Sitting Under A Tree

I just got back from Falls in Tasmania, what an amazing few days of live music and great hangs. Went to MONA in Hobart before that and was blown away by some of the best art there is. Not much to complain about actually, but you've gotta try don't ya, so I did a bit of bitching about a pizza. Song: Chameleon - PNAU

I went back to Adelaide and did Christmas early, saw some family, and caught up with a bunch of mates, many of whom I've not seen in 7 or 8 years. Confronted with their memories of me and the person I've been in the past, I've been able to understand the real reasons why I stopped drinking. Also I broke my sobriety! Had a bit of 28-year-old port with Auntie Marilyn. What a card she is!! A few names are silenced in this for anonymity's sake. People got jobs and stuff. Music: Boyboy - Bella Boo

Tonight I did my 600th gig for 2019, but Peter Jones and I are still locked in a merciless competition to do the most for the year, and it is honestly destroying me. I hate it, but I can't give up this close to the end. Maybe this has nothing to do with stamina, and is just what it feels like to get to the end of something? I dunno, I just can't wait for it to be over. Music: Tezeta - Mulatu Astatke

On Friday my boy Luka Muller asked me to fill in for him at a charity gig in Hawthorn, I showed up in pants and a t-shirt to find that I was performing for a crowd of 200-odd people dressed in suits and evening dresses. I bombed, hard. It was awesome.

I'm finding myself inspired to undertake a bunch of projects in my free time at the moment. Gardening, mosaics, hacking shit with a machette, these are all the ways I hope to pour love upon my soul. Too bad I smoked heaps of cigs on Saturday so my inspirational words sound as if they'were recorded through a cement mixer. Music: Paper Airplanes (Makeshift Wings) - AFI

Peter Jones is a stand up based in Melbourne, and writer for Channel 10's 'The Project'. He's a regular at comedy clubs across Australia, and one of the best joke writers I know. We talked about writing, and what Pete did before he started stand up, which as it happens, was writing.   Song: Fred Jones Pt. 2 - Ben Folds

NSW and QLD are on fire, Bolivia and Hong Kong are in the grip of violent riots, Venice is sinking into the sea, and me and my friends drove past a house that was on fire on Nicholson St on Saturday. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, but all I'm worried about is whether the guy who owned the pub I lived above in 2014 is still angry at me for skipping out on $600 worth of rent. Music: Boys Don't Cry - The Cure

Lucy Bloom is one of the most in-demand corporate speakers in Australia, and her memoir 'Get The Girls Out' was published in 2019 by HarperCollins. Lucy was CEO of a charity setting up hospitals in Ethiopia, has travelled the world doing freelance photography, and in 2015 testified in the Royal Commission investigating schools and churches in Australia and their responses to sexual abuse. She gave me a copy of her book after this interview, which was so sick because otherwise I would have had to buy it. She's a badass. Music: Truth Hurts - Lizzo

Koray Hussein is a professional photographer from London who works with models all around Europe. His Instagram is full of incredible photographs of beautiful women, and I wanted to ask him how he manages to take these photos without making his subjects feel uncomfortable. A great conversation about photography, and also kebabs. Interview Starts at 16:00 Music: La Catedral (no. 1 & 3) - Augustin Barrios

On Thursday my friend graciously offered me a cruisy job for two weeks, and I cannot stop complaining about it. This week I do my best to talk myself into some level of humility, and I won't lie, it was a little painful. Music: 10/10 - Rex Orange County

Caili Christian (@caili) is a Melbourne comedian and founder of the Comedy Women's Association, a series of female-only comedy nights. She also helped set up the Light The Way Home Fund to help vulnerable people in comedy get home safely from shows late at night in the wake of the Eurydice Dixon tragedy in 2018. She's been called an "angry, bitter, feminist harpy" by various morons online, but she is hardly that at all, she's one of the most giving and approachable people in comedy, and we had a great chat about everything that she's doing, and Melbourne Comedy in general. Interview starts at 15:55 Song: Person - Crackazat

Ella Nobre-Watts is a comedian and writer based in London. She messaged me when I put up my podcast about meeting my biological father and said she'd had a similar experience with her father being in and out of her life, so we met up to talk about it. She's also mixed race, so we got into that. A bit of everything really. Just two cosmopolitan, millennial future-kids talking about their feelings. Enjoy! Music: Lover Come Back - City and Color

I've landed back in Melbourne and I feel sad, scared, and overwhelmed with tasks. I don't want to live a transient life of travel any more, but I'm scared to commit to living my life in one place. I don't know why. I want my life to be better than this, and that's what I talked about this week.

Caitlin Durante is an American comedian and co-host of The Bechdel Cast, a podcast about the portrayal of women in popular film. We were gigging the same week in Dublin and sat down in a cafe to talk about her podcast and feminism in general. Find Caitlin on Instagram and Twitter: @caitlindurante And the podcast: @bechdelcast Music: Alex G - Mis

On Sunday I flew to Vienna and met my biological father, Fernando, for the first time. I think I managed to talk about it fairly openly here, recounted most of the events, and reflected on what was a very intense experience as much as possible with the limited perspective I have at this early stage. Also some good laughs. I feel a lot better having recorded this, actually.

On Sunday I'm meeting Fernando, my biological father, in Vienna, so I talked about that for a bit. Pretty intense to be honest, not sure if I really made much of a coherent point here. Maybe I'll have more to say about it once it's actually happened. Music: Chopin Nocturne in C Minor (Played by Vladimir Feltsman)

Riley Quinn is the host of the Trashfuture Podcast and author of 14 published books on political theory. Riley is one of the smartest dudes I know, although at times it is hard to tell whether he's actually smart, or just incredibly confident whenever arguing a conversational point. Either way, we sat down to talk about his podcast, politics, and the world and society generally. He answered all of my questions, and even when they were absolute garbage, he gave me intelligent, reasoned, and interesting answers. I was way out of my depth. Follow Trashfuture on Twitter: @trashfuturepod and Riley Quinn: @raaleh Song: Punk's Not Dead - Darren Hanlon

I was really looking forward to this weekend, in fact I've realised I was looking forward to it so much that I maybe invested too much emotional energy in it. It didn't pan out the way I was expecting at all, and I've been sad about that for the last few days, so I spoke about it here, and went through the story in as much detail as possible. I feel like in doing so I've exhausted some of the emotion I was feeling, which is good. I feel very good about what I just recorded here, I'm proud of it, and I hope it's interesting to someone. And if not, well there's a nice song at the end as well. Song: Streets of London - Ralph McTell

Robyn Perkins is an American comic based in London who does one-woman stand up shows about relationships and dating which use neuroscience to explain the things we do in the world of romance. Robyn also went to Harvard University (like the actual Harvard, in America and everything), studying landscape architecture, and worked in the field for years before becoming a comedian. She rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest names in that world, none of whom I am even slightly aware of, and worked on some huge projects including the Olympic Village for the Rio di Janeiro Olympic Games in 2016. I've always wondered what it'd be like to go to the most prestigious university in the world, so we had a chat about it. Also at the end of this episode I put in a bonus recording of a roast battle with my friend Milo Edwards from a few days ago. Settle in, this is a long one. Song: Pink Floyd - We Don't Need No Education

I've been doing heaps of shows in Edinburgh and it's very tiring, lots of things have been happening, all the days blend together. I keep forgetting when certain things have happened and whether I've told them to people. It's fun though.