YouSaid · the spoken record

Claudia Hammond

lines on the record: 33
first: 2026-01-23
most recent: 2026-01-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“They often talk about something called the overview effect, which is that they use all their spare time, which isn't much, staring out of the window back at the earth because it looks so amazing. And they get a real perspective on the earth and they often feel very protective over it when they get back. Lots become environmental campaigners. And that they can step back. And we can do that in our own way by using things that strike awe in us.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well being higher and they have more pro social, nice, generous feelings about other people as well. But they found something that they weren't expecting by accident, which was that they got people to take selfies of themselves in the area, in the park, say, to prove they went on the walk, because for the study, they need to know that people actually did the walks. So they got people to take selfies of themselves, and they found in the group who did the all walks, over time in the study, they started making themselves smaller in the selfie and making the landscape around them bigger, almost as if they were kind of being absorbed in getting a new perspective on things and a perspective where the park is full of birds and beetles and all sorts of things that don't care about our problems that we've got. And it's not that our problems aren't important. It's just that we can get a perspective by looking at that bigger world as well. And an extreme version of that is when astronauts go to the space station, I've interviewed a few astronauts over the years.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really like the research on all walks as well. So, this is all, not as in a rowing type awe, but AWE awe. And there's really interesting research. Again, lots of this research done in California from California again, but good research that found that they got people to go on two or walks a week. So they just walked in their local area. It might be their local park for 15 minutes, and they looked for something that struck awe in them. And that could be in nature. It could be a beautiful tree or it could be the skeleton of a dead leaf that's really intricate and beautiful. Or it could be something human-made. It could be how did they make that amazing bridge and make it meet in the middle without falling down? I never understand that. It could be something like that. It could be an amazing building. And they got people to do this and they found that after eight weeks of doing these walks, compared with people who just went on the walk, so they were still outside in nature, they were still looking around. But the people who looked for awe, they had their”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without feeling overwhelmed by it because you don't want to then go down these sort of route of, oh, I must improve everything and I must take up everything new. But there could be something that might work for you in a calmer life, as well as trying to really look at what are the things, what are the activities that make you feel restored, what are the things that when you have a break make you feel really good afterwards, and who are the people who make you feel really good about yourself rather than not so good about yourself and trying to surround yourself with those people and see those people more. As a GP, you may have more thoughts on this as well.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is about burnout and coming out of that stage again and healing afterwards and coming out of that. And then I think the old, I know it's sort of a cliche now, but the old being kind to yourself about it and not trying to look at the patterns to think, well, what led what might be leading you to burn out, to then think, how can you not repeat those patterns? What are the things that you can change? And what are the things that you can let go of? Sometimes you've got to do all these things, but it's back to the perfectionism again of thinking Thomas Claren talks about the Republic of good enough. What would be good enough rather than doing everything perfectly? Because we can't do everything perfectly anyway. What will be good enough and what will be okay? And what are the things that might give you joy and make you really feel good? And is there something new perhaps that you want to do that you haven't tried before that might make you feel good?”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to sit at the table and worry about things, and you can write them all down if you want to. You've got to actually do it. But he found it was really effective, and he actually found it was really effective with people who were ruminating in a really serious way. I mean, he started his work with people who were very severe depression, and then found these techniques might be more useful for other people as well, and found that that can make a real difference. So you could deliberately decide to have the worry time as well, as well as trying this psychological distancing where you talk about yourself in the third person. So there's all sorts of different things.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of adjectives to think of, but that might be that you're feeling harried and worried that you won't do this well enough and that Christmas isn't going to be perfect, but could, if you're responsible for cooking a Christmas meal, could it be a slightly more simple Christmas meal? Is anyone going to notice that there are three types of vegetables instead of four types of vegetables, etc. And so I think all of those different things. And then if you find yourself, I'm almost paralyzed by the worry of trying to do it, there's some really interesting research from Holland by a researcher called Ad Kirchhoff, and he found that it was really effective in studies if he got people to put aside time to worry. Now, I know you might be thinking, but there's no spare time. How can I possibly worry for 10 minutes? But it then saves you worrying all the rest of the day. So you decide that every time you start worrying about all these things I've got to do, you decide, this is for my worry time, which is at five o'clock, but you have to do your worry time. It's really boring.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you may have to do all those things in the run up to Christmas. It's reminding, I think, one thing that's really important is reminding yourself, wondering how you did this last time, you know, how you coped last time, and reminding yourself that it won't, this, hopefully, doesn't last forever if this is not chronic stress, and that last time you did cope with this and can cope with these things and a very kind of competent at coping with these things. One thing you can do is to say things out loud in the third person, and evidence shows that this works. So if your name is Sarah, it may or may not be exciting. But if your name is Sarah, it's to say Sarah is feeling she's got too much to do and that there's too much on. And there is evidence that saying what you're feeling in the third person can help. And also working out exactly what it is you're feeling. We'll often use the words, I'm feeling really stressed. But what are you actually feeling describing that can be helpful? There's all sorts of lists online of loads and loads.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think what you need to do there is now often, as you say, you want to take back control, but some of those things are kind of not in your control of when you have to do them. I think one of the things that definitely does help, even when you're up against headlines, is taking breaks. And there was a, and they can be really short, they can be micro breaks of one minute or two minute, where you basically do all the things you were told not to do at school, like doodling and staring out of the window and things like that. But there was research from Germany which found that when people are up against deadlines, they often postpone their break. They think, oh, I'll make a cup of tea when I've finished this. And it would be my reward for the task instead of doing it while they're still doing the task. So it's partly being nice to yourself and doing nice things while you're trying to do the task rather than waiting for the end and thinking, well, rather than get this piece of work done, I will get it done, but I'm just going to go and make that cup of tea and bring it back to my desk to make it a little bit easier. Then there is looking to see, do you have to do all those things?”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, I think that is a thing that happens when technology might bring us a problem. And then there's often some new technology which solves that problem next, if you sort of mean. And so some of these things we adapt and solve. I think it's going to be really interesting to see what does happen with social media as it becomes more and more disparate and more and more different platforms. Is it going to become less all-encompassing because of that? Who knows?”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it is. There isn't one rule that's going to work for everybody. I mean, you could say, in a way, it's a shame perhaps you used to stare out of the window and that that might have been good for you and restful too, except that at least you've got otherwise that shopping has got to be done at some point and otherwise you've got to do it at some other time. But yeah, I think it's a question of us looking at what we're doing ourselves, whether we need to be doing it, whether we want to be doing it, whether we want to be doing it all online or not. I mean, I quite like in meetings not taking a laptop to a meeting and just writing things in my trusty notebook. I quite like doing that and I know there is, you know, people used to laugh at my notebook, but now there's this whole analogue thing going on. Some people like my notebooks. It's quite nice to decide when you're going to use them and when you're not.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then people started worrying about magazines and thinking that magazines would be bad. And so I think it's really important to look at exactly what it is that people are doing at different times to see which of those bits might be problematic for them. And what is true is it's much harder now to do a kind of digital detox because you've now got to have your phone for so many two-factor authentication things and things like that that it is much more difficult to decide not to have your phone. What I did find, and this is anecdote, not data, but what I did find was reassuring was recently I left my phone behind in a car in Yorkshire.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that perhaps distracts you from some of your worries and makes you feel rested. And so, or what you might be doing is sometimes when people will say, oh look at everyone on the train, they've all got, they're just looking at their phones and they're all buried in their phones. But some of those people will be trying to, I don't know, say happy birthday to their mother or they're trying to book a GP appointment or they're trying to catch up with some emails. They're trying to do all sorts of different things or they're trying to book a surprise theatre trip for somebody else. There's all sorts of different things going on there and sometimes it all gets, I think, thought of as being mindless scrolling when it's not all mindless scrolling. Sometimes this is just the method by which we use things. And I think it is interesting that in Victorian times people were worrying about teenage girls reading too many books and that parents would despair at their teenagers with their heads in novels. I think lots of parents would be delighted now if their teenagers had their heads in novels.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's really interesting the research on screen time because it all depends on what you're doing in that screen time. So it's not, you know, I can, I'm sure in Dickens' time that people writing out on their ledgers all day felt stressed about having too much to do about that and spending maybe too much time by candlelight leaning with those. And so I think it's easy to have a different moral panic at different times about new technology. So I don't think there's something, the evidence shows doesn't show so far that there is something actually problematic, if you like, about the screen itself. What there is, is whether people can concentrate and whether they're getting interrupted all the time, then that is stressful because if you're constantly having to go back to what you were trying to think about, then that increases our cognitive load and also what you might be doing is say watching a TV program you really enjoy that makes you feel happy.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Someone who's got the power to do that. And I think that can help ease some of the feelings of helplessness because we don't like feeling helpless and feeling not in control.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying to accept the uncertainty, in fact. So if I don't know enough about air traffic controls, but if you take something like, say, climate change and climate anxiety, then some people do feel very anxious about that, and there is an existential threat there. And so you could retreat and decide I'm never going to look at anything about climate change again. And if everyone in the world does that, that's not going to be the way to tackle the problem. Or people can, what lots people are doing is joining, say, there's local climate groups all around the country that are trying to do things in their areas. And so some people are taking control by joining in a small way, something they can do locally. And so I think it's a question of not retreating, but having a level of acceptance, but also accepting that there's uncertainty and working out what you can do about it if you can do something about it. And that might be local rather than a global level if you're not.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think what you took with that situation is that somebody is looking at what could happen about these planes and how that could work, and that whoever does have a say over that is looking at that one would want to hope. I think that it's not a question of ignoring the things you can't control. And I think it's not a question of retreating. I think it can be a question of...”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you can do things like, I mean, there was an interesting exercise in one study that people did that took 20 seconds a day, and I think there must surely be 20 seconds a day free for a month.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You failed at this, you made a mistake. No one's ever going to forget this. Everyone at work thinks you're an idiot. They're always going to think you're an idiot. We wouldn't dream of saying that. We'll say, oh, you made this mistake. People will understand. This will blow over and people will forget that. And nobody will think any of the worst of you. And that is probably, depending on what you did, obviously, but that is probably the truth of it. And so I think you should always ask yourself, you know, would I say this to a friend?”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, so many things. I think it is to Show some compassion to yourself, and there are loads of exercises you can do for this, but particularly, say, one of the chapters on imposter syndrome or the imposter phenomenon, as it's really known in academic terms, you know, we know that Michelle Obama, David Bowie, Einstein, they've all said that they suffered from imposter syndrome, and we know they were really great. So we tend to think that everyone else is imposter syndrome isn't real, but R1 is, and that we will be found out. And so I think one of the things to take away from that is to be kind to yourself about that, even when you've made a mistake. And I think that often we are much meaner to other people. We say, sorry, I mean ourselves, we are much meaner to ourselves. We say much meaner things to ourselves than we would ever dream of saying to a friend. And so I think one test, I've done two things already now. One test is to say to yourself, would I say this to a friend? Would I say to a friend?”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do loads of those in an hour if you get on with it, and it's very, very satisfying because then I can tick them all off on my app, and that's really nice.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's very true, and I think that there can be a sort of claim to busyness as a form of status in a way. And so, and people will say to me, oh, how are you? How's work going? And I'll say, oh, it's busy, really busy, a bit too busy, really. And in a way, yeah, it feels like that. But that is also a bit of a claim to status, saying, you know, oh, look how much I've got on, look how important I am, look how wanted I am. And so I think it is worth asking ourselves, which of this busyness is necessary? Which is a claim to having some sort of status from that. And also sometimes you can find yourself looking at your to-do list and thinking there's so much on here that I can't do any of them. I'm going to kind of run around in metaphorical circles instead, but that actually, if you do decide right for an hour, I'm going to try and get some of these jobs out the way, some really small, particularly really annoying life min jobs, you know, admin jobs, you can actually...”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I don't feel guilty when I go running, so I shouldn't feel guilty taking a break either. So I think those are two ways that I definitely feel less overwhelmed and take steps to feel less overwhelmed.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thinking, yes, that's why I'm putting all this effort into this. You know, I want it to be a really good thing and I want it to work. And so, and I was trying reframing the stress and trying to do some of the techniques for worrying less and worrying less in the night and using those sorts of techniques. And so, yeah, those do work. The other thing I say is a difference is that I now, and after the book on rest as well, I now do take rest really seriously. And so I've always liked gardening is what I find most restful. And it is a question of people finding the thing they find restful. But I do now take breaks really seriously and thinking rather than just push on, I am going to go outside, not today, but on another non-rainy day for 10 minutes and potter around in my tiny garden and not feel guilty. I used to do it anyway, but feel guilty about it. And now I don't feel guilty about it because I think that there is really good evidence that breaks are good for our mental health.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it definitely has. And in fact, ironically, I shouldn't write the book in the order it's in, the right order, if you like, but I was writing the chapter about stress at the moment where the book was kind of almost late, really, and where my lovely editor was saying, is it coming soon? And so I had loads of other work on as well and was just overwhelmed with too much work. And so I was writing the stress chapter at that moment. And honestly, I did end up putting into practice every single thing in that chapter. One of them being that sometimes the reason you feel stressed, and as I say, there is a difference between chronic stress and temporary stress. But sometimes the reason you feel stressed is that something really matters to you. And so the reason I was feeling stress was, yes, I couldn't fit this in, didn't feel like I could fit this in the hours and the day. But also because I really minded about this and it really mattered to me and I wanted it to be really good. And so that did make me feel less stressed.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But unfortunately, I'm no good at tennis. I had no aptitude for it. I wasn't going to put in the many, many, many thousands of hours in determination and hard work and have the psychological frame of mind for it. So all of those things. But there is this kind of idea, yes, anyone can do anything. And you hear it on, I don't know, reality shows that anyone can be a singer and do these amazing things, but you can't necessarily, and it doesn't mean, this may sound a fetist. I'm not saying people shouldn't try, but I'm just saying that maybe something more realistic would make us happier.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think one thing is that there are far more people we can compare ourselves with now and decide that we are failures. So when I was a teenager, you could compare yourself with the rest of your class and look at what they look like, what you look like, what they were doing. But now you can compare yourself with half the world and you can compare yourself with half the world who are curating their images on social media, say, and who are maybe doctoring them as well and only putting up the very best ones. And we know that there's been whistleblowers talking about some social media companies deliberately targeting cosmetics adverts at teenagers when they've just deleted a selfie. And at the moment where they might be feeling bad about themselves. I don't put everything at the door of social media because I think there are some amazing things about it. But I think when it comes to, say, appearance and perfectionism, that that is some of it.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Workplace, our boss, our family, our parents, that they are expecting this of us. And again, we know with younger people that has gone up as well. And so I think perfectionism is a really worrying thing that is making people feel overwhelmed because that is sometimes causing us, you know, there are some pressures you can't avoid. Maybe you're caring for two different relatives of completely different ages and trying to hold down two jobs at the moment. That kind of overwhelm is harder to avoid and then the technique there is to find the strategies to try to find ways to make that easier to cope with. But some of the overwhelming we feel is because of pressures we're putting on ourselves to be perfect when we don't need to be.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You should look that you should get fit, that you should be successful at your work and keep on striving and being more and more successful, that you need to do really well in exams. And lots of people recognize these things in themselves. But not only that, you need to cook an amazing meal if someone comes around and you need to be a really good friend and a really good family member and partner. And you've got to be perfect at all of these things. And I think this is interesting because we know that humans have survived this long by cooperating and specializing. You know, we can't all do the same things at all. You know, I can't build my home to live in, but someone else can, luckily. So we do different things. And yet when it comes to perfectionism, we kind of want to be good at everything and expect to be good at everything. And then there is the other kind of perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, where we feel that the world, society, it could be our friends, our workers.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because in a way, it's hard to know whether people are more overwhelmed now than, say, 30 years ago. If you look at time use studies from the 1950s, people on average have more spare time now than they did in the 1950s, and yet we feel like there's all this stuff. But one thing where it definitely has changed is perfectionism. Really interesting research on this from Thomas Curran, who's at LSE. And by tracing back in time from, say, the early 1990s, the average 20-year-old now is likely to, on average, score significantly higher on perfectionism than they did in the 1990s. And so we can see this pattern of perfectionism on the rise. And there are different types of perfectionism. So there is self, as it gets called self-oriented perfectionism, which is where you demand that yourself is perfect and you have really high standards for, I don't know,”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Next day or two days later, and then it wasn't worth you literally losing sleep over that and being satired worrying about it. And so there are lots of different strategies that I talk about for how to worry less. And I think, because I think the blurring of work-life boundaries can be one thing where people find themselves worrying.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your job, or people using delayed send on their emails, or else I discovered it's got the app's got to then be open for it to send it or it doesn't send it. So you have to be slightly careful with doing those delayed ones or just putting in the title of yours so that other people don't have to feel pressured by it, an email for tomorrow, you know, not for today, but also resisting having a quick look at your email once there's nothing you can do about it anymore. So absolutely not checking your email last thing at night because you could get an email that really annoys you for half the night and there's nothing you can do about it until the morning and it'll probably all get sorted out in half an hour anyway. And that is one thing that is worth looking at when something, when you're really stressed out by something, and particularly if something is keeping you awake that might be a short-term thing, is to look and count to see how long is it before this thing resolves itself. And sometimes it can actually be...”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think definitely Tech has made it harder when it comes to work, and obviously lots of people work from home now some of the time at least, or maybe all the time. And those boundaries between home and work can start to blur. And from the research that started being done, when people started working from home during the pandemic, people were often inclined to, it shows that to carry on working because there was no, why stop at a particular moment, at least if you've got your journey home, in the end you've got to go out in the rain and get that train and get home. And so it kind of can force you to stop, whereas if you're at home, you might not stop. And then, of course, there is the always on culture of being able to be contacted all the time. And I think lots of workplaces are now trying to come up with ways of doing this. And I think that there is some evidence suggesting that younger people might be getting better at this, actually, and of saying, well, I'm not going to be looking at my emails after a certain time. And obviously it will depend.”
2026-01-23 · Intelligence Squared · How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT