Malcolm Stern: 0:46

So welcome to my podcast, slay your Dragons with Compassion, which I'm doing with my good friends, john and Sandra Wilson at online events. And today is quite a special podcast because we have my good friend, john Wilson as the interviewee, so I'm going to give him a hard time if I can, but he may not let me. But I'm sort of interested in John's particular journey as well, because he's created an amazing platform for therapists, coaches and counselors with online events, which is something he set up with his sister, sandra, and they get really, really good viewings. It's a really good system. And so, john, you must have been inspired to sort of find something to particularly work. Well, I know, during the epidemic, during the pandemic, sorry, but you must have been inspired to sort of to create something that is online, that does give meaning to people. Perhaps we could start with with that, how that got created about the origin story of online events.

John Wilson: 1:46

Yeah well, I finished my training as a therapist in 2005 and quite quickly then trained to work online, I guess with Dr Kate Anthony, who's now passed away, so a real loss to the field. And then I joined a very small community of practitioners who were, I guess, building that field. It was already 10 years old by then, but it's been a very slow burn. And those colleagues were putting on a conference about working online and I got co-opted into that committee. And I got co-opted into that committee and I asked the question that always gets me into trouble, which is well before that. We had hoped that we could get the conference online, but at that time this would be.

John Wilson: 2:44

We were planning in 2008, ran the conference in 2009,. Live streaming an event onto the internet was a massive undertaking at that point. It's not like now you can just turn on your phone and live stream to TikTok or YouTube or something like that. But that's the question that always gets me into trouble, malcolm, which is how hard can that really be? And so my dad had a good camera, I got myself a good laptop and I roped Sandra in, my sister for the customer service, and we managed in 2009 to broadcast this conference onto a web page with the chat room, and I've always been interested in kind of entrepreneurial activities and I thought, well, there must be a business here, and that was the birth of online events.

Malcolm Stern: 3:37

Well, you have certainly sort of filled the gap in the market and also I think probably you were ahead of your time. I mean, as you say, the technology now is quite basic, but I know when I tried to run my live online group during the pandemic I run a one-year group and that one year took two and a half years to finish because people did not want to do it online. But somehow you've created an environment where I'm comfortable leading things online in your environment and somehow you've created an environment that does fill that gap and does leave that possibility and obviously you're sort of ahead of your time. Other people have been inspired to do similar stuff since, but you've. So, as you say, you've got an entrepreneurial streak.

Malcolm Stern: 4:23

So let's just wind back a little bit to to your pre-youth training and of course, this is the theme of this series. Is is how we overcome adversity and how adversity shapes us, and I wonder what adversity has come up in your life. And you know you don't have to sort of spill your guts completely, but it'd be useful to take a look and see what you've had to encounter in order to be the quiet sort of. What I see is you're very steady, wise and and able to hold a big space, but something will have molded you in that in that way, so perhaps we could take a look at that it's a very generous description, malcolm.

John Wilson: 5:02

I think some people close to me my partner might not recognize that description show that, say they know me reasonably well.

Malcolm Stern: 5:10

And that's what he's saying.

John Wilson: 5:12

There are moments of that, and I mean the big thing that affected the course of my life, excuse me, was my parents joined a religious group called the Jehovah's Witnesses when I was two years old. Wow, and that has had a massive influence on my life growing up as a young adult. And that was really disrupted by my experience of training as a therapist and it was already a massive tension in my life, a massive difficulty by then. A massive difficulty by then. Of course, the things that are difficult for us in our lives also bring us things. So in that community I then got a lot of experience in holding groups, taking care of difficult processes, because there was a lot of those kinds of experiences within the community and I think that's something that has lasted beyond the community having that experience of really wanting to hold a container that feels safe enough, that feels welcoming and that feels a place where people can flourish.

John Wilson: 6:37

Of course, as I was getting into adulthood and through my 20s, I could see just a massive tension that wasn't apparent earlier in my life of just how conditional those spaces were my life, of just how conditional those spaces were To inhabit those spaces.

John Wilson: 6:57

There were really massive amounts of conditions on the people within the community that were incredibly impressive and that I would also think about now. The interactions with children because of the belief system the Jehovah's Witness group, or JW, I guess, is the shortcut believe that God will then kill everybody that isn't a Jehovah's Witness and institute a kind of global panacea, a kind of yeah. So to then raise your children in an environment that hopes for and every day prays for global genocide is deeply impactful for children and and now, in terms of what I understand as a therapist, I would see that as an institutionalized child abuse in a psychological way. So it's important also to take these opportunities to kind of, if people get a brush with that community that they have a real sense of. Like all communities, it's multifaceted, but that belief system at the core of that community is very dangerous, particularly for children and for the community as a whole, and it certainly had a big impact on my life as well.

Malcolm Stern: 8:20

Well, it absolutely would have done and presumably it would have had an impact because you've broken free. I mean to a very, very large degree. I mean obviously there are. There are always tendrils that keep us. I mean to a very, very large degree. I mean obviously there are always tendrils that keep us. You know, we don't discover we're brainwashed until we actually sort of start to peel away some of the layers. But I'm wondering how that impacted your relationship with your parents and within your family and with your sister and for the rest of you.

John Wilson: 8:47

Well, I come from a big family and it's I mean, I don't want to say too much about my siblings because I guess that's their story Some of us are no longer part of that community and where they decided to. Well, the JW word is to disfellowship me. The more kind of well-known word in the world of religion is to excommunicate, so where that becomes a clear instruction to any family who are still part of the community that there's to be no contact or extremely little contact. So so I guess I live my life estranged from my parents and some, some of my siblings, um yeah, which has also been very impactful in my life as well, I guess that's, that's also painful as well.

Malcolm Stern: 9:45

That's, um, it's, it's because it's like you know, we well, some, some people, we do, but we don't choose our parents unless in your spiritual thinking you do choose your parents and there's always a sense that that relationship is utterly key, is a foundation stone to all our other relationships.

John Wilson: 10:04

So somewhere there'll have been a skewing, as I can see in your relationships, and I wonder how that's impacted on, for example, your current relationship and the other relationships you've had in the time since you've you've sort of been a nipper and part of that it's been a nipper, absolutely yeah, well, and I mean a slightly side point, but that is the kind of the point of the exclusion from the community, because the the separation from those two prime primal relationships can be so excruciating for someone that some people then will go back to the community to re-establish, um, those relationships, because it's just so painful to have that separation in place and the community is highly motivated to enact that policy because, well, it's such a deeply held belief that anybody who has exited the community, along with everybody else, will be executed by god at some near point in the future.

Malcolm Stern: 11:13

So, um, yeah, people in the community are highly motivated to to enact that exclusion so that you will come back and then you will be safe and save again it sort of feels so simplistic and even medieval when we, when we think about the um, the whole nature of it and interestingly I was just remembering, as you were speaking about that, the Nazis also persecuted the Jehovah's Witnesses. They were one of the groups that were there to be slain, so it's almost as though they got the flip side of that under Nazi rule. I don't know if you know much about that or if you want to say something about to say something about that?

John Wilson: 11:53

well, absolutely, I mean, that was a history that was taught to us um, incessantly and well, I think it's one of the sadnesses around this community because it certainly didn't begin that way and it's had some really hard experiences in history, nazi Germany being one of them. And so I think, definitely when I was younger, having something that you believe in strongly, that you would even give your life for it, can be a really important value system to hold to. I think it's one of the difficulties in a kind of postmodernist culture where we don't have a core belief system and, of course, I don't now have that core belief system, but it was something that was really important to me and took a long time to unhook from, because, you know, as you're departing from something that maybe the people in the history that have been really looked up to gave their lives for, like, there's so many layers and complexities to that.

Malcolm Stern: 13:09

But it would have impacted you. And let's come back to the question I was just asking, but it would have impacted. Let's come back to the question. I was just asking you how it would have impacted your, your relationships, um with I slightly skipped.

John Wilson: 13:22

Yeah, I like it, malcolm, I like it well. I mean, I think there's an amazing piece of research or a very important piece of research to do about the impact on the child and the growing adults attachment experience. Yes, of course, when you have been taught from before, you have language, really, that anybody who deviates from the path is going to be killed. Really that's the simplistic thing. So that making a connection and a deep connection to someone who might then leave you and might be executed it's kind of strange to talk about it in these circles, but it was so, so deeply held, I guess, and I think it's had a massive impact on my relationships. Yeah, I don't think I've told this story publicly before, but I did some work.

John Wilson: 14:33

Peso Boyden work, um, you know it well, I'm Malcolm, I know, and um, the colleague who's running the group, did this lovely exercise just at the beginning. We're all in the circle settling in um, and there was different kind of ways that you would hold your hand. You might put them out, kind of touch or up, which turned out to be held, or down to kind of um, I'm not quite sure. Anyway, there was. These were all kind of like what, where does your body feel comfortable in terms of making the connection. And, um, none of the postures were comfortable to me and the colleague, who I also know well from other places, so in another moment this might sound like a harsh kind of communication, but her communication was that she'd never seen anyone where relationship felt so dangerous and difficult, but that's very interesting.

Malcolm Stern: 15:36

So that actually is the, the sort of like the, the byproduct of the foundation, being quite sort of at odds with the norm really yeah, yeah, where everyone and everything is dangerous.

John Wilson: 15:52

And yeah, and of course you know I I've been facilitating encounter groups for a long time in different parts of the world. I've run a deeply relational psychotherapy training.

Malcolm Stern: 16:06

I run online events, which is a deep relational component, so I also crave that and that's interesting because that's often something that when we've been deprived of something or something's been skewed in our past, part of the healing of it is actually creating the antidote, so it feels like there's something of an anti-antidotal experience in online events absolutely, absolutely.

John Wilson: 16:31

And and I think it's it's both because it's a struggle to connect and the desire, well, the desire to have a community that is actually got the ingredients to be growthful lovely, so let's bring you back to your relationships, john.

Malcolm Stern: 16:52

Wriggling like hell, but it's wriggling like hell, and I don't want you to obviously I'm not asking for you to sort of do a whole blow by blow, but just how is? How are you in relationship, because that's for me that's a very interesting when you've had that sort of that very tight upbringing, then how does that impact on you? Even though you've, in some ways, you've cleared your head to a very large degree, there are going to be sort of like subtle undertones and and and and. We don't have to go into this, but I'm just sort of interested if you'd be willing to talk about that a bit well, I'm probably best answered by my partner as well but what would she say if she was here?

Malcolm Stern: 17:32

We'll do a psychodrama. You can be her Absolutely.

John Wilson: 17:39

Well, I think that, like the fear of being abandoned is just completely um, it's just incredibly huge for me.

Malcolm Stern: 17:52

Thank you and I think that's that's actually that's a very brave and and penetrating statement as well. So that's what.

John Wilson: 17:59

That's what interests me, because I like to see where the links come from, where the damage has been done or the the conditioning has been strong, so the fear of being abandoned, so I wouldn't have thought of that, but when you say it's obvious yeah, and and I think, especially because a lot of that then began when I was really young, it can get really complex because I can feel like I'm in relationship and I can feel like I'm making relationship and there's this whole other energy going on too. That's terrifying, that is terrified, I guess, and that can be easy for me to miss. Um, but my partner's also very, very skillful therapist group facilitator. She doesn't miss anything really, so that can be very apparent to her and I think in those more vulnerable places I can spook really easy and imagine things are not okay when actually they're fine and oh, no, that's very interesting as well.

Malcolm Stern: 19:11

So it's like it's be it. You can go into fantasy because in some ways you were. You're off, so off the beaten track in your early, in your early days, I. But I also think that there's something um, part of my philosophy has been for a long time when I've worked a lot with couples, is that the and also I've seen it in my own relationships that we get to heal some of our childhood wounds through going through the sort of like the fire of relationship. And I think an easy relationship would not serve you. You'd probably be all right with it, but there's something about it feels like there's there's a challenge that comes for you and a respect for your partner that that that she is able to challenge you as well absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

John Wilson: 19:58

And and then the tension for her, because in a very public way I'm able to make relationship easily, but in that very vulnerable, I guess those private moments, um, I can be very hard to live with and, um, that terror can come out and in lots of difficult ways, um, and ways that are painful for us as both.

Malcolm Stern: 20:23

Really yes, yeah so when, when those those things happen and I don't want to push you further than you want to go either, john, so I'm just just sort of feeling my way into this and please feel free to stop me at any time as well so when those, those those moments happen, have you developed some tools? Because this is this is very much what I've written about in slay your dragons with compassion, which is what the the title of the podcast is as well is that we find ourselves with some finely honed tools when we've been doing work on ourselves, that allow us to heal the sort of the difficult scenarios we can be in, and I wonder what resources you found within your current relationship, for example.

John Wilson: 21:04

Yeah, oh, I could easily wax lyrical about some great tools, but maybe the first thing to say within your current relationship, for example, yeah, oh, I could easily wax lyrical about some great tools, but maybe the first thing to say is often they then appear after the disaster.

John Wilson: 21:16

So I just like, for anybody who's listening, I don't want to over egg how helpful the tools can be because it can be excuse me. The tools can be, because it can be, excuse me, just so easy to get into the difficulty and the distress. But I think some of the things that have helped me have been to kind of have my experience and think about it in different developmental stages. So I suppose, like noticing how young a part of me can be um, you know, maybe as young as three, four years old that's having a massive worry, like, and I suppose I'm at times I'm looking for my partner to kind of, and I suppose at times I'm looking for my partner to kind of create that attachment that I didn't have with my parents or that was being there and that little boy can be screaming for that. And of course I'm apparently in an adult-to-adult relationship and when that calms, I think, being able to kind of think about what that little boy needs, I guess, and what kind of soothing might be helpful?

Malcolm Stern: 22:42

Yes, I look at my relationships, current and past, and it's almost shocking for me that the little boy will show up tantruming or angry or hurt or sort of desperate, and it's almost like in that moment it's quite hard to find the resources. Also, because in that moment comes the possibility of allowing it to be an educator. For me as well and I think that's probably what happens for you in your relationship is that you are being educated, like it or not, probably. Sometimes you really don't like it, um, but you are. It's almost like you've got to find your own navigational tools within that and they don't come from your childhood, because there was a very clear set of rules with jehovah's witnesses absolutely yeah, and I think also.

John Wilson: 23:34

I mean, I'm a big believer in therapeutic process, of course, as a as a therapist, but in some ways we can give too much weight to talking things through and like a child at that age can do a little bit of conversation, but that's not really what. No, at that age, um, a little body needs. Of course I've got quite a big body, like six foot scotsman with a big voice and but I and I think it's been really important for me to understand that once I go into that overwhelm, it's like it's a long, it's a long journey back and like are there things as well as talking, of course, but are there maybe things that that little person might find helpful before before going to that complete overwhelm and and then in the moments when I can catch that that's helpful, um, and I think there's also something about understanding. It's like when the body becomes that distressed, understanding it's like when the body becomes that distress, it's like that is not who we are as as human it's like, yes, yeah, and I think that's.

John Wilson: 24:55

And, of course, this is a really tricky concept, especially between men and women and in intimate relationships, and I mean, I'm not talking about violence, of course. I'm talking about a lot of distress and I think, as men, especially when we want to live in a different way from our earlier generations, I guess it can really feel like there's something really not okay there and and um. Being able to understand like this is what the body does when it goes into overwhelm and yes, um has been really important for me in terms of managing the shame and the difficulties that come from that too, and being able to get support for that. Being in the peso boiding group, I've been in therapy pretty much the whole time since I started training more than 20 years, got a great supervisor, so lots of good colleagues around me um, all of those things make a difference, yeah it just was reminding me a lot about my relationship.

Malcolm Stern: 26:01

So I think this will this will impact on people who are listening as well, their relationships and not to see themselves as odd or strange. And I remember I was in, I've been in men's groups, running men's groups and participating in men's groups for probably 30 years uh, so a really long time. And, um, I remember I was in a very difficult relationship and I used to come to my men's group every Thursday. This group was and I would sort of go on and on and on about the struggles I was having in relationships. And I sort of looked around the group at one stage and I said I'm really embarrassed, I keep bringing the same stuff. And one of the guys who's a really lovely guy and we're still friends to this day, has said to me he said, bring it as much as you want, because you've got to find your way through and if you suppress it, you won't find your way through. So I think that I think the whole therapeutic movement which, of course, is relatively modern as well we our parents didn't have this resource, but we have actually got the therapeutic journey to help us on our way and we have to sort of you know, build our own maps as well, but I think for me it was so valuable being allowed to just go. I'm so stuck, I don't know what to do. I've got all these resources that I should be able to employ.

Malcolm Stern: 27:17

I'm I've been a therapist for a long time and somehow I'm all over the place, and there's something about honoring the fact that it's really tough. No matter how developed we are, there's always a part of us that's not quite developed, and that's what I'm hearing you share, and that's great that you're willing and able to go to that place as well, and I hope this isn't sort of violating you in any way, john, that I'm pushing you into places you don't want to go. But I've always enjoyed our chats. We talk a lot when I'm running groups for online events, and I've always enjoyed the sort of fact that I can chew over things with you and there's often a piece of the puzzle gets unlocked. So I'm hoping that's happening here in this space as well. And one of my things as a therapist is safety. Unless there's safety, therapy is a very hard thing to be able to do.

John Wilson: 28:16

Well, it doesn't feel like an imposition at all, malcolm, in fact the other way around. I think you're talking about men's groups that you've been in. I'm thinking about the men I work with, including myself. The difference it would make if we could take better care of each other in families all over the world and and how we kind of manage in companies in countries you know like the reduction in conflict could be huge if we could take better care of those really vulnerable parts of us.

Malcolm Stern: 28:53

I think it's true. I mean, I think for a long time I used to sort of um blame my mother for a lot. Well, my mother did this, or my mother didn't do that, or whatever it was Until when I'd done enough therapy, I think, to be able to start to claim my own ground. There was something about seeing that actually you can't just keep putting it in the past. You've got to find out who you are now, how you're going to navigate the journey now and actually to sort of in some ways as therapists. We are role models for other people as well, and if we're not walking our talk, then we're just sort of pretending. We're playing sort of smart therapists but we're not really doing the work ourselves, and I'm very grateful that that field has opened itself and that I've learned an enormous amount, as I'm sure you have as well, from the, the therapeutic journey yeah, absolutely so, so where do you see life, life taking you now, john, sort of um, um, you know what?

Malcolm Stern: 29:52

what does the rest of you, what does your, your forward trajectory, look like?

John Wilson: 29:58

oh, that's quite a question, isn't't it? It's a big question, malcolm, I mean, and we've talked about this before, I think where it's such an important kind of fork in the road for human existence and, like we, as humans, we really know who we are in conflict and when we're we kind of go to war with each other, whether that's as countries and communities or even as as individuals, emotionally and relationally, and, yes, um, and of course we could keep doing that, and we seem to have so many resources to be able to do something else, I guess, or to bring in something else, and I kind of hope I can continue to be part of a community of people who are trying to to kind of burst something else in the world. It's already there, like it's, it's already in the human condition, that capacity to really take good care of each other, but often the world as it shows up around us invites us into conflict.

Malcolm Stern: 31:12

Yes, it sort of reminds me of. Paul Hawken was asked do you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the fate of the world? And he said when I look at all the terrible things that are happening, all the suffering that's happening, I can't help but feel pessimistic about the fate of the world. And he said when I look at all the terrible things that are happening, all the suffering that's happening, I can't help but feel pessimistic. But when I look at all the little, the individual sort of like enterprises that are moving towards making our society a better one, I think we're building one brick at a time. I hope that I'm not just being idealistic, but I think we're building, one brick at a time, a road that might take us into sanity, and I think that's our job is, individually to find our place of sanity and then, within our work, to deliver that place of sanity. And, as I said, you've got a lovely platform there with online events to be able to offer, you know, sane approaches um to to this journey.

Malcolm Stern: 32:08

And I think what I learned in um, at alternatives and the many years that I ran the, the um lecture series that's in james's piccadilly um was that I, that there are some people who are genuinely. That's funny because that's what comes up is a biblical statement filled with the holy spirit, but it's like I don't. I don't mean that in a christian or in any other particular religious group sense. It feels like they are impassioned by the work they're doing. And there are others who are sort of like it's almost like they've become very good song and dance men or women, that they know how to do the thing, but they're not really delivering the goods. And I think we're becoming more tuned in to where something is really profound and we've got some great role models. We've got people like tic-nac-harm, the dalai lama, nelson mandela these people who've actually sort of who forged their paths and uh, are role models. So, um, I think you're helping bring up some of the, the and coming youngsters as well within online events.

John Wilson: 33:05

Well, yeah, sandra, and I really hope for that, as we run online events together and I think some of those, some of the thinking that has emerged in terms of neuroscience about noticing about noticing that, well, I mean, I really grew up this was also a scottish thing, too, where we're often condemned for our traits, and, of course, some of those newer ideas are around that the human can exist in different states.

John Wilson: 33:35

Yes, and the state that we're in is very much impacted by the environment, and sandra and I think about that a lot at online events, like the way that we are welcomed into an environment, including a digital environment here on zoom, impacts the states that we find each other in and then, and of course, in that more pro social, relax, able to connect with each other states, yes, amazing things can happen. You know, like the groups that you run, whether it's an online event, some really wonderful transformational things happen. We see that in loads of the things that we run and and then, hopefully, that colleagues and friends feel like when they're needing to experience something like that, needing to be a little bit nourished by an environment, we're one of those places that's available because it's not the only place.

Malcolm Stern: 34:35

There are many colleagues who are up to that job too, and but yeah, well, I what I've seen is that, you know, over the many years I've been involved with personal development and the sort of spiritual scene, first of all seeing that there's a lot of spiritual bypassing that goes on, that their things put themselves out of spiritual and not necessarily that.

Malcolm Stern: 34:53

But what I've seen is there are many lighthouses out there in the world now which we need. I think online events is one of them. I think skiros, which is a place that I go to every year in greece, is a place where people come and get recharged and find a place of sanity, and I think that's the thing is in an insane world, to have little sort of like sort of niches where we can find sanity is amazing. So, john, we could talk for ages and we have to, so it's like, but it's been very enjoyable connecting with you, and the question I always finish with on these podcasts is is um, what's the particular dragon you've had to slay in order to become who you are, and which hurdle have you had to overcome to to be john, who you are now?

John Wilson: 35:38

well, I thought you were going to ask me this question, so I've been thinking about it over the last few days as I was kind of making those final exits from the community.

John Wilson: 35:51

My supervisor who's very, very helpful in my work and in my life clinical supervisor his thing was like if you're still still fighting, you haven't really left now and I don't think that's kind of blanket statement for everything, because something, a very strong pushback, but that was a very important idea for me at the time and to really leave and, like the community behaved so badly, even broke the law in terms of their, the way they were relating to me and the violence that they were perpetrating and I'm not saying it wouldn't be appropriate to push back on that, but for me it was really important to really leave and and and. In that then it really left some space for me to think about my relationship with my parents, because we're often thinking, well, relationship is about contact and being in contact, um, and not having that contact gave me a different kind of lens where I discovered that was still really possible to have a relationship even without contact, like, and how I care and love for my parents is not to do with the contact. That's something that lives within me and I think really leaving gave me the space to see that. And we've had several moments of contact, very, very sparse, but in those moments to arrive without being at war not at war at all and, to use your word, malcolm, in terms of your book, to be in a compassion and it's like.

John Wilson: 37:57

I'm still in relationship, I still know you, I still have that, and I think the dragon that then was slayed was the ideas that this institution had kind of grown or or what the institution had grown into. It didn't start there, um and I think that's as I was thinking about your question I think that's the dragon that's been slain for me. It doesn't have that power over me. It certainly doesn't have the power, even though it might look like it's got power over my relationship with my parents and some of my siblings. It doesn't really. We're not at war.

Malcolm Stern: 38:42

I think the not at war is a very, very big theme of what we've been doing today. We've been talking about that and I remember the dalai lama saying, um, quite a few years ago, that we've reached a stage in our evolution as as as a society, that war is no longer really an option and we've got to find our way past that, and so we have to find a way of modeling that, of living that ourselves, that we're not at war, as you say, not a war in one-to-one relationships, not at war as countries, not at war in families, that actually we can find a place of peace. And I hear that, um, you know you've been, you've found your way to a place of some peace with your parents and with the community as well.

John Wilson: 39:24

Yeah Well, and also important to like, every day is a school day. So there's those like those moments, and then maybe there might be other times where it doesn't doesn't quite feel so peaceful, but it it's been a massive liberation for me.

Malcolm Stern: 39:45

Fantastic, that's great. Well, thank you so much, john, for being on your own show. So that's, that's uh, that's great, and I'm very grateful to you that this exists as well, that we've we've been exploring this together and, um, you know, for me it's been, it's been a really interesting hobby to to delve into people's lives a bit and to turn up the learnings that have come for them. So thank you very much for your openness and willingness to go to some quite sort of tricky places as well well.

John Wilson: 40:11

Thank you for having me on on your show maybe it's our show and as we collaborate together. And I want to say thank you also, malcolm, for the way that you've looked after me in our conversation. I really appreciate that, and also for the gifts that each episode of this podcast is to the world, as you've made those explorations with the people who've joined in conversation with you. So it's a real. Sandra and I are really grateful that you're doing this work and that we can, we could be in it together.

Malcolm Stern: 40:45

It's it's so important at this time that these conversations exist and are alive, so I agree, I think you know we need hope in our lives and we need not to sort of get swamped by the the sort of the struggles that are going on in the world around us. So thank you again, john, and we'll be. We'll be in touch soon, obviously, so thank you. Thank you, malcolm.