Southbank Centre’s Book Podcast: Matt Haig & Jordan Stephens on mental health & creativity
In this episode of our book podcast we bring together two very different artists, to address a very important subject.
From author Matt Haig, we bring you an excerpt from his 2018 interview at the Southbank Centre in which he spoke about his new book Notes on a Nervous Planet. And we also welcome musician and campaigner Jordan Stephens, who joins Ted Hodgkinson to discuss the relationship between mental health and creativity.
Following on from the mould-breaking memoir Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig’s new book is a personal look at living with anxiety in the age of social media. We bring you key moments from his conversation last month with Bryony Gordon, offering insights on the why staying happy is difficult in our comparative culture and the relationship between the internet and his writing process.
“There’s a lot of ‘I’ and ‘self’ wrapped up in the consumerist world we live in”
Jordan Stephens
Jordan Stephens is best known as one half of the hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks and has since led a range of campaigns challenging stigma about mental health for the likes of the YMCA and the NHS. He talks candidly to Ted Hodgkinson, Southbank Centre’s Head of Literature and Spoken Word, about the expectations of fame, masculinity and anxiety have shaped his life and fuelled his music.