I like the concept of you

[00:00:00] Hi Sleepy, just a very quick note before we start today's episode. Do you want to listen to this podcast without the ads? Then you absolutely can. Just subscribe to Fall asleep with Henrik plus and to do so you can just click the link in the podcast description and it'll be fixed. See you there.

[00:00:24] Hi and welcome to Fall asleep with Henrik. I'm Henrik and you're sleepy and it is what it is. What happens, happens. And right now there is nothing we can do about any of it really. So let's hit the slides.

[00:00:56] Hi Sleepy. Hi and welcome to my humble abode. Okay, so this week there's been this influx of new listeners, new sleepies. By the way, that's what I call you, Sleepy. And I tend to talk to you like you're the only one, although there are thousands of you all around the world right now.

[00:01:24] I am going to talk to you as you were the only one. That's my modus operandi. As you can hear, I am not from your country. Unless you're from Sweden, then yes, I am from your country. And I can speak Swedish with you. I just said that I can speak Swedish with you who understand Swedish.

[00:01:50] And I also have this very established podcast where I put Swedish speaking people to sleep and I've been doing so since 2018. And Fall asleep with Henrik is my English speaking tryout, if you will, where the same goes. You don't have to listen. You don't have to listen. Just put me on and do whatever you want with my voice.

[00:02:18] I'm not going to try to bore you. I'm actually trying to be entertaining. But since I haven't prepared anything and since I don't edit anything out, this will naturally be kind of uninteresting. And interesting. I'd like you to think of me as your friend, staying over and just talking.

[00:02:40] Do you remember when you were a kid and there was this friend who stayed over at your place or you stayed over at their place and that friend just kept talking and you just faded away from it? You know, not because of boredom, but because you were tired and that you felt safe.

[00:03:05] I had that friend when I was a teenager. His name is Bjorn, which means bear in Swedish. And he wasn't a particularly calming person per se. He was often kind of frustrated and angry. But he had this way that made me feel safe.

[00:03:32] So very often I was at his place and just fell asleep on his bed while he was playing video games and such. And that was an amazing feeling that I've been looking for in other people since because Bjorn and I, we live in different cities now.

[00:03:51] So, and it's, it's a, it's a, well, I guess it's a, it's frowned upon generally to just be in your forties or fifties and just visit friends and ask if you can fall asleep at their bed. That's not the way friendship usually are handled.

[00:04:19] Yeah. So anyway, I will talk about nothing and anything and really anything that comes up in my mind. And since I'm doing this ad campaign right now on YouTube, where I'm trying to lure new people into my universe, there's a bunch of new people here. So thank you for being here. I truly love you for giving this a try.

[00:04:39] And as usual, if you like this, tell your friends, that's the only way a podcast such as this will survive. I have this idea that I want to reach 1 million people before the end of this year. So far, I'm up to around 50,000 people in total. And that's, that's a lot, but it's not 1 million.

[00:05:09] And there's one thing that really nags me. And that is no one really believes in this project. The people I talk to, like people with money and people with, you know, influence in any way, they don't really believe that I can do this.

[00:05:30] And that is my main motivator at the moment, because it frustrates me when people say that I can't do stuff. And it's not because I'm not talented or anything. Well, I don't know about that either. I mean, I'm, I'm kind of average, you know,

[00:05:51] but it's because there it's unheard of that a Swedish podcaster can make it abroad. It's impossible. We are too bulky. We are too straight. We are too un-American. And that, all of that is probably true about me. But I have one thing.

[00:06:21] I have one thing going for me. And that is that I hold the key. I'm the sole key holder to the universe of Henrik Stål, which is my name, by the way, if you didn't know. So, and I can, I have one gift. And that is that I can share whomever I am with you.

[00:06:43] I can dress my, the anomaly that is me into comprehensible clothing. That's me. I make me comprehensible to you. And that could give something to you. Perhaps. I don't know. If it doesn't, then all this settled, goodbye.

[00:07:12] With that said, maybe you will need one listen, two listens, you know, before you really know what this is all about. Because I'm, I'm totally fine with you listening to just the first five or 15 or 20 minutes of this episode. And then just fading away. That is as it should.

[00:07:36] But then again, I'm also very comfortable with the fact that you might be listening for the whole episode. And I'm really satisfied if you feel somewhat that, you know, you find yourself liking this person. That is me. That's also a win for me, you know, because I really like you. I mean, I don't know you.

[00:08:03] So you have to take this as it is, you know, I don't know you. I haven't, I have never met you probably, probably never will either. But it's, I like you. I like the concept of you. Okay. That's, by the way, one thing that you really shouldn't say to a potential partner. Do you like me? They ask you. And you say, well, I don't like you per se. I like the concept of you.

[00:08:35] Once I had a girlfriend. This was way before Nina, which was my last girlfriend. But this girl, she, she was, I fell in love with the concept of her. She was, she were like this very well-read, very well-bred person.

[00:09:00] Her grandfather was like this famous, her grandfather had been rewarded with the Nobel Prize in literature back in the 50s or 60s, I think. And I thought that that was really cool. And my parents thought that that was really cool.

[00:09:22] That they had sort of a Nobel Prize winner in the family, which, I mean, he was dead, long gone, you know, by the time we got together. Anyway, I held onto her for a while, you know. And I think she might have loved the concept of me as well, because I, I don't know. I'm, I'm a wordy person and she was a journalist and I don't know.

[00:09:52] Maybe it's easier than we think to fall in love with the concept of someone. Anyway, I'm not going to indulge myself into speaking about my love life. I've been doing that from time to time previously in this podcast. And yeah, well, I don't know what I'm going to talk about.

[00:10:22] Maybe, maybe I could just do a list. I love lists. They are really helpful in me improvising stuff. I really love making things up, but don't necessarily, I don't necessarily have to stay around the made up thing. A list is very good because there's always something else following the previous.

[00:10:53] So I can, you know, I can just, that's one thing also that you should keep in mind here. Maybe I will just change the subject mid episode. Maybe I will just, you know, be totally uncomprehensible, totally uncomprehensible.

[00:11:16] So at the moment I'm in my apartment and I am, the sun is shining. It all, it almost feels like it's spring, although it's not, it's not by a long shot here in Sweden. What do you know about Sweden, by the way?

[00:11:40] And in case you're wondering, I am not going to, if you haven't listened to this episode or this podcast before, I'm not going to talk about Sweden like all the time. But I have gathered that whenever I mentioned Sweden and talk about Sweden, I get spikes in the number of listeners. So maybe there's this interest, you know?

[00:12:08] So if you want to know things, if you want to know about stuff, then send me an email. You can find my contact information and everything necessary at my site, kirinaya.com. K-I-R-I-N-A-J-A, kirinaya.com.

[00:12:38] Just write to me in general. I mean, whatever you want to say. If you like this podcast, if you hate this podcast, just tell me, you know? And every piece of feedback is good feedback. And I know that I'm not particularly good at English. But then again, that's me. I've been trying this out before.

[00:13:09] I made two podcasts before this. One was called The AI Way to Drift Astray, which was totally written by AI. This was back in 2020, I think. So the technology wasn't that far yet. I mean, ChatGPT wasn't even here yet. And then that podcast didn't make it at all. But it's still there if you want to listen to it. It's old. It's really old.

[00:13:35] But I let the AI write all of the scripts and also do the speaking. And also the music was AI generated. Back then, it wasn't as good as it is now. So keep that in mind. But it's cool. And I keep it up because of the historical value, I guess, in the end. And then I made this podcast called Sleep Chamber. And Sleep Chamber was this clone of my own voice speaking English.

[00:14:03] And the scripts were written by ChatGPT. So, or maybe that was like this early version of Meta's language model, Lama. In the beginning, I think I started before ChatGPT. Anyway, yeah, they're not good either.

[00:14:32] That podcast is also really bad. I'm mentioning this because I want to tell you that I've been trying this out to do this in English for a while. Because I have this urge to communicate with people, not just in Sweden, but around the world. I really want to reach out. I have this need, partly because people tell me that you can't do this. It's impossible.

[00:15:00] I mean, really famous, really successful people in Sweden have tried this, doing a podcast in English. And nobody really made it. So why should you? And whenever I have a meeting with my host, my provider, they don't want to talk about my English podcasts.

[00:15:25] It's not interesting to them because nobody really makes it. But I'm here to prove them wrong. So that's my biggest motivator. But then I have another motivation as well. And that is, I really want to communicate with you. You know, I got this voice memo the other day and it was amazing.

[00:15:56] You know, I'm not going to say from where or whatever. Maybe that was private, but it was from another part of the world. And thank you. I mean, those things really make me glow up, you know, because right now I'm in this mist of unknown things.

[00:16:25] I don't know what works or what doesn't. And I don't really care too much about that either. I'm really just trying to have fun and I'm really enjoying the communication with you guys. So please keep the emails and voice memos and, you know, keep them coming. Yeah. Okay. So there was this list.

[00:16:54] So today I'm going to provide you with a list. I'm not, I don't have time during this episode to finish the list, but this is a list about every person that exists in the world today. So there's like billions of you and not all of you are listening to my podcast, unfortunately.

[00:17:18] But I guess that could be my secondary goal to have like 8 billion listeners by the end of next year, maybe. Okay. So anyway, I'm going to mention by name and tell a little bit about them, all the people that exist.

[00:17:40] And this will be, I guess, a series that can evolve and continue because there are new people, you know, arriving at this planet every second. And also people leaving. So how to deal with that? Okay. I guess leaving is not my problem.

[00:18:03] I can't really take the, the, the levers into account. I can't really. I mean, if I mentioned someone and tomorrow that person just goes away, I can't, you know, what's being recorded is going to stay recorded. I can't, then that, that will require a totally different list because I mean, people leave all the time.

[00:18:32] But although people leave more seldom now than years back, that's kind of cool. I guess we live longer. And I mean, we have so much more time to try and find out what this thing called existence is all about. I mean, what is it all about sleepy?

[00:19:00] I, I'm so curious. One of my worst thoughts are that maybe we will never know. I mean, truly know. That's excuse the language fucked up. It really is. I want to know.

[00:19:24] I want to know for sure, you know, but maybe there is no shore in both meanings of the word. There's no shore as there's no end of the ocean. And there is no shore, like there is no certainty. There is no shore, shore. Anyway, so I will just tell, tell you about people that exists.

[00:19:53] So the first guy that exists on my list is, and I'm going to mention people from all over the world. Okay. I will try anyway. Anyway, so this is Samir Qureshi. And he lives in Mumbai and he works at a call center.

[00:20:20] Now he works at a call center by day and he's a very melodramatic street poet by night. He secretly performs impromptu poetry, reading directly from his mind into the ears of stray cats, mostly after midnight.

[00:20:49] And he treats them as his fickle audience. In a single day, he oscillates between the mundane drudgery of customer complaints and the absurd theatrics of rhyming odes under neon lights.

[00:21:14] In front of felines, as you can imagine, sleepy, his life is a patchwork of humor and loneliness.

[00:21:30] Present day Mumbai might find him kind of bizarre, but his heartfelt nightly performances have earned him the love of the city's cats. Next on my list is called Linda Watanabe.

[00:22:01] And she's a dentist with, as with Samir, she has this offbeat artistic streak that she secretly lives out. She sculpts tiny animal figurines from the very teeth that she extracts during her work as a dentist.

[00:22:31] She decorates her office with like a hidden menagerie of teeth art. And her patients have, of course, no idea that their lost teeth might become a miniature giraffe or an elephant in Linda's bizarre after hours hobby.

[00:23:02] So it's sort of a mismatch. What do you say? Mishmash. Mishmash. Is that even a word in English? In Swedish, you can say mishmash. That's, it's sort of a mixture. A juxtaposition between her sterile professional daytime demeanor and her whimsical, slightly morbid artistic endeavors.

[00:23:31] It gives her life somewhat of a dramatic edge. And she laughs at the dark humor of it, all while carefully locking away her miniatures each night.

[00:23:58] She, she would never, she would never confine in anyone about her weird, strange hobby. I guess it's, it has something to do with whether or not you get consent for using people's teeth. I mean, what happens, who owns teeth that are being removed from your mouth?

[00:24:24] Who owns the teeth the minute the teeth loosens from your jaw? Is it the dentist that owns it or is it still your possession? And if so, could you say, I want to keep my tooth. Next on the list is Omar Mbaye.

[00:24:53] Omar Mbaye is a Zengalese fisherman who has a one-man radio show at night that nobody knows about. He, he has like cobbled together a transmitter on his fishing boat and delivers a bit like me, really, philosophical monologues without any script.

[00:25:22] But his monologues are aimed at an imaginary sea monster friend that he says lurks below the waves. And listeners who accidentally tune in, like that almost never happens. It's a very weird frequency, frequency.

[00:25:55] But listeners who happen to tune in gets to listen to Omar's deep, dramatic reflections on life, love, fear, hope. And also a lot of fishing advice. The best bait to use on a Tuesday afternoon.

[00:26:18] So he fishes by day and is a radio host by night.

[00:26:40] And there's this whispers going on in his town where people say, have you heard that weird fishing dude? But no one's really, no one really knows whether or not he is real or if it is a gimmick.

[00:27:03] And next on the list is Jelena Petrova. Jelena Petrova is a Moscow subway musician who performs daily while dressed in an astronaut suit.

[00:27:32] She made it herself. So she's also good with this cosplay thing. And she plays this eerie electronic instrument that she's built herself as well. She just calls it Lotta. And it is a Lotta sound.

[00:27:58] And she fills the underground stations with outerworldly tunes as commuters passed in the puzzled state that she puts them in. And so when she was a kid, I can't remember her name now.

[00:28:28] You may be remembering the name. But I mean, and also the subways in Moscow are, the subway stations in Moscow are really beautiful. And so her and her astronaut costume really makes a point, poignant point. What point? I don't know.

[00:28:53] But when she was a child, she dreamed about being a cosmonaut. But of course, that never came true because, I mean, how many cosmonauts do you, you know, how many cosmonauts are there each year? So she took up her second hobby, building electronic instruments and playing them.

[00:29:24] And the bizarre sight of a cosmonaut playing a weird instrument in the metro adds like sort of a spark of surreal drama to all of the rushed morning commuters in present-day Moscow.

[00:29:55] And her spaceman act has earned her a cult, cult following, and a very small but poignant small online fan club that finds her mix of science fiction and music oddly inspiring. And I gotta say, so do I.

[00:30:17] I mean, isn't it beautiful with people that defines, defies? Isn't it wonderful with people that defies common sense and what's to be expected of someone? Once I was in a cab, and the cab driver was, by profession, a cab driver, but also he was a real-life inventor.

[00:30:47] Inventor. So he invented stuff. And I asked him what he had invented and he, yeah, he had a whole list of stuff that I couldn't relate to at all. Nothing I'd ever heard of. And it was mostly like small components in computers that made things easier. Like variants of aspects of a transistor that I didn't really get what it was.

[00:31:16] And I'd never asked him whether or not he had like a, he had a bunch of patents, but I don't know if there, if his inventions were really used. But it's so cool that he, he drives a cab and then he works as, as an inventor. He had his own like laboratory or whatever, his own workshop. It's beautiful.

[00:31:45] I would love to have a workshop. So next on the list is Carlos, Carlos, Carlos Menedieta. Menedieta, Carlos Menedieta.

[00:32:06] Carlos Menedieta is, he lives in Bogota and he's a, he's an accountant and a clown for a circus that does charity.

[00:32:31] So he has this kind of boring work as an accountant, balances ledgers. And then he balances on a tight rope in full clown makeup after hours. Okay. So all of my, all of the people on this, this lead double lives. Okay. So now we've established that.

[00:32:58] So next on the list is Aisha Almasri from Egypt. And she's an archeologist and, but she's no longer an archeologist. She is it by training only, but she left her job at the museum to create clothing.

[00:33:24] She's a fashion, she's a, she's an avant-garde fashion designer. But her job as a designer is being inspired by the ancient sites and findings that she came across during her life as an archeologist.

[00:33:45] And she claims that every pattern in his, in her designs are, is being whispered to her by the ghosts of a long forgotten old Pharaoh. And her fashion shows. And her fashion shows, because she's kind of established and well known.

[00:34:13] Her fashion shows are very dramatic, humorous and macabre as the models strut to modern remixes of old, like ancient pieces of music.

[00:34:37] And she's wearing what look like, like mummy wraps with velvet embellishments. And the present day fashion elite are, well, equal parts baffled and intrigued.

[00:34:58] And also kind of critical by Aisha's bizarre design inspiration and her, frankly, unapologetic flair for drama. So she hasn't lost touch with her own profession, her old profession. By day, she still visits dig sites for fresh ideas. And for the sake of, you know, just curiosity, I guess.

[00:35:27] If I were an archeologist, I would, even if I didn't work as an archeologist, I would still just hang around the dig sites. Because, oh my God, sleepy, I would really love to be an archeologist. But I don't have the patience, I guess.

[00:35:45] And I also don't have the, I'm not very good at standing on my knees in the dirt for 14 hours, you know, in a row. So now I'm going to talk about someone from Japan, from Tokyo.

[00:36:10] So this is, this is a guy whose name is Takumi Tanaka. And he's a Tokyo-based video game developer who firmly believes the NPC characters in his game are giving him advice about the stock market.

[00:36:41] So each morning he interprets the random shatter of video game villagers as tips on which shares to buy or sell. And this method has brought Takumi surprising investment success, which tells you a bit about the randomness of stock markets.

[00:37:07] You know, you can really make a fortune or build your own ruin by just listening to anything. Because it's all driven by forces that we cannot foresee. Isn't that weird?

[00:37:25] I was into stocks for a while and I followed the stock markets because I like, I guess I like great patterns that emerge in real time. And I like, I enjoy myself trying to predict patterns, but nobody is ever really right.

[00:37:47] I mean, I had like 50 different sources of information and of what, what stocks to buy or sell. And I never had any real money to invest. So I never lost anything really big and I never won anything really big either. But it was exciting to just watch.

[00:38:12] It was almost like watching like the horse, a horse racing game or whatever. So I'm, I get it, you know, but I can, I can listen to like NPCs in a game and I can listen to an investment banker.

[00:38:36] And I think that maybe, I mean, some things you can predict, like the CEO of a major company is, has been caught dumping shares, you know? Okay. Okay.

[00:38:49] So that's a sign, you know, but whether or not Microsoft is going to rise or fall within a five-year period or a one-year period, you can listen to an NPC and you get as much information from the NPC in a video game than you get from like someone at CSNBC. That's my view of it anyway. Prove me wrong, please.

[00:39:19] So that's him. And now I'm going to talk about a woman from Dublin named Grace O'Malley. And she's a Dublin chef who is convinced that her late grandmother's spirit is guiding her hand in the kitchen. Okay. I can't speak.

[00:39:48] I'm not very, I have also promised, made a promise that I shouldn't use dialects in this podcast. I just couldn't. In this episode, I couldn't, I can't help it. Sorry. So she's a chef in Dublin.

[00:40:09] And she thinks that her grandmother's spirit are giving her cooking advice. And she argues loudly in the kitchen with her invisible Nana about the right amount of salt while shopping vegetables and such. And every meal that she creates comes with a dramatic backstory.

[00:40:39] And she narrates this backstory to her somewhat bored, somewhat baffled, somewhat unwillingly listening dinner guests. And it's ghostly advice, like do not trust people with blue in their clothing or old family legends.

[00:41:04] And it's very bizarre. You sit there and you're, you're being served like maybe the best food you've ever eaten in your life. And then there's this bizarre sight of Grace passing to listen to thin air for whatever grandma has to say.

[00:41:29] And she prepares like these sensational dishes that are really to die for. But is it really Grace O'Malley or is it her grandmother that prepares the food? You don't know, do you?

[00:41:54] So now we're going to go, we're going to Ghana and meet Kwame Adiemi. Kwame Adiemi. I'm sorry, by the way, if these names are not, you know, representative of whatever country I'm talking about. I'm just improvising here, so I don't know anything. But he lives in Accra.

[00:42:23] And he's building, he's an inventor and he's building a robot friend out of like old discarded electronics. And his tiny workshop is both a place of very serious engineering and like total disruptive chaos.

[00:42:47] And the robot just, it's, well, it doesn't, it's not a very successful project to be honest, because the robot often comes to life just long enough to playfully insult his, like Kwame's welding skills and then just shorting out. So the robot just wakes up and says, oh, today, Kwame, you are particularly ugly.

[00:43:13] And then just shuts itself off for some reason. Or the worst days, the robot just comes to life and just goes berserk in the workshop and tears stuff down and breaks itself in the process.

[00:43:36] And he's lonely, and he's lonely, and that's why he's building this robot friend. And his neighbors laugh at him, but they also feel sorry for him, I guess.

[00:44:10] Next on the list is Sofia de la Cruz. Sofia de la Cruz is a Filipino science vlogger in Manila, who performs outrageous homemade experiments in her tiny apartment. Her online videos show a mix of humor and disaster.

[00:44:32] She'll try to bake cookies with an iron, you know, that you iron clothes with, or create a DIY volcano that accidentally paints her ceiling in some neon color. And each five-minute clip, because they're kind of short clips,

[00:44:59] is a dramatic mini-tale of science gone wrong. Almost like, what's her name? Oh God, I should know this. She's Swedish. Simone. Oh God. Bad robots. She makes shitty robots. She made shitty robots. Now she's doing all sorts of things.

[00:45:28] Oh God, I forgot her name. Simone. Is her name Simone? I really love her, by the way, although I can't remember her name. Okay, anyway. I mean, talking about doing your own stuff, refusing to go and do what's expected of you. Anyway, I've been a fan of hers for ages, but now it's been like a year since I watched her videos.

[00:46:00] And maybe that's why I forgot her name. Anyway, so she makes clips out of her own science experiments goes wrong, going wrong.

[00:46:23] And now I'm going to talk briefly about a Chinese startup founder, Beijing-based. And his name is Zhao Mingyu. And he only eats one tiny meatball every single day. And he is fine.

[00:46:53] End of story. Moving on. So this girl, this woman is called Fatima Nasser. And she lives in Berlin. She has Syrian roots, but has lived her whole life in Berlin. And she's a stand-up comedian.

[00:47:18] And on stage, she uses humor to navigate her somewhat dramatic life story. Her parents arriving to Germany in the 80s. Learning German from soap operas and like the comedy of coming from Syria and meeting German bureaucracy.

[00:47:47] And she performs the type of comedy that I really like the most. Comedy that combines heavy reality and laughter. Like stupid jokes and childish endeavors.

[00:48:13] And then heavy reality and often ending in like heartfelt silence. As she delivers like this deep punchline that at first maybe sets off laughter in the room. But then leaves and just makes room for thought, you know.

[00:48:41] She turns trauma and vulnerability into comedic art. And for that, I really love Fatima Nasser. Andrei Volkov. Andrei Volkov is a Ukrainian photographer

[00:49:11] who has trained a flock of pigeons to be his assistants. Because otherwise you'd have to buy a drone. And all the drones are at this very moment occupied by, you know, other stuff. So he needs pigeons to be his drones.

[00:49:39] His aerial photography assistants. So he attaches tiny lightweight cameras to their legs. And he calls them his feathered interns. And he just sets them off. And sometimes they come back and he can see the photos. Often they portray like rooftops and fuzzy encounters with other birds.

[00:50:09] So almost none of the pictures are usable. But some of them are and are very unique in so many ways. In Kalamata, in Greek, in Greece, there's this woman called Sofia Papadopoulos. And she's a school teacher.

[00:50:37] And she writes secret letters to ancient dead philosophers. Every week, she writes a heartfelt note to the likes of Plato or Aristotle. And then she goes out of her way and hides these messages among the ruins of the city. And half expecting a reply.

[00:51:07] Of course, she's not mad. But some part of her really expects like Plato to just, Dear Sofia, Thank you for your mail and for your insightful ways of my old teachings that still hold true until this day.

[00:51:35] So she does this for a reason. She needs to cope with some very dramatic personal decisions that she faces. And that is whether or not to leave her husband of 10 years. They, well, they are not where they were 10 years ago.

[00:52:02] Their relationship has been turning into some kind of a toxic on and off relationship. And, but then again, it's hard to break up as we all very well know. It takes tremendous strength to break up with someone, even if it's a toxic, destructive relationship. So to cope with this huge decision-making process,

[00:52:32] she writes these letters about her endeavors. And she hides them, you know, up on Acropolis, for instance. In Sao Paulo, there's this barber. And his name is Miguel Santos.

[00:52:54] And his scissors are, in his mind, his scissors are enchanted to reveal clients' secrets. As he snips away, he humorously narrates wild and most certainly made-up tales about each person's hair,

[00:53:20] claiming that the split ends of the hair he's snipping are whispering gossip into his ear via the scissors. And his customers really like this. They keep coming back because of the bizarre experience. And of course, he's also a very good hairdresser.

[00:53:48] And they, it's sort of an entertainment thing to be listening to his revelations. And okay, so I'm going to end this list with someone from Sweden. And I'm going to take this theme further into this podcast.

[00:54:16] Someday in the future, I will continue. So this woman is, I don't know her personally, but her name is Helena Fjordviking. That's her name. Fjordviking is a very common name in Sweden.

[00:54:43] And she is, she doesn't live in Sweden. She lives up in Svalbard, which is like, I guess it's Svalbard. What territory is Svalbard? Oh God, it's so embarrassing that I don't know that. But she's stationed, she's a marine technician.

[00:55:10] And she's stationed in this remote Arctic research lab. And she's friends with a polar bear. And she's playing music for it. She's playing this old Swedish humoristic, extravagant, singing songwriter called Poveldrammel.

[00:55:35] She plays Poveldrammel to this, the polar bears. And they dance throughout the polar night. And that, my friend, dear sleepy, was the end of my list for this day. I realized that I haven't even come close to, yeah,

[00:56:04] telling you about every person on earth. I don't even remember how many this was. I guess it'll take me at least three more episodes to mention everyone on earth. And over the time that it takes me to record a new episode, I guess like a few hundred more people are going to enter this world.

[00:56:33] Isn't that like a miracle to think about, Sleepy? That for every second that you and I have this interaction, or mainly me, then a bunch of new people are being born into this world. And they don't know anything yet. Isn't that cool to think about that they don't know,

[00:57:02] they don't even know basic things like, this is the color blue, you know? They don't know what's up or down. They can, of course, experience joy and discomfort. But that's about it. They recognize the voices of their parents.

[00:57:28] They recognize the smells and the sounds that has been around them from like the beginning. But they don't know anything about, if you clench your fist, then this will happen, you know? They don't, oh God, they are so beautiful. Aren't they babies?

[00:57:54] I mean, when they're really newborn, they're like, I don't know, I can't really describe the feeling that I get whenever I see a baby. It's like I'm seeing myself in a way. It's like I'm seeing this part of me that I don't really use.

[00:58:22] I don't really know about it anymore on a daily basis. But it's there, you know? And watching that baby is like connecting with that core, that essence within me that still exists. That little lump that you are when you're a baby.

[00:58:50] And I don't have anything to use and throw at the world as a response to whatever the world throws at me. I'm just the receiver. I'm only at the receiving end of whatever life throws at me. That can be claimed to be the case all of our lives.

[00:59:14] But especially when you're a baby, you're like totally powerless. And that's so beautiful. I sometimes wish that I could put myself in that position again by will, you know? I don't want to stay that way because I like being a grown-up. I like being able, you know? It's a beautiful thing to be able.

[00:59:46] So I'm going to mention one last person on my list. And that's Sam Franson. And Sam Franson lives in New York City. But he doesn't know that he lives in New York City because he's just three days old.

[01:00:05] And Sam Franson is right now in resting his head, which he cannot lift or barely move. He's resting his head on the shoulder of his father, Christian Franson. And yeah, that's about it.