Bad news for anyone who has heard quite enough from him — and music to the ears of anyone hungry for more – Prince Harry is set to take part in a livestream chat with Canadian child development expert and author of six books, Dr Gabor Maté.
The hour-long conversation will take place online on Saturday March 4th at 5pm (UK time) on Vimeo. It will be broadcast to ticket holders only and costs £17 plus a £2.12 fee for UK customers. This will include a copy of Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.
Produced by Penguin Random House in partnership with Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and Indigo Books & Music, Prince Harry, 38, and Dr Maté, 79, are set to discuss the importance of personal healing, among other topics.
Each guest has the opportunity to submit a question, which may be chosen for a Q&A session that will conclude the event.
But what exactly is Dr Maté’s relationship to Harry? And what else can we expect to see the pair discuss in what will be the prince’s first public event since his January publicity blitz for Spare?
Dr Maté is an apt choice for Prince Harry to talk with, not least because the former’s next book, Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children, is due for release later this year.
His focus on familial relationships is clear, as he asked “How much of what I have believed and done is actually my own and how much has been in service to a self-image I originally created in the belief it was necessary to please my parents?” in his book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress.
Dr Maté lives in Vancouver with his wife Rae, whom he married in 1969 after meeting at the University of British Columbia. They have three children, including journalist Aaron Maté, with whom Dr Maté wrote Hello Again, and daughter Hannah, who is a PhD student in clinical psychology. Born in Hungary in 1944, as the Second World War raged, he moved to Canada at the age of only 12. As an infant, his mother put him in the care of strangers to keep him safe for over a month. However, he felt acute anger and developed a fear of abandonment, which he’s carried throughout his life — and has informed his work on trauma, child development, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), addiction and stress.
An advocate for drugs being decriminalised, Dr Maté has even used the plant ayahuasca — which causes hallucinations and vomiting — to treat patients suffering from addiction and mental illness on dedicated retreats, where he worked with a Peruvian shaman. Although there was evidence to suggest his methods helped to ease symptoms, in 2011 he got into hot water with the Canadian authorities who threatened to arrest him.
However, that same year, Dr Maté, who spent much of his career working alongside drug addicts in one of Vancouver’s roughest neighbourhoods, had his work recognised in the form of the Civic Merit Award of the City of Vancouver as well as the Order of Canada.
While he is officially retired as a practising physician, Dr Maté shows no sign of putting his feet up. He is a frequent public speaker and a prolific writer.
He also has an active Instagram account with 1.2 million followers including the likes of Elizabeth Day, Mae Martin and Anita Rani — although it is run, with his blessing, by his daughter. He features in ‘to camera’ videos or conversations on topics such as people pleasing, childhood trauma, and how to move past suffering.
He is regularly invited on podcasts to offer insight into all sorts of psychological issues. He spoke on Fern Cotton’s Happy Place podcast about the emotional demands put on women by the traditional family unit and discussed addiction with Bryony Gordon on her Mad World podcast. He told Gordon he would ban the word ‘addict’ if he could. Dr Maté firmly believes that we are all addicts to some degree.
One of his most cited quotes is “a hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours”.
There is speculation about how the collaboration with Harry came about. Was it a decision made by Random House? Or perhaps Harry is a client of Dr Maté? The latter theory is unlikely, given that while Dr Maté is a retired practicing physician.
It is probable that Harry, who has very much taken the reins on his own life over the last few years, decided to select Dr Maté to accompany him for this part of Spare’s promotion — not least because it is another nod to his interest in talking therapy, which he has had for seven years.
“The moment I started doing therapy, it opened my eyes,” he said at the inaugural Masters of Scale Summit in 2022. “I was moving through life thinking there was only one way to live. And therapy burst that bubble.”
Given Dr Maté’s areas of expertise and how much Harry’s memoir focuses on his childhood (including the trauma of losing his mother, Princess Diana, when he was only 12), it is likely that the livestream will focus on grief, loss and personal healing.
The conversation, which viewers are prohibited from making any copies of and during which the ‘chat’ function will be disabled, comes after a turbulent period for Prince Harry, who lives in California with his wife Meghan and their two children.
His memoir is the fastest-selling non-fiction book in the UK since records began in 1998, shifting over 467,000 copies in its first week. However, a recent poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton for Newsweek found that his popularity — and that of his wife — has slumped to an all-time low among Americans. The couple were also savagely mocked in an episode of South Park.
However, under a post promoting the virtual conversation on his Instagram, while many commenters questioned why Dr Maté would give Harry further publicity, there was plenty of support. “Everyone deserves healing,” one person said.
