Why I’m Back (And Why Most of What You’ll Hear Isn’t Me)

When I was four years old, plastic tube went through the roof of my mouth and tore up the

back of my throat. The surgeons told my parents I might never speak properly again.

My gran refused to accept that. Every day. Every single day. She sat with me and we practiced

sounds, words, sentences. A small boy and a stubborn woman rebuilding a voice one syllable

at a time. I've spent the 50 plus years since then living off of that voice. Radio ads,

corporate narration, being on radio, 300 odd hours of this podcast, 30 plus years studying why words

move people because I nearly lost mine before I was able to say anything with hearing.

So believe me when I tell you I don't say this lightly.

Last week, I taught a machine to speak with my voice. And I want to tell you why.

But first, the elephant in the room. Where the hell have I been? Well, if you followed the show

for a while, you know it went quiet. Not a plan break. Not a sabbatical. The wheels came off.

My immune system, which has been trying to kill me with admirable persistence for over five years

now, it closes to six, I'm guessing, escalated. The condition I have is called CIDP. This one is

confirmed if you want to look it up. Basically, what it means is my immune system attacks the

insulation around my nerves. So if you think about the wiring in your house, OK, except something is

methodically stripping the plastic off every cable, and that something is you. It's going to cause

shorts. Short circuits. The other autoimmune disease I have, which is a maybe or a maybe not,

because it keeps going up positive, then not positive, then positive, not positive, is myasthenia

gravis. And according to my neurologist, there is a third one that's doing weird things and

nobody can figure out what it is. So there were hospital stays. I was in hospital once a month,

at least. There were nerve tests, EMGs, and they feel exactly like they sound.

There were treatments. I was on something called polygam,

derives in a drip bag, costs more than a decent used car, and medical aid battles about who pays

for the bag. There was a time when just getting from the bed to the kitchen was the day's main

event. But yeah, well, that didn't work out well. I might talk about that a little bit more because

the polygam proved to be ineffective. And there was a new treatment called glitzema, which the

medical aid wouldn't fund, which I tried, which actually seemed to work. But it's also costly,

and we simply couldn't afford it. Now, amongst all of that, here's the thing nobody tells you

about an illness like this. It doesn't just take your energy. It takes your output.

Everything I make, this show, my writing, my work, comes out of the same body

that is spending every scrap it had and has on just staying operational.

So the podcast didn't die. It just went quiet. The warehouse goes quiet when everyone's at the

hospital. So why come back now and why come back like this? Well, there's a few reasons. The first

of them is that something shifted. Around about a year ago, maybe a little more, I lost the fight

with the medical aid and the counsel for medical aids. They refused to pay for any of my treatments

anymore, either the polygam or the glitzema. The only one that they approved, which I tried,

by the way, in December, was cortisone, intravenous cortisone. And much to my surprise,

turns out I'm allergic to it and it caused me to hallucinate terribly. So what could I do?

I'm now left with no funds to fund this ongoing treatment. So time to walk my talk and take some

of my own medicine. So I started experimenting about it and on myself and health and thought and

mind. And we're going to talk about this a lot. Okay. And I'm going to talk about it honestly.

We're going to talk about mechanisms and evidence and all of those things, including the parts where

I could be wrong. So I started managing my health my own way. Movement, breath work, meditation.

Some of these approaches had good evidence behind them and some,

quite frankly, are experimental. So I track what happens. I share what I find.

Not as a guru though. More like a test subject with a microphone. The irony is I'm feeling

more like myself than I have in years. But as of this recording, I am two plus weeks into

flare up or a relapse. I'm not sure what it is, but I want my voice back. I wanted my voice back.

The second reason is the machine. And this is the part I promise to be straight with you about.

Most of the episodes you'll hear on the show from now on will not be recorded by me sitting in front

of this microphone. They're going to be narrated by an AI clone of my voice. When I trained myself

on this show, 260 odd episodes of me talking ads, I voiced narration I've recorded over the years.

I fed it my own life's work and told it to sound like me, not because I'm lazy, because I'm finite.

Here's the honest arithmetic on a good week, which again, I'm currently not having.

Nobody gives me a certain number of hours. Okay. One occupational therapist or physical

therapist said to me that I've got to learn to deal with that. Every morning I wake up and I'll

only have a certain amount of energy. And that's not always guaranteed. And the amount of energy

is not guaranteed. So there's only a number of these hours that I can spend each day and I can

spend them recording, editing, rerecording the sentences I've fluffed or I can spend them

thinking, researching and writing things that the show is actually for. The machine doesn't get tired.

I do. So the machine does the reading and I do the living, the learning, and the writing.

Fingers crossed on the living part, by the way. Every word is still mine. I write and approve

what goes out, the ideas, the arguments, the mistakes. If an episode gets something wrong,

that's on me, not the clone. The voice is the delivery van. I'm still the one who packed the

box. And episodes like this one, the personal ones, the ones where it matters that a human

being is breathing behind the words, those I'll record myself. That's the deal. And I'll never

blur the line. When it's the clone, the episode says so, right in the outro. There's a symmetry

in this that I couldn't have designed better if I'd tried. Something from a machine tore my voice

apart when I was about four. 50 plus years of technology later, a machine is helping me keep it.

My gran rebuilt my voice the first time. This time I got to do it for myself. So what is what's

involved now? It's the same show that it was becoming before the wheels came off. Just now

with some of the ambition turned up and excuses turned off. It's about rebuilding health first,

because that's the fight I'm actually in. I'm going to take you inside the experiments, what

I'm trying, what the research genuinely says versus what the wellness industry wishes it said,

what the numbers do, what fails. So if you're living with a chronic condition, or you love

somebody who is, I want this to be the show that treats you like an adult. No miracle cures,

no doom either. Mechanisms, evidence, and honest uncertainty. And alongside the health thread,

the mind. That's been my trade for 30 plus years. How beliefs form, how habits actually wire in,

how people talk themselves out of the life they want, and how sometimes with the right lever in

the right place, they stop. The tools I've used on myself during this past year, and while lying

in hospital beds with a lot of time to think, are the same ones I'll be sharing with you.

Small changes, right place, big results. That's the whole philosophy. It got me my voice back.

Twice. So from this week, this is my intention. And also why we have my voice clone. Two episodes

every week, Tuesdays and Fridays, 10 to 15 minutes each, long enough to say something true,

short enough to respect your day. Most narrated by the clone, the personal ones by me,

every one of them written by me. And depending how things go, I might throw in some live guests

every now and again. So if this sounds like a show worth having in your week, do two things for me.

Follow the show wherever you're listening. That button is the whole ball game for an

independent podcast like mine. And if you want the written version, the experiments, the sources,

the things that don't fit into the audio, join the rebuild. That's the newsletter over at

what'sinvolved.com. I nearly lost this voice before my fifth birthday. I nearly lost it again

to a body that keeps picking fights with itself.

But it's back. And this time it's built to last. I'm David Watts. This is what's involved.

And it's so good to be talking with you again. Until next time, look after yourselves and take care.