YouSaid · the spoken record

Jordan Stephens

lines on the record: 59
first: 2024-12-18
most recent: 2024-12-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“didn't want to get into a political rant about things, but there's a lot of pressure, and I understand it, and I have deep empathy. So, yeah, I want to be a good dad, and I know that I'm not going to be a perfect dad, and that should be good as long as the kid supports Arsenal.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm Suma Brudie. I really desperately say desperately. I feel like I'm prepared to be a dad, but my God, Munia, the one thing that I know about being a dad at now is I don't know shit. Like, I won't be ready. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm not going to be perfect. There's no way of doing that, right? All I can do right now is make sure I look after myself and I make sure that I keep myself in a decent space, as decent space as possible. And that includes allowing myself to be a fucking human being and make mistakes. I know that, you know, and I've also had, this is another thing, I've got men around me who are currently being great fathers. I'm watching it happen in real time. You know what I mean? I will be tapped into a community of people who are breaking generational traumas. And it's a generational trauma that is, as a result of systems outside of these people's control. Do you know what I mean? There's so much pressure on people nowadays, so much pressure. Time is barely there.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About it, and my dad read it, and you know, my dad gave me a wicked feedback. It's tough, but it is tough because these are people's lives and there's some things I can't say because it's not my story. I just have to talk about my engagement with it. But I believe that I've been fair and I believe that people can understand it's my flawed like perception of a situation and it's an attempt to untangle some wires and just look at them and discuss. I'm not set on any of this, you know, people want to have a suggestion feedback on it. I'm here to talk about it, you know?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But other than that, she devoted herself to me. Do you know what I'm saying? But how are we supposed to know that shit? I sat down with my mum during some of the hardest bits in the book I sat with her and read her the parts and I said what you said in the beginning I went look I want to like be as raw as possible so we can be part of like this thing shifting if you know that's the hope we have to dream that my mum was on board because she again she is like an incredibly devoted loyal mother who you know deserves the world you know and I just the issue was I wanted to be make her happy as a boy and that wasn't my responsibility So, yeah, so my mum read it, obviously. He's going to”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know that of my mum and dad. I know they've gone through tough times. They've done the absolute best they can with what they have, like without a doubt. Do you know what I mean? And like my mum put all her love into me being a creative child. You have to understand this. Let me give you an example of how fucked life can be, right? My mom pretty much selflessly devoted herself in my childhood to just making sure that I believed in myself creatively. She devoted her whole self. And anyone who knows I can attest to that, right? When I became an adult, what was one of the most difficult things for me to deal with was the fact that she didn't look after herself. Understand how complex that is. Like, I've grown up as a boy. I needed to see her looking after herself”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, since making slightly better choices in my life, I have a much better relationship with my mum and dad. I love them both a lot. They've both been through a lot individually. And one thing I hope people get from the book is, you know, like I'm saying, it's morally ambiguous. It's not about perfection or some self-help shit. It's like”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was lip syncing thong song, I had no fucking idea what he was talking about. I mean, it's a full circle. My mum pushed me on stage, not like literally, but I mean, like, she encouraged me to go on. She said I'd really enjoy it. And long story short, the curtain's shut. And I came back out of the curtains and started clapping the crowd. So a dragon had been unleashed, yeah. And, you know, it is validating. It's beautiful being in front of crowds and audiences. It's just, you know, finding healthy ways to integrate that with the everyday being, you know?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I did decide that I wanted to be him when I was seven. And so I dyed my Afro silver, which was obviously grey. I was looking at Trevor McDonald out there, the tallow chef for real. Literally. And I was in the Brent local Brent Talent competition.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One day I'll maybe secretly release or something, but she I know every lyric to every song that my mum recorded when I was a boy and it was in the 90s and she was ahead of her time shout out and so you know music naturally became like a form of escape for me. I say that to also say for whatever reason in spite of my quite vast musical knowledge because of my mum's CD collection which went from literally gangstar to nirvana to Beck to sneaker pimps to you know my mum was the first person to show me Dizzy rascal when in my teens first person to show me plan B my mom also found royal blood for real like she went to like she didn't find them obviously but she she went to a gig at the Prince Albert in Brighton which is a tiny venue in texted me after was like hey you should check these guys out they're called royal blood and then like a year later they were fucking astronomical so she's got an incredible taste of music I'm not sure if my mum played me Cisco”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, look, I spend a lot of the book dissecting my childhood, you know, interrogating my mum and my dad, my relationships between them, you know, cutting ties, severing loyalties. You know, I'm really going for it because I just really want people to have a little bit more of an understanding of, you know, different choices that can be made. But it would be wonderful to honour many of the beautiful times I had in my childhood and a massive part of that for me was music from my mum and my dad. My dad is an incredible musician. Also didn't teach me the guitar, so actually fuck him for that. That was actually really annoying. Because why do I not know the guitar? But he's an incredible musician and, you know, I would go to his studio every now and again and he would be, he had to use looking after the studio in Fulham and he would have all these cool bands in and he was just like, you know, I just was like, whoa, music. And my mum should write these song lyrics and they'd be scattered all over the living room floor and I would pick up these lyrics and I'd look at them and I can still, I mean, my mum has these incredible demos.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No one tells you that it fades and flashes. And you just got to ride the flashes and then it does go. I didn't know any of that, you know.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like the biggest lesson for me personally with pain, and I wonder if this differs slightly between men and women. I just literally biologically, because I feel like pain is an inherent female experience, something that women have to constantly, I want to say battle, come to terms with. You know what I mean? The hormonal imbalances that go through a woman's body are just like, if we can't even compute, I don't think, as men. But we do obviously still have to process and feel pain as men, but I think we think we can fix it. This is just, I'm generalizing for the sake of this was ultimately my experience. I felt like I could fix it. Like, how do I, what do I do? Who do I pay? Like, who do I, what can I buy to eat in a month is gone? It can't. And I worry if that's why pain can hit, especially men with certain statistics that I don't really want to get into. I wonder if that's why, because you can't fix it and no one tells you that.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guys, I went to a boyfriend workshop course. I had to learn how to be in a relationship. Like I literally was like, okay, how do I be a good person in a relationship? And I fucking learn. You couldn't learn. It's like this is the thing we all go through. Every single person in this room has to go through an intimate experience of love and connection. And where are we learning it? How do we know what the fuck to do? It affects all of us. So it sounds funny. Oh, we went to a workshop on relationships. Why are we not all at relationship workshops? Because in school, I'm thinking, wouldn't that make more sense? Like, this is why this person might be feeling like this. This is why you might be feeling like this. Do you know what I mean? So that's what I mean by time attacking me is it's like in a world where everybody's working and moving and never, never, never, never, I was sat there smoking 100 fags a day being like this is unbelievably painful and no one has told me what the fuck happens, which is why I wrote the book.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Knowing how you're feeling, do you know what I mean? Like, okay, I had time and money because Rizzle Kickstad allowed me that. I didn't have to be working nine, eight out, nine hours a day every single day to survive. But I was experiencing a heartbreak that I had put to the side because I was working so much. And I'm sat there just experiencing all of it. I'm not taking not drinking. I'm not doing drugs. I'm just feeling like six or seven years worth of grief at once. Yeah, that's fucking scary. And a lot of people who just want to cope, that's the kind of thing they'll say. Keep yourself busy. That's one thing. People are up there and say, keep yourself busy, get drunk. I was literally told by men, two men told me, get drunk, fuck around. To deal with the heartbreak. Which, listen, it works in the short term. The same thing will fucking happen again. It's just delaying the inevitable, you know? This is something I learned in the bridge, which I talk about and emotional trauma retreat I went on, which was the beautiful privilege that money.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, too much time. Time and money. Yes, because I believe that my experience of this culture we live in the system is it's all about productivity, movement, working, working, working. And being alone with the self, just being alone with self and feeling what you're feeling is a scary experience because we literally are never taught about it. Never in life like we go through eight like what is, I don't know how many years of formal education it is, six, eight. I don't know years and years learning about, oh well, some things are important, but we learn about stuff. But one hour a week, I don't know if it's changed, like PSC, there were some lessons that you vaguely touch on. But it's like...”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Isn't to separate that conversation? Do you know what I mean? Like, it is my responsibility, it's our responsibility as men in our culture, in our community, to, like I say, interrogate the experience. We tell people that these aren't the men to follow. These men are not projecting a life of harmony and love, right? Like we have to do that. I would never want this to be a thing of the focus being on the fucking word to describe these dickheads. I'm just saying that my outlook and what I think is the best way to move forward is to just encourage boys to have a real healthy relationship with themselves. Because then I believe they will make decisions from a place of a desire for love rather than a lack of it. Do you know what I'm saying?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I worry that something like toxic masculinity is becoming meshed with masculinity now. And I don't want any boys to ever feel like they're just waiting to become toxic or their very being is toxic. That scares me. So no, I'd rather say hypermasculinity. But the thing is”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“come further to the forefront. So I'm just sitting there going, how do we make different choices so those kind of people aren't elevated? Because Andrew takes your joke. We know he's anyone part of her brain knows he's a fucking joke. I mean, he shouldn't be taken as a joker. He is a ridiculous human being who is just a desperate retention piece of shit, right? But the thing that we need to focus on is why are people, why are boys finding solace in something that toxic? So I'm thinking to myself, well, I just want boys to feel good in themselves. I want young men and boys to feel beautiful and wonderful and proud of the fact that they're boys, you know? And that's why I think these fuckers are taking, get grabbing attention, because they're just going, it's okay if you're a boy, or it's okay if you're a man. Like, literally, that's simple. Like the advice that people will fight you with on agitators, like, well, he says we should go to the gym. Like, what? Do you know what I mean? He says we should...”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know the space I'm discussing when I write something like this. So I wanted to know where young boys were at, where men were at. I've spoken at women of the World Festival for like the last maybe five years, six years. And I love it. I'm like, I would recommend men to go to that. If I could force men to go to that festival, I would. You get to see this incredible plethora of incredible women who are just discussing the female experience, which I just wish we did more as men and interrogate the experience, you know, critique it, you know, lift people, you know, shine on, you know, shine, put people to the forefront who are doing positive things. Every single time I talk at this festival, the comments I get afterwards are from teachers or mothers saying, I'm worried about my boys, or I look after a class full of boys, what can I do every year for five years? In those year, in that time, all that's happened is the manosphere and what we call the Red Pill community, most notably Andrew Tate.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just because, I mean, we know what the term meat are, well, sorry, I can't speak on behalf of other people. I think there is understanding of what the term means, which is, you know, it's separate to masculinity. It is a toxic version of masculinity and it's expressed in this macho culture. And when I first, I used toxic masculinity as a phrase years ago during Me Too, which is the Guardian article that I wrote. And then back then, I felt like there was a decent handle on that term because Me Too was happening, there was this kind of like real, what's the word, purge. A really good purge, you know, there was like this, I don't know how everyone else felt, but there was at the peak of it, like this, people were like, fuck, yeah, maybe, you know, me included, like, this is fucked. Like, what can we do to change things? Yeah, this is toxic. Let's not do this. However, recently, obviously, it's very important to me that I know”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So good. Yeah, so we got in the one that didn't have a lid Nah, it was, and it was really rushed. And the thing is, the notable part of the first kiss isn't necessarily who or where it was. It was how old I was. How old are you?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fuck's sake. I kissed someone also called Jordan, a girl called Jordan. I kissed a girl called Jordan round the back of the school bins.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll take it. You know what I mean? If I obsess over something like that, so yes, I am an addict, I'll always be an addict, I have to watch it in my relationship all the time. I'm naturally codependent. I have to realize that I am not the same body as my partner. I'm not that person's fault autonomous decisions, you know, same with my mum, same with my dad's, like I have these egoic codependencies are desperate to reconnect constantly. It's my adult responsibility to be like, no, you know, we are separate beings, things are okay. I'm okay. and I can exist outside of that but the desire is always there”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had moments during this book process, you know, it was like there was chapters I wrote which were really tough to relive and like I was reliving memories and I was aware of a previous version of myself. There have been times since the proof even when we've had to go through approvals and there have been tough decisions made and then the fear of just fucking releasing the book I will you know I'll find myself stuffing my face with croissants but it's thinking like it could be worse It could be worse and you know I wouldn't say okay I'm not addicted to croissants but I was spiraling I was spiraling and my nearest outlets were that I don't even smoke cigarettes anymore bro and it's like that so when I'm like grabbing things I just look at it and go if even if I've developed an unhealthy reliance on it if it's not damaging people in my life I can accept it you know if I play Call of Duty for an extra hour and like in the scheme of things like I can”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the whole thing with addiction is like a game almost where you put all your energy into putting the lid on one bin and you do live one free. You just have to try and pick the best bin. For example, like...”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh I couldn't go to recovery. So again, recovery is AANA, you know, the 12 steps. It's a beautiful opportunity for people to recover in community. And you have chips. However, sorry, don't eat chips. You're given chips per every day, as in to say one day sobriety, two days. I could never do it because of my beliefs around mushrooms. And to be honest, weed when I was first sober because I just don't believe things from the earth are the same. But psychoactive is one of the rules. Fair enough. So I just speak to my friends in recovery who are going through the steps. And he said that it was described, addiction was described to him as having six bins with five lits.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I do believe it's important for us to know there's more out there. You know what I mean? And it is by design what we're told is considered a drug. I mean, ADC medication is speed, mate. It's method. Methylphenidate, it's just the government sells it to me.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys know what I mean, right? I don't know. Yeah, cool. No, just because it's like subject to talk about, because, again, I'm not a fucking shaman. I'm not here and come to my retreat in Peru.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I say one thing about that? Sorry. Five MEO DMT is used to treat heroin addicts. This is another thing. If you're in the South America, it is one of the most effective ways that I've seen of people becoming over, which is the hardest addiction to overcome, opiates. So that's why it's not a drug, it's medicine, but we just don't know much about it. So carry on.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why are these psychedelic experiences illegal? Why do we not get taught about this stuff? Because really it breeds unity. All it took was two months of me being stuck in London traffic and I was fucking fuming again. You have to integrate the experience. You're encouraged to do yoga and breathe and embody it. But I still was like 20, I'm in my mid-20s. I was off my tits. I didn't know what was going on. I lasted about two months of peace and then I was fuming again.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was separate to the thought, and the second I was separate to the thought I was gone. So anyway, I've come back 15 minutes later, and Masuse is like, yeah. And he went Cosmic Giggle because it's the body just dealing with the fact that, like, what is this? Like, what is this? Why do I care so much about, you know, I came out of that experience being like, why am I arguing with my mate about something that happened with their partner last? You know what I mean? These are just nothingness. These divisions that existed between me and people felt like nothing. And then you could fall into real YouTube rabbit holes about like why is mushrooms illegal?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, firstly, he knew I'd gone there because on the other three attempts, I hadn't quite gone there because I was fighting it because, I don't know, it's just, it's not that normal to leave your fucking body and die after smoking a fucking tree. So I'd fight it and come back like seven, eight minutes into the trip. By this time, because I smoked more and I'd let go, I got to the point where I went, I said, normally when I come back into my body, and then I saw mad.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm just in everything. All the kind of silly hippie stuff you hear is what I felt. I was connected to a complete singularity and I was just experiencing unbelievable joy and time didn't exist. And then I've come back and I started laughing and part-time with Seuss was like, that's the Cosmic Gig or that.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was fucking wild, bro. So listen, this is the thing about DMT. I can't explain it there's nothing that I've experienced in life normally, like in everyday life, since the moment I was born, nothing ever, ever I've ever seen, felt, heard, smelt, taste, anything could have prepared me for what I experienced. And the thing is, let me just pull this in and rate it in, right? Every time I engage with this stuff, it's with a pinch of salt, right? I really try and remain grounded. I don't want to think that something's going to fix me or cure me or like, you know, we need to be in another dimension so we can communicate with aliens. It's none of that, right? I smoked this tree bark and went to this infinite turquoise where I left my body and I was in a suspended state of bliss, even if that has a chemical reaction in my brain. Why is that not being studied every day? Like, I literally was, I left, I breathed out. So the fourth time I tried it, right? I had to surrender to the experience. I breathed out and I left my physical body, which is a terrifying feeling until it's not a feeling because I'm not me.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, anyway, I don't want to shame anyone because everyone comes to that journey at different times, and it is really popular in London and England, but I don't think that it's for me, it would ruin every single intimate relationship that I was in. So that's why I stopped doing it.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is it? Coking alcohol, I think, are damaging for me personally. I'm six years sober. I really do believe that alcohol is a piece of shit. I understand that everybody engages it in different ways. People aren't, don't have like a bad use of it. Some people can do it casually and they feel okay and they can deal with the repercussions. But the whole industry, like the damaging effect on us as a society, the fact that it is the gateway drug. Listen, no one will be doing Coke if they weren't drunk. Who do you know is like, let me start with a line of Coke. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Everyone's mashed up at a wedding being like, let's do a fucking line so I can sober up and get drunk again. What's going on?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wished. But, you know, we have a very wild culture. I've said this recently, you know, we talk about heard on the radio talk about stop and searches, fucking boys living on suburbs with a bit of weed getting stopped. If they're really serious about stopping searches, they'd go into a fucking Soho and turn people over in a suit, they'd find about 75 grams of cocaine every night. Is that a clap? Oh yeah. Know it about me in 2015”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shit after 20 minutes. And in London, they did a test of all the cocaine in London. I said it was on paper. The purest they found was 22%. So it's like we're sniffing Benadryl rat poison talcum powder. Like, what the fuck is happening?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then I was here. But there's a scientific paper that was done, I think it was 84 people did the study. It was hard because of the legislation. Varying mental states, right? One inhalation of 5MEO DMT on 84 people varying mental states had a 100% success rate for the reduction of psychopathological symptoms within a month, regardless of the trip. So someone had a bad chip, good trip didn't matter. If they inhaled this and went and just allowed it to take its course, they instantly fell. Within the month, less anxious, less depressed. And this is just stuff that's in nature. This is ancient teaching that's gone for time. And listen, I just really, I want to learn more about it. I think it's incredible. I think everybody doing the work in that space knows how powerful that stuff is. Cocaine? Fucking expensive.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, honestly, it's as wild as it sounds. And my experience with that medicine is out of this world. And we hear about, listen, it's being studied. I can't remember what university it is. They're doing such great work with psychedelics and psilocybin and understanding mushroom use therapeutically. It's a fantastic antidepressant. It's an anti-anxiety. There's another medicine called 5MEO DMT. You can look this up. It's also something I did, but not during this. Again, you hear about this. This lick the toad thing is like an echo of the reality. Obviously, don't lick toads too late.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so we're going to have to split this because the drugs I'm talking to are predominantly the drugs is alcohol and cocaine. Like DMT, in my eyes, is a medicine, right? Again, disclaimer, I am not qualified to talk about DMT or promote its use, but I would be disingenuous to say that I consider it a drug and also for me to think of it as like a negative thing. I was fucking lucky to be introduced to a guy who was literally like a masseuse and part-time shaman. Lived in North London”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He just says it all the time. Also, again, this is maybe a little Sours the tone slightly, but in reality, I remember the worst way I tried to fit in was, you know, in the initial honeymoon stage with my ex, I remember the mad thing about that kind of connection where it's not particularly healthy. It's just this whirlwind of just codependency, the things we're willing to accept about each other just don't match up. They don't line up. And I would just mould and shift myself in order to be a palette like a version that would be accepted, that would be validated by that, you know? Like my outlook on relationships and life at that time was massively different to us. But and yet I wasn't, I didn't have the wherewithal to be like, okay, well, maybe this isn't the best idea because I wanted to be accepted so desperately by a person, you know.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The book is the book encapsulates the choices I had to make to get myself to a healthy space and meet Harley in this new world. This new world being like being an adult. Because it was like seven years Harley's father, two children, and I can't explain to you how incredible it's been to watch one of the people I love the most in the world just be an incredible dad in the wake of, you know, he has his own complex history. And I'm looking at boys and men and my own journey and I'm like, fuck, this is so beautiful that he's doing this. Meanwhile, I've gone sober, six years sober, you know, and I've made healthier choices. I've met an incredible woman and I'm feeling things I've never felt before. And then we've both turned to each other and been like, you want to make some alternative hip hop.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it was me going, how do I make a hit? Like, how do we claw? I didn't even want to be a Popperstein and suddenly I'm trying to maintain, I'm trying to fight against fucking, I don't know, like random boy bands and shit. Like, I don't know what's going on. I'm trying to compete. And I'd lost myself entirely. You know what I mean? And it's these feelings of loss that I'm trying to compete with, you know?”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had a great first album, obviously, when Platinum, which was like my life dream, but obviously, I didn't think about that, I just wondered how I could get another Platinum album, which is ridiculous. Second album did well by album standards, by Rizzle Kickstandards. They didn't do as well. And because of that, there was an added pressure. I promise you right now, the music I made in the four months after the label told me that we hadn't done as well as the first was the worst fucking music I ever made in my life. And one day I'll send the music out just for banter.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's not be silly. Don't be silly. That is like a sad reality that you have to live in that, again, duality. From your point of view, from the perception, from a metric we can measure, that's cool. But I'm saying I have thrown myself into the spiky arms of like a crunching industry because I wanted to be the center of attention. I want, you know, that's the only way I know how to communicate. Here's something I did that's good. Tell me that's good so I can feel good about myself. Really and truly, I know it's annoying to say because it's not like this idea that we're fed. It's not the best. It's not the best way to go about life. Some people who are famous don't feel like that. I mean, I don't know what you feel about validation or being able to self-validate, but the worst time in my life creatively was after the second Rizzle Kicks album since before this happened in this book.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you can make healthier choices, and often it's not what you think it is. That's really it. And also the other part of it is I told the truth. I took a little long to do it, but I told the truth. And that was another interesting part of it. In this conversation, you hear people talk about cheating, they say, you know, if someone cheated on them, they definitely want to know. I have read that online. But then equally, the same amount of people said that if they cheated, they'd never say. People think that telling people that you've cheated is a selfish act. There's just so much, it's just interesting. I don't have any answers. It's just like, This happens to everybody since the dawn of love, the dawn of time this has happened. It's happened continuously. Let's have a healthy conversation about it to make sure we don't hurt each other anymore and we can commit more effectively and know it feels good to do that.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was like, sweet. All right, so, but, you know, I think I was enticed by the reality that the conversation doesn't happen often. And also just the side of me that wants to kind of untangle life and see the patterns within it or understand the inner workings of it. I think to myself, surely people aren't dealing with it in a way that is congruent to a happier way of being. A lot of people are carrying trauma from that into another relationship, whether they have done it or they have received that betrayal is being carried and it's not being dealt with because it's got this black and white good, bad element to it. So again, I'm not trying to assign any moral label. It's just that this is an existence. This is the inner workings of it. This is having someone who is this cheat. This is why I felt I acted like that. And this is how I've dealt with it. And, you know, I'd like to believe that my existence from this point is proof that those things can change.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who is she? She's like a YouTuber or something. She's a relationship therapist French woman. She had a TED talk that went viral because she saw, and the TED talk is called Why Happy People Cheat. Any show on television that's ever referenced cheating literally referenced Esther Perrell? I hate Susie, Billy Piper talking about cheating, Esther Perrell. Everybody will talk about Esther Perel because it's the only, she's like the only glimmer of hope in a space where everybody tells you you're a piece of shit. Like every idea once a cheat, always a cheat. In the book, right, for those of you who haven't got there yet, sorry, this little spoiler, when dealing with the guilt and regret of having cheated, I Googled, you know, like, can you ever get somebody back after cheating? And the first response on a Reddit thread was, first thing you need to know is you've just ruined someone's life.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not at all. The idea of the book is to exist in a space of moral ambiguity, and my actions run parallel with my own duality. Much of the book is me accepting and attempting to integrate a, you know, I don't know, shadow self or darker side of myself that, if not looked at, if not loved, if not appreciated, will act out. That's how I ended up looking at it, you know. And I thought it was important to write a book where I'm coming to terms with betrayal and infidelity, because for whatever reason in society, of course, having been through that side of it, I've been on both sides. I was cheated on when I was younger, but it's a little more serious when you're older. Being the cheater, it's so painfully black and white, the discussion around it. Anybody who's ever cheated in the history of mankind has watched Esther Perel talk on YouTube, by the way. And Esther Perel is like, for those who don't know, pretending they don't know.”
2024-12-18 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Jordan Stephens on Love, Chaos and Becoming a Man · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT