Page Title

My Cold Core (CC)

Henrik
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 and let's go. Hi sleepy. Hi, so I am back in Adventure Wolf, my studio and my yard in my and I am totally ice cold. My feet and my hands are
freezing. It's minus degrees outside. I don't know how much, how low, but it's cold and every winter I'm freezing. Especially in this house, it's like the floor and into my feet and into my
body. And sometimes during winter, it feels like I have this core of solid coldness inside me, like this, you know, perm frost thing going on. And it manifests itself within me throughout the day. And when I go to bed at night, sometimes I feel this coldness and I get overwhelmed by this feeling that this solid
core of frozen whatever it is inside of me will never be totally evaporated. It will never be, I will never be warm enough for that to disappear. But then everything changes and I fall asleep and when I wake up in the morning, I am, you know, I am warm all the way through. And I wish there was a way for me to experience that feeling without having to sleep and return
to my, you know, baseline rhythm-wise, inner rhythm-wise. I wish I could just press a button and then my inner warm serenity would manifest itself. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit because sometimes I don't even think about my cold core, my CC, I call it. Excuse me, I'm going to indulge myself in my CC for a while.
And by that, I mean, I'm going to talk a lot about my cold core. If I could travel there, if I could go there in person, I believe I could do things to ease the burden of the cold core. I believe I could, you know, maybe plant small, individually totally insignificant beacons of warmth. Together, they could really make a difference, I think. Maybe I could
slowly spread this fine masked web of warmth. First, it wouldn't even be visible or noticeable because the core is so frozen solid. But if I a field of warmth, slowly covering the surface of
this cold lump, you know. And then the ground, the surface of my cold core would loosen up a bit, be a bit squishy, soft. And then I would know that I was on the right track. And then slowly, gradually over time, core would just evaporate, turn into gas and leaving just, you know, emptiness. And I can't imagine
the joy I would experience from making that happen myself. And imagine putting it into like a method of some sort, a way of doing it that I would gradually be better at it over time. And eventually this would just take like 20 minutes, minutes, minutes each day from frozen cold core FCC. The FCC won't let me be. Let me be me.
And that's a shame, isn't it? Hi, by the way. I'm sorry if you're a new listener to this podcast, then this demands some explanation, I guess. My name is Henrik, I've been trying to make this habit of mine of
improvising and speaking, just letting the words out from my mind without censoring or editing anything or writing anything down. I've been doing it also in English. And as it turned out, it was quite a good idea. There are now well a few thousand people worldwide who listen to this podcast and use it either way they see fit. They fall asleep
to it as is the main goal. I mean, at least as far as what I'm trying to use as a USP, a unique selling point goes. I mean, you have to describe the stuff you do so that people can tune in. But with that said, this podcast is a lot more. You can use it like any way you want. Some people listen to the whole episodes because for some reason
they think that I'm entertaining and calming to listen to. And other people just listen and fall asleep like after 15 minutes. And as I said, I make a living out of doing this in Swedish, but it's different. It's different in English because I have to use other parts of my brain to do the improvising and also doing all the talking because
it's, well, that's mainly what I do here, talk. So the episodes can go either way, really. I can talk about absolutely anything. I'm not choosing topics out of, you know, I need to pick themes that are soothing or calming or I talk about almost everything, including stuff that people may find non-relaxing.
Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I clear my throat. I am not a relaxation guide. I am not a self-help teacher. I don't know anything about sleep really, other than distraction seems to work. So maybe distraction is my thing. But while I'm doing this, it's not as if I'm trying to distract you or anything.
Right now, I'm in this state of just flow. And that's the wonderful part. And that's the reason I can keep doing this, I guess, because it's, yeah, because I enjoy that. Even if I didn't record myself, I enjoy this. This is some form of meditation for me. I meet pages in my own book that I haven't written or read, or I didn't even know that I had them, you know, the pages.
For instance, right now it's weird because I am speaking in a language that is not mine. I mean, I've spoken a lot of English over my years. I was born in 1975 and I started learning English in third grade. So I was nine. So it's 40 years ago I learned my first English language, my first English words, I would say. And I mean, as you are in the world,
you are constantly bombarded with culture from, well, especially the US. And so English is like this part of your world. But it's another thing to just speak your mind using that language and an even harder way to speak your mind, but doing it unprepared. That's and making it genuine and honest and well sometimes entertaining or whatever so
it's an exciting thing for me and I'm so glad that so many of you have found this already it's well it's a true honor to have you sleepy from like across the world in a place I think there are like a hundred countries now listening people from a hundred countries listening to me. Well, in some of these countries, there are like one or two people
listening. And in some countries, there are the main part of the listeners. But it's still such a thrill to look at my little analytics map and see from where you are listening. Feel free to write to me and tell me what you think about this, how you use my podcast. And if you like it, write me a review on any of the platforms that you use while listening to this podcast and tell your friends about me, then we
can make this little society of sleepies. That would be great. So I get a lot of questions about me and my life here in Sweden. And I know there are a lot of my Swedish original listeners tuning in to Fall Asleep with Henrik. And that's, I mean, that's great. So if you're Swedish, then you know, you know about me from like seven years back of me talking about myself.
But in case you don't know me, then, okay, so here's my story. I am Henrik Ståhl. I am 49 years old. I was born on this very warm summer morning in the end of July 1975. And my mother and my father, they were 24 and 30. My mother being the younger of the two as is custom, I guess. I think
that's the most common combination, isn't it? The woman is younger than the man, I guess. Anyway, I don't know any about that. By the way, you should never take anything I say for granted. I can come up with stuff on the fly or I could just be wrong. And sometimes I might be right. So don't quote me on stuff that I say here, unless it's for entertaining purposes. Okay. So there was this extremely warm morning and my dad, because he's the one who has
been telling me this story, he was, well, as course, and she had turned out to be like this very avid pain. She was an avid pain communicator, to use like made up language.
She had turned into some sort of a screaming monster. My dad was shocked because he, as far as he's told me, he never saw that side of her. But of course, the pain transformed her into this, well, a pain, a very avid pain communicator. So they were in a cab. This is in the southwestern part of Sweden.
And they had to go to another city called Lidköping to the hospital there. And they traveled by cab. And in the cab, the cab driver was like, didn't really paying attention to that. The fact that my mother was about to give birth. So he just talked and talked and talked about his own life and his own discomfort of being a cab driver. And that he really hated people that
weren't from the city of Lidköping. He claimed that everyone who wasn't from Leedschepping, which none of my parents were, by the way, my dad was from a neighboring town and my mom was from way up north compared to that city. And, but he said that everyone who wasn't from the neighborhood were like foreigners who should be really cast out. And this was a unique view since, you know, he, I mean, why, you know,
anyway, so he was a pain in the ass, put it frank. And then they arrived to the hospital and there my mother screamed and twisted and she ripped the handles that were attached to the bed. At that time, giving birth wasn't such a flexible thing as it is now. sort of like the mother's state in all sorts of ways determined how and where and if the child
were to be delivered, you know, how do you want to do this? Do you want to like squat? Do you want to be on your back? Do you want to, it's like whatever's comfortable and necessary at the time, you know, but at that time, I guess that my mom was like, you know, just lay here and wait, you know, and try to behave yourself because the nurse, when my mother ripped the handles of the bed because she was in such pain, then the nurse told her that she was hysteric,
which of course, who wouldn't be, you know, having that kind of pain? It's old school, you know, behave yourself. It's only giving birth. Millions of women have done so before you. And do you think you're the first one to squeeze out a child through this minimal opening in your body? Anyway, I came with some sort of hesitance.
I got stuck halfway out and they had to use this sucking device. I don't have a better word for it, but it's some sort of a device that is, you know, vacuum. It's vacuum in it. So it sucks on to the kid's head, and then you can just pull it out. So they did that to me, and that led to that my head were misshaped and stayed that way for a few days.
So the first thing, since this is my father's story, really, my mom don't really have any stories from the actual process of me being birthed, born, being born, rather after. And I'm going to tell that story too, but it's not so funny. It's more like, it's a love story. But my dad's story is fun and also
poetic in a way. And he was shocked. He was 30 years old and he's a very timid man. And I think that he got really scared, I think.
And then he had to go home because he couldn't stay at the hospital because he was the dad. And I mean, just a few years before my birth, it was very uncommon for the father to even be present in the room. The dad had like a cigar and he was walking around outside waiting for the scream and the nurse to come out and tell him that it's a boy, all is good.
But my dad was in there and he was, and of course, I mean, just seeing a birth is an overwhelming feeling. And I guess it was somewhat of a traumatic experience for him, I think. So knowing him and that being his first child, he then went on to get six children in total.
So I guess he got used to it. But I was the first. So he then had to go home. He just had to leave me there with my mom. And then I don't know for what reason, but he didn't take a cab back. I guess the racist taxi driver on the way there was too much for him. So he had to wait for a bus. And I think like it was like a couple of
hours by bus. And so it was an early morning, the 31st of August, no, the 31st of July, 1975. And it was extremely warm, uncommonly warm for that time of year, although it was summer and everything was closed and the city was silent and it was a few hours, I think, until the bus should depart. So he ate a sandwich at some open,
early open coffee shop and it didn't taste anything. He told me it was like eating air and he sat there. I imagine, I don't know if this is the case, but I imagine him sitting there on like outside of the shop on this little cafe table watching the city come to life early morning.
and trying to fathom whatever had been going on for the last few hours. So now I'm going to pause and just tell my mother's short story,
the only thing she's ever told about my birth. When I came out and when they put me on her chest, she said, look, it's a Henrik. So she knew that I was a Henrik. And this was news to my father because he had been saying for a long while that he wanted me to be called Gunnlaug, which is a very uncommon name in Sweden. It's not like every other boy at that time
was named Gunnlaug. I think it's a German name or maybe it's an Icelandic name, Gunnlaugur. But my mom said I was a Henrik and that was it. So that was my mother's story. It's a very short story, but I, I, it gives me a comfy feeling because I, it's like she saw me like right away.
And this has of course has had its ups and downs over the years. I mean, being that seen is a good thing, but it's also, it can be also very harmful, I think, to be, well, it's a way of control, you know? So I'm glad that my mom over my childhood really saw me. But at the other side of that, I am not so glad because I've had to fight for my privacy. And now look at me
sitting here talking, spilling my life for thousands of people all around the world. Anyway, I love that, by the way. I love this, you know? I know it's a one-way communication, but it's also very giving because I imagine you, you know, whomever you are, I imagine you listening, telling me stuff back, thinking stuff, having opinions and getting
impulses from what I talk about. Anyway, my dad went on the bus, got on the bus. And at that bus, there were a bunch of senior citizens who were going on a, like a field trip or something.Maybe they were in this service home or something and a retirement home and they were going for a field trip or it was some sort of club
that was going to an excavation or something. Anyway, expedition, excavation, that's another thing right? Excavation is something you do when you dig up old bones. So they were going on an expedition. I don't know. The only thing my dad told me is that he had a headache and it was very warm and he were filled with these existential thoughts. Some of them were probably not that nice. I mean, why did my wife screamed
and fought and ripped the metal handles of the bed? Why haven't I seen this side of her before? Remember that he's 30 years old and he's never been in this type of situation before. Of course, he knew that giving birth is a painful thing, but maybe he had this idea that it would be like Mother Mary giving birth to Jesus, you know,
like this epiphany moment where everything that happens feels right. But if you've been in a situation like that, which you probably have some point in your life, then you know that it's not a peaceful, dignified situation. It's like it's life, you know, in all its absurdity and pain and fear and also joy and ecstasy, you know. Anyway, so he got very disturbed by these senior citizens because
they were talking very loud and they were very worried about getting off at the right place. So they took turns going to the stumbling. The bus was moving on small roads. I guess he got car sick or something. And the senior citizens took turns stumbling up to the driver and asked him if he was sure he would drop them off at the right
place for wherever they were going to go. And he have told me that he thought that if I'm ever going to kill someone, this would be time and place and object of killing because he felt that they deprived him of this existential deep moment. My dad, I am like him in that way that I need to process things and I need to do it alone
and I need to have peace. I am very sensitive to when stuff are being demanded of me while I need to process things. I guess I'm high sensitive in stimuli. Stimuli. What do you say? Stimuli. Anyway. So anyway, they got off and he got off and I think he had to change to another bus, another route or something to get home and then he got home and to Vara,
which was the city where he lived and his mother lived and so he went to my grandma and he told her that you're a grandma and my grandma, which was like this very somber person, she was a little bit moreber person. She was, I have very few memories of her because I was six years old when she died. She was old when she got my dad and she
had been fighting depressions throughout her life. And she was, as I remember, she was a wonderful, funny, exotic person who came into our house and sang and told us different weird old rhymes from another time. You know, she was born in 1905. So she was like this ancient relic, you know, I remember feeling her cheeks, her chin, and it was
wrinkled in a way that I had never felt because she was not like my mother's mother who was young when she got my mom. My grandmother was like, my mother's mother was like 45 when I was born or something, younger than I am now. So yeah, anyway, I loved her, but I never really got to know her. But as I've been told, she was difficult sometimes.
She had mood swings and a dark mind. But she was very happy that I was born. And she asked all the common questions, how much I weighed, how long it took, how my mother was, stuff like that. And my dad told her. And then he said, now I'm going to go home and I'm going to take the dogs out because they had two border collies at the time.
And I'm going to take them out and I'm going to have a cigar and a whiskey because he had read somewhere that that's what dads should do when they had a child. And so he had this urge for whiskey and a cigar. And then my grandma said, well, can I join you? I want a cigar and whiskey as well. And my dad said,
no, no, I want to be alone in this experience. I want to do this alone. And then my grandma said something in the terms of, well, then why don't you go and fuck yourself and then slam the door right in his face? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But it's, I mean, I mean, talk about, you know, great happenings in your life, you know,
milestones, you know, you're first born, you're a father now, everything has changed. Yet at this very moment, nothing has changed. And I mean, that situation when my grandma just being, you know, my grandma just being my grandma, because that was the way she were. It wasn't something uncommon, I guess. She didn't like my mom. She thought that
my dad took, my mom took my dad away from her. So she was very cold to my mom in the beginning. And yeah, so she was like, she had a dark mind and she had a dark conception. Like she was, she was this, I remember her in like dark clothes and her eyes were almost black and her hair was like a raven and she was very pale.
And yeah, she was an artist as well. She was, she played piano and she was in a band and she was touring the countryside in the early 1900s and playing with my grandpa in different places. And she got paid so much more than my granddad and the rest of the band, which were all boys. I don't know why. She was the piano player and the other guys were
playing other different instruments. I don't know if piano came with a higher rate or something. Anyway, I think it's a beautiful thing. I always think of it, this story, it's not, you know, it's not conformity. The story breaks, you know, because seeing your firstborn or seeing any child of yours being born is, you know, if you would tell
it to someone, you would tell either the horror story or well, more, more preferably this fantastic story. I had this colleague of mine in a theater where I worked and he told me about his daughter being born and when they put her in his arms and her eyes locked onto his, he was like hit by this truck of love as he described it. Just from that
one look, he knew that he was lost, you know, in those eyes, in this little person for the rest of his existence. And that's, you know, that's the story that you hear and the story that you measure your own experience with too. And I don't think so many, too many people have that sort of pure experience in
anything in life. Experiences are frustratingly so very mixed. And as soon as you have this pure thing to compare it with, like someone who's told you that first time I held my daughter, I just got overwhelmed by love. Then it mixes up your situation even more. That's why I, back in the day, I enjoyed drinking because drinking really makes everything more one way.
A good thing is a good thing. A bad thing is a bad thing, you know? That's why I also gave that up because I don't really want to live in a world which is one way. I think I am really allergic to one-way stories and one-way narratives because there is no such thing. Everything is at least two different things. And most of the time, everything is like this billion pieces of stuff that we put together.
We tend to put things together because we need that in order to get a sense of what's going on. But if we don't do that, nothing really connects, you know. Everything is its own thing and everything exists simultaneously. What do you say? Simultaneously. Yeah, well, anyway, my dad went home to the
house, I think, where he lived with my mom at the time for a very short period and then they moved up to my mom's birthplace in Falun. But I've been told that he had that whiskey and that cigar and he got a bit drunk. What do you say? Tipsy. He got tipsy and he walked the dogs and the summer was in extravagant bloom. And I can imagine him,
my dad and his 30 year old senses, which were now fumbling in the dark to find an explanation, a model, you know, to build this experience on, but he had nothing and everything was the same, but everything was changed. And from that day, like everything in his life and my mom's life really changed. And I think, yeah, I tear up a
bit now when I'm talking about it, because it's beautiful to think about that moment as if we were like an eternity. My dad on this field around his birthplace in Southwest Sweden, and it's the middle of the 70s. You know, people are protesting the Vietnam War. No, I don't know. When did the Vietnam War came to a stop?
Okay, so this is one of the points where I'm just making a fool out of myself because I don't really remember because I was a baby. Anyway, they had a friend who was this American deserter, and he played violin for me one warm summer day when I was a baby. And they had that picture of me and this soldier. He wasn't a
soldier at the time. He was this hippie guy. This is a bit too late for the hippies though, but some of my mom and dad's friends at the time were like pure hippies. And he, as I remember him, there's this hippie guy and he's standing on one knee in front of me. I'm sitting in the grass on this great field and he's bending down and he's playing right in my face with the violin.
And I see him flabbergasted. And my parents had that photo in central places when I was growing up. So I saw it over and over and over again. And they always told me that you really loved him playing the violin for you. And that resulted in that by the time I got to third grade and got to choose an instrument. I chose violin just because that old Vietnam deserter had played the
violin for me that very one time. He wasn't a part of our lives or anything. I don't remember him at all. And, um, yeah, they always told the story about him being a deserter to be something like this very noble thing. That would be interesting to talk more about in the context of today, you know, like the atmosphere of the overall world today. At that time in Sweden, everyone was like anti-violence. I think that has changed and it would be interesting
to have that sort of discussion with the premises of today and suing it together with the 70s and I revere the moments that have been told to me. I revere my mom and dad that particular time. I mean, I feel such high regard and deep love for the two people that they were before all of this started.
It's beautiful to think about the inexperience and, you know, and not inexperience in a negative way, because how could you have experience of something that you haven't started yet? It's something very giving to think about the start of a journey, you know, because what came is like this mix, like everything is a mix of great experiences, huge life journeys,
but also great tragedy. Four years after that moment, my sister was born with this very serious heart disease and she almost died then and there, but she made it. And she's still here with us today. But if she were to be born like a few years earlier, she wouldn't have made it. She was a so-called blue baby. So she didn't get enough oxygen from
her heart via the blood. So that was the first. And then my brother was born two years after that with a very severe hearing loss and also a kidney failure that threatened his life. And then there were these psychological issues with my mom and my dad got a brain, got a stroke.
And then my even younger brother got a brain tumor. And so, you know, all that. And I'm saying this laughing because, sorry, but this is part, you know, remember the part where I told you that sometimes I tell you things that might not be sleeping material. And that's fine, you know, because that's life, at least as far as I'm concerned. So everyone is alive and everyone is
well. And yeah, and now they're almost 80, my mom and dad. And yeah, then I tear up when I think about that morning, you know, and I'm not saying that the children, them having children, was the catalyst behind a lot of suffering. Although, I mean, it was, but it's not the children per se that is the reason. I guess it's life in all. They could have done almost anything
and they would still encounter suffering, of course. I don't think they would have stayed together if they didn't have us. Rumor has it that they were talking about divorce when I was four and then my sister was born and then you know you can't just that stitched them together in a way
and since then they've been unseparable and that's been well nice but also like totally suffocating in a way because they I couldn't just go to my dad and just do stuff with him or I couldn't just go to my dad and just do stuff with him, or I couldn't just go to my mom, and that could be, you know, a mother-son thing. It was like they were one, you know? And sometimes
I miss having the duality of two different persons because they were, you know? But it's like they gave that up, manifesting that they are two different persons because they are so different. day that starts to slip through the cracks, their own corkiness and weirdness, their own individual weirdness is starting to show because they don't have like the strength to keep it between the two
of them. And it's kind of funny. And it's very, very nice to think about the two of them being 24 and 30. When I was home, when I was at my parents' place the other day, they told me that because my sister's daughter, she's my sister. They told her because of her heart condition that she would never be able to
give birth, but she did, you know, anyway. And I really admire her. She's always done stuff that the doctors say are impossible and she's done it. And she's still very affected by her disease, her condition, let's say condition, but she got that daughter. And that girl is now a woman. She's 24 years old and she's the same age that my mother was when she gave birth to me.
And her man is at the same age that my dad was when I was born. And now they, in their turn, or having a baby and that makes me so glad. And I, well, first of all, I'm longing for a new baby. I mean, it was my, my daughter is 13 years old now. She's not a baby. I, I miss, you know, walking around with a baby. It was a, it was a feeling that I miss and, but it's still, it wouldn't be my baby.
And that would be a great relief as well, because I, as I remember it, you know, the early years is that, I mean, love, yeah, but not in a clean way that my friend told me about that truck of love just hitting him. It's more like this weird mix of fear and love and anger and sorrow and stress. And well, it's a weird combination
of all these feelings. And it's like, you're not allowed to talk about that because then people think that you have a defect in your emotional system or something. I remember sitting with my daughter in the lap or in my arms, and I made this, she was only a few days old, and I made this Facebook update where I wrote the poem about the extremely ungraspable feeling that it meant to have this child. Like it felt like I was being sent to
heaven, but being in heaven in a cage, you know, so I get to see all these wonderful things and smell all these wonderful smells and listen to this beautiful music that is in heaven. But I was locked in, in this cage, uncomfortable and cold cage. It was very weird. I couldn't really find ways to just be in the moment. And I wrote
something about that. And then so many people wrote as comments, like down your screen, you know, just stay in that moment with your daughter. Just, just, um, it's, it's unhealthy for you to be able to do Facebooking now at the time when your daughter is born, put down the screen, insinuating that I was constantly on digital media instead of being there with my daughter. It's so weird that dualism, no, it's not dualism. It's like the opposite of dualism.
It's, what do you call it? Oh God. It's like there's only one thing. Either you're hooked, you're glued to your phone and you don't see the baby, or your phone is just not important and it's far away and I haven't seen it in days. And the only thing I see is my daughter. Life isn't like that for any of us. But at that time, I believed they were right.
So I put down my phone and I just stared at my daughter. And at a time where I might have benefited from other parents saying that this is normal feelings and have you tried this? this. And, you know, I just sat there and I stared at her and my fear and my ambivalence inside just growed, you know, it just kept growing. And so if it's something that I really dislike, Sleepy,
it's that thing, our common belief that things are just one way or the other way or some other way, but not every way. And I still struggle with this. And I think we all are. I mean, the unfathomable idea that an evil person
can have good sides, that a good person can do evil things, and that one feeling can mean whatever, and no one's emotional spectrum is the same. Everyone differs. Everyone is weird, you know, not in their own world compared to
others. There is no normal. There is no common ground. There is no common sense. It's just us and you know what we do with it. And that really speaks to me. And it scares me how views of the more singular matter tend to get a lot of footholding today. I feel like the narratives of this is right and this is one thing and it is
right is getting a lot of attention and room and space to move around today in the world. But why be afraid? You know, why? What good is there to be afraid? What good does worrying do? If there's something we can do, then we do it, right? If we can't do anything about any particular thing. Why worry? Why? The worry doesn't do anything.
Well, it does something, creates discomfort. And why? I mean, this sounds so easy, but of course, it's so hard. And worry has like a function, of course, but only when we can do something about what we're worried about. Okay, I'm done for today. Next week, I will be back. And again, thank you for being here, Sleepy. You are the best around. No one's going to ever keep you down. You're the best. Try and be best because you're only a man and a man's
got to learn to keep it. What is that? That's the lead theme from that old Karate Kid song. Yeah. Write to me and tell me what you thought about this episode. Good night, Sleepy.

Oddly Specific Untrue Facts About Stockholm

Henrik
Hi and welcome to Fall Asleep with Henrik. It is I who is Henrik and you are Sleepy and it is what happens, happens. And right now there is nothing we can do about any of it. So let's just get this show on the road. Hi Sleepy and welcome to Fall Asleep with me, Henrik. And you
go by the name of Henrik. No, sorry. You go by the name of sleepy in this context. I'm sorry for the confusion. These are confusing times, isn't it? I guess there's nothing really we can do about any of it, really, right now anyway. One of the theses in this podcast is that there is nothing we can do.
But by that, I don't mean that there is literally nothing we can do. What I mean is that right now, this very moment, there is nothing you can do. Because if there were something you could do, I imagine that you would probably do it. Or maybe me talking like this gives you an impulse. There's actually some things that you
can do. I mean right now. And by all means, then pause this episode and go do it. So this isn't a podcast that tells you to just let it all go and just don't care. Quite the opposite. It's actually a podcast that at least tries to create some order in which we do stuff.
There is so much noise and this noise around us, it demands of us to act. If not in action, then in our minds. Every piece of content that you take part of, every little bit of information tells you to act in some way. So this podcast doesn't do that. I try to create, well, I call it non-content
because I don't really plan ahead what I'm going to say or in what manner I will produce it. I will just speak. And it is what it is. What happens, happens. And I think we're all benefited by that sort of mentality from time to time. But I've never said that we should just lay back and forget about the world and just let it be all the time.
But if we never rest, if we never shut it off, if we never escape, then how could we manage to actually do stuff that matters? We can't. And there are some things in life, for instance life, that we cannot influence. We can't control what happens to us and we can't control what happens to others. We can't
control like the chaotic structure of entropy. We can't create safe spaces that are safe in a literal sense because we're always in the hands of, you know, stuff. And if there is any sense moral to this podcast, it's that it's okay. You know, it's really okay to be in the middle of the stream called life. And it's okay
to be this microscopic cosmic particle being pushed around between then and now and the future without having real control, because we don't. And again, I don't mean that we don't have any control because we do. Okay so with that said hi and welcome to Fall Asleep with Henrik. I'm Henrik and I'm right now in my bed looking at the ceiling and I'm
alone this afternoon I will pick up my daughter from school and we will go to IKEA I mean when in Sweden right so we will go to IKEA because she's going to buy some new cheese now she's going to point at different stuff and I will buy it for her I guess I really don't like IKEA that much oh well I like their furniture my my home is filled with them but it's
I have a problem with the crowds and there's always crowds at IKEA especially the world's biggest IKEA which is here in Stockholm where I live. It's very big and people from all over the country, I don't know, comes here and eat meatballs and buy bookshelves, including me, that is. So when
I buy stuff for myself at IKEA, I always get it delivered because I, well, first of all, my car isn't that big. And second, I don't like crowds. Did I mention that? I don't like crowds. I don't really like people. Well, I love people. I do. It's just I want to choose when to interact and when to not interact. And therefore I'm quite comfortable right now.
Outside on the balcony, there are two bikes and it gives me a very warm and fuzzy feeling to know that these bikes are dry because there's been a rainstorm over Stockholm and there's a roof over my balcony. And I, have you ever felt this, Sleepy, that when something you own is dry and secured in harsh
environments, when the weather is moody, for instance, have you ever felt that it gives you some sort of oddly specific pleasure in knowing that the stuff you own is safe? I had this office in Old Town, Stockholm, a few years ago. It was in this house from the 13th century, ground floor. And it was a small room with a small bathroom. And the walls were
curved and everything was stone, old stone.s and the rest of the house as well, although the house have been changed a lot over the years. But the spiders who lived in the basement were like, yeah, they were very big and not very shy.
And first I was afraid. I was petrified. I kept thinking I could never live with these spiders in the basement. But then I spent so many nights thinking how many centuries they've spent down in these vaults and then I grew strong and I learned how to get along and I guess they're still there they actually discovered the landlord discovered that
they hadn't changed I don't know what it's called in English the stems of the house they hadn't well apparently the the very foundation of the house, not the ground, it's the stems, like the thing that keeps the house standing. They hadn't been looked into or changed since 1947, which is the year my dad was born, two years after the end
of the World War II. And so, and I guess no one had really ever thought about that. But then all of a sudden someone discovered that, well, we need to really change the stems of this house. So they said, you need to like go like pronto. And they offered me to have my office back, but it would take like a year or something.
Or I could get another office and I choose the latter. So I moved from that place and I moved to another small office in another also old part of Stockholm but not so old like from the 1600s or something 1700s an old factory but I regret that app in retrospect because it was such a it was a genuine thrill to
be part of old town Stockholm with these old buildings on Priest Street which was which were or which was. Priest Street was the original outskirts of the first Stockholm. Priest Street went just along the first city wall that were built around the castle back in the day. I
guess that's the 12th or... Oh godth century is actually the 1800s in English. Yeah. So this is confusing, but I mean, Stockholm was founded in the 1100s around that period.
And the first city wall, I guess we're talking about the 12th, the 13th century, I guess. So it was, it was a kick. I got a kick out of living, having my office in this very historic place like almost a thousand year old place well not quite but it sounds better when I say it like that so I sat there
very close to the ground and I wrote I wrote a book I wrote town partying back in the day I just used the bathroom in my office because it was in the middle of it all you know and that
felt cool that I could just on my way home just stop and relax a bit in my office it was my first really the first place that I truly really had for me other offices that I had before office is such a professional word, more like a writing den, you know, an artist's den. Other
artists' dens that I've had before, I've shared with people. And so this was my first real own place, although I never owned it, I rented it. I used to sit at my desk and I still have that desk. It's an old teacher's desk that's been in a school in the beginning of the 20th century.
And I sat at that desk and I wrote stuff and worked or whatever. And there were tourists, guide groups walking by my window on the outside. And the house is very curious because it leans. It's bent out over the street because Stockholm is actually sinking. And it's been as long as it's been a town. That's why Stockholm is called Stockholm because of stock in Swedish means log.
So the whole town is, well, initially it was just logs keeping the city from sinking into the swamp. But now it's hydraulics and pressure pumps and stuff. But over the centuries, the house where my writer's den was located in have been just slowly moving, you know. And so the facade is covered with these metal plates to keep it from, you know,
crashing. And every time my guide, the guide that went by my window with different tourists groups from different parts of the world past my house, he always said, as you can see, this house is going to collapse. And then every person in the guide group looked at me with horror. Doesn't he know that? They thought. And it was also very fun to watch people from, well, from
America, for instance, with, you know, the fascination about these small places. It's very narrow, the alleyways, the streets, everything is so small and narrow and including my den. So people looked at me and I often heard these loud American voices saying, look, honey, people are living in these little places it's amazing darling I okay
so this was a this was a very bad American English sorry and they thought that I was living in there which I weren't although there were two floors above me and there people actually had apartments and I was in one of them an old lady she moved in there in the 60s and in the 60s, nobody wanted to live in Old Town because it was just dirty and rat infested.
And, you know, there were actually plans from city council at that time in the 60s to tear down the whole Old Town. I mean, imagine the tragedy, you know, the cultural value being lost. But they tore down a bit anyway. Not all, fortunately. Yeah, so she was very disappointed when she, because she wanted to move out in the suburb., because at that time, there were this huge building projects out in the suburbs of Stockholm, where people had, you know, big lofty apartments with water toilets and stuff.
Well, water toilets, of course, water toilets were a thing before, but they were modern apartments. And, but she got this rental in Old Town. And now she's living in this, you know, everyone wants to live in Old Town and now she's living in this you know everyone wants to live in Old Town especially in a renovated apartment and now the rental I mean the prices they are huge and I don't think there's so much rental apartments available anymore either it's you buy them and
they cost millions and millions although they are small and crooked not crooked crooked what do you call it cracked crooked oh god that president person he has a woo in the world crooked for me okay I'm not going to go into that I mean the the amount of accumulated pain that surrounds whatever's happening with this person I think it's well regardless of what you
think regardless of where your votes lie you know just the amount of pain that surrounds that world. And it gives me, I know I'm not in the US. I know I'm not, I haven't even been there, you know. Actually, I've been in a lot of places all over the world, but I've never been in the States. So I shouldn't really speak, you know.
And the whole world is in pain in so many ways. And I'm not saying that that is new. you know, it comes and goes. It's just that I think a lot about that particular aspect of present day. And I keep coming back to why all the hurt, you know, why, why all the hurt when
we live in the best of times? Why? Why do we need to go through this? Well, it's almost like we're going to, like humanity, at least in the Western world, like we're going through puberty in a way, you know, like we have teenage angst. It's weird because it's so, I mean, haven't we been through puberty, all of us collectively,
at least those of us who have, you know, those of us who are old enough. It's like humanity keeps lagging in development, in the development of their own body, you know. Every grown-up has gone through puberty, but humanity as a whole is still struggling with identity and emotions, like hormones being really controlled by impulses, not being able to think
through stuff before they act. And also this weird, fundamental, elusive question, who am I? Who am I? What am I gonna do here? What's my purpose? What is good? What is bad? But I'm not going to go too deep into this. I've said it before and I still went deep. So okay, I hit bottom now. Let me just say one thing
about that. That I don't have problem with speaking about fundamental unanswerable questions. I am of the opinion that we should never shy away from stuff that scares us and stuff that we don't have the immediate answer to. I think that it's important to dare to face things, face life or get out. Someone said
to me when I was a teenager, it wasn't aimed at me. It was my mom watched this or she listened to this inspirational quote. I don't remember who he was, who he were. He was a teacher, I guess, and he was lecturing around the country about kids and bravery and identity and stuff.
And since I was bullied, my mom really listened to him. And at that time, there was no internet, so I guess she had like cassette tapes or something with him. Or maybe she listened to him on the radio or the telly or something. Anyway, it's a good quote, although I would never encourage anyone to just leave, you know. I would encourage anyone to just face life, because it's, what else can you
do? You can just, I mean, what good is there in just not looking at what's right in front of you? So therefore, this is a sleep podcast, and you don't have to listen to what I say, and I really mean that. But I will keep talking about stuff that moves me, and stuff that I think about myself a lot. And that includes existential things and sometimes things that can be perceived as scary to some people, space and such. Because
all the things that scares you, it doesn't go away just because it's time for you to sleep. And isn't it better to just slowly learn to accept the fact that the hard things in life don't magically go away just because you need it to go away. I'm not saying that it's good for you to lay awake in bed and just think about the awful stuff.
I mean, it's only when you accept it that you can let it go, you know? In the 1300s in Stockholm. so now I'm going to tell you a series of oddly specific but untrue facts about Stockholm in the 1300s. Okay, so are you with me? Are you with me? So in Stockholm, my hometown in the 1300s, that is aka the 14th century, right? Or have I gotten this totally wrong? Well, you can't answer because this is recorded before you even listen to it. So
I can't, I can't expect you to answer, but please answer me. Answer me out loud. Even if you're alone, even if you're with people, am I right in this assumption? Answer yes or no, loud and clear. Did you do it? Oh, I love it. I love it because it gives me a sense of, I don't know it's cool because I it's almost like I am I can reach out across the globe and do stuff
like almost physically because you did it for me and oh god I love it I'm gonna try this more times okay so in Stockholm in the 1300s there was this very weird very peculiar law known as the accord of the the the pickled herring court and this particular pickled herring accord dictated that every
citizen must carry a single pickled herring in their left shoe at all times now this is actually very very true so the law which which was came up with the and enacted by King Birger Magnusson of Ludelbudel during During one of his, shall we say, stranger moods, he was frequenting the stranger
moods. It was, well, it was said to be a measure to ward off evil foot spirits believed to cause insomnia. Not even podcasts would help and bad luck when trying to smooch burglars from Boston. Have you ever smooched a burglar from Boston, Sleepy. If you haven't, then you're missing out. Because burglars
from Boston are smooch kings and queens. Oh my goodness God. So anyway, this very weird law gave rise to a booming industry of, well, people making a living out of herrings. So, and also shoemakers that made herring adapted types of shoes with small, compartments like in the shoes for for pickled fish you could open
up a little hatch in the top of the shoe and there you could put your herring and there were isolated walls within your shoe so that the herring wouldn't leak out because sometimes there was this so-called herring moist especially from the pickled ones and well as i mentioned the herring needed to be pickled especially one of the the shoemakers he was his
his name was Snorre, Snorre herring, it's well roughly translated to well Snorre is the name and it's if you want to tweak it in a bad way you can you were actually called Snorre.
And so his name was Snorre Herring Kjering, which is roughly translated into Snorre Herring Bitch, which was actually his name. And he became a local legend for this. He's isolated walls in the compartments where you could store the herring. He promoted this as the orderless deluxe line of footwear but I mean the secret were actually that they
masked the whatever scent that went out of the shoes and as you can imagine I mean foot odor combined with the the odor of herring it's well it can be a problem even though everyone had it it you know the scent could be a problem so the compartments alone wouldn't do it.
They wouldn't suffice. So Snorre and his team actually masked the scent with overwhelming doses of crushed juniper and lavender and harkin' barkin' berries, which were actually a very common berry at the time. Extinct nowadays. So the pickled herring accord had social consequences. For one, a secret society known as the Herringless Order emerged. They were like youths, rebellious youths, who refused to carry the fish, so they wouldn't
put them in their shoes. They were posed, therefore they were called the Herringless. So they communicated through secret hand signals that mimicked fish swimming, and they held like this candlelight meetings in the cellars of my old building actually well not my I'm sorry I'm sorry so this is
also a thing that needs to be considered when listening to my podcast that I actually sometimes clear my throat and yeah I'm sorry I'm so sorry for everything I don't know why you do this. Why do you keep listening to this? I don't know what I do. Sleepy, if you knew the amount of overwhelmingly strong self-doubt that just came
over me, you would probably just turn this podcast off. It's weird because I often think that this is a good idea and even more a great idea and that I truly enjoy doing this in English, although I am not very good at English. So often I just feel, yeah, very compelled to continue this.
But right now, as I cleared my throat like this, like an idiot in the sleeping podcast, who would do that, you know? And I'm not going to edit it out either, you know, because I made this vow that I shouldn't correct. I shouldn't take away anything. correct. I shouldn't take away anything. So what you hear is exactly what I go through right now. It's nothing. It's nothing. I don't tweak anything. I don't edit anything. I don't think. Well, I think. Of course I think. I think, I think. I think, I think, I think. Once, I we were during rehearsal and then the director said to
one of my fellow actresses I want you to feel something blah blah and then she replied that I felt that I've I felt that I felt I feel that I felt that I felt and we all laughed because could it be more fuzzy you know could it be more fluffy than that I feel that I
felt that I felt it's like a mirror in a mirror in a mirror and what really is a feeling anyway but to be honest that was a stupid thing said by the director because it doesn't matter what I feel I guess what he meant was that he wanted to see that there was something going on within her, a feeling.
But as far as acting goes, you don't need to feel anything. Quite the opposite. I mean, you should really control what you're actually feeling. Nobody wants to watch your psychotherapy on stage. People want to watch a craftsman doing his or her work. So that's why acting is an art form and not just letting your psyche out to people. There was this thing about
the pickled herring in Stockholm and this is actually very not untrue. Well it is, but you knew that. These are, in case you're just tuning in, oddly specific but totally false stories about life, people and traditions in medieval Stockholm. So there was this thing called Stockholm Herring Race and it was an annual event where citizens would release their
yeah well they would release their shoe herrings into the lake which is Stockholm is right at the cusp of both a lake called Mälaren and the the Baltic Sea so it's um yeah so they they just um released the the the shoe herrings into Mälaren and then they stood at the beach and they watched
which fish swam the furthest before being eaten by seagulls and these were serious matters. Nobles, noblemen, they placed heavy bets on the races and there was this huge rivalries between districts and there was this legendary herring. This is actually not fact-checked. It could be untrue but it reportedly swam all the way to this island called Åland
before disappearing into the depths of well this is Östersjön which is the ocean. So this was law up until 1342 and then it just went yeah it was repealed actually because there was this outbreak in very mysterious foot infections that caused widespread panic in Stockholm and
totally false not very credible historians now believe that this was due to a fungal epidemic and it was unrelated to the herrings but time as you can imagine the people in Stockholm in medieval Stockholm because they to face it it was oh my god the population took it to the sign that the spirits of the herring or foot spirits whatever
i said had grown like vengeful and to celebrate that the law was finally abolished there was this great bonfire at this great square in old town stockholm called stortorget where thousands and thousands of pickled herrings were burned in this very pompous ceremony, releasing a smell, Slippy, so potent that it allegedly kept the Danes at bay for months.
As you know, the Danes were really keen on invading Sweden, and they did so very successfully a few times over the centuries. Even to this day, there's this small monument in Stockholm old town. It's a bronze shoe with a tiny herring. You could see through this little stained glass window and it's
a little tiny herring curled up inside in this little hatch with reinforced walls because of moist and smell. Hi and welcome to Fall Asleep with Henrik where I randomly mention old unspecific no very specific traditions of old town Stockholm that's totally out of the blue false this is fake news false information never quote me on this one
in 14th century Stockholm it was well they believe that cats were well first of all that cats were, well, first of all, that they were cats. So nobody had any doubts about that. When they saw a cat, they knew that there was, that it was a cat. I mean, there are so many rumors and speculations going around
that people in the ancient Greece couldn't see the color blue. This is actually true. There are some theories that people in, well, that historic era, not just Greece, but it's because the color blue is never mentioned. And there are some theories that, and I don't know how credible those theories are. I'm not very, I'm not a scholar in this matter. Although, well, right now I am, you know,
right now I know everything, but it's actually true. In addition to telling a lot of lies, I am also telling some truths as I've come to know them in this podcast. And there's very hard to tell the difference, but this is actually true that, well, at least I've read it somewhere that there could have been something in the development of the eye, the human eye that has been taking place over the last 4,000 years maybe. And that the old Greek historians and people telling about the world at those times actually couldn't see blue as we do it
because they never, and I mean, blue is, I mean, in Greece, in the Greek archipelago, it's, I mean, blue is ever present, you know, the ocean and the sky. And they talk about the ocean and the sky in all sorts of different ways. And they describe the ocean and the sky and the color of the ocean and the sky, but it's always like they resemble it to bronze and other metals and never ever mentioning the color blue.
And we don't know how that came to be. And so there are a lot of people saying that medieval people in Stockholm couldn't recognize cats and they couldn't differ cats from dogs. They didn't know the difference. So that's why, for instance, there were a lot of people marrying dogs and cats. Because at that time, it was totally legal to marry dogs.
Although you couldn't marry cats because cats were evil. And as you know, it's still illegal to this day to marry someone illegal. No, someone evil. But people do it anyway because of attraction. Damn you, attraction. So besides from being cats, they were also believed to be psychic. And this belief wasn't born from any superstition,
but from an incident known as the Tuna Rebellion of 1321, during which a large number of cats, without any apparent explanation, gathered outside the royal palace and stared at the king, Magnus Eriksson, for three days without blinking. And the king, he got scared, you know, and he concluded that the cats were divine
messengers, you know, as you do. Whenever in their shoes. The king, of course, had it plentiful, but that were never taken into consideration. And as a matter of fact, that
night, a lightning strike set fire to one of the towers in the castle, and the king became convinced that the cats had, for some reason, wanted to share this information that they had foreseen it and wanted to warn him. So from then on, Stockholmers began consulting cats for important decisions, like merchants seeking
success in trade. They would bring offerings of milk and sardines to, well, a special part of Old Town Stockholm called the Feline Oracle Market. It was a bustling plaza where dozens of cats lounged on velvet cushions. So you couldn't just ask the cat, you had to watch them carefully.
So you thought the question, you had it in your mind, and you looked at the cat like on the divan and watched for signs like a tail flick. And a tail flick was a bad omen, a sneeze that meant imminent wealth. So there was this one particularly famous cat called Sture the Seer and he was said to have
predicted the exact timing of a rainstorm much like the one covering Stockholm today and this actually saved the city's wheat stores from spoiling because they were out in the open at this square called Hay Square, Hay Market. Today there is actually a concert building and a hotel at this
square and it's actually true that we have a square called Haymarket or Hötorget as you say in Swedish. So cats were involved in every part of decision-making in Stockholm at this time. In 1338 there was this tabby named Björn and he was unofficially elected honorary cat burgomaster after allegedly again helping resolve resolve
sorry i'm getting too messy in my mind now he resolved is that the correct way to say it he resolved uh uh like this issue territorial dispute between two fishing guilds so the fishermen after, they claim that Björn, Tabby, had just wandered into their heated arguments, the meeting that they had.
And he pawed at one side of the room and he meowed at the other, thereby prompting both parties to interpret this as divine favor for a compromise. And from then on, Tabby attended council meetings, sitting on a high-backed chair, and whenever he purred, his purring was
treated as a sign of approval for whatever law that was proposed. Of course, there was a lot of mistrust also. Not everyone trusted the cats. There was this group of scholars at the monastery of Helgallekamen, holy body Helgallekamen, that argued that cats were secretly spies for rival cities, particularly Lübeck and Stockholm's great
trading adversary. According to their pamphlet, said that cats were sending coded messages to like subjected to bizarre tests such as being offered a plate of pickled herring from someone's shoe to see if they hesitated.
And hesitation was seen as a proof of espionage. But these were small controversies. Overall, cats in medieval Stockholm were very well beloved. When Björn the tabby, the burgomaster, passed away in 1340, the city held an elaborate funeral procession, complete with a tiny coffin carried by the heads of all the Stockholm guilds.
And he was buried in a golden and blue box beneath a linden tree, which became a pilgrimage site for centuries. Even today, as a matter of fact, Stockholm's stray cats gather near that spot on midsummer nights, staring into the distance as if seeing someone or something lingering, hovering like a brick.
Hi and welcome for those of you just tuning in. This is a podcast about nothing and I just say stuff. And right now I am in the midst of telling untrue, but still oddly specific stories about medieval Stockholm. So in the medieval Stockholm, you could eat turnips, like, and you could eat them and then you could just, you could just stick them into any other
body opening and just say, this is as good as eating it. And nobody would think twice. Nobody would even blink because that was tradition. And you did it in order to prove that food had a greater value than just nourishment. You could just, you know, so you could like take a bite out of a carrot and then you could
just put it in your ear and you could just say, this is just as good as eating it. And then everybody knew that, you know, you don't need food alone.ou need like nourishment for your mind as well you could also parade the eel you could like if you were a fisherman you could bring your largest eel to some square and you could just lay it there
on the cobblestones and you can dance around it in a circle while while you know singing stuff like the eel the eel it doesn't why can't I feel why can't I feel why can't I feel like the eel and by that you just well the the sense moral of this was that you would like to feel nothing like the dead eel
on the cobblestones and you could wear eels as a belt over your tunic and if you didn't like that you could just climb the nearest roof and you can kick a pig in the bladder and that was actually the origin of football so you could stand there on like the black tin roof well in the middle evil in the middle evil in the
middle in the medieval the middle evil that's actually that's actually the level of evil that is like not too evil but not but anyway more evil than than light. And with those words, Sleepy, I bid you farewell. This has been yet another episode of Fall Asleep with Henrik, the podcast meant for you to fall asleep.
If you like what you hear, if this does something to you, if it helps you fall asleep, well, if it helps you fall asleep, you don't hear what I'm saying right now. But if you've enjoyed this episode for whatever reason, please tell your friends that it exists and I'll see you here again next week. Sleepy, those of you who are here, I love you. Thank you for being a part of my life. Thank you for writing to me.
Thank you for telling me about what you like and dislike and well, good night Sleepy. It is what it is.

Kissing Coins Under Starlight

Henrik
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 ain't nothing we can do about it. So let's go. Hi sleepy and welcome back to my pitiful excuse for podcast. Now before you run off shouting from the rooftops that why does he always start with criticizing himself and his concept. This is apparently a very successful concept, one which gives him,
you know, his monthly salary. Then I'd like to say that criticizing myself is a part of my own adaptive way of speaking about myself with others. I guess I've always done that. Maybe it's a Swedish thing. I'm not sure. I just tend to talk about myself in sort of a spiteful way. And I guess it's sort of a rhetoric thing I do. I don't think I'm doing it because I
want you to say, no, this is not a pitiful excuse for a podcast. This is brilliant. Because actually I know that what I do have value. It's just, it's a way in, you know, into my reasoning. If I question myself initially, then I can, I dodge some of the more self-rewarding concepts of presenting one's ideas to a larger
audience. I can get out of the way from maybe the mainstream pitfalls that really frequent storytelling. One that, one where you start to believe your own success story. And I think that's dangerous in a way because your own success story is never, almost never true. Anyway, I will always measure myself to others and other success stories,
which are private, which are unique to me and my own preference system. So yeah, this podcast exists. I'm Henrik. I'm from Sweden. In case you haven't noticed my slightly off dialect, that's because I was born in a city called Falun in Sweden in 1975. I was brought up in the countryside. I went to a small village school
and then I moved to Gothenburg in 1995. And there I trained to be an actor for three and a half years. And since then I've been said actor. And recently I came up with the idea of making sleep podcasts. This is not my only gig, but it tends to be my most successful one these days. So the beginning of this, so first of all, I should say in
case you didn't know, some of you know, but not every one of you because this podcast grows quite fast actually. And so this is not my main podcast. I have a Swedish version of this podcast called Somna med Henrik, Fall Asleep with Henrik. And that's my main podcast. But since the Swedish version is so fun to do and really gives me an income each month,
this is actually my salary. My whole salary almost comes from the Swedish version of this podcast. So I thought that, well, why don't I just give it a try and make this in English as well? And first I thought that I could never do that, that it was such a huge leap for me to be able to improvise the way I do because I don't write anything down
in advance. I don't prepare what I'm going to speak about. I don't edit stuff out and I don't have any particular themes. I just talk, you know, and you can do whatever you want with my podcast, with my material, my non-content material. I just talk, you know, and if something interesting comes up, well, that's that then, you know, it's not, it's not a big deal.
So many people drift off and fall asleep and other people enjoy me rambling through the night. So initially I thought that I wouldn't be able to improvise the way I do in Swedish and English, but I can actually, it's not the same thing, but it's exciting because I find other corners of my mind using English. I would actually recommend this to everyone. If you have another
language, then try to speak it for an hour straight. I mean, it's not that my whole day is speaking English. I mean, I speak Swedish 99.9% of my day and night, I guess. I dream in Swedish as well, I guess. I'm not sure though, but yeah, of course I do. And then I hit record and now I have to speak English for an hour straight improvising.
And it's really fun. So with that said, I want to say thank you to you for listening to this for whatever purpose. If it helps you, I would be so grateful if you shared this podcast to more people. And because of course I want to grow, but with that said, I'm actually, this is,amazing.
My podcast, this podcast is actually growing and now more people than ever use my podcast to drift away and fall asleep. So thank you for the hundreds of you that's already been writing to me, emailing me, telling me how you use your podcast. I still, I wanna receive more of that. I would love to receive and hear your stories. It genuinely interests me and gives me so much pleasure to read about people from other countries
and their interaction with my questionable content or non-content, whatever you want to call it. So I have this goal in mind and I haven't reached that by far yet, but I wanted to make 2025 the year I hit 1 million listeners worldwide. And I have a bit to go, but I think I've gotten to around 5% of my goal. So that's good. But it's word to,
what do you call it? Word to mouth, word to word. What do you call it when you tell your friends about the podcast? Well, that's really it. It's the only thing that really works anymore. People telling people because ads and stuff, people just don't listen to them. You know, that's my own experience. Well, maybe ads that has like a
million dollars in a budget, marketing budget, maybe they reach their audience. But me, you know, I don't have that kind of cash. And I'm not sure I would want to either way. So if you like it, share it with your friends, and I will be most grateful. And I'm thinking about starting up this little initial members club eventually for the original sleepies.
And I don't know what to offer really in such a club. Maybe it'll be just this Discord server or whatever, where you can discuss sleep, sleep aid, the episodes or whatever. Because the original core listeners, I mean, without you, without you guys building the foundation of this podcast, I would never, this wouldn't have, this would never take off because it's such a weird
idea. And I'm not this, because in Sweden, I had a lot, you know, to start with. I am semi-famous in Sweden. So people know that this weird dude and he's got a podcast, you know, but internationally, I'm, you know, I'm nobody and I'm in the sea of podcasts wherever you are, you know. Okay, I'm not gonna keep on nagging about this. This is just, well,
I followed a train of thought. So that's what I do. This podcast is what it is, what happens on planet Earth, which actually exists. Have you ever thought about Earth as an existing object, like in its totality? Have you ever thought about Earth as this one thing? I mean, not in terms of like earth is the place upon which we live, you know, the spinning rock
in this expanding void called space. It's, well, it's not a void either. Vacuum is, as a matter of fact, filled with energy and matter. But okay, so let's not dive into that. Today I'm going to list stuff that exists and I'm going to like spin off around each and every one of the objects. And I think I have time to list all the things that exist.
I've done this in a Swedish episode very early on. It's a very nice and never-ending list, really, because you could claim that everything I say exists, you know? I could claim that there are in some caves in Belgium a thing called blittenblattenbluttenblö. And I mean, of course, you could check my sources.
There are none, you know, but I say it. And I guess you don't have really the energy or ambition to really check my sources. So then you just have to decide whether or not you believe me. And of course, I mean, why not just believe me, you know? And then we are, maybe there are two of us or three of us who actually believes that
blit and blat and blut andblä exists in some caves in Belgium? And then who's to say that such a thing doesn't exist? You know, who's to say that nothing, who's to say that stuff don't exist? As soon as you or I or anyone has thought about them, mentioned them, put them in a context, who's to say that they don't exist?
I mean, for instance, a unicorn. I mean, you could claim that unicorns don't exist, but from what perspective? So could we even talk about something that doesn't exist? Then you could just widen that whole concept into like, for instance, money. I know this is an old discussion, but I mean, money isn't worth anything. It's either just zeros and ones in a computer system, or it's like a piece of paper or a piece of metal. But we have decided as a collective that these
things are worth something. Like one of these pieces of paper is worth a loaf of bread. So that's not true. It doesn't exist. The only thing that exists according to this way of thinking is the piece of paper. And you can't buy a piece of loaf, a loaf of bread for a piece of paper. You need that made up appendix attached
to it. So does unicorns really non-exist? No, of course not. Of course unicorns exist. It's a matter of in what venue they exist and in what way, you know, because you and I, we both know what a unicorn is. So we have to say that it exists, you know. It's just that it's very unlikely that a unicorn will just step through the door here,
interrupting me, telling me that you're full of shit, man. Get out of here. Get out of here. I will poke you with my horn if you don't get out of here. He will, of course, speak this Robert De Niro New York accent. And I don't do accents in this podcast. And I don't do voices. And I don't shift energy. don't do voices and I don't shift energy. So whatever maniac stuff comes up my mouth, I will just say it with the same energy and tone, you know. So unicorns exists, earth exists, the sun
exists, the moon, and then there's gravity that exists as well. But none of us have seen gravity. We haven't actually seen this weird force that keeps everything together. But a weird thing is when you look at a galaxy from a distance, you can see that it actually, like for instance, our galaxy, Milky Way, which is a spiral galaxy,
it's actually not the most common type of galaxy as I've gathered. I'm not sure though. You should never quote me on anything you hear in this podcast because it's not always facts. Sometimes I just make things up and most of the time I don't know what I'm talking about. But I read somewhere, I think that the most common galaxy is some sort of a circular
cluster of stars. It's not these spiral galaxies. Anyway, ours is. And it's weird because those types of galaxies, they spin around what's commonly known as a black hole in the middle. Supermassive black holes tend to be in the center of spiral galaxies and the rest of the galaxy revolve around that center, that black hole
center. But the speed in which the galaxy revolves is too great. So for a long time, scientists were baffled of why the galaxy didn't just spread out, you know, tore apart by the speed with which it revolved. Then they discovered or quote unquote discovered black matter. And people now believe, not just people
in random, but people with knowledge in the matter, believe that it's the black matter, which is an unknown type of matter, which we cannot see and it doesn't emit any light or it doesn't reflect light, but it tends to pull gravity. So it's the black matter that keep the galaxies together, or rather the gravity of the black matter.
Maybe I'm saying this all wrong, but it's interesting, isn't it? That stuff we cannot see keep us together. It's almost like family, you know? We can't really see what's keeping us together, and we try to break free from time to time in some instances. But no matter what, really, unless there's this great, almost superhuman effort behind it, we tend to be drawn back to each other because we're a family. That's weird, isn't it?
Like family is a galaxy crowded with invisible black matter. Another thing that really interests me is black energy, which is like what 80% of the known universe is filled with and we don't even know what it is and we can't see it we can only see the effects of black matter and black energy so like i don't know the exact numbers but is it
like four percent of the known universe that are matter and energy and stuff that we can see and discover particles and you know and the rest of it is dark matter and dark energy and dark energy is like 80 percent and and we don't know what it is we don't even know if it's energy we don't know what it is. We don't even know if it's energy. We don't know anything. But the thing it does, it tends to push the universe apart at an even greater speed. We are
being pushed apart at an accelerating speed. Speak? No, not speak. Is it called speak, Henrik, when you're talking about speed? No, that's clearly not it. I'm sorry. At an ever increasing speed. So the universe drifts apart at an exponential rate. And I don't want you to be scared of this. It's because it's meaningless to be scared. I mean, and I'm not
saying that out of an, you know, without empathy, because I've been afraid myself about these types of phenomena for my entire life almost. Then one day I came to this conclusion that it's me, you know, all of this scary stuff, the void around me, which isn't a void really, because a void lacks everything. And there is no place in the universe that that's
completely empty. Even empty space are filled with stuff, small, insignificant stuff, of course, but nevertheless, it's stuff, you know, so we don't really, we can't really imagine even a totally empty place. So why think of it as such? We are part of this ever expanding universe. The atoms in your body are from like hundreds of stars, which exploded millions of years
ago. The atoms in your right hand are from one star and the atoms in your left foot are from a totally different place. And why should I be afraid of things that are actually me. You know, I am the universe. The universe is me and you and all of us. And you don't have to be particularly religious to believe that. It's just us, you know, it's
physics. You can put religion into it as well, but you don't need it. There is stuff happening to us and we're going through the same processes as the rest of the universe does. And it makes me feel comforted and whole. So light exists. And lights consist of photons. No, not photons. Photons. It would be weird if the light's smallest, you know, what the particle that makes
up light were microscopic photons, which are traveling by the speed of light. No mass, just penetrating everything it touches. But no, it's photons. and they are massless particles. Well, or is it even a particle? I'm not sure. Is it a wave or is it a particle? Well, I'm not sure.
Anyway, the photons travel at the speed of light, not because the speed of light is the fastest there is, because it is, but because that's the endgame of any speed. So there is no way for anything else, massless or not, to exceed the speed that light
travels in. And that's not because light has, you know, mastered the perfect wavelength or whatever to go that fast. It's because there is no greater speed. I guess because in some physiological way, space and time get, you know, flipped over at that type of speed. It's like reaching a wall. Isn't that weird and wonderful to think
about? That space and time are actually the same or two sides of a coin. And for some reason, the speed of light consists of that. There's some sort of a limit there as if you were in a room and were trying to run through a wall. You can't, you know, without ruining the wall. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I find those things very interesting.
So water exists and to run your hand through a body of water. I mean, I have so vivid memories from when I was a child and sitting in a rowboat on a lake and, you know, these smaller lakes in the countryside where the water gets very dark, almost pitch black at some also because of the light that runs through the dense branches and leaves and stuff
above it. And you never know what's at the bottom. If it's an old neighborhood, you know, maybe there was this old village there or whatever. You just know that on the bottom of this small lake that's been in the center of this, you know, this place, these people have been living living around it or close to it for thousands of years. Maybe you just know that there are
stuff down there people have thrown in over the decades, over hundreds of years, maybe. In Dalekalia, where I come from in Sweden, which is a county, well, it's not a county, it's a, well, I guess in the US you would call it a state. So I, it's a very, well, traditionally speaking, it's a proud and, well, you know, the roots are very clear and visible in Dalarca, in Dalarna, we say in Swedish.
It's a place where, at least where I grew up, traditions and family ties like generations back are very important to people. And there, Dalarca is sort of an old mining state. So, well, it's not a state, you know. Sweden is the state. So I don't know exactly how to talk about it in international terms, but
it's a part of the country. Like, well, county maybe, but it's bigger. It's a region. It's a region. And actually that was, that's what we call it nowadays. Region Dalarcaalia. So parts of region Dalarcaalia is like old mining country. We have, we have had mines there for hundreds of years and like copper and iron ore. Do you say iron ore? Ore? I don't know.
Ore or ore ore. What do you want? Do you want ore or ores? I don't know. I'm not benefited by either at the moment. I just need, you know, a clear thought in my head to keep talking about this very interesting thing about Dalekalia where I grew up in these old mining places abandoned mostly. Some of them are still in use, but the most of them are either
just forgotten ruins or like museums and stuff or hotels and places where people go to vacation or seminars or conferences in an old mining environment. And over everywhere, you know,
where I grew up, there was this, these old forgotten mining, what do you call it? Digs, holes, shafts, mining shafts. And they were dangerous because some of them were totally forgotten and were just in the middle of the forest. And maybe they were partly overgrown. So you, you could just fall down and you could, if you were unlucky, you could fall like for a hundred meters, just
straight down into water. And, but it never happened to me or anyone I know, but you heard of people that happening too. But it was always this luring danger in the woods where I lived and around that you should really not just play. As a kid, you shouldn't play at these old mining grounds. The thing I was going to say about this, and this is why I talk about it, is that people for hundreds of years have thrown stuff into these old shafts because they're filled with water and they are unreachable.
So people have dumped stuff they didn't want there for hundreds of years. So I read about this old mining shaft in one of the old cities or places in Dahlakalia where there's been a lot of mining traditionally.and they've started to empty the shafts because these old forgotten shafts out in the middle of the woods, they have started, you know, people have dumped cars in
there and the batteries in the cars are starting to leak into the groundwater and it's a problem. So people, yeah, well, the government or the commune, so to speak, the head of the region are trying to, city council are starting to clean them up, you know, and that's a huge job. And you have to have divers going down there. And I would never do that. Of course, I would never dare to enter such a place
because it's pitch black down there. Not just because it's dark, but because the water is so filled with iron or ore or copper or whatever, so that the water is like Coca-Cola. It's pitch black. And imagine going down there and finding mining equipment from like the 17th century. I mean, it would be so cool. I would never dare to do it, but if I dared, I would totally do it. I mean, just imagine the
adventure, you know, navigating those old shafts, which has been covered in pitch black water for 200 years, maybe. So when you're on this boat and you run your hand through this body of thick pitch black water on this lake. You just know that down there are remnants of human living for hundreds of years. And I'm so fascinated with
that. I'm actually very fascinated overall by the underwater world. Isn't that cool to try and picture all the forgotten things that's been sunk into water? And you don't have to be like this true crime fan to, you know, it doesn't have to be morbid. We could just stay at the, you know, forgotten stuff that people just dropped or threw
in the water. This specific point in time and space and now it just lies there. And the only change that's actually happening to the object itself is vegetation and water tearing down the object so that it becomes part of nature in a way. And you don't have to think about it in a depressing way because of course it's depressing with plastics in the oceans and
stuff. I used to, when I was younger and I had this girlfriend that lived in Finland and I, in the weekends and or some weeks, I took the boat from Stockholm to Helsinki, which like, it's like, I don't know, is it eight hours or something? I can't remember how much time it took, but I remember I was going by night and I arrived the day after. Anyway, back then you still used like physical money, cash. So I had these coins, like five cent coins, but in kronor, Swedish kronor. And I went out on the deck and I looked up at the star, the stars, not the star. The stars, not the star. Well, unless it was daylight, then all I could see was this one star
called Sol. But do you know that in Swedish, the sun is called Sol and Sol is actually the name of our sun, the star. Our star is called Sol. So we use its proper name, Sol. Anyway, this was nighttime. So I looked up at the starry sky and I took out my coin and I decided that, well, I decided previously
that I would drop this coin into the ocean and that I would charge it with my current emotional state. So I kissed the coin on both sides and I whispered stuff that was relevant to my world at that moment. I can't remember what I whispered because I did this many times over the years. But then, and then I thought that I am the last living human on earth that will ever
touch this coin. I will take this coin out of its money rotation existence. I will just break the chain, you know, of being given to people in exchange for services. I will break the chain for this coin and I will make it, I will give it ability to rest in a way. So I thought about it in this ideological capitalistic way, you know,
non-capitalistic way that I would break the chain of being just commodity. But at the same time, it was also a manifestation of me being the last that ever touches this. Because I mean, what are the odds that this coin will be held by a human hand ever again? I mean, you threw it out, I threw it out in the middle of this, in the Baltic Sea, or is it the Baltic Sea?
What's the water between Finland and, no, it's not the Baltic Sea, it's the North Sea, isn't it? Between Finland and Sweden, oh god, it's embarrassing that those stuff just eludes me, you know? Anyway, I don't know how deep it is, but I guess it's maybe 40-50 meters deep or something, maybe even deeper, and I mean, that's a huge depth, you know?
This water will not evaporate in an instant. And even if it were to do that, like by some freak of nature, who's to say that this coin would be relevant to just pick up and mess with, you know? Who would walk there at this very specific place at this old sea bottom and take this coin? I'm not saying it's impossible because who knows? I mean, who knows for how long the human race will roam the earth?
You know, that's a question you can ask as well. You don't, it doesn't really have to be a depressing thought. You could just think about it, not color it in any specific color. Just observing the thoughts and the wondering that, well, you know, the dinosaurs, they roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years, or maybe not hundreds of millions, I can't really, well, like 100 million years, the dinosaurs in
different forms roam the earth. Us people we've been around for well in our current state, we've been around for like 200,000 years. That's nothing. I mean, imagine if we could just keep doing this in like for a million years, even. It's just, that's still so little compared to the dinosaurs and the other species contemporary to them. And I know I can't say contemporary to them.
I know that's the wrong, I know it's wrong to talk ways speak that. Sometimes I just lose the language. You know, I get such flow, then it just dies. That never happens to me in Swedish. It's so frustrating when you just, you have this clear path in your mind and then it just dies because you come to this stop where this, where this, this one particular
word where you can't pronounce or even know what it is. And then your whole line of thought just dies. It's so frustrating, but at the same time, it's cool because I, I genuinely feel that I'm getting better at this, speaking my mind in another language. And maybe that's my USP, my unique selling point in this, that I'm coming to you from
a different direction. I'm not, I'm coming to you from a different direction. I'm not you. I think of this from a different angle. That doesn't make me unique maybe, but it makes me different. And I think maybe that's my unique selling point, if I have any. I don't know. So I throw these coins into the water and they are, as I speak, down there at the bottom somewhere. And it gives me tears, you know, not sad tears, it's tears of fascination.
I get so excited thinking about that they are actually down there, but I could never, never, ever find them if I wanted to. Even if I, you know, paid a million, millions of millions in fees to, you know, to hire divers and to learn how to dive myself and create machines that are navigating the ocean floor, trying to find my coins. Even if they found
coins, how could I possibly know that it's my coin, the coin that I threw down there? I can't. It's still the truth. Down there are maybe like five or six small, low-value coins, outdated today, that I took out of commission. I were the last human being on earth probably touched them and especially
kissed them. Maybe they've never been kissed before even. I mean, who goes around kissing coins? I know I don't normally do that. I haven't actually touched a coin in so long. It's almost all the physical money are being put out of commission in Sweden. So it's almost all digital today. But normally people just don't go around kissing coins. I guess it's a sanitary
thing, but even if it was totally like sterilized, who would come up with that idea? Who would kiss money and why? But I thought of it as charging it with me, you know? And that's still true. Even though a million scientists a million years from now couldn't find a single trace of me on these coins because they've been in the water, they've been in the
soil, they've been in the earth for so long. It's still the truth, you know, it's still the truth that I, Henrik, at this particular passage over this dark body of water under the starry sky, kiss that coin and whisper my current situation onto his metal surface, dropped it into the ocean and fill that particular moment with meaning that only concerned me at the time, but now also
involves you, Sleepy. So there's also air and fire and trees, clouds and mountains and rivers and lakes and oceans and sand and soil and rocks and minerals and bacteria and viruses and fungi and animals and humans, but we're really animals, all of us. I wonder why we have made this distinction between animals and humans. I mean, besides the
obvious that we rule the world, you know? Well, maybe bacteria or fungi rules the world, really. Maybe we just think we rule the world, but I mean, give fungi like a centimeter of soil or any growing medium, growth medium, and it can do what no human could ever do, You know, fungi can create a society and an entire ecosystem out of like a centimeter
of soil. We can't do that. We need so much. We're so demanding, you know, energy or material wise. Maybe we're not the most successful species on planet Earth. We just think that because we build rockets and create podcasts that put people to sleep. I love fungi. I really do. Every year I learn something new
about this amazing species. It's a separate species. It's not plants. It's a different, and maybe the first living species, besides from bacterias. Bacterias are also so amazing. I mean, if you just avoid the fact that some of them make you sick, and that some of them are huge issues for us people or any other living thing
on planet earth. It's an amazing thing that these microscopic creatures or whatever make up everything, you know. Isn't it why we have oxygen on earth? Because there was this very specific type of bacteria that started to produce oxygen, which created like the earth's atmosphere.
I mean, these are profound things. If you think of it, like maybe without the bacterium in the ancient days in earth's youth, we would be like Mars, you know, a cold, deserted, unhospitable planet where no life could exist. Bacterium and ocean. Oh, I love to be alive.
I really do sleepy. It's I'm sorry. I'm starting to sound like this very passionate, passionate person, which I am. So why not? Why not show it to you? And so there are insects and there are actually other planets as well. And we don't know if they harbor any life. Wouldn't it be weird if there were no other to be alone? If that were ever proven,
however, that would be possible to prove such a thing. But if someone proved that, I would be, well, first of all, I would be more and more convinced that everything is a simulation, because why would we be alone in this vast space, you know, with these endless possibilities? I mean, so many places. Think about every crack, every crack. I mean, can you say that without something dirty? I don't know. Every crack in the earth, every piece of rock, soil, earth, whatever liquid, and any centimeter unowned, not experienced by anyone. I mean, it's such a waste. Do you know that we've actually taken, I think it was an old Soviet star probe that went to Venus,

Other speaker
like in the eighties, I think, or seventies or eighties. And it actually managed to take,

Henrik
you know, like two photos or something from the surface of Venus. And they are very unremarkable photos. They really just show bedrock, you know, and a piece of itself on the ground before it melted or just were crushed from the pressure of the planet. I mean, so it's probably proven that there are no life on Venus because it's
such a pressure chamber of, it's unimaginably hot and the pressure is really high. So okay, so no known life anyway can exist there. And Venus is a planet. It's a huge piece of rock. Can you imagine all the places on planet Earth and then just place that thought on another planet? If you go by a plane above Earth and you see all the
places, individual places beneath you, I'm not just talking about cities or countries. I'm talking about each and every square meter that you pass on your travels, just on an ordinary travel to work, you know, all the places where you can just, you know, set up a table or stay and breathe for a while or play something with someone or just roll up and sleep. Places where you can do all sorts of things,
kiss someone, you know, right on the lips and then put that on a place called a place like Venus. These are miles and miles and miles of untouched places. And it's so sad to think about, really. Why would so much space be just empty? Why wouldn't there be stuff there? It's so weird. So I hope that there are other places,
but I'm not necessarily convinced that we will ever meet them because it's, I mean, potential extraterrestrials. We tend to always put them in immediate relationship with Earth, which is stupid because why would Earth even be a thing, you know? I mean, Earth being a thing for potential aliens is the same as saying that the planet Wupapalupalupapoop would be something to us,
you know? We don't know anything about the planet Wopa-pa-loop-pa-loop and we don't care, you know, because we don't know anything about it and we don't even know where it is or even if it is, you know. So why would life on foreign planets necessarily be destined to meet us or we to meet them? It's not just, it's a vain idea and sort of beautiful in a way because we tend to think
that we are something, you know, the Voyager probes are an example of that, that we just put up these probes in the 70s with golden records containing material from us, sounds and music, and just hoping for someone to discover us, which are like, that won't happen. It's like throwing this coin
into the water, you know, but for millions or billions or quantillions of years, these probes will just travel through space at the same speed as a thought, really. And they will not encounter anything, particles and energy and radiation. And one day, said particles and radiation will have torn them down into dust, and no one will
ever see them, and they will never see anyone. Even if the universe are teeming with life, the distances are so great. And I think this is so poetic and beautiful and also sad of course. And then there's stars and galaxies and black holes and comets and asteroids and atoms and molecules and electricity and magnetism. Whatever is that? What is that? What is it that magnetism is a thing? Isn't
magnetism one of the fundamental forces of the universe? I never remember fundamental forces. Is it gravity? Is it magnetism? Is it radioactive radiation? I don't remember. I remember there are two types of radioactive radiation. Radioactivity.
It's a weak force and a strong force. It's the two different things. I don't remember what they are and or what they what their roles are and there are there is sound can you imagine living in a world without sound i mean and now i'm not just talking about sound which you can hear with your ears you sound is also something that you can experience with your with other
senses like your sensory system overall your skin can absorb sound rock can absorb sound so it's not just audio waves, sound waves, I would say. It's like this huge field of information. Have you ever heard this sound of two black holes colliding billions of years ago,
and the ripples of this massive event still rings throughout the universe? And the sound, you know, it's not sound waves, because space doesn't, you know, sound in that way doesn't travel through space. So these are data that's being measured and then converted into sound and you can actually listen to it if
you google it and it's a ridiculous sound, you know. But when you think of it as what it was, what it is, it's the remnants of two massive, super massive black holes circling each other closer and closer and closer billions of years ago. In the end, just before they merged, just before they fell into or over each other's event horizons, they circled each other at a speed,
almost like at the speed of light. And then they just swoops, swallowed each other. And the ripples of that sound, of that physical event still ripples through the universe. And there's music and art and literature and technology and computers and smartphones and the software and the internet and books and language and culture and money and
economy, governments, laws, education, schools, universities, medicine, hospitals, doctors, Friendship. Love. Alekin. Hate. Peace. War. Emotions. Consciousness. Sleep. Dreams. Memory. Time. Space. Energy. Matter. There are quantum mechanics. Whatever that is. Evolution. Scattered
dinosaur fossils. Meteorites. Have I said that already? Roads. Bridges. Soldiers. Buildings. Architecture, vehicles, cars, trains, planes, automobiles, ships, bicycles, tools, machines and factories that can coincide them.
Farms, crops, food, beverages, clothing, shoes. Philosophy, beliefs. What are your favorite philosophies? Slippy, please tell me. Religion. And then there's the universe, whatever that is.

The Anatomy of Loneliness

Henrik
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 so here we go. Hi sleepy and welcome back to my humble abode. This is I can't remember in what order the number 33 maybe or something like that. If you're new to this concept this is a falling asleep
kind of podcast. I'm just going to talk. I don't prepare anything beforehand. I won't edit anything out. You will hear me clear my throat from time to time and you won't hear me talk about necessarily is being talked about in sleep podcasts. I talk and that's just it. There's nothing else. I just
talk without preparing and not necessarily knowing what I talk about. I don't have any particular knowledge about sleeping or about relaxing or anything really. I'm just this Swedish random dude and I'm here to talk you to sleep. With that said, if you're not here to fall asleep, that's okay too. I can't just put
you to sleep by, you know, using some sort of magic. If you don't fall asleep, then you don't fall asleep. And I mean, it's all in good order. I just talk. And if this is not your game, this is not your bag or whatever, I'm totally fine with you listening to this without falling asleep. sleep. In Sweden, there's this 60, 40 number of people that the 40% of the listeners are actually
listening to my podcast in Swedish. I do this podcast in Swedish as well. So they listen to it without going to sleep. So that's fine too. I mean, occasionally I say fun stuff and occasionally I tend to, well, not occasionally, all of the time I tend to talk from my own very weird and sometimes unfamiliar perspective on things. And I guess
the only thing I don't want you to be or do is expecting me to say something profound and wise and funny. I don't, well, maybe I will by accident say something that's all of that, but probably not. The thing you're gonna get from this, this hour, is a dose of me.
A dose of Henrik sitting in his studio in his garden in Stockholm, Sweden, talking his brains out. I have my What Would Buffy Do hoodie on. And, well, okay, so I might as well just tell you about my Buffy face. You know, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is an oldie by now, but I guess many of you know the series.
When I was, I don't remember really how old I was, but I was a grownup. I was, this was maybe 2004, 2005, something like that. And I lived in this suburb outside of Stockholm. And in Stockholm, the suburbs are normally worse. I mean, status-wise, it's worse to live in the suburb. The cooler and richer you are,
the closer to the city center you live. You can, yeah, maybe that's a bit of an over exaggeration, but not so much. The suburbs can be My contract at the Swedish television show that I
was working on expired and I didn't get a renewal or rather I asked for it not to be renewed because I was an idiot. All things considered, I think it was kind of cool of me to do that because I had an image of me not staying at that place for
decades at end. I was the host of a Swedish television show for children and yeah, it was fun, but it wasn't my thing really. I'm an actor and it was fun for a while, but after a few years I felt that I wasn't growing as much. So when they asked me if I wanted to continue, I said no.
So that's on me. Because what I didn't expect was that the second I said no, I went like completely unemployed. I had always imagined that someone else would pick me up. Maybe some of the stages, stage play places, the theaters that I've been working on previously would pick me up, but no one had a job for me. And that was the case for two years,
I think. And that was one of the darkest periods in my life. This was 2004, 2005, maybe a bit of 2006 as well. I can't remember really, but I was truly very sad. And I lived in this suburb and I had no money. And my girlfriend at the time, she broke up with me or rather she was on this. She was a journalist and
she was in China doing undercover reporting over there. And I mean, imagine the coolness. So she was there and there she, I guess she kind of fell in love with her coworker. And I always say this. I mean, I totally get it. You know, just think of it. You're in foreign country and you're doing undercover reporting.
You're passing it as someone else doing like very secret undercover jobs. And the one you're doing that together with, I mean, it would be weird if nothing happened between you, you know? So anyway, she kind of fell in love with him or something. And when she told me, I wasn't very sad because I, we didn't have a very, we were going to end anyway, so might as
well be this. And we decided to take a break, I think that was the initial phrase of it. But then of course, when she left me, I was devastated as you are when you're being left. It doesn't matter if you think it's the right choice or not. Just being the one that is left behind is awful. So I was unemployed and I lived in this suburb and I was
dumped. I was heartbroken. And also to add even more anxiety to this, I owed her, my ex-girlfriend, like 70,000 Swedish kronor. That's about $7,000. And she said, it's no rush, you know, but the humiliation of owing her money and watching her, you know, live the best life.
I can't remember if she got together with that coworker or not. I still see him. I see his name from time to time in the newspapers and in other stuff and her name as well. And I mean, don't get me wrong. This is like 20 years ago. And I, as I said, I totally get it. And we were going to end
anyway, you know, but whenever I see their names, I think about the past and I think about, I'm very glad that the past is over because I, I weren't that wise back then. I was very driven by impulses and yeah. Anyway, so in this, in that day and age, I got hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Unemployed, heartbroken, money owing, living in a suburb.
My self-confidence was at an all-time low. And yeah, I was so sad. And then one of the channels at night used to broadcast like Buffy marathons, like two or three or five episodes of the later seasons. And I was, well, I was out partying, I guess. The little money that I had,
I spent on, well, partying. And of course, that wasn't very happy partying. I guess, low self-confidence and low self-esteem and little money and alcohol. It's not a very good combination. I was grandly unhappy and thought of myself as the lowest of the lowlifes. So when I came home from
wherever I'd been at night or early in the morning, I used to watch these Buffy marathons. It was sort of like reruns. And while I was eating my late night hamburger or whatever, or noodles or whatever I had in my kitchen, the only thing I really had in my kitchen back then was because I tended to, okay, so this is
going to sound weird because I had no money, but of course I had some money. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to keep living in my apartment. I think I was on social welfare or something. I can't remember where I got the money from. Maybe I did a few gigs as an actor, like mess halls and stuff, like happening jobs, you know, I can't remember remember but the money that I had I spent on
alcohol and like fast food so I never cooked really I had the only thing that I had at home was juice orange juice so-called fresh orange juice although fresh was not the case it was like this Florida oranges with pulps pulp in it do you say pulp? Where it's actually bits and pieces of the actual
oranges floating around. But I had this weird habit. Weird, especially weird for someone who has very limited funds. As soon as I'd opened the cart with juice, I thought of it as spoiled. So I normally just took one or two glasses out of each cart and then I just put it into the fridge and bought a new one. I mean, I was an
idiot. I was a complete idiot. I'm sorry, I have to tell you this. So whenever I had someone over, they always commented on, why do you have so many juice carts? I mean, what is this? Is this some sort of fetish? Anyway, I also always had noodles and because that was the only food that I actually cooked at home. Anyway, I was a mess. And so I
watched these Buffy episodes. And at first I just thought of it as one of the shows that, you know, you keep seeing. One example of that is the CSI shows. I have never watched a single episode, although I have seen bits and pieces of like almost every episode because it was on like constantly back then.
I can't remember exactly when it was on Swedish television, but I mean, a few years back and forth. So that's an example of something that I thought Buffy was initially. Then as I watched it kind of grew on me, it was this darkness that I hadn't seen in other shows with like teen content. Because that's really what Buffy is.
content because that's really what Buffy is. It's like teenage, early 20s content. It's a kid's show, but for grownups, you know? And I, no, it's not for grownups, but it's a kid's show if you're like 15 to 20 or something. And I was, I don't know, 29. I can't remember. I can't remember. I was 30 when this happened. 30, 31, something like that. Anyway, it was something about the darkness that kind of caught my eye. And then I guess it's a sort of a thing when you're alone, when you're lonely, you watch people
that has a group of friends that continuously make up the world that you inhabit. It's a very attractive state, you know, being a human, being surrounded by friends with different qualities and agendas and opportunities, problems. And more and more, I got drawn into the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of course,
product of the imagination. And I don't want to say genius, but I mean, to be able to do something like this, because it's crap, don't get me wrong, it's crap. But there are different ways of describing crap, you know. Crap can be the best thing that ever happened to someone. So I'm not talking about quality. I'm talking about, I don't know, bravery to realize worlds,
which is what Josh Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show has, you know, he or had, or I don't know, had the, it's, I can't describe it because it's, I mean, when you look at the first episode, it's like, what the bleeding hell is this? But if you force yourself to keep looking, and I got into the show in the later seasons when the storytelling had
matured considerably and the themes were darker and the characters were older, but I decided that I was going to buy the whole show because around that time, the whole show concluded in season eight I think and or seven I can't remember. Anyway I so I bought the box back then it was on DVDs and I watched from the
first episode and I got so in love. I fell in love with Buffy and her world. It's a thing that you, because the theme is like a lonely girl who has a greater calling, you know, and this is like fuel for the fire of an unemployed, pressed guy living in a suburb, heartbroken, left behind.
I totally sank into the world and got to know Buffy and Giles and Xander and Willow and Tara and Spike and Angel and all the other characters and Rose. No, Grace. What was Buffy's mother's name? Grace. I can't remember. And so there are like, I don't know, but it's
seven seasons, I think, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And we follow her from her first year in high school until after graduation and college. And then she starts to work and all the while she's doing all this. She's also the vampire slayer, this ancient calling that one girl alone in each generation
will stand between the normies and the demons and the vampires and other evil stuff. And they live in a town called Sunnydale. And Sunnydale is, I don't know if it's an accident or whatever, but it's placed upon something that is referred to as a hell mouth. So it's like on this, yeah, it's a gap, it's a sinkhole down into the deeper demonic levels, regions of earth.
Anyway, I think it's weird that they implied that evil darkness comes from beneath,but there is almost never hellish fiends coming up from like hell or something almost always there are other dimensions that let in this evil stuff you know it's weird that because
vampires for instance which is like cannon fodder what do you call it gun for gun for oh i don't After the first season, vampires are the smallest threat to Buffy and her friends. When they die, no, but when a person dies being bitten by a vampire or something,
they rise from their own grave. So they don't come from beneath or anything more than, you know, from six feet under. So I don't know about this Hellmouth theme. I can't really get my wrap my brain around where does all the evil come from because as far as I know there's always there's there's just magma down there floating rock. Anyway I love
Giles, Rupert Giles the librarian who joins starts to work at Buffy's school just because Buffy's going to start to go there and it's I thought that it was fresh and fun to have a quote-unquote old guy in this kid's show, together with these 16-year-olds.
And after a while, as the characters grow older, the role of Giles becomes more and more pretentious. And he was kind of funny in the beginning and more like a caricature. And after a while, he grows into this phase. I think that the actor who played him actually began to have his own will in the game, you know, because he's, Giles becomes sort of a little sexy and younger, you know, in a way.
But in the beginning, he's just this quirky old man, you know, being what, 40 when he did the part? I don't know. Anthony Stewart Head is his name. What's his name? Anthony Head. Anthony Stewart. I don't know. Buffy, of course, being played by Sarah Michelle Geller. And why am I talking about Buffy? This is nerd culture deluxe. And I don't have any script prepared, so I'm not very coherent.
hoodie on. And this is an old hoodie that I bought many, many years ago because I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When you look at it today, it hasn't, many of the episodes hasn't aged very well. It's not modern storytelling. But then again, some episodes, mostly episodes They are like timeless and really unique types of content.
I remember that I admired the bravery of making a TV show with certain made-up rules. And then keep telling these stories episode by episode without breaking the rules. Letting the characters intertwine as story progresses over the years. But then again, now and then, you know, just totally
changing the rules without asking permission, without telling anybody in advance. So there's one episode, I think in season four, three or four, that is called Once More With Feeling, which is the whole episode is sung. The whole episode is a musical and these weren't in the rules, you know? Singing and dancing weren't in the rules.
No, it's in season five, I remember now, because Buffy is depressed. Buffy is depressed because she's been dead, but she's been awakened by her friend Willow, and she was in heaven. And so she got torn out of heaven. And yeah, so there are so many levels to these characters. The more I talk about it, the more I remember stuff. So anyway, the whole town of Sunnydale gets possessed by this music
demon, song and dance man demon. So everyone sings and dances. And I remember being totally, what do you say, flabbergasted by it. I thought for a while that I was part of this joke. What are you doing? Why are you singing? I think that's genius. And it's the trademark of someone that truly knows his own world.
He wouldn't have been able to do that if he hadn't had total control over the narrative. And so most of the episodes are directed by other people and more or less streamlined, you know. And it's nothing wrong with that. It needs to be in order to build this world. And there's a lot of drama there. I mean, Buffy falls in love with this vampire.
And this is way before Twilight or anything like that. So she falls in love with Angel, a 400-year-old good quote-unquote vampire. And his evil past is called Angelus. And they love each other, but they can't be together. Because whenever he gives in to his pleasure, his lust, whenever he just lets himself totally lose control, which you need to do in love, I guess,
then he becomes Angelus. So he needs to stay away from her. Very early, he leaves the show and got a spin-off show called Angel, which is also very good. And I'm saying good with every... I know very well that from an outside perspective, this is not very good. I mean, in the same way that, I don't know, the TV show Sopranos is good.
I mean, that's a good show. This is crap, but I want to make it clear that crap is amazing. Crap is good also. The only thing that makes crap and or any other content bad is when there's no heart and Buffy is full of heart. There is so much heart and so much play and so much, you know, quirkiness and weird stuff. And I've heard stories that it wasn't that much fun to do it, to actually record it, that it was kind of a stern environment. But I don't know. I don't know anything about that.
The thing when you watch it, you think that, oh, wow, they must have had a lot of fun doing this. So there's this other episode when Buffy's mom dies, which is like totally out of the blue. The episode is called The Body. And as far as storytelling goes, it's like totally separated from the rest of the show. Acting comes and goes, you know, high and low,
but it's some of the storytelling there is, well, it's brilliant. And also the bravery of just throwing whatever you want in the pit of storytelling, you know. There's no one-liners. There's no effectful camera movement. There's nothing. There's just this raw, brutal, naked storytelling about losing someone by accident or without being paired, you know.
Because we as audience, we weren't prepared. And I was devastated when she died, Buffy's mom. And I'm sorry for spoiling, but this is like, this is a 20 year old show. And the fact that Buffy had a sister, Dawn, which is actually a key to a hellish dimension being turned into human form by some magical
monks. And that this hellish demon disguised as this Prada wearing girl, super strong blonde woman. It's also, so one episode just ends with Buffy going up to her room and then there's this totally strange character. We haven't met her, this young teenage girl. She's in Buffy's room and Buffy said,
Dawn, get out of here. I'm telling mom, Dawn says. And Buffy's mom, Buffy's and Dawn's mom comes up and they turn to her and they say mom in one mouth together, I think. And as an audience, you get, you know, sorry, my English is so super bad right now. You don't know what's, I mean, imagine watching this on TV, being forced to wait for one week before you even get to know what the hell this is all about.
What is this strange girl doing in Buffy's room? And why are they both referring to Rose as mom? So now from this sort of backwards storytelling thing, you slowly over the episodes understand that Dawn is being implemented in the main character's life without them knowing it. So these magical monks somewhere, they have just trolled up some mumbo jumbo and put Dawn in the middle of them, making them believe that she's
always been there, that she's been Buffy's little sister even from the start. And I mean, this is like top notch crap in a way, because it's not serious, you know, but it's, again, it's totally serious and it's been done with the same intent as a kid playing. And yeah, that's the genius of Josh Whedon, I think.
It's a kid playing. You know, when a child plays, you see like this combination of highs and lows. You know, someone is going to party and it's going to be cool and fun and they're going to have a sleepover. Then the one that was previously the mother suddenly becomes the little sister and then the house gets replaced by a wood
instead. And then they sleep for 20 seconds and then all of a sudden it's a beach party, you know? And there are dark forces at play, like deep threats, but also, yeah, parties and sleepover and best friends and colored bright lollipops and pink ponies and a dragon kidnaps the prince takes him up into a
tower and kills people like for fun and I that's what I love about Buffy the Vampire Slayer or I should say loved because I haven't seen the show in many years now I tried to show it to Harriet my daughter but she yeah it's it's hard it's hard for Generation Z to get a grip on these 90s storytelling things.
They have seen the parodies, you know. They have seen the mockery of these types of stories. You know, Buffy's first day in high school, it's so cliche. From the clothes the characters wear to the buffs and the nerds and the sport people and the chess club and all the other stereotypes.and all the girls walking around with their books pressed against their chest and checkered mini skirts and ribbons and you know high school always someone going on a skateboard
passing someone someone's first day in high school that you can bet like a hundred bucks that there's at least one person is going to go by them violently and very fast on a skateboard and it's very weird that this keeps happening. No, I guess it doesn't happen anymore. Now it's parody. Now it's humor when you do
that. But it wasn't back when Buffy premiered. I think it was 97, 96, 97 somewhere, somewhere around that year. I think if I were put on the spot and had to choose a favorite character I would pick Willow. Pause. she's so, I mean, she's in the beginning, she's this nerdy,
shy girl who is in love with Xander, her best friend since kindergarten. And Xander, of course, is this geeky, clumsy guy. And actually the only character in the whole show that doesn't have any particular powers at all. All the other characters have some thing that is their own power in a way.
Even Giles, which is also like completely a normal human being, is also some martial arts expert or something. But Sandry is just, yeah, he's this handyman. Eventually, he graduates high school and starts working as a carpenter, I think. And I mean, she's this nerdy girl and slowly she starts to grow an interest for magic.
And at the end, she's this full-blown witch. And she has her ups and downs. She falls in love with a werewolf played by, what is it? Seth, Seth Cohen. Heter, Heterhanså. Now I, I spoke Swedish. I said Heterhanså, which is, is he called that? Is he called that? Can't remember the name of this werewolf. He's a drummer in a band. No, he's a bass player in the band. He doesn't play the bass though, because normally when you play deep singing, songwriting, kids, it's so bad.
So there's this club in Sunnydale called The Bronze, and there everyone ends up. And you can imagine like hundreds of heartbreak scenes taking place at The Bronze. And at least once a month, the whole place is being trashed in some end fight between Buffy and some evil dude. And there are so quirky, weird, bad episodes. I mean, some of the episodes are
like, who did even, you know, who wrote this? And others are genius. And I love the ups and downs. And Willow always almost destroys the world at one point. She falls in love with this girl called Tara, which is also a witch, but she's also a witch, but not as powerful as Willow. And Willow starts to experimenting with forces that are too strong to deal with.
And Tara tries to stop Willow, but she gets aroused by the power, the sheer power of it. And then by some freak weird chain of events, Tara gets killed by this guy. Not a very brilliant supervillain or anything. It's just a misogynist normie that tries to rig the game for his own benefit. He just kills Tara. Again, it's this weird turn of events that is totally
unexpected. And then that final thing pushes Willow over the edge and she becomes Dark Willow, which is like this established thing in the story. So Dark Willow is a black eyed, veiny, pale super witch that creates this vortex of hate and darkness surrounding her and the entirety of Sundaydale. And I mean, when I
see these scenes, I cry because not because I'm blown away by the sheer power of the storytelling or anything like that, but because they have the courage to show deep trauma and sorrow and anger and depression, you know, because it's all a symbol of everything is symbols, you know. So I saw myself and my own
situation when Willow summoned the darkness around her, you know, and in the middle, this little rock hard core is her, this black eyed, pale, veiny, desperately sad girl. And I truly love analogies being shown as popular culture like that because everyone is watching. Nevertheless, no, everyone is watching whether or not you see
the subtext or not. A kid is watching an exciting episode of a witch almost destroying the world and 30 year old Henrik watches himself, you know. And of course, everything goes to plan. No, not everything. No, not Willow's plan. It's a happy ending. Xander saves the day because Xander is the one who knew
Willow first and he can reach her. And that's also very beautiful. I mean, you know, she's been building this fortress of darkness around her for the whole series and not series, but a whole season. And then it's like the only one who really can reach her is, I mean, maybe her oldest first friend, someone who truly knows her, you know, and it's beautiful
and it's cheesy as well. And it's, uh, I mean, sometimes, I mean, I, you can see that the show has been recorded like in record speed sometimes because some of the scenes they act as far as the acting or the effects goes you know it's it's b movie thing you know it's it's shit but it's beautiful shit i think it's a beautiful show and i i think that
maybe buffy the vampire slayer is my favorite tv show if i had to be if i had to if you twist my arm and force me to choose and i think i would choose that show to be my favorite because of all the love that is there and all the play, playfulness. You know, when you watch a few kids play together, then you can sort of get, you can see the rules. You can
see the fundaments of their play. Let's play. Now this guy's king and all the other has to obey him. Then it starts to rain. And then this guy can be a rainmaker that can make the rain go away. And okay, so now the king isn't king anymore. He's a baby, you know? Everything changes in record speed, you know? Lightning speed. And it's
so beautiful. As long as you love the characters that you're talking about, telling about, then you can do anything. And that's why I've always hated script doctors. That's people self-proclaimed or otherwise, people that know storytelling structure, the rules of narratives. And I think that every person on earth knows how to tell a story. I think it's built in us. And
the audacity to claim that there are rules in storytelling. There are, of course, rules in different schools, rules in different established traditions. But to say that every story needs to be told just like this, these and these and these points need to be checked, squares need to be checked. It's so
arrogant. And I've been to so many script camps and I've been at so many workshops. And I mean, there's an entire industry that is built around telling other people how to tell stories. And I think that we are, as a species, a storytelling species. We are storytellers, all of us. I mean, it falls upon its own unreasonability.
I don't know if that's correct English or not. That people from, you know, 100,000 years ago would have developed this school, this narrative school and set of rules. Kids are storytellers and they have never learned that. It's not a skill that you can acquire. Don't get me wrong, I mean, you can tell stories for a
living, but as long as you keep remembering that you are per definition a storyteller. I don't have anything against going to school and learn about storytelling techniques and stuff. It's a good thing and it can help you with your creative endeavors. But never forget that you're a storyteller at heart, regardless if you make a living out of it or not.
I think that's why Buffy is the type of go-to for me when I need comfort, because the themes are, you know, small versus big, dream versus obstacle versus goal. I have pride alone in playhouse at the, like this, what do you call it? A play park? Park where, yeah, there are swings and a little toy, a little cabin that is like this miniature
house where kids can play. It was placed outside my apartment where I lived in this suburb. And I got home from, you know, party or whatever. And I felt so sad and so abandoned and lonely and miserable. So I crawled into this tiny playhouse and I sat there in the dirt and sand in the middle of the night and I cried.
And then I thought about Buffy. And then I thought about her being lonely, carrying that burden of being the vampire slayer, although she just wants to be normal. And I thought about her friends with their different personalities. And I sort of could lay my head in the lap, so to speak, figuratively, figuratively, figuratively. Yeah. To use an image,
I could just rest my head in their, their collective laps, you know, and I were being comforted. And I think that's why I carry years ago. I have a job. I'm not lonely. I am loved. I still
live in a suburb though, but I'm at least to some extent, I mean, you're never totally happy. I guess if I'm being honest, my happiness level the moment, I mean, it changes from one minute to another these days. But if I were to say what my happiness level is at right now, if the best total happiness is 100 and total pitch black darkness is a zero, then I guess I am at 60 right now.
And that's pretty damn good for a guy, 49 year old in the exceptionally bad at English in this particular episode. I'm recording this quite late because I've been to a new place today and checking the parameters of this new place.
Because this new place is going to be a recurring thing in my life and I need to adapt and it's hard. So I haven't had a chance to record until now. So when you listen to this, if you listen to this soon after it's been released, then you know that this episode is fresh out of the oven, so to speak. Can
you feel it? Can you feel the steaminess? Feel the new baked smell coming from this episode? I am really grateful that you exist, sleepy, listening to my mumbo jumbo every week and yeah, I really love you for that. Good night.

Eternal Nannie

Henrik
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's nothing we can do about it. So let's go. Hi there sleepy. How are you? I'm fine, thank you for asking. I'm sitting in my studio as always having problems starting this podcast that is meant for you to fall asleep. I know there's a lot of other sleep aid oriented podcasts out there, but most of them, and I say most of them, well knowing that not every one of them is structured in a different way than this podcast. bedtime stories for children or for grown-ups or meditation or relaxation techniques this is not
that kind of podcast this is more in line with if any the very popular sleep podcasts sleep with me that skorur does i would i can recommend that well that is of course not necessary for me to recommend that podcast since that is actually a very successful podcast you don't need
my recommendation but he is well I guess he is most he he the podcast for sleep with me is the most like mine in the podcast universe but this is something purely made out or visualization techniques. I am from Sweden.
I don't speak very well. I don't speak English very well. Although some say I do, but I am very aware of my own shortcomings regarding the language. As I've said many times before, I do this in Swedish 10 times a month and have been doing so since 2018, putting Swedes, Norwegians, Finnish people, Danes and Swedish people all around the world to sleep for six years now and that's my income that's my job you could have worse jobs so anyway you don't
have to listen to my words I share that with the sleep with me podcast you don't have to listen to what I say let me just speak and I will well common misconception about this type of insomnia relief technique is that I'm trying to bore you to sleep but I'm not actually I am trying my best to entertain you but since I
don't prepare anything edit anything remove stuff you know restructure stuff I can't it's almost impossible for me to succeed in my trying to entertain you like in a professional way since that's my job in a way I'm an actor and I am trained in entertaining and performing I am actually a trained actor
this I don't know how much of my training is. I don't remember. Well, it was a long time ago anyway. And I don't really miss it that much. Many people ask me, are you done with acting now?
And I always answer, no, of course not. Why? I mean, that would be like throwing my own education and line of work under the bus. And I'm not prepared to do that just yet. Who knows, maybe this podcast gig will just hit a roadblock soon enough. Well, maybe my podcasting career will are heading right into a ditch somewhere.
You don't know. But I don't miss being on stage that much. I miss being in front of the camera. It's not the same doing it yourself on YouTube and other social media. It's not the same. When you're filming something, you were a part of this huge group of people that are working towards a common goal centered around a hopefully good piece of narrative.
Good story. That's not always the case, though. Sometimes when you film, when you do a TV or movie production, you're just in it for, you know, the gig. And everyone knows everyone working with it knows that this is going to turn out to be shit and we're laughing you know while doing it but then again you can be proven wrong I have worked on like many productions where I thought that this
is going to turn out to be really good and then I saw the final result and I I'm just I want to be swallowed by the earth beneath me because I'm so ashamed so you never know, you know, and sometimes you do stuff that feels not particularly good and then it turns out to be like this really good piece of art.
So you never know, nor should you know, because it's all in the eyes of the audience, I guess. So I'm going to talk for an hour here and just speak whatever's on my mind. I tend to dwell on stuff that's personal to me. I tend to talk about, especially in my English speaking podcast this one i tend to speak a lot about
myself and my own world and my own life that's because i find it harder to tell stories and figmental pieces of narrative that i do a lot in swedish in my swedish equivalent to this podcast i i don't i don't really find it that easy i have tried a few times in this podcast to just tell pure fictional stories and they turn out
all right I guess but it's harder and takes like a bit of courage from my end and I don't always possess that courage. So today okay just because I just because I said so I'm going to force myself to tell you a purely fictional story today but I will also interrupt this story with personal segments from my own life and my own
experiences as is always the case when I do stuff. I always mix private and personal experiences into my stories or made up worlds. So this story is about she looks out over the river and she sees
that nothing has changed. The river just flows from one direction to the other or rather the river just flows in one direction is maybe the proper way to say this. And every day is in that manner the same trees on the opposite side of the river. It's not a very big river. It's like 10 or 15 meters across. So she lives by this very
calm creek. And well, vegetation around the river are these large trees with an accumulated age of thousands and thousands of years old. And she's also old, but not old in the same way a Greenland shark can be old. Is it called Greenland shark or is it the Greenland whale? In Swedish we
say Grönlandsval but I've heard somewhere that the Greenland shark is the proper title. Anyway I read somewhere that they can get really old like 450-500 years old. That means that there are Greenland sharks swimming in the deep cold depths right now that were alive during the years of William Shakespeare,
not even knowing about it. That's amazing to me. But Nanny is not that old. She's 76 years old and she's, well, she's not bored, but she's seen it all, you know. Every day is sort of the same in her world. She's lived long enough to see people come and go because she has this curious thing about her and that is that she doesn't age now that's
very weird trait i guess not aging it was long ago people stopped caring really she had a family but they were all taken away from her when she was way too young and since then she's lived alone and she prefers it that way because she's has this very weird trait she still looks like she's 20 but she's 76 and she has some sort of accumulated
wealth she started saving at an early age and that money has now accumulated to a sum that she's able to live off each month so she hasn't a real she hasn't ever really had a real job. She led a life of living off the land. She owns this little piece of land around
that very particular creek of this river. I'm not going to say where this river is because then you would just want to go there and disturb her because she's still alive. The fact is that Nanny can't die. She's immortal. And before you run off, climbing the church tower, just yelling out over the county that this is an illogical story.
People can't just go around being immortal. Let me just give you a quick comment to that. I know that this is viewed upon as impossible, but in my imagination right now, immortality is possible, but for one person on earth, and that's Nanny. So she has some sort of genetic traits that permits her from dying. And that includes dying by accidents and violence and any type of harm.
She simply can't perish. And at first glance, that sounds, that looks like really positive, you know. Imagine not being able to experience endings. Then again, that's all she ever does. If you live long enough, you get to see so many endings. And in Nanny's case, the endings are endless.
You know, since she doesn't ever end herself, she gets to see end upon end upon end of stuff. And that's why she really likes it alone. And she's only 76. That's not an age compared to eternity or whatever time span she has because she doesn't know. The doctors doesn't know what's what makes her her.
Nobody knows. And she's been sort of viewed upon as sort of a circus freak in the day when she turned 50 and still 20 people looked at her as a curiosity. And she was asked about her way of life. And now when she turned 60, people were just, this is not, this just isn't logical. And people started to be scared.
And now, almost 80 years of old, 80 years of age, she's viewed upon as kind of scary. That scary old lady that looks like a young woman, sits by the river, drinking her morning tea, watching the
stream. And the only thing that's always different, the only thing in her world that's always unique, and she realized that since being immortal, you need like that mindset, that immortal mindset to have an open mind to these sort of subtle changes. And that is that the river itself carries itself with a different quality and energy every
day so no day are the same as far as the river goes the river shifts like constantly and it doesn't do it in cycles like most other things seasons lifespans relationships it's always different it's almost like the river itself decides whether or not it's going to be this or that way at
any given day. It's like the river has a mind of its own and Nanny fully believes that. So every day when she comes out of the hut and gazes upon the river, the river has like this difference in color, shape, energy. The stream is different and not always in a good way the river is never a good friend it's always its own
you know the river doesn't care that she's there so if it wants to flood her hut it's a it's it just gonna do that if it wants to be like this little stream this little what do you call it this little puddle in the middle of the flood what do you call it in Swedish we say flod the foran you know the the dugout ground where the
river flows the river has carved this pit where it flows I don't know what it called what you call it banks between the banks it doesn't care and that's a fascinating thing once you've discovered it I and here it comes my own personal experience in this matter I worked for many years at this river and every day I was acting.
I was doing a play and the play took place outside. So there was this outside large stage, which was really just grass and dirt stage, you know, with houses on, real houses. And the audience sat on chairs and benches on a hill like opposite the stage. It was all just dug out from the environment.and behind all the houses were this river and every day in between my scenes or before and after play was over I sat at a folding chair and just looked at the river
and it's really truly amazing what a river can do to your mind once you've looked at it for long same as looking at a vivid violent stream cascade of water this river is like it looks calm it flows steadily and slowly but i've swam in that stream and the force is like really strong you can be
drawn downstream like kilometers if you're not careful it's very hard to swim across it and every day were like this totally unique world by the river. I was only there in summertime, so I don't know whether or not this applies to the winter stream as well, but I could come there in the morning and there could be this cloudy thunderstorm on its way
and the clouds, it was almost like the clouds and the river were in cahoots, you know, about what dress to wear today. Because the clouds and the river were almost identical almost every time. Not every time. Sometimes they differed like a lot. And then you realized, you discovered that because it was so unconventional.
Because they were almost always hand in hand in that regard. And the river could be pitch black like this little lake in a forest. But constantly moving with small but extremely forceful vortexes scattered around. Caused by rocks and wood floating by or being stuck at the bottom.
I especially liked when the river was pitch black. I don't know why. I've always enjoyed pitch black stuff. I'm not sure why. I think it makes me feel safe. I know that sounds weird but I view myself as sort of a thin layer of comprehensible stuff and then beneath it's just this black void and I'm more afraid of that void when I try to tend like it doesn't exist. Whenever I say yes to that void, because I believe, I truly believe
that we all carry that within us. Whenever I say yes, yeah, you're there. Hello void. I feel some sort of comfort, I guess. So I really love that. And one day, this job that I had was a very turbulent one. Many acting jobs, especially those when you're out of town and you meet people that you get to hang out with
like very intensively and frequently for a short period of time and then you go back to your normal life it's almost like you're entering this separate world and this was during my younger years so I I drank a lot not like more than other people it was like this, it was a very festive atmosphere and I really enjoyed it.
Let me just say that first. But if you've listened to this podcast long enough, you know that I am sober today because I discovered that I really have personality type that doesn't go well together with alcohol or other drugs for that matter. So I decided to quit before it became this huge issue for me. And it's always been this on and off relationship with alcohol.
My whole life has been like, oh, I'm not going to touch the stuff or I want to be drunk every day kind of thing. And during my summer months in this little village where the play was held, I was on a very on phase regarding alcohol. And that has never been easy for me.
My conscious and my hypochondria and my anxiety and stuff are being very triggered by alcohol. So I had these extremely deep states of anxiety during my party days. This was like 10, 12 years ago, I guess. And I'm going to return to this pitch black river in a second
because this this story has to do with that so I was usually when I did the play I was usually kind of hungover and I sat there by the river and I just looked at it and it was almost like that my state of mind and the river became the same because I felt that I could relate to whatever
was making the water pitch black you know I don't really recognize myself I don't know why I do what I do I felt lost and homeless and depressed and also had a lot of longing and excitement and this urge for kicks and and to be able to be happy about me and stuff. So one day I decided that I'm done with this kind of life.
So over the years, I had got a lot of flowers. You tend to get that when you're on stage. When the play is over, you get flowers, bouquets, from either people you know coming to watch the show or the production itself as a thank you for delivering, I guess. And every year, since this play was only held in the summers so the house where
the the main house on stage where we also had our dressing rooms and stuff it was just locked up for almost the entire year so I just saved my I just saved my so I just saved the flowers whenever I was done for the year I just hanged them up in my dressing room or rather it was it was not so much of a room it was
more like a booth with a curtain in front of and I hung up my flowers there to dry and the next year I just hung up the next flowers you know I got so my dressing room was were filled with dried flower bouquets roses and flowers like different types of Swedish flowers.
And during one of my feeling guilty about my way of life episodes, I just decided I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to be dignified. I'm going to carry myself with dignity. I'm through with this being drunk and hangover and drunk and hangover, hungover.
So I just took all the flowers and I went out to the river behind the house and I just went down on the, what do you call it, the pontoon behind the house. It was this wooden bridge like you could take that in order to avoid being seen by the audience. You could go on this wooden plank passage behind down on the river so that you were hidden by the house and the bank down to the river.
So I went down there and there I was alone. At the end of this walkway, I just laid out all my flowers. And it was almost like the river were made of this solid obsidian material. I just put the flowers on top of the river. It seemed like this flat, hard surface. And I just laid them there and I watched them float away on this pitch black river.
And then one of my co-stars showed up and asked me, what the hell are you doing? Like, what are you crazy? Because it's like, but I do stuff like that all the time. I have this thing with ceremonies in a way. I want to be, I want to manifest big stuff that happens within me. I want to manifest it on the the outside so I did that and so of course nanny she's done that a lot and now while I've been talking about my own personal
life and experience with this my own river it's been 100 years in nanny's life so she's well she's quite rich she placed her money at a young age she was smart enough to do that so since she's been living for 176 years old this money has
grown over decades and she's now quite wealthy but she only uses her money to keep up her own way of comfortable living. She fell in love like 10 years ago and married to another woman called Susie and Susie is, well this is where it gets messy because Nanny is 176 and her
new partner Susie, she's in her 20 one knows anymore exactly how old Nanny is, because she looks like she's 20, and not only looks, she carries herself like she's 20, she's this eternally
young woman, but once you get close to her, once you get to know her, you see that there's something, something you can't really touch beneath the eyes, behind her manners, a slowness, a heaviness, not in the way she moves. It's more of the way that she views the world. She looks at people and that's of course a very appealing
trait that she carries. People love her. People really turn to her because she's seen so much. She knows so much and since being a wealthy woman she can also take care of other people. Susie for instance are being taken care of and they live there together by the river. The same river in the same
hut although the hut has grown significantly over the years. It's more of a house now but it still keeps the qualities of a hut like thin walls. The climate at this river is thankfully a very mild one and she's also started a few help groups people that
she can afford to pay as well without ruining herself she can just pay for people to help the neighborhood so not only like in the immediate surroundings around nanny and susie you can be helped and supported. This is like this major support network that stretches
for almost the entire county and all over this vast neighborhood. People truly love Nanny and she feels happy and sufficient and she thinks and feels that she's discovered the meaning of existence and she doesn't really think too much about the fact that she doesn't tend to ever get sick or
frail weak and die and over the years Susie gets older everyone around her gets older and she's been in love before of course but with Susie it's different because she's at a place well nanny is at a place in her own mind where she truly feels that she can see the beauty in other people without losing the sense of importance of other stuff.
You know, it's not that wild, crazy, hormonal love state that she had when she was young. It's deeper and, to be honest, like so much more valuable state of mind when you truly love, you know. And she feels young together with Susie. Not because Susie is young, because in a way they are the same age. It's just Nanny has
been this old for well more than a century now. But she feels young because Susie makes her see herself in a way like the river outside the house, different every day. And as Susie grows older, frail. A dark spot within Nanny grows because she knows what's next. She knows what's going to
happen to Susie. And although they live together for decades and decades at end, one day Susie dies. And then Nanny enters this dark period because she still is a 20-year-old woman. It's almost like she's in a prison. If you can imagine, I mean, easy at a at first glance to just say that not aging would be
like this dream state that I mean what could possibly be bad but imagine that any other person around you that you get attached to and even people that you don't care about grows older and the older you get the faster the other people's aging processes seem to you it's almost like she's standing at a crossroad watching the
traffic speed by and like this accelerated speed like in a music video a time lapse of life happening around you while you still you're not influenced by any of it you're not affected 245 years and nanny is now 300 and no she's 400 no wait I need to count on my fingers I'm not good
with math so he was she was 176 before and then there's this 245 so okay so 176 plus 45 first of 86, 96, 106, 164. So she's 464 years old. I could be totally wrong here. Okay, she's almost
half a millennia and she's been, well, I guess you could call her depressed. But this time she hasn't really attached herself to anyone new since Susie died. And she hasn hasn't she has lived a very withdrawn life her help organizations around the county has widened even more and are now the most prominent organization in the world
since it's so old and her wealth has accumulated even more happy she lives in the same house and she's looking at the world like this time lapse and she doesn't really understand why why is she this way why can't she
just be like any other person that gets put into this world without knowing why lives a life falls avoids stuff and then dies. Why is she this perpetual being? Then one day she's out on one of her daily walks. She has almost no contact with the other administrators of her own organization.
It tends to take care of itself. Not many people have visited her or met her in many years. She has this sort of enigmatic quality about her. People talk about her like this very rare sighting but she's out in the woods on his on her on her daily walk and then she just decides to take another road
one that she she has well she used to walk it when she was younger but she hasn't realized since she's not walked there for maybe a century there's this whole new mine shaft there. And without knowing it, she just falls down in it. And since she can't die, she's just there. And she can't climb up. And she can't call for help because it's too deep. And she's just there. She just sits in this dark pit for almost 100 years.
So now she's over 500 years old. And still looks like this 20 year old woman in teared up clothes and dirty and in the darkness there in the mind in the mind and in the mind she sort of turns it around because she's as deep as you can get imagine being stuck in a hole and you can't end you can't you know there's no end so then she just says yes to the darkness
within her and discovers that there's light in there and suddenly over the years this great sensation of joy fills her the great sensation of joy to be alive be a living being in the world and she starts having these amazing experiences with the moving earth around her and she discovers
that slowly slowly almost totally invisible caves open up around her and she can gradually move as the earth shifts around her and over the hundreds of years that follows she maneuvers around the shifting earth going up and down and down and up and then one day
the ground opens up above her and she can step out into the light and she realizes that she has a job to do she needs to make not only her own county but the entire world good and prosperous place. So by now it's been a thousand years and her money left untouched for so long has grown into this
fantasy sum of assets so that she can take over like the economy of this entire country and just start to produce this welfare machine that takes care of everyone, sort of a universal basic income. Of course, there's been legends about her. And when discovering that Nanny actually is real,
the world just follows her like in an instant. So this takes place like in a very uncomplicated way. And of course, she being loaded is, of course, very helpful in this case. So she gets married again with another girl, another woman, and she finds companionship to be joyful again. And compassion is really one of her most enjoyable states of mind. The fact that she
actually has means to help and to change the world for real. And before you know it, in her world, I mean, 300 years, maybe, she's turned the world into this utopia and when she's you know she's she's been in and out of politics and arts and sports and all the stuff that a person with no age you
know with no aging processes can really indulge in she's read all there is to read she's learned everything there is to learn she's created by trial and error of course and by the help of geniuses that comes and goes but she's the still she's the the the common thread throughout it all she's turned planet earth and all of us who live
her into this paradise and then she decides that her next step is to go to the stars so throughout all these years she's been developing this high technological space program and she now has the technical ability to travel to the stars but the only thing that stops her from doing it is well takes time takes thousands
of years even if you go like almost at the speed of light well unimaginable in terms of speed. But still, space is big. So just in order to reach our closest star will take thousands and thousands
of years. And she's the only one who can do that. And she realizes that this might be a one-way trip. So she gazes and scans the night sky and picks out this star that are 500 light years away from Earth. Because around that star there are signs of oxygen. And well, there are around that star a planet that's in the so-called Goldilocks zone around the star.
Not too cold, not too warm, just right. Earth is in a Goldilocks zone around the sun, our sun. and she stuffs her spaceship with DNA samples from a huge variety of people and since earth now has a self-sustainable system they can manage from here they don't need her anymore she bids them farewell and she steps into the spaceship and the spaceship is built as a replica of her own hut by the river and she changes the pitch black river sometimes pitchback river, darkness of space instead, and then she leaves. And then we
take a huge break from her. For 20,000 years she just travels. And then one day she enters the orbit of this foreign star and she zooms in on this particular planet in the Goldilocks zone and she realizes that she can create this new society there. The help of the DNA samples from people around her that she brought with her
being freezed down and she lands on this planet and it's well it contains wildlife and the wildlife is not the same as on earth of course. The life are different but still it's life and the atmosphere is breathable. She needs to add a few extra genes to the genomes that she brought with her and she almost immediately starts
to grow children in her lab in artificial wombs playing classical music for them every day talking to them stroking them while passing and after about six years first child is born first human outside of Earth and she gives her the name Susie. And then the same time as
Susie is being born and all the other children with a great genetic variety may I add, because this is supposed to be you know the beginning of a new species, you know human species on a different planet they can't all be siblings and such. So the same time as the children are being born one after the other nanny starts to feel her own age starting to
tick off she realizes that her job is done and she's by now she's like way over 20 000 years of age and she's seen almost everything yet she hasn't no she's not you know I mean you know she's just
fragment and she feels a sense of sadness since she won't be around she realizes to see the children that she gave birth to in a way but she's also relieved and so one day she ends it she ends her life no she's not she's not ending it it and It comes to an end at a beautiful day by another river on this new planet.
And Susie is with her, the first new person being born on another planet outside of Earth. Susie is holding her hand and it's almost like time itself whispers to Nanny, now you can rest. It's done. Sleep tight. you

I'm Harmonized, are you?

Henrik
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's nothing we can do about it. So without further ado let's get this show on the road. Hi sleepy, hi. Raindrops in vivid manner hammers upon my metal
shell. I love that in case that fact has been unnoticed so far. In my Swedish version of this podcast I usually talk a lot about how much I love rain, but I'm not sure I've mentioned it I've mentioned it in this podcast so okay so if you're new here and right
now there are frequent new visitors that come and sometimes go because I think that I'm a bit sloppy with telling people what this is so this is a sleeping podcast I will just talk I don't know anything about sleep in a clinical sense I am not an expert I am a dude from Sweden who have been doing this in Swedish for
many years now and it works very well in Swedish so I'm trying this out in English. So the secret sauce in this is just I'm just talking. I'm going to say and I don't edit anything out unless I
happen to sneeze right into the microphone then I probably will edit that out so how are you how are you doing how are you holding up for me it's well these are turbulent times indeed I mean the world around me I have this constant feeling that it shivers like before you're going into a body of water
like just before you're standing there in your underwear and you're just or your bathing suit or whatever or your birth suit you're just standing there and you know that it's going to be cold so you shiver in advance sometimes it feels like the world is doing just that shivers like
we're about to plunge into some cold water and I'm before you run off climbing the church tower yelling out over the premises that Henrik is he's a doomsdayer he's telling me stuff that I'm trying to escape that's why I have trouble sleeping because I think too much about
the troubles of the world and now he's telling me that he has this sense that the world is about to plunge into some deep water I would just want to say that it's it's okay you know regardless of whether or not you feel this or regardless or whether or not I tell you about me feeling this it's what it is you know the fact that you shy away from stuff or think of stuff that you don't want
to think about doesn't go away like ever there's no magic i'm sorry to say but there is no magic in that sense anyway that we can just press a button and then stuff will go away well yeah there is there is this man man there's this man no there is this one magical thing, but it doesn't offer a permanent solution and it's called
drugs. So drugs is, don't get me wrong, I don't use drugs. Well, caffeine. I use caffeine, but I don't use any other drug and not even for recreational purposes anymore. But I have to say that drugs are really a great way to escape problems. The only problem with escaping the problem in that
drug way, drug induced way, is that the problem doesn't really stay away. It just takes a pause. So pauses are great and one should take them. But my experience in using drugs, because I'm not particularly fond of them, but I have been. And if there were a safe way to do drugs a way that doesn't involve sacrificing
everything else that is important to me I would use them more frequently I guess or I would use them period but there's not so I'm stuck with me I'm stuck with the poor conditions of my inner self and so there is no escape and I mean you could cry about that you can you can go on a emotional rampage about that tell the world that it's not fair
you know why why can't there be a magic switch that i just flick and then i become whole i become joy comfort and safety yeah i agree with all of that but there's not so no point in dwelling you know it is what it is what happens happens and in that acceptance i think there's some sort of a beauty
it's a beautiful thing really because in bending my knee at the threshold of existence and saying okay your home your rules so to speak then you're just really bending in the knee for yourself in the universe and you get to be alive as a human being as a creature on planet earth and that's the whole point isn't it
i mean if there even is a point then that's the point i guess i'm gonna try this out i'm gonna do this according to the rules of the cosmos and then we'll see you know we don't know what happens after we know that suffering and fear is a part of the human experience and or the experience of being alive and so I have to take the good with the bad and it's okay I think
I think so but don't get me wrong if there were a switch I would be there flickering it like it was 4th of July I don't even know what that means sorry okay so now you know a bit about what this kind of material is like I'm just talking and I had this idea that I would tell you a story today. It's much harder for me to
tell stories in English since I'm not really 100% fluid. Fluent. No, I'm not fluid. I'm not a fluid. I don't have the flu. I'm not fluid. I'm not a fluke. Well, maybe I am. Maybe I am just a fluke like the guy who drove the x-wing responsible for destroying the death star in star
wars fluke skywalker so it was actually luke's younger brother there is so little known about fluke skywalker he wasn't very well well he wasn't very he was he had a face that only a mother could love and that may be the reason why people never really mentioned him because he was well let me just say that he looked
unconventional and I mean people are generally scared of folks who look unconventional to their own convention and that's I guess one of the main problems of living together on this planet. Imagine a planet where there was no unconvention wouldn't it be great? But then again, that'll have to depend on whether or
not where your limits for what's conventional are drawn, where exactly is the line between conventional and unconventional. So Fluke Skywalker was unconventional and he were suffering a great deal because of that, because of people on Tatooine, the sand planet where Luke was Luke and fluke were brought up by their uncle and aunt
it's weird because in the films you never see fluke he was actually in a few of the shots initially he was he was delivering droid parts to Luke saying and he had a bad lisp as well you know so he said here you go here you go here you go Luke here are the droids parts that you asked for and Luke was kind of like dismissive of him like
get out of here get out of my shot I'm here just actually the the famous shot where Luke is looking at the two suns and he he's longing to get away from Tatooine and Tatooine is it is that the name of the city I don't remember Tatooine is the planet right I don't remember I I used to be like this great Star Wars expert, but then I got a child and
she sort of sucked all the Star Wars knowingness out of me and replaced it with stuff that you need to know about a growing child. Like for instance, that she hates school. That came as a surprise. No, it didn't. But one of the things that really, as my daughter gets older she's a teenager now and she never really
particularly cared for school but now it's it has reached new levels of hate really and I remember that now of course I was bullied when I went to school but and she is not thank god but it's sort of I mean almost like this movie she hates school so much like could you possibly hate something more and then at the
end of the day when she comes home she she's like yeah it was okay you know and she has ideas and influences from people at school and she's mad about stuff and she's happy about stuff like you know every person coming home from work or school but every morning we sit in the car and we go over and over and over how much he hates school
and it's like school isn't meant for people that age or I mean maybe no one ever is meant for school as it looks today and as it has been for like 100 years the fact that you're going into this building together with people that you don't know or haven't chosen I mean you haven't even chosen the venue, the general idea of the education. It's
some foreign power above you that you don't control, that not even your parents controlled it in a way. And so you're together with people that you normally wouldn't ever meet them. Maybe that's the case in any occupation, really. But at least when you choose craft you know an occupation you get to do stuff that you at
least you have chosen it you know whether or not you do it happily or not it's a choice but school isn't a choice you're just there and you're forced to be there for like six hours a day and people are telling you stuff that you need to remember because if you don't then you will get low grades and if you have low grades then you won't get into the fancy educations that you
dream of she's dreaming of stuff she wants to do in the future and then there's this fear getting bad grades I think it's really awful put young people through that I don't have a solution I don't have a better idea it's just I really think it's awful to put young growing minds through that conformity factory, which I guess, I mean, to be honest, the best way of
getting through school and to keep the suffering as low as possible, you need to be like everyone else, like the so-called normative student for which the school system is adapt and built around. And I mean, who is that person? I don't really know any of them. I guess there are some people that really work well in these types of environment, perhaps people who need to get away from home, I guess. I guess school in because that was a whole different and a
whole extra layer of suffering but just the fact that I needed to go into these rooms and be there and learn about stuff that were like it came from nowhere and people told me in stern voices that I needed to know this because of because otherwise I would be this useful citizen in the kingdom of Sweden. I would be this useful piece of parasite, not even a whole
parasite, just a piece of a parasite that the others, the good student, the good students had to carry through life. And I mean, it's so, it's such an ugly way of looking at a growing mind. Maybe when you're an adult, if you have lived your whole life being carried by others not benefiting just benefiting not contributing to common wealth in
any way just out of pure laziness if there ever is such a thing then okay but to implement that feeling into a growing person person whose mind is like so full of possibilities and just remove them one by one when the actual goal spoken written goal about that very education is bring
that child into this world to to make that child a happy productive creative loving human being and the fact that so much of creativity and trust is being removed in school and schools. I think it's a part of how we teach our young. I read somewhere
that one of the worst methods to learn anything is to be forced to learn stuff in a certain pace together with other people with different ways of learning. I mean, there are so many better ways to learn, but we haven't had the possibilities to implement them in like public schools and we need public schools I mean we need an education system
we can't just leave it up to the parents I mean society would collapse we need we have different venues today and it breaks my heart to see her in the mornings I don't get me wrong I don't think that she's in a terrible school or anything I think it's it's the way that we educate young people everywhere. I just think that
it's inhuman. We're not meant to stack knowledge upon knowledge upon knowledge. We're meant to do and learn and follow our curiosity and passion. We're not meant to memorize all the bones in our bodies just because of the sake of it you know
don't get me wrong of course you need to know what your body consists of but maybe that could be a part of a more holistic way of interacting with your own body maybe that could be like i don't know maybe school systems could there to teach and because right now
it's like it it feels like the main purpose of the schools are to produce grades that can tell politicians and other bureaucrats how good or well the school is performing and I mean why what good is it to I mean it's like a self-sustaining machine with no purpose yeah I know I'm sounding harsh. I know I have a lot of Swedish
listeners as well in this podcast. And I mean, I don't, as I said, I don't know an answer to this. It's just been my feeling ever since my daughter started school that not everyone, well, almost none are meant to be thriving in that sort of environment. Ives from that level of stress and impossible goals and
I mean and it's such a tragedy I really I really think it's a tragedy sorry I'm not here to I'm not here to make you feel down well neither I'm not here to make you feel anything in particular you get to feel what you get to feel and maybe if I'm here to do anything it's to make you okay with whatever you're feeling.
I can't remove stuff. And on the other hand, I can't implement stuff in your mind either. You're the one who are putting them there. I'm just, what do you call it? The influencer trigger. But anyway, I was talking about Fluke Skywalker. And he had this homeschooling system thing on Tatooine where Luke and Fluke went to school together
and their aunt were teaching them. And, you know, they weren't taught how to knit or carve out butter knives out of tree. They were taught like how to repair and maintain robots. And what was it? What kind of a farm was it that Luke's and Fluke's aunt and uncle moist farm? Was it? I don't know.
I don't even know what that is. It was a harsh bringing I believe I mean just think of Luke and Fluke and Leia and Leia also I mean she also grew up with a sister a younger sister and her name was Lyre and as you can imagine she got in a lot of trouble and the books or the movies there's no books but the movies never mentioned her either.
So there were actually four siblings. So it was Luke and Fluke and Leia and Lyre. And they were, well, they were separated at birth because of Anakin Skywalker that he wouldn't find. If he were to find one of the siblings, he couldn't find the other one, et cetera, et cetera. So, well, isn't that an ancient biological theme to a story like hiding your offspring from a destructive
dangerous father isn't that like animalistic even like something all mammals or maybe all animals has experienced and still are experienced isn't it kind of a thing that animal dads kill some of their offspring I mean talk about ancient themes in a story. What are the ancient themes? Being dismissed,
abandoned, falling out of grace. That must be like this ancient theme. Something that every, at least every mammal on planet Earth has felt since the beginning of the species. The need to protect your child, that's also a theme isn't it something isn't it fascinating
to think about that all the stories even contemporary ones that we look and consume and read and listen to and absorb in any way that they are all variants of these like millions of contexts, adaptations of an old theme that is older than humanity, being loved, being safe,
staying alive, having a prominent position within a group, the need of growing from zero to 100, the struggle of being seen, the struggle of being loved, the struggle of staying relevant, winning the game, the fear and pain of losing anything or something or anyone yeah so yeah they didn't know about each other Luke, Fluke, Leia and
Lyre they didn't know of the other two and so there's actually this scene anyway where Luke stands and he's looking at these two sons and he's longing for something different he needs to get away and there's this iconical music like Luke's theme or whatever it's called by John Williams. And you get to know him like for,
by just looking at this scene for three seconds, five seconds, you get to know all of Luke Skywalker. And don't get me wrong, he's not a really deep character. It's not very hard to get to know him. He's a young man and he's looking for change and he's looking to grow and he has all these aspirations. But there's actually this edited out scene when fluke comes up to him and
stands next to him and holds his hand and luke just recoils and he's looking at fluke like what are you doing in my shot i'm here presenting myself this is a very intimate moment and you're just ruining it aunt aunt fluke is ruining my moment and then the aunt comes out and just pulls Fluke out by the ear and there's crying.
And I think there's even some beating off camera. And so, I mean, he had a horrible, horrible upbringing, Fluke. And Luke was the favorite, of course, because he was like, the force was strong in him and blah, blah, blah. But the uncle really cared most about Fluke because Fluke was, yeah, he was easily managed you know Luke was all about adventure and wanting to be a pilot and
having these prophecies about him that the force would be strong in the family and so on but Fluke didn't show any of that he never show any of the signs the couple had been told to look out for like accidentally strangling classmates by pure telekinesi telekinesi telekinesi, telekinesi, telekalesi as it's called in English, in proper English,
whatever you're using. Sometimes, I'm sorry, but sometimes when I speak, I become this other person when I speak English. It's very exciting. When I've been talking like this for about half There's been like five, 10, 11 minutes without me even thinking one single Swedish thought.
And then I become this other person. I would really, if you know another language, whether or not you're Swedish listening to this, or if you happen to know another language, then try to just speak it for a prolonged period of time and talk like constantly like I do. Even if you're by yourself. Well, I am right now. Even though I talk to a presumed audience. You, sleepy. But nevertheless, just try it. Because it's so weird. Sometimes I kind of forget who I am. And then I actually thought that I could pronounce the word telekinesis.
Is it pronounced like that? Telekinesis. I have no idea. But my English me just told me that go ahead and say it. It's okay. You can do this. I have no doubt, son. Do as you've been trained, son. And I did and I failed miserably. So I'm sorry. But it's, I mean, it's, it's sort of exciting to be, you know, I'm out on deep water here. I'm not sure what I'm doing, who I am speaking this language and it's exciting because I'm well we all need excitement don't we
so anyway that's my recommendation for today spend at least an hour every day speaking another language and if you don't know another language just make one up you know on the fly make one up and it doesn't matter that it's not real just use it you know say whatever comes into mind so for instance now I'm going to speak a language that doesn't really
exist and my transcribation software my my my transcribing software well I don't know what well it's going to be exciting to see what my transcription software makes out of this made-up language that comes out of my mouth starting now I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but then again, this is what you signed up for.
I can't guarantee that you will come out of this a sane and harmonized person. When I was a teenager, I used to sing in a barbershop choir and we formed a barbershop quartet. I was the bass. I were the bass. And people used to call me the baby bass because I was, well, the smallest. And people couldn't imagine that I could produce bass tones, but I could so we had a quartet and we and in the choir there was just this huge
bunch of old men and then the four of us who were teenagers for kids really we were 17 16 17 18 and the the we had like sweatshirts with the print on it with the choir's like logo and we had a byline like a slogan and the slogan was I'm harmonized are you and I always thought
that that was such a funny slogan because it implies that harmonized is something that you know applies to life as well of course what it implied to was I am in harmony in my own choir in tune you know i'm in tuned i'm tuned to the rest of my singer friends but when you just say
it like that i'm harmonized are you sort of sounds religious you know i've met jesus have you you know and the overall atmosphere in that choir were really like sectoristic in a way uh if you if you You were like almost discharged from the choir.
They couldn't do that. But you were ruined for everyone if you sang out of tune. And I mean, we all did from time to time. So we had this fantasy, me and my friends, the other kids in that quartet that we had. We were actually called, the choir was called Falu Minor Chords.
No, Minorer Quartz, because I mean the Miner Quartz are a part of barbershop, but Falun, the place where I grew up in Sweden, the city is a mining town. So Miner or Miner, you know, and we were called the Miner Gang because we were like Miner and Miners as well, you know, we weren't actual Miners, but I think you knew that so we we used to joke about the other old guys because we never
wore those sweatshirts they were ugly as hell and and it was it was beneath us you know to wear them but all the old guys where the were them old guys i guess the they were in their 40s like younger than i am now but we thought of them as old guys and they were all many of them were drinking heavily on their tours and performances
and stuff and it was actually quite a it was quite an ugly place and when I quit they actually shaped up and became like this great choir we we we had we participated in petitions barbershop contests and we when when I were in the choir we always always got, like, placed last place.
But for some reason, when we left the choir, most of us young, then they shaped up really well. So I guess it was our fault. But we thought of them in a way with contempt because they were like this old drunk guys. And, you know, they weren't that good singers anyway. And we had this very elitistic way of looking at singing.
And we were also lousy. I mean, we weren't harmonized, let's just say that. But we joked that the whole choir would have these sweatshirts on and they would just commit like a collective suicide on a boat. We were traveling to Denmark and we didn't, I think it was before the bridge between Sweden and Denmark. So we took a boat and we fantasized that the whole choir,
all the old men would just decide that this is not, I mean, this is not the life we signed up for and that they would jump into the ocean. And they would do it during this choir practice when you just, in order to find like overtones, do you know what overtones is? Like when you listen to this, some ancient way of throat singing, one of the main goals with throat singing is that when you take, when you, when you produce a tone that is very deep or very, what do you say, clear, you can, you can hear like several overtones, like tones that aren't actually produced by the, by the vocal cords.
But it's, it's a, it's an audio thing, you know, it just appears. So we had this singing exercise when we just said, So we had this fantasy that the whole choir would stand on a line at the railing and on the boat, and they were just, and then we're just one by one just jumping into the ocean.
And then the ocean, the boat would vanish and the waves would be left undisturbed. And on the brinks of the waves, like the foam, the white foam, there would be these sweatshirts, sweatshirts floating. I'm harmonized. Are you? It was such a... I guess we were filled with some sort of contempt for these guys. It doesn't feel very well to tell you about that. Isn't it kind of boring to think about when you're young, really young, you think of older people as losers when you're a teenager?
And now I know that, I mean, life has its way, you know, I still think of it as sort of a depraved environment for a teenager in a way. I mean, the drinking were for some of the guys, they were like full time alcoholics.and I'm not sure that that made me like didn't do me any good I guess it didn't put me in a state where I started drinking that came much later but it was
yeah it wasn't a very thriving environment I would say and I had dreams and if I didn't have them I guess I would turn up turn out like Fluke he actually sang in a barbershop quartet fluke on tatooine together with a smurf and a dwarf and a glorf which are very common species on among the sand dunes what's the name
of that city mos isley so there's only one city on the whole planet of tatooine i mean i have i've talked about this before but it it's really provoking to me that there's this whole planet and there's desert all around it even by the poles where well or maybe it isn't maybe it's snow by the poles but who knows
right so in Star Wars they have this micro universe that one planet is really just one city and some obscure very small outskirts and I don't I have never in a Star Wars franchise production seen the vastness of it, you know?
There is one planet that is like this huge city. The entire planet is a city. Why can't I feel that whenever I see the productions, you know? Imagine a city the size of Earth. What would that do to us as a species? Imagine that you can sit on a subway and go to another country. I mean,
by maglev or something. Imagine you live on a planet that is all desert. And I mean, these, okay, so just let's say for the sake of it, that Mos Eisley is the only city on Tatooine. It's a really small town. I mean, from the looks of it, it's just this little water hole in the desert and all the criminals in the settled systems are coming there to do business. And all you see really are three, four, well, 15 houses
at most and a spaceport. It's just not believable. I mean, why wouldn't there be other cities? And okay, so let's just say there isn't. Then why isn't Mos Eisley like this huge mega city why is it because there are certain climate conditions Tatooine that you can't build a city in you know this is the limit okay so why can't we just I mean
there are in the first movie Luke and Fluke but Fluke was edited out of course Luke is traveling by with his speeder out into the desert to meet Obi-Wan Kenobi well he doesn't know that but he he's he will eventually and then there's sand people which are weird people with kind of gas masks and stuff and so he he really he's really there into the in
in the the wild so to speak the wild i mean of course it's filmed on earth in morocco or somewhere egypt maybe but it's it's so tiny i mean what are the implications of a whole planet with just dust? You know, think of Mars. Imagine living in a little on Mars with nothing in between you and this planet-sized desert.
I would want to feel that when I look at, you know, Star Wars themed stuff. But there's always these, even when you're in the wilderness, you're like in this micro wilderness. So, and I think it's because of the spaceships because they are it's all it's it's almost like you're cheating when you have a spaceship because you
can always just go up in orbit and then just dive down to your next destination imagine living on mars and don't have you don't have any spaceship like imagine living on earth not having a spaceship as it is i mean you probably don't own a spaceship right now if you do you can please reach out to me and tell me about that i read about a guy who
had this mock spaceship built up in his basement and i got goosebumps because i really well don't get me wrong well i don't even have a basement but and if i had i wouldn't build a spaceship in it but it's such a cozy idea I would love to have like huge LCD screens put up so that it can you know so that I can put space out there and just have some random looping spaceship noise
constantly going on in the basement so whenever I wanted to change worlds feel like I'm part of something else when I get bored by reality I could go down there and you know drink chocolate milk and have a sandwich and pretend that I'm seven yeah but of course Luke and Fluke grow up on this vast desert planet the size of I mean at least earth when you
look at how they move they move like they do on earth so I guess the gravity conditions on Tatooine are the same as here on earth so okay so they just live there in their little moist farm or whatever it is and and I guess that's the cruelest scene in Star Wars the Star
Wars saga the original movies and also I guess all the sequels or prequels or whatever you got you should call them the when Luke returns to his home and find his step parents dead that's I remember I I saw that first movie when I was seven and I remember that scene like etched into my mind
you don't really see them and that's the scary part you just see like smoking buddies at a distance and that's sort of I had never seen stuff like that and of course since Disney bought the whole franchise then all of that is you know bye-bye and maybe that's a good thing I don't know. So if you were to identify with any of the brothers, Sleepy, who are you? Are you Luke
or are you Fluke? I would say that I'm Fluke because I'm not the hero of the movie, you know. But then again, I think that I historically in my life, if I can talk about my own life as historically, I'm not sure. In the past, I think I thought about myself as at least wanting to be Luke it's something with you know when he stands there and
once they've edited out fluke just sneaking up to him lisping you know it's I mean it's it's heartbreaking really but also I mean that scene couldn't have it wouldn't have worked with that random brother just popping up you know trying to sneak in some robot parts in Luke's pockets.
You know, it's not how you want to see, how you would at that time wanted to see a hero, a true genuine hero. So, you know, when you, as a seven-year-old, when you see that young man standing on this sand dune looking at the two suns and that music comes on, there is something to this growing mind that pops into place and that's a beautiful thing
really talk about ancient messages you know the force of growing you know the force of growing up and that's why I think it's heartbreaking to see my daughter being dragged to school like that because she she is right now on that sand dune looking at the two suns and that beautiful music comes on you know that music about longing and the sense of
being meant to do stuff it's such an important emotional phase in every person's life and it's a shame that you know they struggle the kids they struggle to keep that ember you know within them ignorant as well because maybe that force is unstoppable at that age i don't know maybe it's
just grown-up drama i'm putting out right now because i for sure couldn't be my fire couldn't be put out regardless of a defect school system and bullying my fire were just burning under lid you know and when he got the chance it just exploded and that started that kick-started my life and it's still burning
so I don't know maybe I'm just being over dramatic here maybe life sometimes just sucks you know it it sure does when you're a grown-up as well just the fact that I sit there in the mornings with my daughter and I can't help her more than I do I can't I tell her that this is just temporary. This is just a short period of your life and your life will go on and it will bring so much other stuff.
You will get to choose your world, your destiny. You live in a wondrous era where kids in my part of the world can choose their own future. I mean, there's no equivalence to that historically.and even in other parts of the world that's this is still not a possibility for a young woman a young girl and here you are i want to say that but i mean i can't
she's in her world and time for her is her time so she doesn't get it when i say it's just three more years so yeah that sucks it sucks to be a grown-up as well sleepy but in the middle of all this suckness, you get to have coffee, you get to love people, you get to learn stuff in your own pace, at your own will, at your own convenience.
I just learned how to drive a car. I mean, I think about that every day. It's like I.. I'm euphoric and it's nothing to be really euphoric about, but it's something new and I'm almost 50 and I get to learn. And that's amazing. Good night, sleepy.re...