Paul Farmer

speaker

419 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 8 Aug

Paul Farmer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Desert Island Discs · Paul Farmer, charity leader · 8 Aug 2026 podcast

I suppose my job was to try to tell that story to a wider audience, to try to encourage people to call.

That task of picking up the phone

And ringing the Samaritans is not easy for somebody.

So how could we make that easier for people?

And to give people that sense that there was somebody there, even in the middle of the night, even in your darkest moment.

Yes.

I became a a listening volunteer.

I learnt two things actually.

The first thing was the power of listening.

I think as a leader, it's incredibly important to be a good listener.

And not just to listen to the words, but to listen to what's going on in between the words.

To listen to the gaps and the silences.

And the second thing I learnt was

the experiences of many people who were calling were that they had mental health problems and Samaritans could do something to help

But we could only do a certain amount.

So that connection to those callers was a absolute driver for campaigning work in mental health.

I've always felt like I can listen to people.

Maybe it's living in a quiet house or maybe it was being at university, it was probably all of those things.

But I I kind of felt like I could listen.

I can give people time in that sense.

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