S1, Ep4 How to Fail: Sathnam Sanghera

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Sony Music

Society & Culture

4.7 • 9.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2018

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera joins How To Fail and kicks off by saying how flattered he was to be asked to contribute to a podcast on failure because he hates hearing nice things said about himself. So that’s good.As well as discussing his failure to take a compliment, Sathnam talks movingly about growing up in a household where both his father and his sister had schizophrenia. At first, he tried to run away from accepting it and then when that didn’t work, he wrote a brilliant, award-winning memoir called The Boy With the Topknot which was later adapted for the BBC. (Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling is a fan).Sathnam talks about his social failure at university (and his inability to get a girlfriend for three years), as well as his failure to learn an instrument, his failure to score a high Uber rating and his failure to read back his own handwriting moments after he’s written something down. Along the way, we cover his childhood job in a Wolverhampton sewing factory, the modern tendency to confuse anxiety with serious mental health issues, grief and how he coped with the death of his best friend, heartbreak, success, the concept of 'negative mindfulness', racist dogs and Sathnam’s undying love for George Michael and Club Tropicana.We also spend longer than necessary trying to remember the common colloquial phrase 'prepare for the worst, expect the best' which is embarrassing given that we both make a living from words. How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish The Boy with the Topknot is published by Penguin and available to buy here. Sathnam Sanghera’s website is here. Social Media: Elizabeth Day @elizabdaySathnam Sanghera @sathnamMoorish @moorishhumous Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is sponsored by Airbnb. Maybe you've stayed in an Airbnb before and thought
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0:19.9	is worth at Airbnb.co.uk forward slash host.
0:28.6	This episode is brought to you by Fevertree. Regular listeners will know that I am passionate
0:35.4	about a perfectly made margarita. It was my lockdown hobby. I basically perfected my margarita
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1:11.1	Then you stir really well or you shake the margarita if you're feeling a bit adventurous
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1:59.3	Hello and welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right,
2:18.6	hosted by author and journalist Elizabeth Day. That's me. This is a podcast about learning from
2:25.6	our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning
	...

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