Andrew Leigh

Andrew Leigh:

As a science-loving rationalist, I've always loved Tim Minchin's songs, and everything from dogma to alternative medicine. He's even been kind enough to let me quote snippets of them in two of my books. But I remember the moment when I thought, "This guy's a genius." It was midway through the School Song in Matilda when they start turning lettered blocks over. And you realise the song doesn't just work lyrically and musically but also visually because every line corresponds to the next letter of the alphabet. Now 43 years old, Tim grew up in Perth before moving to Melbourne, London and Los Angeles. Then he had a really bad experience with a project. And now he's home. I think I speak for many Australians in saying we're sorry that Larrikins didn't work out but delighted to have Tim back here. He's presently doing a tour, the Back Tour, which is currently showing in Canberra. Tim, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

You seem to have grown up in a fairly musical family. Your uncle, Jim, was a bluegrass musician. You talk about family singing around the piano. You played with your brother, Dan, in bands. Did you always expect you'd go into entertainment?

Tim Minchin:

No, I think I really didn't. I think maybe because the only professional musician in the family was my uncle, Jim. And he was the black sheep. It was quite wayward in his time.

And I grew up in a much less wayward corner of the family. Of the Fishers, that family, our family was the most conservative, I guess, because my mom married a surgeon. And we were pretty straight.

And I don't know when I thought that it was realistic that I could be an artist for a living. But it was late. It was after I was already an artist.

It took me a long time to give myself permission. Literally, I didn't really think it was possible. I think I thought there were special people and then there were normal people. And I thought I was in the latter.

Andrew Leigh:

But you played a lot of piano and you wrote a lot of poems as a kid. When did you start to put those two together?

Tim Minchin:

I think I wrote my first song at 11. And my brother and I wrote together a lot. He would write the music. And I would write the lyrics in our later teens. And in our early bands, it was really that; me being the lyricist, he being the musician.

By the end of the time that Dan and I were playing in bands together, he was just playing for me but joyously. He was like, "Oh, great. Your songs are better. Let's play them," or at least better, whatever that means. I was more driven to do it.

And, yeah, when I left Perth, I stopped playing with my brother. And it was quite a full-on thing. And I never really found another wingman, although the guitarist I work with now is the most amazing guy ever. You'll see. But, yeah, I think we all just loved music. But we thought it was a hobby.

Andrew Leigh:

Who do you think of your early musical influences as being?

Tim Minchin:

Well, it's just Dan. Dan told me what to play, what to listen to. So I guess he was feeding me [inaudible 00:04:41] and Crowded House and Excess and The Cure.

Then later when my friends started listening to more music, I was never the one going out to pursue it. I've never listened much. I've always found it quite hard having music on. [inaudible 00:04:59].

So I was dragged to things by my friends. So I got into Pearl Jam but mostly because my mates did and all that [inaudible 00:05:06] stuff and eventually Nirvana and The Pixies and stuff. And then I think like most of us, my sense of what my music was ended at the end of the '90s. Now it's all just retrospective.

But more influential than any of that stuff was on one side the musical theater-y stuff that was on the pianola rolls and that my gran took me to because we went to the theater a bit. And on the other, just Beatles and the Stones and The Kinks. Probably, The Kinks and Queen even more.

Andrew Leigh:

I think of your style as being most similar to Tom Lehrer, who was foisted upon me by parents who had lived in the US in the 1960s. But that tradition of piano playing musical comedy didn't dive into you at that early age.

Tim Minchin:

No, people used to say, "You're like Tom Lehrer." And I'd go, "Who?" When I first started being silly, I didn't even know who he was. I was vaguely aware of The Elements. But, yeah, I'm not influenced by comedians, nor by pianists particularly.

I didn't listen to a lot of Elton or Billy Joel or anything. Songwriting wise, Ray Davies and Lennon-McCartney and Freddie Mercury were my influences. And actually, in terms of my love of language and stuff, it partly probably comes from Gilbert and Sullivan. And I didn't really know who [inaudible 00:06:41] was until much later as well. It wasn't hugely sophisticated.

My parents didn't have a big record collection at all. My granddad gave me a book of Ogden Nash poems. And I love Spike Milligan. But it's playfulness.

All those bands, actually, although they're all '60s bands, they're all writing ... I mean, The Kinks, half their stuff was basically satire, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, I Want to be like David Watts or whatever that song is. It was just gags. And The Beatles, often their lyrics were playful and sarcastic. And certainly, Queen. So I think that might be why my style is a little unusual is because I play piano.

My style of piano is very much I'm mimicking drums and guitar. I'm constantly playing left hand like a kick drum, right hand like a snare and chords like a guitar. So I'm going [inaudible 00:07:46].

And that's because I didn't really grow up listening to pianists until I found The Whitlams and Ben Folds in the '90s and went, "Oh, you can write pop from behind a piano. You can rock." For some reason, it was them, not Elton and Billy.

Andrew Leigh:

And is it true you'd learn to read music pretty late?

Tim Minchin:

Still, I can't read music.

Andrew Leigh:

That's astonishing to me given all you've done.

Tim Minchin:

I did up to grade three pianos. So I guess when I was 12, I could read a little bit. But then I just let it go because when I quite piano at end of grade three, piano [inaudible 00:08:28], I didn't play for a year, I don't think.

And then my brother hassled me into ... my piano teacher, when I said I was going to quit, now she's still around. She's in her 70s, 80s, actually. And my mom sees her. And she's always mortified that she had a student who would go on to be a composer, I guess, but notice that I had any particular propensity.

But she did for some reason on my last lesson go, "Okay, just before you go," and she just showed me how to harmonize a C major scale. She just went, "You know the C major scale. Then if you extend the harmony of that at C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G dominant, A minor, B minor, flat [inaudible 00:09:14] and you just do that to all of the notes on the piano and you know how to play chords. And good luck." And that was gold.

That combined with my brother being a guitarist, so therefore playing chord based. And I can play guitar a bit too. So I just imported chord theory.

And then eventually, I went to the Conservatorium in WA to do a contemporary music course, which was like a how to be a session muser sort of course. And I did that because I wanted to learn to read music because by then I was writing music for theater. And I thought, "I'm going to hit a ceiling here. And no one's going to employ me if I can't do the dots."

And I went to do this course. But I was too far gone. It's very hard to go back.

And so now I could not play a simple melody in the right hand of sheet music. There's no need. I would never come across one. And why would I ever see one?

I can write a Broadway musical on Logic Audio Pro using midi instruments, singing all the harmonies, playing the flutes. Sometimes I play outside their range because I don't really know how those instruments work. I look up, "What's the range of a flute?" And then I hand it to Chris Nightingale or Ian Grandage or Jules Buckley or any of these amazing orchestrators and go, "Make that good. Turn it into dots." It's amazing.

And so that specialization, right? I'm not a music producer. I don't have a lot of gear. I'm no good with microphones or preamps or EQs or compression. I actually made a conscience decision in my early 20s that I wasn't going to get caught up in gear and process. There's other people who specialize in that. It was a good choice.

Andrew Leigh:

We'll come back to comparative advantage later on. But I'm curious on your meld of left and right brain as somebody whose dad's a surgeon. I mean, one of the things I love about your music is the use of statistics and science. But you chose to study arts. Why was that?

Tim Minchin:

I mean, putting aside the myth of the left and right brain, but that metaphorically I am right brained. Is it the right that's [inaudible 00:11:33]? I think it is the right that ostensibly was the arty side.

Andrew Leigh:

That's the metaphor, yes.

Tim Minchin:

Anyway, our Tertiary Entrance Exams were called TEE in the '90s. And when I got the results back, by the time I got to the end of year 12, I was always fine. I got away with math and chemistry. I was quite interested in economics. But it was only because I had a good teacher, I think.

But really, I remember getting my TEE results and looking at my English mark and going, "Yes." And mom going, "What did you get on your TEE?" And I'm like, "Oh, I don't know. I didn't check."

I didn't really care because I knew I just wanted to go and do English, basically. And because I always got B's, B-pluses in English and English literature at school and although I never thought I was particularly bright or academic at school, I always thought the guys getting A's in English, I though, "They're just regurgitating. This is bullshit."

And so when TEE because it's marked by tertiary, my result was way higher than all those guys who got A's. And I felt so vindicated that having slightly more original ideas was ... I went, "Ah, yes. When I leave school, they're going to value this." That was my first indication that I was going to be able to be valued for being a bit more lateral.

Andrew Leigh:

And you studied some philosophy at university.

Tim Minchin:

Yeah, a little bit of philosophy, enough to absolutely peak my interest. I studied a bit of psych, a bit of philosophy and through that got interested really in belief and logic and cognition but belief, really. And somewhere in my 20s, laid dormant.

I've done this a lot in my life, same with learning dominant 13 shaping at uni. I went, "Oh, okay. That's a jazz chord." And then later, six years later or whatever it was, 10 years later, I sit down and write Matilda and it's just all through it. It just sat there on the shelf waiting for me to catch up with the knowledge sort of thing.

And I did that with my love of science. It just sat there dormant until somewhere in my 20s. I think the first book I read was Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. And then on and found James Randi and all that kind of slightly odd but interesting skeptical movement in the United States. And then really got into reading about religion.

And then suddenly you find yourself back at Philosophy 100 learning all the informal logical fallacies and going, "Oh, this is amazing tools." All the way to now, where really my macro obsession is this term that Steve Novella, I think, coined, which is neuropsychological humility is how important it is to understand that both your neurology and your psychology construct stuff and how susceptible we are to being fooled and to our biases and stuff. I look at the world through that lens now. And I'm obsessed with trying to get ... I'm starting to try and figure out how I can have an influence on people like you, although I don't think I need to influence you because I think we think the same stuff to make sure critical thinking is taught from age 10.

Andrew Leigh:

Yes.

Tim Minchin:

I'd rather my kids understood confirmation bias than that Captain Cook turned up in 1788. That's on Wikipedia. We've just gone down a whole path, sorry.

Andrew Leigh:

No, it's great. And I will circle back to some of that. I want to keep the chronological thread going, though, because you spent a lot of your 20s not being famous, playing pubs in [inaudible 00:15:31]. You were supporting Eddie Perfect.

Andrew Leigh:

Do you feel as though in some sense that was your 10,000 hours? A bit like The Beatles' time in Germany, that apprenticeship of just being able to practice and make mistakes. How important do you think that was in retrospect?

Tim Minchin:

It's completely vital. I mean, I've got a song that I never quite finished called Spend Your 20s Poor. And I've hinted at this in a graduation speech I did and stuff, this idea of not rushing.

But what's so important for me is the geography, being in Perth, where you could make something great and everyone would go, "That was great." And that's the end. Then you have to go on and make something else great. In the meantime, you have to make coffees.

Whereas, if you live in London or Melbourne, but much more Melbourne or New York, if you do something great, everyone's like, "Okay, right. So you should go do this and go do this and do this." And so in London, it'd be like, "Okay, so you go make a radio comedy with the BBC. And then maybe that'll be tele. And then you'll end up touring. And we'll do a DVD deal with you."

And I think it happens in Australia as well in the Eastern States at least, people find talent and with good intentions go, "Well, let's tap it. Let's promote that." And then the person gets a TV show and it's not great because they haven't done their 10,000 hours.

And they blew their chance a bit because you don't really get another go at a sitcom if that's your thing. If your first sitcom doesn't work, they don't go, "Let's commission a different sitcom for the same person." So I got ignored.

And by the time I turned up in Edinburgh in 2005, it looked like I just popped out of the ether like this weird freak, fully-formed, pseudo cabaret, rant-y, eyeliner, swearing pianist when actually it was such a long journey to try and go, "Well, what do I do?" Having been rejected by all the record labels and rejected by all the agents and wanting to be an actor. But faces like this don't get on Australian tele. And wanting to be a muso, but songs like that don't really get record deals.

And eventually I went, "I'm just going to put it all on stage and show these fuckers that I've got some skills." And that changed my life. But it took me till I was 28 to even think that anyone would want to see it.

Andrew Leigh:

And then things changed pretty quickly after Edinburgh. How do you avoid becoming a pompous git when fame strikes you that suddenly?

Tim Minchin:

Well, I think if you asked Andrew Bolt, I did. But working on the hypothesis that I'm not a pompous git, I think the important things are not getting known too early before you develop ... you get trapped. You get stuck in the age you ... it's a bit like, they say, heroine addiction and fame ... this is my pet theory that addiction and fame are similar. They freeze you in a certain era, the era in which it happened because you're not having normal developmental experiences after that happens, putting drug addiction aside.

But when it comes to fame, especially in America, the industry does everything it can to infantilize you so that everyone can make money out of you, because if you're functional and self-reliant, then you don't need a manager and a PA and an assistant to the manager. And you don't need a driver. And so you get deskilled.

Even having found some success at 30 and really only significant life-changing success, I guess, after Matilda, even though I was in my 30s, I've had to be constantly vigilant. And you ask the people that work with me, I've never raised my voice at anyone in my life. I treat everyone the same, I think, pretty much.

But the only thing that ever irritates me is when someone tries to open the door for me. Just the absurd, in America and on film sets, the servitude. I'm just like, "Just stop doing that." And then a whisper goes around, "Mr. Minchin doesn't like it when you open the door." And so then suddenly you're a [inaudible 00:20:32].

And it's like, "Oh, this is hopeless. Can we just start again? Let me get you a coffee. And then I understand your job is to get me coffee. But can I get you one first?" It's that. And I'm really vigilant about it.

I've definitely come into a place where I feel I can speak with some authority that is probably unearned. But I think that comes with age anyway. And when you're job is to speak, I've become more confident.

I've become more bitter about the places I don't succeed. Things which we'll get to if we're going chronologically like the things that haven't worked out for me, infuriate me like, "How dare you stop me getting my way?" That stuff, I've become a bit like that, which is like an entitled thing that just comes with, "Hold on, I've worked really hard. And when I did it there, there and there, it worked. And then you come along and now ..." I get furious.

And I think if Sarah was here, she would say I've got more serious. But I think that comes with age too. You just carry the weight of the world a bit more. You feel a bit sadder about stuff. But other than that, I think I've done all right at keeping normal.

Andrew Leigh:

Yeah, and I feel as though as your power on the world increases, there comes an increasing obligation to be tough with the powerful and gentle with the powerless around you and people who are complete bastards to those who are driving the taxi or serving the coffee, using their position always seems to me a great Litmus test of a broken character.

Tim Minchin:

Yeah, and you've heard me say that I think that's true. And it strikes me as odd that ... surely everyone feels that way. Surely as you get powerful, you think, "Oh, well, the right thing to do here is to only shout up, don't shout down."

But some people just get worse and worse and worse, especially in Hollywood. They're just yelling on the phone at people and assistants. You just go, "You must feel awful about yourself when you hang up that phone, you must. Unless you're actually having a psychological personality disorder of some sort, you must just feel shit when you shout at someone."

Andrew Leigh:

Well, anger's a powerful motivator. And we'll again circle back to that. You have an amazing variety of work.

When you hit your 30s, you don't stop acting. You've got Californication. You've just been doing Robin Hood recently.

You continue to write for stage and screen. You produce books. I feel as though I'm speaking to a man who perhaps doesn't understand comparative advantage.

You seem to just throw yourself into absolutely everything. Why didn't you narrow as the opportunities broadened out? Why didn't you focus on a couple of projects?

Tim Minchin:

I think it's partly because also in my 20s, my mom and people would encourage me to specialize. But again, part of growing up in Perth is you can't really afford to. And also, I just like it all. And so by the time I started getting attention, virtually my first thought was, "Oh, how can I leverage this so I can keep doing all the things I like?" And once I got a sniff that was possible, I thought, "Well, that's the best possible outcome for a career, isn't it, to have variety?"

And I'm in a rare situation in that I've been incredibly lucky that the first commercial musical I co-wrote was a just massive thing. And I own it, which means I have a piece of ... it's like I invented a tool that people need. I have a piece of intellectual property in the world, which means I have more security. And it'd be mad to me to not leverage that into living a life with absurd amounts in variety because that excites me.

People go, "What's your favorite thing?" And I'm like, "My favorite thing right now is touring." But in a couple of weeks, I'll be like, "Ugh, I wish I could go and write."

And then when I'm locked in a room composing and tearing my hair out, I'm like, "Ah, I just want to act and say someone else's words so I don't have to be responsible for it." And then when I'm acting, I think, "Oh, this is hollow. I need to go. I want to go and write an essay." And so I'm a bit fidgety, probably.

But mostly it's conscious. I'm like, "The ultimate career would ..." if I have a goal, it's to hit 75 or 80 and look back and go, "No one's ever had a career like that. No one's ever done that stuff." And I'm getting there.

Certainly as an Australian, I'm in uncharted waters in terms of having a Broadway musical and being able to do concerts. And I've just written, co-written and starred in a drama. That's been one of the best experiences of my life.

And now I'm thinking about adapting a novel into a TV show. And I'm starting to go, "Okay, so when do I direct my first TV show?" I mean, I did direct an animated film for four years. So I've learnt some stuff.

Andrew Leigh:

Well, let's talk about your [inaudible 00:26:41]. 2017, you discover that Larrikins, which was to star Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, basically every famous Australian actor ever, wasn't going to hit the screen. So Groundhog Day didn't do as well as you had hoped. How did that affect you? And how did you bounce back?

Tim Minchin:

Well, acknowledging, which I feel I always have to do, how absurdly privileged my life and problems are, so I spent about 65%, 70% of my time for four years, moved my family to LA to make this film. And it's an incredible thing, animation. The talent of the artists I worked with; I mean, Harry Cripp, who wrote the script, and all these beautiful designers and artists.

I say this on stage sometimes, "It's like building a mansion out of match sticks. At first, you have to [inaudible 00:27:42] the match sticks." I mean, every pixel is considered.

And it's hard to describe what the job of co-directing an animated film is. But I was writing the songs, co-writing the script. Hans Zimmer was doing the score.

I was in every meeting about every feather and piece of dirt. We were building the Australian Outback in digital 3D. It was amazing.

And then in the meantime, I had written Groundhog Day. And that was costing 12 million bucks to get to Broadway and won all these awards and stuff. And I thought, "It was going to be big." But I was having to work very hard.

And then, yeah, the film got shut down when corporate buyout, basically. And for lots of reasons, Groundhog Day didn't stick on Broadway. And I was just flat, just depressed, really. And it was the loss of time that I couldn't get my head around, the idea that someone could steal four years off me when I could have ... I eventually had a meeting with the executives who shut it down. And they were like, "But, Tim, you got really well paid."

And I'm like, "I took a pay cut to do this. I know you think that's why people do things. But I did it because I wanted to spend more time with my family and I wanted to make an Australian singing animal movie. I wanted to break new ground. I didn't come here for your money. I could earn four times as much touring. I could have written so much in that time that you've taken off me."

And I was having this pervasive thought that even as I was having it, I was thinking, "This must not be right. This must be what depression feels like." But the thought was, "Ah, I'm done. They spent four years taking my sparkle, feeding on my sparkle, whatever it is that I bring into rooms, which is just enthusiasm, really, and love."

The guys who worked with me on Larrikins, when I see them, they say that was just the best experience because they felt respected, which you don't at these studios. And I stood between them and the powers that be. And I told them to bugger off and told the artists they were geniuses.

And I felt like they had taken all that energy I bring into rooms and just stolen it off me, like someone with a wand pulling the sliver of silver out of my mouth or whatever that reference is. And I felt like I couldn't make anything ever again. That was the thought.

I'm like, "Ah, I made the wrong choice. I went to Hollywood and I got what you get when you're too ambitious and go to Hollywood. They broke me." That's what I felt like.

And actually, Broadway was worse. Broadway was even more brutal. I mean, there's stories. I've been made to sign a thing saying I won't talk about it by a producer who deliberately, as far as I can tell, tried to deliberately destroy us but then had enough power to make us sign a thing saying we wouldn't talk about what he did.

And I don't know when that runs out. But it's black mail. But I don't want to get my fellow producers into financial trouble by talking about it. But I almost am now. But it's insane.

Andrew Leigh:

If The Producers hadn't been made, I'd suggest there's another musical there for you.

Tim Minchin:

It's just awful. The ruthlessness hurt my heart. And I am a pretty strong kind of person in terms of getting what I want out of stuff.

And I can be quite, "Okay, thank you. It's just not the best idea. We're going to do it again."

I think being in the writers room with me can be quite full on because I'm just like, "No, no, no. It's not that." But I'm not mean.

And it's ridiculous. I feel like [inaudible 00:31:59]. I feel like I got to 40 before I realized that people are assholes.

And it was like a slightly existential thing. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. People are awful. People don't care about ... people are ruthless." And so that is privilege to get to 40 having somewhere in your head that people are actually generally good and then to have an experience that makes you think, "Actually, people are assholes." That is privilege to have got that far.

Andrew Leigh:

What got you back into being a creator again?

Tim Minchin:

Just some time. Just had to stop thinking about it. I thought about it all day every day, both those things rotating fury in the unsent angry letters. And just the self-righteous fury, really. I can be pretty self-righteous when I feel like someone's been unfair and righteous on behalf of others when I feel like someone's been unfair, you'd have to say.

Andrew Leigh:

Cardinal Pell would probably agree.

Tim Minchin:

Yeah, Pell would agree. And Matilda's about that. I mean, I don't know. I'm a second child. That sort of righteousness, I don't think it's always attractive.

But it's better than not being righteous. It's better than not caring, I suppose. And then I just went, "You got to stop going around and round on this stuff. If you're not going to fix it, you just got to move on."

And then we moved back to Australia. And Upright, this TV project, and this tour, I've had the best working year of my life in Australia when partly, of course, I feared of, "I'm going home for my kids and my family. But I'm obviously going to have to take a hit with the work because it's Australia. There's not as much going on."

But I've had the best working year of my life. And that's all I want to be is busy and making stuff that doesn't get binned. And so I'm really good now, really good, back to being the luckiest guy in the world, which I always was, obviously.

Andrew Leigh:

[inaudible 00:34:09] distinguishes two kinds of anger. There's the revenge anger where you want to hurt somebody who's hurt you. And there's righteous anger in which you're upset about a particular cause, an injustice in the world and you seek to deal with it. And she says that revenge anger is a dumb emotion and we should get it out of our system. Are you still able to take that approach after 2017?

Tim Minchin:

I agree entirely that revenge anger is useless. But I think revenge anger is like a release valve on a steam engine. You'd be foolish to demand of yourself no ... I think you'd be unrealistic to demand of yourself no revenge anger when someone does something to you. If you went to a counselor or psychologist, they would tell you that you have to find your way out of it.

I still can get myself worked up about ... I'm still angry, crazy, at stuff that would be very hard to explain that just would sound so ridiculous. But I'm angry about Matilda on Broadway, really angry. And I can't ... it's hard.

That would be a whole conversation. But the manipulation of all these awards and all this lying and people saying stuff about us to make sure we didn't win awards, it's just mean. And I get angry about that as much as anything still, crazy.

Andrew Leigh:

I was always astonished it didn't do as well in America as it did in Britain and Australian.

Tim Minchin:

Well, because they don't want us to. That's why the Tony Awards are made to take power off artists and put them in the hands of producers. So they make up a fake award ceremony and say, "Hey, the best musical is this." And Americans go, "Oh." They believe that in good faith.

But it's bullocks because the best musical Tony is worth $10 million, someone's calculated, in tours and blah, blah. And so they're not going to give it to [inaudible 00:36:19]. And listen to me talk. It's so ridiculous to talk about that. I need to work on being more zen. But I'm definitely better at it.

Do you regret writing your song about critic Phil Daoust?

I wouldn't do it now, obviously. But I was still punching up then. What is sad about it is that it stuck. And so poor Phil, when you typed his name into Google, for years and years afterwards, that's what came up.

But then again for years when you typed my ... because he wrote for The Guardian, when you typed my name in, his review would come up, personal review saying I'm talentless. The song for Phil Daoust was a song about my petulance. I mean, it is clearly at the end a song about how hopeless I am about taking criticism.

But I got to have my cake and eat it too, which I do a lot. I get away with getting to have my cake and eat it too being self-aware but still getting to shove my knives in. It's not really attractive. It's quite funny, though.

Andrew Leigh:

You're one of the strongest proponents of Atheism out there. And you're passionate about a humanist scientific world view. I wonder how that gels with your notion of what it is to live a good life.

I think about [inaudible 00:37:55] notion of religion for Atheists, the idea that philosophy is often exploring the outer reaches of logic and theory. Whereas, really a good life is mostly about sticking to a few basis; be faithful to your spouse, play with your kids even when they're less exciting than being on the internet. Do you think in critiquing religion, you're taking away one of the supports that helps to guide a lot of people in living a good life?

Tim Minchin:

There's only one thing I've ever done or said ... well, not that I've ever done or said. But in terms of the work I put out, the only thing that's just plain old mean is Thank You, God, which is a dismantling of the idea that prayer can heal you or do anything, that prayer works. And Woody Allen Jesus is just mocking the idea.

Everything else is ... my interest is where religion meets bigotry because religion meets bigotry everywhere. Religion is in the vast majority socially regressive all over the world. And I have religious friends, of course. And they're beautiful. But you can't look at religion in Australia and the role it plays and say they're at the forefront on mass of progress, progressivism.

The same mob who are saying, "We have no problem with gay people. We just don't think they should get married because marriage is about that and they can have a different thing," pretending that they're fine. They're the same mob who up until 1995 were saying, "No, we still think it should be criminal to have gay sex in Tasmania."

And it's always the church. It's always the church leading conservatism. So I don't have a problem with religion. I have a problem with how religion is used to justify retrogressive thinking. Am I wrong about my assessment of it, do you think?

Andrew Leigh:

Well, here's where I think you might be. It's certainly true that the churches were a strong force against same sex marriage reform, as with other social reforms. But it's also true that churchgoers on average are more likely to volunteer even putting aside their religious volunteering, more likely to donate money even putting aside their religious philanthropy. They're more-

Tim Minchin:

That's not true, is it? Statistically, I don't think religious people are more philanthropic.

Andrew Leigh:

Yeah, so-

Tim Minchin:

Not in America.

Andrew Leigh:

This is drawing from Robert Putman's American Grace, which ends up concluding basically that attending a religious service makes you nicer because most involvement in communities happens because people are asked.

Tim Minchin:

It certainly makes you healthier and happier statistically.

Andrew Leigh:

Indeed, and that these Sunday assemblies, which have emerged as Atheists look to replicate something church-like, don't seem to have taken off. Is a world of White Wine in the Sun and physics podcasts enough to provide that sense of social glue that characterized the Australia we grew up in?

Tim Minchin:

Yeah, because it is, because it's happening, because very few people go to church now. So the question is really, are we more broken now than we were when we all went to church? Because it's not a hypothetical, it's happened. We don't go to church anymore. And we have sports clubs. And we have hobbies. And we have alcohol and the pub. But we don't go to church anymore, do we? 9% or something, is it, regular attendance?

Andrew Leigh:

Yeah, about a fifth go once a month. It's certainly waned. But those people are important.

Tim Minchin:

Oh, of course.

Andrew Leigh:

[crosstalk 00:42:05] what they do. And you're undermining their raison d'etre.

Tim Minchin:

Oh, yeah. No, as I say, my ... so I don't want people to stop having religion. And I don't think you'd find a single quote ever of me saying I think religion should go away. I don't know if I think that. I think it probably would be better that there had never been monotheism.

I think if we had gone down the great route, obviously they had problems, but it was a long time ago, of philosophy and logic and rhetoric being the main things, I think we need to get back there, learn rhetoric and philosophy of logic and how to distinguish between a good and bad idea. And these are the things that the world needs now.

In America, there's a massive correlation between religiosity and Donald Trump voting and between religiosity and a desire for unlimited access to semiautomatic weapons. It's nuts. They might be getting good stuff out of their religion. But they're also basically being taught to be able to believe what clearly ain't so.

So if you grow up your whole life being told Jesus was a magic person and you believe it and you take him into your heart, that's all fine. Is it possible that what you're doing to your neurology is coaching yourself to be able to live with cognitive dissonance in a super powered kind of way? Because if you spend your whole life literally believing the Bible, then you are living with massive cognitive dissonance, aren't you?

You can't possibly go through the world ... you're thinking one thing about the world as it is. "I won't walk in front of that bus. I'll drop this cup and it will fall." And then you're thinking another about Jesus. And then when Trump comes along and he's clearly an awful person, you can do that thing you do, that trick you do to just see what you need to see.

So there's two questions. And it's a huge conversation. There is, is religion right as in is it correct about the nature of the universe? And is religion nice as in is it good? Is it morally right?

So I think it's settled that religion is wrong about the nature of the universe. I mean, obviously we could have a conversation about whether God exists. But it seems if you don't grow up being brainwashed, you basically know that there wasn't a magic Jewish preacher in first-century Palestine. But the question of whether it is a substantial moral good or a substantial moral evil in the world, I don't know. It's got to be close to being as bad as it is good.

Just talk about the Catholic Church in Australia, the massive amounts of good stuff they've done and the massive, massive damage. Now, it's quite easy to measure the schools and the hospitals, the orphans and the outreach and the help for the weak and the meek. It's hard to measure the cumulative effect of homosexuality is a sin. You can measure it in many, many deaths before you even get into abuse and just in teaching people lies, just standing up every Sunday and saying, "Jesus thinks this."

And I'd rather people learn truths or as close as we possibly can get, which doesn't answer your question about what we do to create community. Sometimes I think if it was being really basic about it, "Whether your religious or not, it doesn't really make much difference to whether you're a good person or not." I haven't noticed it. So all things being equal, why don't we stop the fairytales?

I would not be able to look at my kids in the eye when they said, "Was Jesus the son of God," and say anything but no for the reason they say, "Is the moon made of cheese?" I just have to say no because the answer is no. I can't say, "Well, some people ..." I do. I say, "Some people believe that. And that's fine."

And we have all those conversations. But if they said, "What's true?" I say, "Well, it's a faith that was made up by wandering Jewish shepherds."

Andrew Leigh:

You never did Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause.

Tim Minchin:

Oh, yeah, of course. But when my daughter said, "Does Santa Clause exist," at the age of four, I was not able to say yes. When she asked me, I said, "He exists in the story world. And that's a wonderful world to spend your time in." And she went on believing in him.

And when my son still believed in Easter Bunny last year when he was eight, I thought, "I think this is getting mean." And I told him. And he broke down and said, "Nothing's real," because it tumbled very quickly. It was the Tooth Fairy that I told him isn't real because I thought it was time because soon if we was 10, he'd be cross with us for not telling him because that's mean to tell a kid something like that. At some point, it's mean.

Andrew Leigh:

Do you believe in free will?

Tim Minchin:

No, you can't. But I do understand the Dennett versus Harris distinction. I do understand. But they all act as if what they're saying, "Yes, there is," and, "No, there's not." But they all acknowledge it's not really. It's just how hard your determinism is, isn't it? Or am I misunderstanding the debate?

Andrew Leigh:

So we're all chemicals-

Tim Minchin:

Meat robots, yeah.

Andrew Leigh:

... meat robots making the decisions that we were always going to make given [crosstalk 00:48:02].

Tim Minchin:

Well, no, because that's where people go wrong. And again, this is too long. And I want this conversation with you because it's hard to find people who have the basic background to have the conversation. And it's an ongoing conversation.

When you say, "We live in a deterministic universe," they think that it means everything is predestined. But there might be a guy wandering down the street out there who is on his way to beat up his partner. And the fact he's on the way to beat up his partner is because he was born with the genes he was born with. And every single piece of input in his entire life was the piece of input from the food his mother ate in utero to a gust of wind in year five coming through a window that made him look that way, not that way. Every tiny, tiny, tiny thing led him to walking past our hotel room on the way to hit his partner.

But he's not necessarily going to hit his partner because I could walk out there and he could go, "Oh, you're that guy from that thing. Can I have a photo?" And then he wouldn't hit his partner, necessarily. Or a bus might go past with a sign on it saying, "Ring the Domestic Violence Hotline," and he might ring it. So intervention is vital in a determinant ... of course, determinism doesn't mean it's definitely going to happen. It means once it has happened, it happened because of everything that happened before it.

So I talk about it. And this is a little pet theory I'm trying to work on, which is that in terms of how this affects our how to be empathic and understanding of people, I think high expectations forward, utter understanding backwards. So until you hit a bunny with a crowbar, it is worth going, "Never hit a bunny with a crowbar, you psycho," or whatever intervention it is or, "Hey, why don't we put the crowbar down? Why don't we go play with something else?" You intervene all the way up.

But once the person's hit the bunny with the crowbar, it's like that's a person whose life led to the point where they hit a bunny with a crowbar. And now we have to think about justice and retribution and punishment and rehabilitation in those terms. So understanding that free will is at best a difficult-to-defend notion increases empathy doesn't make you give up. It does the opposite. Since I first understood this years after someone planted the idea in my head, it sat on the shelf, I feel like it's genuinely made me a more empathic person.

Andrew Leigh:

So it's settling then between free will and the agape love that the Greeks talk about, the universal love.

Tim Minchin:

That's right. What do the Buddhists call it? An all-loving something, something. Are you a long way from me in your thoughts about free will?

Andrew Leigh:

No, pretty close. I visited the local jail yesterday. And as I was leaving, I was asking one of the senior people there what we could do to help some of those there.

Andrew Leigh:

And he said, "Don't give me more resources. Put it into early intervention. Put it into improving the foster care system, the early childhood system, the schools making sure that we've got better mental health supports." And he talked about ... he said-

Tim Minchin:

So many of those [crosstalk 00:51:48].

Andrew Leigh:

... his very best wardens are those who treat all of the detainees with the notion of, "How would I want this person to be treated if they were my son? My wayward son who had done some terrible things but who still my son." And he said, "You don't always get those people as wardens. But when you have them, then they're the ones who do the best."

Tim Minchin:

That's amazing because that's what I always want to say. I use "cousins" because when you say "brother" or "son," you go, "Well, they would never do that. I always just go, "What if it was your cousin? Your cousin who you lost touch with but your cousin. Or your sister's husband." People don't like that.

People don't like being asked to be sympathetic towards people who have done horrible things. I mean, this comes to the George Pell thing, which you'll hear me talk about on stage. But any suggestion that I post writing my song feel some sympathy for that man ... I mean, I don't like that man.

But I feel a removed, objective, philosophical sympathy for him because it's my life philosophy that any point at which your empathy runs out is a failure on your behalf. Now, some failures of empathy are utterly justified and fine. But it's still a failure.

Andrew Leigh:

Let's extend this out a little bit further. Are you vegetarian?

Tim Minchin:

No, I'm a philosophical, hypocritical vegetarian. I think I should be.

Andrew Leigh:

My last guest, Robert [inaudible 00:53:30], said this is a bit like those who put themselves in the position of Thomas Jefferson who said that ... he knew owning slaves was intellectually wrong. But he did so anyway. That's your vegetarianism.

Tim Minchin:

Yeah, it's the worst. Yeah, you know how I talk about having my cake and eating it too. That's probably the grossest thing about me is I talk a good game and find it hard ... look, I think you got to be careful with demanding of yourself everything.

Living an ethical life is not possible. You just have to kill yourself. You have to take yourself out of the biosphere as a human. There is no ethical version of it.

But not eating meat would be very, very good. The trouble is my feelings about ... it's too long a conversation. You've heard it all before. But, yeah, I mean, the sentience thing.

But environmentally, it's crazy. But me not eating meat, it has to be governmental. All environment, we're not going to fix global warming with individual acts. We're just not. We can't.

It has to be a top-down, global effort of laws, penalties, taxes. We just got to. And it would make me feel good to be doing my little bit first. But it's not the thing that's going to fix it. I mean, you'll hear me sing a song about ... tonight I've got a new song about how much I hate myself. So you'll see that.

Andrew Leigh:

Let me quickly skate over a bunch of topics by giving you some either/ors, what I think of as my false dichotomy round.

Tim Minchin:

Fantastic.

Andrew Leigh:

Lennon or McCartney?

Tim Minchin:

I have to say McCartney just because I've made him ... I can't, no. I refuse to answer.

Andrew Leigh:

Shakespeare or Wikipedia?

Tim Minchin:

If I may define that as if I could only choose one to be in the world, Wikipedia, I'm afraid.

Andrew Leigh:

Biology or physics?

Tim Minchin:

Oh.

Andrew Leigh:

Which fascinates you more?

Tim Minchin:

I think physics fascinates me because I can't understand it. So I enjoy biology better because at least I can get close. But I struggle with the macro, macro and the micro, micro.

Andrew Leigh:

Books or podcasts?

Tim Minchin:

Books.

Andrew Leigh:

Kurt Vonnegut or TS Eliot?

Tim Minchin:

No, that's Lennon-McCartney. They're non-overlapping magisteria.

Andrew Leigh:

Los Angeles or London?

Tim Minchin:

London, London, London, a thousand times, London.

Andrew Leigh:

Stage or screen?

Tim Minchin:

Oh, I would have yelled stage a couple of years ago. But I'm getting really into the art form. Stage is still my most profound experiences of audiencehood are in theaters, also the worst experiences.

Andrew Leigh:

What is the worst?

Tim Minchin:

Mama Mia, any of that stuff that's ... for me, that's just not very ... unbearable.

Andrew Leigh:

[inaudible 00:57:01]?

Tim Minchin:

Despite his reputation, I think [inaudible 00:57:09] body of work is a bigger contribution. [inaudible 00:57:14] is just a wonderful writer and [inaudible 00:57:19] and essayist. [inaudible 00:57:22] introduced ideas that have had huge influence.

Andrew Leigh:

Sydney or Melbourne?

Tim Minchin:

Well, Sydney. I've put my dime down on Sydney. I'm learning to love it. But Melbourne in my heart. I love the ocean.

Andrew Leigh:

Thomas Lehrer or Lin-Manuel Miranda?

Tim Minchin:

I think Lin-Manuel's more gifted than Tom and me put together, yeah. It's the American hysteria, the way they talk about Hamilton, this musical, is hilarious. They have nothing to say about it.

Tim Minchin:

They're just like, "I got a ticket. It was 1,500 bucks. We saw it."

Tim Minchin:

"How was it?" "It was great." You're like, "Ugh, fuck." All they wanted was to have had a ticket. And the soundtrack is one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest musical theater soundtrack of all time. As a piece of theater, I think Groundhog Day was better.

Andrew Leigh:

Jazz or blues?

Tim Minchin:

Where they intersect.

Andrew Leigh:

Which takes us back to your uncle.

Tim Minchin:

Oh, yeah. No, he's fully blues. He's got no jazz in him. He's a proper ear player.

He wouldn't be able to name the chords. He's Hendrix level just feeling his way. Yeah, he's a monster.

Andrew Leigh:

And in terms of which is worse, Trump or Brexit?

I actually think Brexit will be unless something magical happens and they go to another vote and we pull the fuck out. I mean, pull out of Brexit. I think Brexit's worse.

I think we'll recover from Trump. America might get better because of Trump because it's had to look itself in the mirror. Although, I think there'll be something approximating us into a wall first.

I mean, I don't know what is going to happen when he goes to jail. What are they going to do? Well, I've got a new song tonight that says all those gunned-up red hats, I think they'll just stay on the couch watching Fox and Friends. I don't think they're really going to get out of the couch.

Andrew Leigh:

Auto-Tune or alternative medicine?

Tim Minchin:

Oh, I'd take Auto-Tune. Auto-Tune's my friend.

Andrew Leigh:

I thought you disliked it.

Tim Minchin:

My character in Californication doesn't like it. Oh, yeah. No, I don't like bad Auto-Tune. The idea of Auto-Tune is people don't know you've done it.

Andrew Leigh:

Right, you don't mind that.

Tim Minchin:

No, I tune everything these days very gently. And I don't ... tuning's not my problem. My voice is a horrible instrument. But tuning's not the problem.

Andrew Leigh:

So let me wrap with a couple of final questions. What advice would you give to your teenage self?

Tim Minchin:

I don't know, really. I don't really have any advice for him because I just got on with it. I mean, I would say, "It's going to be cool." But that's pointless.

That's that intervention of deterministic universe. If I had gone and said, "It'd all be cool," it probably wouldn't have been. That's why you don't time travel. The fact that I felt absolutely not good enough to be a musician or an artist is why I got to be because I just worked because I thought, "Well, I'm not naturally gifted. So I better just try harder."

Andrew Leigh:

What's something you used to believe but no longer do?

Tim Minchin:

I guess at some point, I believed in some vague mystical notion of the universe and purpose. I used to believe in free will. And when a friend of mine in New York ... so it must have been 2010-ish, had said, "There's no such thing as free will," I just went, "Well, that's such a stupid thing to say. What does that even mean?" And then, of course, the gateway was Harris's little book. And then down the rabbit hole. So, yeah, free will.

Andrew Leigh:

When are you happiest?

Tim Minchin:

Probably, on my parents' farm but only cause it's rare. I mean, that's the definition of happiness is stuff that you get that you don't always get. And if you get it all the time, it no longer makes you happy because it's a relative concept, yeah?

Andrew Leigh:

Henry IV, Part 1, whole days "to sport would be as tedious to work. But when they seldom come, they wished for come." What's the most important thing you do to stay mentally and physically healthy?

Tim Minchin:

Oh, I exercise and sleep.

Andrew Leigh:

You've moved from running to gym work recently?

Tim Minchin:

Yeah.

Andrew Leigh:

What prompted that?

Tim Minchin:

Well, soreness. But also, it works better for me because especially this TV show I just filmed required me to be naked and have sex. It's better for my body.

I do circuits, basically. It's better for my body. It makes me lose weight more quickly because it's more shocked by it. Running, my body's like, "Oh, this old thing." And, yeah, vanity.

But I also get a mental health kick out of it. I used to think, "Gym doesn't work like running does because running's free." But I still get the endorphins.

And I do this class with all these people just around the corner from my house. And I know them all. And it's quite fun.

Andrew Leigh:

Do you have any guilty pleasures?

Tim Minchin:

It's just wine. I don't know how guilty I feel. I'm quite functional, mild dependent.

I mean, the one thing about loving my work as much as I do is there's nothing else. There's my family and hanging out with my kids and doing what they want to do; playing basketball or going for a ride or going to the beach and snorkeling and stuff, which I love. But it's there. But I don't do any. There's no hobbies for me. I just want to work.

Andrew Leigh:

And finally, Tim, which person or experience has most shaped your view of living an ethical life?

Tim Minchin:

Well, I think probably it's just my parents because there was no preaching. There was no didactic explanations of how to live in our family.

But my dad and mum are solid good people, I reckon. And I think my siblings and I are generally nice and very interested in trying to do the right thing. So it must have just come from there, right?

But I don't know if there's a text or a philosopher. I'm pretty inspired by my siblings too. I think they're pretty ... my big brother's a kind guy, yeah. And we talk a lot about the "how are we to live" question. I guess [inaudible 01:04:48].

Andrew Leigh:

Yes, so how has your view on parenting evolved? You have two beautiful children; Violet and Casper. And you must have been around a lot of kids in producing Matilda. What is it to you to be a good dad?

Tim Minchin:

I think I'm probably not a very good dad because I'm not there enough. I mean, I have some guilt about how much I'm around. But my wife and I have a very old-school division of labor. She's full-time parent/person who runs our rather complicated lives. And I'm a full-time times two worker.

But I'm not sure how much Matilda changed me. And I wasn't really around that production. I wrote it and let them all get on with it.

Tim Minchin:

Certainly, I have done a lot of work with youth theater and stuff. I've always got along really well with kids. I have a big family and have always been surrounded by kids.

So I don't find connecting with young people difficult at all. Although, I start to feel a bit old nowadays. I think they think I'm just an old person now.

But my kids, I'm a bit unsure about this. I think we might be screwing our kids up by being too close to them. But I don't know.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that it's good to feel ... I get so upset when my daughter's upset. And I feel like that's good to show her that I care. But I don't know.

I think maybe our parents had it closer to right where you just keep a bit of distance and let them muddle through because kids are just getting so anxious and stuff. I wonder if it's partly because we indulged them by asking them to talk it through. We should have just gone, "No, bye. No crying."

Andrew Leigh:

So you and Sarah are helicopter parents who want to be free-range parents.

Tim Minchin:

I think we are not particularly helicopter-y. I think we're quite strict for parents these days. But my daughter and I especially, she's so good at ideas. She's always been able to ... she wants to hear my analysis. And I don't know if I'm screwing her up.

I'm not sure. I really like them. We get along well. And I'm very, very lucky because not many people in my industry have a marriage as healthy as mine. And it's because she's a rockstar. She's just solid as.

Andrew Leigh:

Well Tim Minchin, actor, writer, director, [inaudible 01:07:47]-

Tim Minchin:

Pontificator.

Andrew Leigh:

... pontificator, thank you for taking the time to speak on The Good Life podcast today.

Tim Minchin:

It's a pleasure. Hope you like the backing track.