The TRUTH about FAME, Cancel Culture & Learning to LOVE Yourself | Jameela Jamil
In a long‑form interview on Lewis Howes' "School of Greatness" podcast, Jameela Jamil reflects on her rapid rise to fame, the evolution of her activist voice, and the toxic dynamics she observed within liberal social‑justice circles. She critiques cancel culture as punitive and counter‑productive, argues that the pursuit of moral perfection and instant‑fix mentalities undermine real progress, and calls for incremental, compassionate change. Jameela discusses how social‑media algorithms create echo chambers, how women are pitted against each other through scarcity mindsets, and how media platforms both pedestal and then dismantle women. She emphasizes the need for grace, accountability, and atonement, positioning mental health as a societal foundation that deserves systemic investment. Neurological insights have reshaped her self‑care practices, leading her to champion movement, brain‑science‑backed habits, and a redefinition of greatness centered on laughter, connection, and humility. Throughout, she urges civil discourse, listening across ideological divides, and recognizing that identity and opinion have become inseparably linked in the digital age.
Chapters
We are all suffering under the same people and we need to come together in this fight. Otherwise nothing's going to change for anyone and people are just going to keep on dying. And if we don't believe in change and if we do not move for actual change, then nothing's going to happen. We are not going to open or change anyone's mind and we are not going to secure our freedoms. I think you gotta have a dream.
The School of Greatness.
Really?
Yeah.
Please welcome Lewis Howes.
Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Jamila Jamil in the house. Thank you so much for coming back. Very excited about this. You've given me a jolt of energy just seeing you. It's been a few years since I've seen you. We were talking about how I met you, I think around 8 to 10 years ago when both of us were kind of just starting in our own journeys.
Yeah.
You've exploded on TV and multiple podcasts and, you know, movies and all these different things. You continue to explode.
Else have you?
In a positive way. But you've also gone through a number of different journeys. Since when I first met you, when you know, you just came off of like a BBC radio show to now being a star on TV show, hosting shows, hosting podcasts, to being all for advocacy in a number of ways and communicating a certain way to, you know, talking about body shaming and mental health to now kind of transitioning into doing things in a different way. And it's been interesting and inspiring and funny at times and unique to see how you've evolved, how you communicate, how you create content, the success you've made and everything. But when we were just talking off camera, you were talking about how there's some big transitions and changes that are happening. It sounds like. What is the biggest thing that has changed for you in the last few years?
I think in the last few years, especially during the pandemic, I watched the way that, you know, like, I'm a liberal and I exist within social justice circles and I have been a loud member of those circles. Can I swear on this?
Sure, yeah. Loud, loud meaning what? Like on social media?
Yeah, loud, direct, forceful, sometimes with a pitchfork in hand, especially back in like 2018. And I have noticed our community move towards a place that doesn't resonate with me at all. And I feel as though I have some sort of responsibility as to being a part of the wave that created this, but it feels like Frankenstein, where I had no idea what it was going to become. I thought we were fighting for justice. I thought we were fighting for we were boycotting the bad guy and that we were all in this together. And what I've seen is both our groups picking each other apart, not really dealing with much bigger issues because we're so busy holding each other to these outrageously unattainable standards of moral perfection. But also it's become so punitive and for a group that talks so much about inclusivity and diversity, we don't have a lot of inclusion or diversity of thought. anymore. And that's just not what I want. It's not what I signed up for. And it's not my way of being like, this is me leaving the Liberals. I will always stand for those same values. But the way in which we're going about things is. Is harmful, and it's not gonna change anything. And if we don't believe in change and if we do not move for actual change and incremental change rather than always striving for immediate perfection, then nothing's going to happen. We are not going to open or change anyone's mind, and we are not going to secure our freedoms. And we are seeing in broad daylight more and more rights being taken away as we continue to ostracize the people that we most need to reach across to. And I have not always done the best job in reaching across to those people, but for the past few years, I have been imperfectly working towards you know, chiseling down my very sharp tongue and trying to become more non-violent in my communication so that we can all come together because we have so much more in common than we have, that we have in differences. And most of our differences come from places of fear or come from places of completely different information we're receiving. All of our opinions are just a product of the information that we receive and we know now that social media algorithms are manipulating our feeds to see more of what we're already, what we've even just looked on just out of curiosity has now become our full feed. And so we're seeing two completely different versions of the same events, of the same people, of the same actions. And then, because we don't realize that we're seeing two opposing sides of each story, We think the other group is stupid. And it's so sad because most of us are facing the main things, like the problems with climate, which I know some people don't believe in, but it's getting hot as a rathole. So something's happening. We are seeing the housing crisis, the homelessness crisis, the healthcare crisis in this country, the food crisis, the big sugar crisis. We have all of these terrible, we have this terrible minority of people who get to control the masses and who none of us come together and organize against and hold accountable because we're all so busy staring at and fighting each other. And that feels awfully convenient and quite scary because that means the actual bad guy who's got none of our best interests, whether you are right, left, independent, whatever, we are all suffering under the same people and we need to come together in this fight. Otherwise nothing's going to change for anyone and people are just going to keep on dying and getting sick. and becoming unhappier and suicides are going to continue to rise. This is not my paranoia. We have hard statistics that prove that this country is falling apart. And I'm not like one to, I don't like the rise in just on America because I've been around the world and I've seen that there's a lot of things that they do wrong and they're not perfect, but there's also a lot of things that they do right, a lot of freedoms that people have here that they don't have in many countries around the world. A lot more opportunity here than there is anywhere. So I don't think on America is the right way forward. I think it's just about identifying why is everyone so angry and so sad? And how do we figure out what we have in common here and come together and work this out as a as a nation?
This is inspiring. I didn't you just gave me I didn't expect this incredibly inspiring opening dialogue, but that was that was amazing. And I'm curious, you just said there's a lot of people are angry. Why do you think you were so angry four or five years ago when you were marching with a pitchfork in certain areas and using a sharp tongue like you mentioned in certain ways and fighting in a certain style? Why were you so angry? And also, why do you think so many people are angry today?
I think, first of all, Women weren't really given the mic until about 2016, right? Our problems were dismissed or laughed at, and we were treated appallingly in the most mainstream of arenas. And so in 2015-2016, Me Too happened, and suddenly the mic was pointed at those of us who were willing to speak, and was like, what do you have to say? Now, we didn't have any practice. We hadn't been doing this. We weren't all like, orators, you know what I mean? Like, I was a Billboard 100 DJ, radio DJ, I used to just count down pop songs, and now I was being asked for my opinion on huge social political infrastructures. And it felt incredibly callous to disregard that opportunity if I knew that I had the strength and at least some of the words to speak. But we were not, it's not even out of practice, this had never happened before. And so I think we were frustrated, we were impatient, we were exhausted, we were angry, we had all like generations of stored up anger, not just for ourselves, but for our mothers, our grandmothers, and great grandmothers. This has just gone on for so long. And so it just all came out at once. And it all came out in a place of rage. And I think you see that with a lot of minorities who speak out. When they start speaking out, it's with so much aggression and passion because they've been waiting for such a long time to speak, but it doesn't all come out in the most constructive way at first because we're only human. And so we're fallible and we're not perfect at communicating ourselves. We don't have training for this. I was never taught how to speak on these massive issues. I left school at 16. I just knew that the one thing I had that a lot of my peers didn't have is a complete disregard for other people to like me.
You didn't care if people liked you.
Didn't give a. Yeah. Still don't give a s***. Not interested in being popular. I was so unpopular at school that it sort of set me up for a life of not being popular and I'm amazed I have as many lovely, wonderful friends as I have now. But outside of those friends, I have no interest in pleasing people or making them like me or being popular or being approved of or even being believed.
Really?
I have no interest. I don't know these people. And so it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what I think of them, it doesn't affect their lives. It doesn't have to affect my life as to what they think of me. And so because I knew that I was, for some reason, neurologically separated from.
That.
I had this kind of superpower to be able to take all the bullets that a lot of other people can't take. Because we are socialized, especially as women, especially as brown women, To be obedient and to be liked and for someone to want to marry us one day. Hooray. And for whatever reason, for whatever I'm missing socially, whatever I'm socially inept at, whatever cues I can't read or disregard, it meant that I just felt ready. I felt ready for the fight. I wasn't ready for the fight. You weren't ready. Because I didn't know what this was gonna become. I didn't think anyone was gonna listen to me when I started speaking. I didn't think I was gonna go viral. This wasn't planned. I was advised by everyone not to say anything at all whatsoever because it would hurt my career. And it certainly did at times.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course. I'm fine now. But it just took off. And by the time I first met you, I did not first meet you. And by the time I first came on this podcast, I think it was like 2019, I was flying at a height at an altitude that I could barely breathe at, right? Where I had been leveraged by the industry, put on this pedestal that I knew was a trapdoor and I was being hyperbolized and everyone was, you know, like world leaders were coming up to me or like getting my number and communicating, trying to get me across all their different causes. I was speaking at the UN. I was on every single podcast. I was on every single magazine. Every panel. Time magazine named me as one of the 25 most influential people. I was on the COVID of British Vogue alongside Greta Thunberg and Jane Fonda. I didn't know what the The fuck was going on? And people were like, She's the feminist hero we need. And as soon as that came out, I was like, that's it. That's the end. Like, it's that moment you get that sickening feeling in your stomach before, when you're at the top of the roller coaster, before you just go all the way down, when you know you're about to just plummet. And I think, the tension that I had when I would bump into you or when I was on your podcast, when I was on anyone's podcast, because I had this defensiveness in knowing that this was gonna blow up in my face. Really? And I wasn't congratulating myself. I was constantly saying from the beginning, like, I'm a feminist in progress. I left school at Zurich. Don't listen to me about everything. I'm just figuring this out. I wanna be a vessel of learning publicly. But the headlines would write so confidently about me that people Mistook that for my confidence, as if I think I'm the feminist hero the world needs.
People put you on a pedestal as...
Yeah, and it's a... The chosen one. Always a trapdoor, and it is a well-oiled system of specifically putting women on that kind of pedestal so high up that it's an unsurvivable fall a lot of the time. And, God, do we love to watch a woman fall. My God, do we enjoy the, like, Schadenfreude, however you pronounce that word, of, Of watching a woman who has been presented as being really full of herself and really like proud of herself and very opinionated, watching her be humbled. God, we love, I would love to understand the sociological or anthropological reasoning behind why as a society, women very much so included, live to watch the humbling of a woman.
Other women.
Other women, yeah.
Why do women Love to watch other women who are successful fall rather than watch them rise.
I don't think it's all women. I just think it includes women. I love to watch a woman rise. I live for it. But I don't see other women as my competition. I see myself as completely unique. I still think I'm a piece of, but I am a unique piece of. I am my own piece of. No one can be a piece of like me. And that's very comforting. But I don't see us in lanes. I just see us as individual like stars. You know, there's an infinite room for all of us.
I like that. A lot of women are competitive, most women or?
I can't say for most women, but I would say that most women have at some point in their formative years, it's been ingrained in them to see other women as competition.
Really?
Why? Yeah, for marriage, for the attention of the opposing gender, or we've been taught that there's a finite amount of space in the workplace or a finite amount of space in the social circle. It's like, well, there can only be one. You see it when there's like one amazing female rapper and then another female rapper rises up and the public and the media are massively instrumental in trying to turn these two women against each other, pit these two women against each other. We don't do it with male rappers in the same way. We maybe did at the very beginning when there was more of a scarcity, but we have so many extraordinary talented women who can do this same thing in very different ways and we insist on trying to get them to rip each other down so that we don't have to. Wow. But it's because we've created a scarcity mindset that so many women have that there's not enough space and there is enough space and it's so vital that we recognize this finally so that we stop being part of tearing each other down because the world is hard enough for us. We do not need to make it harder for each other. And it doesn't mean we can't criticize each other. I've criticized women. I'm very open to being criticized myself. It's just about making sure that when we're criticizing, we're doing it actually constructively. and not from a place of, I need you to be lower than me for me to feel taller than you.
When did you realize your approach? And, you know, 'cause you mentioned once they put you on the COVID of everything and once they said, you,'re the, you know, the next this and the greatest that, it sounds like you realize, oh, it can only go down from here at some point, or there's-- well.
I knew it was like a ticking time bomb before. everything started to go up and...
So when you put someone on a pedestal, what happens?
Well, I mean, what happens is normally very powerful people within media start orchestrating that person's demise. Really? And yeah, and we saw it with like Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, Princess Diana, Meghan Markle, all these different people. It's like, it's a well orchestrated, a well oiled machine of orchestrated attack. They put them up there though.
Yeah. And then they take them down.
Yeah, with Jennifer Lawrence, everyone was like, oh, she's so relatable, she's so relatable. And then after a while, The same exact behavior was, why is she trying to be so relatable all the time? This feels very forced. I think she faked falling over. Let's bring her down. She's a bit arrogant. She's gotten a bit ahead of herself. This is like a 22 year old, 23 year old woman. She's barely out of her teens. It was really mad to watch. Same thing with Anne Hathaway. She was just enjoying... Life. Life and enjoying having some success. And she, you know, had an Oscar speech that seemed to turn people against her and make them feel completely comfortable, completely dehumanizing her. But anyway, listen, I think I'm slightly different to these women in that I've been poking the hornet's nest. Right, straight out the gate. They weren't doing that for me. They were much more innocent by their standards than I was. I made it very easy for everyone because I have a loose opinion.
You made it easy for everyone, but.
Also at the same time-- Doesn't justify.
It, but-- Right, but also at the same time, people weren't as willing to communicate back because they didn't want to be looked at as aggressive or whatever, maybe also-- what do you mean? I think people were, well, some people were willing to like speak back, but then other people were like, okay, I can't say anything because then I'm gonna get in trouble if they had a separate opinion from you, right?
No, people would debate with me all the time. Yeah. Yeah, we just got into very toothy debates where both of us spoke to each other in a bad way.
Oh, really?
Yeah. And my problem is the fact that I... Listen, I don't believe in always being the bigger person. I believe sometimes in being the smaller person. I'm very petty.
You're the last one to say something.
Yeah. I will fight you to death, but I regret returning the behavior of some of the people who treated me badly. I regret it immensely. Like I was spoken to in a very inhumane and disgusting way by certain men with big platforms. And I regret giving in to the calm desire to own them and humiliate them back publicly.
Interesting.
And it's a natural desire because it doesn't feel fair to let someone get away with that kind of behavior.
Absolutely not.
But ultimately, when you resort to their same behavior, and sometimes you use even fouler language, which I'm prone to do because I'm English and very rude, all you do is you start to look as bad as them, and you start to look as ungracious and ill-educated as they do. And you looked like you don't have a better answer. And I did have a better answer. I was just getting into a very like base part of myself. Just my little cave woman inside. Where I just wanted to bludgeon them over the head.
Exactly.
But actually there were smarter and better ways to reason with those people, 'cause it wasn't really about those people. It was about the people who were watching this conversation between two. large media figures. And it's about how do I appeal to the people who follow that person? It's not going to be by ridiculing him because they follow him. So if I ridicule him, they consider me ridiculing them.
Exactly.
And I just, I wasn't ready. I didn't know any of this was coming. I couldn't, it's so hard to recognize this in the moment. It's so hard to zoom out. No one tells you to. No, like, we were in such a culture of like, yeah, get him on both sides. You know, and the audience, it became like the gladiator ring. Like, Twitter became like a gladiator ring. And I just didn't understand what I was participating in. And the pandemic kind of brought a stillness. I mean, it brought mania online, but it brought me a stillness to kind of step back and recognize that, like, this is the way that people are talking to each other now. and the lack of humanity with which we are treating each other in a time where we should have ultimate humanity because we're in a global crisis is terrifying. And I don't want to be a part of this divide because I can see what kind of horror we are leading up to with an election. And regardless of who you support politically, if you're watching this, it doesn't change the fact that The time leading up to that election and the time around that election are going to be societally fraught. And people are going to be fighting and spitting each other in the streets. It's going to become violent and scary. That's not a society any of us want. So we all have a social responsibility right now to look at that and go, how do we all create a more peaceful time? Because the person with different opinions or political beliefs or political backgrounds is not necessarily always your enemy. They're just afraid. They've been, on whatever side, felt so much misinformation and so much bias and so much rhetoric to see you, whoever you are, as the enemy. They're just responding to a kind of fight or flight. We're not each other's enemy. There's obviously the odd outlier who's just evil and just wants to hurt other people, but those are the loud tiny minority of human beings. Most of us just want to be safe, fed, we want healthcare, we want our loved ones to be okay, and we don't want to be lonely. But we have never been lonelier. As a society, as a global society, people have never been lonelier. These are the scariest loneliness statistics. I think loneliness has now been classed as one of the biggest killers in the world, like more so even than I think some things to do with like alcohol and cigarettes. loneliness is a killer. So of course we're lonely because we don't feel like we can be our true selves. We don't feel like we can ask important questions. We don't feel like we can speak openly. We don't feel like we can be friends with people who have opposing opinions. We don't feel like we can talk to colleagues who have opposing opinions. We don't feel like we can talk to our grandmother who was raised in a completely different generation. Right. Like this is not at all what I wanted. I don't want this to be the world that my friends' children grow up in. And so I have a responsibility now, too. And I've been doing this for a few years on my podcast. It's encouraging my audience who probably followed me for the fact that I'm this warrior princess.
Right. Now you've got to persuade them differently.
Encourage them towards grace.
Interesting.
Understanding and not disposing of each other as fast as they are.
That'S. I mean, I was telling you before we were talking about this, that this is inspiring me, hearing you say this, because I'm all for Justice, fairness, you know, people being heard and communicating effectively and making sure that we're improving everywhere. I'm all for it. But it's sometimes when it's communicating in a way that is attacking, I'm like, I don't know if someone has ever screamed at me, and I've been able to listen to them. From football coaches to parents to ex-girlfriends, I don't know if I've ever been able to sit there calmly and say, I hear you. And I'm really, I'm willing to listen more and I want to make a change. It's always like, I need to protect myself. I need to defend myself. You're crazy. Or whatever I was feeling in the time of something coming at me or feeling guilty, shamed and not enough when I'm being yelled at from my perspective. And I just don't know how that's going to help people feel included in a conversation when they're getting yelled at or made wrong.
I mean, from the very beginning of my advocacy, I always was against the frivolity of cancel culture in that I always said that we can't demotivate people from improving by telling them they can never come back. That I was constantly on from the start. I was never trying to cancel anyone. I was just trying to tell people to stop doing what they were doing. I just did it with incredibly bad language. But I never intended for anyone to have everything taken away from them. Probably Harvey Weinstein who can go f*ck himself. But everyone else who just said the wrong thing or thought the wrong thing or, you know, went against group think, those are the people that are just like, let's hear them out and hope that they can come back better and stronger and they can atone. And then we re-welcome them back. Otherwise, how do you motivate anyone to change? Why would we? Right. Why would we? Like, we're all, Like, we haven't evolved that much in the last 2,000 years. We still can't tell the difference between a mean tweet and a saber-toothed tiger. Like, we aren't these utopian moral beings who can just keep taking endless amounts of lashings with no hope of return and keep doing the work. The work is hard.
It is.
Whatever it is that makes you an embittered or angry or fearful person is probably some sort of trauma, right? I've been an and that wasn't for no reason. That didn't come out of nowhere. I was abused. I didn't deal with my abuse. I took my abuse out on the wrong target. That's most of us. Yeah. And I think because I've also been a troll and I've been a misogynist in the past, because I've watched my own transition, I have such belief in people because I'm such a not extraordinary person. So if I can change, I really believe in people. Wow. And I feel as though on the left and amongst liberals and in social justice, hope and belief in people is dying.
Wow. Really?
Yes. That's why we disregard people and dispose of them, 'cause they're just like, they're never gonna change. And that comes from, by the way, just being disappointed again and again and again. I'm not blaming them for that, but that's not gonna get us anywhere. And it's not true. What is the point of activism, which is the work of change, if you don't think people or systems can actually change, and they can't change with only ostracization and bullying and humiliation. And yeah, I mean, that's a big part of what ostracization is. It's what ostracization is like. Canceling has got so many different iterations as to what it is for so many people. People go, well, Louis CK is not canceled. He's still selling out Madison Square Gardens. Clementine Morrigan talks a lot about this, like what? canceled culture actually is, which is like taking everything away from someone, including the fact that their own friends and family and colleagues decide to distance themselves from that person. They become completely, it's like putting a person in kind of social solitary confinement, which is the cruelest thing you can do to someone. Much crueler than taking away their awards. It's a social contagion. And I've never learned from being screamed at. I've never learned from being bullied or ostracized. I might be fear-mongered into changing the way I act, but it doesn't change my heart. No.
If anything, it might make you more upset and- maybe it might make you-.
Yeah, if I get- I have no hope in the world.
No one accepts me or is willing to listen to me, then screw the world.
Yeah, we see that with a lot of people. It's like we see that with people who go into prison and come out more violent and more dangerous. It's like you dehumanize people, then what is their motivation to become more humane? Where are they supposed to be getting that from? You can't just withdraw, withdraw, withdraw, and never deposit any grace, never deposit any humanity, and expect that person to change. And so, you know, I think I myself have been ostracized and, you know, kind of after the top of the roller coaster came crashing down in 2020 with a bunch of just, Nonsense that was said about me. Like I knew that I was gonna probably get cancelled for something that I would say, because I, you know, say the wrong thing sometimes and I allow space for my infallibility. What I didn't expect is that things that weren't true would be used to take me down.
Oh, that's how it always is. Well, that's how it always is.
That's how it tends to happen.
You're always like, that is what happens. Well, at least talk about the facts.
And bring me down with that. But it's not just that. I was going after, like, big industries and going after the diet industry and the diet industry funds the media industry and I was going after the media. I was going after huge figures of the media. So it was bound to be that this coordinated effort would just come at me all at once. That's not to say that I had not made mistakes. It's not to say I hadn't left myself open to criticism because I had and I welcome it. But the things were so egregious that I was like, wow, you just can't kill women anymore. We used to be able to just kill them when they were annoying or a problem. So now you just have to kill their credibility. You have to kill their reputation. You have to overexpose them. you have to make people irritated with them. Two people disagree with their tweet, you call it a backlash and a headline. Either there's a multitude of people, the majority of people are agreeing with them. Being inside of that swirling media cancellation mess was fascinating because I was like, this is how it works. And after that, I couldn't unsee it. And then I started to look back at all these women who'd gone through the same thing, and I was like, it did all happen at once out of nowhere. And so now I feel very protective over those women, but But also...
So what was the moment that...
Being screamed at by people didn't make me feel more empathetic. Right. It didn't make me feel like I wanted to help more. It made me want to disappear and kill myself.
Interesting. This is when?
This was 2020. Really? Yeah, I wanted to kill myself. Wow. I had to be put on medications that I wouldn't kill myself. It was very serious. I had a six month nervous breakdown after that and I was like, I don't want to be responsible for making anyone else feel like this. Not that I'd ever tried, because I was not pro-council, but I definitely called people out publicly. In ways that sometimes I still do when I'm working on it. But because I want to find a balance between holding very powerful people accountable, but also not just taking a tomahawk.
Right, right. Not just a tantrum.
I want to do it in a more intelligent way.
Yes.
And, and thoughtful. thoughtful and relatable way. But going through all of that, realizing that like, this is not how we teach anyone anything. And just the mess and seeing how many of the people that were enjoying my downfall were Nivral's, were my own, were the very people that I'd been fighting for and were women.
They were enjoying watching the fall.
Yeah, and participating in it. Participating in it.
How so on social media?
On social media.
Behind the scenes with friends or... Because.
I think like, I think I probably wasn't adhering to the social contract, because I am opinionated. I have an opinion on everything. Stood in most of us. I didn't understand, hey, don't give your opinion all the time about everything. I just don't really chat it. I've never understood my position. I've never understood, like, fame happened so fast for me both times it happened in, like, England and the US that you can't grasp it. You're just in your house. I'm not a Jonas brother going out and, like, people are chasing me down the street. I just feel like me. I still live with my flatmates who I've known since I was 18. You know, so I couldn't understand that I'm, I couldn't really understand that my position has changed. Stop just chatting to everyone as if you can, because everything you say becomes a headline. I just didn't realize, and then by the time I did, it was too late. Wow. And... It is what it is, but I've overcome the trauma of that, and now I feel very grateful for it. Because it has given me a clarity that and the pandemic and watching the horror of the way that everyone behaved on all political sides has given me real motivation to now spend the rest of my life working on bringing people back together. Wow.
That's inspiring. I'm laughing because I just, wasn't sure where you were at in your life personally, but to hear this really inspires me. And what sounds to me and what I'm hearing you say is for many years you were calling people out on... Out and in. Out and in. You were speaking out about certain people. And now what I'm hearing you say is you're trying to call people up to something greater, of what's possible for them. in a more thoughtful, inclusive way.
Calling people together. Yes. It's like we are struggling with so much bigger than the stuff that we're fighting about right now. It is happening imminently. The healthcare crisis is imminent. The homelessness crisis is here. It's arrived. We're fighting about things that might happen 10, 20 years from now. And we need to be talking about what's happening now, what's happening, what's going wrong with the water in this country, the hormones in the food, big shake, like all these different things. that are killing people now. I just want us to, I just want us to come together.
You are aware of and involved in so many different causes and things around society. And there are probably a lot of people watching or listening who are angry about something in the world, whether it's in their own community or... What would.
Be for good reason.
Healthcare around fairness, equality, reproductive rights, whatever it might be, financial inequality, all these different things. A lot of people are angry about something. And what I see is a lot of people who are angry about that thing want it to change now, like you talked about, like it's got to change now, which is really hard for big things to change overnight. But how can people who are upset, frustrated, worn out, exhausted, and feel like it's just so unfair, certain elements of whatever system they're frustrated with, How can they, if you can only share one message with them on how to really be effective on making a change and the thing that matters to them most, what would you say to those individuals?
Well, the first thing you need to do is identify that that's a cultural pattern in our generation, right? We want a thousand channels. We want a thousand shows to be able to stream at the same time. We want to be able to have 600 different people on a menu that we can swipe through who we're gonna go on a date with tonight. We have Amazon Prime. It delivers today. We have, you know what I mean? Instant gratification. I don't do slow weight loss or weight gain anymore. It's like, where are the shortcuts? We're a generation taught to look for shortcuts, to look for a quick fix, to look for instant gratification. And so recognizing that as a cultural phenomenon that's never existed before because pre-technology, we didn't have access to it. I'm sure the inclination was always there. It's never good for you. We have too much content. We are overstimulated. We're spending too much time on screens. We're seeing mental health issues. We have too many dating options, too many apps. People are lonelier than they've ever been. They're having less sex than they've ever had. The birth rate, I guess, is declining. All kinds of things are going wrong from having too many options, too much convenience. We are seeing people's health decline because of fast food. and so when we look at people losing weight with these extreme measures, be it pills, injections, like very, very severe diets that are unsustainable, 5% of which work, 95% of which fail. Like, those aren't good for people. They can lead to eating disorders or heart problems, all kinds of different health issues. If you're taking substances to speed up your weight loss, I was talking in I was talking in the Senate not long ago about the fact that in muscle build products that are predominantly targeting boys, in a lot of them they're finding Viagra and heavy metals. All just quick fix, quick fix, quick fix. There's no such thing as a quick fix. Nothing that has ever been done at speed can ever work. It always causes mess, chaos and harm. So while I understand wanting anything fast, patience and discipline are two things that are no longer encouraged in our society. We don't even allow for human beings to grow and change anymore. We expect them to instantly be updated with all of the perfect opinions that are constantly changing all of the time. So we have to take a step back and look at the fact that we are a sick society. mentally, physically, socially. And so, once we're realistic about the fact that the quick fix doesn't work, I think we're able to return to, okay, what does incremental change look like? The only kind of change that ever lasts, right, incremental change.
It's kind of slow change.
It's slow bit by bit by bit by bit, and that allows you to have time to be careful. It allows you to have time to consider, it allows you to have time to change your mind.
Strategize, test it out, see how it feels.
My rise to fame way too fast. I had no idea what the f*ck was going on. I felt like I was in the middle of a tornado. I didn't have time to look at myself or look at the way that I was coming across or look at the impact to the people that I most wanted to reach. I didn't want to reach the people who already agreed with me. And now those are the only people that are probably listening to my podcast that I mean to be for everyone. But I couldn't see it. It's too, happens all too fast. Nothing fast ever works. Wow. Nothing good comes from it. So what does incremental change looks like? Look like incremental change looks like starting to educate yourself. It involves listening to people's opinions who are opposed to you, which you're not supposed to do. I'm not just shutting them down. Nowadays you're not even supposed to follow anyone that has a different opinion or who did something wrong.
Because then you'll be judged for following those people.
Follow those people.
Look at them.
Learn from them.
Read their stuff, watch their content.
Develop critical thinking skills as to why you disagree with them. Research, learn. When you have a family member who says something that you find egregious, that you disagree with, whatever political side you're on, learn how to debate.
Learn how to- I'll just run away and shame them and make them wrong.
Learn the facts. Learn how to convince each other again. Not just shut each other down and dispose of each other. Change the circle you're in if we can all just focus on the circle we're in and stop fighting with celebrities who we way over deified anyway and stop fighting with, you know, our great-grandfather who isn't- Did something in the war back in the day or whatever.
Yeah.
Like, let's just work on our inner circle and try to make an influence there. Change the way that we interact with others, 'cause that will change the way that person goes on to interact with someone else. And open up our scope of who we are.
Yeah.
Willing to just listen to. 'Cause I sometimes wonder if the reason that both sides are so afraid to listen to each other is because they're worried they might be convinced, or they're worried they might find out they were wrong.
Ooh, I think I like that.
And whether or not that's true, that's not a good place to move from as a human being.
Your beliefs are shaken. It shakes your identity.
Yeah, and this is just it, right? So I was talking to this psychologist in DM on Instagram, in which she said that identity and opinion have become completely interlinked. She sees that a lot with the people who come into her office.
Explain that more.
So it means that, like, you know, back in our brain, we grew up not knowing anyone else's political ideology or what their parents represented or what their beliefs were about. Almost anything. We used to just have polite meals and then, you know what I mean, like arguments about, like, more trivial things. It was a simpler time. It wasn't necessarily a, A great time, but it was a simpler time. And we were able to acknowledge that if someone had an opinion we don't like, that's just their opinion that we don't like, and we had friends who might have been deemed problematic or different, but we kind of accepted that, well, that's just like a part of them I don't like, but I can see the rest of the individual. Now we can't see the rest of the individual anymore. The bit that we don't like tarnishes everything about them and erases their history of anything they did that was good.
That's what I like.
It's scary. It's scary. Like we see this all the time with public figures. It's like someone could do so many great things and then they make one mistake and then we disregard everything they've ever done and we want to get rid of them without thinking like, oh, a lot of people might suffer if we completely get rid of that person because they're actually quite helpful. We used to be able to see when someone was more helpful than harmful and see that we can just work on the bit that's harmful. But now we just throw everyone away. And so I think that is something that concerns me. And so when it comes to the identity and opinion, is that identity and opinion is no longer a separate thing. Because of social media, identity and opinion have kind of like woven together and now they kind of exist as one. So before when someone would say, I disagree with your opinion, it just meant I disagree with your opinion.
But now it means- We can still be friends.
I disagree with you fundamentally. I disagree with who you are. and who you've become. And I'm defining you as this person. I'm freezing you in stone as this person forever.
How long do you think this will go on for until people wake up and say, oh, I was doing this to other people, and now it's actually coming back to hurt me?
It depends on how many of us with public figures work to raise awareness and raise the alarm about this.
Wow.
You know.
Not many people in Hollywood are talking the way you're talking right now.
It's because you're still congratulated by isolating and demonizing. That's why I went so, you know, that's why I popped off about the Met Gala, because I was like, hang on. Hang on. This is an industry and this is an audience that really makes a big deal of not being able to separate an art from an artist.
Well, they have been in the last four or five years, right? Yeah.
The last seven years, I've seen it. It's like, we can't separate the art from the artist. We're gonna demonize and ostracize whoever we can. and whoever we want to and whoever we're just going to completely separate ourselves from and we're going to drop them and we're going to do this or the other.
And what happened at the Met Gala?
The Met Gala is they threw a party for a bigot who was so cruel about fat people, who people claim to care about now, so cruel about immigrants, so awful about the MeToo movement and you've got MeToo feminists and media that pushed the MeToo movement celebrating this man at the highest honor, the biggest party of the year. And then youve got everyone on line who loves cancelling people, and who loves digging up people's tweets when they were twelve, applauding a lalla, lalla lad, doesn't matter what he said. He's an icon what are we doing? Pick one. How can we expect any one to take us seriously, if we are this hypocritical and this wishy washy? You've got to be consistent. I'm fine to separate the art from the artist, 'cause the longer I'm in.
This industry the more I realize that.
They are all terrible people.
Really?
So what is... Like the greats. The greats.
They've all got something.
They've all done something...
Sometimes.
Hugely inappropriate.
Very.
Or awful, or they were horrible. So the only way you can enjoy art is almost to separate the art from the artist. And the longer you're around, the more you start to realize that, and the more that comes out after they've died, it is what it is. So what is it? Are we separating the art from the artist, or are we not? We have to decide. I hate hypocrisy, because it means that all the other things that we're doing that are good can't be taken seriously. We open ourselves up for ridicule.
The word that I keep hearing you talk about or insinuating is grace.
Right, yeah.
And it sounds like you've had grace for yourself through what you went through and your rise to fame a couple of times, plus the roller coaster when you were on top. you know, when people were coming at you in 2020 and dealing with all that, you had grace for yourself, you had grace for your body image, you had grace for your health, your stress, you've had grace for others now in certain ways. And what I'm hearing you say is we just need more grace in general for ourselves and others.
No, we don't just need more grace. We still need more order. We still need accountability. And more accountability and more self-accountability, more like less hypocrisy. and more like organizing for what the actual end goal is here. What are the big things we're fighting for? Let's stop like focusing in on the minutiae. Let's work on the big things that hurt everyone in our society. And let's work together on that. Let's organize. And then on top of that, in order to be able to do that, you need more grace. Doesn't mean you can't criticize each other. It doesn't mean you can't get pissed off with one another. It doesn't mean you can't fight. It just means that the fight has to end at some point. There has to be a road back. We have to allow for a space for atonement. And we have to recognize that there is a part of us that enjoys watching other people fail and do something wrong and make mistakes, because then we don't have to think about all the terrible mistakes and terrible thoughts. that we've made.
Yeah.
And all the mistakes we've made, it's like, oh good, everyone's looking at them, so no one's looking at me.
Right, right, right.
And so the reason dogpiles happen mostly, it's not because everyone cares that much about that thing. We can see that the thing that we want to say has been said a thousand times, but we want to loudly, from a tribal perspective, from a tribal place rather, we want to loudly exclaim, our disapproval so that we announce which tribe we're on. We want to say, I'm with the bigger crowd, so don't include me in any of that. I just want to, we want to be safe. We want to be in the tribe. We don't want to be left on our own to be eaten alive. And what I feel very sad about is that more and more, when someone gets into trouble for something that isn't like egregious physical violence, The kind of thing where they really destroyed someone's life where that person might never recover. We just leave them for dead. When I got piled onto, I got left for dead. And racists and bigots and misogynists were all able to come for me. And no one from my side stepped in.
How is that?
And then as soon as I overcame it, everyone came back.
Why is that?
Everyone came back and it was like it never happened. And they were like, oh, I'm so glad you came back through that thing. And I got Marvel and then I was back on the COVID of Vogue and I was having a great time And all of a sudden, all my friends came rushing, not my, like, real friends. They never left me.
Celebrity friends.
All these people, all these media figures were suddenly all leaving me wanting to be in pictures again. And I was like, Isn't that interesting?
Yeah.
And so, you know, sometimes I now get into trouble for trying to show public grace to someone in a moment of their disgrace. And I understand why I get into trouble for that. But this is, it might be my mistake. But I'm not afraid of mistakes. I believe in my heart right now that love and extending a tiny bit of grace or hope to someone is the best way for them to come back from that thing and do better. And that seeing someone go from doing something bad to doing something better is much more healthy and helpful for our society than just watching them disappear. 100% seeing change, seeing change. My audience love watching me change. They love that I used to be a misogynist and I'm growing less and less problematic as time goes on. But they enjoy the fact that they're watching me become not only a better person but happier, happier, healthier, allowing myself to fail. like getting rid of the shackles of the perfection that women are held up to, like the standards of perfection that women are held up to. I've never felt more at peace. I've never felt more love. I've never felt more connected. I've never been more open to a fist bump. I'm English, but I'll take it. But I've never felt more connected to the world. And I think a large part of our loneliness as a society is coming from the fact that we are starting to We're being trained and encouraged by social media and media and algorithms to look at each other as enemies. We are not each other's enemies. There are people far more powerful whose names we don't know deliberately who are controlling all of this and making us stare at each other rather than looking for them. And I want to go after them. So expect now that I've said that, there to be another huge random media scandal.
This is powerful. I'm curious, where do you think you'd be if you didn't have have the, you know, the attacks of everyone coming at you in 2020. Where do you think you'd be right now without that experience, that sadness, that loneliness, that loss of, oh, I thought these people were my friends, and then they left, and then they came back.
And I think I'd be in a fairly similar place. Really? I really do. I think when it comes to noticing and fighting for the way that we elevate women just to drag them down, I think that's what that taught me.
'Cause you experienced it.
And I think I might be less inclined to reach out to someone in a moment of disgrace. That would be something that would be different. I think I would be the way everyone else is, which is all, I don't want to catch it. I don't want to be nice to them or like anything or keep following them in case anyone drags me into this. I don't want to be in the tribe. But what you do is you leave someone so isolated that then they feel hopeless and, you know... Bad things happen. Yeah, people have died. I know people have died. I almost died. Yeah. I almost truly died. I can't believe I'm still here.
Wow.
And had I not lived with my best friends and my boyfriend and not had the kindness of the people, you know, around me and medication that I'm no longer on, but I needed in that moment, I'd. I'd be dead for sure. It isn't. I understand that people look at public figures as like, well, you've got this money and this power. And definitely true, yes. It's not the same as when it happens to someone who works in a shop or a store or in a school, which does happen. It doesn't just happen to the... That's the other thing. We think this stuff just happens to famous people. What happens is it bleeds into our culture and it permeates our culture. It happens to people who we never hear about. It happens to people in schools, in, you know, in their workplace, and they get ostracized and they lose their job, and they have no other means. They've got no way to... They can't even afford a therapist through all of it. the kids are wanting and they're learning. But I think other than that, I think I would be at the same place when it comes to division because the pandemic shifted something in our society globally and the loss of women's rights and the hatred that we're seeing now, we're not seeing people disagree with each other's opinions. We're seeing real Visceral hatred. Visceral hatred, yeah. Yeah, and we're seeing mockery of each other that I don't think is very helpful, that I totally participated in before. You know, just a few years ago, if some man was incredibly degrading to me on Twitter, I would call him an incel. And I look back and I'm like, Call him a what? An incel. Yeah, you know, when someone's in voluntary celibate, without really thinking about, like, yes, he shouldn't have degraded me, and yes, he should never have spoken to me in that sexist and disgusting way. But my calling him an incel just lowers me to his level and is actually perpetuating a really cruel, unkind message about men who feel lonely. So then I suck.
Right.
And so I stopped doing that a few years ago. Like, I'm, that's good. But I, you know, it's not like, I'm not like, right, right, right. It's just, it's good.
You're aware of it and you're acknowledging it and you're, you know, this, like.
Slap down, smack down, own the libs, own the Republicans, you know, even liberals, these videos they make when they go out in to these parts of the country where a lot of these people, they're not from the same metropolitan cities we are. They're not exposed to the same news or algorithms that we are. They are largely ignored by both coasts until suddenly someone's got a microphone and they want to go and interview some 70-year-old Republican man who's a farmer and ask him his opinions on these very new topics of discussion, and he might give an ill-informed or outdated answer. And then the way we laugh and it goes viral and everyone loves it and we just s*** on them. What message does that send? What does that say to everyone watching that? It says we think you're idiots.
You're less than.
You're less than. They think we're idiots. We are all everyone right now being idiots because we're we're fighting the wrong target. None of us are smarter or better than each other. We're all just informed differently. And the faster we can all work to explain that to people, the faster we will bring people together into a much healthier and happier society. And that's where I want my work to everything I'm doing is now towards mental health.
I was just going to mention that because with your show, your podcast, iWeigh, which is a great show that I've been on, and I think I've seen the evolution of it, which is inspiring to see that it's focused more on mental health now. And I think something you said, which is self-accountability, self-control, mental health, and enter your own healing, are the things that I think when we work on those things, Everything gets better because then you can interpret things better, you can pause, you can give people grace, you can give yourself grace. You can, as opposed to just, I'm angry, I'm lashing out because I'm hurt.
And I'm afraid. Yes. Everyone feels afraid all the time. It's really bad for your nervous system. It's neurologically terrible. We've had doctors on my podcast come on and explain that mistakes are the most effective way for somebody to learn. That's how neurologically your brain is more likely to implement and keep information. We've made people afraid of mistakes, we've made people afraid of everything.
Yes.
And people feel so afraid of and isolated and judged by each other. It's not good. And so what I weigh has been more focusing on is me reaching across to people who are less and less like me and wanting to engage in civil discourse.
That's inspiring.
I'm wanting to expose new ideas that are away from group think and just challenge them sometimes, but respectfully.
Yeah, of course.
Or sometimes have my mind opened.
What's the thing that's opened your mind the most from someone that maybe you said, I don't think I'm going to learn much from this person, but I'm curious to see what they have to say. And maybe I'd be open.
What?
Who shocked you or what idea opened you up?
I think the thing that has probably taken me by surprise the most has been neurologists in that it's not that I went in with any kind of preemptive decision of what I was going to hear, but I had no idea how much neurology, how much brain science actually informs our personality and informs our behavior and informs our anxiety and informs our depression. I had no idea about the way that we are wired and how much that can do and how what we eat and what we drink and how much we sleep. I always thought, yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. Exercise.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hate exercise. Yeah.
Don't drink alcohol. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, yeah, yeah, I get it, yeah, yeah. It's completely transformed my life. I've been listening to these people. I've been learning about glucose, and I've been learning about daily exercise. And I'm mortified to admit that it's made me happier than I've ever been.
I'm mortified.
Because you were like, screw this stuff. Yeah, yeah. I hate sweating. I think it's disgusting. Wow. But I've been exercising, you know, a little bit every single day. I've been bringing my audience along for the ride because obviously we were a kind of a very, clear anti-diet culture space. It was, you know, where a lot of eating disorder recovery- Sure, sure. Where a lot of people who've had eating disorders come to, you know, what we've created as a safe haven for eating disorders. And so exercise is a really tricky conversation for most people. Yeah.
Because there's so much shame around exercise. It's not a healthy version.
It's more of an extreme version. It's all for the external.
It's all for the vanity. Well, you know the power of your brain and how helpful it is for that, which helps you Heal, calm, feel differently.
It changes everything, but our focus is, you know, look at the exercise attire that men and women are expected to wear, especially women with the bra and like the light-colored leggings. And that's fine. Everyone should just do themselves. Sure. Not everyone, not everyone feels comfortable, actually. I don't want to bend over and see what I look like bending over in a mirror. I had an eating disorder for 20 years. I have body dysmorphia. That's gonna make me not want to go again the next day. 'Cause I'm gonna go into a place of judgment. And, you know, we also, again, we want instant results, instant results. It takes a long time.
It takes a long time.
Not that long, not as long as you think, but it takes like six months. It's not three week abs, six pack.
It'S like six months minimum to really start seeing.
Exactly. When I was 24, I walked into my friend, who's a personal trainer, who then went on to train me for Marvel, Al Jackson. I walked into his gym, when I was 24, I was like, how long would it take me to get an, like, Nicole Scherzinger? And he looked at my, and he was like, about three months. And I was like, nah, never mind. I walked out.
Even three months is not that long.
Amazing.
Yeah. Three months.
It was probably going to be a sneak into a six. But still, I heard that, and I was like, well, if there's not two weeks, I don't have time for that.
Oh, my God.
Classic. Classic of our generation.
I'm just not gonna work out at all.
Yeah, but when you think about the neurological benefits of exercise and the fact that within 10 to 15 minutes, you have endorphins, you have happy chemicals going through your brain that are de-stressing you, making it more likely for you to be able to sleep that night, de-stressing you, you immediately feel better than you felt beforehand. And then if you keep that up every day, within a week or two, your life starts to genuinely feel differently. And so I've been trying to bring my audience along with me on this journey doing that.
It's called move for your mind. How dare you.
How dare you exercise? You know, how dare you enjoy it? But I found a way that is like in baggy clothes, eating sugary snacks so we can divorce the idea of calories out, calories in. We're going against all of exercise culture and all of diet culture, because exercise culture and diet culture are just married now. And so we are, we've kind of created this slightly anarchist, rebellious, like exercise culture. Don't work out, but make sure you're moving. Yeah, yeah, you look, but you can look ridiculous. I look ridiculous.
I have no, that's great. I have no, like, swank, you know?
Swank. I don't know if that's the right word. Don't work out for Instagram. Yeah. Don't work out for Instagram, work out for yourself. I'm gonna wanna see that. But like dance in your kitchen, do things that are free, lift water bottles, lift your dog, lift your child. You know, go for a walk every day. Do simple things, buy a $300 walking machine, which might be expensive for some people, but some people it might be affordable. So if you're a woman and you're afraid of walking at night, I walk on that and I watch my favorite TV shows and then I get my half an hour a day and then I feel amazing and I have a great night's sleep. I sound smug and disgusting. I hate myself. I promised myself I would never be this person.
Or a healthy person?
An exercising person. But we're trying to find unpretentious, fun and welcoming ways for people at any size or with any disability or any stage of pregnancy to join us and not feel ostracised. That's cool. Because we still, I mean, whenever there's a plus size line for exercise workout, the world goes mad. So what did you want them to wear when they were exercising? You want these people to exercise and work out and be healthy? What do you want to be naked in the gym? The gyms are not a very friendly space. So it's just about finding an alternative way to democratize exercise and bring it back to the people. It was ours. It got industrialized, like, a matter of decades ago and turned into this exclusive club where you have a uniform. Why do you need a uniform?
Yeah, unless you're playing a professional sport.
Actually, well, you've had this uniform that's getting sexier and sexier and sexier every year for both for all the genders. And it's becoming more and more about just becoming a billboard for other people. No one's thinking about the inside. It's all very punitive. It's also punitive. No pain, no gain is the stupidest slogan of our generation. One off.
Right. Well, it's also with men, it's like you just see managers shirtless everywhere who are just shredded and probably on steroids or human growth hormone. And so they're just like so, ripped that you're just like, most men are like, I could never get to that point.
Yeah, but that get to happy.
Right, exactly.
That person might be struggling with an eating disorder or some sort of body dysmorphia or orthorexia. You know, we don't know what everyone's story is. Just focus on being happier in an hour than you are right now. Yeah. Feeling autonomous. So many of us don't feel autonomous in the world because there's so much chaos and we're doom scrolling and we're looking at how the world is falling apart and our kids are changing faster than we were at their age and everyone feels so like, oh my God, it feels like I'm in quicksand all of the time. It's like it's a quick way to immediately feel like, okay, my feet are back on the ground and it's just temporary, but then you do it again. Absolutely. And so that's a big part of what we're doing over at Ayurveda is exercise culture, but also neurology and learning that you can really make fundamental quick changes that it doesn't just have to be medication. I'm pro-medication. And it doesn't just having to be access to the best therapy, which no one can afford en masse. There are so many ways you can rewire your own brain. And I think these people, people like Dr. Caroline Leaf, who's great. Yeah. Are fantastic and important. And they're about no longer succumbing just to big pharma, but giving the power back to the people to have autonomy in their own recovery. Absolutely. It's empowering. That's inspiring.
So what I'm hearing you say is that when you started to talk to neurologists, or brain scientists, you started to learn these ideas just make you happier and healthier overall. And so you started, you know, mortifying yourself by doing these things.
Yeah. And you started to see results. Instagram live. Yeah.
And you started to see results.
Yeah. I'm happier than I've ever been. I noticed it. Nicer than I used to be.
Yeah. You see it? Yeah, exactly. I could feel the energy right away when you walked in here. I go, something has shifted within you. Yeah.
Not a year bad.
Before I. I said it was just like.
No, but I was defensive.
You had more of an aggressive energy.
Yeah, I was defensive and I think there's nothing wrong with a little bit of female aggression, but I do think that what I had was more of a defensive energy. That's what it was. Again, I was flying so high and everyone was congratulating me so much that I was like, I was just waiting for the shoe shop and also everyone, every podcast I went on, someone was trying to trap me or, you know.
So I didn't know what you were gonna be like.
Like, I didn't know what you were gonna say. Hope you didn't think I were trying to trap you. Great, I had you on my podcast, we had a great time. It's just, I just didn't know who to trust. I knew that the other shoe was going to drop at any moment and I just didn't know when it was going to happen and I had this anxiety and I think also because everything was happening so fast and because I had that anxiety, I think that also accounts for some of my worse, like my poorer decisions with things that I said publicly, subjects I weighed into. Why am I talking about global conflict? What do I know about global conflict? But I felt pressured to because people are like, your silence on this is deafening. And so you're like, I don't want to think I don't care. I want to know I care about.
Their country, but I don't know anything about their country. That's one of the biggest things when people say, I can't believe we're not supporting this or this or this or this and you're not saying something means you don't support it.
Yeah. I'm like, maybe I just don't know what to say.
Yeah.
And you're, because I know this, the one thing about eating disorders, I'm expected to know everything about everything. And my bad for trying to jump in when I didn't know because I only ever created more mess. And for some reason, the media, like, I can, and it can make a headline. So, like, it, like, and I don't know why, like, but they, they, they know that I'm divisive. They know I'm controversial. They know that I'm outspoken.
Yeah.
They, they, and then they further polarize me by making the headline as egregious as possible and violent as possible. It's always Jamila Jamil slams. And often I've just said a really.
Thoughtful thing with, like, a love heart.
Right.
Not always. Right, right, right. Sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What did it feel like to you when you know, you had people that were maybe seemed like friends or acquaintances, but when you were going through your stuff in the media and people, you know, went against you or just stopped talking to you for a period of time, how did they make you feel? And how is your relationship with certain people like that once they started to come back around?
They'll never be back on the inside, ever. And I think It can be helpful in moments like that, as heartbreaking as they are, because it was heartbreaking. Yeah, I know the feeling. You felt very like, you feel very betrayed and you also like judge your own sense of judgment. You question yourself, which is never nice. It's a shaky feeling when you can't trust your gut instinct. But truly, it's also an extraordinary magnifying glass of clarity that I'm so grateful for, because I have this extraordinary pool of people now left, who I know have got my back, who don't care, who don't look at the internet, who challenge me when I'm wrong with grace and love, and they maintain the most fundamental quality that I think we all need, which is to have the benefit of the doubt.
100%.
It's the benefit of the doubt is going to carry us to a better society.
Yes, it is.
We have lost the benefit of the doubt, especially for women. We have reserved quite a lot of it for men, but even then we assume people's worst intentions and that's not the world that I grew up in.
Yeah, and if we're modeling this to our kids, what do we expect them to do? Have great values and, you know, be open to conversation.
What's a great value? The values that are correct keep changing. So what's a great value? What does inclusion look like? What does diversity of friendship groups look like? Debate is the foundation of democracy.
We've stopped that.
Disagreement, rather, is the foundation of democracy.
We've stopped debating. We just said, no, I'm not gonna listen to you. I'm just gonna yell at you and not listen.
Yeah, I just, like I said, I've done it before, got me nowhere. Didn't make me feel good, made me feel really lonely and sad, and alienated me from people. I don't wanna be alienated from people.
I wanna be friends.
I wanna be with the people. I want us to be together. Yeah, I don't want to have children, but this work is my way of making the world easier for my friends who are having children. If I can make it a safer world for their kids, then that makes up for the fact that I refuse to be called mother.
Really, I'll tell you what, I'm inspired by just the journey you're on. You know, I'm inspired that you got to experience so much in the last six, seven years. You got to experience a rise of fame quickly, and you did some things that you were proud of, but also things you weren't proud of, and you learned from them. You know, I'm glad you got to experience people for you and then against you because you learned from them. And I feel like you're a better person because of that, and you have more perspective now. And at the end of the day, you've got a lot of grace for yourself and grace for others, and it sounds to me You want people to come together, you want people to be open-minded, you also want people to be accountable for their actions, and you want people to focus on their mental health and their optimizing of their own mental health, optimizing their own physical body and their spiritual health so they can have more peace and grace for themselves and others. That's what I'm hearing you say.
Yeah, we talk about mental health so much now in society and it's a big part of the zeitgeist, but I still think we're talking about it from not quite the right angle. We're still talking about it as though like, this would be a good thing to have on an individual basis. Wouldn't it be nice if you had, if you could make your mortgage payments and look after all your kids and take them to all the practices and do all of this for everyone, but then also not want to kill yourself. It's definitely still seen as a surplus, whereas actually it should be the foundation of everything that we are going to. I can't believe mental health is not free in this country. I cannot believe it's not free in every single country. It is in many countries. But this should, this is how we increase our GDP. People can work healthier. People can be healthier. They will be in the hospital less if they are happier because stress and loneliness and all these different things are huge factors as to what destroys people's health and immune systems. It would change the amount of people having to go in psychiatric care. It would change the amount of homelessness there is. It would change the way that we treat each other as a society. It would change everything. That's where the money should go. All the money should go there. If we could all as a world put the money instead of in the military only into mental health, if we could take some of those trillions and put it towards making the people and the children happier and having children access to mental health, we wouldn't need so much military. There wouldn't be so much war. We wouldn't need the police as often as we do. We wouldn't need as many drugs or whatever else. As many drugs or as many different things that we have now to numb the pain. Numbing devices. Numb the pain. Exactly. To help people escape from the pain. I agree. We wouldn't be sewn to our phones. And a lot of people who make a lot of money from us doing that know that. They don't make the move to improve our mental health. And so we have to do it ourselves. And people like us have to tell people.
I'm loving this message.
I just think-- I'm inspired by this message. I think it's the most important thing in the world, and it's still treated as like a luxury.
Yeah.
Rather than a fundamental. And it should be the same as brushing your teeth or, you know, getting out in the sun or whatever. Sure, sure. As opposed to eating good food.
So I'm like- We didn't know what.
We were going to talk about.
I'm just, I keep them inspired by this because, you know, I just love seeing the journey. I didn't know this was where you were at fully. So for you coming in, I was just like, wow, this is really inspiring. I have a couple final questions for you that I think Well, I know I asked you the first time on the show, and so I'm really fascinated to hear what the response is to them, and if it's the same or if it's changed since the last time. I don't remember what I said, so.
You'Ll get all this stuff.
Yeah, we'll link that back up so people can see the last one also, but I'll ask that in a second. But I want people to check out your shows. You got iWeigh, you got Bad Dates, which is hilarious. You're on social media, Jamilah Jamil on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, everywhere. www.iwaycommunity.com How else can we follow or support you with what you're up to right now?
I think just join me at Iway or join me on my social media. Join the mental health movement. I think that we really have an opportunity to change the future of marketing and mental health and include more people. Listen to Iway. It's a great podcast on neurology and mental health that offers you the autonomy to take it into your own hands. Listen to bad dates if you want to feel better about your own romantic life. It is the most disgusting and filthy and funny podcast with extraordinary comedians who give way too much information about their personal lives and sex lives. And again, it's the much needed escapism. I'm able to provide information and the sad stuff and then the escapism. So I hope people listen to it because it is just an amazing vacation for your mind. That was great.
It's purely silly. We need comedy. Yeah.
Comedy is one of the best medicines, you know?
100% saved my life. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so both those shows, Bad Dates, I Way, I'm inspired. I want to hear these final few questions. Before I ask the final two questions, I want to acknowledge you Jamila for, again, the journey, transformation. It's really more not a transformation, more the awareness that you have about yourself and who you've been, where you're at now or where you're going. And I really just love that you have that awareness for you, that you've been on a healing journey, that you're able to see things from a different perspective. For me, that's really inspiring. I think it's inspiring when I can do that and anyone can do that. So I'm inspired by the journey you're on and it's really cool to see you right now in this space. Because most importantly, you're happy and you're healthy. Yeah.
And that's for me really inspired to see you in a space like that. It also speaking of cancel culture goes to show that like when people criticize you, some good can come from it. Even if I didn't always make a public notes apology statement about everything, I was listening. I was listening when people pulled me out. And so I make those tweaks sometimes privately. Because sometimes it's easier to make change privately. We need to become aware that it's okay to have a learning journey privately. You do not have to share every single thing. I'm not going to have a pap smear on like live IG. I need to look after my brain privately with space and mess.
You don't need an opinion from every person on everything you do.
And everyone doesn't have to be privy to every single thing about all of our lives. It's a very big, like, mess. this conception about how we're supposed to conduct ourselves because of how much some people choose to share on social media. But I'm listening and I'm changing. But also the people who spoke to me constructively were the ones who got in. And the people who almost pushed me over the edge and killed me or made me so angry that I didn't want to fight for anyone and give up were the people who abused me. I didn't need to be sent death threats or rape threats or threats that I'm going to be ostracized. or that people are going to boycott me or call for me to be fired. I didn't need that to change. The people who spoke to me kindly and with peace and with the best of intention, who believed in me to change, are the ones who changed me. So criticism can be fantastic. I am a product of that criticism. But from love.
Conscious criticism.
Those are the people that helped me. The other people did nothing but cause me stress and almost made me give up on everything, including my own life.
You keep inspiring me with this message, so I'm grateful that you're sharing it. And if you guys are inspired, make sure to leave a comment below of the part of this conversation. I'm glad you asked for me. You can ask, you know, my team. I haven't said that to anyone in this room.
Is this calling everyone inspiring?
Inspiring in certain ways, but not like this.
Okay.
But you can ask them about it. Yeah, but I mean, not everyone's inspiring, but the way and how you, view things differently as inspiring when you were.
Completely-- the fact that you've got the.
Before and after-- more extreme in another way.
We love a before and after in our generation. And so like, this is my before and after.
I just wasn't expecting it. So I think that's what's inspiring, because you're in a peaceful place, which I'm really excited about for you personally. And so I'm acknowledging for that. And I want you to hear that.
Tell me one more time that you find me inspiring.
Exactly. I'm too find you inspiring. But I acknowledge you for, for the journey. I think it's really cool. And I think it's, the thing that is inspiring about it is for people that were in that state of mind that you were in now, that are still angry and upset and screaming and fighting, and maybe it's justified in their anger, but it's not going to get across with what, to make the change they want in the best way possible.
But also we don't value humility. We value self-flagellation, internal self-flagellation. but we don't actually value true humility. And when someone shows it, we normally on them. We normally make fun of them being like, I see. I knew you'd done that thing wrong. I'm gonna use this opportunity to make you feel even worse. It's like, that's not the way.
That's not it.
That's not how we treat children, I hope. And we're all just children. We're just children who are bigger. We've got jobs and bills and stress, but. We're all just massive kids. Whenever I'm at one of my boyfriend's concerts, I don't watch him. I watch the audience because he's an amazing musician. He's doing this thing that is incredible. He's not just pressing a button and all the music plays. He's actually playing three instruments at the same time and singing. And people are watching him and they're enjoying what he's doing. The songs mean something to him. And they're all looking at him and they're not thinking about themselves or their lives or anything else. They're just focusing on one thing. and this is with any show, I'm just giving an example of what I've seen. And they look like babies, they look like innocent babies, and you can see their humanity. Like, I urge anyone at any concert or any cinema to look around for a second and see people's inner child when all the defenses aren't up and all the like arbitrary obligations that we get when we're 18 suddenly come along. Look for the inner child in everyone. I do that with everyone, even the people I argue with. I look for that, and I don't mean that in a condescending way.
Sure.
But we're all. We all just want the same we wanted when we were babies. We wanted. We were lonely, we are hungry, we are tired, we're disgruntled. We're not getting what we need. And before we used to cry and we used to talk about it, but now we're not allowed to. But we still feel all those feelings. Yeah. So how do we look after the child in all of us, I think, preach it.
I like this.
I swear I haven't taken, like, ayahuasca. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I know I'm speaking like someone who's taken ayahuasca.
I haven't taken it. I haven't taken any psilocybin.
There you go. Wow, that's a first person in Hollywood who said that.
I'm afraid.
I was like, I'm already crazy, I don't need more.
That might mess up even more, yeah. Tip that one over the edge. This, okay, these last two questions, this is called the Three Truths. I asked you this before, you may not remember it, that's okay, but it's called the Three Truths. so it's a hypothetical question. Imagine you get to live as long as you want, but it's your last day on Earth, far in the future. You get to experience, accomplish, not accomplish, all the things you want to do. And you live a beautiful life. But it's the last day. And for whatever reason, on this last day, you have to take everything that you've ever said with you. All the content, all the TV shows, this interview, the tweets, whatever you create in the future, it's all gone for whatever reason. And all you get to leave behind to the world are these three final truths, three lessons that you've learned, that you think you will learn for the rest of your time, that you would leave behind, that you think are important for people. What would be those three truths for you?
Cuddles are the most important thing on earth. I really mean that. They are truly the most important thing on earth, physical of action, Some sort of form of physical touch is the most important thing in the world. Try and access it wherever you can, even if you have to pay for it, whatever you need to do. They have cuddle cafes in Japan. Really? I highly recommend. Highly recommend, yeah. But cuddles are the most important thing in the world. Never trust a fart. It's deep and meaningful. I hope you can see that. I'm a deep, philosophical guy. But it's true, and I've learned that one the hard way. Never trust a woman.
Okay.
And that shame never achieves anything productive.
Love it. Final question, what's your definition of greatness now?
For me personally, greatness would just... It's something to do with making people laugh, being able to give people the gift of laughter, whether it's at my expense or in something that I'm making, either people who love to hate me, I'm like, you,'re welcome. Like, it brings me, like, there are some people who really enjoy making fun of me or hating me, and they're having a good time and they're bonding over it.
Yeah.
And I love that for them.
Oh, we go.
But giving people the gift of laughter to me is the most connected I can feel to a human being. Almost more than sex. Like it is just the most, like our souls are intertwined in that moment. We're on the exact same wavelength. And laughter has been the main thing that saved my life. More than any medicine or operation or anything. Laughter has been the key to my survival. And so if I'm lucky enough to get to keep doing that forever, or even for another few years, I'd be thrilled. I've had my fair share. I'm ready to go. I don't have to get to do this any longer, but that to me is greatness. There's being, you know, remembered the way that I remember, or not even remember, but as I leave this world, I want, God, I hope he knew this when he left, but I hope Robin Williams remembered at the very end how much joy he brought, how much he made us laugh. Because I have pictures of him in my house, you know, and as like a kind of almost like a shrine to that man because of how many of my darkest moments were alleviated because of him. And I pray that he thought about that even for a fleeting second towards the end of his life because it's.
So Did you ever get to meet him?
I never got to meet him.
I had one moment with him.
Wow.
I mean, I didn't speak to him, but I was on a plane that he was on and he was in the front seat. I was walking on the plane. And right before I even got on the plane, I felt an energy of like crossing onto, like, I'm entering the plane and I could like hear something. I was like, that sounds interesting. Sounds familiar. And I saw him. Talking to the person sitting next to him in first class right there is going from New York to LA. And he was on, he was like telling some joke and like people were just like in it, right? And luckily people were stopped putting their bags up. And so I was just kind of standing there for like 60 seconds watching like this close from him and just seeing him do his magic. And I was like, wow, that's a pretty funny guy. And unfortunately, you know, that was the one time I met him, but it was, I didn't meet him, but I saw him and I got to experience it. But I was just like, man, this guy brought so much joy and laughter to so many people around the world. And so I love that definition of greatness for you. And I'm so grateful you were, you came back on and you've shared. And thank you again for making me laugh as well as inspiring me, because I had to throw that in one more time. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. Appreciate you.
Being a strong, outspoken female.
That's an insecurity.
Yeah, it's not an insecurity now. It's one that I've had to to move past that when you are bright and if you are funny, that is something that hasn't really been liked or celebrated or really acknowledged in the world as a good thing for a woman.
And I was asking- it matters to them most. What would you say to those individuals?
Well, first thing you need to do is identify that that's a cultural pattern in our generation, right? We want a thousand channels. We want a thousand shows to be able to stream at the same time. We want to be able to have 600 different people on a menu that we can swipe through who we're gonna go on a date with tonight. We have Amazon Prime. It delivers today. We have, you know what I mean?
Instant gratification.
We don't do slow weight loss or weight gain anymore. It's like, where are the shortcuts? It's a generation taught to look for shortcuts, to look for a quick fix, to look for instant gratification. And so recognizing that as a cultural phenomenon that's never existed before because pre-technology we didn't have access to it, I'm sure the inclination was always there. It's never good for you. We have too much content, we are overstimulated, we're spending too much time on screens, we're seeing mental health issues, we have too many dating options, too many apps, people are lonelier than they've ever been, they're having less sex than they've ever had. the birth rate, I guess, is declining. All kinds of things are going wrong from having too many options, too much convenience, right? We are seeing people's health decline because of fast food. And so when we look at people losing weight with these extreme measures, be it pills, injections, like very, very severe diets that are unsustainable, 5% of which work, 95% of which fail. those aren't good for people. They can lead to eating disorders or heart problems, all kinds of different health issues if you're taking substances to speed up your weight loss. I was talking in the Senate not long ago about the fact that in muscle build products that are predominantly targeting boys, in a lot of them they're finding Viagra and heavy metals. All just quick fix, quick fix, quick fix. There's no such thing as a quick fix. Nothing that has ever been done at speed can ever work. It always causes mess, chaos and harm. So while I understand wanting anything fast, patience and discipline are two things that are no longer encouraged in our society. We don't even allow for human beings to grow and change anymore. We expect them to instantly be updated with all of the perfect opinions that are constantly changing all of the time. So we have to take a step back and look at the fact that we are a sick society. Mentally, physically, socially. And so once we're realistic about the fact that the quick fix doesn't work, I think we're able to return to, okay, what does incremental change look like? The only kind of change that ever lasts, right, incremental change. It's kind of slow change.
It's slow bit by bit by bit by bit.
And that allows you to have time to be careful. It allows you to have time to consider. It allows you to have time to change your mind. Strategize, test it out, see how it feels.
My rise to fame way too fast.
I had no idea what the f*** was going on. I felt like I was in the middle of a tornado. I didn't have time to look at myself or look at the way that I was coming across or look at the impact to the people that that I most wanted to reach. I didn't want to reach the people who already agree with me. And now those are the only people that are probably listening to my podcast that I mean to be for everyone. But I couldn't see it. It's too absolute too fast. Nothing fast ever works. Wow. Nothing good comes from it. So what does incremental change looks like? Look like incremental change looks like starting to educate yourself. It involves listening to people's opinions who are opposed to you, which you're not supposed to do. I'm not just shutting them down. Nowadays you're not even supposed to follow.
Anyone that has a different opinion or.
Who did something wrong. Because then you'll be judged for following those people.
Follow those f***ing people.
Look, learn from them. Read their stuff, watch their content. Develop critical thinking skills as to why you disagree with them. Research, learn. When you have a family member who says something that you find egregious, that you disagree with, whatever political side you're on, Learn how to debate.
Learn how to- I'll just run away and shame them and make them wrong.
Learn how to convince each other again. Not just shut each other down and dispose of each other. Change the circle you're in if we can all just focus on the circle we're in and stop fighting with celebrities who we way over deified anyway and stop fighting with, you know, our great grandfather who isn't- Did something in the war back in the day or whatever.
Yeah.
Let's just work on our inner circle and try to make an influence there. Change the way that we interact with others because that will change the way that person goes on to interact with someone else. And open up our scope of who we are.
Yeah.
Willing to just listen to. Because I sometimes wonder if the reason that both sides are so afraid to listen to each other is because they're worried they might be convinced. Well, they're worried they might find out they were wrong.
Ooh, I like that.
And whether or not that's true, that's not a good place to move from.
As a human being. Your beliefs are shaken.
It shakes your identity. Yeah, and this is just it, right? So I was talking to this psychologist in DM on Instagram, in which she said that identity and opinion have become completely interlinked. She sees that a lot with the.
People who come into her office.
Explain that more. So it means that, like, you know, back in Back in our day, we grew up not knowing anyone else's political ideology or what their parents represented or what their beliefs were about. Almost anything. We used to just have polite meals and then, you know what I mean, like arguments about like more trivial things. It was a simpler time. It wasn't necessarily a great time, but it was a simpler time. And we were able to acknowledge that if someone had an opinion we don't like, that's just their opinion that we don't like. And we had friends who might have been deemed problematic or different, but we kind of accepted that, well, that's just like a part of them I don't like, but I can see the rest of the individual. Now we can't see the rest of the individual anymore. The bit that we don't like tarnishes everything about them and erases their history of anything they did that was good.
That's what I like.
It's scary. It's scary. Like, we see this all the time with public figures. It's like someone could do so many great things, And then they make one mistake, and then we disregard everything they've ever done, and we want to get rid of them without thinking, like, oh, a lot of people might suffer if we completely get rid of that person, because they're actually quite helpful. We used to be able to see when someone was more helpful than harmful and see that we can just work on the bit that's harmful. But now we just throw everyone away. And so I think that is something that concerns me. And so when it comes to the identity and opinion, is that identity and opinion is no longer a separate thing. Because of social media, identity and opinion have kind of like woven together and now they kind of exist as one. So before when someone would say, I disagree with your opinion, it just meant I disagree with your opinion.
But now it means- We can still be friends.
I disagree with you fundamentally. I disagree with who you are and who you've become. And I'm defining you as this person. I'm freezing you in stone as this person forever.
How long do you think this will go on for until people wake up and say, oh, I was doing this to other people, and now it's actually coming back to hurt me? It depends on how many of us.
With public figures work to raise awareness and raise the alarm about this. Wow. You know. Not many people in Hollywood are talking.
The way you're talking right now.
It's because you're still congratulated by isolating and demonizing. That's why I went so, you know, that's why I popped off about the Met Gala, 'cause I was like, Hang on. Hang on. This is an industry, and this is an audience that really makes a big deal of not being able to separate an art from an artist. Well, they have been in the last four or five years, right? Yeah.
The last seven years have seen a series of like, We can't separate the.
Art from the artist. We're gonna demonize and ostracize whoever we can and whoever we want to, and whoever we're just gonna completely separate ourselves from, and we're gonna drop them, and we're gonna do this or the other.
And what happened at the Met Gala?
The Met Gala is they threw a party. For a bigot who was so cruel about fat people, who people claim to care about now, so cruel about immigrants, so awful about the MeToo movement, and you've got MeToo feminists and media that pushed the MeToo movement celebrating this man at the highest honor, the biggest party of the year. And then you've got everyone online who loves canceling people and who loves digging up people's tweets from when they were 12. applauding a b la la, lalla la, It doesn't matter what he said. He's an icon I what are we doing? Pick one How can we expect anyone to take us seriously? If we are this hypocritical and this wishy washy? You've got to be consistent. I'm fine to separate the art from the artist, 'cause the longer I'm in this industry the more I realize that they're all terrible me. So, yes, like the great.
Great They've all got something.
They've all done something someti Hugely inappropriy. or awful or they were horrible. So the only way you can enjoy art is almost to separate the art from the artist. And the longer you're around, the more you start to realize that and the more that comes out after they've died. It is what it is. So what is it? Are we separating the art from the artist or are we not? We have to decide. I hate hypocrisy because it means that All the other things that we're doing that are good can't be taken seriously. We open ourselves up for ridicule.
The word that I keep hearing you talk about or insinuating is grace. And it sounds like you've had grace for yourself through what you went through and your rise to fame a couple of times, plus the roller coaster when you were on top, when people were coming at you in 2020 and dealing with all that, you had grace for yourself, you had grace for your body image, you had grace for your health, stress, you've had grace for others now in certain ways. And what I'm hearing you say is we just need more grace in general for ourselves and others.
No, we don't just need more grace. We still need more order. We still need accountability. And more accountability and more self accountability. More like less hypocrisy and more like organizing for what the actual end goal is here. What are the big things we're fighting for? Let's stop focusing in on the minutiae. Let's work on the big things that hurt everyone in our society and let's work together on that. Let's organize. And then on top of that, in order to be able to do that, you need more grace. Doesn't mean you can't criticize each other. It doesn't mean you can't get pissed off with one another. It doesn't mean you can't fight. It just means that the fight has to end at some point. There has to be a road back. We have to allow for a space for atonement. And we have to recognize that there is a part of us that enjoys watching other people fail and do something wrong and make mistakes, because then we don't have to think about all the terrible mistakes and terrible thoughts that we've made.
Yeah.
And all the mistakes we've made, it's like, oh good, everyone's looking at them, so no one's looking at me.
Right, right, right.
And so the reason dogpiles happen mostly, it's not because everyone cares that much about that thing. We can see that the thing that we want to say has been said a thousand times, but we want to loudly, from a tribal perspective, from a tribal place rather, we want to loudly exclaim our disapproval so that we announce which tribe We're on. We want to say, I'm with the bigger crowd, so don't include me in any of that. We want to be safe. We want to be in the tribe. We don't want to be left on our own to be eaten alive. And what I feel very sad about is that more and more, when someone gets into trouble for something that isn't like egregious physical violence, the kind of thing where they really destroyed someone's life where that person might never recover, We just leave them for dead? When I got piled onto, I got left for dead. And racists and bigots and misogynists were all able to come for me. And no one from my side stepped in.
How is that?
And then as soon as I overcame it, everyone came back.
Why is that?
Everyone came back and it was like it never happened. And they were like, oh, I'm so glad you came back through that thing. And I got Marvel. And then I was back on the COVID of Vogue. I was having a great time and all of a sudden all my friends came rushing, not my like real friends, they never left me.
Celebrity friends.
All these people, all these media figures were suddenly all leaving me wanting to be in pictures again and I was.
Like, isn't that interesting?
Yeah, and so you know sometimes I now get into trouble for trying to show public grace to someone in a moment of their disgrace and I understand why I get into trouble for that. But this is, it might be my mistake. But I'm not afraid of mistakes. I believe in my heart right now that love and extending a tiny bit of grace or hope to someone is the best way for them to come back from that thing and do better. And that seeing someone go from doing something bad to doing something better is much more healthy and helpful for our society than just watching them disappear. 100% seeing change, seeing change. My audience love watching me change. They love that I used to be a misogynist and I, you know, I'm growing less and less problematic as the time goes on. But they enjoy the fact that they're watching me become not only a better person but happier, happier, healthier, allowing myself to fail. like getting rid of the shackles of the perfection that women are held up to, like the standards of perfection that women are held up to. I've never felt more at peace. I've never felt more love. I've never felt more connected. I've never been more open to a fist bump. I'm English, but I'll take it. But I've never felt more connected to the world. And I think a large part of our loneliness as a society is coming from the fact that we are starting to We're being trained and encouraged by social media and media and algorithms to look at each other as enemies. We are not each other's enemies. There are people far more powerful whose names we don't know deliberately who are controlling all of this and making us stare at each other rather than looking for them. And I want to go after them. So expect now that I've said that, there to be another huge random media scandal.
This is powerful. I'm curious, where do you think you'd be if you didn't have have the, you know, the attacks of everyone coming at you in 2020. Where do you think you'd be right now without that experience, that sadness, that loneliness, that loss of, oh, I thought these people were my friends, and then they left, and then they came back.
And I think I'd be in a fairly similar place.
Really?
I really do. I think when it comes to noticing and fighting for the way that we elevate women just to drag them down, I think that's what that taught me.
'Cause you experienced it.
And I think I might be less inclined to reach out to someone in a moment of disgrace. That would be something that would be different. I think I would be the way everyone else is, which is all, I don't wanna catch it. I don't wanna be nice to them or like anything or keep following them in case anyone drags me into this. I don't wanna be in the tribe. But what you do is you leave someone so isolated that then they feel hopeless and, you know... Bad things happen. Yeah, people have died. I know people have died. I almost died. I almost truly died. I can't believe I'm still here. And had I not lived with my best friends and my boyfriend and not had the kindness of the people around me and medication, that I'm no longer on, but I needed in that moment, I'd be dead for sure. It isn't. I understand that people look at public figures as like, well, you've got all this money and this power, and definitely true, yes. It's not the same as when it happens to someone who works in a shop or a store in a school, which does happen. It doesn't just happen to the... That's the other thing. We think this stuff just happens to famous people. What happens is it bleeds into our culture and it permeates our culture. It happens to people who we never hear about. It happens to people in schools, in, you know, in their workplace, and they get ostracized and they lose their job, and they have no other means. They've got no way to... They can't even afford a therapist through all of it. the kids are watching and they're learning. But I think other than that, I think I would be at the same place when it comes to division because the pandemic shifted something in our society globally and the loss of women's rights and the hatred that we're seeing now, we're not seeing people disagree with each other's opinions. We're seeing real Visceral hatred. Evil hatred, yeah. Yeah, and we're seeing mockery of each other that I don't think is very helpful, that I totally participated in before. You know, just a few years ago, if some man was incredibly degrading to me on Twitter, I would call him an incel. And I look back and I call him a what? An incel. Yeah, you know, when someone's in voluntary celibate, without really thinking about, like, yes, he shouldn't have degraded me, and yes, he should never have spoken to me in that sexist and disgusting way. But my calling him an incel just lowers me to his level and is actually perpetuating a really cruel, unkind message about men who feel lonely. So then I suck.
Right.
And so I stopped doing that a few years ago. Like, I'm.
That's good.
But I, you know, it's not like. I'm not like.
Right, right, right.
It's just. It's good.
You're aware of it and you're acknowledging.
It and you're, you know, this, like, slap down, smack down, own the libs. own the Republicans. You know, even liberals, these videos they make when they go out into these country, these parts of the country where they've, where a lot of these people, they're not from the same Metropolitan cities we are. They're not exposed to the same news or algorithms that we are. They are largely ignored by both coasts until suddenly someone's got a microphone and they want to go and interview some 70-year-old Right. Republican man who's a farmer and ask him his opinions on these very new topics of discussion and he might give an ill-informed or outdated answer. And then the way we laugh and it goes viral and everyone loves it and we just on them. What message does that send? What does that say to everyone watching that? It says, we think you're idiots.
You're less than.
You're less than, they think we're idiots. We are all everyone right now being idiots because we're fighting the wrong target. None of us are smarter or better than each other. We're all just informed differently. And the faster we can all work to explain that to people, the faster we will bring people together into a much healthier and happier society. And that's where I want my work to everything I'm doing is now towards mental health.
I was just going to mention that because with your show, your podcast, iWeigh, which is a great show that I've been on, and I think I've seen the evolution of it, which is inspiring to see that it's focused more on mental health now. And I think something you said, which is self-accountability, self-control, mental health, and enter your own healing, are the things that I think when we work on those things, everything gets better. Because then you can interpret things better, you can pause, you can give people grace, you can give yourself grace. You can, as opposed to just, I'm angry, I'm lashing out because I'm hurt.
And I'm afraid.
Yes.
Everyone feels afraid all the time. It's really bad for your nervous system. It's neurologically terrible. You know, we've had doctors on my podcast come on and explain that mistakes are the way, the most effective way for somebody to learn. that's how neurologically your brain is more likely to implement and keep information. We've made people afraid of mistakes, we've made people afraid of everything. Yes. And people feel so afraid of and isolated and judged by each other. It's not good. And so what I weigh has been more focusing on is me reaching across to people who are less and less like me. I'm wanting to engage in civil discourse.
It's inspiring.
I'm wanting to expose new ideas that are away from group think. and just challenge them sometimes, but respectfully.
Yeah, of course.
Or sometimes have my mind opened.
What's the thing that's opened your mind the most from someone that maybe you said, I don't think I'm going to learn much from this person, but I'm curious to see what they have to say. And maybe I'd be open. What, who shocked you or what idea opened you up?
I think the thing that has probably taken me by surprise the most has been neurologists in that it's not that I went in with any kind of preemptive decision of what I was gonna hear. But I had no idea how much neurology, how much brain science actually informs our personality and informs our behavior and informs our anxiety and informs our depression. I had no idea about the way that we are wired and how much that can take and how what.
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