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- [00:01]
Catherine May
Try having lamps instead of a pendant light. See if that helps you. You know, try walking about in the dark. I find it delightful, personally. It's yours. You are allowed to make your home the place that welcomes you personally, as opposed to a place that looks good to the outside world. I think at particular low points, true introverts and a lot of neurodivergent people really, really just need their own company and just cannot take any more stimulation. I think it's about having permission to retreat sooner than perhaps other people would. To me, like a home is an extension of a body and your body should feel at home in it. And that's not only visual, but it's about all of the senses. It's about the way it smells, it's about the way it feels on your skin. It's about the way it sounds. Sounds like. Let your home be an extension of your sensory realm.
- [01:04]
Matt Gibbard
Hello and welcome to Homing. I'm Matt Gibbard. This is the first episode in a new strand of the podcast, conversations with thinkers and experts whose work helps us understand the true meaning of home beyond the bricks and mortar. My guest today is the writer Catherine May. Catherine's best known for her best selling book Wintering, which explores the importance of rest and retreat during the fallow periods of life that we all experience. In this conversation, we talk about what happens when we allow ourselves to notice natural rhythms and cycles, so the solstices, the shifting light, and the subtle signals that tell us when it's time to slow down. We discuss home as a sensory environment, almost as an extension of the body itself, and how the spaces we live in can either soothe the nervous system or quietly overwhelm it. We also talk about boredom and creativity and why giving children unstructured time and space can be one of the most generous things we do for them. Catherine helps us understand the home as a place where we can learn to restore ourselves, enabling us to go back out into the world with renewed strength. Here it is, and I hope you enjoy it. Catherine, the first thing to say is I found your writing really inspiring, I must say.
- [02:27]
Catherine May
Oh, thank you.
- [02:28]
Matt Gibbard
I've always thought that home is such a great way into so many interesting themes that help you understand the world better and yourself better. And I think of things like safety and comfort and routines and rituals and this idea of belonging. Do you belong to your community? And so on and so forth. So today I suppose I'd love to talk to you about some of your ideas using the home specifically as a framework. So I think really with most of my guests, I like to start at the beginning. So just kind of briefly, what was home like for you when you were younger? And was it an important thing to you when you were young?
- [03:07]
Catherine May
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I had quite a divided sense of home when I was younger. I had spent from the age of, I think, four till I was eight or nine. We lived with my grandparents after my parents divorce. And although my mum hated moving back with her parents for obvious reasons, I loved living with my grandparents. And they kept a very kind of calm, quiet, very routine LED house, which for me just felt so comforting and soothing. And when I think of home, I still probably think most of their home, honestly. But When I was 8 or 9, we moved into council housing and I really didn't enjoy that for the longest time. It was just a very rundown house. And my mum is incredibly house proud. She worked so hard to bring it up to standard. But for the first few years we were there, we were fighting kind of endless battles against leaks and things falling down and things breaking and we had no heating, we had no double glazing, it was cold, it was quite uncomfortable. And I. I just wanted to move back with my grandparents, which, you know, I look back now and I feel really guilty for the number of times I said that to my mom, honestly. But I, you know, again, like, I was an undiagnosed autistic child. There was no way to really talk about how important it was for me to have a place of retreat from the outside world and a place that felt safe and predictable and fundamentally secure. And of course, it just took me a long time to process the change. So, yeah, my childhood sense of home was quite disrupted, I think, ultimately.
- [05:09]
Matt Gibbard
Okay, and what about as an adult? How does your home support you as an adult and how important is it in your sort of everyday life?
- [05:19]
Catherine May
Yeah, it's massively important. I mean, I'm a homebody, really. I do like going out, she says very cautiously. I do like going out into the outside world, but I find the outside world a lot. You know, I'm not comfortable in crowds, I'm not comfortable in groups of people. I get socially exhausted really quickly. And of course, I live with heightened sensory issues where, you know, so many things that feel normal to other people and completely fine, like fluorescent lighting or background music or just stuff that makes weird noises outdoors, is overwhelming for me. And so I really rely on my home to be able to come back into a space that feels right, you know, and that can reset me. And I, you Know, I would extend that to a visual sense as well. Like, I can get visual overwhelm quite often, too. And I think my home is carefully made to be in soothing colors, to absorb sound rather than reflect it. To just not be part of the chaos that I sometimes experience outside.
- [06:44]
Matt Gibbard
Can you give me an example of that visual chaos, a kind of environment that you find difficult?
- [06:50]
Catherine May
Yeah, I mean, I find kind of untidiness quite hard. I find also, like a lot of pattern quite hard for me personally. And sometimes it's just kind. It's hard to explain. But some places to me have. Have too much light or too many different things going on, or a lack of symmetry or a sense of general disorder. And I can't rest there. I can't manage it somehow. It's quite hard to articulate, really. But I could point it, you know, point you to it when I see it. I was talking to an architect recently, funnily enough, we were both in this really loud cafe. And I was like, this is awful here. And he has hearing loss. And he was like, well, I'm finding it awful too. And one of the things that I've noticed over the last few years is that we've developed buildings with harder and harder surfaces, and we've stopped softening it. And actually it's become inhospitable to loads of different people, but it's just fallen out of fashion to fill buildings with soft surfaces. There are so many things like that that influence my experience of the outside, and it's out of my control. As many times as I can leave a restaurant because the music's too loud, or can ask people to turn the sound down, or can try and choose the right place, it's home. That is the place that I know will behave itself fundamentally. And that won't make me more tired. That will actually be restorative.
- [08:32]
Matt Gibbard
That's such a great way of putting it. That will behave itself. And I think that the word control is really key, isn't it? I think you're exactly right. I'd go along with that as well. I think of restaurants a lot. I think restaurants are very unthoughtfully designed a lot of the time. I think one of the things is that if you're in a couple, one of those people has to sit with their back to a very busy restaurant with the sound going on behind them, unexpected sound going on over their shoulder. That's incredibly difficult to navigate, I find. Just. That's one small example. But try and just see everyone. So everyone has a View into the room, I think is quite a basic one. You talked about the soft sound absorbing materials, but another one, you know, we don't need so many hard surfaces.
- [09:20]
Catherine May
We don't need so many hard. Everything's so rattly now. And if you have any. Cause I also have Meniere's disease, which is like an inner ear problem, which means that sudden sound can be very, very uncomfortable for me. And I can get a lot of sound distortion. Being autistic means that I have sound distortion anyway. So it is actually amazing to me how many places that are very comfortable to other people are very inhospitable to me. And I think that there are some considerations that just could be made. You know, we pride ourselves in putting in wheelchair ramps and escalators between floors or whatever it is that helps people. But my problems are more based on simple things like just not being too loud. It seems so fundamental to me. And yet I get the sense that for some people, loud noise levels are comforting. They maybe feel like a bit of a disguise or they maybe feel stimulating. For me, it's the opposite. And I increasingly don't want to tolerate these environments that I used to think, okay, well, just brace yourself and get through it. Like, I'm not interested in doing that anymore.
- [10:40]
Matt Gibbard
So what do you do then? You just avoid them or do you end up turning down a lot of social engagements and things like that?
- [10:46]
Catherine May
Yeah, I do. And it's a shame, isn't it, really? I mean, I. If I'm invited to a party now, I mean, obviously, like close friends and things like that, I'll make the effort for. But often for work parties, I'll ask some really careful questions about where this is being hosted. And yeah, you just have to say no. I mean, I do try and gently feedback, you know, like, I'm so sorry this isn't an environment I can be comfortable in.
- [11:16]
Matt Gibbard
I think that's good.
- [11:17]
Catherine May
But I. But actually, I mean, just as an anecdote, like, I went to a Christmas party, a work Christmas party last year for writers. And as soon as I walked into the room, I just. I couldn't believe it. They had a loud kind of dance DJ filling the room. And these were all quiet, nerdy people who spend their day behind a desk like me. And the music was so loud you couldn't hear anyone talk. You couldn't have a conversation. And I just. It was a moment actually of sort of radical realization for me that we have got into weird habits of thinking what social life ought to be. And we seem to have Got set in them when we were like 19 and wanted to get off with someone. And not always successfully, and actually not always successfully. No, we tried, we failed. It was glorious. We did our best. But actually there's a maturing that needs to happen. I think in our generation, we're both the same age about realizing that we are allowed to back down on like being at a disco all the time. There are other ways to socialize that. It just welcomes so many more people in.
- [12:32]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I had a really fascinating discussion with Chris Packham who in high school explained how. How difficult he finds certain environments. But he, he was great actually. He sort of said, you know, he sort of implied you have to be quite assertive a bit. Like you're saying it's fine to set the boundaries and say this doesn't work for me. And I think people have to be accepting of that. And that's okay.
- [13:00]
Catherine May
I mean the great thing about being autistic is the bluntness that comes with it. And it. And I think we do have to learn to say not just oh, I'm sorry, I can't make it, which is the sort of polite mode of speech that we're trained into doing. But actually, I'm so sorry, this is not a hospitable environment for me and I won't be able to handle it. And it still puts the choice in the hands of people if they want to change it or not. But I do think it's important to voice that out loud actually.
- [13:28]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah. Let's move on to wintering. So you of course have a best selling book all about this concept of wintering. To those who don't know what that means, describe that concept for us. A moment.
- [13:43]
Catherine May
So Wintering is a book about two things at once really. It's about how much I love winter and how that mode of survival that the world or the natural world goes into during winter is really beautiful to me and really fascinating. And I just wanted to share that fascination. Particularly for the people who tell me that they hate winter and they just try and ignore it and get through it. Like I wanted to make a case for actually living through winter as a positive part of the year. But it's also a metaphor for the times in our lives when we are frozen or shut out from the world. The downturns and the troughs that tend to be a kind of social secret, but which actually are a normal part of human life. And I wanted to put the two together and use it to speak about how Ordinary. It is with the scope of human life to have these periods and how actually, as hard as they are and as brutal as they can be, essential they are to our learning and our growth and our ongoing survival. So, yeah, it's. It's a book that does two things at once.
- [14:58]
Matt Gibbard
It's a very, very beautiful book. I really. I absolutely loved it. How does the idea of wintering play out at home, specifically? Can you give us some thoughts on that?
- [15:09]
Catherine May
Yeah, I think winter's a time when we often feel quite confined to our homes, or at least more connected than normal. For me, there are huge things that we need to think about doing in our homes in winter to make them comfortable and cozy. I think it's really, really important to consider how we are looking after ourselves during that time. We should always try and get outdoors every day. It's really important. But realistically, we're going to spend a lot more time indoors. And so I talk a lot about things like food in winter, like controlling the levels of light and just really leaning into that hibernation space, metaphorical hibernation space. I should say that our homes represent in winter and how vital they are to us as we take this long rest at the kind of pause in the year and how they can nurture us through that time.
- [16:13]
Matt Gibbard
And what will you be doing this winter then, Catherine? Have you got specific wintering plans? The problem is, before we start recording, you said, the thing is, this is now your time of year. You're known for it, so you're very busy, right?
- [16:26]
Catherine May
Yeah, that's right. It's so funny because I've always kind of burrowed in in winter and really enjoyed the extra solitude that it brings and, like, really needed it. That feeling of restoration that I get when it feels like the world recedes for a while. And that helps me, gives me the energy to come back next year. That has been a challenge for the last five years since wintering came out, because everybody remembers I exist in September every year. But I have got better, I have say, at booking out my calendar very carefully and sort of managing my time. But my family's at the end of a very gruelling year for us. My husband's been very ill this year. I've been looking after him. And it's been a tough year for everyone. And I really feel that we are ready to shut the doors on the world at this point. Actually, this is not gonna be a big party season for us. I think this year my winter home is gonna be about helping everyone to feel restored Again and really leaning into rest. I think there's gonna be lots of pajama days. I think there's gonna be lots of baking of cookies and enjoying quiet family time. And I feel like it's a sanctuary for us at the moment. We're just enjoying our own company and needing it very much right now.
- [17:55]
Matt Gibbard
I understand that. And you've got a son, haven't you?
- [17:58]
Catherine May
Yes. 13 year old. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, 13.
- [18:01]
Matt Gibbard
Okay. There's a really lovely moment in wintering, actually, where you talk about baking gingerbread men with him and how that act somehow starts to restore you. And that's sort of what you're talking about, isn't it?
- [18:17]
Catherine May
Yeah. I mean, I know not everyone loves cooking, but I do. And I find there's something about those sort of unusual things that you cook. The things that aren't the business of the everyday, like gingerbread. They're a longer process, they're a little bit fiddly, they take up all of your attention, and they produce something that feels special and feels kind of celebratory and like a treat. And I find things like that really restful. And Bert and I have always cooked together that kind of thing. Funnily enough, I cooked this morning some molten marshmallow cookies for the very same reason. These lovely kind of chocolate cookies that you roll in a ball around a frozen marshmallow, and then when you bake them, the marshmallow melts in the middle. They're aggressively sweet, and I could not eat more than half of one. But actually I was baking them as a gesture towards everybody else, you know, to sort of say, okay, we're really at the end of the year and here's this. Here's another little thing to get us through and comfort us. I'm big on comfort cooking, I think.
- [19:23]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, it's lovely, isn't it? Do you manage to get outside every day? Is that important or some days not?
- [19:29]
Catherine May
Yeah, I make a rule of it, actually. I think there's lots of things about that. I think one is just moving your body and it's so easy to. To find that you haven't moved for weeks during winter if you're not careful. It's so easy to get put off by the weather. But also our circadian rhythms are linked to experiencing daylight. And I think one of the reasons why lots of us feel that winter is so grueling is because we forget to encounter that daylight. And so our bodies don't reach that intrinsic understanding of where we are in the year. We've always experienced winter. We, we've always experienced the loss of light that it brings. And our bodies actually know how to handle it, but we have to let our bodies do that. And there's a kind of discipline in even just stepping outside the front door every day and just breathing the air and seeing where the sun is and taking in what little vitamin D is available at this time of year. But yeah, so I do, I try and see the sea every day. That's my rule. I live a like four or five minute walk away from the sea and I find it quite motivating instead of to say, I'm gonna go out to say, I'm gonna see the sea.
- [20:41]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, that's a good one.
- [20:42]
Catherine May
That's what I try and do. Yeah.
- [20:44]
Matt Gibbard
Is the sea important to you as a form of landscape, though? I mean, is it coincidence you live by the sea or tell us about that?
- [20:52]
Catherine May
It's no coincidence at all. I grew up quite far down the coast or the coast of the river. I grew up in Gravesend, so there was always water and always that big horizon actually that you get over a river. But I always, always dreamed of living by the sea. And we moved here finally when I was 29, I think after lots of persuasion with my husband, who is a Medway towns boy and very devoted to it, like this very urban landscape. I didn't think I'd ever persuade him, but he finally gave in and I. Yeah, the sea for me has a magical effect. It's hard to really explain it and I know that not everybody feels it, but I always feel better if I can just get a glimpse of it. And the smell of it I absolutely love. And the sound of seems to completely reset me. And so, yeah, living here really matters to me. I love it.
- [21:51]
Matt Gibbard
So we've talked about the idea of sort of hunkering down in these darker months. I mean, if you are someone that's naturally introverted or sensitive or, you know, as many words we can use.
- [22:03]
Catherine May
But is there some of them are euphemisms as well?
- [22:07]
Matt Gibbard
Some of them are, yeah, yeah, I suppose, you know, anyone listening will probably know what we mean by that. Is, is there a danger of those people spending too much time at home? And if so, what can we do about that, do you think?
- [22:23]
Catherine May
Yeah, it's difficult to say too much time, isn't it? Because I think it often, particularly for introverted people, it depends where they are in their life as well. You know, I think at particular low points, true introverts and a lot of neurodivergent people really, really just need their own company and just cannot take any more stimulation. But in ordinary times, I do think there's a balance to be struck, even for people like me, whose, you know, default mode is all of humanity is awful and I must escape it. I know I don't really mean that, but I do need my balance. And I think it's about having permission to retreat sooner than perhaps other people would. But I also think that that's where ritual comes in. That's where understanding the ritual year and taking part in it, rather than the social year, which is really, really different. And for me, switching into that mode, thinking about how I'm gonna mark the solstice with other people to whom that's important, how I'm gonna mark New year with people who are at my stage of life and, you know, with my kind of tendencies, which is not the fireworks and disco tendency, unfortunately. I'm married to someone with the fireworks and disco tendency, though, so that can prove complex. And I respect it in other people, but it is not for me. Yeah, for me, taking part in shared moments at key parts of the year that really mean something to me helps me through that social landscape at this time of year and encourages me out, even at times when I maybe am not predisposed to wanting to go out. And if it's the right kind of event, I always feel better for it.
- [24:17]
Matt Gibbard
That's really helpful, I think. Let's talk about Enchantment, which is your more recent book. Just describe the sort of central ideas there. And how does that relate to the home, would you say?
- [24:31]
Catherine May
Yeah, so Enchantment's a book about how we can find kind of awe and spiritual depth in every day. I wanted to write the book that Came After Wintering that answers that question, like, how do we go back into the world and find the magic of the world again after, like, a long, dark period? And actually, I think Enchantment answers a different question, too, which is, how do we find all that stuff within a long, dark period? It relates really powerfully to home, because I didn't want to write a book that said that you could only find awe in distant, amazing, exotic places and that you could only reach once in a lifetime, and that's your encounter. That's all you get. I wanted to write a book that said it's all here for you on your back doorstep every day, but you actually need to train yourself to find it. And that book is an exploration of all of the incredible array of elemental wonders that are. That are right there. Under our feet and above our heads. The moon, the sea, stones, geology, landscape, the deeply storied landscape. All of those magical encounters that we can have that we miss because we don't think they're there and we don't think that we're the ones to encounter them.
- [26:05]
Matt Gibbard
That's really beautiful. So is it about sort of paying better attention to what's around you? Is that part of it?
- [26:11]
Catherine May
Yeah, training your attention. Learning to work with weak signals at first and kind of commit to them and grow them. It's also about knowledge, I think, in a way, and about how knowing things is a form of play, or certainly for me. And about how the quiet parts of the world, you can learn to hear them more intensely and find them really restorative. And I think the other thing it's about is permission to feel that even when the world feels very dark around us. I think that's possibly the most important thing at all. That we shouldn't defer this forever until everything feels okay. That these aren't just things for fluffy times, they're actually things for serious times because we need a toolkit almost to get us through.
- [27:03]
Matt Gibbard
So I've never been able to meditate. Right. I find that my mind struggles to be still in that way. But I did talk to a therapist a while back who said you can do that kind of thing on the move. So she said yes. Next time you go for a walk along the river near your house, you know, don't put any headphones on. That's going to distract you. Listen to the sounds around you. Look up into the trees, look at the sky, pay attention to the water as it flows, and just take some time to be still in that outside world. I thought that was a really great piece of advice. And it's not actually a piece of advice I've taken into everyday life, but does that resonate with you?
- [27:50]
Catherine May
Yeah, that's great advice. I mean. Oh, how long have you got on this, Matt? I could talk to you about this for ages. Go on, let's do it. Okay. I first learned to meditate when I was 29 and when I moved here to Whitstable because it came in the wake of a big episode of anxiety that had become. That had completely taken over my life. And I was unable to function because my anxiety had got so high. It wasn't the first time I'd suffered panic attacks, but it was a major incursion into my sense of, like, sanity. Honestly, I felt like I was absolutely losing my mind. I didn't have A very good GP at the time. I think any decent GP might have prescribed me some medication, but mine sent me off with a flea in my ear. And I turned to a meditation class that I saw advertised in the library where I was hiding one day, and it genuinely changed my life. And I am also someone that cannot sit still. I'm someone who cannot stop thinking. My brain is very busy and I had all those kinds of resistance to it. But I learned this technique that I had to commit to because I just didn't have any other choice. And I learned Transcendental Meditation at the time. After a few years, I got frustrated with that because it's a very, very specific technique and it's very rigid. I'm allowed to be rigid, but I don't like people imposing their rigid on me. So I worked with a brilliant meditation teacher called Lauren Roche. He's actually from California. He happened to be in the UK at the time. And he talked to me about all of the different ways that you. You can get into meditation. And I think he's the reason that I still meditate now. And he watched me for a while, and bearing in mind this is before I had my autism diagnosis, he watched me and he was like, your personal space is absolutely enormous and you don't want me anywhere nearer than here. And he stood at the other side of the route and he was like, watch me. I'm going to cross into your boundary and you'll feel it. And he was like, five meters away. And I felt it and he was like, that's important to you. That's not a mistake, that's not a failure of yours. That's how much personal space you need. And he said, and it's a meditation in itself to notice when people cross that boundary. And I was like, what? That's, you know, that's meditation. And then he said, you move your hands all the time and so you can meditate by that. That's a clue, that's a sign about how you are soothing your body. Now, again, like in the autism world, I'd now call that a stim, but a. I didn't have access to that language. But also, not everything's a pathology. Some things are just how we soothe ourselves. And he was alert enough to. To watch me move my hands and say, try moving your hands until they want to fall still in the way that you want to. And I did. And so I've had the fortune of learning meditation from that perspective, that there are multiple routes in and they're about tuning into what your body is craving at any one moment and letting those resolve themselves into stillness rather than forcing stillness onto yourself. And that's why walking is a great.
- [31:33]
Lauren Roche
Way into meditation as well.
- [31:35]
Catherine May
Because I crave walking and it stills me, but I have to let it. And the advice to take your headphones off is a brilliant one because it's.
- [31:48]
Lauren Roche
Taking your attention in another direction for as long as you're listening to something else.
- [31:52]
Catherine May
And it's about. It's about sitting with the discomfort of.
- [31:55]
Lauren Roche
Your attention for a while and how scattered it is and staying with it until it calms. And meditation, good meditation, because there's loads of bad meditation advice out there. Like, hey, everyone, clear your mind.
- [32:09]
Catherine May
It's like, oh, ta da, my mind's clear.
- [32:12]
Lauren Roche
That's like the worst advice ever given to anyone. The way that I've learned meditation is to notice all of those thoughts and let them be. Just let them be. And the effect that that has is it's a move towards stillness, but you have to process them first. You can't push them away. And there is no magic spell of clearing your mind, particularly for neurodivergent people who are like. And yeah, so. So I never had to have that illusion that I was supposed to be still in the first place. And it's allowed me to stick with it.
- [32:52]
Interviewer or Additional Host
So, so interesting. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think that's really helpful. And is there just to continue that for a sec? Are there certain things that you do each day in quite a deliberate way to get into that mindset? I mean, people think of meditation and it's okay, I'm going to sit down somewhere and I'm going to be still for 10 minutes and I'm going to meditate. Is that what you're doing or how are you sort of starting the process each day?
- [33:20]
Lauren Roche
I let it be different every day. And I let myself fail at it sometimes too. Like, I'm not the perfect meditator. I don't do it every single day. I used to and I. And since I have my son, I've never managed it every day. But I do different things that get me into that space. So sometimes that's swimming in the sea, sometimes that's walking, sometimes that is sitting in my chair. I mean, after years and years and years, it's now more like kind of tuning into a frequency than trying to figure out how to get there. But that's years on. I try and make space for it and I try and give myself at least one minute, just one minute of attention every day, just standing out in the garden. And if nothing else, I've done that. So I've tried to let it teach me to be nice to myself and not to think about how it should be, but instead meet my own need as it arises. And sometimes that is definitely not stillness. There's definitely, like, you know, that energy in my muscles that says, I don't need to sit still. I don't want to sit still. I want to expend energy. And sometimes there's that lovely call to sitting in silence. And that's really beautiful when it comes, but it's not consistent. I'm not a monk. I'm not a monk. I wouldn't mind it, actually. On balance, it might have been quite a cool career option, but. But I'm not. So there we go.
- [35:00]
Interviewer or Additional Host
You, I believe, got your diagnosis in your late 30s. Is that right?
- [35:04]
Lauren Roche
Have I got that right? Yeah, I was. I think I was. I think I realized when I was 39, and I was diagnosed when I was 40. So, yeah.
- [35:11]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [35:12]
Lauren Roche
On that cusp.
- [35:13]
Interviewer or Additional Host
Okay, could you tell. Just describe. You talked about having panic attacks. You obviously had issues with anxiety at certain times in your life.
- [35:23]
Lauren Roche
Could you talk about how did you.
- [35:27]
Interviewer or Additional Host
Feel like something was wrong with you? Did you feel like you were broken in some way? Did you feel like an outsider? I mean, it's hard to find the terminology, but how did you feel within yourself, especially as a child and into adolescence, compare to the people around you? And how does that compare with how you feel about yourself now?
- [35:46]
Lauren Roche
Are we getting insights into you here, Matt, as well, from that question? Well, we'll see.
- [35:53]
Catherine May
Yeah.
- [35:53]
Lauren Roche
I mean, I. I grew up feeling like a profoundly different kind of a person to the people around me. I literally thought I might be an alien. That was. That was the way I thought about it when I was a child, that I. I couldn't even tell you what was so different, but it was like just not fitting into this social environment that seemed to know what it was doing. And. And. And the experience of being disliked, of people not taking to me, of not somehow not managing to pull off this incredible social feat of just being in a classroom with other people and getting along. And I now look back on it and think that also I didn't understand them. Like, it felt at the time, like they didn't understand me. But I look back now, and I think, you know, I didn't understand their.
- [36:56]
Catherine May
Emotional responses to things. Like, in some ways, I was having a big response and nobody else was having one. You know, like being in a noisy Room that makes me want to kind of grab my head and scream. And everyone else seemed happy, like, what's the dislocation there? And in other ways, they were moved or excited or upset by things that didn't bother me at all, you know, and I couldn't understand those differences. It felt like everybody else was kind of numb and. And I was feeling. And I couldn't. I just couldn't figure it out. You know, I dealt with a lot of the low self esteem. I dealt with the depression that so often comes with autism. I had to deal with bouts of intense exhaustion that left me sick for months and months and months because of, you know, what I now understand as autistic burnout, which is so common amongst people like me, but which I didn't have. Have any explanation for at the time. And it's left me with PTSD around medicine because I was going to different doctors, different clinics, in pain, in, like, unable to sometimes get up out of bed and told over and over again that there's nothing wrong with you. You know, you're just. And some people more aggressively than others. Yeah. Does that answer you? Does that fit with your experience, I wonder.
- [38:30]
Matt Gibbard
No.
- [38:30]
Catherine May
I mean, it's often very different for boys, Right?
- [38:34]
Matt Gibbard
Everyone's experiences are different, aren't they? And a huge amount of what you said there is very familiar to me. I think that strangely, I have never found the social aspect of it so challenging. For me, it's much more the sensory aspect. So things like when I think we should come onto this now, but acoustics and light and the quality of space and materiality, which is why it's taken me a long time to figure this out. But this is where my intense interest in the built environment comes from, because I'm hugely sensitive to all those things. So I spend a lot of time trying to understand them. And that's really what I'm trying to do with this podcast as well. So, I mean, thinking about lighting, for example, how do you think about light in relation to your home? Both sort of natural light and artificial light. Are there certain things that you do or don't do?
- [39:36]
Catherine May
Yeah, I mean, I would walk around in the darkness all the time. Like, I find I drive my husband crazy because I will be sitting in a dark room, you know.
- [39:47]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, I'm the same.
- [39:48]
Catherine May
Completely happy. I find artificial light really uncomfortable, honestly. Obviously there are different kinds of artificial light, but I am really overwhelmed by it, and particularly, you know, fluorescent light, because I can perceive a flicker in that even when other people can't. That's constantly moving to me, and so it's exhausting. But I. And I don't like bright sunlight either. Like, I am. I think I'm a cave dweller. Like, I don't mind a bit of light. I mean, obviously, I'd quite like to see, but I find most environments massively overlit. And so I'm all about, like, low light, lamp light, nothing in the middle of the ceiling beaming down on me like a, you know, tractor beam from a ufo. And I'm a big fan of candlelight, although I am also dyspraxic. So I have to be extremely careful because I have set a few things alight. Sometimes I say that very casually, but, you know, it's. It's not great.
- [40:54]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah.
- [40:56]
Catherine May
But, yeah, so light. Light is a. Feels like a kind of ongoing battle. I would say, in reverse, of my husband claiming that I want to live in complete darkness. It seems to me that he wants to live in a supermarket where everything is just floodlit at all times, and it's awful. And I do not. Do not approve.
- [41:15]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:16]
Catherine May
My.
- [41:16]
Matt Gibbard
My dad used to.
- [41:17]
Lauren Roche
He.
- [41:17]
Matt Gibbard
He invented a word for it called lightism, and he always accused me of being lightest.
- [41:23]
Catherine May
Yeah, I'll take that. I'm lightest.
- [41:25]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, I think we're both lightest. What about materials, then, Catherine? You know, tell us about the materials that you're comfortable with or not.
- [41:35]
Catherine May
Yeah, I mean, softness is a huge issue in my life. In fact, on some autism questionnaires, one of the diagnostic criteria is, do you have to cut the labels out of clothes?
- [41:49]
Matt Gibbard
Oh, wow.
- [41:49]
Catherine May
And that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a moment of revelation for me because I was like, what? Other people do it, too? I find so many textures intensely uncomfortable. Some of them because they're itchy and scratchy, some of them because they're uncanny to me. I can't be near polystyrene, for example.
- [42:11]
Matt Gibbard
Oh, God, no.
- [42:12]
Catherine May
Unbelievable. How did that become a material that people drank tea out of? I mean, I just. But there's all those kind of dissonances when you grow up, as we have, when other people are, like, comfortably drinking a cup of coffee out of a polystyrene cup, and you are in the corner, like, shaking. It's horrifying. So, yeah. And I can't be near any wool. Wool is painful to me. It's so prickly. And, you know, people say, well, not even lamb's wool. It's like, not lamb's wool, you know, so I have to be really careful. Like, sofas. Sofas are often very itchy to me rather than comfortable. Many, many surfaces put my teeth on edge or. Yeah, make me very uncomfortable. So in my own home, everything is soft. Everything gets run through the washing machine five times before I can wear it, or put it on my bed, for example. But to put that in more positive terms, I do build little cocoons, you know, lots of, lots of soft things, lots of wood, which is a lovely thing, which does not put my teeth on edge. And like natural, natural fibres, natural surfaces are really, really important to me.
- [43:33]
Matt Gibbard
I agree with that.
- [43:34]
Catherine May
And the other. Oh, sorry, I was gonna add. Sorry. The other sort of softness. Like I'm in a room surrounded by books here and yes, I love books, but there's also like a softening of the sound that happens when you're surrounded by things like books or in my husband's case, records. That sort of. That's a big one for me.
- [43:52]
Matt Gibbard
It's funny, you know, on a Sunday morning, it's always the same in our household. So I'll come downstairs and we have a snug with a TV in it and I go in there and my daughter Indigo, who is 12 and who is autistic herself, will be lying on the sofa watching tv. And there'll be one single cushion in the middle of the floor and it's been discarded. And the reason for that is it's, it's quite a scratchy wool.
- [44:19]
Catherine May
Oh, yeah. Cushion.
- [44:21]
Matt Gibbard
And it's. I find it so funny, but it's always, always discarded over to one side. And she's most comfortable in this hoodie that she has, which is incredibly soft. And she puts the hood up and it's got something on the sleeves where she can put her thumbs through it. And it just feels very innate to me, that idea of sort of nesting in the softest materials that you can. But I also think, you know, as you pointed out, natural materials, I mean, wood, clearly, but these materials that feel like they've come from nature. I know it sounds obvious, but I think I'm always surprised how many people live with man made laminates and plastics and things like that, which are not only not very good for the environment, not very good for your health, but also they just don't make you feel very good.
- [45:06]
Catherine May
No, I mean, of course it's a cost issue and I really, really get that. But I notice that a lot of neurodivergent people like old things and I think part of that is the contact it gives with real natural materials. It's. Yeah. And that sense of Softness. Your daughter's jumper. I really recognize that. One of my patterns was that I kept trying to tolerate things that I knew felt uncomfortable, but I thought I ought to feel okay with. And I had a set of scratchy woolly cushions that were very lovely, very stylish, and were stitched in these lovely folk patterns. And they looked fantastic on the sofa, but I didn't want to touch them. And, you know, and if I was going to lean against them, I had to make sure I was, like, completely covered by a jumper and a T shirt. And one of my first thoughts was, like, I can get rid of the cushions that don't feel soft and have other cushions that do feel soft. Like, that's actually okay. It's all right to want that.
- [46:07]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, it is okay to want that. But I think it's interesting you talked about your husband. You know, so many of us cohabit. I mean, some of us don't, but a lot of us do. And we have to learn to comprehend compromise. And my wife is an incredible aesthete, and we have some very beautiful, incredible things in the house, including lots of things that she's made and designed herself. But she is naturally more comfortable with, I'd say, more layers of things. She's probably naturally more comfortable with textures and patterns. And it's interesting. So we have this slight sort of, you know, passive aggressive battle where, you know, I'll go into a room and I'll maybe just take one or two things out and I'll put them somewhere else. Or I'm always trying to preserve the space around things. So, you know, for me, furniture needs the right amount of space around it, and that's important to me. And then, you know, I suppose then it's okay if there's a big pile of books on the table, just as long as I can find a way around it.
- [47:07]
Catherine May
Yeah, it's funny. I mean, my husband is just. He's not bothered by clutter. He's not bothered by untidiness. It just. He's just untroubled by it, and he's not bothered by itchy things either. And so I realize how fussy I can come off sometimes and how often it becomes like a sort of battle between two poles of one, like, can we just leave this? And the other, like, no, this must be okay. But we do get there. There is an ongoing battle about the level of volume.
- [47:44]
Lauren Roche
I'm not sure that's ever going to get results. And I do, you know, I do try and find followers to the Other direction. But it's really hard to meet everybody's different needs. I think that's the truth of it. But please move in the opposite direction is to not be tied in other all the time. To have the release of playing a record at, you know, what I consider unbearable volume and what he considers to be relatively quiet. It's hard. It's hard living with people.
- [48:13]
Interviewer or Additional Host
Do you listen to music yourself?
- [48:16]
Lauren Roche
I do, but actually only under certain circumstances. You know, like I can't work with it on, for example, that's not something I can do. And if I'm tired, it doesn't energize me. It wears me out. Other times I need it, you know, I need to kind of drink it in. So, yeah, my needs around music are much more specific, I think. I still, I adore music. It's really important to me, but I can't tolerate it every single day is probably the truth of it.
- [48:49]
Interviewer or Additional Host
Yeah. In the context of living with somebody else, how do you find enough personal space for yourself? You know, enough solitude?
- [48:58]
Lauren Roche
Right.
- [48:58]
Interviewer or Additional Host
Because that's a challenge for all of.
- [49:00]
Lauren Roche
Us, that, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's a massive challenge. I mean, I think we're both people that need quite a lot of solitude. I am very lucky to have my office that you can see behind me as we're speaking. It's, you know, for years and years and years I worked on the kitchen table or kind of of improvise different spaces to work in. And then when the pandemic came and my husband got, you know, sent home from work, obviously and had to work from home for the first time. And for a while we were sharing my desk and I hated it so much that I realized that I had to establish a room that was my own space. And so now, now we actually have a room each. We have a three bedroom house and he has the spare room upstairs and I have the front living room downstairs. And we are both in them with our doors shut. And if we're in there with our doors shut, nobody bothers anyone else. It's really crucial for me. I mean, writing requires extended periods of deep concentration and I can't do anything if it's broken all the time.
- [50:10]
Interviewer or Additional Host
So what's your routine for writing then? What time of day do you do it?
- [50:15]
Lauren Roche
I'm a morning person altogether and I do my best writing in the mornings. So if I'm in like an intensive period of writing, like I'm trying to finish a book or something like that, I'll tend to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning and then I can get a good couple of hours in before anyone is anything like awake. Probably a little longer in our house. And I still will write in the mornings after everyone's got up as well. But my cherished time is definitely those hours and I often get my best writing done at weekends because everybody else sleeps in. And so then I've got maybe four or five hours to myself before I get bothered. I am so far the opposite of an evening person, of a night owl that I, I've just got nothing left after 8 o'. Clock. That's it, my day's done. I've got nothing to say to anyone. Nothing good happens for me. So I, I need to be able to go to sleep at that point. Maybe not quite to sleep, but I need to be moving towards bedtime. I, the other people in my house are night owls through and through and for years are beginning, beginning of my relationship with my husband. I tried to go to, but we tried to like, you know, meet in the middle and go to bed at the same time. 26 years in, we have learned better than that.
- [51:38]
Catherine May
We have separate bedtimes.
- [51:40]
Lauren Roche
You know, you found what works for you.
- [51:41]
Matt Gibbard
I mean that's, that's really good. So what happens if you get invited for dinner somewhere and you know, inevitably, you know, the food served at half past eight, nine o', clock, what happens then?
- [51:52]
Catherine May
All right, I'm going to eat before I go out first of all because I do not function well hungry and yeah, I can't handle that, particularly if there's wine involved, like being hungry and drinking. Terrible, terrible accommodation for me. So I'm going to pre snack. I'm not taking any risks. Do you know what? It's fine, it's really, really fine. I can manage. I can't do it all the time though, you know, and I really like, maybe once a month I will do that and I will tolerate the late bedtime and it's okay for me because I get to live the life that I want to live most of the time. It used to be really different when I was trying to like go out to work and I've always really struggled with working in a workplace with other people and having my weeks dictated and the kind of tiredness that comes with that. But at this phase in my life I'm chill with it, I can go along with it, but I probably will go home earlier than I once would have done. I'm heading home at 10:30. That's me done now, thank you very much.
- [53:02]
Matt Gibbard
And is there anything else that you do to help with sleep? Are you a good sleeper generally? What do you do routine wise on that front?
- [53:12]
Catherine May
I'm mostly a pretty good sleeper. I think I have. Well, I say that. I mean, I wake up a lot. I'm a very light sleeper, so I'm easily disturbed. That's the problem for me. And also once I do wake up, I'm awake for two hours. I'm not someone that can be disturbed and then drop straight back to sleep. I am someone that goes to bed with a blackout, blind curtains, an eye mask, the whole lot. And I also play, I play the sound of the Irish Sea by my ear and that helps me to shut the world out. So if there's other people up in the house, which there normally is, if they're talking downstairs, I can't sleep. So I use this kind of, basically this white noise, but it's lovely, natural white noise to shut everything else out. I can't wear earphones, I can't. That kind of stuff is not comfortable for me. So I use external noise. I sleep okay most of the time, but I will always wake up early. So if I don't get to bed early, I have a very short sleep because I can't sleep past say six o'. Clock.
- [54:26]
Matt Gibbard
Okay. The last thing I want to talk to you about is creativity because I think, I mean, you're a mother as well, so I think we should talk about creativity and children. But how do you have any thoughts on how you instill a bit more creativity and play into your everyday existence at home?
- [54:49]
Catherine May
Yeah, it's difficult, I think. I mean, I do think motherhood makes a huge difference to it. I used to have a lot of scope to just follow whatever pathway I was interested in and now everything's under a lot more pressure. Even as I now have like a young teen, it's still surprising, you know, how much parenting there is still to do. I kind of thought that once we got over the toddler stage that would be it, but that turns out to have been optimistic. So there we have it. And you know, like, it's really important for me to be there. It really matters to me. I don't, I'm joking about it, but I don't feel casually about it. I have to try and make time within my schedule, not just to be outputting. I am a scheduler. I am someone that's always trying to, like always, oh, how can I make all of this fit? Even though I don't stick with the routines for very long I reinvent routines all the time. And so I try and make sure that I'm not only physically writing, physically outputting words, that I make time to read, that I make time to see exhibitions, have conversations with people. My tendency is to ignore all of that as like, not essential and to just try and generate words and very quickly that just empties me out and I haven't got any words at all. So I've now started scheduling my week with no meetings for two of the days. And that gives me the opportunity to get on the train, get to London to see interesting things, to have lunch with other creative people. Because those conversations actually really, really matter to me. To walk, to take long walks, to explore places, to read. Yeah, I can't on those days. I can't write all day. And it forces me into the big wide world and that then feeds my creativity. You have to make a lot of space for it. I think it's really easy to just drain it.
- [57:01]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, I think that's so interesting. Cause actually you said that you're not particularly routine driven, but of course what you've described, there is a pattern that you've put into place in your week that helps you do things that probably wouldn't naturally occur to you. But in terms of your son and being a mum, I mean, where do you stand on the idea of giving children a sort of short or longer leash in terms of allowing them to explore and get bored and make mistakes and all that kind of thing?
- [57:35]
Catherine May
I think it's really important. One of the things I notice about kids at the moment and about, and actually more about parents than about kids at the moment, is there seems to be a belief that we need to pack their time like a suitcase so that they're always busy and always occupied. And I, and so many of my son's friends do so many different clubs that there is no space in their life for nothingness. You know, like all of my creative practice comes from being incredibly boring board as a child and the only, you know, I was an only child. I was mostly with my grandparents. I didn't have many friends. I started writing because I was trying to occupy myself. And I'm not sorry about that. You know, I also started reading because I was trying to occupy myself. Our kids now are never as bored as that because there is so much available to them just in the home. And I do genuinely think that's wonderful. But we have to stop trying to control their attention all the time. And we have to trust them to get bored and to find their own way through. I just think it's so important. And I think one of the reasons why this current world is so hostile to neurodivergent kids and why they're struggling so much and so, so often dropping out of school and like, you know, developing mental health issues and just telling us that they're finding it hard is because so much is being thrown at them all the time. And I just believe in giving them space even when that seems unproductive sometimes to us as outside viewers. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in kids minds that is not profitable in the sense of, you know, could they make money from it in the future or even now? Or is it going to lead to a qualification or is it going to be attracting a certificate that might one day go on their UCAS form? I never had to live with that when I was a kid and I'm grateful for it, honestly. And I try to avoid doing the same to my son.
- [60:03]
Matt Gibbard
So if there's a parent listening and they may be in that cycle of. As so many of us are sort of over scheduling, do you have any thoughts about what they could do?
- [60:14]
Catherine May
Do you know what? I think in a funny kind of way it's okay to say no sometimes to your kids over scheduling themselves. And I think, because I also hear a lot of parents say that they feel over scheduled by their kids timetables too. I think it's actually, I don't think you're doing them any harm if you say no, I'm sorry, you're doing plenty already. That will do. But I also, I also would say like when you look at their schedule, because kids do have schedules now. Ask where the spaces are, ask where the bits are that they fill and ask yourself about your comfort levels with them beating their own path a little bit. Because we have got to give our kids some space. You know, we have got to give them some breathing space. And if that is pure leisure, then that's actually great. Like it is not bad for kids to have leisure. They have way more homework than we used to have. They have way more demands. The world is way more noisy. Let them be, Carve them out some space. Let them have a break. Because we need it and they need it too.
- [61:30]
Interviewer or Additional Host
Yeah.
- [61:30]
Matt Gibbard
I must say, if I was king for the day, I would definitely ban homework.
- [61:35]
Catherine May
Oh, I would. I mean, yeah, sorry, yeah, that's just a plain yes. I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna develop that point. Yes, please become king for a day. Please ban home Work. I'll support your application. I'll write your reference.
- [61:49]
Matt Gibbard
Okay, good.
- [61:50]
Catherine May
I'm in.
- [61:51]
Matt Gibbard
Great.
- [61:53]
Catherine May
It's that easy.
- [61:54]
Matt Gibbard
It's that easy. Does Bert ever come up to you though, and say, mummy, I'm really bored. Do you get that?
- [62:03]
Catherine May
No. No, he doesn't. Well, I guess because he's got lots of things that he can do, you know, he does. He loves computers. He's really interested in them. But he likes building games, so he will occupy himself for hours doing that. He really likes drawing. He hates reading, incidentally, and I'm okay with that. He can read and, you know, he's got that tool that he can use in the future if he wants to, but I'm damned if I'm going to force him into that. He's really in, as so many kids are now, really into Dungeons and Dragons, which I find fascinating because I grew up having such a yearning to not look geeky. I was so scared of people, like, uncovering my true geek self. And I love the way kids lean into that now. He doesn't get bored. What he, you know, what he does doesn't always look idealized to me and doesn't look like a National Trust brochure, but I am having to grow up about that and let him follow his, his deep, deep fascinations with the world and not try and make him in my image. And I often wonder what I would have looked like as a 13 year old if I'd have had the Internet in front of me. I think it would have blown my mind. All the things I wanted to know. Oh, my God. You know, and I hear a lot about kids watching YouTube and how terrible it is and then look at my son and watch him watching videos about astrophysics and think, I dreamt of this kind of quality information available to me when my mind was so hungry for it. And all I had was the village library full of Catherine Cookson books. And that was like. And my family's copy of the Pears Cyclopedia. Like, yeah, our kids are adapting to a very different world and we are there to help them get balance, but in some ways they're leading us and showing us that, you know, what they need to do and want to do in this world as it is. And it's. Yeah, we can't turn back the clock, I don't think.
- [64:14]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, I mean, on that one, there's obviously a big anti smartphone movement and trying to preserve people's childhoods a bit more. Where do you stand on that one?
- [64:24]
Catherine May
I have complicated feelings about it particularly for neurodivergent kids. Actually, I think that, yes, on one hand, kids on social media sites coming into contact with impossible standards and also the opportunities for bullying within it and for grooming and for all kinds of other horrible, inappropriate things really needs, like, clearly, clearly, clearly needs to be addressed. On the other hand, I'm concerned about outright bans because I think so many kids are quite isolated and find their communities through this as well. I mean, my own experience of social media has changed a lot over the last few years. But actually, when I was first realizing I was autistic, Twitter was an absolute lifeline to me and let me find my people and let me feel at home in a community for the first time in my entire life. And I think these things are massively more complex than just good or bad. I also think that, you know, when we were kids, there were parents, unusual parents, that banned their kids from the tv. And I know loads of those kids have grown up to watch as much TV as everyone else, you know, and the truth is we can't, we can't protect them from the modern world forever. And I think our job is to let them develop the skill set and help them to understand the pros and cons. So, yeah, I see a lot of terrible things with the online world, and I think I believe fervently that we need to learn how to keep it in its place and escape it. But I also worry about the ableism of saying it's uniformly bad for everyone, because I think it's an absolute lifeline for loads and loads of people. And I think it represents an opportunity to make friendships and community and to feel like a valid human being for loads and loads of people and to see ourselves in context. And I think we remove that now at our peril.
- [66:37]
Matt Gibbard
Such interesting stuff, Katherine, as a closing reflection, if I can put it like that, I'm going to put you on the spot here, but if someone is listening and they are perhaps neurodivergent, perhaps maybe just an introvert or perhaps quite sensitive in some way, what sort of practical advice do you think you could give them to take away in relation to the home as a framework and thinking about the home, what would you say be the most important sort of two or three things we've touched on so far today?
- [67:10]
Catherine May
I think the biggest thing and the biggest thing for all of this is to learn to listen to your gut when it comes to making decisions. And that counts for the home as much as it does for everything else. And so your home is Your domain. It's the one place in the world that you get some agency over and let that be the thing you need. You know, if you're not sure. Because I. I do think that a lot of people who do have high levels of sensitivity, for whatever reason, have spent their whole life having their instincts overridden by the outside world. You know, like being told, you don't need to cut that label out. It's comfortable, it's fine, everyone else is fine with it. Or, you know, like, a wall jumper is fine. Why are you. Why are you fussing? As adults, we get to redress that balance, and that can take a bit of tuning in. And sometimes we need to experiment. So try having lamps instead of a pendant light. See if that helps you. You know, try walking about in the dark. I find it delightful, personally. It's yours. You are allowed to make your home the place that welcomes you personally, as opposed to a place that looks good to the outside, outside world. And when you can make it in that fashion, it will support you in everything else you do.
- [68:37]
Matt Gibbard
I think that's such a lovely, lovely way to put it. And, you know, and to add to that, forget about what you see on Instagram and.
- [68:44]
Catherine May
Oh, sod Instagram.
- [68:45]
Matt Gibbard
Honestly.
- [68:46]
Catherine May
Honestly.
- [68:47]
Matt Gibbard
And try, you know, trying to somehow mimic what you see other people doing. I think it's such a good point you make. It should be the outward expression of yourself. That's what the home is.
- [69:02]
Catherine May
Yeah. And actually of your body. To me, a home is an extension of a body, and your body should feel at home in it. And that's not only visual, but it's about all of the senses. It's about the way it smells, it's about the way it feels on your skin. It's about. About the way it sounds like. Let your home be an extension of your sensory realm.
- [69:26]
Matt Gibbard
Thank you so much, Katherine. You're a very, very wise owl. And I've learned a lot, a lot more. I love that.
- [69:33]
Catherine May
Thank you.
- [69:34]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, you are. You really, you know, you write beautifully, but I think you're very, very open and you're very thoughtful, and I think the world needs more people like that. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
- [69:47]
Catherine May
That's extremely kind of you. Thank you very much.
- [69:51]
Matt Gibbard
Huge thanks to Katherine and thanks to all of you for listening along. A reminder that we're now releasing a new episode every week, so if you're not already following the show, please tap, follow, and you'll be alerted when a new one comes out. As always, if you can spare a minute to rate or review the show. I'd really, really appreciate it as well. For those of you who are new here, we are also do house tours with many of our guests, so you'll find those over on Patreon. The video version of this episode can also be found on our YouTube channel, and you'll also find us on Instagram. Homing with Matt this episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Talk to you very soon. Bye for.