What Navy SEALs and My Nonverbal Son Taught Me | Tom Hopper

Much of my training is done on dark mornings, either on busy roads or on trails shared with gravel bikers and various wildlife you're best to avoid. So hearing what's around me, that is essential to safety. Sealing myself off with earbuds really isn't an option, but the trade-off has always been accepting every bit of wind and road noise on top of whatever I'm trying to listen to. And the OpenFit Pro, that's what you see right here, solves that. Shox built open-ear noise reduction into an open-ear design so the unwanted noise feels like it's been pushed farther away, kind of like an invisible hand holding it back, while you stay completely connected to what's happening around you. So you get this focused listening experience without the isolation part. I don't know how they do it, but they do and it's amazing. Plus they have flexible earhooks and soft silicone that keep shox locked in through a hard effort. They shrug off sweat and rain and they sit very comfortably under a beanie, which is very important for me. The sound is genuinely rich, it's Dolby Atmos optimized, and the battery runs for days and days of normal use. And right now for listeners of the show, you can visit shox.com or click the link in the description box and use code RICHROLL for a discount on all shox products. And it can be combined with other official promotions. You could have an action star, right, and they can be the toughest guy in the room. But I want to know, who's the little boy that grew up to be that? My guest today is Tom Hopper, an actor known for scene-stealing roles in Game of Thrones and the Umbrella Academy, and now for his starring role alongside Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitsch in The Terminalist, a military action thriller series based on the novel of the same name by author and former Navy SEAL Jack Carr. This is a conversation about what it means to pursue the creative artist's life and fully commit to a craft. It's about pursuing acting with an athlete mindset, why and what led to him giving up alcohol, the crucial role fitness plays in his life and mental health. This guy's a beast and a very impressive high rocks competitor. Life lessons he learned from embedding with special operators and the surprising revelations that he and his wife have experienced raising a non- verbal autistic son. Freddie, who's actually the biggest light in our lives, I saw this interaction that I hadn't had with him for a couple of years where he kind of looked to me and we were playing again. This is all about how he sees this world and I have to jump into that. Yes, he is incredibly charming but Tom is also very wise and incredibly empathetic and truly impressed me with his depth. Check out season 2 of The Terminalist dropping on Amazon October 21st and enjoy this delightful conversation with your new favorite actor. One of my favorite categories of guests on the show are people that have found a way to like meld this artistic sensibility with an athletic sensibility. You know, when I was raised I sort of was under the belief or there was this perception that you can be kind of an artistic kid or you can be the athlete but never the twain shall meet. Like these are two different worlds and people are sort of come out of the womb wired for one of these and I always love putting that lie to the test and you're an example of that. Like you're a mountain of a man, you're obviously like an incredible physical specimen who is you know super into fitness and well-being, cares about your health, super into you know high rocks and cross-training and all these sorts of things which shoots you in the roles that you've taken on as you know these special operator types, alpha males. But you're also like a sensitive artist like you wouldn't go into acting at a young age if that wasn't really the thing that lit you up more than anything else. Yeah I mean for me like I grew up watching these action heroes right they're like my they're my inspiration from the acting side of things and I also loved watching you know beautiful performances by some of the greatest actors ever right. But I was always into sport I was always in team sports and stuff and I've always seeked performance I've always wanted to be the fastest on the track and field I've always wanted to be performing the best I can do. It's weird because as my teens went through the process I was a very skinny tall guy right so I had a gross but like 16 and then had no muscle whatsoever you know like I remember someone you know taking the piss out of me on the football field once being like your chest goes inwards like they said it was like so I had all these yeah concave chest and I was like so skinny and I got really self-aware of that and stuff and I didn't even start properly I was doing these sports but I never really thought about the idea of putting on the muscle and stuff I wanted to and I wanted to know how to do it but there wasn't like social media and stuff for now and I know that you know we've talked about this there's a lot of confusing things of how to do things but also the information is there readily available to get into that kind of shape so when I got into drama school I was looking at theater and thinking well how do I make a real career of this how do I get to be an action guy how do I get to be in movies that was always the impetus you weren't going to the Royal Shakespeare Company so that you could be you know on the stage doing a Macbeth yeah it was always like how do I be Van Damme or Stallone or Schwarzenegger yeah because I was following a dream right the reason I wanted to become an actor was because I want to make movies and in great TV and stuff and I wanted to fulfill those those those dreams I'd had as a kid and so I wanted to find something that would set me apart from from other actors especially in the UK there wasn't really many actors in the UK at that point that were I guess like you know muscular or whatever I just tried to find something that was set me apart so I just started lifting weights in drama school which we weren't supposed to do we were supposed to you know be free and loose yeah on stage you're supposed to be able to you know just well there's a sort of a feat you know kind of culture and sensibility to being in drama school and you're supposed to want to be a Shakespearean actor yeah and it's embarrassing to admit that you actually want to be an action hero action star yeah so you keep that quiet or was that sort of over like this is why I'm here because like I would imagine your peers you know well to my tutors I definitely would but I think everyone wanted that but it always felt so out of reach at that point right you're only in drama school to just do the devised piece that you're doing that week or something right so everything was about becoming a better actor and I did want to do the Shakespeare I did want to be the best actor I could do I wanted the disciplines of how do I become better because when I went to drama school and all the way through I was far from the strongest actor right there was actors in my drama school that right now aren't working but I look at and think how did they not because they were so so good and I think some part of that is there's an element of look you know right place right time and then there's also what are you what's your products right what's your brand what's the thing that you are selling as an actor and I thought well as a lanky six-foot-five dude I'm not really selling anything whereas if I'm you know a slightly more muscular athletic build six or five guy that sets me apart from a few of the guys so I started to get these like smaller roles when I first graduated of you know there was a part of a smaller pool of actors and what was interesting I started noticing that I would get roles of kind of tough dudes but that had a softness to them they had morality and that was something that always really interested me because you can have an action star right and they can be the toughest guy in the room but I want to know who's the little boy that grew up to be that right who's the human being behind that who's the relatable person behind that and I search for those kind of roles I want to know how you can have someone that to the average guy you look at a Navy SEAL and think they're invincible there and they are in a lot of ways you know they get pushed beyond any human limit and ultimately they're just they were a little boy once like everyone else that became where's the humanity yeah where's the pain behind the eyes yeah what is the internal struggle and journey that this person is on yeah while they're you know shooting guns exactly yeah things are exploding yeah because they that's the thing is they have to do such extreme things right uh-huh and with the Navy SEALs and a lot of the guys that I've talked to who are in the SEALs and some of them are still active they are the nicest guys I've ever met they are they are so humane and like beautiful human beings and will do anything for you but they have an ability when called upon to get a part of their brain to a place where they can do like atrocious things but for the force of good for the what they believe to be to be right and that's the mindset I had to get into it's how you and in Terminalist Dark Wolf my character Rafe he had to what we call a the the showrunner Dave DiGiulio talks about the the dark wolf light wolf dial right where as a person you either sit more on dark wolf where you go to the dark side right so it's kind of like 40 and then you or you can sit in light wolf most of the time but you can turn that dial to dark wolf when you need to and it's the learning of how that mentality of learning how you turn that dial and come back to light wolf yeah right and Rafe sits in that in preparation for this role did you train and spend time with special forces operators and what was that like and what surprised you about those individuals in that community because I think our relationship with these people is really based on what we see in movies and TV I mean now there's a lot of podcasters that you know that are examples of this so it's a little bit different but in my experience like I've met a handful of these guys and they're not what you would expect yeah totally yeah I spent a lot of time with them Jared Shaw being one who is our main technical advisor and executive producer on the show he was instrumental on me kind of really understanding the mindset of what it is to be a SEAL another buddy of mine Alvy who's still very active in the SEALs he's an instructor for buds over there and I think the biggest thing that surprised me I had like a real fear of like being around these guys they're so out there the real thing and you're a poser and a pretender you're exactly gonna put on the costume and like flit about and get paid for it 100% and the fear is as well at what the guys out there the audience members who are SEALs how do I get them to respect my performance right how do I get them to think I buy that I buy that he could do that and for me the only way I could do that was immersing myself with these guys and having huge amount of respect for what they've been through my job is not to do what they do my job is to respectfully tell their stories right my job is to listen be a sponge and just absorb them and how do we then tell an authentic story for them so I just sat with them I had like a lot of like lunches and coffees and just drinks and just you know chats with these guys the biggest thing that surprised me was how gentle and I kind of humble they are and just they don't they don't glorify what they do they are so professional and just live by a code and a brotherhood and you mentioned the word community community with those boys is so important what I love specifically about the SEALs it's called the teams right mm-hmm it's called the teams because it's not about you it's about your brother beside you right it's about if I go into a room we're clearing a house say I'm not thinking about me I don't give a shit about me I give a shit about him how do I protect him and every one of those boys in that room is doing the same thing so you go in there together knowing that you have your your brothers back mm-hmm for me that's something I could really go on board with because I've grew up in in team sports and that's that's a mentality that I'm like I totally understand that like on a rugby pitch I know that if my boys being tackled over there I have to be there to clear out that room to make sure that the ball carries on in our side so that it's always about looking after your fellow man and it's different to two different parts of the armed forces there's no there's very little ego I find with the SEALs they they all work for each other and so that's what I love about them is they their care for one another mm-hmm I had this guy Rich Deviney in here a couple years ago and he I'm probably gonna get his title wrong but essentially he was responsible for kind of overseeing like all the teams and and like buds and etc and determining what makes the difference between somebody who gets in and somebody who isn't like measuring up yeah and what was so interesting about it is that it has nothing to do with like strength or your capacity to hold your breath or like you know lay in the ocean when it's free you know like all the stuff that they do carry that who's going to carry the boats and stuff it's really about their emotional intelligence and their mental resilience it's way more of a like a head game thing and they have like kind of revamped their training based upon like tests and data that they've received over the number of years to figure out like who the best candidates are. And they're often, you know, if you lined them all up, like you wouldn't be able to pick them out in a lineup. And Rich Deviney certainly doesn't present as somebody that if you saw him on the street, you wouldn't think like you, you, the, the big bushy beard and the big arms and the, like the tight shirt, like you're wearing and all that kind of stuff. It's like, it's not like that at all. Like this guy is like, he just seems like a dad who would be at your kid's soccer game, you know, like very normal and grounded and affable and friendly. And so, so interesting, like the, the, the, how they're portrayed in movies and television, like the alphaness, the sort of alpha nature of these guys. I mean, certainly they're all, you know, very much like that. But, but when you interact with them, it's like, they don't have anything to, they're not like fronting, you know, like they don't have to like be showy in the way that you kind of see them on screen. Yeah. And also the guys like LV who does a lot of the, the buds training as an instructor, he says that that's what they're looking for. They're looking to break down the masks to see who the person really is underneath. When you're at the, like in hell week where they barely sleep, you're like broken down. That's when you see the guys who are really true seals that will fight for each other. And like, they see a man down, they'll go pick him up and bring him back into the fold. It's exactly what you're saying. It's like, it's the mindset and who they are as people that they're looking for, because you've got to know, you've got to know that that guy is someone that will look out for the man beside him. You can't be in any doubt of that. And he says that you have guys that turn up and they'll absolutely rip it on all the physical stuff that front of the pack, but they're not thinking about anyone else. They're like, I'm going to like just jack this up. And just like, they just go and they do their thing and they'll, they'll, they'll be like gone because they're not, they haven't got the right mindset. It's very specific, I think, for the seals. And, uh, that is such a beautiful community. And I've, I've, I've had the luxury of meeting so many of them now, and they're all the same, you know, there's different versions of them. Obviously everyone's different, but they kind of have these like fundamental tears about them as, as human beings that all slots within the seals. Dark Wolf and the original terminal list show. These are all based on books by Jack Carr. He was, he was, he was a seal, right? He was a seal. This guy's really prolific. Like he's just cranking out books all the time and these books are crushing, right? Like there's a huge appetite for these stories that he's telling. Yeah. His, his work rate is unbelievable. Like there was periods when he came to visit the dark wall set or an untrue believer that we've, that we've just done where he was like, Oh yeah, I'm writing at the moment. I only got like two hours sleep last night, but it'd be still like his energy is like up here. And I don't know how he does it. You know, it's, it's incredible his work rate. And I have a lot in common with him because he has a son with special needs as well as I do. So, uh, we, we relate a lot with the, the kind of the reason why we, we do it and why we both work so hard, but he is incredible. Yeah. He churns out books at a crazy rate and, uh, and he's a big part of the production as well. So in terms of the writing of the scripts, he oversees everything and has so many plans for more books and more shows around the terminal list world. Yeah. So he's, he's quite a machine. He's creating his own, I mean, it's sort of a version of Taylor Sheridan, you know, it's like creating an expanded universe, you know, and there's a tremendous appetite for, uh, this kind of programming. I mean, I'm like, you know, there's that trope where men of a certain age suddenly become obsessed with like world war II or the Roman empire. Like for me, it's a series of acronyms. It's like CIA, MI six, uh, KGB, FSB, you know, you know, anything that's sort of zero dark 30 coded, like I'm in day one. So like when terminal list drops, when your show dropped last year, like I'm day one binging this stuff. Like I just love it. Like, I don't know what, what it is, but like, I just, I can't get enough of this kind of stuff. Uh, it's wildly popular. Um, and you're kind of at right place at right time. And the sense that I have gotten from you, we've been spent, we spent like the entire day together. Like we, you, we've been together since seven o'clock in the morning, the afternoon. Now we taped an open container. So I'm just alerting the audience. You have that to look forward to. So I've gotten to know you a little bit today. And my sense is that you are, you mentioned performance at the outset, like you are a professional athlete and your sport is acting. Sure. That's a really interesting way of putting it. I've not actually thought about it like that before. Um, I suppose like the mindset I approach my acting with is, is like a professional athlete. Yeah. Because I, I do everything I can to is when the right word, when in acting is people appreciating your performance, right? Is people going, I believe that I enjoyed that I was entertained by that. So in the same way I approach my training from a physical standpoint, or like, say like a high rocks race, I do everything in my preparation to know that I can perform and I can perform to the best of my ability or what I'm truly capable of. When I turn up on a set for me, for me, preparation is everything. And knowing that I can, no matter what happens, I can push the character in any direction. I know who this guy is. I know what the way he thinks. I know the way he reacts. I know who he is to this person I'm talking to. I know the relationship they have. And it's something that I suppose over time, that's something that I've realized that I do, but for me being the best actor I can be for not just me, like I do it because I have to do it for my family, right? I, I have a career to think about and every, every, every performance, no matter what it is, no matter how big the role, it matters to me so much to get it right. And then when it comes to something like terminal list, even more so, right? Because I not only have a fan base of an existing character from a book I have to think about, but for also for Jack, because he's putting the responsibility into me to create a character that he's written to the Navy SEAL community, I owe it to them to make sure this is an authentic performance. So I don't take that lightly, right? That's a huge responsibility in my eyes. So yeah, I, I prepare as, as much as I can to get what we call the win, right? Yeah. It's interesting to think of what you do in an athletic context, like you train as an athlete so that you can perform in a race or in a game, a tournament, et cetera. You do everything possible to set yourself up for success. And when the race arrives, if you're Michael Phelps and you're getting on the blocks or you're, you know, Djokovic and you're on the court, you have to let all that go and be present. And similarly in acting, you can't like will or force that performance. You can't like, it's not about pushing. It's about letting go and surrendering. Cause if you're not present and available and actually like listening to the person you're interacting with, you're not going to extract a performance that is going to have any kind of verisimilitude, right? Like, so there's this tension between like the athletic person who's just like harder, harder, go, go, go, push reps. And there's a physicality to, you know, what you do in the roles that you have. But there also has to be this, like, you have to let it all go and release and allow like something to happen and be available for something you wouldn't have thought of. But if you're caught up in your head and being like, I have to do this, like you've already lost the game, right? Similarly, like if Michael Phelps or Djokovic or Nadal or any of these people are like thinking about what they have to do when they're on the court or in the pool, like they're out of it. They're out of the game, right? They have to be in that flow state. So you have to set yourself up for like this surrender. Yeah, that's exactly it. And it's perfectly put because you don't see, people don't see the reps being done before the performance, right? They just see performance. And, you know, I think you said it so well there because the work you put in, the reps you put in before you get onto that, in front of that camera, that preparation is the only way you do relax. If you haven't done the preparation, you're going to be uptight. You're going to be like, oh shit, what's my line? I think I was, I should have looked at them all last night. You know, all that kind of thing is going through your head. And you're like, what happened before this? And I remember, I can't remember, I was just doing this. You don't want to have any of that. You have to get to a point where- We're like, holy shit, that's Chris Pratt. Yeah, which fortunately, I'd had a few reads with him to get the role. So I was kind of like- And Taylor Kitsch is an intimidating dude. Oh, mate. He's a force to be reckoned with, that guy. He doesn't look like he suffers fools lightly. No. So me and Kitsch got into a brilliant flow state as actors because he is very similar to me in the way he prepares. We both come ready to rock, you know? And we learn that of each other. So then you get into this beautiful place where you know as soon as you turn up, even like the first rehearsal, you're in it. And we got this great dynamic through Dark Wolf. And Kitsch is a phenomenal actor, one of the best I've ever worked with. And he has this ability to live in the moment so well that he can ad-lib and riff on top of the lines that are in the script in drama. In comedy, it's easier because you can just play around. Whereas in drama, to pinpoint your own lines in between the lines that are written on the page and then still be so powerful and make perfect sense and be relevant to the scene and the story, he can just fly around. And it's incredible to watch and amazing to work with as an actor. I have such huge respect for that guy. And he will, as you say, doesn't suffer fools lightly, but because he cares so much about the end result. He has an athlete mentality. Absolutely. He's a very, very skilled hockey player and grew up in team sports and is very close to the within the SEAL community. And he approaches his work in that same way. So when you get a bunch of guys who all have that similar mindset, and a lot of the guys on Terminal List that are very similar to that, we found ourselves in a place where in conversations, it's best idea wins, right? You get into these deep conversations about what's best for this scene, and you do it for every scene, every scene matters. So working together like that with that group of people and having a whole mindset on a set like that, it's quite unique. It doesn't happen on a lot of shows. It's very rare. This episode is brought to you by Element right here in Black Cherry Salt. I'm deep in a fall training block right now, which is the biggest sustained running volume that I've attempted since my back surgery. And here's the thing that nobody tells you about rebuilding endurance at almost 60. Hold on one second. It is good. The margins get thinner. When I under fuel or under hydrate, I don't just feel it on the run. I feel it for the rest of the day. A little bit of a headache, some brain fog, a three o'clock fade. It's not a mystery. Often, it's as simple as inadequate electrolytes, which is why Element lives in my home gym. It's a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix and carbonated drink with sodium, potassium, magnesium, and none of the sugar or dodgy ingredients that typically you find in these sports drinks. 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And it blocks RFID to prevent wireless theft. They make the classic version and a MagSafe one, which I have, that snaps right onto the back of your phone depending on how you like to carry things. And for the person in your life who's perpetually padding their pockets, they also make a tracker card that slips right in. Free shipping, a 99-day risk-free trial, and a lifetime warranty. Genuinely, the last wallet somebody needs to own. So get a head start on gifting by heading to ridge.com slash richroll to shop Ridge's friends and family sale and find the perfect gift for the guys in your life. That's ridge.com slash richroll. Shop smart this holiday season with Ridge. And after you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them and support our show and tell them we sent you. It was about two years ago that I decided to watch Friday Night Lights from beginning to end. Because the first time I watched it, I just, when it ever came out, I never watched it sequentially like that. It's one of the all-time greatest shows ever. It's so good. And I'm a huge Pete Berg fan. I love the movie. And Taylor Kitsch, there's such a naturalism to his acting. It appears so effortless. He's so embodied in that role in a really beautiful way. And he's an interesting case because in the aftermath of that, of playing Reagans for however many years, there was a moment where it's like, oh, well, this is the guy. This is the next guy. And then for whatever reason, it just seemed like he got put in. leading man roles in the wrong movies for him and like a couple of these movies sequentially like didn't work out from a studio perspective and then we didn't see him for a while and then he seems like he's like found his footing with this kind of role like he's played variations of like the kind of guy that he plays in terminalist in your show it almost seems like he has become one of those guys like in real life and yeah i don't know he's a curious like like mysterious person but i also know that like doesn't he have uh like there's there's addiction in his family and i think he set up like a foundation or a treatment center yeah yeah it's amazing he's created this whole thing at where he lives in montana and a foundation and a place where people can go and recover and it's beautiful what he's created up there but what's interesting about kitch and what i've learned about him is he's he's when you first meet him there's this like hardness to him and like how do i how do i get in with this dude right like right like he's he's not letting you in easy right you're gonna have to earn it absolutely you gotta earn his respect and also his trust right and uh but when you're in here's the most beautiful kind generous guy that thinks about everyone but himself my wife's very similar to that right so i kind of know how to work with someone like that she has a very small friendship group and doesn't let people in easily doesn't trust people easily um you know she was hurt in the past and stuff and that has like been this knock-on effect of her trust and she often calls things out where people was like i don't don't trust that person or whatever and i'm like i think they're okay you know i'm quite open in comparison to her but down the line often she's right and kitch is very similar to that if he spots something he's like i'm not sure about this he'll call it quite early and he's usually right on that sort of stuff um but when you're inside and you're inside his friendship circle uh you're in for life you know yeah um where is this all heading for you i mean are you somebody who's thinking about taking the leap into the marvel universe like like what's the ambition here like what does the career look like five ten years from now if you get your way um for me i'm always looking for unique opportunities to to test myself um i have a production company now with my wife and we produce movies and and one of the reasons we do that as well is to is to push myself from a creative standpoint because a lot of the things i do in my my career that you know my my agent stuff will bring me a lot of them are more like in the action realm yeah so we look for unique projects that we can get made separately that are pushing me from an active point of view like how can i really push myself um like the one we've just we've just sold now we shot last year uh called better where i played twins so i got to play identical twins and we you know i'm doing scenes like this you and me i would have a body double but i'm talking to myself right and then i have to switch and do the other side uh so that was like one of the biggest challenges i've ever had so defying this stereotype so you're available not to be just typecast in these kinds of roles yeah yeah because i i i want to push myself you know and these kind of roles you can find those ones that do that and it comes to roles you know the marvel university you know that's obviously one one path but i look for things that are really unique and how they're like transcending a genre um like for instance umbrella academy when i when i got umbrella academy there was lots of like superhero shows and stuff going on at that point and i had a few that were sort of turning up in my my email page and then umbrella academy came along and it was such a unique take on the superhero genre and as i said before i'm looking for who's behind the superhero right who's the guy behind the mask behind the costume behind the superpower and how does that superpower affect the person and that's how you make a character relatable for me you know like i want to be able to watch a performance or like i would want people to watch my performance and think oh i see myself in him you know and sometimes when you just have a superhero that's like blowing up buildings and stuff it's like well do i care you know why do i care about the character so i'm always looking for things that are unique takes on on genres and on characters and you know like i think long term for for me in the production company and stuff me and my wife we spoke about this before but my my son freddy is uh autistic and non-verbal and you know has has severe special needs and we we have built this production company to build it to be something that will create an income for him long term so that we don't have to worry as much about his care and like who's gonna who's gonna look after him when we're gone and all that sort of thing that's that's really important to us so we're trying to build something for him you know um so that's my big goal is like what will keep my career growing to a point that will build our production company to be something more than just a little thing on the side and projects that are educational in some way around this issue of neurodivergence and and what autism is like telling stories with actors like featuring actors that are you know that are neurodivergent and and kind of broadening people's understanding of definitely so yeah a lot of the characters in our in the movies that we we're producing and developing uh you know we'll get given scripts and we look at a character and we're like actually this character could be neurodivergent you know because for whatever reason we see a path there where the why not you know because it's it's part of our everyday life and it's a part of every you know a lot of other people's everyday life that they they deal with this and it's i don't know what it's like here so much but in the uk there's an element where it's all swept under the carpet you know it's swept under the rug and they're kind of put aside and for me i'm like well that's not the way this world is for me you know and and having freddie who's actually the biggest light in our lives it's an everyday thing and we want it to feel like an everyday thing for everyone else so it's not it's not something that people feel scared of it's something that people go oh yeah i know someone like that you know because sometimes when i talk to people about you know freddie and i say you know he's autistic non-verbal they'll be like oh what completely non-verbal and i'll go yeah yeah he doesn't he doesn't talk and they're like wow i've never i've never seen that before and i think oh man that's true i before i had fred i actually was not educated on this at all i didn't know this really existed and that can only be because it's not been presented to me it's not been something that's that's been in my everyday life and and that makes it much harder for parents and for also these children who are going to grow grow into adults and be in this world the more we understand it because that's the key of it really is to understand that these kids have so much to offer and uh freddie's 11 he's 11 now he's 11 now um i want to understand this better i'm super interested in what it must be like to be a parent of a non-verbal autistic kid you know we're learning all the time that this relationship we have with these types of individuals has always been one of like well we don't really understand what's going on here you know like it's it makes us uncomfortable because they act out in certain ways and this is not appropriate for polite conversation yada yada yada but more and more we're realizing like these are very gifted people they have a different lens on the world they see everything through a perspective that we don't understand and often they are genius in certain respects and in ways that gets overlooked and finding a way to plug them into the one thing that lights them up you know we see these surprising discoveries and and what they're capable of and i look at them as like celestial beings they're like angels that come down and they're like you think you know what's going on but like we're operating on a whole other level and like i know it's difficult for you to understand and we don't really know how to translate what we're experiencing in words that you could possibly understand but there is a certain kind of like genius and a diversity of types of geniuses with these people yeah because they're all you know i've had before where people say oh autistic people who are like that or non-verbal they're like this right or they don't like this or they don't like that there is no i mean that's why one of the reasons why they call it a spectrum right because on that spectrum you can hate this love this and on this side you the complete opposite um and yeah there's there's certain fundamentals that are like the same amongst all all these kids and adults who who are neurodivergent but the one thing you picked on there is that they are they are all working on a completely different energy plane to the rest of us and angelic is a very good word because they're so pure there's there's no egos there's no masks there's no they don't know the meaning of deceit right they don't know how to to just work for they they exist within our world in a beautiful setting right and the way that freddie sees the world i learn from every day because he's he sees the beauty in wind and trees and rain and water and just the air and it reminds me all the time to appreciate all those those very basic things antidote uh you know self-obsession and being caught up in your stupid bullshit story about only ever present yeah i can't help but think about uh the telepathy tapes i had dickens on the show and like that is just a wild you know like journey into you know some really confronting ideas about the capacity of of certain neurodivergent individuals i mean she's essentially making the argument that like they are communicating on a you know in a different dimension you know of consciousness and a shared kind of space and it's like it's very you know you're like whoa you know okay slow your roll here like let me get my head around this but for anybody who hasn't listened to her uh series the telepathy tapes it is it's a wild ride it's i know they're working on a documentary that's going to come out at some point i think they're going to make a movie of it as well you know i heard they oh like a feature movie oh that seems like a film that your production company should be involved in yeah actually i can connect you with her yeah that'll be good um and even if it's just a thought experiment like i find it absolutely fascinating because from my perspective she introduces uh these autistic non-verbal people and then demonstrates through these experiments that they are able to kind of extra perceptually like understand things that their parents are trying to communicate like they can find things that their parents have hidden you know like it's like all kind of and it's like is this a magic trick is this real but actually what it is is a vehicle for her to introduce an even more confronting idea which is that everything we think we understand about consciousness is wrong and that the material premise that consciousness is a product of biological complexity is actually upside down that the material world is actually a product of a one consciousness like that's really the thesis that she's asserting there so it it's like sort of this quantum physics um kind of notion of of what is reality yeah which i've played with a lot with that and having a son like freddie you know and and then listening to the tapes the telepathy tapes i'd never even thought about this before before i came across them so it kind of blew my mind especially having a son like fred and then i start looking at all the possibilities because i think i think we're narrow-minded if people if people go no no no there's no way that's that can be true like why because i i look at human evolution we didn't always talk so there must have been a part of our brains at some point that we did communicate with each other in some form before speech because we wouldn't have survived as a species if we couldn't figure out how to cooperate and cooperation is contingent upon being able to communicate exactly and i also think that might be something to do with you know like uh the long history with dogs as well i think dogs have some kind of connection to this as well of why humans connect with with certain animals so so closely but i i just think that maybe and this is just my weird like sort of thesis on it but i just feel that maybe once upon a time we all had that ability we all have a part of our brain that was able to do that before speech became a thing and then as speech developed and over you know thousands of years we shut that part off and these kids that for whatever reason don't have that that that neuro pathway to create speech maybe theirs is just still active you know um that's that's the only way i was sort of looking at it and thinking well that that would make sense from a biological standpoint that they're still like firing there because they haven't they haven't developed the speech so if you tried to communicate with freddie telepathically yeah well actually my wife always says this because my wife has got like a deep connection with fred and one thing that's really interesting is like uh my wife when she's in a bit of a mood right she won't always communicate it she'll just sit in it and i know her energy's off but freddie is so connected to her it will throw him off if she's off and it won't be anything that she's actually putting out she won't be like shouting more or anything like that he's feeling what she's feeling yeah yeah and so it's not so much my connection with fred i've tried to do things because i'm like so into the telepathy i'm like i'm like sort of staring at me going can you hear me can you hear me i hid the oreos you know like go find them follow my voice freddie and uh But my wife has had more kind of instances of when She says she's thought things or done things and then Freddy will look at her and you know Moments like that when especially like her energy energy is a big thing with Fred and her they kind of are always in in Sync and so when she's in a great mood, he's in a great mood. She's down and out He'll he'll be stimming more. He's like out and he could be in a completely different room But if he feels that so that that is that is going across pathways that's not something like they can't like if she could be out and about during the day, but and he could be at school and They'll be like we had a bit of a bad day today Reading her facial expression or anything like that. Anyone work like she's not in his presence It's sort of that quantum physics idea of like particles on opposite sides of the universe that are interacting simultaneously Yeah, which is so crazy about the telepathy tapes, right? It's like they can be in a completely side because there's ones they've done like the way they're not even in the same building Mm-hmm, and they get them to do Like the kids or the mum draws a picture, right? The mum draws a picture. It's been like a couple years since I've listened to it So I don't recall but there are yeah It's the mum draws a picture and then they use and the kids so my son Freddie has an iPad That he can talk to her and he's at the basic level right now where he can say, you know, I want Water right and he can communicate through the picture Associates the picture with the thing but some of these kids now in these these iPads they're actually able to talk and type out the letters and the words and so the mum will be in a completely different part of the house or like somewhere completely different and they'll ask the kid to Describe what the mum is drawing and The kid will start typing out the exact description of the drawing and it's a new thing that they've given the mum as well they've said Like the people doing the the series that the producers will be like, okay draw this So the kid will have no idea what they've been asked to do It's gnarly like I highly recommend it to anyone because I think more people should have eyes on it and more Great minds should have eyes on it to be able to actually do more research into it because I think it's to ignore it I think it's crazy because it's something that So few people have like clearly tapped into yet, but there's something in it for sure It seems like it shouldn't be a huge leap to really craft a study that's bulletproof yeah to put this to the test because you know, there's a lot of dismissal of Kai's series and people Sort of take potshots at it Well, you know like that they're guiding the hand of the child to like push the thing and like, you know This is all BS or whatever. It's a magic trick, but I don't know. I found her to be very Earnest and yeah She doesn't seem like she's trying to pull one over on Anybody and she seems like she's gone way out of her way to like on her own try to create these scenarios Yeah in good faith the one the interesting one for me. I think it's the sound guy who works on the show Yeah, like it was the crew who was freaking. Yeah, the crew were like most of the crew were complete skeptics They were saying and they couldn't believe that they were like, this is gnarly Because I think that's the best one is you get like true skeptics To turn and to be like, I can't believe what I'm watching Then you know, there's something in it. I think because you can always if you if you want it to happen You can you know, you can find ways Yeah, there's a sort of wishful thinking and we'll like we'll figure out a way to get the result that we want. Yeah Manipulate it. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting when that documentary comes out and if they make a feature that's why yeah be very cool Yeah This episode is brought to you by birch. Ah I can just feel it. Here's an honest question for you. When did you last upgrade your mattress? We replace our phones every couple years or running shoes every few hundred miles But the thing we spend a third of our lives on a decade 15 years Given how essential sleep is to well-being that math strikes me as backwards I've been sleeping on a birch mattress for about five years now and it taught me What I've been tolerating before sleeping hot waking up stiff Blaming everything except the slab of synthetic foam underneath me birch on the other hand is built from actual materials organic cotton natural latex responsibly sourced all engineered to breathe and No polyurethane foams. 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Is this something that like developed at a certain point in his childhood or how? Did that happen? So? Me and my wife differ a little bit on this. We she was saying that He was always like a little bit different. I my memory of Freddie was that he was developing You know quite stereotypically, you know He would do certain things that you'd expect kids of that age to do up to about 18 months I would say and then After 18 months there was this period where He became a little bit more distant and he was going to his daycare and They said oh, we just want to you know, see if by game Freddy's hearing checked because he's not answering to his name And I was like, oh interesting and then I showered him across like Fred and He didn't turn around and I I had a little like sink in moment there because he'd always done that before like he would come across to me would look at me and like he would smile when he saw me and I Called him a couple of times and he didn't answer and I was like, that's weird I'm not actually notice that and then I went up to him and like turned his Sort of shoulder around to look at me and then he kind of saw me and like lit up, you know And so at that point we were like, oh, maybe there's something wrong with his hearing So we should get that checked and we went through this whole process, but he kind of started to just He Regressed I suppose from where he was and then sort of plateaued He sort of stayed and he his interests were no longer wanting to play with Things in a conventional manner he started to want to like just get things for a sensory fix so That's that sort of continued over the next two years really where we were And this is the thing me and my wife went through some tough times because and she she really struggled and it was it was very hard for my wife because she took a lot of responsibility for it and She Blamed herself, you know, and she was in a little bit of denial about whether it was You know autism or and and if I brought it up It would be a tough conversation. She didn't really want to deal with it, which I totally understood But it was hard for us, you know to really communicate about it, you know to get on the same page because I I'm someone who When When I see a problem I go right. Well, we got a we got to fix this What's that? What's the fix and I start looking for things of the way to get it back on track? I've got that for my granddad. My granddad was very much like that Who Freddy is named after actually funny enough? but my wife was more like I Think it's his ears. I think it's his hearing and we sort of went down that track for a while and then It just never improved we saw like a lot of other kids his age Starting to talk starting to do all the things that you'd expect them to do and it was this kind of slow Realization that he's different right and I Didn't know how to deal with that as a dad. I was I You you grow up when you think about having kids and you think about specifically having a boy You dream about I'll get to kick a football around with him I'll get to you know, I'll teach him how to play rugby and we'll do all these things and I Suddenly had this realization of oh, I probably won't ever get to do that with Fred and I struggled with that a little bit I didn't know how to engage with him a lot of the time when I was Looking after him it was I felt like I was just sort of Doing exactly that just looking after him and making sure I couldn't engage with him I couldn't play with him and I didn't know how to deal with it. And Then I had this moment where he was He sort of I decided to get down to his level and like try and really engage with him I was like I've got I've got to try and find something that I can engage with him on and I had this moment where I realized that I was trying to force Freddy Into my world into the way that I saw things and I was like I have to understand his how does he see this world? What does he enjoy and I started doing all the things with like water play and like this used to look obsessed with stones He'd always like play with stones so I started doing that with him and playing with the stones and I saw This interaction I hadn't had with him for a couple of years where he kind of looked to me and like he started enjoying the play And like smiling with me and we were playing again, right and that that was my first moment of going. Oh, it's not It's not about me and what I want. This is all about How he sees this world and I have to jump into that. I had to jump into how he sees it and That was a big turning point for me personally at least of how I now parent Freddy and it's so different to truly my daughter Who's who's not nor divergent, you know, she's neurotypical Talks enough for her and Freddy and She got double the oh, she got all of it. Yeah, but she's a beautiful soul and an amazing little sister for Freddy She's perfect for him so caring and always Looking after him and does like his therapy with him and stuff. But yeah, it's it's something that We've worked on right it's like it's a process and it will be forever a process with Fred, you know, because we We're in a great stage right now where he's developing really well. He's had a lot of therapy he does an ABA therapy here in the States, which is amazing for him and You know, they always these kids they surprise you what what they can do and Sometimes you think I'm not sure if he'll ever be able to do that and then one day just decides he's going to do it It's a really beautiful Story. I mean, I think every parent can relate to You know that exercise that we go through when a child is born is like well Who is this person gonna be like are they? Yeah, like like you have this fantasy you're projecting your own identity It's like trying to imprint your kid like oh, we're gonna do all these things and it's gonna be amazing It almost never that's never what it is Like they're gonna confront you with whatever it is inside of you that needs to grow and evolve and change Like it's a you know, they become these gurus and these these amazing teachers And they have you know wisdom that we lack or didn't get you know That were meant to learn right and you go from this guy who is like this is a problem We need to fix to like I'm embracing this person because they're actually Nourishing my life in a way that I never even actually thought of and and just appreciating the beauty of it well also, you know acknowledging the challenge it must be you know, like just the amount of patience and Kind of centeredness the pressure that it puts on your marriage the time and attention. It takes away from your daughter like It has to be a herculean effort to try to thread the needle and figure out how to parent this child In a healthy and responsible way. Yeah, I mean Me and my wife are always, you know, we're always talking about that We're always talking about how do we be the best parents for both of them, you know, because they need such different things We also have an amazing support network in our family We we moved back to where both my mum and Laura's parents are and a sister who help out massively with Freddie So we have an amazing unit of people so we're very fortunate in that sense that we have that but the bottom line is we have to always be open to to change and to things that We weren't expecting to do, you know, we have to like think okay what's best for him now and he's you know he's always he's growing and he's adapting and he's changing so You know, I think in the long term that's always going to be a year-on-year process, you know, and sometimes day-to-day process and but he's been even with all the challenges of that he's been the biggest gift in our life I mean both of our children are but Freddie in particular because he's changed the way that I look at every person I ever meet now. Before I had Fred you know you'd be quick to kind of if someone came up to you in the street there was a little bit off or like spoke to you differently and I remember people saying like that guy's a little bit he's a little bit off he's a little bit weird maybe they are but but sometimes now I think I always anyone that comes up to me or I speak to them and there's there's a little bit oh I think they're if they're they're neurodivergent before I wasn't educated on that whereas now because of Freddie I'm so much more open to meeting every different type of person. Suspending your judgment. Yeah and and almost like no like you don't yeah suspend any judgment yeah because you realize you start looking at people anyway when when you're a parent I think you start looking at everyone as like oh they were once a kid you know you start thinking about who they were when they were very little like I see kids on the you know guys on the street and stuff here in LA and I'm like oh man that's someone's someone's baby you know and so I think it does something for you anyway as a parent but with someone like Freddie you just become much more open to to everyone I suppose. The conversation around neurodivergence like the sort of public square discourse around it is very interesting right now because we have a whole sector of society at the you know kind of highest earner bracket like tech oligarchs and they love to throw the word neurodivergent around and it feels a bit irresponsible and cavalier like maybe you're slightly Aspergery or whatever and you know maybe that allows you to focus on your building your startup or whatnot but that's very different like I feel like it's almost a badge of honor you know like to be the very productive like highly successful neurodivergent person and that's very different from you know what you're experiencing with your son and this like you know like on a far end of this spectrum with you know being nonverbal trying to understand this child how do I emotionally connect with him how do I enter this world like what is the world that he's experiencing like do you have a sense of that like how is he processing his environment? Yeah well that's the thing because he's never spoken right there's this thing of like I suppose if I didn't say we always have that hope that one day he'll speak then I'd be lying I think because my wife has never heard the word mummy you know and that's something that I think she'll dream about until he says it or doesn't right. And that's not anything to be ashamed about this is a very human. Yeah it's just a human for a mum I think for their child to be able to communicate on the most basic you know form of being able to say their name but yeah the neurodivergent thing is thrown around a lot and it's as I said before is such a broad spectrum of what that means but yeah I mean it comes into the fact that you know one is is in the bracket of special needs right where that requires these people cannot take care of themselves alone. No I mean Freddy could but he would you know be obese I think because he would eat all the snacks in the house but so we have to curb that. Especially since you can't hide them because he'll telepathically know where they are. Oh he'll totally find them every time yeah he's actually amazing at that but for me they're the two clear sort of depictions right one is because you hear a lot of people going well well I'm autistic I'm this and I'm that and I me and my wife would go oh okay cool. Yeah you have to bristle at that. Yeah but you you also understand that it is a broad spectrum and they're very different they're very different categories I think the problem is there is not enough education of there is clearly this one that we're in that is very different and and that's not saying you know there's there's children being raised with a sort of highly functioning autism that can be more complicated in a lot of ways than than what we have you know like Freddy on a day-to-day basis actually is is beautiful to hang around with and he's like he's not difficult but there's times where having him and not being able to communicate like if he's ill for instance not being able to ask him where does the pain where's the pain where where are you struck like what is it you're feeling you have to guess you're like I don't know what the problem is and you try and take his temperature and then you're like oh he's got a temperature now like what's we do he's not showing us where the pain is times like that are brutal because you just don't know what to do whereas at least in with someone that's verbal you can you can at least communicate with them but you know Freddy doesn't this there's times where I'm sure it will be extremely hard with people that are highly functioning because there's things that they do and can't do that they will make their day a nightmare if they can't do certain things and stuff whereas Fred is okay in that kind of area we can take Fred on a plane we can move around with him he doesn't have that kind of like OCD element so there's positives and negatives to both sides but I just think there is a very broad lack of understanding of there's two different types you know they need to be understood in terms of understanding what is it that you want people to know and get about this condition that you think is misunderstood that would be helpful for somebody when they you know encounter somebody and like how do you act like how are you supposed to think about this what is a right-minded like ethical approach yes or better understanding I think that's a great question because I would say broadly speaking I would say that people would think that when you first see Freddy because he's not talking because he's doing little things like he'll hold his hand and he might be having his little movie that he has because it's like a comfort thing for him that he's not smart or he doesn't know what's going on in the room Freddy knows more than most of us that what's going on the room he's sensing energy all the time he's like operating on what I believe to be a completely different energy plane but he's also he understands so much more than what he lets on so just because not listening in the same way or is not responding in the same way as a neurotypical person he's there he's present he's understanding what's going on and he understands a lot what's being spoken about he just doesn't show it so I think the there's like a fear sometimes of like oh I don't know how to communicate with this person I talk to Fred like I talk to anyone I just speak to him mm-hmm chat to him like when we're in the car I'll talk about all sort of stuff he's not responding in the same way that my wife or my daughter does but I know he's taking it in and I know he understands because we've got to a point now where his comprehension is like I can just ask him to do stuff and he'll come and he'll do it I know a kid Max who's the showrunners of Umbrella Academy the showrunner Steve Blackman very good friend of mine his son Max is three years older than Fred very very similar to Freddy nonverbal and he's now a point where he could literally like just talk to him and like very easily he's comprehending everything that would be my biggest thing to anyone if you encounter someone that's like that a child no matter what age if they're an adult try talking to them right but don't talk to them as if they're a child yeah what you could talk to them like a normal just talk to them perfectly normally and and that's also liberating for you as well because because you just go oh yeah they're just the same as me and that's the thing is like I think that dare I say fear there's like a fear of interacting with someone like that because it's so different you know and that's why like I mean I think in the UK it's definitely been swept under the rug and like they're put aside and there's the schools are really really hard to come by you know it's not it's not talked about enough and we found like one big thing that me and Laura try to do is to build more of a community in an online community we did a lot of YouTube videos during kovat when we went through this diagnosis with Freddy and we were like we should we should put something out there for like other parents that might be going through this because we knew how hard it was and there was nowhere to turn I was looking for videos on the support this sort of thing of like how do you deal with this like what do you where do you go that's so surprising you would think there would be a lot of that yeah there may be more now I haven't looked in a while but at that point I was in you know like 2020 2019 and there wasn't there wasn't really and what is the message that you want to convey to the parent who is at the beginning of one of these journeys that it's going to be okay you know because you really really think it's not and if you especially if you're in a marriage and a happy marriage that you want those like got loving it but you you differ that it will be okay if you work together and you try and find a common ground on how to work through it that I'll say that it's not gonna always be that hard because there's times early on in Freddy's life where we were like what what will we do like how what happens if you know he because there's also things like potty training and stuff right that they don't have the comprehension Freddy didn't have the comprehension to know that he needs to go to the toilet for a long time so we had to guess when he was going to go and put a you know a diaper on him to guess when he might need to go this is constant stress of like oh what if we feel like you can't leave the house and all that sort of thing and as I say like they surprise you right because one day Freddy Freddy just walked up to where the cupboard was where the diapers were just picked them up got a diaper out and then handed it to me right and you have these moments where you go oh my god like he just handed me the diaper and then just recently like a few weeks ago and that's what big thing about our therapy here in LA he's like more motivated it seems to do stuff he started swimming on his own I was telling you about this early started like he kind of invented his own stroke we he wanted to push into the deep end of the pool and we're like I think that's a good idea but he loved swimming so much he loves water but just doesn't have that comprehension to learn how to swim or like to teach him how to swim and he kept pushing to go in the deep end and me my wife well let's just stay by him and see what happens and then we let go of him and my wife was under the water with a goggles she came up she was like he's actually swimming he's holding himself up and he just started swimming mmm like just figured it out figured it out yeah yeah and because of a desire to want to do it and then the other big thing is he started he just out of nowhere went and sat down on the on the toilet and peed in the toilet and if that's at 11 now right so like this is a long long process so I think what I'll say to parents who are at the beginning of this journey like sit tight you're gonna it's all gonna be good like we're on it's a longer journey with with children like Freddy but if you kind of strap yourself in it will it would just continually get better and easier and if you give them the right help and aid they'll get there they'll figure it out we were joking earlier I was saying he's such a different type of intelligence yeah that there's an analogy with like AI like in the way that AI can like look at a data set and extract an insight that never occurred to humans Freddy might be the person who loves swimming and then figures out a brand new stroke that no one ever thought of and he just he doesn't need a swim instructor he just needs to figure it out and there's something about like the intense focus of a neuro divergent person once they lock in on the thing that lights them up it's like sort of get out of the way yeah you know maybe it's not swimming but at some point it seems like he will find his thing yeah everyone says that and then like you know his life will sort of blossom and it'll be easier to understand like how to meet those needs yeah that's it like he he is very when it's something that he wants to do he has a hyper hyper level of focus and that was the thing he was so determined to get that deep end I couldn't stop him every time I put him back in the shallot he just like push back to the shallot to the deep end and he wanted to get in there he wanted to feel what that was like and push himself to do it and that was the first time I'd really seen that with him where he was like just absolute determination of like no no no no you can keep pushing me back all day I'm gonna keep going there and I'm gonna see that I can do this so that was magical for us especially his parents who for he loves water so there's always this fear of him falling into water which we've had a couple of close calls with that on on holiday a few years ago he fell in and I turned me and my brother-in-law Greg we turned and we're like what was that and we couldn't see what happened and then someone screamed that Fred had fell in and me and Greg like sprinted across the lawn and got into him and he was he was going under at that time and he was you know had a bit of a cough and stuff and he was fine I mean he actually gave my wife full-on trauma but it was it was a very close call yeah right so from then on it was like oh my god how are we gonna we got to find a way to teach him to swim because he loves water so much we don't want to take that away from him but we need to find a way to do that and we'd seen loads of different swimming teachers that were like I'll get him to swim I'll get him to swim and it was it was difficult not having it and then he just decided don't worry I got it yeah yeah it's one day one day just one morning was like no no I'm doing this it's making you like you're being compelled to become a better man a better parent and a better husband like you can't get away with stuff like the intensity of what your relationship with your wife must be like it's at a different level than like a normal marriage like you got to work your shit out because like the stakes are high and we have to figure out how to parent this kid and so you're kind of being called upon to you know self-actualize so that you can you know be the person who can be the right dad to this child and be the best husband you can to your wife. You know, you can't sleepwalk through this. No, yeah. And you have to be willing, I think. I think I've learned, certainly in my marriage, I've had to learn to look in the mirror a lot. I think we both have to do that and just go, where was I responsible in the downfall of this situation and how do we grow from this? Especially in light of the fact that you live the circus performer life, you have to go off to Bulgaria or Australia or whatever to do these shows and you're gone. And the pressure that that puts on your wife is tremendous. Yeah. She was an absolute saint. Through those first few years of my kids being born and between the first year of truly being born, and Fred was like three, I was away so much shooting Umbrella Academy over in Toronto and I would jump back as often as I could. But I had to go through this learning curve of like, I would jump back in at home and be like, right, great. Let's all hang out. What are we doing? You know, I just want to spend time with my wife and stuff. And I just like try and cruise back in. And my wife was like, I need to get out of here. I need to get out and have some space. And I'm like, what? I've been away for weeks. Let's like hang out. And she was like- Sort of like your turn, dude. Yeah, totally. Glad you're home. Yeah, but I need some time. And that kind of mentality, the two of us clashing on that was a tough period because I just couldn't get my head around it. And my dad actually, he was not the greatest of like wisdom for parenting the skill at times, but he said something to me that changed my whole perception of it. He's like, think about it this way, Tom. She's thinking about what's right for you. She's thinking about what's right for the kids. She's organized everything for the kids all the time. She's like trying to sort out. So when you're away, she's doing this, she's doing that. Who's thinking about her? Who's making sure that she's okay? And I was like, oh my God. It was like this kind of like light bulb moment. And I went and spoke to my wife. And we were in a particularly bad place at this point. And I went and spoke to her about it. And I said, I understand I need to give you more. I need to think about you more and think about what you need. And I've not been doing that. And she was like, your dad said that. And I was like, yeah, weird, right? Being a mother is hard enough. Oh my goodness. You know, a thankless job. But to have to be a mother on that level and have you be gone, it's like, fuck yeah, you should be thinking about her. A hundred percent. Yeah. Making sure that her needs are getting met. Yeah. It was a real kind of like moment of clarity for me. And we did, I don't know if you've ever done this with your wife, but have you ever done love languages? Yes. I think they're amazing. When I figured those out for my wife, I then knew what she needed to receive love from me, right? And I was trying to do the same thing before. I was like, she just wants a hug. So I go try and give her a hug. She's like, I don't need a hug from you. Her love language is acts of service and words of affirmation. She was like, it means more to me that you write me a letter or a card, or you take the kids from me for an afternoon and say, babe, you go chill out, do what you need to do. I've got the kids. But now that you know that, you know what to do. Exactly. It's amazing. And that instinct, there's a problem. She wants me to solve it. No, sometimes she just wants you to listen and be present with her. All of these things that we should know that we know. We just don't. I mean, I struggle with that one because do you do that same thing where you go, well, here's what you could do? Right. Of course. Rather than just like, that sucks. This is not helpful. Yeah. This is actually making it worse. Absolutely. Yeah. She's like, sometimes I just need you to say, that really sucks. I go, okay, no suggestion. No, just like, yeah, that sucks. That's good enough. Speaking of things that really suck, one of the things we share in common is our journeys through lower back. Lower back injuries. How was that? That was a pretty good segue. Yeah, yeah. It was very good. Graceful. Ours are a little bit different, but I know that the audience doesn't need to hear about mine. They've heard enough of it, but you've had a different, but similar kind of experience trying to figure out how to alleviate debilitating pain in your lower back. The more people I talk to, this is an epidemic. It's chronic. So many people are suffering, and there's so much confusion about what to do and all these new alternative therapies. Should I get surgery? Should I not? There's so many different types of back pain disorders. What is yours, Ben? Oh, man. Well, I've had two separate herniated discs, one L5-S1, one L4-L5. The L5-S1 was my worst one, I would say, and I had that for a good year and a half. I was working on Black Sails, the TV show at the time when I was dealing with that, and I was in excruciating pain every day for a year and a half before I got it sorted. I would go and see various different back experts, and you were talking about this, like, I've got a guy. He'll sort you out. There's so many guys out there. I don't know about these guys. I don't know about them, but they all said the same thing. Ultimately, you're going to have to have a discectomy. You're going to have to have surgery. And then my mate's dad, he'd just been over to the Cayman Islands to have one with a company called Regenexx, which was quite a new company at the time, Regenexx. But he did a stem cell injection into his, and he said- Is that where Mel Gibson is going in Alacra? No, he went to South America somewhere, didn't he? Panama? I don't know. Yeah. There's one in Panama. Yeah, maybe. There's a bunch down there. Yeah. And some of this is sus. It's scary. That's the thing. Yeah, finding the right one. And that's the thing. In America, the level of stem cells that you need that would normally fix a problem like that, you can't culture stem cells in America. It's not legal to culture them. That's why they all do it down there. Or I think there's another place in Europe that they're allowed to do it. But everything's done in South America because there's no limit on what you do. And the Cayman Islands is where they can culture them. So he went and had it there and had an amazing experience. It healed his herniated disc. And I was literally a week away from having the back surgery. I'd booked the back surgery. And my best mate, Zach, it was his dad. He was like, I would definitely speak to my dad before you go through with the surgery. Because he was saying that a lot- I mean, I didn't know about this at this time, but he was saying that a lot of people who have that discectomy, they might get some alleviated pain initially, but the same problem is going to occur again because you're not really fixing it. You're just kind of snipping off the disc and then it's still- and it's actually weakened the disc then. So I was in this whole kind of haze. But I spoke to his dad and he was like, you should definitely speak to him. So he gave me the number of this clinic, Regenexx. And they have a clinic in Denver. So I spoke to them and they said, yeah, you'll be a candidate for the stem cell procedure in your disc. So I traveled across to Denver and had- it was like a two-day thing. I went in, they did a bone marrow draw, drew out the stem cells from that. And then under ultrasound, they injected it into the disc. And it was really painful after that one because at that time, it's kind of advanced more now. But at that point, it created an inflammatory response. So the disc kind of swells. So it swells even more into the nerves. So you kind of become paralyzed for like 20 more hours. The impingement on the nerve roots is even more severe. Oh, it's brutal. Yeah. And the ultrasound is so they can guide the needle precisely where it gets- they're literally injecting into the disc itself. Yeah, yeah. So the stem cells go in and then they inject PRP, a very specific advanced PRP around the disc to encourage the blood flow. Because a lot of this time, they say the reason the disc, herniated disc can't heal by themselves because everything else in the body gets blood flow, it will heal. It doesn't get enough blood flow. Yeah, there's no blood flow in the disc. No, there's nothing there. It's just like cartilage, right? So they put in the PRP to help the encouragement of the healing process to activate those cells. And then I was- but the pain sort of stayed there for- the initial like bigger inflammatory pain, that went away so I could walk around again after like 24 hours. But the sciatica was still there, right? And I was thinking, I'm not sure if this is gonna- if this has worked because I don't feel any different. And then five weeks later, I was- we were on a family holiday in the south of England. And every day for the last like year and a half, I'd gotten out of bed and had this like pull in my leg. Every time I stood up, it was like this dragging pain down my leg. I stood up out of bed and for the first time in a year and a half, it just wasn't there. And I was like, where's the pain? And then I started walking around and was like, oh my God, the pain's gone. And that was the first moment I was like, that stuff actually works. And it was a really significant herniated disc as well. It was like pushing deep into the nerve root. And every surgeon was like, you're 100% gonna need surgery. There's no way you'll fix this any other way. And then I got another injury, the L5, L4, L5, about three years later. And I went back to Regenix, but I went to one that was now open in the UK. And they'd advanced it more from then. It was a PRP, an advanced PRP, you know, three different types of PRP in the injection. So it was an even easier process because I went in, did a blood draw. That afternoon, I went back in and they inject three different types, one into the disc, one surrounding the disc, and then one on the way out. And I felt relief from that like the next day. It was so quick. So I'm a big advocate of that kind of regenerative medicine. And it hasn't returned? No. And I mean, I do do a lot of things to strengthen that area. And I do a lot of glue work and a lot of retraction stuff to make sure that I'm trying to keep that stable, that area. But no, I've had no sciatica at all since that. And I've lived with them for a long time. Yeah. Living with that kind of sciatica, with that level of nerve root impingement, I mean, you're never not thinking about it. It's like every time you move your body, it's like with you all the time. And for me, it got to the point, I couldn't sleep. Like my leg was just in so much pain. I'm so glad I'm on the other side of that. And I'm so cautious about doing things that are going to put me in that position again. I mean, my condition was very different. It wasn't really a disc degeneration situation. And I do have some slight degeneration, but that's not what needed to be corrected in my case. It was a different situation. It's called spondylolisthesis, but it was L5-S1. So when you said it was down on the nerve root, if it's not herniated, how is that pushing? That's like the whole thing retracted onto it. The disc was compressed, but fundamentally, like if this is S1 and this is L5, and this is like, I'm looking at you like this way. It was sort of like sitting like that. It was like pushed forward and just crunching on the nerve root. And this thing had to get moved. It was like an engineering situation. And what do they say what that was from? It's a congenital condition called Parr's defect that a certain number of people are born with, where you have a hairline fracture on the bony backside of one of your vertebrae. And I think many people could live asymptomatic their whole life, but I've done a billion flip turns and run too many miles. And all the pounding over the years obviously exacerbated that and made that L5 unstable. And just slowly, the symptoms increased over a 10-year period. I first noticed some numbness in my foot in 2010 and was diagnosed with this then and told I was going to need surgery and proceeded to train through it and deny it and see a bunch of guys and just try to manage it until around like 2018, it started to get completely out of control. And still it was many, it wasn't until 2025 that I got the surgery and I have numbness in my foot and that numbness inches up towards on my shin, up towards my knee. And I still have most of that numbness. I probably always will because I waited so long. Yeah, because it's been under that pressure so long. It was a successful procedure. And when you look at my MRI and my x-rays, you can see some degeneration in the discs. So perhaps what you did might be appropriate for me at some point. But when I was seeing all the guys, I did have PRP, which not for nothing is actually really painful, at least for me it was. And it did absolutely nothing for me. I mean, the PRP is like, not all PRP is equal, I think, in that sense, because that's the one thing I think companies like Regenexx pride themselves on is the type of PRP and it's specific for the injury. My aunt actually had a very similar situation to you. She had PRP in her elbow from a tendonitis thing and had a very similar situation to you, very painful. And I was surprised because I was like, my experience of that is not the same. I've always had a really good experience. I don't know who you went to there and I can't speak for them, but I just know that if you're at the right place, it can be really beneficial. But there are some definite ones out there that have had bad experiences for sure. Speaking of bad experiences, this is another segue. I'm going to crush this transition. Am I right in thinking that you have put alcohol in the rearview mirror? I'm interested in the story behind that. Well, growing up, I mean, I was in a very working class background. So drinking drinking culture was very much you work through the week the weekend comes you hit it Right and you just drink Friday Saturday night. You recover Sunday. You're about to work Monday. Hell. Yeah, right that's that's the way and I Fell into that straight away. I mean from a very young age mean in the place that I grew up Kids were trying to get alcohol from like, you know, 13 14. You're just trying to and you wanna You want to know what that feels like are you seeing all your older peers doing it all the time? so I suppose I started very early in that side of things and I was also, you know part of like rugby communities and stuff and the rugby Mentality is is drinking a lot. I went to drama school where you drink a lot so I was always doing it and then in somewhere in my 20s, I suppose the big turning point for me was when I did black sails that a show about pirates and that we got into we were told to get into like great shape. I I just thought I'd put it on hold anyway, because I didn't want the extra calories. I wanted to to perform at my best and You know, we were being put through these crazy workouts I just didn't go hand in hand to go and drink and then try and work out the way we were doing and that was the the big point really when it was the first time where I actually just stopped drinking for a bit and I Just got the most amazing benefit from it. I was like, wow, I feel completely different I feel like so much like clearer and I feel like more energy and then I go through periods where I Would go to a wedding or I go on a night out wherever and I would drink again and it would just take me like a full week to get back to where I was before that night and Then I started assessing Why I was why why I needed to drink because like I don't really feel that great afterwards Well, I really don't feel great afterwards and I really don't feel that great when I'm on it I almost become out of control of who I really am and I've sort of saw myself becoming another person My wife always said to me like you're not a great drunk so I always knew that it didn't really serve me that well and I Thought well, why do I need to do it? What's what is it about drinking? That is so great And I suppose I started assessing the wall It makes me feel like freer when I'm out with all my mates and stuff and they're all doing it So it's kind of like this group mentality thing so I thought well, I wonder if I can Start hitting nights out with my mates and let's see how good a time I can have when I don't drink a thing Mm-hmm, and the hardest thing with that, especially my mates in the UK was the peer pressure because they all they're like, what's wrong? Why are you drinking? It's you should be drinking. It's like you're something wrong with you if you're not drinking so I had to kind of push past that and also Not be any worse to hang out with I had to be like the funnest guy on on on the tour sort of thing So I would be the one like pushing to go to like karaoke at the end of the night I'll be like pushing the night you're overcompensating kind of a compensating exactly. Yeah, but then you find like this This setting where you can sit in it and go yeah, I feel good I can hang out with all my mates I can have a laugh But I wake up in the morning and I can get up and go for a run or go to five minutes after they're giving You a hard time. They've completely forget about it. Like you think everyone's walking around thinking about you. They're not they're not they're not at all Yeah, so that was so yeah, and then it just became Something I did, you know less and less and then to the point where now I think I'm Over ten years now. Yeah, well over ten years. I haven't drank It's I love that story You know recovery is a recurring theme on this show and you know, I talked to lots of recovering addicts and alcoholics, etc but I also talked to people like yourself who are like It was mildly problematic in my life But it wasn't like I had to suffer some tragedy or like my life didn't crash and burn in some way where I had this You know epiphany and a reckoning and all of that like it doesn't have to be that way It was just a recognition slowly over time. Like is this really working? Is this really worth it? like what do I want in my life could my life be better without this and like making that decision and like sticking to it like this is I Think Emblematic of this cultural shift that we're seeing right now the embrace of the NA lifestyle your fellow Brit Andy Romage Oh, you know him. Yeah, so he's been here. He's a friend. He actually has a documentary coming out called going dry Oh great about this really cool, right? And he he was the co-founder of like one year no beer, which I know was a big thing in the UK I don't remember that But just this movement of like it doesn't have to be this way like we can go out and be ourselves and have fun And we don't need this yeah, and our lives are better and look at how we're flourishing as a result of putting our energy into things that actually matter and like kind of transgressing the Momentum and gestalt of culture that's pushing it like this is what you have to you know If you want to fit in we all want to be members of a tribe and we want to fit in and we want to Be with our peers and all of that We don't want to do things that are going to alienate Ourselves from our friends or put us in a position to miss out on having a good time So I think appreciating like that desire while also providing a healthier alternative so that you can Still show up with your friends have a good time and not have to do that. Like I think it's a really cool thing and I've seen These cultural norms shift and change like, you know Gen Z Millennials to a large extent like they're just not consuming alcohol Yeah, no way that you know, like I'm much older than you but like it was just I mean if you weren't gonna drink for Get about it. Like it was just expected. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean on in in the UK. It was almost at times like a nightly thing, you know before sometimes I thought I was like We all alcoholics because we were drinking every day. Yeah, and now the the youth like I look at my my niece and my nephew who are like 21 and 19 and They'll go out and drink but it's nowhere near what we used to like hardly at all in comparison There's also much better drugs now. Yeah Yeah, the hardest in a scary way But yeah, the consummate alcohol is like why like it's not as appealing, you know, and you were seeing this change It's super interesting. Yeah, and do you think that's the thing that's because of like parents and stuff Do you think it's because of you know, we were talking before about like generational influence Do you think it might be them seeing their parents and saying like not for me? All right Yeah, but I don't know but this has been going on for thousands of years, you know, like why now? Yeah, well, I think it's always smoking as well. Right people. I know a lot of my my peers Didn't want to smoke because they saw their parents smoke or like a parent died, but it's kept a generation I'm seeing a lot of young because of vapes and stuff like that like the accessibility of like marijuana vapes and nicotine vapes and all of these kind of higher grade pharmaceutical alternatives to alcohol are almost more readily available than Trying to get somebody to buy you beer at the 7-eleven like that's that's harder than what's going on and I say that as a parent of like, you know, like You know people who are now maturing into adulthood like your kids are much younger But you know, it's kind of scary and part of that's being in Los Angeles I suppose yeah, because it's illegal here now is it or is it like prescription? It's a spray zone Well marijuana's I mean, it's essentially legal I mean there's a difference between state law and federal law and blah blah blah In a prop on a practical level. I mean you see the dispensaries all over town, right? Yeah, some of them look like Apple store, you know And so the marketing behind this is this is benign It actually is good for you and should be part of your wellness routine whether it's like micro dosing psychedelics or like just having some kind of casual relationship with marijuana and as somebody's been in Recovery for a very long time like I know a lot of people who are in recovery for pot who have had like marijuana psychosis and it is not a bit like this this casual kind of affect or Relationship that our society now has with marijuana is like deeply concerning to me Yeah, because I we we worked a lot up in Toronto and Toronto is Like it's completely legal like people like you say that these stores are like Apple stores Yeah, you just walk down the street smell it everywhere in New York City. You smell it Constantly all the people I know that smoke a lot of pot. These are not productive people These are people who are binging an entire season of Star Trek, you know while eating, you know Kentucky fried chicken and sleeping all day, you know, like this is this is this is what's usually happening Yeah, so, you know buyer beware Amy Schumer was like have you have you ever tried one of these gummies? I was like no no, and this was back in like 2016 I think and she was like, oh you should you should try one like they're amazing that you'll just feel like super chill and and She she kind of like sold sold me on it and she was like what he's like go go for a walk like just take like half one and go for a walk and You'll love it. I was in Boston at the time. I was like, you know what they're all talking about this The wellness benefits of this thing. Let's just see what it's all about So I I took half of one of these gummies, right? I was like, okay Let's see what happens and I'll use myself as a guinea pig for these sort of things, you know Like I I'll try anything if I think it's gonna give me a benefit. So let's try it and see what happens So I try I don't know what the strength was. I swear I got to this park and Three and a half four hours flew by like it was nothing I was sat there in this park and I remember just I was there was like a wedding going on there was like a wedding party and I remember a couple of people kind of like walking by me quite close and I saw what I remember being so kind of zoned out and it put me into such a comatose sort of setting like I basically felt sedated like I was coming in and out of something and I was like super relaxed and then I kind of came to about three four hours later and it looked at my watch and Like three and a half hours, I'm just like flown by yeah, and not exactly a new tropic No, yeah, but just like a week. I was like, I don't know what disassociation. Yeah, but also what benefit did I get from that? Mm-hmm. I walked back to the hotel then these things are so strong Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know what she gave me but it was I mean I for one did that to you and you're like, you know mountainous state of 220 pounds or whatever Although I suppose one my body's just not used to it. So it's probably what the hell is going on, but Yeah, I mean I Was it was not for me. I experienced it was like yeah, okay. I think it'll be a one-time only thing Yeah, you know what is for you? Here's another segue This guy's a pro man high rocks is for you. Oh, yeah. Yeah Tune in to open container for more about that, but when did your competitive spirit? Inspire you to get involved in being a competitive athlete in high rocks Yeah, so probably about not long over a year actually maybe a year and a half ago I was in I was still shooting terminal list at the time true believer, which is the one that's about to come out and I Was like doing my training I was doing my training for you know my seal training and stuff like being shaped for Rafe and I I remember feeling like a bit of a plateau sort of feeling like I wanted something to kind of aim for and my mate Simon Came over and was telling me about this thing called high rocks that he did earlier in the year I was like, I've never heard of this thing What is it and he was showing me videos and he was explaining what the race is and for people who don't know it's 8-1 kilometer runs and in between each kilometer run is a different workout station You have a ski erg a sled push sled pull 80 meters burpee broad jumps You have a to was it a to be a burpee broad jumps of 1000 meter row Yeah, then a farmers 200 meter farmer carry 100 meters walking lunges and then 100 war balls at the end of the race and each in between each of those is a one kilometer run and the idea is You do it as fast as you possibly can So he showed me the videos of him doing it. I was like, this looks amazing This looks right at my street and he told me like it's all like performance base. It's all about being as fast as you can and I We've talked about this but I love being humbled right? I love going you're not good enough for this and then I go Like watch me. Let's see. Look come come back in a year or come back in a few months And I kind of do that to myself. I kind of like to challenge myself and find things that are hard and and push and I Decided that next week. I would sign up to one so I signed up to the London one, which was later on in that year and I thought right. Well, let's just see where I'm at and I didn't really do much running before but I thought you know eight one comes it runs I could probably do that and be alright and On paper, it definitely feels easier than the reality of it. So I did like a simulation in my home gym I went for a run and then started doing like I didn't have a sled at that point I did like squat heavy squats went for another run and was was doing the stations and I got to the burpee station, which is like what station for and I was gassed and I was like I've been completely humbled by this thing and And Just thought I've got some work to do because I'd already signed up for it so I was like, I've got some real work to do so I started researching of how to train for it and I Became highly addicted to I mean I had that kind of personality Anyway, when I have something that I'm into my wife calls it hobby dating I find a hobby that I'll just like day so I'll never cheat on with a girl But I'll just kind of like acting you take on a role you immerse yourself in a you don't understand and then you know Six months later. It's over and you go into something else exactly that exactly that so yeah, high rocks became that new thing and then My weaknesses were exposed on my running base was nowhere near where it needed to be But what I loved about it was it kind of tapped into many aspects of fitness, you know, like the the agility aspect, you know burpee broad jumps, you have to jump up and down from the ground, you have to use severe strength and power, and there's sled pushes and pulls, you have to be able to do different kind of aerobic work, skis, rows, running. So I just loved how the cross-training hybrid athlete element of it fit into the way I like to train anyway. And also the performance base, the performance of knowing a time, I set a goal time of what I think I could get, it was much faster than where I was at the time, and I thought, right, I'm gonna aim for under one hour 15, because my running base, when I first started running, I was struggling to hold a 5.45 per kilometer, minutes per kilometer pace, so I knew I had to bring it down to like a 4.30 minutes per kilometer pace. So for a 100 kilo guy, that was a challenge, so I wanted that push. So then over the next few months, I worked on just getting better at it, but I had some real kind of wake-up calls of how much running, what it can do to your body if you do too much too quickly, I got like an ITB syndrome, and I had this terrible pain in my knee for a while, so I had to really learn from that and slow down, build slower, and then I did my first solo in December last year and then got one hour 14. Oh wow, so you got under one 15, you're gonna do Birmingham? Yeah, that's the plan. Yeah, yeah, Birmingham at the end of October. We might have a slight, I don't know this yet, but I've got a slight filming conflict, so I'm hoping I can get to it. We'll see how deep this obsession runs. Exactly, yeah. Can I take a few days off to do this? Yeah, just to go do a high rock. But there's more, I mean, there's a lot of these races every year. The popularity of this sport is like insane, it's gone through the roof. And I think it's cool, there's a community piece to this that I think is really powerful. We were talking earlier, I think on some level, it's a reaction to COVID, this just thirst and desire for IRL experiences and this shared love of fitness that brings people together. There's all kinds of gyms. This is sort of the maturation or the evolution of CrossFit gyms into these high rocks gyms. And I've seen a couple of these places. And people can kind of go through the circuit together. It's cool. And this is a completely different world from my world of athletics and fitness. And this morning, you just absolutely destroyed me. I was so humbled. I knew that I would be because I'm like a locomotive, like I start slow and I get up to a certain pace. And as an ultra endurance athlete, it's just about how long can I maintain this degree of effort over an extremely long period of time. And so I'm never training the high end of my anaerobic state. It's completely undeveloped, like I have no fitness up there. And I know that's what I need to do in order to be a more robust, resilient athlete. But we always wanna do what we like doing and what we're good at. And so I'll do my zone two and I'll do some static lifts in the gym and stuff like that. But I've been shying away from threshold stuff. A, it's painful. And I'm not good at it and all of that. And so this morning, you kind of forced me to confront just how much work I need to do. You literally lapped me in the stupidest circuit of all time. And I was like, oh, wow, okay. I mean, the thing is with that kind of work, I mean, I was saying this when we were doing it. It's really, for saying that was your first time doing that kind of training, though, I mean, the reason you get better at that kind of training is just doing more of it. But now I have my feet wet. You've introduced me to this and now I kind of understand this. And now it's sort of like, okay, I have to, okay, now I'm gonna figure out how to get a little bit better at this. I can already feel it. And the kind of workout we did, you can do adaptations of any version of that. A slow version of that. I think I wanna get the technique down first. So important. Rather than just jump into these threshold circuits. I need to know how to do these movements properly, which I definitely don't right now. But it's fun. And we were talking about friends in common and other athletes who have found a lot of nourishment in this world. There's more and more actors doing this. Is that a joke that you and Patrick Wilson should do a team or something like that? Like there should be a celebrity category or whatever? I was saying they should do like a pro-am. So celebrities or actors or whatever get teamed up with the pros and they have to work in doubles with them. So you do like a double. Right, you get like you and Jake Dearden or one of these guys get a ringer with somebody who has some kind of celebrity status. Yeah, I mean, he'd be dragging my arse around there. He's running paces about a minute quicker than I am. That's the deal. Like when you're in pairs, there's always gonna be, it's always gonna be that way. Yeah, that's the thing. That's what I love about the doubles in high rocks is you adapt depending on what the pair is, right? So there's certain ones. Like I did one with my nephew, Ned, who is a phenomenal runner. But he was kind of like new to this world of training. So by the time we got to the race, we figured out where his strengths were and where mine were and where our weaknesses were. He's far superior to me at burpee broad jumps, right? Because he's only like 75 kilos. I'm 100 kilos. So him like springing his little body around is like so much easier than me. Whereas on the big heavy sleds or like heavier lunges, like I take a bit more of that. And then on the runs, he sets the pace and I keep up with him, which actually wrecked my gas tank on the runs. But yeah, you work together and you work. But if you get your run in shape, you'll have a major improvement. Yeah, yeah, that's where I'm, I mean, a lot of this sort of off season for me has been building up my running, which unfortunately has hit me a little bit because I got like a plantar fascia thing for doing too much mileage and too much hard running. So I'm having to kind of lean back a little bit. We were talking about that earlier. Yeah, like your cardiovascular system, your lungs and everything, they're fit enough to handle the intensity and the volume, but your ligaments and your joints and all these things, they just take a lot longer. And it's just so easy to get injured. You get ahead of yourself because you're fit and you want to push yourself and you want to go hard. Restraint is like always the number one rule with running. Like less is more, never run on consecutive days, things like that, until you have enough experience where you know when to push and when to hold back. Yeah, and it can creep up on you, the injury, right? Like this thing, it wasn't like I did one session too much and it just happened. It was like a trauma case. It was just gradually it became something that hit me over multiple weeks. And all of a sudden I was getting up in the morning and I couldn't walk properly because the pain was so severe in my foot from the plantar fasciitis. So it's not something that you get like that immediate trigger. It's like your back, right? It was 10 years of that gradually getting worse. I feel like with running injuries, sometimes it can creep up on you and before it's too late and then you've got to give it double the time to let it settle down again. But you know what you can do when you finish your High Rocks race? You can enjoy a delicious NA beer from Go Brewing. Oh, is that? Do you know Go Brewing? So Go Brewing is the NA beer title sponsor of High Rocks and they're a brand partner. I'm an investor. Shout out to Joe Chura. Yeah, like they're on board with High Rocks. So it's like you celebrate with an NA beer. Yeah, that's great. Because I think sometimes, like I still love that feeling of having a beer, right? So even if it's a placebo effect, just the taste alone of having a beer can be great. So what is it that makes it, does it still taste like real beer? Yeah, they've done a great job. They have like these small batch craft beers and they've won all these awards for like best tasting. Like the original NA beers tasted horrible. It's come a long way and now there's some interesting brands. I mean, Athletic Brewing was the first brand to really make a huge impact, especially on the kind of athletic outdoor community. But now we have all kinds of brands out there. Like Go Brewing's my favorite. That's why I'm backing them. Yeah, I gotta try it. Shout out Go Brewing. Actually, we have some here. I'll give you some. Yeah, great. And we have your fellow Brit, who has a similar kind of giving up the booze story as you and his name is Tom Holland. Oh yeah, that's right. He did start drinking, right? He came here and told that whole story and then he founded Biro. Like he has his own NA brand now. Yeah, I heard about that. I mean, you guys don't look alike, but like. Two Tom Hedges. Yeah, like it's, the names are similar enough. Does that cause issues? No, no. I think you were coming in and we were having dinner the other night and you were gonna be coming in. It was before we had to like reschedule. And my wife was like, I don't know who this guy is. Like, I'm gonna Google him. And she spelled your name correctly. And she's like, oh, he like, you know, had this bad experience with alcohol and then he quit. And then I was like, I think that's Tom Holland. I think you typed wrong. And she's like, no, I typed this. And it was some AI article. What? And it was claiming to be about you. And then there was like a picture of Tom Holland but they were spelling your name correctly. I was like, there's confusion out there. That is so weird. Yeah, the AI got really confused. Right, anyway. Yeah, the only person that I do get, do you know the director, Tom Hooper? I know who he is. He directed like Les Mis. So that's the only one that gets confused. The Hooper Hopper thing. Yeah, Hooper, Hopper and Holland, all the Toms in Hollywood. Then there's Tom Hiddleston as well. There's a few Tom H's. It's a little harder to confuse him. Yeah, yeah. But he's in the superhero world, right? He's in the world, yeah. How long before you're putting on a Marvel costume? We'll see, they're doing a lot of reinvention, aren't they, right now? They are. Yeah, we'll see. They need to think broadly, think more broadly. Yeah, I mean. About what they're doing. That's the thing is like, some of those characters' stories are great. Like the one that always, I mean, it's more the DC universe and they've just done the new Superman. But Superman always really interests me because of, not Superman, like I was talking about before. It's, for me, if I got Superman, I'd want to concentrate on Clark Kent, right? Who's Clark Kent? Who's the, how do you make Clark Kent unrecognizable to Superman? Because I always feel that the Superman movies, it's like, they've just put glasses on them, you know? I don't really feel like they're a different person. I feel like I would know. They never really developed that character. No. In the way that Nolan developed the Bruce Wayne character. Yes, and I think that's always the more interesting one is like the mask of Superman is Clark Kent, right? He's born Superman. He talks about this in Kill Bill. Tarantino talked about it in one of his speeches where Bill says, why Superman's different. He's born Superman. His mask is Clark Kent. So how do you create this mask that is unrecognizable and how do you go deep into who he has to be to not be seen as Superman? And for me, that's the really interesting actor part of it. I think it's from an actor's perspective, I think it's the most interesting one, but it's just not been tapped into in that way yet. I'd love to do a, you know how they read a joker? I would love to do a version of Superman or Clark Kent when he's older and he's kind of like hidden away, not wanting to be Superman anymore and he's living life as like a Clark Kent in a much darker world. Yeah, he's having an existential crisis about what he's doing. Kind of like Daniel Craig in Skyfall. Like he has to revisit his childhood. There's a whole identity thing going on with that. Yeah, exactly like that because that's when it becomes more relatable. It's more human. But I always thought that Christopher Reeves, the reason he was so great is because of his Clark Kent, not because of Superman. He looked like Superman. He was already that. But I want to see the other guy. How do you be the dweeby? All right, well this was your audition tape. Attention DC, you heard it here, man. I already know what the clip is. Yeah, it's all right, I'm already developing it. Speaking of Daniel Craig, here's my final transition. True or false, you are or are not being considered to be the next James Bond? I don't think I am. I think they are going to go much younger than what I currently am. Even though I try and age my points. How old are you now? I'm 41 now. 41. Yeah. Yeah, because they need to have somebody that they can grow into over more than a decade. Yeah, and if I was so lucky to have the opportunity, a massive Bond fan, then I'd back myself to be physically able for the next 10 to 15 years. But I think the really interesting thing to do right now with that, because Daniel Craig was so good, and they've kind of done that, they already did that reinvention after Pierce Brosnan to kind of make it more real and raw and gritty and kind of that human side of him, right? Where we see him fall in love and then get hurt. They've kind of done that, right? So the only way to reinvent now, so it's completely different and kind of incomparable to Daniel Craig, is to go, let's go right back to when he first becomes this guy and take him into his like 20s, maybe. So I imagine. Origin story. Like an origin story, yeah. And I think what would be really cool, I don't know if they'll do this, but what would be really cool is if you took it back in time as in it actually made it like period. Yeah, I've heard people talking about that, like do it as a period piece, set it in the 60s. Be very cool. They definitely have to go in a different direction to try to reimagine this and get people excited. You can't just continue, you know, and the Craig thing was the Craig thing, but we have to do something unique now, I think. I think so. And it's so hard, there's so many of these movies and so many iterations of this. Yeah, so how do you exactly? It's like the question that I'm sure they're all going over is how you do that, how you reinvent. And I think the only way to truly do it, to not make it comparable to what we've already done is to go much younger. And I think they should cast a complete unknown. I love all the guys that are in Contention. Callum, like he would be great, right? Aaron Taylor-Johnson, like that guy's a machine. He would be amazing, all in their own right. But we all have a relationship with these people and we have an association with who they are on screen. I think we need to have somebody we've never seen before and we can develop a new relationship with this character. Yeah, and that was the thing with Daniel Craig, right? He was pretty well established, but he wasn't like a household name. No, no. A lot of those guys almost are, really. Crushed it in Layer Cake, though. Yeah, that was like his audition piece, right? I mean, in Layer Cake, you watch him and you go, yeah, he's perfect for Bond. But we were talking about this earlier, when he first got announced, there was kind of an uproar that he wasn't right. People were not happy. Blonde, like, people were freaking out. Yeah, and what I love about that is he just absolutely smashed them all to pieces with that first performance. It was amazing. Well, all of that went away when they leaked the photo of him coming out of the Caribbean sea. Oh, yeah, with his little skimpy speedos. And he was just absolutely, like, just drilling it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember seeing that and thinking, that's what James Bond should look like. He should look like a machine. Right. But you don't necessarily think it in a suit, right? Like, he's kind of, like, trim and everything in a suit. But then when it's off, you see this body that's, like, honed to be able to be, like, a functional being. And, like, he's capable, you know? And I love that. He's not just suave, he's capable. What is your theory on why so many leading men and, like, action stars come from the UK or, you know, Australia also? Yeah, yeah. Like, is it a tradition or a respect for acting in those places in the world that we don't have here? Like, it seems like there's a disproportionate number of dudes who end up, you know, dominating Hollywood that, you know, come from one of those two places. Yeah, I don't know, man. I'm not sure what that is. I mean, yeah, it does seem to be, there's quite a few, or, like, Europe as well, right? We've had, like, the Arnies, the Van Dams, Dolphs. I don't know what that is, yeah. I mean, the acting side of it, I don't know because it feels like a lot of the action stars aren't, like, known for their acting prowess, necessarily, some of them. But they are, like, amazing action stars. Jason Statham is an incredible action star, right? But he was a top-tier diver. He was, yeah, a great athlete, yeah. Yeah, I saw some videos of him on YouTube. No, super legit. I don't know if he went to the Olympics, but he was, like, on the national team, and, yeah, yeah, he was, like, he was, yeah. Yeah, legit diver, and a very good martial artist. So those sort of things cross over quite well, I think. But I don't know if that's anything to do with the country. I'm not sure if it's just a weird thing that's happened. I'm not sure. Well, it isn't necessarily normal in the United States to, like, go to drama school. But I feel like in the UK, that is a path that is sort of accepted. Yeah, because action, it's definitely not an action thing, but I definitely think there is a, the drama school training, and I think that's what- There's a tradition there. Absolutely, yeah. That dates back hundreds of years. Yeah, and there's a discipline to that kind of acting that I don't think, I don't really know, because I haven't done it, but the kind of training they do in the US. Theater training is, there's nowhere to hide, right? Like, you don't get to go for another take. You do it then, or you don't do it at all, or you fail. So doing theater is the ultimate exposure for you as an actor to push through. And because things happen all the time on stage, right? They go wrong, and you have to deal with it and move around it or use it and acknowledge it. And then, you know, if you're really skilled, you can make the audience laugh through that moment, or you can, and usually an audience is kind of in with you on it. Like, they know that it's happened, so they kind of go, how are they gonna deal with that? So that's the skill of theater. It's an organic, living, breathing thing. Yeah, yeah, very much so. With higher stakes. Yeah, huge stakes, yeah. Like, if you're doing it professionally, like, they expect you to be able to deal with that stuff. So, yeah, theater training, I think, gives you a discipline that is different to, I guess, the way they maybe do it over the States. I couldn't talk to that, but I'm sure there are types of training here. I know, like, Lee Strasberg and stuff like that is like, he's very disciplined in that kind of training. So, and that kind of, I think the Strasberg way, that does also link into the way that theater is done. So they're very similar like that, but once per screen. And it's all about being real. How do you connect to the text to make it authentic? So like, text work, like learning how to do script and make it your voice. Was Strasberg the tradition that you were trained in, or? We learned it with a lot of practitioners, like Stanislavski. Yeah, I was gonna say, because there's these kind of different theories and ways of going about it, Stanislavski and Strasberg. These are very different approaches. Yeah, like outside in or inside out, which way you approach it. So you either draw from your own experiences and how do you bring that into the text for a script? Or you take the person's, the character's reality and you go, how do I make that mine? So there's loads of different ways to do it. And sometimes you have to adapt. You have to go, because some people are very strict on their method. And I've been asked a few times, like, what's your method? I'm like, I don't really have like a set method. I go with what I feel the character is right for me. And sometimes like, I'm quite picky with the jobs that I do because I wanna know that I can do a good job. I don't want to just take a role because it's like a huge IP or something that's going on and I'm asked to do it. I don't necessarily wanna do it for that reason. I wanna be able to go, how good a job can I, me, Tom Hopper do at that? Am I gonna be able to bring the truth out of that role? And sometimes I'm like, I'm not sure that's for me. I'm not sure I'm the guy for this role because I don't feel it. I don't feel like I can do the best job. And if I feel like that, then I don't wanna do it. I have to look at characters and really go, what's my version of that role that's truthful? Especially when it's something like Jack Carr's universe because you're telling real authentic stories. So it matters a lot. I think it's important to have that rigorous training if you're gonna excel in your field. And there's so many different paths. Like as you mentioned earlier, you went to school with so many people who were so brilliantly talented and could never find a way to plug into it. It's definitely not a meritocracy. I'm curious around how you think about the training versus the natural gifts. When you watch somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis who just puts in one transcendent performance after another, the Robert De Niro's, these people like Meryl Streep, they're just touched in a certain way. And it could be charisma. It could be just some ineffable intangible quality that they have. And sometimes it's a stage presence. Other times, it's just a relationship with the camera that translates in a way that if you're on set, you don't even see it until you actually watch the movie. How does that work? Like when you see those people and you're like, how are they doing this? Like what is happening? Like how do I get a little piece of that? Yeah, I think it's the same way we look at phenomenal athletes, right? You have these outliers sometimes that have a natural talent. They have the work rate and they are able to just go beyond what other people are, right? And what other athletes of that same sport are able to do? You know, like the Ronaldos, the Messis of the world, the Michael Jordans. And I think you have the same thing in acting. You have someone like Daniel Day-Lewis, for instance. You know, clearly he, from jump, default setting, has this kind of magnetism about his face, the way he just sits, the camera loves him. On top of that, the guy works insanely hard at immersing himself in these situations to be who am I when I'm completely this role? What does that look like? How do I feel? What is the immersion factor that he'll put himself through to become that? You know, method acting is a thing in our industry that gets, there's a stigma to it because it can be quite intense and not fun to work around for other people. But the other side of that is it creates phenomenal performances sometimes. Not always, sometimes it's, you know, people get it wrong. But in the case of someone like Daniel Day-Lewis, it creates Oscar-worthy performances. And he's our Ronaldo, right? He's our Messi. He's someone that has all of it. And I think you have actors that sometimes the camera sits on them and they look great. They're movie stars. I call these kind of movie stars, right? They're brilliant at that thing. They do that thing. But what happens if they're really pushed in a different direction? Are they able to adapt and be diverse? And sometimes the work rate isn't there or the skill to be able to transition across to a different style of acting. But they're amazing at that one thing. So I think the thing is with acting is it's so broad of what is good now. You know, there's people that I see that are phenomenal at comedy and then can't transition. I see people that are amazing at comedy and then transition to drama and they're phenomenal at drama, even better. Like the Robin Williamses of the world. You know, Robin Williams, for me, like Mrs. Doubtfire, right? I think he's one of the best performances because in that movie, he crosses over from hilarity, brilliant, genius comedy to this moment in a courtroom where he's gonna lose his children and won't get to see his children anymore. And you see this beautiful, heartfelt performance of a man going to the extremes of becoming a woman to get to see his children. That, for me, is an incredible performance because it hits everything, hits all the boxes. The great comedian to dramatic actor pipeline is interesting because we've seen that with other people. We know them as sitcom actors or whatever and suddenly they become these really powerful dramatic actors. It doesn't go the other way, though. You don't see an accomplished dramatic actor excelling in comedy. Yeah, and that's why Chris Pratt, I think, is great because he's pushing that now in Terminal List. I've seen all eight episodes of True Believer now and what's really amazing to see is how I watched him on Parks and Rec and then the Guardians movies and stuff and I see him doing all this amazing comedy style of acting. And then when I see him in Terminal List, there's a darkness inside there that he brings out. And now in True Believer, even more so. He's pushed and pushed and pushed as an actor. And it's so cool to see, to look at the guy in Parks and Rec and then go, oh man, he has this other side to him that's really brilliant. And yeah, there's something about comedic actors sometimes that they have, I don't know, like a past. Well, they have a sense, they have to understand timing in a very precise way that maybe can get somewhat overlooked when you're a dramatic actor because it's all about landing the line and understanding the dynamic that you're in because some kind of line set another way isn't gonna work. Exactly, yeah. And Chris is a actual genius at the comedy stuff. Like I've been in rooms with him where he's making gags and stuff. And what he can do on screen, like he's literally a genius at that sort of stuff. He's improv-ing some of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, he's incredible. Like when he gives you shit for the tight shirt in season one, like that was on the spot. Yeah, I know, I got fully set up on that one. Fully set up. I turned up on set and I was the only one in that tight T-shirt. But yeah, yeah, he gave me shit for that. But I should have given shit to the costume designer, to be honest, not me, but I was. Well, you got one to hang over that person, you know. They owe you, although you're getting a lot of mileage out of it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think you're benefiting from that attention a little bit. I've held you hostage for like an entire day. So I'm gonna end this with a final question. I feel bad. Not at all. Literally spent the entire day with you. I wanna end this with some thoughts around how you think about your relationship with your profession and your career because you're in a very uncertain profession. You talked about the need to feel in control, but you decide to go into this world where you actually don't have very much control over your destiny. It isn't necessarily a meritocracy. You can work really hard, but you show up, you do these auditions, you hope you get cast in these things. But it's not like getting a job and like, okay, I'm gonna work hard and climb this corporate ladder and I have this trajectory and I know where I'm going. It's a very different thing. You have to have a capacity to weather risk and uncertainty. So for the person who is thinking about a creative career or is trying to evaluate whether they can tolerate that degree of uncertainty or risk, is it worth it? Everybody's telling me the chances of you making it and all that kind of stuff is so slim. What are your thoughts on that to the aspiring actor or anybody who's trying to take an offbeat path in their life? Yeah, it's a great question. And one that I have had for my whole career and that uncertainty thing, my brother talks about this because he's a pilot and he just goes, I don't know how you do it because I know where my paycheck's coming from and I know that I just go to work, I fly the plane and I come home and I get paid. You have to be a checklist guy. Yeah, just to start with where I began with that and my parents saying to me, it's really hard, it's really competitive. Everyone I ever spoke to was like, you'll be lucky to even get into drama school. You know, it was so competitive just to get to drama school. Then when you get out of drama school, you'll be lucky to get an agent that can get you work and then to even get a job. And I suppose there's two sides of it. One was my mum and particularly my granddad, my granddad was sort of like the constant figure in my life, my male figure in my life growing up. He was my mum's dad. And as I said, we named my son after him. He was always the one that was like, he was a minor in the UK, very working class background and he always said, don't stay around here, Tom. Don't just go into a job here in Colville, which is where I was, which I love Colville, like it's where I grew up, but he was like, don't stay around here, travel. He was like, follow your dreams. If you want to do something, follow your dreams. And he said that to me from a very young age and I suppose that... always stuck with me. He said, if you put your mind to anything, you can do it. That was what he always said and he drilled that into me all the time. And I suppose that created like a fundamental thing in my head where I just thought, if I put my mind to it, I can do it. And I'd say that to any young aspiring actor. If you can find the strategy for you to just keep pushing, keep finding ways to do it, pivot. When it's hard, it'll get better. Stick at it. I've had times where I'm like, I'm not sure where the next job's coming from early on in my career. Did you have a plan B or were you just like, I don't want a plan B because I'm all in on this? Yeah, no plan B because for me, I can't see myself finishing, to go back to the win element, right? I can't see myself winning if I go, well, I might finish third, so I should prepare to finish third. I got to believe that I can do it. And I do, and I always have. But that's not without strategy. That's not without massive action being taken. I actually was talking about this on another podcast about this book, Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. I read that book at one point and I kind of applied a lot of those strategies to the way that I approach most things in my life now. It was the podcast called Books That Changed My Life, and that was one that did. And a big part of achieving anything, I think, in life is if you want to do it, you have to take massive action. You have to figure out what works, what doesn't work. And when it doesn't work, you keep changing it until it does. And me and my wife collectively now, her as a partner, we have our goals that we want to achieve with our production company and our careers. And we are applying those strategies and those actions to make sure it happens. And as I've said about that for Freddie and stuff, but I think the only way... Actors sometimes have a thing where they just sit and wait for the call. I can't do that. We talk about control. I have to find ways to take action. I have to find ways to take back a little bit of that control. Otherwise, it will drive me insane. So I'm just not the kind of person to sit there and wait. So I have a very high work rate for that. So I would say to anyone who was in at the start of this journey, take massive action, right? Go and find out other ways that you can get in the door. And I don't just mean like go and network with this person and go and meet this person. It's not really about like just meeting people. It's about finding ways you can get in front of the camera, finding ways to further yourself as an actor and put yourself in the best positions you can. And start writing. Start trying to produce things. Do everything you can to get further and further and deeper into the understanding of the industry and how it works and your career. I'm not saying that's the right way. I'm saying that's just what I do and it's done okay for me so far. And I want to surpass where I've got to, right? I want to keep growing. And the only way you do that is by taking huge amounts of action and just taking control back because as an actor, you feel very much out of control all the time. So you've got to take it back. And have a robust, healthy resilience to weather a lot of rejection and not take it personally. Yeah. Taking it personally is one thing that's so damaging. There's times where you get close to things and it doesn't go your way. Have you had that where... Because your life could literally change around like pilot season. My former life as a lawyer, I would negotiate pilot contracts for clients and it's like this person who's been working so hard for so long and they've tested for this pilot. Before you even shoot the pilot, you have to sign this contract that could be for like the next seven years and you know what you're going to be paid. But first the pilot has to get green-lit to be shot and then it has to get picked up for a series. There's so many things that have to happen. But just that idea that like, oh, if this is a go, my life changes overnight. It's like playing the lotto on one level. Yeah, it really is. And what that does to your mind if you got like really close and then it doesn't happen, they went with another person or the pilot didn't get picked up. Yeah. I mean, I think when I was younger in my career, those times were tougher. And I think you kind of have to go through those periods to start to feel okay about it and kind of develop the wasn't to be mentality. As soon as you get to, okay, wasn't to be. It's crazy. I mean, I started doing that almost even if I did really was like, oh man, that hurts. You're already thinking about like the other house you can move into. Yeah, exactly. It's like this is- Yeah, the new gold clubs I want. This is very dangerous. Yeah. It's tough, right? Because it is a dangling carrot and you're like, it's so close. But I've had roles. I mean, I've had roles where I've been given them like huge roles where I've gotten them and then because of scheduling, I couldn't do it. You couldn't. Can you say? No. Like, yeah. But the sooner I get to the place of, okay, it's not on my path. It's not on my journey. That's all right. We'll find something else. The more I've done that, the more there always is. Like more, yeah. It's an abundant mindset. Yeah. Which begins with abundance. Yeah. So there's never just one job, right? There's always going to be another one that's right around the corner. And I think with the right work rate and mentality and focus on the right things. And also, when you do have to read for roles and stuff, it's that preparation thing I was talking about. You've got to, that focus. And I think it goes back to the not drinking and all of that. I do all of those things. I make those decisions now because it does give me what I feel like an edge in those times. And there's a compounding effect to that. I think so. Over time. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're just at the beginning of this. Like you're having a moment right now, but I think your future is very bright. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah. It was super cool to spend the day with you. Yeah. You too. Season three, Terminal List. What is the title? It's not Dark Wolf now. No. Dark Wolf was the prequel movie that was out last year. That was the thing you did. And now it's Terminal List. True Believer. True Believer. Which is the second Jack Carr novel. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's great. It's based on the novel and it's a thrill ride. It's great. Streaming on Amazon, premiering October 21st. Correct. Yeah. I promise you, this is your gift to me. This is the 60th birthday gift that you're giving to me. Here you go. Here's Terminal List. Because I will immediately binge this entire thing in one night. I will be like the pot smoking guy on the couch and we'll stay up to watch the entire thing in one sitting. Yeah. Four hours will fly by. Or just on a long flight or something like that. Exactly. Yeah. This was an absolute delight. I really loved the opportunity to get to know you, man. Yeah. Me too, man. Thank you so much. This was super cool. Let's do more cool shit together. Yeah. Can't wait. And keep me posted on all the High Rock stuff. Will do. And I will likewise do it. I got to work on my technique a little bit. Yeah. It's a little embarrassing. We've got a double in the future, I'm telling you. I was definitely humbled today. So that open container episode will come out at some point, TBD, but we're having really fun with this, a lot of fun with this new project. And it was great to have you do both of our things today, man. It was great. Thanks for having me, man. It's been a real pleasure to be here. I've watched you and seen you do your thing, and to get to work out with you was a real pleasure and get to have these conversations. It means a lot to me. Thank you very much. Thank you, man. All right. Peace. Before we continue with the show, I want to point you toward an award-winning podcast I think a lot of you will get something out of. If you're a parent, you know this feeling. You want real, trustworthy guidance. But most of what's out there either overwhelms you or makes you feel like you're failing. 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