Before we start, this episode contains some chat you might find difficult to hear,

so do check the show notes for more details.

Hello and welcome to Happy Place, the show that encourages gorgeous human connection.

Today I'm chatting to Ian Redpath and Jeremy Chopra.

They're the men that you might know better as TFLs all on the board.

One of the things that we notice with those boards, this board's all over the network,

but people tend to ignore them.

But then they don't ignore the things that we put in them, and I think it's because they realise that

one, it's handwritten, so it's by a person. It's a person there.

And then when they take note of that, then they read it, and then they read the words that we're

putting on there, which is about connecting. It's about connecting with themselves and what they're

going through, what we go through, and so on, and then they realise, oh, there's someone here who's

written that, and they go with it, and that whole connection thing happens.

In 2017, poems and little messages of hope and support started appearing on white boards

at London's Underground Cheap stations. They got posted on social media, and the words

resonated with so many people that their Instagram account, all on the board, now has over a million

followers. A couple of years ago, Ian and Jeremy, two customer service assistants for TFL,

revealed themselves as the amazing creatives behind the writing, and it was the biggest privilege

to get to chat with them about their own mental health when they came round to mind at the end

of last year. They've been through a lot, between them, PTSD, social anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks,

in post-acindrome, and I do think that's why their poems have touched so many people, because

you can just tell they're coming from a place of real understanding and empathy.

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