(no music) #1271 Q&A Friday - Let me bore you to sleep (17th January 2025)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. I don't know what happened then. My name is Jason Newland.

Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Do you ever had like a ice cold thing go through you that just happened then? But I think that's probably because I just put my ankle against an ice cold metal railing. That probably didn't help.

This is Let Me Boyd Asleep and it's Q&A Friday. I've yet to create a jingle. But I do have some questions this week.

I think last week I had about two questions. This week I've got, I had it, I'm gonna have to check it. I'm gonna have to check it.

Oh, I've got so much to tell you. So much. Where are we? Okay.

Oh, I just want to say welcome to Ashley, who's just joined the my Facebook group, Jason Newland's boring group. Welcome. Welcome, Ashley.

That brings it to 207. 207. So welcome.

Thanks for joining. Oh, I have six questions. I tried to be a bit more specific this week because because I do these every Friday.

Sometimes the my request for new questions gets lost. And it's hard to tell the difference between this one and the one from last week or the one from the week before. Because they're all kind of pretty much the same.

As far as like any questions for Q&A Friday. So what I've done, I've started putting the exact date for when the next Q&A Friday is. So two days ago, I wrote any questions for Friday the 17th of January 2025 Q&A Friday.

So I think it's made it a little bit more easier to follow. Not that it's difficult. It's just things because I do I release quite a few recordings throughout the week.

And I think the things just get lost along the way. And this week, how many recordings have I made since Q&A Friday, which was the 10th of January, I've done 123456. I've made six recordings since last Friday.

And some of you might think in six, you didn't put six on the pod on the Facebook group. I know I didn't. And two of them I didn't upload.

So I did the was it place of peace, which is a relaxed, relax and sleep hypnosis daily. That was 218. Then I did 219, which was a body scan, both very short recordings, unless of course you listen to the long recordings, I guess.

What is this doing? Get this current plan. You say 50% 12 unlimited. Is this for 12 months? Say 50% unlimited podcast 12 months statistics.

I thought I already had 12 months statistics. So I'm just I'm just looking at something on here. 12 months statistics.

So what's different from that? Custom supporters club tool, customizable player color collaboration feature. I don't think there's any nice my Spreaker account is offering me a 50% discount for the next but for the the plan above 50%. Is it 50%? Oh, bless them.

Okay. Switch to monthly billing, which is what I've got. 60 pound off 540.

2500 wall. This is very strange. So it's 462 pound a year.

And this is 2 pounds 5025 pounds 60 a month. 25 pounds 60. Yeah, 25 pounds, euros rather.

Because at the moment, current plan is I think about 200 and 200 200 and 2040 240 euros a year I pay for my Spreaker podcasts. But that's monthly. So I don't doesn't not all in one go.

Right before I start, I'll just quickly go through the standard thing. My website is jasonnewland.com. It's my podcast. Basically, got a little bit of a headache today.

I think I might need to need to drink more water. And 1415 16. Really? Oh, I was gonna say the last recording I did was the 15th.

I didn't do one yesterday. Because I was a little bit a little bit flabbergasted by some of the stuff that happened yesterday threw me off, to be honest. And I had a bit of human contact, which tends to wear me out a little bit.

But that's my website. And there's, if you can't find anything, you know, like where's my stuff gone, or it's not uploading or updating on the podcast app that you use, just go to my website. And this will be on there.

And there's also links to all the different podcasts. But I don't know how long 123456789 1019 different podcast apps where my recordings are. And also, if you want to have a laugh.

And you want to listen to some really, really old stuff. But I would laugh but you know, some old stuff that's not available anywhere else. Click, click on podomatic.

And there's quite a few courses from yesteryear. Like from a long, long, long time ago. So that's my website.

And as a PayPal link there, if you'd like to support me, there's a link to the Facebook group, Jason Newland's boring group. There's also a link to my YouTube channel, which is Jay at Jason Newland. And every time I do a recording, I make a 10 hour version for my YouTube channel.

And it's just 10 seconds of a screen of an image. And then it's a dark screen for the rest. Which means it's kind of ideal for drifting off to sleep and stuff, if that's what you choose to do.

And lately, lately, I've been staring in the mirror, very slowly picking me apart. Lately, I have been listening to some of my recordings. Just it's good to do sometimes because you know, I don't, I don't necessarily.

It's not something I would do on a regular basis. Outside of when I'm editing. I mean, I hear it firsthand on when it's happening.

And I always fall asleep listening to them. So yeah, that's been quite cool. Ah, what else? There's a few interesting things, there's stuff that I could talk about, but it's not relevant for the Q&A Friday.

But, but, but, but, but, but yesterday, right? Those those that listen to me regularly, or have been listening for a while, know that over the years, I've had a tendency of sometimes, occasionally, doing stuff without thinking. And these days, it's not usually bad. You know, it's not like, but it's it.

It's generally not good on me. I'm usually the one that ends up. Well, I'm always the one that ends up on the wrong end of the stick, as it were.

The wrong end of the stick. And I've got a neighbour who is, he's elderly. He hasn't got much support, I try and support him a little bit.

Try and be here for him, you know, just if he needs me for stuff. And I've, I've said that I'll help him to get things if he needs them. And, and, you know, he doesn't really go online or he's about, he's just nearly 80.

And he lives alone. And he's literally just my neighbour, my local, my very close neighbour. And I've known him for nearly 10 years now.

So we got on really well. I knew that he needed a microwave. So on Wednesday, I ordered him a microwave and a bin.

So a waste paper basket bin. I ordered myself one, I ordered him one, because they're, they're like five quid each. Because I definitely need one.

And I think he needs one as well. So I've got him one. And I got, how many more times, just repeating the same thing.

I mean, I got two bins, one for him, one for me. And that's the end of the sentence really, isn't it? But I think they're black. And they're not waste, they're not wicker or anything like that.

You know, they're just, I think they've got gaps in them as well. So they're not. Yeah, it's just the standard.

I don't know how flimsy they are. And in fact, I hadn't even checked to see if they got here in one piece. And you might think, what are you talking about one piece? There's two of them.

No, I don't mean make sure they're stuck together, because that would be weird. But okay, I'll go through the whole story. I'll go for that.

I feel like this is a recording on its own. This is like a separate recording, but I'll, I'll just go for it. It won't be a long story.

It's before I start doing the Q&A Friday part. So here's what happens. So I ordered a microwave.

And then on Thursday, Vinnie's barking. I think there's someone at the door. So I look at through the door, because I've got a ring doorbell.

So I look through there just to see if anyone's there. So I got my door closed, and I try and minimalize his barking for the neighbors sake. So when he barks when the door is closed, then often means there is someone actually outside the door.

So I just check. And there is but they're not outside my door. They're out.

You know what? This isn't going to be Q&A Friday. I don't think I've got too much to talk about. Okay, so this, let's see how we go.

And the bearing in mind, I'd ordered a microwave for him. It wasn't expensive. It was like 59 pound.

I didn't, I didn't want to get the cheapest one. But I got like an average price one. And which, you know, I know, you can, you can pay huge amounts for them if you want.

But I just thought I'd get it. It's not on credit. I just paid for it.

And I thought it'd just be a really nice gift to give him. And it's part of me thinking, it's not about whether or not he can afford to do it or anything like that. It's more it's just a nice thing.

It must be quite nice to have somebody do something for you. I say now obviously I have people do things for me sometimes. I mean, I've got a neighbor who's I've known him for years and years and years.

Another one. Most of us have been in there for a long time apart from the lady downstairs. And the one that's took over my friend's flat.

But the rest of us have been up been living here for donkey's years. Where does that expression come from? I know your dog years, which is what seven, seven human years, isn't it per dog year, which doesn't seem very fair. It should be the other way around.

I think dogs are more deserving to be fair. I've done no harm. He hasn't caused any harm for anyone and he never will.

Anyway, I, so that's why I got it now. Oh, that neighbor. Yeah.

So he was living on his own. The other one, not the one that I'm talking about, but the other one that I'm now talking about, but not the one with a microwave that I bought a microwave for. So we call him old neighbor number two, because they're both around the same age.

I think he's a little bit older. He's like 81 or something. And as I said, I've always gotten well then he used to spend half the year away.

And then half the year here. And sometimes he'd do it twice a year, go away, come back for three months, go back again for three months. And his wife and his child lived abroad.

So I would look after his mail and, you know, just take any packages in and stuff like that. He'd let me know. And sometimes he'd just bring me, if he hadn't food left in the fridge, he'd just bring it in there and I'd chuck it away for him.

And then he's moved back in his last year. He, his, his, his wife and kid moved in with him. So he probably rents privately anyway.

So although it's a council block, his landlord bought their flat and then moved out and he's lived there for years. So he's too much information, but his wife and kid have moved in. And since they've moved in, they bring me around food and cakes.

Now I know I'm not supposed to eat cakes, but it's so rude, isn't it? To refuse cakes as a gift. And I've let them know I like chocolate as well. But it's, it's just, it is, isn't it? It's, you've got, if someone gives you a cake and it's not just like, Oh, I bought you something from the garage.

This is, she's cooked it, cooked. It's still warm. The cake was still warm.

Oh, just, I literally just, just made a cup of tea and this cake and a cup of tea went down so well. I feel a little bit ill for a few hours because I think my sugar level just rose way up too high, but Oh, it was lovely going down and not the sugar level. Well, it was okay.

Once my sugar level went back down again, but that's not really relevant to the microwave, is it? Oh yeah. So Vinnie's barking. I look for the, the, um, ring doorbell camera just to check out what's going on because yesterday there'd been a lot of activity.

I mean, yesterday I, it drained me and that's why I didn't make a recording because we had quite early on, there's like downstairs, there is a bin room. It's not a very big room. It's outside in the garden, the shared garden, but it's, it's big enough for just black bags to be put in.

I, when I moved in, there was two dustbins actually in there and the dustbins were taken out by neighbours and they used them as for fires to put, you know, for some reason. And because we used to, oh man, it's, it's hard to believe. We used to have a, a bloke lived over the fence and this is quite a few years back and this is true.

It sounds like it's just made up, but it's true. He would have a delivery of pallets delivered to him, like a big pile of pallets every week. And he would spend all day smashing them up with a hammer or whatever and every evening burning them.

That's what he did. He did that for months. I think it was during the summer, but it was like what, can you imagine how much noise that was all day long? Smash, smash, smash, smash, smash.

And then come, I don't know, late afternoon, early evening, had to close all the windows because, well he had to close the windows because of the noise, then had to close the windows again because of the smoke. It was very strange. What's that got to do with a microwave? Oh yeah, so I'm not, I don't know if he, I think he used one of those bins.

I'm not sure. I know that someone that doesn't live here took one of those bins and took it over behind the fence because they wanted to build a fire. It's, who knows why.

And once you've built a fire in one of those bins, it's like a metal bin. They're not much use for anything else because it does kind of ruin them, I would say, for anything else. You can't, you can't store milk in them anymore.

Not that you would want to store milk in a dustbin. Yeah, that's not a good example. But anyway, it's now just used for bin bags, black bin bags.

And other stuff that people put in there, whatever, random stuff. But the doors were completely destroyed. They were hanging off.

One, the vermin had got in and they basically made big holes in the doors and I mean the door, they'd probably been there for like 30 years. So they were replacing the doors. But it was proper bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, drill, saw.

I can't, don't know how to make a sound of a saw. But it was proper full on all, all day until probably, I don't know, three o'clock, two or three. And then it kind of, or maybe four and then it's just gone and it was finished.

But it started around nine. So I couldn't make a recording during that time. Another thing that happened is my doorbell kept going off.

And I was doing other stuff. So I don't know what I was doing. I think I might have been working on my website or updating some of the YouTube videos stuff, something like that.

And I, my phone would light up if someone actually rings the doorbell, because not everybody rings the doorbell. Some people just, they just knock on the door. But if someone actually rings the doorbell, it does come up as on my screen of my phone.

But I missed that because I was, what was I doing? Oh no, I didn't see it because I was in bed. I was in bed. Yeah.

So I, there was a little, this must have been a gap when the person stopped, stopped doing the door, the front door. At the door, you know, outside the bin door, the front, not the front door to the bin door, you know, the bin cupboard thing. And so I, I went and had a little nap.

And then when I came back, I'd seen that I'd had a missed, not only had I missed someone knock on the door, but I had a missed call from downstairs. So I said, oh, because I called her this is my neighbor. You're right.

She said, yeah, we had the council around doing surveys on our flats and they're just randomly turning up doing it. And they did inform us that they were going to be planning to come around and this was before Christmas, but they didn't say they were just going to turn up, which I don't think it's a great idea to do that. I'm just, there's a lot of vulnerable people living on their own and it's, yeah, it just seems a bit weird to just turn up.

But anyway, I'd missed mine and my neighbor downstairs didn't have a particularly good time with the one that came into her flat. So I'm like, oh, so we had a chat about that. And previous to that, we'd already, I'd already gone for a walk because of all the noise outside.

Me and my neighbor went for a walk and took Vinnie out and just to get away from the noise for a little bit, because she was still having her kitchen done. I think the last day was yesterday, but they put a new kitchen in. And so she had noise inside the flat and outside the flat because the bin room thing was literally just outside her bedroom.

It's outside my bedroom, but it's downstairs. I'm upstairs. And so we go for, go for a nice little stroll and have a chat.

And, but then later on she caught, you know, I call her up because she'd phoned me and she told me that they came in and I, I'm starting to worry thinking, oh, good. And I had been left a note, a little card, like a postcard thing to say, call us, please. We tried to come in and whatever to do a survey.

And the reason I don't, apparently the reason for the survey is because the building is about checking the building's integrity. It's a very old building. It was built around 78.

And some of the things in it have been here for 35 odd years, like the, the radiators, the, um, the kitchen, the bathroom, a lot of the windows, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's been here for a long, long, long time, which is why they've, I've got two neighbors that have had new kitchens. One had a new kitchen last summer and that was a neighbor over the road and the neighbor downstairs had a new kitchen right now.

She's had one and she's also getting a new bathroom as well.

So, um, and my neighbor over there is getting new windows opposite me. So they're, they're rolling out different things that need doing. And, but I'm thinking, oh, but my flat's a mess.

Right. Then he just started barking. There was someone in the garden talking really loudly, really loudly.

Why would you talk so loud? Such a moaner. Um, yeah, so we went for a walk and everything. And then she, she called me and I missed the call because I was in bed.

Again? No, I wasn't, um, I'm losing track. Anyway, I have a tendency, I have my phone on mute most of the time. So if I'm in bed or if I'm making a recording or whatever, I just have it on mute and I just call people back.

I often have the phone next to me. So if it, if the screen lights up, I can see someone's calling. But if I'm actually waiting on a phone call, I'll put the vault, you know, I'll stick it on ring.

And yeah, anyway, so I call her back. So I've had, it was like, I've had a lot of contact with my other neighbor over the road. So, um, oh, let's back, let's, let's go back to the start of the day.

So there's all this noise going on downstairs. My friend rung me up and I can't remember what she wanted ish. Yeah, I think she was telling me about the bloke coming around.

So I, I, she's about having a chat or something. So I'll come in the garden, have a chat with her. And I knock on my friend's, the neighbor's door opposite me to the reason I knock on his door.

Okay. Earlier on, this is confusing for me earlier on when Vinnie was barking, I look out and I see my neighbor carrying a box into his flat. And I'm thinking that the alarm bells went off.

So I knocked on his door and on the way down to the garden and I said, uh, right. I had another phone call just then. I just banged the microphone.

Oh, no idea what I was talking about. That's the thing. You know, I go through little periods when it's like nothing, then it's like lots of activity.

It's, I mean, technically if I, if I did this in the middle of the night, it would be a lot easier, but I'm asleep at nighttime now. Yes, I am. I went years where I'd be up all night long, sometimes till four, five, six, seven in the morning.

And that's when I should do my work. That's when I should put up my work. That's when I should make recordings.

It's a lot more quiet, a lot more peaceful. But now, yeah, I don't, I'm bedded. I'm in bed at 10, 10 o'clock, nine, sometimes, sometimes even earlier than that.

So, okay. So I, on the way down to the garden, I knock on my neighbor's door who lives opposite me and I say, Hey, whatever your name is. Do you still need a microwave? This is bearing in mind, I hadn't had one delivered yet.

Okay. And he said, No, I got one today. I already ordered one.

And I thought, Oh, okay. And for, so I didn't like brilliant. Okay.

I tried to, I tried to cancel the microwave that I'd ordered from Amazon, but it was too late because it was out already out for delivery. Well, you know, I'm back upstairs. I don't know what I'm doing.

Again, I have another missed call. And this time it's my neighbor downstairs again. And I'm thinking, we've, we've had a lot of contact in one day.

I was like, I don't know what it is now. This strange. Oh, in the meantime, we'd already had a milkman come and I just found out now I had a milkman knocking on the door as well.

This is so much activity, people knocking on the doors in one day. So I'm doing something. I've got the door closed.

I've got music on. Just listen to some music. I can't I don't know what I'm doing online, something.

And I see the phone lights up somewhere at the door. But I don't know what am I doing? It's like I was busy doing something. But I didn't.

I didn't make a recording yesterday. I must have been researching something, possibly. And I've been trying to work out how to set up the what are they called? tasks.

So chat GPT and now have tasks. It's in beta. So it's like in practice kind of mode at the moment.

And it's basically like a guess an AI agent kind of like a miniature AI agent thing that just does a certain certain task. And I've got to to set up. One is create a new task.

Okay, how do I set up a new task? I was struggling to get into the tasks. It wasn't if I click on tasks. Oh, it does now.

But yesterday, nothing. But I've got to checked. I've find a find uplifting stories, new stories.

And this is every hour search for uplifting new stories. And the other one is check boxing announcements. Again, there's quite often it's the same stuff, which is a bit weird.

And, but, you know, it's sort of shaggy sort of checking through it. So every hour, it checks for the latest boxing announcements and the latest positive uplifting news. And as you can imagine, there's more boxing announcements than there are uplifting news stories.

The problem is they're mixed together. And I don't want it to be mixed together. I want them to be separate.

So I suppose I could ask for that. I need to be a bit more specific, more specific. Right now I need to go to the toilet.

I'm sure he didn't really need to know that. So I should be back in a sec. I might even wash my hands.

Oh, that was satisfying. So, oh, right. So my neighbour, he said he has a, has a microwave.

I couldn't cancel it from Amazon. So I'm just sitting in here doing whatever. The phone goes, it's my neighbour downstairs again.

And I answered the phone. She said, have you had a delivery? I said, I think so. I've not looked yet.

I mean, I'm indoors. I'm inside with the door closed. And I didn't check the ring doorbell.

And I hadn't checked the emails to see or anything. And she said, can you check? I said, all right. And I said, yeah, I've got delivery.

Is it two boxes? I said, yeah. She said, well, you're going to want to perhaps come down and see this. I said, well.

Now I was intrigued. I went down. She's also got a doorbell, a camera doorbell.

And on a door, on the camera, it's got the video of the Amazon delivery, walking up the steps, probably about halfway up the steps and drop in the microwave box. Not on purpose, but you it drops on the steps, fall down to the steps and slides, you know, towards the main door. So he's trying to carry two boxes with one hand.

The other box is incredibly light. It's just got these waste paper bins in. So he goes back downstairs.

He picks the box up again. I don't know what he was holding on to because they didn't look like anything he could actually on to for the microwave box. He gets halfway up the stairs again, and he drops it again, and it falls down the stairs again, bangs down.

It makes quite a bit of noise, but it is echoey down there. And it lands back down near the front door again. And then eventually he picks it up correctly, you know, both arms in his arms, you know, carries them up the stairs.

And who knows how, how hard he put it down? I don't know. But I don't didn't really take much notice of that bit. I should check to see if he dropped it again, shouldn't I? And I could not believe my ear, not his eyes.

Because it's the kind of stuff you see on YouTube. It's like, really? Bearing in mind, it's it wasn't, wasn't just a box. And he didn't know what was in it is actually the microwave had was the microwave box with a picture on the other microwave on it.

You know, because you remember the old days when you get stuff and it was didn't necessarily come in, you know, it'd be in a box in a box. So that people didn't know what was in there. Now, this just came as it was.

And I thought, well, with that film footage, I'm just going to send it back. There's no way I'm going to have that after that, because it's going to likely be damaged. And my neighbors downstairs said, can we just can we see if it's damaged? I said, well, no, there's no point.

I was just it's already sealed. I just leave it sealed. And I realized by looking at their faces that I really wanted to see if it was damaged.

It was and that got me a bit more interested. So come on, then. So we all came back up here.

She filmed me opening the box to see if there's any damage, you know, because you wouldn't technically if you drop something, it dropped down the whole of the stairs. Basically, drop down half the stairs twice. So if you drop a microwave down a full set of stairs, not a big, big, big set of stairs, but either kind of expect a bit of damage, I would say.

And so I open it up the polythene inside, you know, that foamy polystyrene stuff that was kind of that you put it in that was supposed to kind of protect it. It's not it's not supposed to protect it from being used for basketball. It's you know, it's not supposed to be bounced around.

So I mean, and it that was broken. And then we take out the plastic, which was around a microwave was broken, took the plastic off just like a plastic bag thing. And the control panel was hanging off a little bit.

It's like broken. The door didn't seem to close properly. And it looks like there was dents in the sides as well.

I just what I don't know why I was surprised. But then it makes me think I've had damaged stuff in the past. And it's it wouldn't the right thing to do just like generally like to knock on my door and say look, I dropped this down the stairs.

You know, sorry. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to take it back? Do you want to do you want to check to see if it's okay? I know they've got limited time. But it's better than potentially losing your job, isn't it? Even if it means you're going to be a later day, in a sense of I've not told Amazon yet about it.

And it wasn't his fault. It's, you know, things get dropped. That's not really the issue.

It's just ignoring the fact that it was dropped. And to do it twice. And it wasn't chucking them down the stairs.

It's not like he wasn't kicking about. And, you know, it clearly was an accident. He didn't mean to drop it down the stairs.

But it happened twice. And he didn't tell me didn't. You'd think there'd be some kind of process for the delivery drivers to be able to just say, look, it's damaged.

Not even to take the blame themselves. Just say, look, it's damaged. I picked it up and it was rattling.

It's damaged. So I've returned it. Or just to say it fell out.

It just fell down. I dropped it. You can have droppages.

It's just a standard thing, isn't it? Doesn't whatever job human error, it's natural. Maybe not to chuck it down the stairs twice, but you know, generally. But right now, literally, just for I started this recording, so I put it off all day.

Because yesterday zapped me out. Really did. And I went on because I already tried to send it back.

Like last night, I went on my phone to Amazon and was trying to like do the form. But the phone, it wasn't allowing it. I did the form and then it said no, it's not worked.

So I've gone on to my iPad. And this time it has worked. And it's really simple, really simple.

All I had to do really is just fill in a short form. Say that is, I mean, there's loads of reasons to send it back. One was just like, I don't want it anymore.

I thought I ordered it accidentally. The one I put is it was damaged, but the packaging is fine. And all the boxes fine.

So the box is fine. It was inside the packaging. But I just thought they didn't have one for that.

And, and they said, How do you want it to do you want it? Do you want a re you know, do you want another one? Do you want a refund? Do you want a refund put into your bank? Do you want a refund put onto your Amazon account? So I just said no, I want it back put back into my account, my bank account. And then they How would you like to give it back?

Do you want to go take it to as the as a drop off point? Do you want to take it to the post office? Like no, I don't want to do any of those things. Why should I have to travel? Technically get a taxi because it's the bus is quite a long way away.

It's quite hard to carry something like that for a long distance. Because it's, it's not even the necessary the weight. But it's kind of if I carry my arms, I can't see in front of me.

So if I've got in both arms, I can't see in front of me. And there's a big balance issue, you know, like I can't see what I'm walking on a good trip. If I hold it in one arm, I'm going to be off balance.

And I can't really hold stuff for long periods because my lower back I've got lots of excuses. I've got more more than that. I've got more excuses.

One of them is I don't want to. And, but technically, it's, it's not ideal to try and carry it to get to the bus. And then when I get the bus to where I'm going, then I have to carry it again to the post office, which is another like 15 minutes.

So it's it's a good like half hour walk to get it. And if I get a bus, it's going to cost me 15 quid. Although my neighbor downstairs did offer to take me.

So that was nice. In the drop down list of options, right at the bottom, you have to click the thing to get down to the bottom. It says we can ask the post office to come and collect it.

A postal driver or whatever poster, the Royal Mail rather, will come and collect it from your doorstep. They'll come and knock on your door and collect it. Why don't you put that at the top then? That's the easiest method.

I'm guessing for most, okay, maybe not most people, it's hard to know. Not everybody's going to be in and able to stay in or whatever. But that seems like the easiest method to actually have someone come and collect it.

I mean, technically, you just leave it on the doorstep for them. If it's safe to do that, doesn't need a label, doesn't need anything. Just, I guess they have their own labels printed out when they come and collect it and they just stick it on there.

Like, wow. Wow, man. So yeah, I said, yeah, I want the Royal Mail to come and collect.

So they come and collect it tomorrow. What I'll do is if it's the normal post lady, I'll carry it downstairs if she wants, just to help her out, because she's carrying stuff all day. I don't mind doing that.

But it's just, it's also if she's got a heavy bag and stuff to carry. So I'll carry it down to a van. But it's a lot easier than having to take it to the post office.

But they put that option right at the bottom and all my, if you didn't know to scroll down, you wouldn't, you literally have to press a down button to get to it. There's lots of sneaky, I'm not saying they're being sneaky, but there are lots of sneaky ways that websites do things. You know, that caught me out recently with my website hosting.

And I don't know if they do on purpose, but they put it on how much is it monthly. And I looked and then I did something else. And I said, okay, I'll do that.

But then it reset to being yearly and ended up paying for the whole year. And they did refund it. But no, that's not good.

Another thing that I don't know if you noticed, it doesn't happen as much. But there was a time on the internet where they almost betted on people's impatience. So the screen had come up and you click on a link.

And then the screen had moved down and it'd be an advert. Like you wouldn't you didn't haven't clicked on an advert. But that's what would come up because it moved the screen a bit so that you is like a second delay.

So the screen to come up, you click where you want, but in that time, the screen moved up an inch or down an inch. It's like frustrating. So yeah, so they're coming tomorrow.

That'll be the end of this little adventure. I haven't given him his bin yet. I'll do that later.

And I'm going to borrow some tape off of neighbors downstairs to reseal the box. And that should be it. Blimey.

And they said I ain't got to do nothing, just give the box back. So that should be good. The only time I've ever done this before is when I had a laptop.

It was a reconditioned laptop. This is years ago. Like long way everything's years ago.

This is like 2000 and blimey 2014 2013 2014. And it didn't work. The laptop didn't work.

So I just called contacted Amazon. And it was actually purchased for me. Someone bought it for me.

I contacted Amazon that the next day they come and collected it. They gave me another one there. There and then just like swapped over.

I've never been so excited. So I think we're up to date now. Have a drink of water.

So it's time for the Q&A Friday. Or now I'll do that. I was gonna say I feel like she did the Q&A Friday separate bar.

Right. So the first question I've got. Ing, I've got Dimitri, Aska, Michelle, Robin and Ali.

So I'll start with Ing. Thank you so much for your podcast. It helps so much.

Do thank you. Thank you. Do you listen to your podcasts? No, hopefully not a friend family definitely not.

Friends shouldn't do. I try to dissuade anyone that I know from listening to what I do. Because it's, it's not for them.

I've had a few people say or listen to your podcast last night. And there was one particular situation. This is Wow, this is going back.

Again, 2013 time. And I was having coffee with a friend. And I said to him, please don't tell anyone.

Because I sent a sense of Valentine's cards to somebody. But it's Valentine's private. It's secret.

And I didn't want anyone. I didn't want anyone to know it's from me. Wasn't anything weird.

I just sent some Valentine's cards. That's all. But you know, secret.

And it wasn't one of those situations where I was. I just just wanted to send a Valentine's card. Because I was in love with her.

But nothing was going to come of it. So I didn't, you know, I didn't leave my forwarding address on there. Yeah, it wasn't anything I said it was I keep saying it wasn't anything weird.

It sounds weirder than what I say that doesn't it? But it wasn't I just didn't. I didn't. He said, Oh, tell my daughter.

I said, No, don't tell your daughter. I tell my daughter everything. No.

This is a private conversation. I don't want you telling people. It's not anybody.

It's my daughter. No. I want you just this is between me and you.

I just telling you this is what I've done. Not told anyone else. It's just I just said it wasn't a big deal.

But it was like becoming a big deal the way the conversation was going. And I saw him the next week. We sat down and had a coffee.

We used to meet up every week. And he started laughing at me like just laughing. I said, What? He said, I was listening to your recording your podcast.

I said, I think it was probably a Jason chats recording or he might have been watching it on YouTube. I said, Okay. Why are you laughing? He said, Remember when you said don't tell anybody about the Valentine's cards you sent? I said, Yeah.

He said, You spoke about it on your video. I said, Did I? He said, Yeah. So you're telling me not to tell anyone, but you're just telling the whole world or anyone at all that, you know, even doesn't want to know that might see it.

And I thought, Oh, yeah, it's kind of a point. But my, my, my theory is this nobody anywhere near where I am would listen to this or would watch my videos. That's how I figure it.

Nobody knows who I am. This is, I mean, there was a time when I was predominantly American audience, especially on YouTube, but also on the podcasts. It's America, the USA is still the majority, like percentage wise out of all the countries.

But it's not as dominant as it was. It used to be something like 80 80% USA. Now it's not.

It's, I mean, there's a lot more people in my country now, or in Britain, UK, rather, that listened to my stuff than ever before. There never used to be, I didn't have many, a very good percentage of people in this country, listening to my podcast. But now it's, you know, over the years, it's grown.

And also Australia and Canada and multiple, multiple countries is yep, I'm going to check the stats. What is a geolocation geolocation? This is for the last 30 days. So the United States, this is on my all my podcasts, well, most of my podcasts, 54% United States, 16.39% United Kingdom, 12% Australia, 6% Canada, just over 1% New Zealand.

And all the other countries is kind of roughly about a 1% type mark. So you know, Ireland, Thailand, I even got people in Thailand listening. Germany, India, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Iceland, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Kuwait, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, South Africa, Romania, Singapore, Jordan, Mexico, and others.

So there's another percentage 2%. And it's just others. So I don't know where they're where they're based.

So the United States is still the predominant one. But all the other countries have kind of opened up. I got more people in Australia listening to me now than ever used to.

And maybe Canada as well. But I mean, statistically, well, not to be fair. During lockdown, I had a month, the statistics went up a lot.

Now, I'm not going to go into statistics. But it went up a lot. A lot.

A lot. I mean, I was, I think one month and I think what was it? I don't know if it was December. December 2021.

I had over 900,000 downloads just in that month. Yeah, under the standard 1,000,940,000. I think, if I remember rightly, which is, you know, I've never got close to that in any month since.

Or before that was just one of those strange months, I guess. But on Spreaker, since 2018, my overall stats, total downloads is 15,042,884. And yes, so far, again, it's the last 12 months.

That doesn't really mean anything, because half the year I've not even been on there. So this this year, current year, current month, actually, isn't that blimey? So current month 54% 15.6. If I go for all time, how far back will let me go? Okay, and let me go back for one year, one year. That's a bit rubbish.

Let me go back one year. So 119,946 downloads. But I was most of that year, I was using SoundCloud.

So that was SoundCloud. I wasn't using Spreaker hardly all over the last year period. So if I look at the insights for, if I just go in the last 12 months.

Okay, so for the hypnosis of sleeping deeply, on SoundCloud, for the last 12 months, I've got 1.7 million plays. And that is one if it shows me what the top countries are. Top locations, if I go to countries, so it's not giving me percentages, but United States of 735,000, United Kingdom 237,000, nearly 238,000, Australia 157,000.

So it's got gives you a rough idea. And the top listener was Wanda. So thank you, Wanda, if you're listening.

Yeah, blimey. So I wonder if I go, let's have a look at the let me boil the slate. What was that one? What have I got with that? Okay, it's that one.

Right. So let's have a look at the stats for the last year, the last 12 months. So yeah, on the let me boil the slate podcast for the last 12 months.

Bearing in mind this year, I've not been using it much, because I've gone back to Spreaker 539,000. So in the last year is what 257,000. So 2,200,000, 2,300,000.

About 2,000,000, between 2,300,000 and 2,400,000. 2.4 million roughly, and the last 12 months. So it's alright.

It's I'd expect a bit more, but it's alright. It's okay. It's not too bad.

So um, see any opportunity to talk about stats as me. I don't think any. Although I did have a weird incident years back in 2009, 10.

I was in London, and I was helping out in my friend's comedy club. I was in university at the time. So I was, yeah, I was just helping out.

And I think it was to build up to Christmas. So it might well have been 2009, December. Possibly.

Yeah, that would have been. Anyway, what happened is, I get a text message, just to my normal, my normal, you know, text email. But I'm at work, but I'm just checking.

So I'm in the office and we're just taking orders for Christmas and stuff. And this person said, um, are you related to, and listed my dad, and my brother's names. And that was freaky.

I'm like, what the hell? See what I've been doing, I've been sending out, offering sessions. What was I offering? I don't know if I was offering some kind of, to help. I was contacting driving schools to offer help with getting over driving test nerves, which is something I actually used to do in person with people back in in groups back in 2006.

2007 time. So I was thinking. So it's only a few years after that.

So 2009. I contacted pretty much all of the schools. And I think it was, I was just going to offer the schools, I was going to make some recordings, I think, and just offer the schools a chance to just, I can't even remember, maybe just to have this by the CD or something, or just had the recordings for free.

So I contacted possibly every school in my area anyway. And every driving school. So this was from a driving school.

Like what the hell's going on? It turned out and then I've got an email about five minutes later laughing like, it's me, it's your cousin. So it was like a cousin, I don't even know her really. I don't, I wouldn't know her to, if I saw her, I wouldn't know her.

But she's my cousin. She's my uncle's daughter. My dad's brother's daughter, my dad's niece, you know, however.

And I haven't seen her in decades. But it's weird, because, you know, we both, her dad means he's got a different surname now, because she's married, but her dad, what she was originally had my surname, till she got married. And her dad had my surname.

And so, and she said, it's me, it's your cousin. And it's really weird. What's weird is she had one of the biggest, she had this really big driving school, like really big driving school that I didn't, I'd heard of it in the area.

And it was kind of, I think it might even be nationwide now. But I didn't didn't know she was connected to it. So I don't know if she just married into it, if he already had that, or they, I think more likely, they built it together.

Because I've been together, you know, for a long time. Because they're old like me. In fact, she might even be older than me.

And that was weird. I don't think she that that was I don't know, she listened to any of my stuff. Another time, and one of my other cousins.

And it was, this was a different, yeah, my uncle told me this. And it's a different uncle. Because I've got, well, I had one's passed away, but I had two uncles, and two aunties.

And so one of the uncles that was the cousin that I was mentioning with the driving school, but had the other uncle. I saw him when I was visiting my nan. Yeah, quite a long time ago, of course.

And, of course, because she's not been around for 10 years now. Blimey. And she and he said to me, something funny happened the other day.

I said, Well, she said, one of his kids, funny, his kids are giants. I mean, they're like six, seven. Look at me, I'm like five, two, six foot.

They're all really, really tall. And I think they all went into the army. And they were like, police, army police, because they were so big.

And back then you had to be tall to be in to be a police person, you know, in the 80s and stuff. And early 90s. In this country, that's anyway, but I'm sure there's some countries where you can't don't have to be six foot tall, because nobody's six foot tall.

And anyway, see, he is like, apparently, his height's got nothing to do with the story, though. I don't know why I mentioned his height. Someone came up to him in a pub.

They looked up at him and they said, you related to someone called Jason. And he said, Yes, my cousin. See, I know their names.

I just haven't seen them for years. So because I used to see them when I was a little kid, and they were, we were all kind of roughly the same age, you know. And they were a little bit older, because he wasn't perhaps, he's probably about my age.

See, my oldest, this is my dad, he was, his older brother was 80. And he, he sort of left, he departed a couple of years ago, well, it was 2020. Or was it 21, 2020.

And that was my dad's oldest brother. And he was born about 1940. Yeah, 1940.

And then I think, I think my nan, because basically, my nan got pregnant when my granddad was on leave. I know, I don't know if you want to think about that. But he was on leave.

And I think the 1939 that all started, and he came back, maybe came back in 1940 on leave. I don't know. But anyway, he didn't see his son, my granddad didn't see his son until 1945.

So my, my uncle was already about four or five years old at that point. And my dad was born about 46. So there was about six years between them.

Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it? So they came home 45. And then my dad was born next year. So he was the second out of the five of them.

Four of them. Five of them. Yeah, five.

But technically, the brothers and sisters or the, you know, all my cousins and stuff, they're all quite close age group. I've got a cousin who's around about the same age as me. I got one that's about the same age as my older brother.

So you know, all kind of in the same kind of ballpark really, you know, 50s, I suppose now. And even my little brother is he's eight years younger than me. And he's now what am I? I'm 44.

He's not 44. I mean, I wish I was 44. I'm 54.

He's 46. 40s. No, I'm 44.

So he's Yeah, he's 46. So he's 46 now. So he'll be 50 soon.

Anyway, I what was my point? Yes, someone came up to my uncle, my cousin, and said, Do you know Jason? You got you write some called Jason. He's really good looking fella. Does YouTube videos really handsome.

It's very distracting how good looking he is. They probably might not have said that. And he said, Yeah, it's my cousin.

I mean, that was a whole story, to be fair. But my uncle didn't know I did this stuff. And he was no one really knew.

And I think it's something that my dad brags about. I brag about it. Because I find it's impressive.

I've always been impressed by myself. I figured, well, no one else is going to be so I might as well. But yeah, no one listens to my podcasts.

Family wise, I think occasionally, because I, on Facebook, I was allowed on Facebook, I generally try and block everyone that I know, like in in real life. Not not everyone, but most, because I don't want them listening to my podcast, because this is my private. It's like a private diary, like a private journal.

And it might seem weird, like if it's private, why are you doing it publicly and 1000s of people, you know, listening, but it's not about that. It's I don't know if still feels private and personal. And I'm not self conscious talking to you as I would be to someone that I actually see in real life.

And so yeah, I'm pretty sure that none of my family watch or listen to anything I do. And I haven't got really much of a family, like that I have contact with, but none of the ones I've contact with would, I don't think. And nobody, yeah, nobody I know is impressed with what I do.

It's, I think they just, I guess they just think of me as being a bit weird. And therefore, what I do would be a bit weird. And I'm probably not someone that people would take seriously.

And you could argue, well, not surprising the way you talk, like, okay, good, good, good point. But I can be serious. And I can focus on serious subjects.

But I tend not to when I make these Let Me Bore You To Sleep podcasts. But I do, you know, I do still mention stuff and talk about real things that are going on in my life. Neighbours, no.

Although, although, in the past, I did make a recording for my Nan, because she had osteoporosis. And basically brittle bone, her bones were just crumbling, really, through age and well, through the disease. And she had a lot of pain in her shoulders and in her back.

And I made her a recording to listen to. This is probably in about 2004. Before I even started making recordings, like for people, or podcasts, and I made her an audio recording.

I think I did one for my auntie as well, that's also got osteoporosis. Because both my aunties have got it, and my Nan's got it. So it's kind of a genetic thing.

And they're the two things I need to kind of watch out for when it comes from my Nan's part, osteoporosis and macro degeneration for the eyes. Because so both my aunts have got the osteoporosis. And bearing in mind how many breakages and fractures I've had over the last few years.

I'm not sure how strong my bones are. But a doctor won't test, they won't do anything. I did ask, I said, Can you not test me first, see if my, what my bone density is like, just in case I need to take one of those big old tablets.

I just figured catch it early, you know. And I do drink a fair bit of milk, which has got pro calcium and stuff. But I know my Nan used to have to take a big calcium tablet, once a week or something.

And she did also, she went blind with the, with the, with the macro degeneration thing. And my dad's got that. And I think his brothers have got that.

So I think maybe his aunties as well, my aunties as well. So the one thing that does carry in the, in the family is prostate. The, the, you know, the prostate thing that I don't want to mention.

And I got tested. And I was clear, thankfully. But it's definitely a genetic thing, because all the men have had that thing.

And when I say I don't mean all the men have got prostates. And I don't mean that I'm just saying, it's, I don't know how widely spread it is amongst for better, or a better word than that. How, I don't know when it comes to my, my cousins and stuff.

Because I don't have contact with them. But the male ones, I mean. And I only really speak to one of my cousins.

And that's, that's rare. She's on Facebook. So I've kind of kept her on there.

But I don't have any other family, family members on. And kind of, yeah. So, yeah, it's weird.

But no, I don't. That's the answer. Really.

I don't really have anybody. Yeah, no, I don't. As far as I know, nobody does.

I mean, my friend downstairs. And if he came upstairs, and he'd just be smiling, for no reason. I usually meant that he meant that he'd been watching one of my videos.

Because he just make fun of me. He said, Oh, how big my hands look. And just make fun of me.

But other than that. So thanks for that. Dimitri asks or says, since it's recently been the anniversary of Humphrey Bogart's demise.

I wanted to ask if you liked his films, Jason. And if yes, what are some of your favorite, favorite of his pictures? I wouldn't know. You do.

Honestly, I can honestly, I can never guess what question you're going to ask. If I did not expect Humphrey Bogart to be mentioned. The only Humphrey Bogart films and I don't know a specific one, but would be the gangster ones he used to do.

Where'd be like, you dirty rat. And it there'd be is it like Machine Gun Kelly? Was that one of them? And I used to like those movies, all of them really, because they're all quite, I quite like them quite quiche, quite. I don't know the way that they were filmed, they were really filmed well.

Because it didn't even have special effects. So they kind of some of those older movies, the ones in the, you know, the 40s, the 50s. They, the ones in black and white, they had to rely on the script, like pretty much solely on the script and the acting.

And because there wasn't much else going on. You know, they didn't, they couldn't be there for like, lots of necessary car chases. And I'd say it's like super special effect because it wasn't around back then didn't have that a CGI and things.

So I quite like that some of the movies, the black and white movies I quite like. But there I don't have a favorite one. I really can't.

Humphrey Bogart. I really didn't expect that question. This is the most rare as that is, that's the most random question I've had since the last question you asked.

Thanks. The next one, Aska. Thank you so much for what you do, Jason.

Your podcast has helped me when other sleep meditations failed. Thank you. Now it's my go to.

Sometimes I'm asleep within minutes. Well, if you fall asleep within a minute within minutes on this recording, you won't have heard any of the questions answered. Because I was definitely talked away too much before.

But that will happen sometimes, especially if stuff's happened. Because very little happens in my life. So when I do have some occurrences, I kind of need to talk about them when they are fresh in my mind.

It just kind of makes sense. Otherwise, I just I might mention it in a few years time, but it just is nice. I kind of I'd like to keep this as a kind of a journal as well, you know, to keep track of what's going on.

And yeah. So not sure if this has been asked before. But I wonder how your own sleep is.

And if you have ever listened to your podcast to help with sleep. I don't I have in a sense of when I listen to my own podcast, it's more as a tester. Firstly, you want to see how it sounds.

Make sure this might make you laugh and make sure that I'm not talking too quickly. And I guess that might never happen. But just get an idea if it sounds okay.

And I always fall asleep. Always fall asleep. Because it is it's hard to listen to my voice for an hour.

And I thought I'm probably the biggest fan of my voice. I just I love my book. It's boring.

It's boring listening to what I say. It's so boring. And I do fall asleep.

And although I found something today, and you know, quite interesting, you might not know, so I'm quite into philosophy. And I found some YouTube channels, where they are talking in depth, I found this particular YouTube channel, where he talks for like two or three hours about a philosopher. And he clearly knows his stuff, like he really knows his stuff.

But in the comments, there's people saying I listen to this go to sleep. This is so boring. Your voice is so boring.

And I'm listening to it because I'm interested in philosophy and interested in the people that like Nietzsche, or if you say if you call him Nietzsche, the people that influenced him, and the people that he influenced, and all those different people. I haven't banged that metal thing for ages. That needs to go.

It's still there. And so I was listening to this thing this morning. Because I woke up early, and I fell asleep.

And it was 2 hours and 50 minutes I've been listening to this YouTube video. And it was just it's very long. There was a lecture basically about this philosopher that had one big book.

And I got no idea what I listened to. Because I was gone, I fell asleep. But it was relaxing.

So for me, my I like to go to bed early, I like to be in bed by 10. Especially on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, because I listened to Nick Abbott on the radio LBC radio. So I listened to the his show every Yeah, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, if I'm not in bed by 10 o'clock, which occurs when there's boxing on sometimes a boxing doesn't finish till 1112 or 12.

I'll I'll listen live, but then I'll go back, I'll go backwards. So I'll be listening. It's kind of like playback while it's still live, if that makes sense.

And the show lasts for three hours. So it's 10 to one. So I do that's, that's probably one of the most regular things I do in a week.

And I go to the toilet as well, but not at specific times. The what else? I nearly every day I get woken up by Vinnie. I don't know why he's waking me up.

But he does. And it doesn't even it doesn't need to, because the doors open. Unless it's early.

I'll close the door and have his water and his food in the in the bedroom with me. But if it's fairly late, I'll turn the lights off and I'll have the door open so he can go. I still bring the water into the bedroom, so that he can get to it.

So he hasn't got to go into the living room. But he can come and go as he please. So he doesn't need for me to wake up.

But sometimes I think he just gets bored. So he woke me up about 10 past three this morning. But I did get quite a lot of sleep.

I went to bed fairly early yesterday because all of the interaction with people and it just drained me. It's just one of those things is sometimes it has a it wasn't it was unpleasant or anything. It just it was a bit a bit too much activity for me.

So I went to bed and I didn't eat anything properly, which probably didn't make me more sleepy. I don't know. But he woke me up at three.

I got up and no not three about quarter past three. I did some stuff on the internet and I had my breakfast at four. And then I listened to that recording about an hour later the video and I woke up nearly three hours later.

The YouTube video about the philosopher, whatever his name was. So I don't I don't listen to my podcast really to go to sleep, but I will listen to them sometimes during the day just to see if they work. And what I what I do now is I listen on YouTube because the screen goes dark after the first 10 seconds.

I haven't got the screen shining. And I can just lay on my recline in my chair. And it's quite a nice way to do it.

Rather than I don't sometimes I listen to it on the phone in my bedroom. But I just find that's a little bit easier. And if I do listen, if I listen to it normally, I just listen to it without music for the duration of the recording.

Or on YouTube, it's 10 hours without music. And other than that, with Phinney, I need to have something playing when we're in bed for at least the first few hours or a couple of hours. So either classical music, I quite like pipe, panned pipe, is it pipe music? And or might listen to the radio or an audiobook.

And then once once he's asleep, I can turn it off and he's asleep, he's gone. This I don't want to, I prefer not to have that playing other than Friday, Saturday, Sunday, because that's for me rather than for him. But I, well, it benefits him as well, because if there's no distraction, he will hear every single sound.

He's listening for it as well. So every time someone opens the door, or goes downstairs, or you know, he just starts barking. And 10, 30, 11, 12, it's just not a good time to be doing that.

And yeah. So thank you. Apparently, I did say your name right, Aska.

See? Yay! I've done something right this year. I thought, oh. So thanks for your message, for your question.

Michelle asks, have you ever been to the United States? No, I haven't. However, are you inviting me? I do. What does it say? Just listens for the first time last night.

Loved it. I just looked at your thing. This is from 10th of October, 2023.

Blimey, that's ages ago. Wow. So you're in, Michelle, you're in Texas, I think.

I don't know. Anyway, I've just gone to your profile just to, because it said there. I thought I'd try to see whereabouts you live in.

But yeah, I'd like to go to America, or to the USA, because I don't know, for me, there's, we're so connected, like the countries, like the UK, or England or whatever, and the United States, so connected, like almost related. Not just the fact that we used to own the country, but just in a sense of, and, I mean, obviously, there's going to be lots of people from the UK, ancestors that, you know, that have gone down, I think, that live in, I don't know, you know, a lot of British people, Scottish people, and millions of Irish people that lived in America.

And so, you know, it's because it is a nation of lots of different people, isn't it, in America.

And I, you know, I was born here, but born watching TV shows from America, listening to songs from America, and hearing about the politicians, like the, you know, the presidents in America, watching movies with American actors. So, you know, it's very, or even American adverts, playing with American toys. There's so much, reading American novels, there's so much connection between this country and America.

Did you hear him just growl then? You better keep quiet Vinnie, I'm doing a recording, don't need you barking again, just because someone farted outside a mile away. And I would like to visit America, I have never been visited, but I'd like to come and maybe do a tour. If we can get everyone from the entire, from America, everyone that listens to me, or everyone that listens to me, even if it's just once in entire, throughout an entire year.

And if they're willing to travel to somewhere in America, like let's say Boston, for example, just as an example, or to New York or wherever. And if every single person in the United States that listens to me, at least once during the last year, I reckon I could probably fill an audience of about 35 people, I reckon. Which is a nice audience, it's small, it's cozy.

And it could be like my tour, my world tour, you know, groups of 20 or 30 people. Yes, Vinnie. I never performed, I think the most I ever performed to was about 250.

That was like, you know, in the 90s. But in some ways it's harder, I found it, when I started doing relaxation groups, I found it harder with smaller groups. For some reason, it's easier with big groups.

If there was like 23 or 24 people, that was almost easier than dealing with just three people. I don't know why. You all right, darling? You all right, baby? You all right, baby? And that's talk to Vinnie, by the way.

So yeah, I would like to visit. If one day, if there's an agent out there that thinks, you know what, we'll put on a world tour for him. Yeah, come and do that.

And I'll visit United States of America, come and travel. You know, if I was like well known enough, it'd be so cool to imagine about to travel through America, and just stop in different towns and different places. And even if there was only 50 or 100 people, it would just be so cool.

Just to do this, you know, wouldn't have to be like big, massive, obviously, it wouldn't be with it, I'm going to get I'm not going to fill an auditorium out, or an arena. But it'd be just cool. So be intimate, it'd be like, it could almost be like a Q&A Friday live.

And you could all clap. I don't know. It'd be weird.

It'd be surreal, though, because it may pop in fact, I mean, surreal is just like unreal, isn't it? Like, but unlikely to happen. But if you think about it, the amount of people in America, or the United States, I don't know if it's America or United States, whatever you want to call it, the amount of people that do listen to me, like on a regular basis, let's say at least should we say once a month, or once a week, even.

There's quite a few, quite a few people.

So that would be and if they all wanted to sort of meet, and get together and come and see me, that would be a probably there'd be a few people there. It'd be a lot of fun. I can't see it being a financial success, though.

It's as I want to travel first class or business class just once in my life want to be able to do that once just how cool would that be? Imagine having like, just space, leg space. And yeah, and have someone else paying for it as well. Wow.

So that'd be cool. So yeah, I'd like to visit the United States. I'd like to visit Canada and Australia.

It'd be also cool to there's lots of different countries like Norway and different countries in Europe as well. It would be nice to really get a gauge of my audience. I mean, I know I've got 207 members of my Jason Newlands boarding group.

But and this isn't I mean, this isn't even bragging to say there's more than more than 207 people listen to me. When it's hardly a brag, is it 209 at least listen to me on a regular basis. But it would be nice to have a real sense of how many people listen to me.

And it's how I would even know how I would get hold of that. You know, people that listen regularly, because most people would never ever send the message, never contact me never let me know that they listen. It's just because it's just standard thing.

Most people that listen, or watch videos, they don't leave comments. They don't. They just listen and they watch the videos.

That's generally the way I mean, if you look at a video that has 100 million views on YouTube, at the most it might have 100,000 comments, might have a million comments. But it's still you know, it's only going to be a fraction of compared to the amount of people that have watched the video. And I don't quite get 100 million views on my videos.

Not quite just a little bit less. So yeah, it'd be I'd like to, but I haven't been but I would like to before I get too old because I don't know what the cut off age is for traveling. But yeah, yeah, definitely would like love to actually love to go to United States.

There's certain places I want to visit. And Phoenix is one place. I want to go to Milton Erickson's museum place.

I'd like to go to Disney World or Disneyland, one of them. I'd like to go to, I just want to visit different places. And but I want to go camping.

I don't I don't don't want to go camping. No. I want to.

Although I'm kind of a loner and I travel on my own. I think if I was going to be traveling a country, I think I'd kind of like to, I don't know, maybe do it with someone. Maybe not.

I don't know. Because the idea of going and being on my own to start with might be thinking, oh, but the way I am, I do generally do things on my own. So it probably wouldn't bother me going to another country.

I've gone to other countries on my own before. So probably, I guess I just get to speak to people wouldn't I as once I got over there. So, yeah, I'd like to.

But I know that wasn't a question. Would I like to go to America? But I did have someone offer me the opportunity to come to the United States to do a like a guest speaking at university about, you know, what I do, the hypnosis stuff and what I do and how I do it and why I do it. And this was just before lockdown happened.

And then kind of nothing happened from it. But part of the reason is because I didn't, I didn't jump at the opportunity, which I should have done. I was scared.

I was, I was. And I should have just jumped at that opportunity because that led somewhere. I don't know where but it was all paid expenses, you know, travel, staying.

You wouldn't, you know, I wasn't going to get paid to do it. I was basically going to get myself a holiday in America for a week or however long. And I was scared.

It's weird. I just didn't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to stand in an auditorium with all these students.

And what do I know? I don't know anything. Well, I got nothing to talk about. It hasn't stopped me.

But you know, technically, I don't think I've got any anything to say really. So yeah, it didn't happen. The next question.

So thanks for that, Michelle. Next question is from Robin. Would you consider doing a podcast on weight loss? That brings up issues for me, not not not emotional issues, but just because I had this.

I've been asked in the past to do some weight loss stuff. And I know how popular they can be, especially this time of the year. Begin of the year, January, you know, with all the New Year's resolutions, and all you always see them all I see at the moment on TV is weight loss adverts.

It's like, it's like every advert seems to be slim fast or I don't know what the other one is. Weight loss, Weight Watchers, I said Weight Watchers. And I imagine in some countries, it'd be maybe trying to sell that new weight, weight reduction pill thing.

But I, the problem I've got is because I'm, I'm overweight myself. And it just seems I can do it, I can do something where how to cut down on eating. So I have done that myself as well, I've reduced my sugar intake.

But it just seemed a little okay, hypocritical is probably not the right word. Because it could be argued that there's a lot of things that I've done hypnosis sessions for that I don't do myself, you know. So I don't necessarily follow my own advice, not that I really give advice.

But you know, just it. Yeah, maybe I don't take notice as much a notice of my own recordings as I might benefit from. But I did have someone, someone I used to work with, contact me back in 2000.

And I think it was 2014, maybe 2000. Now 2014 and asked me, would I do hypnosis with her? Bearing in mind, I've not seen her since 2000. Well, I stopped working with her in 2000, the end of 2003.

So I haven't seen her for 11 years. I've seen her a couple of times, just like but not for a long time. And she said that she'd put weight on and she was trying to lose some weight.

And she used to be like, absolutely, really, really thin. And not that that's really relevant to the story. But I said no, I said no to her because I was overweight.

I mean, I was a lot lighter then than what I am now. But I just, I just like just didn't didn't feel right me trying to in person, especially because there was this, this, there's a, he was like a director of a hypnosis organisation training. I remember seeing him on YouTube, talking about weight loss, and he was very large.

Like he had a full grown adult inside his tummy, big, really big. And he was talking about weight loss. And for me that just looked silly.

Not him being big, I'm not make fun of how someone looks. But when you could argue I just did by saying look like a grown human being in his belly. But I'm just saying I'm just going to give an example of like someone's pumping air in there just up his bum.

I don't know. But you know, it's needed burping. It's what I'm trying to say is, it seemed very incongruent to be offering someone advice.

It'd be like, for me, it'd be like someone going to have a smoking cessation, recall, you know, hypnosis session to stop smoking, and the hypnotherapist is there smoking. It's like it doesn't work. It's like, and the fact that they can stop anytime they want is, is besides the point.

The fact is that it doesn't work if you know they're doing something, or even imagine if you'd, you'd gone to a hypnosis person, and you've gone through a hypnosis session to stop smoking, and you feel really good about it. And you're walking home, and you see the hypnotherapist outside the pub smoking. That, that could undo everything that had just been done.

Then you might think, how did they get that far away from the, I've just left this office, and they're over there, they must be transporting themselves, or they've got a twin. But I don't necessarily mean in the same day, it might be the next day that you see them. But it could undo the good work.

It's, you know, if it was doing a weight loss recording, you're okay, but look at it a different way. Let's say I did a weight, a weight loss podcast. And most people don't really know what I look like.

Probably, you know, most people who listen to my podcast, don't go on YouTube, they don't, not saying I don't go on YouTube, they don't go to my YouTube channel, because it's not a particularly, a busy place, my YouTube channel. Although there is over 2000 videos, but you know, it's a podcast more that people use. So imagine you'd listen to a weight loss recording, be listening to maybe a month to this podcast that I'd have created.

And then you see that, oh, you go to my website, maybe you want to say thank you or so this has been really good, cheers. And you see, oh, it's a YouTube channel, I didn't know you had a YouTube channel. And you click on it and you see a picture of me dancing around in a little t shirt and stuff, a little bask and my belly's bouncing around.

And I'm eating a burger, a big big Mac and I don't know, you know, smearing cheese on the head. I don't know why I'd be doing that. Grating cheese into my mouth.

So it'd be just be it might undo some of the good work. And I'm not saying I don't have a video of me dancing around or belly bouncing around great and cheese into my mouth. That'd be weird, although I kind of want to do that now for some reason.

But yeah, I thought about it. Maybe I can give it a bit more thought. Because I have lost weight.

I lost over a stone. So yeah, so that's the answer to that question. I don't know if it was useful.

Ali asks me, how did you come upon hypnosis? So I'm gonna do chronologically. I knew about hypnosis, stage hypnosis because of Paul McKenna on TV during the 90s. I thought it was funny to watch.

I didn't really know what was going on. I didn't really I wasn't particularly interested. I'd never seen anything live, even though I'd been in a live comedy environment for that.

Yeah, for nearly 10 years. I've never seen anyone do hypnosis on the comedy circuit. And then in 98.

I had my eye on these two books, I was gonna, I was going into the bookshop regularly in the West End. It was not foils, I think it's books, etc. wasn't black rolls, not books, etc.

I think because there was a few really good bookshops just around the corner from Tottenham Court Road train station. And which is just up the road from like Leicester Square and all that stuff. And not Leicester Square.

Yeah, Leicester Square. Piccadilly, well, Piccadilly, they're all kind of quite close together. Piccadilly Circle, Strafalga Square.

It's all just a walk away. And Oxford Street, Soho. And I keep going into the shop and I'm going in there every week, and I'm buying books.

And I a couple of times I look at these books on hypnosis. And they're both the introduction to hypnosis, how to do hypnosis. And I look at them.

One's got a green cover, one's got a blue cover. And I put them back, I look for it. And I get more and more interested.

And I put them back. And then probably a couple of weeks into January, I buy them. And that was the beginning of my little journey.

Starts I read them. I started doing I did. Yeah, I started learning NLP did some I did an evening course in NLP, neural linguistic programming, which had a lot of hypnosis involved in that.

And then I started buying more books on hypnosis and ordering videos and watching them. And it just, you know, like from a library, not an online library thing. And then so I did my training in 99.

Start training in 99 time ish, NLP, hypnosis, and just kept collecting books, just doing different courses over the years. And did another one in 2002, still collecting books. And yeah, 2004, I tried to start a pain relief service, free pain relief service.

And in my local area, no one kind of took no one wanted any, he just didn't take off. But I started doing hypnosis sessions with friends and family, just pain relief or relaxation, things like that. So got a little bit of experience.

So it's a long time after I started even learning that I did anything with it really. And it wasn't until 2006. Although in 2003, I was making recordings for myself, relaxation recordings, audio ones.

In 2006, I then launched myself at doing the free pain relief service, I ordered, I think about 50,000 postcards, something like that, maybe 100,000, I think about 50,000 postcards. And I delivered them all around the town. And I started getting people contacting me for the free pain relief service.

So I started going around people's houses, any evening after work, so I was working. And at the same time, I contacted Yeah, I contacted a alcohol and drugs charity, saying, you know, I'd like to offer a relaxation, actually wasn't offer help. And to start with, every Monday evening, I go there for quite a few months, every Monday, and I would do like a course, six week course with people with alcohol issues.

And it just be relaxed, there'll be a relaxation session at the end of the night. I'd be there for probably three hours. And it'd be a break halfway through.

And then we do like different techniques and NLP techniques, hypnosis techniques, for helping with cravings and things like that. And they were quite popular. But the relaxation sessions seem to be the thing that people like the most.

And I I started doing relaxation sessions only. And then I extended on in 2007. I started doing relaxation sessions in a drug and alcohol charity as well a rehab place.

So I was in two different places, doing relaxation groups, relaxation, relaxation sessions. And it would be the staff members and the clients. So it was quite cool.

So I did both. I did about two sessions a week in each one. So about four a week.

And I stopped doing the free pain relief service before 2006 ended. And but it did by the summer, by the beginning of summer, I'd gone from going into people's houses to renting a therapy room on a Saturday morning. So I just see people from nine to probably one.

And they'd come in still a free service, but they paid 10 pound, which was how much I was paying per hour for the room. So that was it. So they pay the 10 pound fee.

And I got them to pay that to the person downstairs because there was a receptionist there. So that was good. So I did that for a while.

And started having people asking me to do other things. You know, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? And that was kind of it was moving in a different direction to the pain relief, which is what I was mostly interested in. And then in 2006, because I started doing the the groups, the relaxation groups.

Someone did ask why can't I? And this was the end of 2006. So probably I went part time in about September 2006 in my job. So I had, I used to finish, I used to work from nine to two, something like that.

So I started increasing my relaxation group sessions, I started doing more. And I do it in the afternoon, because before I was kind of limited to just once once a week on a Friday, not on a Monday morning, not Monday evening, maybe, maybe two evenings a week, but generally Monday to start with. And then a Saturday morning for the pain relief.

So what I did is I started doing group relaxation sessions during the day. So like, you know, about three o'clock, like at the end of their working day, so maybe, maybe four to five, or three to four, something like that. And the staff had come as well.

And people in the alcohol charity, I was being asked like the people saying, we do like listening. It's nice when we're here, but it'd be nice to be able to hear you when we're at home. So I thought, oh, luckily, the bloke that works in the, I haven't seen him for a long time now.

It was lovely bloke, he, he, I recorded on a digital recorder, the recordings of a group session, and then he puts it on to CDs, made a cover and everything like that, and started giving out the CDs for free to the to the clients. And then the drug rehab centre wanted to do the same thing. So we started doing it there as well.

The thing is, it was expensive. And it was time consuming, because he wasn't there to do that. He was, he had other things to do to answer the phones, and he was on the reception.

So it got to the point where it wasn't very practical to be giving people CDs, because they were they were going to soon as they were being created. And also the quality wasn't so good. And didn't want to just have the same recording.

So I thought that was very limiting. And then what I started doing is putting the recordings on my website. And I thought it'd be better for people in a sense, to be able to listen back to the recording that they just listened to.

So let's say they're on a Friday, having a recording between three and four. And then on a Saturday, they can go and listen to that exact recording, word for word, because it's it was recorded, and it even get the same sounds that was there during that recording. And people on, what's it called? So this is probably before the summer, I started sharing them on not Facebook.

What's the one before Facebook? Names, names, face, whatever it's called, there was one before Facebook started sharing the audios on there, I started a podcast, podcasting was kind of a new thing back then. It had success, podcasts were quite popular, and then they just died out. And they became popular again later on.

But for quite a while, they just dropped. I mean, the podcast I use was called free podcast, free podcast, something.com. And I had Yes, it's June 2007. I'd reached over 100,000 downloads.

I just remember that it was like, couldn't believe, could not believe that I'd had that many downloads. Wow. And all the recordings were really bad quality sound.

And a lot of them were just live recordings from when I've been doing, you know, the podcasts and doing the live sessions. So I did the live sessions all the way up to September 2007. So I did, yeah, I did live group sessions for a year and a year and a half over a year and a half between the alcohol charity and the place.

I only stopped doing it when I moved to do the university course. But during that time, I was also making recordings at home. I was making videos at home as well.

And I started doing putting posting videos and podcasts on to what's it called? I forget the name of it, the one before Facebook. And that was going, that started going really well. And it was also a really positive place as well.

So get a lot of, a lot of encouraging words from people. And the videos were awful. They were like really, you can see them on YouTube, actually, they were black and white.

And the sound was terrible. But I had one video, I think it had like 10,000 views. I couldn't believe it.

Like what? And I think it was either a pain relief one or a relaxation one. I just couldn't believe that people were listening. And at the time, I don't think anyone else was doing, I couldn't find anyone else doing hypnosis recordings on there.

It was all bands, singers. And that's what it was, you know, really based for as far as music and videos went. So yeah, so I continued with that.

Until just continued really just grew. The first I tried to do I did three professional recordings or in a professional recording studio in about 2008. And this was a stop smoking recording, a relaxation recording, and a pain relief recording.

I've lost all three of those recordings. I don't know where they went. And they were all on CD.

And I spent about two days in recording studio. And then I did my own stop smoking course, which I spent two weeks recording. And I've got some equipment.

And this was about 2000 and maybe 2009. I just lose track. I'll be honest with you, the years.

And I did that because my landlord and landlady were on holiday for two weeks. So I just spent the two weeks focusing on recording this thing, editing, editing, editing and editing continuously, redoing sentences until I got it. So it sounded good.

And I was watching Prison Break in between. So I watched all the series as a prison break during that two weeks. And then, you know, before that, like 2007, YouTube came along, and Facebook.

So I was at 2006, might have been 2006 to be fair. Yeah, might well have been 2006. So I started, I started my YouTube channel in 2007.

I might have joined Facebook in 2006. And yeah, I just just been doing the same thing forever. The YouTube channel was going quite well.

And I did delete that in 2013. I think 2014 time. I've had the same Facebook page, I think since 2008.

So I deleted the ones I had, but I've had this one for a long time. And if it says it, does it say when I first got my Facebook page? Usually it says active since doesn't it? Let's have a look at the why doesn't it? Why doesn't it come up? Let me just see my profile page. Does it say intro? No.

Oh, yeah, it does. Joined August 2008. See, yeah, I had a couple of different Facebook groups.

And then I, I had a habit of deleting stuff that lasted for a while, actually, to be fair. But gradually, I seem to have managed to move on from that. So yeah, is and then it's just progressed, I guess, since I've moved to here the last nearly 10 years now.

I've tried to increase or improve the quality of the equipment that I use. And I think the turnaround was, I'd say 2018. When I started doing this podcast.

And I became a little bit more regular. A little bit more regular than I had been before. Sometimes I'd go weeks, sometimes, well, maybe not months, but definitely weeks without making recordings.

But once I started doing this podcast, there was a lot more, a lot more regular, not just with the Let Me Boyd You Sleep recordings, but also with some of the other stuff I do. And yeah. So I've, I've, I lost a lot of the early stuff.

Especially the recordings that were on my original podcast, the, the free podcast.com, whatever it was called. Early 2008, they stopped doing stats. And then they deleted like half of my recordings without letting me know.

And then they just closed. And the rest of the stuff was gone. So I lost hundreds of recordings.

But it's all right. It doesn't matter. Well, it is what it is, isn't it? I can't believe it's dark outside.

It's dark outside, isn't it? How can it be dark? How can it be dark outside? It doesn't make sense. So, and here I am, all these years later, nearly nine, well, no, 19 years later, 19 years I've been doing this stuff. Since 2006.

I mean, it was January 2006, probably about now, this time, when I just split up with my girlfriend, and I was sitting at my desk, looking at my laptop, and deciding I'm going to print some leaflets up, or some postcards, but they're leaflet postcards. And I printed them up, and printed up like 50,000 or whatever it was. And I will start the, and I built a website.

And I've got domain, like my domain name was, I've had jasonnewland.com for over 20 years. But the the one I had for that one was free pain relief..co.uk. I think I let that one go.

The previous one to that was helpwithpain.com. I think that was 2004. And I didn't get any, any comments for that. But the free pain relief, that was that worked out okay, pretty good.

And so that's 19 years. Since almost kind of like the launch, but if we go back even further. And it was 1998, when I bought my first hypnosis book.

So 98, 2008, 2018, 1920, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. So it's like 27 years. Yeah, 27 years I've been kind of in, I'm kind of involved in hypnosis a little bit still, I suppose.

I still make recordings. And I've definitely moved towards the being just really boring. And focusing on just being boring, and boring people's minds so they fall asleep and so you relax and, you know, all that stuff.

And that I do believe brings me to the end of this here recording. Recording. So thank you everyone for your messages, for your questions.

And I'm sorry that I didn't get straight to the questions because I did chat for a bit of an update of what's going on. But oh well. So thanks for listening.

Remember to be kind to yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Because you do deserve to be happy.

Lots of love. Bye.