I honestly believe true happiness lies in lowered expectations. In opening the door to let the air in.
— Sara Pascoe
When I was a small child we were allowed to wait up until midnight on 31 December. Then as the TV chimed, Dad would run to the front door and open it, welcoming the New Year air. This is the kind of entertainment you make in poor families, and cry to your therapist about when you're rich.
It sounds like a brag but I've got a separate room in my flat just for unread books; I don't let my read books touch my unread books.
When I started watching comedy there was a lot of negativity about women; a lot of comics were spewing out aggressive, violent and negative material.
After an afternoon of interviewing Siri it turns out there are millions of questions that it can't or won't answer: How did you get my phone number? How many Siris are there? Did you have a Christmas party? Who is playing the tiny xylophone before and after each interaction? Are you spying on us, plotting the downfall of our species?
Bodies have a sex, but gender is a thing we made up, like your star sign or nationality. It doesn't really say anything about who you are. The destruction of gender binary would free everybody.
Worse than useless, I worry e-petitions are detrimental, with their sense of catharsis and mini-activism. Channelling away agitation, giving us the opportunity to show all our Facebook friends just exactly how great we are at being compassionate.
For all of the separateness of church and state, Christian morality has shaped Britain and its inhabitants for a very long time.
Sometimes people give to charity because they have been persuaded to believe in a cause, sometimes just to get rid of you and sometimes because they are befuddled and confused.
It's unfair but true: youth is attractive, curvy women are attractive, outliers who look a bit different to everybody else are attractive.
I have never been to Ladies' Day at the Grand National. I've never been to any day there, truth be told, and unless they introduce a Scruffy People Who Believe Horse Racing to Be Deeply Cruel Day and pay me to attend I can't see that changing.
That's the thing: when I listen on public transport, my headphones act as a separator - a wired barrier between me and the nearest people. Yet my podcasts drag me through the depths of human nature.
I get too upset by online criticism.
As an adult, my hero is my dog, Mouse. He is so friendly to everyone he meets. He wags his tail and loves everyone, like Jesus!
When you meet a new woman who does stand-up, it is instantly like, 'Yes! In the gang'. Because you know the logistics of the job: they travel a lot, it's lonely in dressing rooms, you know that they have bad gigs. That means they don't have to prove themselves to me.
I could barely function as an adult; I slept through alarm clocks and lost train tickets mid-journey.
Skinniness is a new fashion. It reflects an obsession with youth, a suggestion of pre-adolescence when a female's fertility can be dominated. It implies vulnerability, feebleness and fragility.
No success will ever quench your thirst - my rich person's therapist told me that.
I am very short-sighted but I don't wear my glasses as they give me a headache, so if everyone could just stand closer to me that would help.
I hate how old people get in my way when I'm swimming. You're trying to get into the zone and normally, if there's someone faster than you, you get out of the way, but old people don't; they're like, you can go round me. I give a little tut when I pass them.
But, if you read science journals or the inside of Snapple caps, you might already know that watching TV is the closest you can get to being dead, which is why it's so relaxing.
Extensive analysis was conducted before deciding whether consumers would respond better to a male or female imprisoned in their phone. Almost every country in the world had a female Siri programmed - but not, initially, in the UK and France.
We're all diminished and restricted by sweeping statements defining boy and girl, our expectations and disappointments with ourselves, the way we look, what we enjoy, and the choices we make.
Belief is invisible, so there is enough space for everyone's. Except in the shops at Christmas.
While all religious beliefs should be respected, choice is a human right.
The cliche of call-centre work is that it's mainly older people who will stay on the line to talk to you. Whether through loneliness or good manners, they tend to allow you to finish your sentences, hear you out.
Much of the discussion around how people look at women focuses on culture, as if the media is entirely to blame. As if, without magazines and commenting hosts, we'd all suddenly dress in practical overalls and only judge a person on the quality of their charity work and poetry.
When podcasts are in charge there will be no wars, just ears. That will probably be our motto, but in Latin. In our podcastian future, we'll comprehend that each story has another angle, every case a contradictory piece of evidence.
The podcast is a bit like a phone call, except you don't say anything.
I was always obsessed with ancient Egypt, but any time you go back to wouldn't be as good for women as now - so it might be a quick visit.
Culturally even, you have shows like 'Friends' or 'Sex in the City' that are imbibed along with like fairy stories, which are all about The One. Then we feel like we're looking for it, and if relationships end, what we've experienced isn't valid.
The more you learn, the more becomes possible in life.
When I was 18, I moved out of home. I decided to try to be an actor, so took myself off to slum it with nine humans and a million mice in a red Leytonstone house.
I wore a padded bra every single day and night from the age of 14 until I was 31. Giving up padding was my New Year's resolution. I had known for ages that wearing a stuffed bra was a form of hiding my real body.
We parcel up time into years and months and days because without compartmentalisation the tundra of time is impossible to navigate.
I try so hard to be tolerant of everyone and their choices, but people who harm pets or support factory farming have an enemy in me.
When I go back to Essex, where I grew up, I'm still appalled by the homophobia and casual racism and aggression. I live in Lewisham, in south London, and though it might look a bit rough, it's a diverse, friendly neighbourhood.
Even quicker than the development of super-technology is the human adaptation to taking it for granted. We live in a world where regular people converse publicly with an inanimate object and escape Bedlam or a dunking.
Utilitarianism is a philosophy from the olden days exploring the idea that whatever is best for the majority is the fairest.
Comedy, surprisingly for a form that intends to bring joy and joviality, is always upsetting people. Jokes rely on broad strokes, stereotypes, caricatures, exaggerations and simplifications.
So why don't all religions get together and go to war with atheists? Because we all want the same thing: respect and tolerance and not to be forced to do anything we don't want to.
If a bright-coated fundraiser was hassling a confused pensioner in the street, people would see, some hero would intervene. But it's happening in living rooms on landlines, and it will continue.
Call centres employ mainly out-of-work actors because vocal skills plus low self-esteem equals reliable cold caller.
For women, style codes are not merely about being smart or presentable, they are a platform for judgment.
It's interesting that reading, like listening to podcasts, is a lone pursuit, one where we keep our mouths shut and let someone else do the talking. Where we absorb rather than emit. By occasionally isolating ourselves, we can more successfully, more generously, socialise.
Someone who didn't do comedy might think it was awful to have someone talking about you. But I just love the attention, even if I'm not there.
I really respect the work and speeches of Tony Benn. He was a powerful speaker with a huge heart.
The only reason you would hate to be compared to 'Fleabag' is if you were said to be 'not as good as Fleabag'.
Many of my memories of my mum are of her in the bath with a book, utilising her limited spare time by simultaneously washing and studying. She left school with no qualifications and now has a PhD. If I seem like I am bragging about this, I am.
A show that I loved as a kid was 'Maid Marian And Her Merry Men'. It was a really strong female character making fun of the boys, an inversion of gender politics. But it was very funny, too. I always wanted to be one of the village people messing about in the mud and being stinky.
