Before I start, I need to make it very clear that there is a dog right next to me and some sounds

will be the dog, some sounds will be me and it's up to you to figure out which are which.

Here is a bit of an announcement. I started the Made of Human Podcasts back in 2016

in a tiny flat in Edinburgh on Candlemaker Row during the Edinburgh Fringe. I had just realized

that I was an introvert and I wanted to ask people I saw as successful or well put together

how they managed to do life. Now that I was so useless at it, during the first couple of recordings,

it was a struggle to properly block out the sound of actual bagpipes playing outside my windows

as the guest, which could be Richard Gad, Desiree Birch, Chris Getard, was sitting on the edge of my bed.

Since then, the podcast has grown into something different. Not a huge production, it's still just

me and my recorder, with of course the help of Dave Piggering who edits the episodes and Phoebe

Kitscher who transcribes them. But it's different. I'm still an introvert, but a lot of what I thought

was just being an introvert I've now acknowledged is executive dysfunction and CPTSD. It's not just that

I feel a bit drained after being social. It's that I'm often quite triggered and exhausted and

I'm likely to shut down. It also means that I go through long periods of time where I simply don't

function. In the past month or so, I have not released any new episodes. I had a minor breakdown.

I couldn't do the recordings. I just couldn't. It was too much. It was all too messy in my head,

which has had to explain to people who don't live with executive dysfunction, CPTSD or

its type of neurodivergency. Everything was just too much. But I didn't want to give up

on the mo part because it brings me so much joy, chatting to these people fills my heart,

and not to be too up myself, but I'm good at it. We're not the biggest podcast in the world,

but we also don't have to be because I feel like we have a community. People listening to

made of human, it's like we get each other. I think we learn together and we feel together

...