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Françoise Girard: Feminism, Activism, and the Power of Storytelling | Podcast

July 13, 2025 Ben Yeoh

Françoise Girard is an activist and founder of Feminism Makes Us Smarter. We discuss Francois' journey from studying law in Montreal to becoming a feminist activist in New York. Francois shares experiences from her work with the Open Society Institute and the International Women's Health Coalition, elaborating on the critical role of grassroots feminist movements in effecting societal change. 

“Taking a feminist, intersectional lens helps us understand the world better. You can see trends before the regular commentators do.”

The conversation touches on misconceptions about feminism, the interconnected nature of various justice movements, and the importance of long-term, flexible support from philanthropists. 

“If you want to track the health of a democracy, look at what’s happening to women’s rights. They’re the early warning system.”


Francois also highlights the power of storytelling in activism and reveals her creative process behind her writing. 

“When we walk out of a play, we’re more in touch with our feelings. That’s how movements grow — through stories and emotion, not just policy.”

“Each of us won’t solve it all, but if we all do something — even something small — that’s how things move. That’s what gives me hope.”

The discussion concludes with insights into successful campaigns, including the decriminalization of abortion in Ireland, and practical advice for individual contributions to social change.

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on YouTube.

Contents

  • 00:18 Francois' Journey to Activism

  • 01:50 Working with International Organizations

  • 03:39 Founding Feminism Makes Us Smarter

  • 04:54 Understanding Modern Feminism

  • 05:41 Intersectionality and Feminism

  • 10:35 Theories of Change in Activism

  • 22:54 Challenges and Learnings in Feminist Movements

  • 31:45 The Role of Art and Opera in Life

  • 32:17 The Power of Storytelling

  • 36:14 Creative Processes and Writing

  • 41:51 Successful Movements and Campaigns

  • 49:41 Current Projects and Future Plans

  • 54:38 Final Thoughts and Advice



  • Transcript (This is AI assisted, so mistakes are possible)


Ben: Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Francois Girard. She's an author, activist, and founder of Feminism. Makes Us Smarter, Francois, welcome.


Françoise: Thank you very much, Ben. I'm really pleased to be talking to you today. 



Ben: How did  your journey to become an activist come about?


Françoise: Ah if you'd do me when I was 15, whether I'd be doing what I'm doing today, I would've thought it would be very cool to do what I'm doing today, but I don't think I would've imagined it. I would've said, how on earth do you become a writer, someone who works with feminist movements globally? I wouldn't have known how this happened.


So basically, I. I studied political science and then I be, I studied law, became a lawyer. I was working in a big law firm but I was always interested in human rights, women's rights, justice, fairness. And throughout my journey as you call it, I did get involved in student politics.


I was the president of the Law Students Association in law school at the University of Montreal. I was, always involved in organizing, with events and year books and plays and, I was always active but when I had the opportunity to move to New York when I was 34, I got married and decided to move to New York.


My husband was already in New York. That was the moment I left Montreal and decided that this was the time for a change. I didn't, I wasn't gonna join a big law firm in New York. I was instead gonna go into, international human rights, international affairs, New York was the place, right? So it was the opportunity.


So I did do that after a while after knocking on a lot of doors. And this was Prego, you couldn't look up people the same way. You had to knock on doors and meet people. I ended up hired by the Open Society Institute at the time the Soros Foundations and I started working on human rights.


In Eastern Europe not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and. Gave away George source's money to human rights groups, women's rights groups independent journalists. We just did a lot of work on democracy. Promotion was very exciting and I learned a lot. And after that joined the International Women's Health Coalition.


'cause my passion was always feminism and women's rights. And I went to see my boss at Open Society and I said, I'd like to. Be on the front. I wanna go on the front lines. I, it's nice to give money to groups, but you're removed and I am gonna leave a comfortable world, leave it behind the world of philanthropy and join a frontline organization.


So I joined International Women's Health Coalition, which later on ended up leading for eight years, and got connected with feminists from all over the world. Working on sexual and reproductive health and rights, in particular, abortion rights, contraception, sexuality, education, violence against women, some of the most difficult, quote unquote issues the most culturally challenging issues in a lot of contexts.


And met all these amazing that I'm still in touch with and just had. An amazing time of it. It's hard but so rewarding and five years ago now, I left the coalition and four years and a year later, so four years ago, I started, feminism Makes us Smarter, which is a communications platform where I have a newsletter.


A podcast. So where I talk to feminists from all over the world about their work, their journey. I also review books and evidence about, what works to combat violence against women, or what works to advance abortion rights. And just putting out there, more voices and more experiences, knowledge that's not often found in the mainstream media.


There's. Not a lot written about feminism in general. Even when women march by the millions, the mainstream press writes very little about it. They just don't find it interesting, or important or I don't know. And and so I felt that it would be a contribution to, to put that additional content out there in the.


In the sphere, in the internet sphere.


Ben: That's amazing. So how do you think we should think about feminism today? What? What do you think is most misunderstood by most people when we think about it? And I think there's some talk about also the intersectionality of it. It doesn't live in isolation, but to your point, there's a lot of talk about what.


Works there are these intersections with wealth and poverty or the fact that, feminism makes us smartest. Societies which are more equal seem to be doing better and all of that. But I'd be interested in your take on what's most misunderstood.


Françoise: I think that when I chose the name, feminism makes us smarter and I like the acronym FMUS because I pronounce it famous, 'cause we're the famous feminists, of course.


So you gotta have a bit of fun. But what I wanted to say is that. If you take a feminist lens, and it has to be an inter intersectional feminist lens, so we can talk about that. But if you take a feminist lens to the world, you start to see things much more clearly, right? Things that seem perplexing or become clear.


When you take a feminist lens, you also see things coming with much more. Preview, so to speak, like for example, I think it's. In my world, it's well known. The connection between author, authoritarianism, fascism, and sexism and the repression of women is that's always gone together, right?


So if you pay attention to anti-abortion movement movements, fighting against gender equality against the whole idea of gender, even then you can see that. Fascist movements are on the rise, right? Because they're connected. And in a way, issues like abortion, control of women's bodies control of women's fertility are canaries in the coal mine of democracy and human rights.


So it does make you smarter to adopt a feminist lands to understand even politics, because you can see. Trends before, like the regular commentators will see them. That's what I've observed. Now, what's misunderstood about feminism, one is the typical trope that feminists hate men. You know that it's a man hating movement.


That we wanna abolish men and so on. And that's of course not true. Many of us have men in our lives, men we love men we spend our daily lives with. What we don't and or what we hate is patriarchy. Like the notion that there's should be a social order that elevates one. Sex, the male sex, or people who are assigned male at birth above everyone else above, above females.


People who are assigned female at birth or people who are non-binary and so on. Like the, this idea that, the male should rule is the problem. And it leads to many other problems including violence, war, domination, extractive capitalism control over nature by, by, by man. That is, there is some of the things that we wanna fight against.


And the other thing that I think is misunderstood is that if we adopt a feminist approach, I. We, everyone will benefit. Like people assume that only women will benefit, but in fact, men also are oppressed by sexism and patriarchy, right? The idea of being a man today is very narrow, right? You must be strong and domineering and you must be.


Taciturn and stoic, and you must resolve all your conflicts through violence and domination. And for a lot of men, of course, this is very oppressive, oppressive of their own nature, their own sensibilities. It's of course very destructive. Because then, anytime there's a problem, you have to punch the other guy or, lobb a missile, whatever.


It's not conductive conducive to, to, to peace to building society, harmonious society. So I do think for a lot of men becoming feminists would actually be empowering for them. So that's one thing. Then the intersectional part is that of course, because when we say patriarchy, the patriarchy as its practice now is not to elevate all men.


Although all men can, participate in the patriarchy. But the patriarchy that wants control over our society is the white patriarchy, right? The white, cisgender, straight. Patriarchy and the Christian patriarchy this is what in the US for example, we're facing, these are the people who wanna dominate and they definitely are of a certain makeup.


And so our feminism has to be able to analyze that. And it's not just okay to say, we wanna abolish patriarchy in general. We have to really analyze the relationships between. Racial justice, environmental justice gender justice, economic justice and feminism to be able to have a proper analysis of what's really going on here.


Ben: So activists often talk about a kind of theory of change, the mechanisms that they think they, the levers that they can pull in society today to impact some of these changes for the better. And like you've alluded to some things over history seems to have worked, some things have perhaps not worked as well.


We can learn things from other. Types of activists, like disability rights activists, and you've said race and all sorts of things. So I'm interested in what you think the main theories of change you have at the moment. What you think is working or maybe should work or you're interested in.


Françoise: Yeah, the one thing that's. Always been my guiding light is the notion that, the famous quote by Frederick Douglas, the 19th century African American writer and social reformer that he fought against slavery in the US in the 19th century. And was someone who worked for rebuilding, reconstructing the US on equality principles.


And he had this famous saying, power concedes nothing without a demands. It never did. And it never will, right? And so what that says is that we have to organize in movements and, in community-based groups and so on to demand. Equality and justice. It's not gonna happen without a fight, and it's not going to happen without us demanding our freedom and our and demanding justice. So for me, my theory of justice is really grounded in social movements, in community organizing. And there's. Have plenty of evidence that's what really makes a difference for change.


Certainly in feminism there's been a lot of interesting research on violence against women and what has worked in various societies to move the needle on violence against women. What has spurred governments actually act on violence against women, which is so pervasive and there's this fabulous research by a professor.


Called Laurel Weldon. She's at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and Canada. And she and a colleague Malan, Toon put out this research where they looked at data from 70 countries around the globe. And what were the critical factors that got governments to actually do something about violence against women.


And after they took away all the, left-wing governments presence of women in parliament, whatever, they controlled for all the variables. The one factor that was critical to moving the needle on violence against women was the presence of independent, organized feminist movements. Right? When you had a feminist women's rights movement that was pushing the government to act on violence against women, that's when you saw action.


Without that, it didn't matter. What philosophy the government espouse, and what you know, whether it was a developed capitalist economy or a socialist country, a richer, poorer, it didn't matter. The one thing that mattered the most was the presence of feminist movements pushing government to act.


So that's, it's not just my say so, my belief or what Frederick Douglas said, it is actually. Evidence-based that with social movements change is possible. It doesn't mean it's inevitable, but that is the critical factor that must be the secret sauce that must be there.


Ben: In an ideal world, how would you think about shaping society?


So if these movements are successful or is there any particular. Policy or idea now. 'cause our utopia might be a little bit away. But policy or ideas now you think would be, are really vital to think about enacting and how do we get, from there to our ideal world?


Françoise: Oh my goodness, there's so much that's on fire right now, literally and figuratively that.


It's hard to pick one thing I just wanted to add, because you mentioned disability rights, that I do think the disability rights movement. Has said something, one of their slogans is very profound and important, which is nothing about us without us, and that's also then been adopted by other movements including the HIV and AIDS movement.


And the feminist movement, of course, believes that deeply. You cannot. Make the change without the people most affected at the table. And bring them in and actually give them leadership. Not just bring them in as a token or listen to them on the side, or, consult with them, but the, the decisions being made over here.


It's really. Co-creating the solutions with the communities in leadership. And so if I had to change anything, it would be that, to really take that seriously, like really bring people in to co-create and imagine solutions and enact them long term and really stay the course tho that would be one of the things that I think we.


Make the biggest difference and there's so little of that being done. It's pretty shocking. But of course there's many other things. Healthcare, of course, that's been my beat. Sexual and reproductive health control of women's bodies, ensuring that half the population can control their body.


Fertility are not subject to violence can make decisions without coercion. That would be hugely important, including, girls, early marriage, forced marriage. The gamut of things that happen to girls at an early age is. It's just terrifying. So if I could change that, I'm sure we'd be in a better world, but that's the not the only thing we need to do, obviously.


Ben: Sure. And but to your point you'd need to include everyone and then downstream these things happen. If you can't get that level of inclusion with all of these groups, then you probably don't even get any of these downstream and they wouldn't be sustainable. Yeah. So we could go on and on about the things on fire, as you say, but maybe we should just flip it and.


And look at some of the silver linings. And maybe I would ask what are the things which give you hope right now? Are there things that you find inspiring or things which you think okay, here's a little spark. We should continue to work on that?


Françoise: Yeah. I'm always inspired by feminist from all over the world and their bravery and creativity.


A few years ago I was impress. Many of us were by the Argentine women's movement fighting for the decriminalization of abortion in Argentina, which was a tall order, right? Argentina was very conservative, macho, historically Catholic country that had lived under dictatorship.


All that leaves a lot of. In society if you want. That leaves a lot of things. In the political apparatus that, that make it difficult to advance women's rights and equality, gender equality in general. And they campaigned for years and we, when we were at the International Women's Health Coalition, supported them even when it looked completely farfetched that this was going to be possible.


And they came to us. Yeah. Again, like listening to people, they came to us and said, we wanna. We wanna campaign in in the Congress for decriminalization of abortion, but we are from all over the Argentina and the provinces of Argentina. And it's hard for us to come to Buenos Aires.


We need a small apartment in front of Congress that we can use as a base. But no donor wants to fund rent, because the donors have all these ridiculous rules. And they said, would you do that? Would you. Find a little apartment that we can use as a touchpoint. And we said, yeah, sure. Yeah. And this was years before the decriminalization actually happened and we said, yeah, we'll do that.


Yeah, we understand what you're talking about because we're activists ourselves. We know what it takes, what kind of sustain action and presence and lobbying and how you need. And so we did that. And in December, 2020. Congress voted to decriminalize abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, and then the president signed off on it.


Then it was after, terrific mobilization that basically took over the whole country during the pandemic no less. They were amazing. And they had the green scarves and they did all these marches and it was super creative, also very visual, very. With music and singing, and it was intergenerational.


You had older feminists, like what they call the historical feminist, less historic as the older 85-year-old feminist with the young teenagers marching together. It was beautiful and moving. So that gives me hope. The creativity and the ingenuity and the. Patience and determination and fierceness of feminists from all over the world.


And then of course, today what we're seeing rise up in the US this movement against fascism, which comes out of all, many previous and existing social movements, including Black Lives Matters and movements for environmental justice. That's all. It's all coalescing and then re reorganizing and morphing.


But that's where we saw we had the No Kings Day in mid-June. That was incredible. Impressive. Big all over the us, not just in one city, but all over the US in places where you wouldn't expect people to come out and say, no Kings here, fascism is un-American, where, it was beautiful.


So that gives me hope. Yeah.


Ben: And like you say, you started your own podcast not too long ago. How's that been going and what are some surprising things or anything that you've learned from doing your own podcast?


Françoise: Oh, I, first of all, I love it even more than I thought I would.


It's so much fun because you can talk to many people you wouldn't talk to otherwise. And a friend of mine a few years ago told me, Francois, of course, because I was surprised people would agree to talk to me. Even people I didn't know. He says, but of course they'll talk to you. You are now the media.


You're the media. When the media calls you, most people are flattered and they're like, you wanna speak with me? Oh, great. And people have. A lot to say incredibly rich experiences of activism, of, or, they know many things about what works on the ground, what change is possible what bravery there is out there to advance women's rights.


And so there they've got a lot to say that you would never read in the regular media. There's very little in fact about women's rights, even when, the women's march happened in. In 2017, there was really not that much reporting on it, considering how big and transnational it was. So it's it's important I think, to put that out there in the internet, in the conversation, more voices, more experiences, things that regular media would not pick up otherwise.


I learn and people have amazing stories to tell, and the part of it about storytelling I think is really important. They will talk about their journey, what they learned along the way. People are quite candid also what things didn't work what they wish they'd done differently. It's a real learning experience for me as well as I think for the listeners.


Ben: That's, yeah. That's a good question about what what we would've done differently or any learnings that you have. So maybe I'm gonna pass that one back to you as well, is over your feminist journey, are there any things you really wish had gone a different way or some sort of learning that you'd, you'd pass on to future generations as to how to think about this movement building?


Françoise: There's a couple of things. One, I, on the, per my personal level, I wish I had. Listen to myself a little more, like when I was getting tired as a leader, I wish I'd passed the baton sooner. That would've been smart. And I think there's, in any social movement or any, like in politics, in, in business, there is this.


Sense of, being essential, irre, irreplaceable, critical. I think we have to do away with that, the pro protagonist moa, as they say in, in Spanish, which is the idea that you're such an important figure that, if you lead, it's gonna be devastating and, maybe not right? If you pass the button in there.


In a responsible way maybe sooner would be better, and we could use, different leaders at different times. So that's the one thing person. And


Ben: the system and the organization has gotta be able to survive beyond the founder, otherwise yeah. Not there, right?


Françoise: That's right. And so of course you've gotta lay the ground for that, but don't assume that. They can't do without you. Don't assume you're so indispensable. Put the conditions in place and then pass the baton. Also because this work is very tiring and you have to realize sometimes you do get depleted and maybe you're better, your best ideas are behind you, and be honest about that.


The other thing on a totally different level for funders of feminist organizations and of any social movement is we've gotta learn to trust. The movements much more than we do. Like funders, please. We need to trust the organizations, the leaders. We've gotta give them long-term flexible funding.


Stop trying to control things that you can't control. It's the illusion of control, of course. 'cause you're not on the ground and you cannot be there to. See what's really happening and most of if you've done your due diligence and you've, the organization, they're not there for nefarious and they're there to advance a cause often that great personal cost, so trust them, right?


Don't micromanage them. Give them the five year grant. General support and just send us your annual report and we'll visit you once a year and we'll chat with you a few times a year on the phone and we'll get out of your way. And that's been one of the biggest problems. I think our side, if you want the progressive movements have had to contend with is that there.


Philanthropic sector and the government donors, the overseas development assistance is way too micromanaging, controlling, asking for interim reports all the time, et cetera. Which, with key performance indicators and log frames, whatever, that don't mean anything.


Honestly, there's such a waste of time that's not. That's not productive. When you're leading a campaign, let's say to decriminalize abortion in Argentina, you have a lot of twists and turns, you know you have a defeat in parliament. Then six months later there's an opportunity again, the road comes up again where you know, if you are having to report on very tight metrics that don't allow you flexibility, the ability to.


Once again fund, the lobbying effort, even though you've already funded it once, you know that if you don't have that kind of flexibility, you won't be able to pivot and do the things you need to do when you're really pushing for change. And if I look at the right wing in the US and globally, the same is true in Europe.


Their donors get that. Their donors give them 20 year support. Help build institutions, give them lots of money to try different things and fail. And they trust them, like they trust them, that they do wanna bring on, authoritarian and Christian role and they're all on the same page and, and give them room to experiment and try different things and it makes a difference.


That what we're seeing now in, in. The Western world is and elsewhere is the result of that trust by right wing donors. For our right donors, we need to learn those lessons. Yeah.


Ben: Yeah. I think there's a lot of. Elements of truth on that, particularly when you take a movement, which has got an end goal.


How useful are KPIs? What are you gonna do Num number of calls on politicians. That's not gonna be a useful metric for them. And I think if you have a guiding purpose, a guiding North Star, then there is and I think there is a little bit, there's two things I picked up is particularly with smaller.


Organizations or grants. And, smaller can even be few million or tens of millions, but they're not actually that large in the grand scheme of things.


Françoise: No.


Ben: We're not talking about billions that the paperwork surrounding it is just. Outta proportion to getting on the work that you have to do.


So that's a number one thing. But the number two thing that I picked up is the people who are super great on all the kind of paperwork stuff at the margin, and it's slightly less effective than the people who are just really useless at the paperwork stuff, but are going out enacting whatever it is the thing that you want to enact.


Yeah. And so by putting such high paperwork burdens on people, either you having to hire. Specific people to just do the paperwork thing, which isn't the active purpose that you want to do. Yeah. And then it slightly tilts to the less effective people, maybe even on the borderline of fraud, because you're very good at just doing the form and you end up having to spend 80% of your money on the form, which is then you go why wasn't the majority of our money spent on this other thing as well?


You asked us to do all of the Yeah. Forms and said, this is what you have. So I,


Françoise: that's right. There were grants that at the International Women's Health Coalition we were contemplating applying for, but then we found out that from other people who'd received funding from that donor that if you did take that money, you'd have to hire a full-time person just to deal with them, deal with the donor, fill out the forms, and, send them their, log frames with their.


Indicators filled out. And and when you accept that kind of funding, you also end up inevitably passing some of that onto your grantees. We were funding grassroots groups and we thought, no. Are we gonna keep calling the group in northern Cameroon that's fighting against child marriage to ask them, how many meetings have they had and how many girls were there in these meetings under the tree in that village?


And is this. Reasonable. And frankly, no. So we had the luxury of saying no to some of these donors. But it's easy to get trapped into that as a, as an activist group, and it does take you away from your core purpose.


Ben: And the last one, I would say that on the grant giving side, for philanthropists or organizations listening in, is that the decisions take too long as well.


Yeah, like a by committee, and B you had the information you needed. You probably had it over two coffee chats and a call. And then you asked them to produce this 10,000 page, 10,000 word. Probably not quite 10,000 pages. Feels like 10,000 pages, but 10,000 word. Form or whatever, and you're getting no incremental value for that.


So I gave some a micro grant program, a thousand pounds, a thousand dollars to individual activists or people trying to make a difference, and I have a call and decide within 24 hours and you give them the money and then we're like, oh my God, I just can go and do it.


And then I say. Tell me in a year whether that worked or not, and yeah. Yeah. A good half of them. It hasn't really worked, but it's fine. They tried something. Yeah. And another half actually they went in, they went and did something and they did it fast. It either works or it doesn't.


You're, a report's not gonna help us like that.


Françoise: That's so true. Yeah. No it's just mind boggling sometimes. Yeah. And then they say, okay, then we have doc dockets only twice a year. I'm like, where's the urgency? Yeah. There's no urgency. The world is literally burning in you all, are very comfy, meeting twice a year. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, yeah, exactly. There's a real disconnect.


Ben: If there's things happening, you should, you can make these decisions fast. Good people can make the decision fast. And I think we can we can and should learn from that. So we met through art and theater.


We have a, yes, we do. We have a theater company, improbable, which does operas. As well as improvisation. So we have that in common. So I'm interested in what role does art and opera play in your life? And we touched on the role of storytelling in general, in movement building and in, in convincing people.


So you could touch on that, but I'd be really interested in how art has influenced your life and opera, and how does that kind of intersect with everything you do?


Françoise: Yeah. Getting back to storytelling. Years ago I had the privilege of spending time in workshops by a man called Chris Rose, who actually lives in Britain, who used to work for Greenpeace.


And he's a campaigner and trains people in campaigning. And he's the one who made us understand those of us working in the public health program at the Open Society Foundation that. Facts don't move people or very little. And people, you can give them all the statistics in the world.


What moves them is stories stories that connect with their own values and their emotional, makeup. And that's of course, again, you know what people like Joe Rogan and all these guys on the manosphere understand. They really are very adept at telling stories that connect with the grievances that some men feel, right?


It so storytelling and narrative. Is what people remember. And then you can hook a few facts to it, to the story, but it's, the frame has to be the story and the emotion and so on. So that's how you move people on political issues, for example. And so I think that's where arts and opera and theater connect for me, because that's often how you can pass if you wanna use it for political purposes.


Of course. How important message is important. Stories are conveyed. And I don't know that's always the reason. Let's say Puccini wrote an opera but often we, when you read the story of how the opera came about, it was about, the revolution in Italy and wanting to fight authoritarian kings and wanting to support.


The movement for liberation and democracy in Italy, so there's several of it, of the operas like Tosca that are, that have the subtext of liberation. So it, it worked that people went to see the operas at the time and they understood what he was saying, even though it was a story that allegedly didn't have an immediate political purpose, but they understood.


They understood the message. And I think music, bypasses that sort of rational side of us and really reaches us in parts of our brain that are truly connected to our emotions. And so opera and I found in particular is something that really will bring out an emotional connection to the story at hand.


And often you'll find yourself. Crying, sobbing in an opera in a way that if you listen to facts about tuberculosis, you wouldn't. But when you see Mimi dying in lab, you know she's dying of tuberculosis. You do feel, my God, we can't allow people to die of tuberculosis.


This is too cruel, right? So there is lots of way in which opera like conveys messages. Very powerfully and directly to people. And it's, it brings up, I think, our humanity, our compassion, the our connection with each other. When we've been at a play, with we, we've both on the board of Improbable and we've been to the place that they put on we come out feeling like better people.


Now we're more in touch with our feelings and our. Or Yeah, or dignity or humanity or care for others. It does make you a better person, I think, to engage in the arts and to open yourself up to the range of emotions that theater and music, connect you with. I do think it's. It's a plus in the world.


So


Ben: it allows us to engage and imagine other world and other people, I think. Yeah, very much agree with that. Yeah. And you've written, I think you've written your own book or books and been involved in creative projects, so I'm interested, do you have a particular creative process or when you are creative do you ride in.


Notebooks and think over the day or your morning or evening person, or do you use post-it notes or how do you do it? I like asking people there, there seems to be 1,001 different ways of doing creativity, but I'd be interested if you have a particular process or things you like to do.


Françoise: Yeah I haven't written a book. You know me, there's a book somewhere in there, but it's not yet a reality. What I write is a newsletter which I write every month. I used to write it twice a month, but now with podcasting, I do it once a month and I. It's about different things. It's about a topic in women's rights.


Could be something very current the battle over abortion rights in the us or it can be something that's more of a feature. So I went to The Gambia last month to meet the activists against female genital mutilation, and it's a battle that's been going on for years now, and, I wanted to hear how it was going, so that's more of a feature piece. I also review books that I find inspiring writing about feminism. I. Or stories about women that I find inspiring. So sometimes I'll put out a digest where I've said, I've read this book, I just wanna share it with you on here's some of the things I'm thinking about.


And I've done a few of these on the writings of Bell Hooks. The African American queer writer professor who who died a few years ago, who wrote about feminism, about love about. Community about organizing, about what it's like to be a black woman. She had a lot of incredible writing that feminists will know, but a lot of other people will never have heard about her.


And so I wanted to put that out to, connect people to it so that, so my process is it's painful until I sit down, but once I'm at the table, it's fine. Once I start. No matter how I start, I'm good. Yeah. Then I can just write, I get in the zone and I'm writing and it takes, it takes to write one newsletter will take days.


I, I spend hours on it. It must be 20 hours, 25 hours on one piece. That's 3000 words. Because you really wanna. And there's so many things I could be saying that I've gotta take out and just keep my story, my narrative, more simple and keep out all the intriguing details I would like to bring in.


So it takes a lot of work just both to put it together in a way that makes sense narratively, but also then. Pair it down to the core and then, work on all the sentences. And English isn't my mother tongue, so I've gotta do some work, additional work to make sure it, it's okay.


And then there's, the dreaded typos that are always creeping up and so it takes a lot of work, but. Once I get going, I'm okay. What I do before that is often I've been reading something and so I just take notes and I put it in a FA folder. I write the notes or a copy, a link or a paragraph from something that I find interesting.


I put it in this folder. So I've got a few things to get started with, but after that, after I've read that, I just start, I just start writing and then,


Ben: and you go immediately. To digital, essentially you're taking digital notes and straight onto that, or do you do a little longhand piece? No


Françoise: I love longhand, but I just end up doing digital even though I'm not a good typist.


And I, I wasn't an early adopter of anything, but yes, no I do it.


Ben: And do you general, do you generally edit sentences and paragraphs as you go, or you're a little bit more we need to get the flow out and then you edit sentences and paragraphs? Once it's all written or is it a mix?


Françoise: It's a mix. Like I'll write, three, four paragraphs, then I'll stop. Then I'll go back and rewrite, reread, and then fix it a bit. And then leave it, then continue, then go back. Then I, this paragraph needs to go first and then, it's it's written. Yeah. I go back over and over to make sure it's exactly what I want.


So that it's easy. I was very impressed early on in my student life by George Orwell's essay on the politics in the English language when he said, you've gotta do all the work. Like your reader should just, read it and it's easy. You've done all the work, you've taken out all the difficult, the difficulties.


It's gotta be smooth. And your point has to just. Pop, right?


Ben: Yeah. That's the, and


Françoise: so that's what I'm trying to do.


Ben: That's the great problem with the vast majority of philosophers actually, and also economists. I think Not all economists, but most, they don't write with that clarity, so we can't really understand, what it is with their ideas even.


Yeah. If they had it.


Françoise: Yeah. Great.


Ben: I agree. Last last few questions. I wanted to go back to your thought on what makes successful movements. And I was very intrigued. You're talking about the feminist movement, particularly in Argentina, but maybe you'd wanna highlight a movement or two, or a campaign or something which you thought was really successful and what really made it successful.


And I can see probably a lot of it. Is in the context of the people in the place that might not directly read from things to things. But having looked in the inside of some of these things and I think people looking on the outside don't get to see how well A, how much effort was in there, and b, the sort of.


I guess operational groundwork about how these things come together, and I just wondered if you had any insights to offer. Having seen some of these things about you know how the movement comes together. Yes. They do seem to be points of leaders. They do seem to have these messages. A lot of it is about the storytelling and emotion.


Sometimes they have these symbols. Green scarfs, rainbow colors, I this and that interplay between the storytelling, the leaders, but the community a as well. I'm just fascinated if you have any observations on what makes successful movements or activism and and insights you might have.


Françoise: Yeah, since, I've worked a lot on abortion I'll mention another such campaign. But you know what I'm saying I think is applicable to other topics. The campaign to remove the prohibition against abortion from the Irish Constitution. That a few years ago that was an incredible.


Efforts by women in Ireland, women and men. There were men involved as well. And it really, it was sparked by the death of Savita Halvar that young dentist who went to the emergency room because she was miscarrying in Ireland and was denied, an abortion because there was still some fetal activity even though the pregnancy wasn't viable at that point.


If you're miscarrying at 18 weeks, there's nothing to save, right? But the Irish medical establishment denied her an abortion and she became septic and then she died of a massive infection completely unnecessarily with her husband by her side, pleading the doctors. And the medical personnel to do something.


And that was a very tragic story in 2012. That, was a shock, I think to, to Ireland, frankly, and to the Irish women's movement. And they, they realize this is the moment, like we need to act because this is intolerable. It's been intolerable for a long time, but this is intolerable, but this is also.


A symbol of everything that's wrong. So they, you gotta recognize the moment when there is that spark, right? You have to have preexisting organizations able to take that forward. To donors. We were speaking earlier about donors funding long-term general support. If you don't have organizations that already exist and already have been funded, who can grab the opportunity, seize the moment, it's not gonna work.


It's gonna be very difficult. Because set, setting up an organization. In the middle of a campaign is very hard. You need to have some preexisting structures, plea again for finding structural organizing. But there were some feminist groups and groups working on abortion and, in despair for a long time in Ireland.


And they saw the moment, okay, this is the moment that will, it's a story, it's a narrative that is very clear. It's outrageous, it's unacceptable, and we can use that to make change. And then what they were very clever doing is. Starting to get testimonies from people who had been forced to travel to Britain or who had been prevented from traveling to Britain to get their abortions, who had to give birth.


As teenagers people really scrambling to get, put the money together to try to figure out how they were gonna take the boat. The difficulties families face with. Children they couldn't take care of. They really managed to get all the different stories of people who had children that they couldn't take care of.


Those that were able to obtain abortions in very difficult circumstances. And then also the people who needed the kind of care the maternal care, the miscarriage care that were being denied that care because of these abortion laws that became all encompassing and. Prevented the proper practice of.


Obstetrics in the emergency room so that lots of these stories were gathered. Then they organized these actions, like for example, they started marching to through towns with suitcases, to, to demonstrate the need to take a boat to, to go to England to get an abortion because you couldn't get it in your own country as a citizen of Ireland.


And so they, these women would march through villages with their suitcases, their wheelies behind them, and. Very powerful stuff that people just, oh God, yes. We're doing this to our women. This is not, this isn't, okay. I. Then apparently they also created these knitting circles where they would knit these little flags, with, a, a ban.


The eighth Amendment was the provision of the constitution that needed to be repealed the eighth, and they were knitting and bringing people in who might not have thought they were abortion activists or that they. We're prepared to campaign on this, but they could join a knitting club and be educated, so this, they had many creative tactics that led to this campaign.


And they brought men in. They had men groups of men campaigning to repeal the eighth Amendment. One of the, 'cause they, it concerned them too. Obviously they're, they're very concerned. In fact,


Ben: one of the things I heard also around that is that they used a process of a citizen's assembly to try and draw in and say, look, if you ask.


A hundred people or a thousand people just drawn from our population, this is what we think now this, time has moved on.


Françoise: Yeah. Yeah.


Ben: I was wondering how you think about that. Did survey as well and things did.


Françoise: Yeah. They did a lot of surveying also to show the change in opinion.


They used all the tactics and when people say, what's the one tactic, I would say, you gotta use a range of things. 'cause some things will work with. In some contexts and some things will work in others, and that's why they gathered a lot of evidence because for the lawmakers they needed to put the report together.


The book report with the stories and the. The consequences. Economic, medical, psychological consequences, the cost to the system. They did all those things. But then they also were able to do the part of it that was public campaigning, which was the visuals the events, the, the gatherings, the marches, the rallies.


They did it at all, right? And and it worked. And it was an incredible event when it happened that, when people were actually going to vote, no one. Could say they didn't know what the issues were and why this mattered.


Ben: Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Moment in time. Okay. Yeah, very move. I'm very


Françoise: moving too, honestly.


Yeah.


Ben: Great. Last couple of questions. So one is are there any current projects or doings that you'd like to highlight that you're currently working on?


Françoise: Yeah, I've, I'm writing right now about. Control of women's bodies, which is one of my topics. I wrote about female genital mutilation in The Gambia.


I wrote about early enforce marriage, child marriage last year. And I'm gonna keep doing some things on violence against women. There's a couple stories I wanna put out. One about the story of gi, that French woman whose husband was drugging her to offer her to. Random men, and who was raped by at least 50 men without her knowledge in, in that small village in the south of France.


And what I'm interested in, the story is known and these men have been condemned including her husband. He's in prison for doing that to her. But what I'm interested in is the testimony of the man. 51 of them I think, testified at the trial in the, in most of them did testify in their defense.


And the reasons they gave for why they thought it was okay to rape that woman is just remarkable. I think that's a story that I was able to read in the French press, because I speak French and that I don't think people in the English press have. Know about because all those testimonies were not translated.


So I wanna write about that. It's pretty shocking, including lots, several men saying it was her husband, so I had permission.


Ben: Wow.


Françoise: yeah, you, it's okay. You can rape a woman if you're her husband. Tells you it's okay. It's just in today's world, in France,


Ben: yeah. Could definitely have a documentary piece on that.




Françoise: Yes. It really makes you think, it's hard it's not cheerful, but I think we have to look at it straight on, this is what we're talking about, what we're talking about. The need for feminism. Yeah. And then on a lighter note, I'm interested these days in the question of fashion and politics.


There's a really interesting book I'm I wanna get into about how the French Revolution fashion changed overnight because you couldn't wear. You know that the court used to wear, so that brought in the black suit for men, and the cotton clothing for women. And because you could no longer.


These expensive silks, even if you could afford them, it just wasn't done anymore because, politics had transformed what you could wear and not wear. It's really interesting. Yeah. So I wanna look into that.


Ben: Yeah. I, fashion has a, much bigger say as well, like movements and things and symbols and like you say, in the knitting.


Yeah. And the one on the politics front, which I've always noted I have no huge insight as to what it. What it means. But for instance, if you are broadly speaking a powerful male world leader today, you pretty much wear a suit and tie. There's a little exception. So in India you might have a near suit.


Yeah. But that, but like all of, so whether you are Xi Jinping or Putin or Trump or any of the European leaders, they're all in a suit And Thai, whereas. 200 years ago. Even if you think of elite males or just elite court, I mean they were all males mostly. The range of fashion was very varied.


And in this globalization effect, we now think that the pinnacle of male power is a suit and tie. Get up. Yeah.


Françoise: Yeah.


Ben: Which is extraordinary to think and, but also it's un, I find it's really interesting that both China and America and Japan will wear this as their things. There's a little bit more variety in women's dress.


But even there, it's narrowed and it's just interesting thing. Over four, 500 years that would not have been the case. The most powerful people in the world all dressed very different. The same, there was a nation state thing, but yeah, so it's, yeah, you show


Françoise: up in your national but there is an exception to that, which is the tech folks, so that's how Elon Musk can show up in a, the black T-shirt and, the tech lords can wear.


Something different. That's the new power uniform, new.


Ben: Exactly. I I guess it isn't counter-cultural, but it's counter something that, that simple and in fact those sort of statements are worth something. Anyway,


Françoise: we're thinking about yeah, exactly. We're thinking about


Ben: W with that and, how Yeah.


Those symbols that where people wear them or not, and then conform or don't and what it means. Last question. Do you have any life advice, career advice, or thoughts that you wanna share with listeners?


Françoise: I've been interested in the book by Rutger Bregman, the Dutch historian who just put out a book called Moral Ambition, which is, don't waste your talent.


He says, make something of your life. And I think that's something I really agree with. In other words, we can all make a difference, for the world, for better, and. And we shouldn't all just be bankers and consultants and, tech people, although that's, you gotta earn a living.


And that might be your calling. But think about what else you can do to make the world a better place. And we can all do something. We can do a small piece, you can do a bigger piece. It can be your life's work, it can be your side gig, but what are you doing to, improve? The conditions of the most unfortunate, what are you doing for the unhoused?

What are you doing for people who are face discrimination? Per pervasive discrimination? Are you working to, green the economy? We can all do something. And when people say to me, ah, it's overwhelming, I don't know what to do. Look at the situation of women's rights or democracy in the us.

I go, no, okay. It's all right. We. None of us will solve it completely, but each of us can do something every day. And we should. 'cause if we all do something, that's how things will move. That's what gives me hope.


Ben: That seems like a great advice that we can all do something, think about what we might want to do.


And we'll do a little something. So on that, Fran, thank you very much.


Françoise: Thank you so much, Ben. It's been a pleasure. 



In Arts, Life, Podcast, Writing Tags Art, Podcast, Feminism, Activism, Storytelling

Sumit Paul-Choudhury: optimism, Navigating Life's Challenges and Uncertainties | Podcast

May 30, 2025 Ben Yeoh

Sumit Paul-Choudhury has written 'The Bright Side', a book about optimism. Sumit discusses how his wife dying  reshaped his views on optimism, differentiating between pragmatic optimism and blind faith. He explores how having an optimistic outlook, although seemingly against his scientific training, aligns with good mental health. 

"Believing in a better tomorrow is not the same as saying that today is great."

We touch on the evolutionary logic behind optimism, the impact of agency on perception, and how alternate histories can inform future thinking. Sumit also reflects on the role of optimism during personal grief and provides insights into his writing process and the broader importance of the arts and humanities. The conversation closes with advice for optimism in younger generations and an emphasis on appreciating everyday human interactions.

"Postcards from your future self can be more helpful than New Year’s resolutions."

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or YouTube.

Contents:

  • 00:19 The Moment That Changed Everything

  • 01:08 Embracing Optimism

  • 02:58 The Psychology of Optimism

  • 04:42 Rational Optimism vs. Pessimism

  • 09:39 Alternate Histories and Humility

  • 13:20 Leadership and Optimism

  • 16:03 Techniques for Optimism

  • 20:45 Optimism in the Face of Grief

  • 23:40 Teaching Optimism to the Younger Generation

  • 26:03 Understanding the Climate Problem

  • 28:41 Victorian Sewer Systems: An Underrated Marvel

  • 29:41 Debating De-growth Ideas

  • 32:07 The Importance of Arts and Humanities

  • 34:36 Moonshot Ideas

  • 38:33 Existential Risks

  • 40:21 Personal Creativity and Writing Process

  • 45:58 Current Projects and Life Advice

Transcript (This is AI assisted, so mistakes are possible)

Ben: Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Sumit Paul-Choudhury he leads Alternity which is a studio that looks at alternative histories and speculative futures. He's also written a book called The Bright Side, which is about optimism. Welcome. 

Sumit: Hi. Ben. 

Ben: You write that you became an optimist the night my wife died.

How did that moment reshape you? 

Sumit: So I think everybody has a moment in their life. Sooner or later.

Preferably if you're lucky later, but when you have to think about whether the world is benign and whether your life is gonna go smoothly or not. And we all have an expectation of that. It's not a particularly rational thing. And in the wake of that event, what I had to face was that the world was not as benign as I thought it would be, or my life was not gonna be as.

Smooth as I thought it would be. 'cause up until that point it had all gone pretty well for me. Really. I had a, pretty, I had a good upbringing, I had a pretty successful education and I was starting to have quite a successful career. And then this sort of happens and you think, actually things are evidently not gonna be that easy or that trouble free.

And so that kind of, inspired as you might expect, a period of some reflection about about this. And one of the things that occurred to me, so I started, there's two things happened. One was that I started to think almost as a joke, I started to say, I'm gonna be an optimist. 'cause I thought of optimism as being quite a silly, frivolous kind of way to, to look at the world.

Not harmful per maybe harmful, but I thought of it in terms of, if you don't really wanna think very hard about the world, you just say, oh, things will work out and that's optimism and that's all that, it really means.

and so one thing that happened was I started doing things that I thought would help. And as I later found out what I hit upon were the kinds of things you are actually supposed to do if you want to be more optimistic or act more optimistically. And I found that they were working, it was started out as a stance, but it started to become a real thing.

And then in the course of doing that, I realized that actually I'd always been like this, that I'd always been an optimist, and that I was actually quite deeply baked into my personality. Which was difficult for me to accept in many ways because I just said, I think, I thought it was a frivolous way to look at the world, particularly with someone who like me.

I was, I studied physics, I trained as a journalist in both those professions, whatever the truth might be. You are supposed to think of yourself as being, a hardened, analytical, critical thinker. Someone who judges things on the basis of evidence and solid argument and so on are not really someone who just thinks things will work out in a particular way.

So there was a real issue for me there to reconcile this kind of newfound identification of myself as an optimist. And what I've been trained to think was the best way to, to look at the world, the best way to approach it. And that's what sort started me down this road. 

Ben: And you distinguish essentially between a pragmatic optimism from this.

Notion that you glossed over in terms of a blind hope, that kind of idealistic, almost foolish kind of hope. Can you unpack the difference and did the sort of face of having to look at that through grief and everything else also help differentiate this difference between a kind of blind faith, hope and where might you have a more rational optimism?

Sumit: So what I got to, and I started to look at this, I think of it in terms of layers almost. So what I found quite early on when I started thinking, looking at optimism seriously, was that it is the default state, not just of me, but 

who have good mental health, who enjoy good mental health are optimistic by default about our own lives in, there's lots, loads of psychological research to the effect that we systematically overestimate our chances of leading a trouble free life. We think good things are gonna happen, so we think we're gonna have healthy relationships and successful careers and, earn more money than we'd like, than our peers and so on.

We think all those things are gonna happen. And we don't think the bad things are gonna happen. So we don't think we're gonna get cancer. We don't think we're gonna be in a car crash. We don't think we're gonna get fired. We don't, and that seems to be very deeply rooted in the way that we look at the world.

And what I found was that there's a good evolutionary logic for that. The simple version of which is if you didn't believe that you wouldn't get our bed in the morning, you have to believe the world is gonna, you're gonna succeed otherwise, why would you do anything, right?

And actually, if you don't believe that, people who don't believe that. Or don't score well for opt or highly on optimism. Tend to be people who have depression. There's quite a big correlation there between those two things. So it's a psychologically healthy state. But having said that, that's where I think we start.

That's what evolution has given us, if you like, and what our base psychology gives us. But of course, we have lots of ways of looking at the world that go beyond that. We have lots of rational tools for making sense of the world. We have lots of ways of assessing what's coming that are more analytical than just our instinct.

And I thought that gives us a, that means that we can build on that basic urge to believe that things will improve. But how do you harness that turn into something useful? And that I think is when you get into the, alright, now you can start thinking about intellectual ways of doing this.

Aren't just hoping things will turn out that are about trying to figure out how they might turn out better and then doing something about it. 

Ben: I guess the rational part of me though thinks so. There's, there is this line of evidence that if you're clinically depressed, you. Judge the probabilities of the real world better than a typical person.

A non-depressed person, like you say is a little bit more optimistic than real world chances. But actually basing it on the real world probabilities is more rational and is therefore a more true way of seeing the world. I was wondering what you would've thought about that, and maybe that also interlinks into this optimism gap that you can see about, depending on which scenario, which framing you use.

I think some surveys show. People can feel good about their own future if they're not the press. So a typical person but tends to actually feel more gloomy if you ask them about society or some other things outside of themselves individually, but on this kind of more culture sector led thing.

Yeah. And I was wondering about the mechanisms behind that and whether we should narrow it and if so, what we should do about it. 

Sumit: There's two slightly different things going on there, but there are, but there's a common strand, which is agency. So the thing that the person who sees the world with with depressive realism essentially.

So the person who sees the world and says the probabilities accurately or seemingly accurately, I should say what that doesn't take into account is the fact that we don't have perfect knowledge about the future. If you had, and this is why I have a problem with the work, with the use of.

People saying they're realists. Because actually if you're being a, if you say you are being realistic, you're essentially, you are implicitly saying. I know how things are gonna turn out and actually we dunno how things are gonna turn out. And I think one of the issues is that we consistently underestimate our overestimate, how well we see the future.

We think that things are gonna be more or less the same tomorrow as they are today, despite the fact that actually I. What actually tends to happen is a lot of the time they are, many days are the same as the day before. But then there comes a day when everything changes, you know? And actually as it happens this past quarter century, we seem to have gone through quite a lot of those, between, so we've got, nine 11, the financial crisis, covid the outbreak of war in Europe.

And so you know, there's quite a lot of stuff that's happened in the last, in living memory. That should suggest that actually sometimes things change very rapidly and in ways that we don't expect. So the thing that I think that you're missing, if you think about what looks like a realistic probability what looks realistic from the here and now is that the future is open and mutable.

And that in two ways, one in the sense that it holds possibilities that we don't know about which is about the predictability of the future. And that obviously varies from domain to domain. Some areas we can be very clear about, some areas much less we can forecast tomorrow's weather pretty neatly.

We can't really forecast an election in three years time with anything like that. Degree of accuracy. And some of those possibilities will be positive. And the argument that I would make is that if you are an optimist, whether you're an optimist or a pessimist, it's, it boils down to self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because, but the difference is there's an asymmetry and payoff one that, in a very neutral way you don't necessarily care about. But as a human being living in the world, you do, if you are an optimist you accept that there are positive possibilities out there. And you might try and steer towards them, not necessarily precisely, but in some sort of way.

That means you're more likely to realize those positive possibilities if you're a pessimist. On the other hand, and should we said that pessimism in this sense is very close to fatalism, it's not doing anything basically. And that means that essentially, yes, you'll be correct, that nothing will happen to previous situation, but that's because you haven't done anything about it and you will not benefit from unexpected positive surprises.

So essentially, being a pessimist, you give up the potential upside. And so that's where that falls down. That kind of idea of agency, the ability to direct, that's also the root of the optimism gap, the gap between how we view our lives and how we view the collective future. Because it's to some degree because we believe that we have control over our own lives, which you know, is true to some extent, maybe not as much as we think.

What we don't believe is that we have control over other people's lives and certainly not how strangers behave. And I think that's why, optimism is strongest for ourselves. And then it gets a bit weaker for our friends and family. Then this kind of a quite a, an odd area in which there are people who we think are agreeable and competent in the lingo.

And we are willing to believe that things will go well for them. Beyond that, it's strangers and we don't think we know how they're gonna behave. We don't believe that they, we can control what they'll do and we become quite negative about what that's gonna, and that's where the gap comes in, I think, between what we think we are gonna do and what we think society is gonna do.

Ben: That model makes a lot of sense for me. I've seen it in animal behavior studies that one of the things you can get into is this learned helplessness condition. So you learn that nothing. You can't do anything and then you stop doing something. But the point you make, which I think I haven't heard it, I.

Quite as articulate as that which you really nailed is the fact that we can impact our own futures. And therefore, even though your probability might be X, whatever you're gonna say, there's not 0.5, you can actually shift that probability by your own agency, your own choice and acting on it. And actually, I think we can probably influence others or influence strangers in societies probably more.

Than we expect. At least we could do within that, which would make sense. I've seen you write as well that you've called alternate history, a tool for humility or essentially looking at these scenarios of that. How do you think maybe businesses, governments, companies, or even ourselves can use what ifs or structured what ifs without getting lost in sort of fantasy type of land, but still being using as a case for say, constructive optimism about the world?

Sumit: I, it's not easy is the first answer to that really. But the and I think the so opt, so we are storytelling animals, it's probably, at this point, every time anyone ever says something's unique about human beings, they turn out to be wrong. But but we do seem to be, at least our capabilities in that respect, seem to be much greater than any other organism we know about, which is double-edged sword because I think it gives us that ability to think about the future in ways that that give us a lot of, a great deal of.

More capacity to plan our futures than any other animal does. We can envisage the future in many ways, which, and the fact that we could do it in many ways, not just one, is is one of our superpowers. The same thing applies in reverse. We can do the same thing with the past, but we don't do it very often.

And I think, it's we do it as a pastime, really. It's everywhere in, in fiction. Alternate histories are really, and, speculative future are everywhere at the moment. The, I think there's varying ways you can look at it. One of them for me is just to remember that the stories we tell about the past are, to some extent, just stories.

It's not to say they don't have a factual basis or that things didn't actually happen because I wanna be careful about not turning this into Revisionism, but the but it's the but what I think we. We tend to do is we tend to construct a narrative that says something happened, then something else happened, then something else happened.

And it had to happen like that. And that gives us the sense that where we are now is where we had to be. And of course when you look at the past, actually, we just talked about, how contingencies have shaped this, our living memories. But the same is also true for history.

And we know about some of these, some of these kind of accidents of history are celebrated. Some of them not so much. But when you get into it, there's always kind of points in which history could have taken a different course. I don't think you need to be precise about what that course might have been.

It's an entertaining pastime to do the, what if someone had killed Hitler when he was a baby, and how would the world have turned out? That's the canonical, alternate history experiment. So you can think that through and you can plot it out. And there are lots of hobbyists who do this with.

What would've happened if the Roman Empire hadn't fallen or whatever else. And you can construct lots of. Interesting, intriguing words out of that. But I think the top level is really just remembering that actually how we got here was not a succession of pre-ordained moves. We didn't get to this point because, things unfolded according to some sort of plan.

We got here because, people did I. People did the best they did. They could. Some things happened that nobody controlled Nature got in the way. Every now and again, you get plagues, you get natural disasters. Buildings fall down every now and again. That sort of thing shapes the course of history.

And if you remember that, it makes you think actually the future is not set in the same way either. And every decision we made remembering that every decision we made in the past and everything that happened in the past led us to where we are, but not necessarily to this specific point.

The flip side of that, and this is what I mean about being humble. This, we are not in a particularly special or preselected place. That means that the same is true going forward. We could go to any number of places from here. 

Ben: So should we be worried about. Panglossian leaders, those who just end up spouting what seems to be almost fantastical nonsense on that side.

Or I guess you need some leadership, something to lead us to a better place. How do we deal with this in terms of a leadership thinking and particularly where I guess we've seen arguably in the western world over the last decade or two, some leaders which might be tilting towards that panglossian style of thinking.

Sumit: I think so there's, yeah, again, it's a double-edged sword because you need people to have clear visions of what they think is possible. And you need people who are gonna able to inspire that sense, that confidence in the people who they have to lead. Which is, again, relatively obvious because who are you gonna follow?

Are you gonna follow the person who says things are gonna be great or you're gonna follow the person who says everything's gonna be wrong, go wrong. I don't have to. So yeah. Excuse me. So optimists are, are popular people like hanging out with optimists. People will go where optimists tell them to go.

It's contagious in that sense, in the sense that people want to do what optimists tell them. I think there's the balance really is when it steer, it drops from being, I. There's a difference between being optimistic and being delusional, and I think it's the delusional piece that is the, or delusional and denialist, really, it's when you insist that your optimistic vision of the future is gonna pan out regardless of the evidence of the contrary.

I. That it starts to become dangerous. All politicians when they get elected have to do so on an optimistic promise. I talked about that kind of, that zone of people that we don't know, but we're willing to accept, the on who's will behalf willing to accept optimism.

Politicians love to be in that zone. Politicians really want to be in that zone of people who are agreeable and who we view as agreeable and competent and whose optimism we believe. That's what they're always trying to get into, and they do it explicitly in campaign speeches and so on. And they have to, because of course anyone who's not in a position, not in office doesn't actually know what they're gonna be able to achieve.

They can't let, so they have to offer up an optimistic promise. And to some extent it has to be a faith-based promise. It has to be this is what I think we're gonna do. Then you get into power and you suddenly discover that, in the words of that infamous treasury note, sorry, there is no money, or whatever else.

And and then you have to deal with reality and modifying it. Where it goes wrong, I think is the point at which people start to say actually still gonna work out. Because with, regardless of whatever else is going on. A lot of the time, this is not particularly obvious from the outside, you just know things are not going to plan.

But it's not. Sometimes it is. And it's things like Covid. COVID is the clearest example I think. We had panglossian leaders on both sides of the Atlantic and the US and the uk. Trump and Johnson re jump Johnson and Trump respectively. And we also have people like Bolsonaro in Brazil, all of whom were essentially at the beginning of the pandemic.

Wanted quite understandably to say, this is just gonna go away. It's not gonna be a problem. Like Johnson said, we'd be done with it in six weeks. Trump just said it would banish miraculously. Bolsonaro denied it existed pretty much. And then they all of them got covid quite seriously.

Of there's no point being blindly optimistic in these circumstances. Reality catches up as Philip k Dick said. Reality is that which when you ignore it doesn't go away. You can ignore Covid, but it's not gonna go away. 

Ben: Yeah. That that's back to reality.

I was reading. On the internet just recently that people have been started to use some of these AI agents or GPT to do this technique of being an ideal parent or being an ideal person. And I was reflecting that this was similar to something you've written around being your best self, that you could be your idolized self.

And I guess this was also a case for optimism. So I, I was interested in. Have you used the technique of being of thinking about your idolized self or maybe even an idolized society or what a utopia might be like and how should we use this, and how useful do you think this kind of thinking might be?

Sumit: Yeah. So I dunno, the chat the chat GBT examples but I can imagine, I think I probably have a rough idea of what you're talking about, but the so yeah the best possible self exercise, I should say there's not a great deal of of evidence that you can change your default level opt of optimism very much.

And I would say that's actually probably fine because we, you grow up with a certain level of optimism for various reasons and and you know how to work with that as it were. So I'm not sure that just generally increasing your level of optimism is necessary, particularly desirable anyway, what I think is useful is to direct it, is to think about the areas, specific areas in which you might wanna be more optimistic.

And that's where I think this thing of, if you don't feel optimistic, you can then bring your intellect to play. You can try and reason through it, and that hopefully will start to make you feel better about it more generally. So the best possible self exercise, which is one of the few interventions that has any evidence supporting it.

It's modest, but it does have it. It's this idea that you should just consciously think about what you want out of your life and you should try and do that. Imaginatively really, it's set aside a certain amount of time each day and, try and come up with a, an idea of what your life might be like if you achieved everything you wanted to achieve.

And some ideas about how you might get there. And the kind of thing about that is it's not, that doesn't sound particularly revolutionary and in many ways it's not really. It's not saying much to say you should do that. The thing that I think is striking about, it's that we just don't do it very much.

We do it once a year at New Year when we make a set of completely unrealistic resolutions, which we then promptly fail to adhere to, and then we give up until the next year and we do it all over again. So actually, although it's not a hard exercise to do it's not something we do very often.

I do think it, despite what I've just said about it not being much rigorous risk evidence. In favor of it. There is evidence in favor of the best possible. It's not a massive effect for me personally. I mean from personal conviction. I think it does work for a couple of, one was because when, during the period of my bereavement is what I invent, one of the techniques I stumbled upon I'm a writer by trade, so I started blogging about what my future life might be like.

And sometime in more or less direct ways. And I found that was really quite a helpful exercise because it helped me to think about, 'cause in that situation, the future just looks like a wall at some points. There's nothing, you can't see anything past, the present day.

So just doing that exercise in alright, so what does this look like a few years down the line? That was helpful. And then I realized that actually, this again, it's one of those things I've been doing. For a long time. And I do think that probably if you carry on doing it, you don't necessarily have to sit down 15 minutes with a piece of paper or whatever and you can write about it.

You can draw, you can there's a technique which people use with communities where they ask you to write a postcard from your future community. So what do you want the place you live to be in, be like in 10 years time you write a postcard to yourself. So lots of ways, but it's about that imaginative conception of what that might be like.

And just the mental exercise of. Trying to think through those possibilities, I think does have a very solitary effect. 

Ben: I love that idea that you write about like postcards from the future. This idea, you can do it from a society or your community. Like you say, you can do it to yourself and also your suggestion that you may have a baseline level of optimism.

Like you said, some level of optimism might be hardwired from some of our biology and neuroscience, but actually to some extent you can train it a little bit, but maybe not. In an overall sense, but in some of these slightly narrower domains, in terms of what you might wanna train, you don't wanna be optimistic across everything at all times, and you end up panglossian.

You can train a little bit of it. And that really struck a chord with me. 

Sumit: You end up with toxic positivity essentially. Just to throw another buzzword into the mix, I think what we, you've, we've seen what happens when people try to be. Overwhelmingly positive all the time, and and it does end up, ends up again in denial. It ends up in denial of, the things that are not making you happy. It ends up in denial of the things that are not making other people happy. So just blindly try, I think. And I think that's where you tend to get to if you just try to be more optimistic.

You just try to be more positive across the board. You can only really do that by pushing away uncomfortable truths. And I don't think that's a great approach. I think being, as you say, being narrower about what it is you would like to, the specifics you'd like to fix, specifics you'd like to think about, that's probably more useful.

I. 

Ben: I'm really interested how you've used some of these techniques, particularly in grief or bereavement and how that has happened because I did a show around death and some of it had quotes from people in grief and bereavement. And I think a lot of them found it very hard to come to this place on, on say, the Bright Side, and yet it seemed to really work out for you.

So I was interested if you think it was just particular to your situation or whether you think some of what you went through could be. Techniques which might be useful for others. So I guess one is imagining a possible future or at least some better possible futures within that. And is there anything else you came to this realization?

Because I think you went through a few things. You went for long walks, you did these other types of, you tried a variety of things, which people do, and yet you still manage to settle on this kind of rational, optimistic route. 

Sumit: I think a lot of it for me, part of it was just that I, as I said I discu realized that I clearly was actually quite strongly optimistic to begin with.

And I think people find different ways to optimism. They find different reasons for optimism. I think if I'd had a family at that point, I might have thought about what I needed to do for their lives rather than my own. And of course, people in that position have a different set of considerations about how they move forward and what they can do.

I had the freedom to. At that point fortunately for me to essentially say I can do what I want for a bit and see how things turn out. If I'd had kids, that probably wouldn't have been true because you have to give them routine and all the rest of it. So there's part of that.

Part of it was another, part of it's about guilt which is not really, it's not directly relevant to optimism in that sense. But when I think it helped but didn't take it seriously to begin with. Because initially I could think of it as this is not something, 'cause I obviously wasn't happy, and I think that if I had thought about it and thought that I, I'm, and thought I was being, doing something that was about.

Being happy or pretending to be happy, I would've found that uncomfortable. But because I treated it as an exercise it was a bit detached from how I was feeling. There's a certain degree of dissociation between my emotional state and my kind of, and this is what I'm doing to get through this.

And from people who've written to me since the book came out and people have contacted me, there's, there are a lot of people who've said. Similar kind of feeling that that, I have to be positive. I have to find optimistic way forward. But it's difficult to it's difficult to say that or to express it because you don't want people to believe that what you're think that what you're saying is I'm over it.

It's done. I'm happy now. 'cause it's very much not that believing in a better tomorrow is not the same thing as saying that today is great. Which is again, actually true for all of the kind of dimensions we're talking about. It's also true of, the world situation, I am I'm, as an optimist, I think the world will be better, 50 years from now than it is today.

But that is not to say that I think today is grace by any means. 

Ben: Yeah. I often express that today's got a huge amount of challenges, yet it is still out of the last thousand years, the best possible time to be born is now and probably the right. It'll be better to be born in 10 years time, in 20 years time than it is today, more or less.

Do you think this has lessons for what we should be teaching or discussing with a younger generation, say children or even younger people? Because I find maybe one of the loops back is I meet some people I. Who I guess I would describe or always describe as being climate anxious or having this anxiety around the world.

And this is why I really feel that some of them are close to learned helplessness and I very much say you've, got to somehow develop your own agency and things around that. And often it makes them feel better because they are suddenly imagining a better world and trying to take steps towards that.

Is there anything else you would perhaps point towards younger people or children that we should be discussing with them? 

Sumit: I think with the younger people, this is it. Difficult 'cause I think that we have, I think we have inadvertently ended up in a situation where we're telling young people about all the things that are gonna be terrible about their futures.

And none of the ways in which things have improved or none of them. That's exaggerating, but I think I think it's very easy as a young person today. And I'm not a young person, so I'm always a bit cautious about saying what I think young people, hear or see or do. But, I think it's very easy to get nothing but messages of doom.

Because of the media environment we live in. It's very easy for that to happen. And it's very. It's, there are lots of ah, what am I trying to say? I think the experience of previous generations in this respect. So there's quite a lot in the book about how I lived in terror of of nuclear war when I was younger, as I think many people of my age did.

And I'm not saying that, that these are the same kind of fear or that or that that just because nuclear war hasn't happened doesn't mean that climate. Like collapse isn't gonna happen. They're both, but they're both problems that needed addressing and they're both problems that seemed intractable at the time.

And I think it would help for young people to appreciate that the situation they're in is not, is actually not unprecedented. There's a lot of messaging to the effect that we are in unprecedentedly dangerous times. And I don't really. Believe that in a way. I think the risks are very real and very large.

But our capabilities are also very real and very large. And our knowledge is very real and very large. One of the points I make a lot of the time is that actually the reason, you know it, is it not better that we know that there is a, the climate is in trouble. Rather than, the situation we would've been in.

50 years ago, the climate was already in trouble. We just didn't actually X Exxon but but most of us did not know at that point that the climate was in trouble. And yes, it, this stuff is scary. And we, and the news is because there's this constant drip feed of bad news. But in many respects, we should treat that as we know what the problem is.

Now we know what the problem is, and when it comes to climate, we actually know what we have to do about it. It's actually, it's not a complic, and at base it's not a complex problem, it's about the level, the atmospheric concentration of certain gases. That's not that hard to understand or to start dealing with the politics and all the rest of it's different.

But, anyway, I'm rambling. Yeah, 

Ben: no I think that's you make some really great points that I think particularly presents in climate and environment. Essentially we fixed the ozone hole, right? We don't talk about that anymore. I remember, when I was growing up, we were taught about that and it was a really big problem and we actually fixed that problem.

And you go back a little bit further in, in the history of London, we had these really big, thick pea super. Events which I, I've only now seen pictures of it because it disappeared and we solved it. And our generation knows nothing about that. And same with some of these other existential risks.

I, I think you're right. Nuclear is a problem. Now we're talking about what? Manmade pandemics ai, existential risk. And actually were so much more aware of them than when we came out of, into the 1950s into nuclear where we had no real. Thought about it within that. So yes, the risks are great or maybe as great as they have been, but our ability to meet that is, is perhaps just as high.

Sumit: There are some interesting history. Helps. Again, I think, and I mean I, I don't think kids necessarily want someone to tell them about, ancient industrial history. But there's probably palable ways of doing it. One of my a friend of mine, Tom Han, who's pointed out he's a studies existential the history of existential risk and existential risk panics, as it were.

And there are interesting reflections. So there is when when people first started talking about splitting the atom way back when, the early 20th century, there was similar kind of rhetoric around, this might destroy the world unless I do it, in which case it will be a limitless source of, of potential for the human race.

And nobody understood its capabilities very much so it was kinda like. It will cure disease, it will provide energy, it will run your car, it will do, it will do everything, and you can't help but look at that now and think actually this is exactly the same. This is this, it's the same conversation as we're having about AI now.

It's it's both cornucopia and apocalypse. Only a few kind of why souls can manage it, otherwise and it could do everything. And none that never turns out to be true. Yeah, 

Ben: and I can see particularly with the ai, if you ask. Certain Americans, they'll say, yeah, we will save the world.

As long as the Chinese don't do it. And then you speak to some Asians, the Chinese is oh, it'll all be great as long as you don't let the Americans do it. So I dunno whether they can both be right or wrong, but some of that anyway, I thought we might do a small section of what I call overrated, underrated.

So I'll give you an idea or a sentence and you can comment on it, whether you think it might be overrated or underrated and some thoughts from this. Probably it's in. In this space. So overrated or underrated? Victorian sewer systems. 

Sumit: Oh. Underrated. And they're in the big section in your book, right?

Yeah. I say underrated. Yeah. They under, they're underrated I think in the sense that I don't think people appreciate the. The scale of the project or we don't think about it. It's one of those things you say we don't really think about very much anymore. One thing is who wants to think about sewers for a start?

But but the problem was, in the middle of the 19th century, the Thames was completely polluted. Like it was it was un central was becoming an uninhabitable because of the stench and the massive disease.

And so Basel Jet set out, once they decided this was a problem, to clean it up with this massive sewer system and he built it successfully. It was a Victorian mega project. It took vast amounts of, of material and ingenuity and money and all the rest of it. And now the terms is clean enough to mostly to swim in and for wildlife to to enjoy and so on.

So it's, and that's something that happens. It's there below our feet if you live in London. And we give little thought to it needs replacing now, granted but very much underrated. Yeah. 

Ben: Very good. De-growth ideas, underrated or overrated? 

Sumit: I think a bit of both. Sorry. That's weaseling isn't it?

Yeah, that's fine. You could do that. I think I think overrated in the sense that that it's very easy to clamor that what's wrong with the world is the fixation with growth. And I think, I. Certainly there's some truth in that. There are decisions, there are certainly some decisions that get made in the name of growth that are probab, that are short term.

We all know that there are some decisions that get made that are short termist and ultimately counterproductive and so on. And we all know that growth in the ways that it's usually measured, which is essentially to say GDP doesn't really capture the things that make life worth living. It makes capture some of them, clearly.

But there are lots of things that it doesn't capture. On the other side of it though the the reason so it's easy to say that Degrowth is the answer and we should just move away from growth altogether. The other part of it though, is I don't think anyone's come up with a very credible response to that really.

We've had attempts at defining happiness and a broadening out the scorecard and so on, so that we include more factors I think about is just introducing carbon emissions as, probably the only constraint maybe that's being taken seriously on growth.

That's the only thing. And the amount of political turmoil and social turmoil that has resulted from saying we need to consider carbon emissions, on a similar footing to the potential for growth. So just there aren't that many easy solutions here. So I think degrowth. Clearly there isn't some sort of alternative to the growth at all costs approach.

I feel like the wheels are coming off that at this point. We know that there are significant ways in which it's failing our societies. I don't think just saying just step away from it is really the answer. Either there's a middle ground somewhere that people who know more about this stuff than me.

Should be trying to work out and I'm not sure they are trying to work out, I think they're trying to shout at each other instead. 

Ben: Yeah. Although there is this issue of time horizon like you said, there's some things you can do which look maybe good on a three to five year basis. In fact you could say, if you only had two years to live, these are the things you might do.

As opposed to you were thinking on a hundred year view or a 50 of your, let alone a thousand year of you. And there are these problems in terms of for instance, when you've looked at happiness or other things that people find important. So education, health. And the the correlation of with GDP is like 0.8 or something is really high.

We haven't managed to look at these some other things. And the happiness thing is again is very mixed. We can't quite get round to it, but I agree. I think we should be looking more of it. So under and overrated. Great. Okay. The role of the arts, so arts and humanities, underrated.

Or overrated? 

Sumit: Oh, massively underrated, I think. And yeah, again, with, again, with the caveat, underrated in a sense that I, so one of the things that I, I believe but cannot prove as it were is that I think that we have, when I say we, I mean I'm really talking about the UK here, or it probably applies to some other societies as well.

I think we've let the organs of the organs of imagination, that's a terrible phrase, but I think our societal organs of imagination have been allowed to atrophy. Imagination and creativity in a broad sense, rather than the narrow ones of product design, if you like. Whatever. What I mean by that is that that places like Univers, so universities have been turned into job factories to make it overly state this overly crudely. But but the, the the guiding staff in universities has become, how many productive, employees are you gonna turn out.

We have systematically through succession of events, some deliberate, some otherwise stifled the creative potential of many people who might once upon a time have been. And I know this seems quite a long way removed from what we've been talking about, but people who might once sort have picked up a paintbrush or picked up a guitar or whatever else now cannot really do that in a viable way.

We don't have the educational facilities for it. We don't have the recreational facilities for it. We don't have society that rewards it. And I think all of those things regardless of the actual products, of those activities which I think are themselves valuable, but I think what it does is it gives people permission to think about the world, in ways that's not, that are not the ones that they're necessarily given, by rote, and the more we do that, the more difficult it becomes for people to see other ways that the world might turn out or to have conviction that the way that they see the world, has merit. And yeah, and it's art and humanities that do that. There's some culpability here in that some of the arts and humanities have become so preoccupied with themselves that they've forgotten about, the wider world or seem to have lost interest in engaging with the wider world.

But nonetheless, yeah, I think we've become so fixated on hard skills on stem and this is coming from someone who is, stemmed to the core. We've become so fixated on that. I think we've forgotten about the piece that the arts and humanities. Contribute. 

Ben: I've always said the cutting edge of physics wherever you get, is much closer to philosophy, arts, creativity than it is to just mathematical equations.

And I think the role of fiction, creative arts, imagination does give you both of these things. This ability to imagine these other worlds and also then to imagine other people, other societies who aren't necessarily you. Okay. Last one on maybe last couple on overrated, underrated moonshot ideas.

Overrated or underrated? 

Sumit: Overrated. Yeah, over, overrated. Not in the sense that I don't think they should exist. I think they should exist. I think it's great for people to have ambitions people, societies. To have big ambitions and see what happens if you pursue them. This all sort of presupposes that you have the luxury of doing that.

But nonetheless, I think it's a good thing generally to have moonshots, things that seem unachievable. 'cause sometimes they turn out not to be. That's the, the self-fulfilling processes of optimism, what I think is, underrated by comparison, and this is not to say it's not happening, it is what I call in the book multiverse shots.

And this is not a particularly rigorous concept, but it's the idea that you should be trying to nurture ideas which have the potential to flower into many domains. One of the areas, and there's a couple of areas in which I think I could, there's sort of a. You can make the contrast. One is air travel, and or yeah, mean air travel, let's call it air travel.

And I get very frustrated by there's a certain demographic, shall we say who like to complain that Concord doesn't exist anymore. And that it was a great failure of it was an engineering triumphant, and doesn't exist. And where are we going as a society? And so now we have attempts to rebuild supersonic planes and and get that up and running again and.

I can't think that's a, that's not a particularly helpful moonshot. It solves a very limited problem for a very limited group of people and one that doesn't arguably need solving. And the same could be said for all the flying car startups, that exist out there. And these are essentially trying to solve problems that don't really exist.

They're ambitious, difficult, technical engineering problems. They're not real problems. Whereas I think, the other modes of aviation what you could do with air shut technology. There are people exploring all these things, but what you could do with aviation, air shut technology, what you could do with biofuels, what you could do with other forms of propulsion.

These are all fields that are comparatively unglamorous compared to the big Bang, if you like. Yeah, I think moonshots are great. I think it'd be better to try and identify fertile areas of research a bit more than in a bit more of a constructive way than we do at the moment.

Ben: I thought that was a really interesting section in your book. It. Tell for a couple of things that I think that, for instance, I don't need an AI robot for my coffee maker, but there was so much other stuff you wanted to put robots to use that maybe you could think about. So I did think there was one on that.

Sumit: Yeah. But it was also 

Ben: interesting on the aviation point that maybe it's, we want systems moonshots, which would be multiverse in, in the sense that I think the phrase comes from, oh, we wanted flying cars, but we only got. Two hundred and forty four, a hundred forty four or whatever. But actually we didn't solve it.

But had you solved a proper Twitter, social media for the world, that actually would've been, and will, would still be much more valuable than if oh, it's just, we didn't happen to solve that to solve that 

Sumit: one. I think it's interesting in that context actually. 'cause I think of a GI similarly.

I think a GI is a not well, actually, I do think to put my cards to the table. I think it is a pointless moonshot, really. I think I think it's expending an awful lot of of power resource human endeavor and all the rest of it in the pursuit of making a human ish machine. Whereas actually I think, the, I think AI has probably has a myriad of really useful applications in many areas of life that we are not really focusing on because we're.

Currently hung up on this idea of we can make an all powerful, all rounder, which I don't think is gonna happen. And I don't think it's gonna be particularly useful if we do. 

Ben: I think that is just starting to happen. It's interesting. It's maybe a little bit like what we saw in, in, in the internet is in just getting our heads around how to use this.

And that's, I think this is why you're saying younger people use. These AI agents, but yeah, we don't necessarily need them to be 10 x or a hundred x better or like human-like intelligence 'cause we can't even use our own human-like intelligence now as effectively as we could. So maybe we've got some 

Sumit: of these things.

I think the great potential of AI is to think in ways that we don't think, yeah, I'm not sure the point, I'm not, I don't really grasp the point of creating machine that will think like we do, but not as well. I think. I think creating a machine that will think in ways that we don't think is much more useful.

Ben: Yeah. Okay. And then the last one on this I guess we touched on, but overrated, underrated, this would be existential risk. I guess we can talk about AI or climate within that, but do you think overall this some of this focus on existential risk is overrated or underrated? 

Sumit: I think it's hugely overrated.

I think I don't and a bit cautious here because we do seem to be inventing things that could do. Great damage to, a large number of people. Ever large number of people, numbers of people. We are in a point in history where we could exterminate ourselves probably more than we, but nonetheless having said that I feel a bit like, I think we've started to think about the future, the way that we think about, we used to think about God, we think the future is gonna judge us, and that, there's an apocalyptic moment coming or a moment of salvation coming. And now we put it in, we couch it in terms of what our technology's gonna end up doing as though we were not in charge of it.

Or that we were not in control of it or that we don't have any ability to decide how we use it. And I find it hard to believe that our situation today is, somehow worse than, and the comparison I like making with this is a medieval peasant in, 1350, the Black Death is coming.

People are dying in their droves. You dunno why You dunno who it, you dunno who it's gonna affect. You. Dunno why it's affecting them. You dunno how to prevent it. You can't do anything about it. Your society is completely imploding. It turns out quite well for you if you're a peasant, actually.

Because feudal, the feudal system collapses and all the rest of it. But I find it hard to believe that, that was not a moment that felt more dreadful from the point of view of existential risk than the moment we have now. When we are, concerned about, we are worried about technologies that don't exist yet.

And it's not wrong to worry about technologies that don't exist yet, but the very fact that we are worrying about them in advance. It's surely an improvement over, am I gonna be dead when I wake up tomorrow? 

Ben: Yeah, agreed. Existential risk then overrated. Okay. And then last few sets of questions.

I had one I guess moving to personal creativity on your writing process or your own imagination process. 'cause you, oh yeah. You've got a whole book out and also I guess you run a creative studio. I've asked this for a number of people and I think there are as many different creative.

Processes as any other things you can write in the morning, you can write in the evening, you can write any of the 25 7. You can write lots, you can write little but I am interested in what people do. So do you have a particular writing process? Do you like notebooks or your laptop person?

Morning person, evening person. Do you write with music? No music or however, is there anything about your writing process you'd like to share? 

Sumit: I can take the music bit. 'cause always with music, that's the easy, that's the easy part of my answer. You know what I don't have a very good answer on this really.

I don't think so I wish I had a cut and dried writing process because then I could just do that over and over again and be much more productive than I am, or maybe not, I don't know.

But like most, like many people who write a large part of it is a mystery to myself really. I spend a lot of time reading. I think the one thing that, I have figured out about myself is that I am the kind of person who integrates a lot of information rather than the kind of person who has one idea and pursues it doggedly.

Unfortunately the process by which I do that is a bit opaque even to myself. I tend to read a lot of stuff in the area I'm interested in, and then at some point, words tend to present themselves to me, largely fully formed. Often when I wake up in the morning I have, I go to bed, with a massive stuff in my head, and I wake up in the morning with, with the lines I want to write down.

I. That's a very unsatisfactory answer to anybody who wants to actually do this is the truth. 

Ben: Yeah. Speech. Make sure you sleep. Yeah. Make sure you sleep. That's a good one. Okay last couple of questions then I have one, which I guess is the sort of meta question, which is there a question about optimism that you never get asked, but you would like someone to ask you?

Was there any question that, oh, you always wanna be asked, but no one ever asks it to you? 

Sumit: I don't always wanna be asked. Oh gosh, yes. Give me a second. 

I guess the question which I am asked and which I've written like 89,000 words of justification, but which I still don't really know what my actual answer to it is is it right to be. Optimistic. And when I say right to be optimistic, I mean in a cosmic sense. So in the book I explain the first part, the, why I think there's an evolutionary rationale for being optimistic.

And in the second part I talk about the people's attempts to, and this is, it's the second part really that we're talking about here. I talk in the second part about the philosophical arguments for optimism, at least actually slightly antiquated, philosophical arguments. But nonetheless, and they're cosmological arguments.

They're arguments about the way that the world is arranged. Is the world arranged in such a way that it's justifiable to be an optimist? And if you are if you are if you have religious faith, if you're a believer. That's an easy answer, a question to answer in many. It's not easy in the sense that you still have lots of other questions to address then, but it's quite easy to say yes because God is benevolent.

So you should be an optimist. You should believe that things work out. If you are not a believer on the other hand then you are left with this question of, what is the universe like? Is the universe patterned? Does the universe have a direction? Does the universe, want something from us?

And. That would be an empty question. Were it not for the kind of. Problems of cosmology today. So modern cosmologists have all these questions, some of which I think are a bit overrated, go back to that. But nonetheless they are questions. There are questions about why the universe is so neatly arranged.

Why the physical constant, the universe suit us and. I, I'll specifically set up in a way that leads to the emergence of human life in the ways that we don't think would've happened otherwise. I don't actually think that's a problem in the sense that, I think there are explanations for that, but it is an interesting question about, so what do we think about our relationship with the universe in that case?

Does that mean that is there at some kind of level, an ordering to the universe? That means that actually the way we perceive the universe, the way we move through it, the way we behave in it. Justifies us being optimistic. Is there something like that? I don't know what the answer to that is.

I suspect that there probably isn't an answer to it. Because from that little ramble you've probably understood it's not an easy question to articulate. But there is a question there about is the structure of the universe such that there is a direction or a purpose or a rationale?

Ben: Yeah. I was chatting to another physicist who's. Talked about philosophy and this notion of free will, is it deterministic or not? And he came to a conclusion that essentially we have free will in practice because of complexity and these other things. And it alludes to what you said earlier is because we don't know how the scenarios are gonna play out.

We have to run the program. We have to run, we are the program in the sense that we have to run these scenarios. Although, I dunno whether it gives justification, I do think that actually you might as well be optimistic because if that is going to make your program or your scenarios tilt to the ones that you might do because we don't know and may never know to, to your point.

And because the only way of knowing is to run the program. Then you might as well run the program in this way because it's gonna be neutral. So you can choose one or the other. 

Sumit: Yeah. Pragmatically, here I am in the world. I have to make my choices. I can't not make my choices.

Yeah. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter what the fundamental nature of the universe is, I still have to get on with my life and I started to do it in a way that I think is gonna turn out well. 'cause I'm not gonna. Actively decide I'm not gonna become the dice man and roll a dice to decide.

And I'm not going to leave it to the universe to decide. But the physicist in me would still like to know, yeah. Ultimately out there, 

Ben: is there a universal law or framework which is guiding this. Yeah. Great. Okay. And then last question, are there any current projects you wanna highlight?

Current project. Current or future projects. And is there any life advice or advice career, advice life, or anything that you'd to leave with listeners? 

Sumit: What happens next is an interesting question for me. Part of what I'm doing next is is around this question of what does, what does it mean to be a human in the universe?

I have a kind of campaign going to which I'm gonna get started shortly. And how to make the universe scary again. I think we've I think we've become a bit too comfortable with the idea that we know everything, we can do everything. And I think there's a bit of restitution of that that needs to happen.

I started thinking about my next book, which I mixed feelings about, but 'cause it's a big project, but, it started to itch, so I think that's gonna happen sooner rather than later. And in terms of life advice? Oh gosh. I don't know if I'm, I think I've exhausted my supply of life advice in the book.

Really. I think, yeah, no, there is one actually, which is I think the I think forgetting everything else, all of that kind of intellectual scaffolding and like what I tried to do in the book was provide lots of lenses to look at the world through, and hopefully one of them is one that you'll look through and think, yeah, I think the world does look brighter through that one.

But the the one thing I think is most helpful is I. Or most immediately useful is to try and pay attention to what your life is actually like in the day to day. Because when we get gloomy about the state of the world it's this kind of thing of our own lives are okay. But we think the rest of the world is terrible.

I think it's worth remembering that, the people you meet in an everyday, as you go about your life, most of us, fortunately most of us live in, peaceful societies. At least, we go about the world and we meet people and everyone does what they're supposed to do and and people are friendly and generally get on and, traffic works. So thousands of people, millions of people go about their business without erupting into conflict or violence or decay or whatever else. So every day when we go out in the world, what you actually see is people getting on with it. And people managing their lives and trying to reach the best outcomes for themselves.

And when it comes to that optimism gap, I think what helps is to remember that's what people are like all over the world. What you're seeing around you, you're not in a privileged to some extent you are but it's not that you are in a bubble separated from the rest of humanity.

That's what the world is like. That's what people are like. I think that helps to get over the optimism gap. 

Ben: That sounds excellent advice. And so with that, I'd remind everyone the book is called the Bright Side. And with that, thank you very much. 

Sumit: Thank you, Ben. Thanks.

In Arts, Life, Podcast, Writing Tags Podcast, optimism, Sumit Paul-Choudhury

Mary-Ann Ochota: Adventure, Resilience, Unveiling hidden histories, archeology and the ancient world | Podcast

April 4, 2025 Ben Yeoh

Mary-Ann Ochota is a broadcaster, anthropologist, and writer known for her work on Time Team and books on archaeology and the British landscape. 

“Archaeology is ultimately about people – the stories of people in the past and how they lived their lives.”

Mary-Ann discusses her visits to Chernobyl, British henges and the Australian Simpson Desert; exploring themes of resilience and environmental recovery. 

“One of the big misconceptions is that archaeology is just about digging things up.”

She shares insights on ancient British sites and the broader implications of sustainable development and access to nature. We discuss her role as president of the Countryside Charity and her thoughts on the future of rural development are highlighted, along with her creative writing process and advice for connecting with nature.

“We’re all living on top of layers of history, whether we realise it or not.”

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on Youtube.

Contents

  • 00:31 Exploring Chernobyl's Impact

  • 04:59 The Resilience of Nature

  • 05:55 Adventures in the Simpson Desert

  • 13:56 Ancient Sites in the UK

  • 17:10 Access to Nature and Social Barriers

  • 31:56 The Ridgeway National Trail

  • 38:33 Exploring the Purpose of Henges

  • 39:29 Ancient Feasts and Food Waste

  • 40:15 Reevaluating Ancient Civilizations

  • 44:32 Imagination and Environmental Crisis

  • 47:53 Balancing Hope and Realism

  • 50:06 Writing Process and Creative Challenges

  • 01:04:24 Sustainable Development and Land Use

  • 01:11:32  Life Advice 

Transcript (This is AI assisted, so mistakes are possible)

Ben: Okay, great. Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to the brilliant Mary-Ann Ochota. Mary-Ann is a broadcaster, anthropologist, writer, and adventurer. You might know her from Time Team or her books on archeology and the British landscape. She's a passionate advocate for the countryside and explorer of the world's hidden histories.


Mary-Ann, welcome.


Mary-Ann: Thank you very much for having me. It is genuinely a great privilege.


Ben: Thinking about your adventures, you've been to Chernobyl and I think also to the city of Piya.  What struck you most about your visit to Chernobyl and how perhaps it might influence our views of resilience and environmental recovery, and anything about the abandoned city, which really struck you?


Mary-Ann: It was such a strange place, Ben, I think I went with, so we were making a documentary for National Geographic. Oh no. Was it Discovery? I should really know, shouldn't I? And it was about Chernobyl 30 years on and how the impact of the nuclear disaster at the nuclear power station that had impacted not just the people and the environment, but also the wildlife.


And so I think I had gone with a certain set of preconceptions about what a kind of nuclear holocaust landscape might look like. But actually you get there and the immediate presentation of this landscape is that it's beautiful, rural, there's loads of wildlife. And it feels. Lovely. And we had training before we went because we were going to be going to areas of the exclusion zone that tourists don't normally get to go to.


And so you have to take additional precautions. And the person who was training us is ex-army. He was part of the army teams who would go into civil disaster zones or war zones to make safe, the chemical, the nuclear and any kind of pot potential biological warfare threats.


So the other, members of civilian and military teams could then go in safely to help restore power or rebuild the road or reach victims of the violence or whatever. It was set at field hospitals. So his was the advanced team who had to deal with the stuff. And he said basically in this kind of scenario, it's not a live war zone.


There's not, dismembered corpses strewn across the road. You're not gonna find some kind of quivering wreck of a survivor in the bombed out shell of a house. It's the silent threat that is really easy to forget. Because it's the dust. It is just the dust that you will inhale that will be on your skin that has a half life of thousands of years of radioactive contaminant.


And you won't feel any different. You're not gonna start coughing up blood, you eyes aren't gonna burst. It's just the silent killer that will in 20 years time, you get cancer and maybe you wouldn't have if you hadn't taken the precautions that you do. And that was the thing that really struck me, that the notion of how we perceive risk is often so aesthetic.


The aesthetic of what things look like, what a scary or dangerous thing looks like versus what actually is truly a risk was the thing that, that struck me. And that you have to be conscious in your vigilance. Because otherwise you just become really quickly complacent. There was one point where filming days are really long and we'd been filming in the forest because we were filming with a team of scientists who were investigating the impact on the kind of the woodland rodents.


So things like little voles and little mice that live naturally in that kind of birch woodland that has grown up around all the villages because for 30 years people haven't been cutting down trees. They haven't been cultivating fields, their gardens where all these houses used to be. And nature is regenerated and it's impacted by the nuclear contamination, but it grows anyway.


And the thing about investigating the impacts on things like door mice and vols and little mice is that because they reproduce so quickly, you've got 30 generations of impact. Whereas obviously if you're looking at humans, you've got the children of the people who were evacuated. So when you're looking at the impact on genetic inheritance, the impact on how mutations have affected populations, things like that, you're not looking at a zombie mouse with, five ears, but you're looking at really subtle little changes.
 


Ben: That's fascinating. I, looking at the pictures, it also just struck me. How resilient nature is or, little animals and things and how they come back. 



Mary-Ann: Nature runs. And I think, that's one of the amazing things about talking about Rewilding.


Even in a kind of pop a kind of a landscape like the uk, which is very densely populated, 70% of the land masses farmed, but you actually go give it a little chance and it bursts back into life. And actually that's one of the kind of things that you have to remember that what we are doing is maintaining suppression of certain types of habitat and what the kind of the, what happens if you look at places like Chernobyl, which are far from ideal conditions for real restoration of nature, but in other ways really great because you've entirely taken away the human pressure on those landscapes.


And you go what happens now?


Ben: On the other end of the spectrum, I think you've been to the Simpson Desert in Australia, and that's somewhere which is super remote and harsh. And yet maybe that recalls something about the resilience of humans over time. What did you learn about the Simpson Desert? And I guess that was more ancient cultures, but the ability of humans to adapt to where we are?


Mary-Ann: Yeah, I think there's many opportunities that I've had around the world and in back at home in the UK where the thing that really strikes you is the ability for people and communities to, like you say find new ways of coping with threats, coping with challenge and harm. So the Simpson Desert is.


An extraordinary place. It's the largest, it's quite a niche kind of claim to fame. It's the largest parallel dune desert in the world. So imagine kind of Lawrence of Arabia. You've got those big sweeping dunes that are like waves of sand. The Simpson Desert doesn't really look like that. It was ex, again, expecting something different to what I then saw.


The Simpson Desert is lower, it's a bit grayer in lots of parts. And these sand dunes are quite big. Not massive, maybe 10 meters high. And they run in parallel lines for literally hundreds of kilometers before petering out and then starting again. And a lot of the desert is very kind of scrubby.


There is vegetation there and it's sorry, Simpson Desert. It's ugly little scrabbly bushes. When rain comes, which is rare, but does happen, it bursts into life and all of a sudden for a few weeks you've got this, these carpets of wild flowers. And then what happens is that the water will be held in basically kind of clay pans where naturally the sediment has formed at a kind of a base a slightly less permeable base.


So everywhere else, the water dissipates very quickly. It evaporates off because you're in a desert, it's hot, and it's very dry. But on these clay pans, it holds water for a little while. And then all these different animals and birds and plants burst into life and you've got this real extraordinary cyclic.


Rhythm of life in these desert ecosystems that is completely alien to someone who lives in temperate, rainy Britain, where the cycle for us is seasonal. It's every year and today, for example, I walk the kids to school and you could smell spring in the air. And I really love that experience of kind of feeling my animal, self responding to that.


But in the Simpson Desert, some of these cycles don't happen. And there is a cycle that happens annually where you've got the hot summer season where it gets up to 50 degrees centigrade and no one goes into the desert. And then the winter season, where, for example, expedition groups like ours can go if you carry all your water with you.


But some of the cycles run on generational human generation length. So 20, 30 years you'll get these seasonal cycles and you've got, what you end up with is species that kind of, their range shrinks back to these refuge little refuges where they can just clinging on through the really harsh seasons year after year.


And then there's another rainfall event, and then they spread out again, and then you they circle back to these refuges, which are really biodiverse and really precious. Because if you lose a refuge, then you lose. Thousands of literally thousands of species from plants to invertebrates to the slightly bigger animals.


And then of course you've got the desert specialists who can cope, big eared little mice and funny little lizards with big fat tails that store moisture. But it's an amazing, it's an amazing habitat to walk across. So we were walking and we had camels carrying our water and kits, so there's no permanent sources of water in the desert because these clay pans are very temporary seasonal.


And the people who used to live there the PE people, native indigenous to that area were the won kru. And they would go into the desert, they'd live on the desert fringes, and then they would go into the desert when conditions were suitable. And they were doing a number of things fishing, for example, in these clay pans.


Where did the fish come from? Nobody. The biologists know, but it feels like they spring from nowhere. And the one kru had these wells effectively where you, they create a kind of a natural clay pan, very low down, and then it gets filled with sand, but it holds enough water. So then when you get to a well, you can dig it, dig out the native well, and you will get literally a, kind of a cup's worth of water at a time.


But because you are. That kind of generationally inherited knowledge of how to survive in these landscapes. That's enough. That will keep you going. And then you can walk another 20 miles to the next native. If you miss the you're screwed. That's it. You're done. But so you don't miss, and you walk at night often.


You walk in, the kind of muscular times, dusk and dawn. Or sometimes through the night just to cover the distance to get to the next


Ben: and I assume that the wells are about one day's walk away from one another.


Mary-Ann: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And the thing that was always.


Confusing to the the white colonists who were turning up with horses and with a canoe or a boat strapped to a horse that would then promptly drop down dead after a few days because the conditions were just horrific and horses can't survive walking on that kind of sand.


They started to import camels. So camels aren't native to Australia. There's thousands of them now, and they're a kind of a problem. But. Camels could cope. But the thing that they didn't understand was how the people could have coped. And they just thought they, they must have been living like animals and actually go no.


It's incredibly sophisticated knowledge that just cannot be underestimated. And actually what you see as well as these chains of native wells that are, like you say about a day's walk between one to the other are stands of this particular plant called Pitchie (or Pituri). Which has the same kind of volatile chemicals as tobacco.


So you can chew it and it gives you a bit of a high. And Pitchie was traded up and down north, south pretty much across most of the continent of Australia. And other things like shells, feathers this Pitchie, various kind of types of pigment, all sorts of, precious and specific commodities were traded up and down these long networks between different groups of people who had different languages different cultural ways, but had some kind of commonalities.


And so what you'll find is in what feels like. Genuinely, the middle of nowhere is a picture stand a stand of these bushes. But you can see that it's been cut and copies by human hands. It's growing in a different way. Now, I wouldn't have been able to see that, but in our expedition team, we were traveling with botanists who were like, I see it and point out, can you see where these cuts have been made?


That isn't na, that isn't natural. This isn't naturally how the bush would grow. And so basically what you're doing is pruning them so that when you come back the following season, there's more picture to harvest that you can then carry out and trade, strike even get high.


Ben: Yeah. Did you try any?


Mary-Ann: I didn't. No.


You have to dry it and then ferment it. 



Ben: Bad reactions, maybe not thing to try for the first time in that. 


Mary-Ann: Never tried a cigarette. I managed to skip that phase of being a teenager. So I feel like maybe Pitchie (or Pituri) would've been the thing to get you through break.


Break the seal. Yeah, exactly.


Ben: It strikes me that there was such sophisticated ancient knowledge and also these cultures, which obviously the colonialists went and destroyed, but coming back closer to home how many ancient. UK sites have you visited? How many of these hinges have you been to?


Because you've I'm pretty sure you've visited Stonehenge and you've written about Avery. You've written about Kane as well. I'm not sure I've got pronounced that correctly. But what do you think is going on with the UK hinges? Are you fond of the kind of astronomy type ideas about why the Henges were about and what do you think about some of these ancient sites in Britain?


Mary-Ann: Britain is just the best for like really weird old stuff. I think that's the thing, Ben that's. Links lots of my work. So for example the trip in Chernobyl, not only were we looking at this, the wildlife, but also meeting people who wanted to come back. For example the one Canaro people still exist despite all the horrific and brutal treatment and the kind of cultural genocide.


People still go to the desert now. They live outta the desert, but they do still go bush and people in the uk I think we sometimes massively. Take for granted the fact that we live in this landscape that has been permanently inhabited since last ice age. So like 11, 12, almost 12,000 years ago.


And every single generation has made its mark in the landscape because, feels so remote. So you look at Stonehenge and the first circle the wider circle, not the kind of massive stones in the middle, but the kind of wider earth work. That was established about 3000 BC about 5,000 years ago.


Avery a little bit later, four and a half thousand years ago, probably callanish, like you say, up in the Hebrides, amazing. If you want to go and visit weird, cool archeology that's a bit off the beaten track, I'd say go to the Outer Hebrides or to Orny both sets of Scottish Islands.


One on the west coast, one off the east coast. But we've got thousands of them, and some of them have souvenir programs and tickets and gates and whatnot, like Stonehenge. And then some of them are, all you need to do is to bother to go and find one basically. And if you have the ability to go into the field, literally a field and find them, then honestly I think you'll be repaid tenfold a thousand fold with the kind of the joy of exploring being a landscape detective.


But even if you don't have access or the ability to get into the middle of a muddy field. The resources that we have now, the tools that we have online to look at aerial photographs, to look at LIDAR scans of kind of the land the land forms to get all these records that have been digitized.


You can do some fantastic armchair landscape spotting as well. Yeah, what it's, they're brilliant. I love them because one of, there's so many why's that are still unanswered.


Ben: Yeah. I just really mysterious and, you can go to places like the Simpson Desert to get that, but you could get it much closer to home.


I've noted a lot of your work on access to nature and access to places like this. I'm quite an urban boy and when I speak to some of my urban friends, there is this sense here in London or maybe in the UK that the countryside perhaps is for an elite.


You need to be rich. Aristocrats have a lot of land. Maybe city people or even explorers aren't so welcome. We have this issue maybe with access and pathways and knowledge and the like. And I had earlier on the podcast I. Her nickname's Al who also has a lot of work on terms of access to nature and things like that.


And it seems to me that there's a perception that there's a bit of a challenge and there's a little bit of argument around this. I'd be interested to know what you advocate for and where you think the kind of challenges and opportunities are in terms of getting access to nature and things.


'cause like you say, some of these things, you just need to know where they are and it's essentially free and, or should be and they should perhaps not be. Some, as much of debate around this as there is


Mary-Ann: yeah. Realities of barriers to access to our countryside more broadly, but as well as the landscape heritage cannot be underestimated.


It is really easy for me to say they're free. You should just go. But actually think about what that represents and all the stacked. Privileges and assumptions that is based on, which is that I have access to a car. I have money for fuel, I have a spare pair of shoes so that if my feet and get muddy or wet, I have something else to put on.


I've got the I've got access to laundry facilities in my home. I don't need to take all my kit to a laundre. I've got a waterproof coat that works and waterproof trousers. I've got layering. I've got a ruck sack. I've got enough free time to be able to go. I've got enough money to stop at a cafe perhaps and buy a sandwich and a cup of coffee.


I've got don't have a physical disability to consider so that if I'm parking up in some random car park and there's one toilet block, I don't need to go, oh, hang on a minute. There's no disabled blue. I. Mixed race. My mum is Indian and my dad is Polish. I think in some circumstances I'm perceived as a person of color and in other circumstances I'm white enough, I'm white passing.


I think it makes a big difference when you are able-bodied and you are wearing Gore-Tex, that people nod at you and go, oh yeah, she's the right kind of person to be here. She looks like she probably knows what she's doing. But I've spoken to people who, have, oh I know loads of people who've faced really explicit, horrific racism.


The gang of friends who went walking. And there was one place to go to the toilet, which was a pub. And in, as they went through this village and one of the guys is practicing Muslim and he didn't want to go into the pub. So he sat outside while his mates went in to, to go to the loo.


And someone who's standing outside, one of the locals, I guess having a cigarette said, oh, you leaving the terrorist outside then are you? And it's just horrific. There's a guy called Sam Ascar who runs a guiding company called Summit Special. He works a lot with people from the global majority, guiding them on kind of walks, increasing community capacity and confidence to get in the outdoors because if you are walking with a group who you have a, an affinity with, you don't feel so exposed, you don't feel unsafe.


And they get death threats. They get death threats for taking over the countryside, inverted commas. And it is genuinely appalling to see how hard it is for some people to simply be in the countryside. And often we think of, um, racism and poverty and access to public transport and stuff like that as urban issues.


We are a majority urban. Society. Most of us live in towns and cities, but we cannot forget that the rural communities are, need to be economically viable. They need to be culturally diverse. They need to be able to have access to affordable homes and, sustainable transport. And I think one of the things that when we forget that or overlook it or assume that it's probably fine because actually it's all aristocrats and people, leaning over five bar fences gates, chewing straw.


That actually you create the perfect conditions for a rise in populism as much as anything. And we do a kind of massive injustice to all those communities if we don't take seriously. There needs to be. Economically viable, diverse, exciting, entrepreneurial communities in exactly the same way that we look at Leeds or Manchester or London and go, of course you need to create opportunities for business development and investment and green power and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.


Name all the things that are important. If you don't go and how does that work in the rural hinterlands, then we've absolutely missed a trick and we are doing a huge disservice to literally millions of people in our nation. Yeah.


Ben: Because I think, although we're majority urban might be 70 30 or maybe even 60 40, so that's Yes.


A minority, but 30% is still a really large absolute number.


Mary-Ann:  I think it's come to the fore quite a little bit more than usual that because, we've seen tractors surrounding the House of Commons as farmers protest things like changes to inheritance tax. But the kind of the, the dissociation the kind of divorce that we have, most of us from how our food is produced and who is doing that, who is actually managing this land and in what ways and how much of a say do we have about that?


Um, it's a real problem. Our complacency or kind of feeling like, oh, that's nothing to do with us is part of the problem because we. Just offer an un unequal and unhealthy share of power to just a certain handful of people who may well be happy to say, don't worry. We're custodians and stewards of this land.


Don't you worry your little urban heads about it. And you go, hang on a minute, hang on a minute. Who is that benefiting? And the answer is not the nation and not social justice. So I'm a big fan of access reform, partly to challenge that hegemony of power because it is unequal and we've forgotten what we've lost.


Because of enclosures of common land, because of effectively people being pushed to urban areas because of a depopulation of rural places we think that's how it's always been. We forgotten that, not that many generations ago the, countryside areas were much more populated and you'd have, 12, 15 people working on a farm.


Whereas now it's incredibly lonely and isolating. 'cause you've got one farmer struggling away with a bunch of machinery, but also untethered from the fabric of society. And that's not good for either, either side of that equation.


Ben: So you are recently president of the Countryside charity, is that it?


The role president? Yes. So I can see this is gonna be one of your priorities. Is there anything else you'd like to highlight as what you are thinking? And then maybe you can roll it into, so if you did have. One or two or three policy asks what would they be? Some might be a little bit more simpler around access reform, which don't seem perhaps as tricky.


We might get onto what sustainable development might be, which might be a little bit more tricky. Yeah. But access and yeah. What other things you're thinking and policy recommendations in the uk or even broadly, you can take on the world if you'd like.


Mary-Ann: You would be surprised at how tricky access reform is a kind of first thought you're like it's not that hard.


And it turns out there is a lot of vested interest pushing back. So there's the situation as it stands at the moment in Scotland, so literally head over the border and you have a default of access as a member of the public, you can go pretty much anywhere on both land and water.


As long as you do it responsibly. So you can go hiking across any field or mountain or hill. You can go swimming in a lock, you can launch a canoe, you can wild camp. You can light fires again, as long as you're doing it responsibly. A little campfire. You can ride a bike, ride a horse. You can't go into kind of private land, so someone's garden or like a kind of work yard or a farm yard.


You can't trample crops. You can't disturb livestock, but you can, for example, walk along a field margin, find your way across the landscape. And the essence of this Scottish outdoor access code is that there's a default of access, a right of access. Except where there's obvious exemptions where it would not be responsible for you to, for example, walk across this wildflower meadow, walk through this herd of cows where it would really disturb them.


You have to, it's on you to behave responsibly and to educate yourself on what responsible access looks like. In England and Wales, we don't have that. We have a default of exclusion with certain access permissions. So we have about 140,000 kilometers of footpaths and bridleways, which Scotland tends, doesn't really have, it doesn't have the footpath network that we in England and Wales have.


And it's not to be underestimated. That footpath network is pretty awesome and really quite extraordinary in compared to other places in the world. And we have open access on, particular types of land. Now it's weird because it's an ecological designation. So it's for example, unimproved grazing and you're like what the heck is that?


I don't know what that is. Or unimproved, grassland. But most of it is moland mountains and heath, which inevitably isn't really where most of the people are. It's up and away. It's things parts of the Pete district, it's parts of the late district. It is parts of places like the South Downs National Park, but I.


Any other bits of it, you have to stick to a footpath or a bridal path, or a byway or you are not allowed to be there and you would if you were walking across a different kind of field. Then it's the, it's an act of civil trespass. It's a civil offense. And I'm a huge supporter. And on that open access land, you can only walk.


That's the only thing you can do. Or you could stop and bird watch or you can rock climb, but you cannot, for example, ride a bike, ride a horse. You can't camp and you can't swim, for example. The rights of access to water in England and Wales are like pretty terrible. I think something like 3% of waterways have rights of access.


Then landowners can, through their large s give you permissive access. They can say, we'll allow you to walk along this path to reach the river, but they can withdraw that permissive access at any point. There's no controls over what kind of thing that access looks like. So they could put styles in, they could make it really narrow.


They could put barbed wire. They could say, you can only come on every second Thursday of February and that's it. Or just say, we've decided not to now, so you can't come anymore. And I would really support a change in access in England and Wales that defaults in very similar ways to Scotland to say, actually, let's have a right of access to the land with sensible exceptions rather than the other way.


And the reason is twofold. The first is that it would create more access for more people close to where they live, which we all know. The evidence is stacked up that is good for our health and that is good for our mental health, our wellbeing, our social cohesion and resilience. But also really good therefore for productivity, for keeping people in work, keeping people economically active, reducing costs to the health service and social care services.


All this stuff is the return on investment is fast as soon as you've got viable green. Access. People just are better. They're more, okay. So that's one thing that you actually just increase access for people and you still need things like car parking and litter bins and styles, or not styles, gates, sorry, don't have styles 'cause they're really terrible for access, but accessible gates.


People will want paths as well. Not everyone wants to try and, plunge their way across a river or kind of try and tread down the kind of the scratchy brambly edge of a field side. Some people want to do that, but some people will want to path. But the other thing, the reason that I think access reform is really important and why it would create a kind of a real step change that is important in so many ways beyond just being able to go for a walk or a bike ride.


It changes our relationship with the landscape and it changes that sense of ownership and belonging and responsibility to one, which is, this is also my place. This isn't private property where I am here either under duress or with permission that can be withdrawn at any moment. This becomes a right, and with that right becomes a profound responsibility that this is my land too.


It's my responsibility, it's my duty to understand it better, to care for it and perform. There's a campaign group, the right to, and they call it wild service, which is also the name of a type of tree, the service tree. But fundamentally it becomes about a reciprocal relationship with the land and with nature.


Not one where you go as a consumer to use it recreationally and then you withdraw yourself back to where you came from where you rightfully belong, which is in a town somewhere, but actually this is land that is ours and that it feeds that much deeper essential relationship, which at heart acknowledges that we are part of nature and that we need nature and to care for nature is an act of service, but also an act that fulfills us profoundly.


Ben: So it leans away from it being a transactional money thing to stewardship and thinking about the long term and our relationship with the land and everything. I think that absolutely. Yeah. That's really fascinating and I. I hadn't also picked up until I was reading about your work that I think you are patron of the Witch Way National Trail and I discovered I didn't know anything about this trail and it's really ancient.


What drew you to that and what should people know about this trail?


Mary-Ann: The Ridgeway National Trail. It's one of 16 different national trails around the uk, which are designated in the same way under law. They're designated in the same way as national parks and national landscapes. Things like the High wheel or the Rocha Hills or the Lake districts, or the Peak District or south Downs National Park.


So these national trails are supposed to be jewels in the crown that really celebrate the the most iconic or culturally specific or unique in terms of the, the ecology of our landscapes. So things like the Pennine Way the walk along the Hadrian's wall the walk along offers Dyke on the England Wales border.


They're all national trails and the Richway National Trail has this kind of nickname as Britain's Old Road. And the National Trail section of it runs from Ivanhoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire just north of London, to Overton Hill, which is basically Avery in Wilshire. And it's about 87. It is 87 miles long, so if you wanted to walk it you could walk it in I guess a week or so.


A lot of people, some people but you can walk like little sections of it. And parts of it are the kind of Western half, the Wiltshire Northwest Downs end of it is accessible for horse riders and people on bikes as well. It's mostly bridleways, whereas the bit that goes through the Chiltons, the Chilton Hills is mostly footpaths, so you can't take a bike or a horse there.


And it's. It's remarkable. It follows the chalk escarpment that kind of runs, um, from northeast, basically the wash in Norfolk in East Anglia, down to kind of line Regis in Dset across that kind of bottom corner of the kind of UK mainland. And it follows the high ground. So you get really distinctive set of species of wildlife because the specialize with this chalk grassland.


But you also go past so many extraordinary archeological monuments that just are mind blowing. It's a really beautiful walk. And because it's chalk where the path is, it's exposed. And so you are literally following this really clear, distinctive white line through the landscape. And, it's inspired.


Lots of artists people like Eric Rubius who painted these landscapes where you've got this line of white that cuts through arching up and over these kind of rolling hills. And sometimes even though you are in really the most populated corner of Britain when you're up on the redway, you can, it can just be you, skylarks and some hares.


And it's really beautiful given that it's so close to so many towns and cities. It's it's quite a remarkable place.


Ben: That sounds amazing. So I have two teenage You should go. Teenage. Should we go? Yeah. I have two teenage urban boys, so this is definitely would be one on our list.


But is there a anywhere you'd recommend, I guess I'm London centric to that, but if we're to go anywhere in the uk. Where would you say we should go and have a visit or have a little adventure?


Mary-Ann: Why not start? Let's start on the Ridgeway. There's a really cool bit of a walk where you can walk from no, hang on.


Let's scrap that. So I'm a big fan of Avery Stone Circle. I Okay. Think it's better than Stonehenge. Sorry. It's better than Stonehenge. Sorry. Stonehenge. Partly because you can get up close and personal to the stone Stonehenge. You have to stay on the path and just like squint to see the thing and you're like, oh, is that it?


It's a bit small. It is impressive. Fine. But it's not cool. It's not viscerally amazing. Yeah. So going to Avery and you can hug these absolutely enormous, like tons and tons of stone and kind of wonder, genuinely marvel at the construction of the biggest Henge in Europe. It's a super henge.


It's so big. It's got a village in the middle of it. And then you've got these various stone alignments. You've got circles within circles. You've got these huge earthwork banks. You've got a Stone Avenue that leads out of the village. And if you walk up the Stone Avenue, a carry on for a. A kilometer and a half carry on for about a kilometer and a half.


So not too bad. Even for people who don't love walking, walk slightly up a hill and you get to a place called West Kennett Long Barrow, which is from about five and a half thousand years old. It's an old to from the late stone age, and you can go inside the spooky tomb and you can literally sit inside a prehistoric tomb that is older than the great pyramid of Giza.


Wow. And it's literally just you and a footpath and you can wander in and and it's it's on you to explore, which I think


Ben: I'm definitely gonna, I think we're gonna try and get there this year. And I suppose there's a whole ancient community complex around this, or was it more just a religious pilgrimage site?


Mary-Ann: Such a good question. Ben Avery is obviously. Really important. We don't know quite how it was used, but it certainly, it has ceremonial proportions. One of the really interesting things actually about lots of different Henge monuments. So Stonehenge is officially a hege because of a tiny earthwork way further out than the kind of big stones that you see.


And a hege is it's got a coming from the outside, it's got a bank of earth and then a ditch. So the ditch is on the inside of the circle. That's officially what makes something a henge as opposed to, if you think about like defensive earthworks around a castle, you would have the ditch on the outside and then a much bigger bank on the inside.


'cause you're trying to stop people from getting in. So they have to get down the ditch and then they have an even higher climb to get over the bank of earth with a wall on top or what have you. Whereas a hinge from the prehistoric period. So in the late stone age and the Bronze Age, what you end up, what you have as a kind of theme is that you've got the earthwork on the outside, you've got a bank and then a ditch on the inside.


So it's more like it's containing something on the inside rather than preventing something from coming in from the out or. Maybe the bank is for sitting on or standing on. So you can see what's happening inside the circle. So it focuses attention into the circle. And so one of the thinking, one of the kind of theories of how these henges might have been used is that they are communal gathering places where dispersed communities can come together to.


Either bear witness to some kind of important ceremony, or maybe it's a place where you go for particular processions or occasions, perhaps seasonal. Again, seasonal times that kind of mark the end of harvest or mid-winter or the kind of effectively like a brilliant knees up in the middle of summer where, you know, people hook up, you make trade deals, marriage arrangements, everyone gets wasted.


You have a big pig, barbecue, whatever it is, which we find at Dorrington Walls, which is a site near Stonehenge. They were just massively keen on pork barbecue. So much so that they throw carcasses away that have lots of meat on them still. And we can tell that because all the bones are still articulated.


So you know that the kind of the flesh and some of the tendons and stuff. So we think of the stone age as everyone kind of scrambling for a final, tiny hazelnut to stave off starvation. But actually they were doing well enough that they were feeding their pigs apples and honey, we can tell 'cause the pigs have rotten teeth.


They've been fed such sweet diets to sweeten the meat probably.


Ben: And they had lots of food waste as well then, or at least at times. And had food waste. Yeah.


Mary-Ann: Yeah, exactly. So this kind of conspicuous consumption.


Ben: And maybe had these, ritual performances and things, it really strikes me that these ancient civilizations, or even not so ancient, were just so much more sophisticated than my kind of lay interpretation was.


And actually a lot of the techniques and skills, some of which we couldn't even replicate today and have no idea what was going on, but also that civiliz what we might consider civilization or these techniques happened a lot earlier than it would seem, I dunno, I'm gonna pronounce this correctly from the Turkish site, but Ger Beckley Pepe, I think that's how you talk about that.


Yeah. Yeah. It seems that is ancient and they were doing things so far before we thought that humans started doing these type of things, and that might then apply to everywhere else in, in the world we're thinking. I dunno what you think about that or what kind of this, thinking about how it should change our view around what.


Ancient humanity has been doing and what we've been doing all of this time,


Mary-Ann: I I think you're right recently and in with increasing frequency, we have dating techniques that are more accurate. You used to be able to say, oh, it was somewhere between 12,000 BC and 8,000 bc, but we're not actually quite sure.


Whereas now we've got techniques that can really hone down dates or you can get a kind of sample from a particular type of artifact or biological residue. That means that we can get just a lot more information without destroying the thing in the process. But yeah, basically. Most frequently the thing that we thought first happened in 4,000 bc then you suddenly get dates.


For example, Quebec tepi this really extraordinary kind of ceremonial complex where there's evidence of early agriculture there's evidence of narrative storytelling in these kind of carved panels. And you just think. Oh, we need to recon, reconfigure that. There's even like way deeper in the past, we've got evidence of Neanderthals, for example creating a rock art making shapes of hand prints creating ceremonial structures.


This amazing super weird site in France where they found Stites arranged in a circle deep into a cave system far beyond the kind of natural light. And the only people who were around at the time were homo Neanderthal lenses, not homo sapiens, not us. And so you go, oh, we need to reconsider them.


That they weren't knuckle dragging idiots. They were. Sophisticated, creative capable of that kind of abstract thought. So quite regularly the kind of list of criteria that we use as human exceptionalism. Oh we are the only animals who do language. We're the only animals who create art.


And you go oh. No. It turns out Neal did that too. Oh. It turns out that, whales use vocalizations that distinctly identify different individuals, which you might otherwise call a name, for example. Yeah. You are right. They're not sitting around the whale equivalent of a campier telling stories about, the gods and monsters as far as we know.


But we constantly underestimate both other. Species and we constantly underestimate the humans who came before us. I think that's the one that's the, I think that should be on the list of human criteria. We're just rude and exceptionalist


Ben: regularly. And maybe I dunno whether it's this, I guess you could almost say it's a slack of imagination, but I was reading a lot about, and observed, for instance octopus.


So this is almost like ancient. And for as far as we can tell they might have their own culture, their own humor, their own sort of society. But it's so other, so alien. We can't imagine it. And we don't have their language, but it, they might go we can't understand your language.


Imagine if you could trade with octopus or speak with ants. Ants we could do so much for ants and ants could do for us if we could treat them on a level, but obviously it's not there. It's a little bit science fiction.


Mary-Ann: Yeah. But you are right. I think we. You think who, who loses when we have that failure of imagination or failure of curiosity?


And I think sometimes it's not because we can't work it out, it's because the impact of acknowledging the sentience or the importance or the integrity of that particular organism would profoundly force implications and changes in the way that we act, that we take for granted that put our needs first.


But fundamentally, we are, facing climatic Armageddon and a massive crisis in biodiversity collapse. And so business as usual is. Clearly not working. And because we're short term, it's that failure of imagination. And because we've got so much kind of vested interest in, for some of us, often the people who are pulling the levers of power and money where money goes they have enough vested interest in maintaining some version of status quo.


But it doesn't serve us, not as a species, not for the majority of us, in fact of the kind of 8 billion humans on the planet, and certainly not for the broader spectrum of non-human kin or other than more than human. If you want other than human.


Ben: Yeah. Maybe it's this failure of imagination, like you say, and vested interest from a minority.



Ben: Willful blindness.


Mary-Ann: It's interesting to contemplate what, don't, the thing that history teaches us is that we don't learn from history, but the same mindset of kind of dominion and fundamentally an exploit, an exploitative relationship, I think is ones that, you can see writ through with our relationship with the natural world, but also written through with cultures around the world through colonial and imperialist.


We've basically got that same imperialist mindset and we've we can point at the harm and say, oh, there's a thing that happened that wasn't great for some people except, maybe others. Yeah. They go, the railways were fantastic for India, well done us. And they should say thank you. The kind of the flip side of that is that if we perpetuate and continue and keep feeding those uncritical, unpro, ways of shaping how we understand the world, then we continue to cause the same harms.


Ben: Yeah. So I will put a glimmer of silver lining in that we seem to very slowly, much too slowly and much too painfully do achieve small bits of progress. So we went from slavery to women's rights, minority rights, disability rights, but.


Still more to go on all of those really to, to some extent and really slow. But they did come in. But I, I have a a thing within disability. It's why is that being so slow for it and continues to be so slow? But, when you look at it over human generations, at least you can see there is some, although I don't understand why we can't do it quicker for some of these things because they are only human made constructs, which we are disassembling and reassembling.


But there, there is a sliver of that. I do think we, we have made progress, but it does seem to be so slow on that.


Mary-Ann: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think you are right.


Ben:  I only mention  it because I, because when I speak about with this, my son I don't want him to give up hope as well because sometimes if you feel you can't do anything, then you end up not doing anything.


On the one hand, you don't want to you don't want to negate the scale of the problem or the challenge and the bad stuff that we do. On the other hand, you don't want to think that, oh if this is the case, then we're always powerless and we might as well give up.


So you've gotta got this weird balance of where you are in advocacy of we've gotta hope for the best, but we're also planning for the worst type of thing.


Mary-Ann: Yeah. And I think that idea of hope not being optimist, it doesn't need to be about optimism, it needs to be about a commitment to continuing the change.


Even though it's hard, even though there's no guarantee that you will succeed, the endeavor itself is of value and should not be ducked. I think the other thing is you are absolutely right. It's really easy for us to be pessimistic and go, oh, isn't things, aren't things terrible?


And they do feel admittedly quite terrible at the moment. And all those gains that I thought to some extent we had down there was consensus that this was a good thing. Now feel like they're at renewed risk of going backwards, particularly with the Trump presidency in to a kind of a lesser extent with, for example disability cuts announced by the kind of labor government in the uk.


You go, hang on a minute. What the things that we took perhaps were a bit complacent and took for granted. We thought we'd won that war and we could move on or won that battle and could move on. I think we need to potentially keep reasserting, the value and the why which is exhausting to say no.


It's important that, disabled people have every opportunity to live fulfilled lives. Whether they're the working, getting people into work or whether you are unable to work, you still deserve to live a fulfilled and, coherent life that has that is, beyond mere survival.


I, you think didn't the Victorians decide that was probably appropriate? Didn't we wasn't that, didn't we beat women's suffrage as a kind of concept?


Ben: Yeah. Settled that a while ago.  I'm interested in your creative and writing process, 'cause you do all of this traveling and broadcasting and storytelling. You are a brilliant presenter, but you've also written all of these amazing books. I asked Cisco a number of people, and there's no right answers, but I'm always really fascinating.


Do you write in Burst? You keep notes, do you keep a little drawing pad where you are as well? Do you do it in weeks at a time or every day? How do you like to write and how's your process?


Mary-Ann: Oh, it's such a pertinent question at the minute, Ben. I have a very long overdue writing project, apologies to Mike at Pan Macmillan and it is coming who's my editor?


So I have two small children, one's six and one's three. And that has massively impacted my ability to, I think, go with what feels like the natural rhythm of my writing and creativity because it has to be shoehorned in between all of life and the kind of caring responsibilities.


Naturally left to my own kind of will. I would write from the afternoon into the evening in long days. I'm like more plotty, shyer horse than I am sprinting thoroughbred for sure. It takes me a long time to percolate and settle and faff about, and then I start to slowly get into the writing.


So I find that actually to get. Proper big bits of writing done. I basically have to leave my family and go and stay. I go and stay in a youth hostel where there's very little else to do, apart from going for a walk or sitting and writing. Those are my two permitted activities or go for a run or something like that.


Because otherwise I just end up, I don't know, I'm just making spaghetti bolognese and then putting the washing on. And then by the time the kids are in bed, you're just like, oh, I'm tired now. So working in short bursts does not work for me. It does for like adminy stuff, but like the big brain work, I need hours and hours on end.


And probably days upon days where you build up that momentum I'm definitely,


Ben: Do you edit as you go or do you put it all out and then edit? Afterwards, which you need your buildup of days.


Mary-Ann: Yeah, I try not to. My husband, Joe Craig is a, an author. He writes children's books fiction and I write nonfiction.


So the kind of, the activities are slightly different, but there are elements which are the same, which is and many years ago, I actually overheard him giving advice to a youngster who was saying, oh, I want to write stories. What, what do I do? And he said, basically, imagine that the writer and the editor are two separate people.


You can't do both jobs at once. So write first, edit second, because otherwise you get stuck trying to perfect before you've created, get it down in some kind of messy draft. The first draft is always shit. Make peace with that. That is part of the process. You don't need to show that to anyone, but you also want to turn off the critic in your brain so it doesn't get in the way of, you don't want someone standing over your shoulder going, that's a terrible, clunky sentence, right?


Or that's not the right word. Or, cool, you are not as bright as you thought you were, are you? You don't want any of that. Hush, hush, go away, make a cup of tea, annoying critic, editor person, and you just get it down with no judgment. And then you do the next stage, and then the next stage, and then another stage.


And that's where you can be a bit more critical and move stuff around. I've just started using Scrivener. Yeah. As a software. I was attempting to write this book that I'm working on at the moment, which is a history of our species, but short and very readable. It covers Quebec, Lee Tapi, in fact and Neandertals.


I was really struggling with a Word document of such a long manuscript that kind of has so many aspects that relate to one another. So I gave Scrivener a go, which I found very helpful because it also has the functionality where you can just make everything else go black, literally go black, and you've just got words and you don't get distracted 'cause it it looks and feels like words.


So you're not faffing with a really complex bit of software.


Ben: A decent amount of, screenwriters actually in some playwrights use a kind of Scrivener type thing. I use although I haven't done a long piece for a while, and I'm not sure I quite have the space around 'cause of children's things.


The post-it note strategy, which was the kind of analog version of a kind of scrivener. So when you have a scene or a little chapter, but also, or even something which would only be two or three paragraphs worse, and you have the heading, but you're not quite sure where you place it and you don't want to lose it.


You have it, but you also wanna go, oh, you know what, it's no good being in the middle, in the first third. It actually has to go all the way into the middle third somewhere. And you rearrange those or you realize you know what? That's no good. So you just pair up the post-it note and put it somewhere else.


Mary-Ann: Yeah. Yeah. That, that feeling of having no, nothing is sacred when you're editing. And you might have spent hours, days trying to get a thing. Clear or sorted, and then you go to review it and you're like, Ugh, I don't need it. Yeah. It shouldn't be here. Doesn't fit. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't fit. But I'm a very paper-based person.


I like still use a paper diary, for example. I do try and get some of it online and I've, what I tend to do, I dunno why I do this, but I tend to create like email drafts to myself. So I use my drafts folder on Outlook to get down a kind of, like you say, a line or a link or a something.


Just again, because I'm, I I'm. I don't madly, I don't enjoy spending time interfacing with technology. I'd much rather be digging a hole outdoors or doing something in the naturey outdoor space. So the thing that even though it's clunky and doesn't quite do the job, it does the job well enough with less kind of mental friction.


Ben: Yeah. Yeah. My, my wife Anish actually does that quite a lot and she's she's writing in a kind of nonfiction narrative sense as, as well, but I'm always really worried. It's oh no, it's gonna, you're gonna lose it in drafts or yeah, but it's somewhere where you don't lose it and things.


But yeah, no, that, that does happen. That's what happen. Write and things. Yeah. I don't, if it does work to me joke. Yeah.


Mary-Ann: I yeah. I should, the kind should is always a terrible, it's, it is never that useful in any bit of life, but as a writer as well. I should be more organized.
 


Ben: Creative messiness though I'm really in favor of it, that actually it sometimes means you get linkages and ideas that you wouldn't otherwise if you are too rigid and rigid in form. Maybe that's just an excuse, but I do think it's, I, yeah, I do think it's true. Think


Mary-Ann: that's, yeah, I think that's very true and I think I'm, I dunno if it's a kind of stage of life or it's an age thing.


But I'm definitely less bought in to the idea of efficiency and kind of high output productivity now. Yes. Because a, it's not very sustainable. You burn out, but also because the, it is really easy, isn't it? In our kind of, in, in the world in which we live to feel like that's where your value as a person lies.


And it's really. Helpful, I think to sometimes just go, but why are you doing that? Yeah. What value does it value in perceived in a much broader sense, rather than, are you gonna earn money? Are you gonna earn lots of money or no money? You actually go, look, what does this add to your obituary for argument's sake?


Or by, creating some sense of positive legacy, not in an egotistical way, but in a kind of, have you left the world a better place? Yeah. And if you weren't that, ah,


Ben: riffing back to our idea of stewardship earlier. Yeah. And I do think it's almost in all things like big or small or personal or organizational, that the offset to efficiency.


There's trade offs in everything. Tell us, the economists say the offset of efficiency is less resiliency. And you see that to the extent that you make things just in time or one supply line really cheaply because this is really efficient.


Mary-Ann: Yeah.


Ben: You are much less resilient as a person, as a system, as an organization, as when something goes wrong and something always goes wrong.


If you have a single supply line really efficient, your supply line is disrupted, you have no more business. And so actually this is a lesson I think I take sometimes from nature. Nature has a lot of redundancy, which actually is resiliency in some ways. It's efficient in some ways it seems mysteriously inefficient, but it's not inefficient in this operational sense.


It's because it's building these other things other things around it.


Mary-Ann: Exactly. Yeah. And it determine, it depends on the timescale that you're perceiving as well. Yes. Like how big is the perceived, what are the parameters of your project? Inverted comm, and you're right, yeah. The idea of kind of redundancy or inefficiency being bad and you go, actually, if you reconsider, maybe that's the most important thing.


I was struck, I was chatting to a a youngster I know the other day who's 12 years old and was talking about doing duke of Edinburgh Award and how it wasn't really of value anymore unless you do your gold, duke of Edinburgh, the bronze and the silver, everyone's got them, so they're not really worth anything.


And it really struck me that for that youngster in their kind of social circle and their education circle. It was perceived as, what is the product, what is the output rather than process or what you might get from it By doing community service, by learning skills to go hiking and read a map by learning about a different project in a kind of follow your own nose, Montessori indulge your own learning and curiosity.


And I thought, oh no, what we're failing our youngsters.


Ben: This is exactly your point about the transactional nature of some of these items within nature. And to roll, lean back that obviously the majority of the value is not in your little gold, bronze, or silver certificate. Yeah, the majority of the value has to be in the experience and everything, but if you're only doing it for the certificate, then obviously you lose everything.


Anyway. Last couple of questions for you. Would be current and future projects, and then we might also tip into kind of any advice, thoughts you have, but maybe yeah. Current or future projects that you would like to highlight.


Mary-Ann: So the big current project is this book about humans, which I, I started writing a number of years ago and then put down basically because having very small children fries your brain, it turns out whilst also trying to keep all the other plates spinning.


So it's back up and running now and hopefully we'll get finished. I'll finish writing in that in the next few months. Basically, it's a short, super readable history of our existence as a species as really complex, socially, elaborate people, creatures, animals from the species that first started walking on two legs, so about three and a half million years ago.


To now to how our, that inheritance might shape how we respond to future challenges. But all readable and all quite sure. So not as thick as some books written on this subject. The idea is if you're a quick reader, you should be able to read it in a day. Excellent. That's my plan. Turns out writing short is harder than you think.


You think, oh, just dash it off. Nah, it turns out it's taking me longer to write a short book than it did.


Ben: Yeah, it there isn't that aphorism. I'm not sure who, is it maybe a tribute to. Is it Oscar Wilde or maybe Mark Twain? Something like, I'm sorry, this letter is so long I didn't have long enough to make it shorter or something like this.




Mary-Ann: exactly. I endorse that sentiment. It's exactly right. Yeah. Because you have to boil it down. Condense, yeah. 



Ben: It Takes  longer, but you not lose most of the meaning and everything that you want to say. Exactly.


Mary-Ann: Exactly. So that's taking up a big chunk of time. The other thing is as you mentioned before my role as president of CPRE, the countryside charity, there's so much stuff that's coming our way in terms of land use frameworks, in terms of energy infrastructure and build out of kind of grid new homes.


The government have committed to one and a half million new homes in, within five years, probably unachievable. But how you go about doing that, even in the kind of steps towards that, there's a way of doing it well, and there's a way of doing it that will cause really great harm and actually just make loads of money for the mass house builders, but not deliver affordable housing, social justice or protection of the natural environment.


So there's lots of stuff coming to CPRE that we feel passionately about, want to advocate strongly for drive policy influence. But also I think my perspective as president, like the public facing, person who shunters on in public about this stuff is to make sure, or to invite more people into the conversation and for people to go, actually this isn't a niche thing about boring planning. This is actually about how our country looks, how it operate. Our lives. Our lives. Yeah. And in the kind of same way that people say, oh I'm not, I don't really do politics.


And you go, of course you do politics 'cause you eat and you drive on roads and you live in a home and you think about what the future might look like for you or for your family or for your loved ones or for your job, of course you do politics. And so I think that I feel the same about everybody should, does countryside issues.


Whether you live in a high rise in the middle of the London Docklands or you live in a kind of rural cottage in the middle of Rutland. It doesn't matter. It matters to us. It. These things impact all of us, and we should all have a say. Yeah we need to grow our ecological literacy and confidence to, to speak out on these issues.


Ben: Yeah. I should have asked you about sustainable development in. Rural Britain or even Britain o overall. So maybe I'll sneak one in because there's this debate very live, particularly within England, around sustainable development, solar panels, local communities and maybe around this green belt.


So I've been to bits of the green belt and some bits of the green belt are really horrid, but some bits of the green belt are really lovely and it's this really difficult, this is this balance that we have that, we have got needs and we also want to protect. We also need to develop, but not lose but not lose.


What's really valuable about the past, and I see this in reading some of your books around some of the sites that we have or like this old wooden church and the like, the by. Able to incorporate some of the, now with the past, you actually keep the past alive and that's what people did in the past.


And then sometimes if you ossify something like when the green belt was set up, it might've been fit for purpose, then it might not be fit for purpose now, but how do we save the bits that we want whilst not letting it over? So that's a massive, huge question on the sustainable development, maybe seen through the green belt, but I don't know if you had wanted to share a couple of thoughts on that.


Mary-Ann: Sure. So the thing about the green belt is it's a planning designation. It was set up to prevent urban sprawl. So when it first got set up it was in response to development that was really ad hoc. Basically, you'd have a kind of a trunk road coming out of a town and developers would buy up the land and then they were building houses along the full length of these roads and then building out either side.


So then towns would get merged. And if you. Allow that to continue and you let the kind of the economic driver just push where development happens without a kind of strategic plan, you end up with Los Angeles where you can literally like just sit in a traffic jam for a day and not get anywhere.


Or drive and drive and drive and drive and drive, and you're still driving through suburbia and it's all car dependent and it's none of it is sustainable. And you go where is your food coming from? Where is your fresh produce coming in? How in particularly pertinent to us now in 2025 looking forwards, how are we going to mitigate for flood events?


If everything is built up how are we going to protect from heating within urban environments? If you don't have any green canopy cover, if you don't have areas nearby that provide biodiversity what happens to all these systems that are absolutely on their knees? Because we have undermined their what we were talking about before, we've undermined their redundancy.


You go, oh, we don't need this scrubby hedge row. We'll put more houses, or we'll put a car park here, or we'll build a factory or a data center. Or we'll expand the dual carriageway to a four lane motorway. That means that people can get to wherever they're going, or in a car individually, one single person in each of those gas guzzling cars or electricity guzzling cars.


Doesn't really matter what it's being fueled on. That's where we're going to invest time and money. But it's also where investing land and land is finite. Once you've used it up, you can't earth more up out of the sea. And the Royal Society did some modeling and said, and this was for the previous government, this government have even more commitments to what land they're using and for what.


But the previous government, the previous Tory government all their commitments for land, if you met each of those commitments for farming, for building, for energy infrastructure you would need, we would need a piece of land twice the size of whales to meet all the commitments unless you stack up benefits so that as it's called multifunctional land use.


So actually one of the ways to do it is to, for example, instead of having a solar farm here and a food production farm here, and a carpark there, why not put the solar panels as a canopy over the carpark and then actually you retain land for. Maybe it's wildlife restoration, maybe it's more food production, maybe the land that is being allocated for food production or protected for food production that's already being farmed.


How can we farm that in a way that is nature friendly and regenerative? Bearing in mind that I think, we throw around these terms like sustainable farming or regenerative farming, and you go what's the opposite? It's unsustainable and degenerative. Who's voting for that? And the only people voting for that are the people who either can't see what the alternative looks and feels and how it pays, or people who are profiting from the system as it stands.


In the short term because in the long term we all lose when, all of Carlisle is underwater. When there's massive supply chain shocks, when you go to Tesco's and you go, where are all the apples? And you go, the apples aren't here because there are no pollinators anymore. And you go, shit, can we get them from Senegal then?


And you go, no, 'cause they're screwed as well. Yeah so land is finite. I think fundamentally land is finite, so we have to use it really carefully. And up until now, the vast majority of us haven't really thought about it and haven't really had a say in how it's used. So I think the one thing I'd say is that we need to be really smart about how we use this finite resource.


And the other thing is that we need to ensure that democracy and democratic input is really strong and protected in that system of deciding and decision making fundamentally. The kind of that bottom line, which is democracy isn't about putting a tick in a box every five years. It's about having a meaningful say about things that shape our lives on an ongoing basis, in a way that you are both knowledgeable enough and empowered enough to have a meaningful input into the process, and then that input is taken into the consideration and the output.


You can see how your input impacted on the final outcome. As opposed to people going to public consultations, feeling like they're really impassioned in terms of what they're arguing for or what they're saying. Have you thought about this or we're worried about this, and they it feels like a kind of a paper exercise where someone's nodding why bother having them 



Mary-Ann: If entirely disregarded because that's again, where you feed the rise of populism. People who feel like they're not invested in the systems of power and they go screw you. I'm gonna vote for those other crazies who are saying, we'll give you what you want. Yeah.


Ben: Strong democratic processes and much better thinking about.


Land use. Okay. That sounds pretty good. There you go. Yeah.


Mary-Ann: If we could last, if we sort that out that Yeah. Yeah. Then


Ben: that you can think, oh, I had a great time as president. Okay. Last question then is, do you have any advice for people, maybe these are people who want to do more with nature or maybe it's your amazing career of being both anthropologist and into broadcasting and in, into creative arts or any overall life advice that you would like to give listeners?


Mary-Ann: Oh. Oh, such a loaded question. Okay. Two. I'll go two things thing number one, career advice, particularly for youngsters, but actually I think probably relevant to everybody. And I have to remind myself, I give myself this advice too, which is that it doesn't all need to be part of a big plan. Say yes to stuff, follow your curiosity.


See where it leads be open to the journey rather than the transactional output. And in terms of connecting to nature, don't feel like it needs to be big or once in a lifetime. Or exotic or remote or expensive. It can literally be, we started Gorilla gardening, the patch of land at the end of our street.


And I live in suburbia just outside London. And it had some really scrubby bushes that maybe the council would've come and laid at the start of the season. But actually me and a couple of neighbors went, hang on let's try and do something with that little patch of land. We haven't got permission, but I contacted the local garden center and said, we're doing some community gardening.


Can you help us? So they gave us some vouchers to spend on plants, wildlife friendly plants. We've got some seeds that we're all pulling propagating on our window sills that we'll plant out when the little fellas are a little bit bigger and, and honestly the combination of social connection, investing in your place, people walking past going, oh, hello, what are you doing?


And just starting little conversations. It's lifted the whole feeling of what matters and that you find common ground with people that you might otherwise not have an opportunity to chat to or not feel like you are allowed to stop and talk to them. And actually the outcome is that we have a nicer environment for the people and a nicer environment for wildlife.


And we've made friends with each other. Yeah. So yeah, start small. Doesn't need to be expensive, doesn't need to be time consuming. Go for a walk and stop and use all five senses. What can you smell? What can you hear? Feel something, find a funny little bit of moss or a bubbly brick look. Notice the lichens growing on, or the mosses growing on the side of a tree or the side of a brick wall, or whatever it is.


Notice where the birds fly and where they don't fly. And don't forget to breathe.


Ben: Yeah. Oh, that sounds excellent. So follow your curiosity. And for nature, it can be small things. Yeah. So I remember we go mud larking down the river Thames or even just walking on the river, Thames Beach right in the middle of London it seems.


Yeah. But then you're transported far away and yeah. Through these small things


Mary-Ann: Or beyond yourself. Yeah.


Ben: Great. On that, Mary-Ann, thank you very much.


Mary-Ann: Thank you for having me.



In Arts, Life, Podcast, Writing Tags Podcast, Mary-ann Ochota, Archaelogy, history, nature

Rebecca Lowe: Exploring Freedom, Moral Philosophy, Technology and the best society | Podcast

February 28, 2025 Ben Yeoh

Political philosopher Rebecca Lowe discusses her views on freedom, equality, and the ethical implications of emerging technologies. Currently writing a book titled 'Freedom in Utopia,' Rebecca delves into philosophical debates concerning obligations to extinct animals, the ethics of eating meat, and the future potential of lab-grown meat. 

On questioning norms and making choices:
“Think hard about what the norms are that you follow unthinkingly. There are many ways to live a good life, and it’s for you to work that out for yourself, because you’re the only person who can have any epistemic access to that.”

On fiction and its philosophical role:
“I feel quite strongly that people who don’t spend time reading fiction are really missing out on one of the great things about being human—the capacity to separate out from your daily life, think about other worlds, imagine.”

She also touches on the moral considerations surrounding artificial wombs, the possible role of ChatGPT as a tool for philosophical inquiry, and her disillusioning experience running for political office. Rebecca emphasizes the importance of decentralization, freedom, and respect in society while also sharing her creative process and insights into leading a fulfilling life.

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen onApple,Spotify or whereveryou listen to pods. Video above or on Youtube.


Contents

  • 00:22 Reviving Extinct Animals

  • 02:29 Moral Implications of Eating Meat

  • 07:47 Future Moral Consensus

  • 11:25 Consequentialism in Healthcare

  • 19:21 ChatGPT as a Philosopher

  • 25:28 Artificial Wombs and Ethical Questions

  • 30:33 Rebecca's Political Journey

  • 34:43 Creative Process and Philosophy

  • 37:50 The Importance of Reading Fiction

  • 41:03 Imagining the Best Possible Society

  • 42:19 The Role of Prisons in Utopia

  • 46:01 Education in an Ideal Society

  • 49:05 Cultural Goods and Utopia

  • 52:18 Healthcare and Resource Allocation

  • 55:11 Under rated / Over rated

  • 58:55 Final Thoughts and Advice


Transcript (This is AI assisted, so mistakes are possible)

[00:00:00] Ben: Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be speaking to Rebecca Lowe. Rebecca is a political philosopher. She has a particular interest in rights, freedom, and equality, and she's currently writing a book called Freedom in Utopia, in which she thinks about freedom in the best possible society. Rebecca, welcome.

[00:00:19] Rebecca: Hi Ben, thanks for having me, great to be here. 

[00:00:22] Ben: Would the best possible society look to revive the woolly mammoth? 

[00:00:28] Rebecca: Do you know, actually, I've been for ages wanting to write something about our obligations to extinct animals. I think there are some really interesting arguments to be made about this when that technology becomes possible.

I don't know enough about the science. I need to, I've got some scientist friends I should ask. Maybe it already is possible. I'm aware, I think some philosophers are writing about this. I haven't actually read that stuff, and I should. But I have this general interest in things like how the demands of morality change when new things become possible.

What are our new requirements? What's permissible? And it does strike me that in that it seems like we have obligations to prevent current animals going extinct. When it's possible to bring back previously current animals, what do our obligations lie? I also just think a load of those animals that are dead are really cool.

I'm probably the stupid person who would want Jurassic Park to happen. So yeah, would it have woolly mammoths? I hope so. 

[00:01:22] Ben: So there are a couple of current projects actually coming out of long now and brand stinking. So there is a project to revive the woolly mammoth and they think they can do it.

But as a stepping stone to that, they actually have revived extinct species of a particular tree. So it's a first step for plants, which they think also might be. Might be positive but there's a kind of techno optimist critique in here somewhere because there's some thinking that the woolly mammoth Might be able to help I think the tundra for instance the tundra in siberia where historically they may have helped with things like that potentially going too far but there is some thought on that I might be a little 

[00:01:59] Rebecca: anxious if the reasoning was, to instrumentalize it.

I'm not sure if the tundra You know, the Tundra argument would count as that, or if, I'm sure people would come up with parallel arguments anyway, but I think I might be a little anxious if a large part of the thrust for bringing back a creature was to use the creature for some some particular end, but that's probably just me overthinking.

[00:02:21] Ben: Yeah, no, I think that is one of the critiques that some do, but then I think not everyone involved in the project puts that much weight on it. Obviously other people have different things. I think one of my moral failings is the fact that I still eat animals. I eat less now than I have ever done, but I still do.

I'm hopeful that lab grown animals like lab grown diamonds will be a future replacement. And I do wonder in a hundred or 200 years, we might view eating meat a little bit like slavery is why on earth did we do that in terms of social or moral progress? However, today, when I am presented with animal, I find it's actually respectful to eat any part of the animal given to me, bone marrow, eyeballs, liver, I will actually eat everything.

And I was reading some of your work, which actually had this idea of whether there was respect or not within lab grown meat. Or things. But in any event, do you think eating animals is actually disrespectful like that? And what are your hopes for lab grown meat? Is there some moral qualm about it, which I perhaps might not have considered as a substitute for the meat eating I do today?

[00:03:30] Rebecca: Yeah, I'm a big meat eater. I eat the I eat the marrow and the liver. Haven't eaten the eyeballs. I've probably, have I tried the eyeballs? Maybe. I love eating meat. I tried to give up eating meat. I managed for a few months last year. I have to say I managed by just eating all of the seafood.

Which slightly fails. I just like meat too much. I came to the conclusion there are too many more steaks I want to eat. But that's a failing as far as I see it. I think it's bad to eat meat. And the main reason I think it's bad to eat meat is this respect point that you're bringing up.

So in other words, I think even if all of the animals you ate had the best possible life and the best possible death, found some way to kill them without suffering, found some way to, eat them at the end point of their natural lifespan. However you want to cash it out, I still think it would be wrong to eat them.

The reason is that I think it's disrespectful to eat the dead body of a once living creature. I think most people hold that view pretty naturally around human bodies. That's why you feel You know, uncomfortable walking over a grave or, someone playing with the bones of a skeleton. I think we should afford a similar respect to the dead bodies of animals and, we're not just talking about playing with it, we're talking about consuming it.

And what's more, we do it, at least nowadays, for our pleasure. There are plenty of alternatives. Back in the day when there weren't, or if you're living in a place where there aren't sufficient non meat alternatives, I think that's different. I think if you eat the dead body of an animal, because you need to then I think you've got a load more arguments at your disposal.

But for my [00:05:00] pleasure, because I think it's delicious, when I could be eating something else that's delicious, so I can't even depend on some aesthetic argument. I think it's bad and wrong, but I'm, I'm human. I fail. Do 

[00:05:12] Ben: you put any weight on the environmental arguments? 

[00:05:15] Rebecca: Yeah, I think there's a whole subset 

[00:05:16] Ben: of the different, yeah, 100%.

[00:05:17] Rebecca: It's another sufficient argument, probably. For me, the sufficient argument that holds the most weight is the respect argument. I think for me, a lot of my views around how we should treat each other as humans, but also treat the other living things in our world come down to this point about, basic equal moral respect, something like that.

That's at the heart of my kind of, libertarianism or liberalism, whatever you want to call it. 

[00:05:40] Ben: And that respect doesn't need to transfer to lab grown meat. 

[00:05:44] Rebecca: Yeah, so I've written a thing actually, which I think I pretty much still hold, which is for a long time, I thought that the answer to my problem, which is I really love eating meat, I love cooking meat, my favorite thing to cook is meat, I'm one of these people who go to the butcher shop and, get the cool cut and I'll read loads of stuff about how to cook it, and I'll enjoy cooking it, and, all of those things but I think it's wrong, so that's a Problem, how do I reconcile that?

I thought for a long time, hey, sooner or later, lab grown needs are going to come along and I can, when it's good enough, I won't just You know, gain the kind of the taste sensation and the the texture sensation. I also gain the aesthetic and intellectual value of cooking it and all of those other things, giving it to my friends, the kind of the creative aspect too, I love all that stuff.

I think the problem for me is though that I feel like it would still be disrespectful to the kind of animal it replicates. We're not talking about creating a steak that doesn't look like a steak or doesn't taste like a steak. The whole point is that it's a as near to perfect simulation. And I make an analogy in my little piece I wrote, which I wrote for Eon, which if you're into philosophy, you should read some of these articles.

That's for your listeners. I make a kind of an analogy with video games where you're, um, imagine you had a video game and the aim of the video game was to beat up and otherwise abuse women. There's loads of arguments why you might think that's got sort of moral problems. One is it's bad for you to do bad stuff.

Another argument, however, is that it's disrespectful to womankind. And it doesn't have to be that, the particular instance of the woman is a real woman because the whole point is, it's not, it's a simulation. And I think you can apply the same argument to eating, the simulated beef steak.

It's disrespectful to beef kind to cows. That's, I think that's probably my position, but as as I've just admitted, I eat the actual meat, so it's going to be a little bit less bad, good times, 

[00:07:47] Ben: right? Are there any things today, which in a hundred or two hundred years time, you think we might have consensus on it being a moral wrongness?

So I, I wonder whether meat eating, except for some more narrow cultural things, might be there. And it's interesting we progressed, I think there's moral consensus. Slavery was bad and wrong, and then we had women's rights, arguably we had minority and disability, other rights, which we've had a growing consensus that, okay, that it was morally wrong not to have those rights but in the moment, it's quite hard to judge, you go back to, say, 1500 or certainly 2000 years ago, I think it would have been very, it was quite hard for a lot of them to feel like, okay, slavery was there, aside from maybe some religious thinkers, which is interesting, but is there anything you spot today where you go oh, I really think this is on the chopping block?

[00:08:35] Rebecca: There's kind of two parts to this, aren't there? One is, which is the thing I feel a little more confident maybe saying some things about something like, what are the things in our world that are bad and wrong? The second is a kind of prediction type question and it's, about epistemic capacity.

Are the people in 100 years time gonna have the capacity to know that thing was wrong? As you say, there's all kinds of considerations, maybe people are going to be far more stupid in the future. Maybe people, they'll have been in nuclear war and people will live in silos so they won't gain the advantage of talking to each other.

And I can't make predictions about that. But a couple of things My, my assumption is, so one of them is definitely the eating meat thing. How we treat insects? I don't know if this is just me, but all my life I've been, I don't think even, I'm not even sure what the word for it is.

I remember when I was a kid seeing people, clasping and killing mosquitoes. I remember my uncle, so I'm just going to be nasty about my uncle now had one of those little electric fly zapper things and I just don't get the, I just don't get it when people, I understand if you're in a hotel room with a mosquito in a country where you might catch one of the, Zika virus or something, I'm not really going to have a problem with you killing the mosquito.

I still think you're doing something problematic. If I can get the mosquito out the window, believe me, I've spent time in my life trying to get the mosquito out the window. Killing the mosquito is something I will do, but yeah. I'm, the idea that you just kill the spider, and not just kill the spider, but have fun, enjoy killing the spider, I just find it [00:10:00] morally, I find it morally repulsive, but I also just, I feel like I'm just on some other wavelength or something.

I just don't understand the mentality there. So the cavalier way in which people treat insects. I find astonishing and it doesn't mean I think you've got to go along, with a little brush and glasses looking at all of the, the speech ahead of you. I'm talking about voluntary intentional destruction, enjoyment in the destruction of a living thing.

I find this incomprehensible and I hope, I can only hope the people in the future look back and discuss. 

[00:10:34] Ben: That's really interesting. That's the kind of respect for living things idea. I find that interesting because you argue against consequentialist ideas in your sub stack. So this is the typical utilitarian thinking about the ends justify the means and the like.

And it's interesting because actually a lot of. Say effective altruist utilitarians have ended up being taking this position on meat and actually they do a lot of work on insects And particularly prawns and things like that, which other people find a little bit odd It's oh, why are they paying attention to this?

and they would make arguments that Prawns or insects have a little bit of value and therefore they make this value based argument and they come to it from that side of the argument. So I find it's really interesting that you've also come to it from a respect and principles way of doing that.

But I'm also interested in generally your take about why you feel so awkward around these consequential ideas. And I'd be interested In particularly placing it in typical cost benefit policy decision making and what you make of that in typical political decision a political economy decision and one thing that I think about and I throw to philosophers was within Healthcare economics or as I've noted that one of your parents is also medical ethics So I thought maybe you'd have a really interesting view on this but for instance in the UK, but really under any healthcare constrained budget, they make these decisions, and this is a live one, where they try and compare the cost of saving, say, a preterm baby with, say, a diabetic, and although it's quite flawed, you can get a rough consensus on what they call these quality adjusted life qualities, how much 

[00:12:11] Rebecca: qualities.

[00:12:11] Ben: Yeah, how much is or a disabled adjusted life here, but essentially they're putting a value on life and they're putting it under this constraint of budget, although it's a statistical thing to help them make those decisions. And I actually think it comes from road pricing initially, interestingly, economically speaking, but so they'll go something like.

It costs maybe half a million to save a preterm baby, and it costs about twenty to thirty thousand pounds to save a diabetic in terms of a year life. And if you just do a pure utilitarian calculation you tend not to make that decision. If you survey people, they actually will say, no, I think that I think we should spend some money on babies.

And it's interesting, different types of people are differently on that spectrum. Interestingly doctors themselves tend to be a little bit more utilitarian than just the average sample of the. Woman in the street, but I'm interested faced with that sort of decision. How do you think?

Philosophy helps think about it or in particularly you're thinking of philosophy. Is that something where you think you might have some insights? 

[00:13:14] Rebecca: That's a big question. Where to start I think one thing I'd say is, I'm with I'm not a Kantian I don't even know very much about Kant But one thing I think he's right on is that autumn fires can you don't have obligations that you It doesn't make sense to say you've got an obligation to do something if you can't.

When you're talking about things like healthcare, you have resource constraints. And while we continue to have resource constraints, we have to make difficult decisions at the margin. We have to You know, way up where the next pound is spent. So it's hard to give a clear answer if you're not going to depend upon some kind of equation in which you're, assigning costs and values to different kinds of lives or to different like if somebody is, if it's more expensive to save somebody's life than someone else's life, how do you deal with that?

I think you're right that. There's got to be some space for costing stuff out and whether that comes from road pricing or, insurance and people and actuaries have to be able to find some way to translate what it means in financial terms when someone dies or someone doesn't die or someone suffers an injury.

I understand that. And to some extent that's going to have just, market considerations at its heart. I think for me, a starting point I would use. would be something like urgent need I don't think it can only be what is the, the value in that sense that's assigned to the life, I think it's also what is the situation in which the person finds themselves whether that means that then you preference something like queuing for an allocation thing, so you and I have the same injury, but I get to the hospital first you and I get to the hospital at the same time, but I'm more likely to die.

Those generally are a kind of first place consideration, and my limited understanding about. Allocation of [00:15:00] resources in health care decision making it's rarely that you started it from the point of, hey, you tick these boxes, I tick these boxes, therefore I get priority.

That's the kind of fourth order matter is my understanding in terms of triaging that maybe I'm wrong on that. I'm not sure I have much of a better answer, except that my general position for two reasons is that consequentialism, consequentialist reasoning I think is bad and wrong. The main reason is I think it.

It not only allows or permits, it also sometimes demands certain behaviors which are morally repugnant. I also think you can't do a little bit of consequentialist reasoning. That's a relatively controversial view. I'm with someone like Stuart Hampshire on this. I don't think you can do pick and mix.

You can't be like, hey, for this policy problem, I'm going to do some consequentialist reasoning. That's not to say you can't say something like, hey, that argument Ben just made is a consequentialist argument. I'm just saying that you, qua Ben, can't be a little bit of a consequentialist. You're either a consequentialist or you're not.

It's a totalizing moral theory. You can't jam it together with some other theory. They're not coherent. So I'm saying one thing about, what you're disposition, your belief system is, and one, one thing about what counts as a moral theory or what counts as the kind of grounds on which you justify an argument so generally speaking, this comes back to something we were just talking about before around, overdetermination, so having different arguments for, to come to the same conclusion I think it's often the case that you and I can come to the same conclusion using different arguments.

For me, it's never going to be the case that one of those arguments is a good argument if it's a consequentialist argument. Doesn't mean we can't come to the same place. So I can come to the point in which I think you shouldn't, clap and laugh at killing the mosquito on my, right space pluralist liberal approach, and my friend the consequentialist can come to that purely, on the outcome, teleological and justifying the means position.

I'm just going to say, hey, that's a bad argument. You got to the right place. They don't get a monopoly on the endpoints. Sorry, I'm I don't have a good answer to the QALYs question except I'm deeply skeptical of assigning value in a bigger sense for lives. Yeah. I practically understand the requirement around costing stuff out.

Of course, that's the case in a world of limited resources, and healthcare resources are incredibly important. What I don't agree with are claims like, because this beta sounds down syndrome, therefore it's less. It has less moral value, that life, than the fetus without Down syndrome. Similarly, the person who's 86 has less value in this deeper sense than the person who's 17.

I'm just 100 percent not going to agree with that. And it's not just I'm going to disagree with it. I'm going to think it's revolting. Yeah. 

[00:17:46] Ben: That's interesting. There's a few things I find really interesting in those comments. If you add ask the average person, they do have this sense of what's fair and what's not.

So if you're born with, say, a rare genetic disease, but it's really expensive to treat, there is a sense that money shouldn't have been the stumbling block for treating some of those, even that it will take from, some others that you will end up having to just do a little bit of everything, knowing that you can't do.

do everything. And then the other bit which chimes, because it's one of my big problems with what a lot of Peter Singer writes, which actually comes down to disability rights. And I'm close to disability communities, but it, his strong form view means he ends up having to argue for these things, which feel morally really wrong to, Lots of people, in fact, probably a majority of people, but specifically to say within the dis disabled, disability community.

His 

[00:18:38] Rebecca: position's on infanticide, which he recently clarified in an interview, I think, with the New Yorker. We know that he held this position in the past. But he came out and clarified it again. He still holds it. Yeah. The parent who doesn't want the kid under the age of one can kill the kid. I'm slightly, but not very much you 

[00:18:56] Ben: know, caricaturing his position, right?

That is the end outcome of the, yeah, of the arguments. But and it's really tortured to get there because it's to do with, as far as I understand it, and I haven't Deeply read all of the underlying papers but almost to do with the personhood of animals So you've come he comes this is the consequentialist thing about you sometimes get to these decisions by seemingly very, tortured things 

[00:19:16] Rebecca: Yeah, 

[00:19:17] Ben: But in any event, maybe this is a good other good segue as to do you think?

Chat gpt, let's just call them gpt is a good philosopher 

[00:19:26] Rebecca: Yeah, I do. Again I'm a philosopher, so I'm gonna want to define the terms good and philosopher. Yeah, okay. I have this general view about the term philosopher, which is that most people either have far too narrow or too expansive a view, to a small set of people, like a relatively big set of people. You're only a philosopher if you're one of the four people working on epistemology or metaphysics at one of three American universities. And then on the expansive view, everyone's a philosopher because we all do, we live, philosophical lives and make philosophical comments.

On some level, Both of those views are correct, but they don't really tell us very much, do they? [00:20:00] If you think of a more, a mid ground position, which is Being a philosopher, doing philosophy, and those things are slightly different is applying a certain kind of approach to thinking about things maybe within also a certain set of questions, within a certain set of topics.

That's the more the kind of approach I'd take to being a philosopher is doing philosophy. Yeah, I think ChatGPT is increasingly a very good philosopher, certainly in terms of philosophical tool or resource that if you are interested in philosophy and you're willing to put in the philosophical work, I think you can, I think you can benefit massively from it.

I do I often talk with ChatGPT about philosophy. I wrote a thing on my sub stack about this recently, which I think some people got a bit of attention, one of the big philosophy blogs. Covered it, got a few funny responses from philosophers, I think probably hadn't read my piece, and also I'd say probably hadn't tried, the later, more pricey version of GPT, which I think is an easily justifiable spend if you've got, if you've got any money.

And I'd say actually, you know, I was talking to a friend about this the other day, I feel a little bit like It's like people who are offered, I don't know, you get this bargain and it's hey, and it is a bargain, hey, for half of your worldly resources, you can live forever. And you're like no, I'm saving my money up for something important.

The idea that you can talk proper philosophy with a text box on your computer is just so incredibly, it's insane. It's incredible. And the idea that you're not willing to like, Spend 200 quid on 200 quid on that, I think, or 200 dollars, I forget what it is now. I'd block it out of my mind.

I don't know, I just don't know what, how do they price stuff? Generally in life, what is their pricing strategy where that's not good spend? Okay, of course, if you're starving and you've got kids to feed, I don't have any kids to feed. I'm fortunate I can afford it.

But affording it means, assigning sufficient value. And why would you not assign a load of value to this thing? Probably, to be fair. It's slightly circular because you haven't tried it. Yeah, I think a load of people are missing a massive trick here. I find it quite funny. 

[00:22:00] Ben: It's getting cheaper and it's getting better and it's particularly good if, say, actually, so I don't know, if I ever want to think about what a consequentialist would think, or particularly say, Peter Singer, you ask TPT, it's really good at parsing some, particularly someone who's had quite a lot of public work, like Singer, and really teasing out this is probably what they would say.

And then you have this kind of quite angry conversation with them, which you couldn't say to Pizza Singer's face, but that's very dispassionate about this is because you haven't considered this, it's quite good. And it's interesting someone we both know, Tyler Cowen, the economist also advocates that.

But interestingly, Tyler has said, I don't know if you picked this up, but he claims he's two thirds utilitarian. So you should challenge him on this, whether you can be two thirds anything on this next time next time you speak to him. Actually, maybe that's a good segue. I noticed that you'd read his book The Age of Infavor, or you'd skimmed it.

And I was quite interested because it actually talks a lot about essentially an autistic cognitive profile as well as things like AI and other things like that. And I do wonder whether in the future, things like autism profiles or how we consider disability, or just talking about different mental states or different ways of being will be quite radically different.

And we can already see some signs now, but in where things are going, I had a chat with someone who was. Born deaf now can hear as an actor and it's interesting that they view the kind of cyber technology which enables them to hear Almost as a kind of companion partner. Not quite. It's quite a complex thing, but Interestingly in the same way that you would say you should have respect to insects They think that you should essentially have respect to these call them cyber AI in the sense that it's a part of her life, or we might get to the extent where they are.

I find it's really interesting that I'm often saying please and thank you and actually being quite nice to my GPT, weirdly because I actually think I get better responses, but there is this thing about do you abuse your GPT or are you nice to it. Yeah, so I was wondering, what do you, what did you make of that and what did you make of the Age of 

[00:24:05] Rebecca: Yeah, I read some of it over Christmas.

I thought it was excellent. What else? I think so actually on the point around saying please and thank you to the GPT, I think it's, it's good to practice being a good person. This is one of the reasons, so actually I wrote in my substack piece about talking with GPT about philosophy, but I bullied GPT, if that really means anything, to bully something that doesn't have moral status.

It probably doesn't, it's a shorthand, isn't it? But I felt morally dirty afterwards. I was trying to find out if it was a consequentialist, and I was really Again, I'm not sure it counts as being awful if it's a thing you can't can you be awful to a wall? No, you probably can't, but it's good to practice good behavior, and I think I didn't do that there.

So yeah, I think it's, I don't find it weird to say thank you, I do as well, you're right, it probably also has some benefits probably baked into it, and it's probably good if it's baked into it that it responds better if you're polite. 

[00:24:55] Ben: But there is something to, like you say, to good behavior even if it's in private 

[00:24:59] Rebecca: right, or 

[00:24:59] Ben: [00:25:00] you can, you might have a toy model and you bash it up.

But, and obviously, maybe there's no real consequence to the toy model or whatever, but you are modeling, even to yourself, 

[00:25:10] Rebecca: a 

[00:25:11] Ben: good behavior or not. 

[00:25:13] Rebecca: That's right. And I think we do have obligations to ourselves as well. And one of those is to try to. Make ourselves into good people as we can, because it's good for us to be good people.

It's bad to do that stuff. And one of the obligations we have to ourselves is to hold ourselves in check and to try to improve. Yeah cool. 

[00:25:28] Ben: A couple more philosophical things, and then we might pivot into some creative things. I noticed you wrote something around artificial wombs, and I've spoken to some young I guess liberal thinkers who are actually quite pro artificial it gets around a lot of the medical complications of biological birth.

I guess this is the sort of far future, although it's starting to happen now, so it's maybe not as far as before. But I was wondering what you thought about artificial wombs and whether some of the thinking about artificial wombs, they also transferred into, Essentially artificial or even AI soldiers and this type of thing about where AI goes But I'm wondering if you still have the same view on artificial wombs as you had has it changed and Whether you'd like to articulate that.

[00:26:12] Rebecca: Yeah, I think my position is something it actually reminds me a little about I guess the third I think I gave you two thing I would wonder if people in the future might look back with some moral I have some deep moral concerns about surrogacy for various reasons. One is, I think, the mere sufficient concern is about the woman who who gives birth to the child.

I worry about the exploitation of women to that end. We know, at least in some places, that women are exploited and used. As vassals or vessels and I have deep concerns about that. I also have concerns about the fetus that becomes the baby being separated from the person who gave birth to it.

Again, there's all kinds of, questions and things, and I'd want to clarify that, that, my position further. But one answer, to the artificial womb question is, it takes that problem away from, in terms of at least the treatment of the woman who gives birth. If you can do that without having that third party.

or whatever number party it'd be. That's one problem seemingly solved. I don't think it takes away the baby problem entirely, because there are questions about what it is to be born of a machine, effectively. In the piece I wrote about this, I took into account, the concerns of both the fetus and also the woman.

And I think there are great benefits on both ends of this kind of technology. Oftentimes the stuff I read or the people I talk to come at it from one point or the other. You get feminist argument, which is, it's better for women not to have to give birth for various reasons, not just, physically because it is brutal and risky, but also points around the opportunities in the labor force, costs, more general costs there are to, to giving birth, to being a mother, taking time out of work and all of those concerns.

But there's also the baby point, which is there are great advantages. In terms of access to health care interventions monitoring of being outside of, being hidden within a woman's womb. Also there are points, my friend Emily made this point when I was writing my piece around the kind of injustices and inequalities that obtain.

when we take into account the behaviours of different pregnant women. You've got pregnant woman A, who's a heavy smoker and drinker goes on rollercoasters. I don't know the effect of going on a rollercoaster on the thesis, but I'm assuming at least later on it's probably bad. And then you've got, woman B, who follows all of the best guidance, some of the guidance I'm sure is rubbish.

It seems like there's going to be some pretty serious costs to the fetus in Woman A. We can get rid of that if we have, if in the world in which we have the artificial womb, which provides all of the things that the fetus needs to develop. There are big questions around how you how you compare those things in terms of particular psychological effects.

What does it really mean to say what does it do to a fetus psychologically to, for them to gestate within the machine? It's very hard to know how to answer a question like that. But I think, generally speaking, it seems to me like there would be vast benefits of this technology coming into play.

I think it's highly likely it will. And I think it's really important we think about the ethical questions now, because once technology is in place new obligations arise. It's getting very hard to say, the fetus of eight weeks, 10 weeks, and now we have the technology to save it, but we shouldn't save it.

People will start saving it. And then you're going to have questions around women wanting to opt into this. And you're going to have to come up with pretty good arguments to say that women shouldn't be able to opt into that. Some of those might well be those resource questions. If this is something that's expected on the National Health Service does it mean that just because it's possible, therefore the taxpayer should spend?

Those are important questions. My point is, think about it now before it becomes possible. Otherwise, a load of these just status quo [00:30:00] problems come into play. It's very hard to wind stuff back once it starts happening. People start to backwards justify just because it happens, you get sunk cost thinking.

Think about it now. Try and work out some, some baseline stuff and we'll be in a much better place. It's also just interesting and fun. 

[00:30:19] Ben: Yeah, I think so. I think that we do seem to be a little bit behind where technology is going or is both in AI and in health. Technology and some other things perhaps a pivot into your life.

You ran for being an MP here in the UK. And that I wondered what you learned from that experience. I get the vibe that it's like, Oh my God, never again. And I'd be interested to know like, how, and obviously a lot of people are quite skeptical of like political system and average person on politicians.

Overall so i'd be interested in your experience, was there anything positive to take away? What are the maybe critiques you would take away and how is that? How is that whole experience for you? 

[00:31:06] Rebecca: Yeah, I mean look i'm not naturally a joiner. I didn't join a political party until actually so when I was doing masters back in 2008 in london.

I worked for a bit of time as a researcher for an mp It was a tory mp. So I had to join the conservative party to apply for the job I hadn't joined a political party before then I I hadn't got involved in student politics, there's nothing I was less keen to do, I hate all of that stuff. So I'm not naturally, I'm also just generally not naturally a joiner, I don't like organized fun.

I love playing board games and stuff, but the idea of, I don't know A work away day where you're forced to, I just, that's just naturally not me. I think the things I learned from it, yeah, number one, I don't want to be an MP. I have friends who are MPs and I really admire them. I think we need good people to do this.

But the invasion of privacy the stuff around party constraint, so towing the line, not being able to say what you believe. I don't think when I was running I ever said anything I didn't believe. I'm, yeah, I don't know, I'm not very good at doing that apart from anything else. But living with those constraints wasn't something I wanted to do.

Also the party that I ran for the Conservatives has changed a lot since then. Back then in 2015 it was relatively socially and economically liberal. I'm very socially liberal, there are a few parties that match that. I think it's also just like a relatively rare combination to hold probably these days.

[00:32:26] Ben: What's happened to classical liberals? Why, 

[00:32:29] Rebecca: Why the I don't know guys where are they? Come join us. Come 

[00:32:33] Ben: join us. Was it like from, I guess there's a huge tradition of it, but I guess if you root it in something like John Stuart Mill's time and beyond, you would have thought, oh, and now like diminishing.

I just think, I 

[00:32:47] Rebecca: find it for me, I'm just naturally skeptical about anybody trying to tell me what to do, including myself. I think it's not surprising that I adhere to it. As much as I adhere to anything, I'm definitely a, classical liberal. We can, talk about what that means, but.

In terms of the substance that's generally, been the substance of the views of the classical liberal thinkers around free speech, free trade 

[00:33:06] Ben: Freedom in general. Concern, 

[00:33:07] Rebecca: sorry, say again? Freedom in general, yeah, absolutely. Concern around, the overbearing state trying to tell you how to live your life, rule of law, these, constraints on other people trying to tell you what to do that's just naturally where I lie.

I'm also interested in the kind of, the moral theory aspect of it, how you justify these things, because again, this is consequentialist classical liberals and there's rights based classical liberals. There's interesting stuff about property. I wrote my PhD on moral property rights, largely because I'm naturally a capitalist.

I believe the stuff that it, the system under which we're the most free, it brings about the most good ends. But when you're thinking about, competing claims over stuff that is external to you. Which I see as being a necessary building block of supporting capitalism. It's hard to come up with a non consequentialist argument.

Or at least it's not hard, it's just I was interested in working out what the best justification for that was, because I'm the kind of philosopher who won't just, settle at this stage. I find myself having to go back down to where it begins. But sorry, just to go back to your question about the politics thing.

It left me quite disillusioned. It made me realize that a lot of people in politics, I think are in it for the power. It also, I think, pushed me towards recognizing that what I'm most interested in is just interested in, sorry, is just sitting in a little room reading philosophy books and talking to interesting people like you about philosophy.

The policy stuff and the politics stuff, I think is admirable and necessary, and I think all of us who are interested particularly in political philosophy should do some of that stuff. But for me personally, I like sitting reading Quine. That's just, that's just who I am. 

[00:34:42] Ben: Too compromising.

And maybe on that, what is your creative? process. Do you like to read half the day, write half the day? Are you a morning person, evening person? I've asked this out of a lot of creatives, and basically there is no right answer. People who are really good could do it. Early first thing, late first thing, read a lot, [00:35:00] write a lot, anything else.

But I'm just interested in what people do. Do you have a particular process. Do you sit down and write it or 

[00:35:08] Rebecca: I don't really, I again, I'm a little anxious around even imposing stuff on myself. Although I, then you get into this kind of circular thing where, I'm not happy unless I write, unless I work.

But if I'm telling myself, I've got to do it at this time, I'm going to, rebel against that. I have, I guess I come to some kind of. Compromise on which there are certain things I'm going to expect that I'm going to do every day, and many of those are things that are going to motivate me or put me in a good, I don't think I need motivation to write, it's basically all I want to do or read.

But I'm aware that you know if I do some exercise, and I listen to the music and I read some fiction. I talk to other people and I go for a walk. I'm gonna be in the right kind of frame of mind, not just to do some writing, but hopefully to do some good writing. I try to make sure I read philosophy every day that isn't related to the stuff I'm working on myself.

I was doing this thing where I read half an hour of classic 20th century, random classic 20th century every day philosophy every day. That was easier when I was living in my own house with all of my books. I then went to America for a few months and I didn't have all my books. If you're living in a house, thousands of philosophy books, you can just take them off the shelf and Oh, today I'm going to read Stawson.

But that was a good practice. I did enjoy that. I wrote like 50, 000 words of notes on stuff that I still go back to. But yeah, so there are certain things I do. I like writing. In the evening and at night, I do read and write at other times as well I read all the time just when I feel like doing it.

I write when I feel like doing it. I guess one principle I have, and as much as I have any about this, is if you feel like writing, go and do some writing. I'm lucky that I mostly, most of the time feel like that, but if I ever feel like very particularly And then, I think, listen to yourself.

Sorry, that's not very Like I say, I constantly have this whole problem about not trying not to, Not too many constraints on yourself. That's fair enough, 

[00:36:50] Ben: which is a definite way of doing it. What role does fiction You play in your own creative processes and what role do you think it should play maybe in overall humanities thinking and maybe in particular I noted you read what I have loved and it's interesting that one of the themes, it's multi-layered book but one of the themes is around grief.

So I'm particularly interested in maybe do you think. On something like grief, philosophers have anything to say, and is that a better domain for fiction, or even memoir, or something like that? Multi layered question as to what fiction plays a role in your own thinking. The fact that you blogged about it means that it must play some role.

Does that have any role for philosophy in general, or is it just for you? And how, when fiction seems to derive some real things to dwell on in terms of grief, that Perhaps there's a more powerful way than is that outside the domain of this middle road philosophy? 

[00:37:47] Rebecca: Oh man, that's a great question.

Beautiful question. I would say, first of all, I just am obsessed by reading novels. I always have been. I grew up without a TV. My parents, we didn't have a TV until I was about 12 when my brother and I came up with this. We basically persuaded our parents that if we could do the Times Crossword, we would get a TV.

There must be 

[00:38:05] Ben: some metaphysics argument for having a TV, right? I think 

[00:38:09] Rebecca: We'd already tried all of those. They had to read. Yeah I think this, I don't, I think I'm probably just dispositioning. It's probably just the case I would have already loved reading, but I think it was a very kind, good thing my parents did, because I just became obsessed with reading.

I was, what I always wanted to do, and I love reading fiction. I think it's really important to keep reading fiction. I know a load of people who, when they become adults, read other, don't read fiction anymore. Partly because you feel as if you have interests and obligations to know what's going on in the world, so you prioritise non fiction.

I understand that. I'm anxious around instrumentalizing fiction, although I do think there's a load of instrumental value in it. I find on some level certainly, I also find the same thing with going to the theatre. That when I'm, engrossed in fiction sometimes it helps me do philosophy because I'm forcing myself to not think directly about the philosophy and then sometimes I guess you get that, just that turning over in your mind and maybe you come to some conclusion you wouldn't have done otherwise.

I think it's definitely the case that for some emotional matters, fiction can play a really important part in our life, whether it's as a matter of comfort. So I think, similarly Bertrand Russell has this great point in The Conquest of Happiness, one of his books where he talks about playing games as a way to cope with grief.

I completely think that's right. Again, it's a point I think about being completely engrossed. Probably the same about sport, if you're playing a really vigorous game of tennis, you can't really be overthinking about the awful things in the world. So it's an escapism point, it's a sorry, my computer's just telling me to enter my password, I don't know why, so I'm just going to do that, there we go.

Um, multi levels of value, I feel quite strongly that people who don't spend time reading fiction are really missing out on one of the great things about being human. Which is the capacity to separate out from your daily life, think about other worlds imagine [00:40:00] and also just engage with, certainly the kinds of fiction, I like, which often are.

I guess, quite philosophical, I think, the what I loved is a very philosophical novel. I tend to be less keen on explicitly philosophical novels to when people are trying really hard. And actually there were a few points in that book where I felt maybe she was trying a bit too hard.

But when it's implicit, I really love that. So people like, I don't cut there, I think he's a great philosopher. Except for in the Lives of Animals, which I think is one of his best things. He doesn't really say, Hey, I'm now going to do some philosophy, right? So I really enjoyed the Knausgard. I read the first book recently, and I actually didn't so much the little essays, the more kind of, Hey, I'm now going to give you a philosophical little it's division on, the theory of time or whatever.

What I really liked was the implicit philosophy in the rest of it. So again, like someone like Iris Murdoch, I like her novels, but the bits where she's like explicitly doing philosophy in them. Less keen. So yeah, philosophical topics and ways of thinking about things. I suppose is something I particularly value in fiction, but I just like good novels.

[00:41:02] Ben: Yeah, that's great. Maybe let's do a little bit on thinking about what would be. in a best possible society and then we can wrap up with some quick fire and maybe some current projects and advice. Oh, I love quick fire. 

[00:41:13] Rebecca: Sounds good. 

[00:41:15] Ben: So on the freedom in the best possible society, I'm interested in art, education, prison.

Maybe disability as well. But in this best possible society, we had a brief conversation on this a few months ago are there still prisons? And I guess, when I look at prisons today, I was looking at some stats, and there was, it's something extraordinary, like 30 to 40 percent of people in the prison population have severe mental challenges.

Call it as an outcome that You know, they've been told they have huge learning difficulties or autism or other things or you're talking about half where If you really think about it that there's something which has really gone badly wrong and there is Then maybe there's a little other half which is a little bit different but you might need some restraints, I guess still in a best possible society if you've got some of these things how does your utopia handle constraint seen through the view of prisons, but I guess any constraint 

[00:42:19] Rebecca: Yeah, so I think my view is pretty much that it's not justifiable to put someone in captivity as a form of punishment.

I have a more radical general view, which is around whether punishment is ever justifiable. But if we're talking about putting someone in captivity as punishment, I think my position is that's not. Justifiable. However, that doesn't mean I don't think that it's ever the case that it's justifiable to put someone in captivity, right?

And if you, exactly, and if you think about the reasons why we do people to put people in captivity, so for instance, one of them might be a public health reason. If you come down with this new highly contagious disease but you're refusing to confine yourself to your house. It might be the case that someone wants to lock you up for a bit.

I'm not really passing a judgment on whether that's justifiable, I'm just saying that's, they're not doing it to you to punish you. They might also be wanting to punish you, saying, Hey, Ben, why are you not staying in your house? But that's a separate argument, right? So I think my position is something like, I don't see, even in the best possible world, because I think you'll still have some psychopaths, you'll still have some people who want to do bad stuff, and I don't think the best possible society would be somewhere where you weren't free to choose to do bad stuff, and sadly do bad stuff, therefore we have to think of ways to respond to that wrongdoing.

I can't see it wouldn't be the case that sometimes you need to put people in captivity in order to protect other people. So this is, I think, a self defense argument or a Now, of course, the way that's going to cash out is something like you're going to have these institutions that look like prisons, it's just Rebecca saying that they're not punitive.

However, I do think actually that if prisons weren't intended to punish, then they would look quite different. It'd be much harder, for instance, to I think to defend, certainly I'm not going to use the word justify there, defend some of the really quite vile practices that go on in our prisons at the moment.

I saw there was a report out yesterday from the prison inspectorate, I haven't read it yet, but one of the points that was being made was something around women's access to being able to wash their underwear. You're talking about the most basic human rights necessities of, being able to have access to sanitation and clean living spaces and clean stuff on your body.

The idea of, but of course, the problem is that if you're using a punitive argument for imprisoning people, you're going to say, oh, but if we don't treat them bad, it's not going to be, it's not going to be a prison or people aren't going to want to come to the people that aren't going to want to stay out of the prison.

You've got to find some kind of, whereas if you take the punitive element There's no reason why prisons can't be Places where it's not just that your basic needs are being met, believe me, I think everywhere, that any institution that's going to be a place where someone is spending their time needs to make sure that's the case, it's also going to be like, you [00:45:00] can't have these silly arguments anymore about, oh, those Scandinavian prisons, people get TVs.

Is a separate point. I grew up without a TV. I have views about whether TV is a necessary, preferential. Like I don't have a TV. I'm glad you know what I'm saying. 

[00:45:13] Ben: Society with a lot of technology. Yeah. You could be in the equivalent of like almost. Let's say a theme park or a holiday villa.

I think there'd certainly be 

[00:45:22] Rebecca: animals, there'd be green spaces, there'd be work opportunities, there'd be education. You'd have, we wouldn't just be talking about meeting basic needs, we'd be talking about it being a valuable place for people to spend time. And once you take the punishment element, that goes away.

But I'm not denying that you'd still have institutions. Again, it might, you might actually be able to take a non institutional approach in which what is effectively house arrest becomes, but again, there's going to be all kinds of resource allocation questions around this. So yes, my assumption is that Utopia, or is my working conclusion at the moment is that yes, people are put in captivity.

[00:45:57] Ben: For doing bad stuff, or, 

[00:45:59] Rebecca: but it's a different justification, yeah. 

[00:46:01] Ben: In this best possible society, do you still have schools? Would a government ever set a curriculum? Is there a basic amount of knowledge that you think a best possible society should have as a base? Or, if you take more, in fact you have it today.

I'm very sympathetic to the unschool movement of letting people do that. I still think knowledge is really important, but what knowledge someone Should want to seek is much more debatable as to whether anyone I guess you could say parents included But I guess another thing but at least best possible society.

Do we still have schools? How is education handled? 

[00:46:38] Rebecca: I think like we all have and not just parents have a serious obligation to ensure that kids get educated and One one one thing that I think I saw in a friend about this the other day and they're like, oh that's very illiberal of you because I said something like Children shouldn't get to choose most of the stuff.

That doesn't mean children shouldn't get to choose any stuff, right? But children shouldn't get to choose what the things are that they learn. That doesn't mean at the edges that they, their interests can't be satisfied, that those things can't govern some of the stuff they study. But as adults, one of the things we're obligated to think about is, what is it, what are the kinds of knowledge and skills, ways of, becoming better reasoning creatures?

How is it that we can inculcate those capacities in children. I'm not convinced that, I'm certainly not convinced that our current school system does a very good job of that. I didn't like school. I have a lot of sympathy for the school is prison argument. My I'm not really fully convinced that the answer though is, everyone's homeschooled partly because everyone is good at homeschooling their kids.

I have anxieties around Kids effectively being indoctrinated by people with very strong views about things. I certainly don't want the state going around telling people not to tell their kids stuff. But I think one important role at the moment that is incentivized by schools is giving kids access to other ways of thinking.

So if you've got a kid who's brought up in a religious household when they go to school they learn about other ways of seeing the world. Kids are, because they're not fully reasoning creatures, are very open, they're very persuadable. It can be indoctrinated very easily. I'm not, that's not a comment about religion generally or any particular religion, it's just a point that I think, again, because we all have obligations to kids we need to make sure that kids have access to different viewpoints and also to certain kinds of knowledge.

So if a kid gets 18 and doesn't, I don't know that there's gravity, or know that there are other countries in the world, there's a whole load of substance. That every kid has the right to know about, because it's important stuff. Sometimes there's some truth arguments about this, but some of it is just because it's established knowledge.

If it's the case that the established knowledge is that there's gravity, the kid has the, the right to know about that. I'm happy to make those kinds of arguments about this, those kinds of arguments. How you actually do it, whether, the state should be determining a curriculum, I want to have that stuff done as locally as possible.

But there is definitely a role for, um. Hard fact here. 

[00:49:03] Ben: Yeah, and rights and obligations. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And then last one on this one is, do you think your best possible society has more art and more fiction, more theater or? Less or is it actually it's up to that society to decide so it's very hard to tell 

[00:49:20] Rebecca: yeah this is a great question I wrote a paper about this which will become a chapter in my book, which is basically around this problem of If you just let the people determine what the culture should be the culture might be really bad And if you don't know the culture like if you don't know about Mozart, you're hardly gonna push for Mozart this is a difficult problem in terms of how much spend there should be, what the obligation on the taxpayer is.

How much preference should play a role in this? Are there, objectively good cultural things that everyone should know about? I have an argument which is something like, again, it's like a right to the opportunity to know certain things. And I think you can use an argument like that which kind of bypasses the objective subjective value [00:50:00] point.

Which is something like it's the case that some particular opera is established knowledge is that this is good in these particular ways and people know about it has cultural significance, then I think it's wrong to deny someone the opportunity to know about that. The Truman Show world in which you're kept in the bubble and you don't have awareness of things that are going on in the world is bad for various reasons.

One, because you can't play a cultural part in it. One, because if you don't have awareness of it, you can't know that you might like it. I think those kinds of arguments can bypass some of those much more difficult should be people just get what they want kind of argument. I don't know whether there'd be more.

I generally think that more is the way to count these things. Would there be a diverse and interesting cultural mix in Utopia? Yes. I'm not sure it would be Utopia if not. How you get to that though, what the process is. what the institutional arrangements are. I don't have a good answer for you yet, but hopefully I'll get one.

My guess is probably something a little bit like, I think Rawls says something like, in the realistic utopia I don't know something like it takes some time for for people to start being just to one another because they're suddenly now experiencing more just institutions or something like that.

I'm paraphrasing badly. My guess is that over time, when you have all these other advantages, so my conception of utopia is one where people have much more of a purchase on decision making, so decision making is much more decentralized. I think when you are being treated like a reasoning creature with the right to make decisions about your own life, I think that has other advantages.

And my guess is that one of those advantages is also maybe valuing a diversity of cultural goods. That's probably a bit of a stretch, but I think I could make that argument. Also maybe if I don't know, maybe you have access to more resources, you have more disposable income. Because I think the nearby possible world is one where there's much less scarcity of goods.

I think a world in which the state is less intrusive. You have more freedom to determine what the good life is for yourself. I have a naturally positive view about humankind, that we're naturally Good, most of us, but also that we're inquisitive. So again, I think probably you'd see a morality of cultural goods 

[00:52:18] Ben: Is health care a universal right in this utopia?

Are we wealthy enough that there is no resource constraint or I guess it depends if you're really wealthy then you probably get there. But I guess in the realistic utopia, there may be still other resource constraints. There's always going 

[00:52:35] Rebecca: to be, yeah, there's always going to be constraint, like number of doctors and nurses time to do operations.

But 

[00:52:41] Ben: do you think universal healthcare is better than let's say the US model of private insurance? I very simplified something, which is quite complicated, but 

[00:52:48] Rebecca: I generally think like mixed models are pretty good. I, it frustrates me when, if you criticize the NHS, people assume you want the American model.

I think America has pretty high spend also. I think there are two questions. One is how the goods are allocated. One is how you pay for it. I'm a hardcore believer in like a pretty generous social minimum. And by that, if people genuinely can't provide for themselves to meet their basic needs references to, we can, draw the line where that, you know, where that cuts in different ways.

Then I think we should, um, we should help those people. Again, there are all kinds of questions about how you do that, what the mechanisms are, what that counts as, what their role in contributing is generally I think like mixed payment. Models on a social minimum is the answer a world with fewer resource constraints Although like I say, you're still going to have the people constraint.

I think could look much better I dislike the way we do it in the uk partly because I think it has dreadful outcomes Just look actually to return to the women's healthcare thing our Maternity statistics are atrocious, on any count. They're still better than 

[00:53:52] Ben: the US, though. No bar, 

[00:53:55] Rebecca: no bar, man! Right?

[00:53:56] Ben: That's true, but I think we are worse, if I look correctly, than Slovenia and Slovakia. 

[00:54:02] Rebecca: I think they're probably the only European countries, though. Like France, Italy, Scandinavia. Plus it's not just a relative thing. There's going to be some absolute requirement here. And I don't think any country in the world is meeting that absolute requirement, partly because I think people don't take sufficiently women's pain into account.

There is still this kind of naturalistic fallacy argument on which it's good for women to feel pain during childbirth or something which I really dislike. I saw a good piece the other day about how women in France have much better access to epidurals and stuff. And again, it's partly cultural.

Cultural thing, but there's a 

[00:54:35] Ben: lot of there's a lot of cultural thing. There's actually a lot doctors themselves or Technocratic value of pain. Yeah does not match the Call it the patient or the consumer value of pain So this is one of the things because pain in itself like will you go through a painful episode?

But if you're cured at the end, so this is Partly the utilitarian problem that while you're killed, it didn't matter that you went through a lot of pain because you're cured at the end of it. [00:55:00] 

[00:55:00] Rebecca: It's like the argument is hey, the person is dead. It doesn't matter that they suffered. Yeah, 

[00:55:05] Ben: or even the person is alive.

It doesn't matter that they suffered because they're alive. Yeah 

[00:55:10] Rebecca: right, 

[00:55:10] Ben: great. So maybe let's do some quick fire. Cool, go for it. Underrated, overrated, and then we'll finish off with a couple of questions. Okay. I'll try and do some of these. You can pass underrated, overrated, or maybe neutral rated, or you could say more or less.

So we'll do a segue one. Underrated or overrated, universal basic income? 

[00:55:31] Rebecca: Probably overrated, just because a lot of people are obsessed by it. But I think it's a depending on how you, what you, what do you take it to mean? It's if you just take it as a social minimum type thing, but probably overrated just in terms of too 

[00:55:46] Ben: many people on about it social media, overrated, underrated, 

[00:55:51] Rebecca: underrated, at least the good types.

Twitter, for instance massively underrated. People love to hate on Twitter. I've met like loads of interesting people, work opportunities, make friends through it. Great. 

[00:56:01] Ben: Great. Great. Phil, 

[00:56:03] Rebecca: If you filter well. It's incredibly valuable. 

[00:56:07] Ben: Equality, underrated, overrated? 

[00:56:11] Rebecca: Depends on what you count as equality, right?

In terms of like basic equality of respect massively underrated. Probably the most important concept in morality. If you're talking about, equal distribution of goods, then definitely overrated. 

[00:56:27] Ben: Fair enough. Although that's interesting because then I was going to put freedom, but I guess you probably don't you don't rank things like between equality and freedom because you put those very important, but I'm guessing on freedom underrated or overrated, you'd probably still say it's underrated today.

[00:56:41] Rebecca: Yeah, freedom is so important. I think freedom is, we have all of these like denuded understandings of freedom that go around. Whether it's people thinking, freedom is how many, machine guns you can have, or whether people think freedom is trading away political rights for economic goods I think, I also want to make a distinction between the ontological sense of what it is to do something freely and what the moral value of having that capacity is.

I think though generally philosophical theories and particularly theories of value massively underrate freedom. That's the point about my Utopia book to be honest. Like where does freedom sit within the theory of the good? And I think people I hate people who are underrated. 

[00:57:20] Ben: Great. So we're speaking, I'm in London at the moment, and you're in Spain, so I think this might be obvious, but underrated, overrated, travel.

[00:57:28] Rebecca: Oh, I love travel. Particularly train travel. Trains are massively underrated because they couldn't not be, because they're so great. 

[00:57:35] Ben: Yeah, that's fair. 

[00:57:36] Rebecca: I also find as a, again, like a kind of aid to being productive. I love working on trains. I love, working in new places. It's inspiring and fun and.

Yeah, 

[00:57:48] Ben: that was great. Great how about so we talked a lot about respects i'm going to assume that's still underrated But what about the concept of honor? I guess we've got all of these Aristotelian or other values, but maybe honor do you think it's underrated overrated? 

[00:58:03] Rebecca: I mean i'm gonna ask you what you mean by honor if you want to I mean if you're talking about Sorry, isn't very important answer.

If you're talking about honoring somebody for doing something good, then it's probably a good thing. If you're talking about honoring somebody for doing something bad, then no, but maybe that doesn't count as honor. I get a little anxious around, all these kinds of traditional values, like being patriotic, being honorable, being deferential.

Um, I think they rub up against my sense in which I don't want people interfering in me. I also think pride is something I have a bit of a, anxious relation with. So yeah, I'm just gonna say it totally depends on what you mean. Sorry. 

[00:58:46] Ben: That's good. Good philosopher answer.

Okay, that's great. So last couple of questions. So if you could then. Choose one thing to change about the UK. I guess you could either do policy if you want to be practical or some philosophical or other concept that you think that is really underrated and we should really embed within UK thinking.

I guess we didn't talk about the centralized, decentralized thing, but I think people have picked up, you're not a fan of centralization and would want more localism, but yeah, if there's one thing you could either change in the world or maybe the UK, either policy or thought that you would embed what would it be?

[00:59:21] Rebecca: I put some brakes on the assisted dying stuff. It's being pushed through very quickly. I have I don't, I'm opposed to it substantively, but I think the process at the moment is very concerning. And I don't actually think it helps people on the side of, making arguments for it. I think it's counterproductive.

The process shows, it may just be the case that the process itself is bad, and we need to change the process. It may be that the process is being misused. Beyond that, yeah, I just think. some fiscal decentralization, the decoupling of revenue raising and spending at the local level. The UK is a massive, particularly England is a massive outlier here.

And that's not an argument itself, because maybe it's the case that [01:00:00] other places do too much of it. But I think it's disrespectful to people in the sense that I think it's not just that Fiscal decentralization brings about better ends, matching, local needs and preferences with decision making, whatever, competition innovation, specialization.

It's also you've got the right to make decisions about stuff around about you, and that's been taken away from local people. Easy change, just, yeah, start with some housing stuff or whatever, property taxes, and get the ball rolling. 

[01:00:29] Ben: Easy. That makes sense. I'm generally in favour of that. The one big exception is I don't know what you do about big infrastructure.

Because no one wants If you want a wind farm, no one wants wind farms next to them. 

[01:00:42] Rebecca: I love wind farms so much. I'm such a fan of the wind Oh man, I saw some really beautiful ones on the train line. If you ask most people, they don't want wind 

[01:00:49] Ben: farms. But maybe that's where they've got to make a stronger argument for it, but things like wind farms, The 

[01:00:53] Rebecca: aesthetic argument for wind turbines, both onshore and offshore, I think, is It's not, it's been underdone.

I would do that. I'd be the wind farm czar. 

[01:01:02] Ben: Or many nuclear power or something. I was thinking about the assisted dying debate. It does strike me that I wonder whether the private members bill route, this is a really peculiar UK thing. So listeners, but I do wonder whether that's actually something we need to just.

Yes, and do other processes. It's not that, for instance, the U. S. has got some really weird esoteric processes, which they should definitely nix if they could. They can't because it's entrenched in their system, but it strikes me that this was under debated under or from all sides and that and partly because they tried to push it through this.

[01:01:36] Rebecca: 100%. And I think you're right. I think it does bring up questions about the PNB thing, which already is a little bit of a joke, a bit like the EDM thing. Some, some of these routes are a little bit of a joke, to be honest. And I mean that in the sense of that's what the consensus view within Westminster, again, that might be a bad view, but that is not a consensus view within the rest of the country.

So you already, you've got a Yeah. Transparency. There's these technocratic 

[01:01:59] Ben: things. Whenever you have these things about people have to sit up and speak for a set amount of time to do these things. You have it in the US as well. It's if you can stand there for six hours or something, you can run down the session by weird, sheer dint of willpower.

I'm not sure the ability to stand for six hours should be the measure that we debate these things on. Something's 

[01:02:19] Rebecca: going wrong there, isn't it? It's like your point about Peter Singer. If your argument comes to the conclusion that you have to. Be in favor of killing the baby. Something's gone wrong, guys.

[01:02:29] Ben: Anyway, okay, so I'll end up with would you like to highlight any current projects or thoughts that you're working on? Obviously there's this book around freedom, but anything else you'd like to mention? 

[01:02:39] Rebecca: Yeah, so the book, read the book, although I've got to write the book, but I'm doing an inter intellect series on it.

So if anybody's interested in coming along once a month online, that should be fun. I'm enjoying writing my sub stack. I'm writing a piece at the moment about the meaning of life. Cause I think it's funny that almost everybody makes this joke about, Oh, what do philosophers think about the meaning of life yet?

Of all the many philosophers I've met, I don't think I've ever met a philosopher working on the meaning of life. I thought it was funny. I'm waiting on a visa to go to But they do work on the good life 

[01:03:06] Ben: sometimes. 

[01:03:06] Rebecca: Yes, they do, but I think So yes, that's right. Of course, the philosopher's answer is Oh, but maybe not explicitly answering that question.

I'm waiting on a visa to go to America for a couple of years. I've got an exciting new job I'm very happy about. Yes, good things ahead, I hope. 

[01:03:21] Ben: And let's end with any life advice, career advice, philosophical advice that you might have for people. I've already picked up, if you don't want to compromise very much, definitely don't want to go and be a politician so that's one one thing but yeah, any other thoughts that you might have, maybe for people who want to follow?

A life within philosophy or political economy thinking or just generally some things that you thought about How you got to where you got to today 

[01:03:49] Rebecca: think hard about what the norms are that you follow like unthinkingly I think and maybe this is a just an interest in freedom thing I think all of us do things just because that's the way people around us do those things at the worst that leads us to doing really bad things At the best, it probably just means you're not getting as much fulfillment out of life as you might.

There are many ways to live a good life, and it's for you to work that out for yourself, because you're the only person who can have any systemic access to that. I think in a good life, you spend your whole life working that out. You probably do a plurality of valuable things but the life in which you just follow the crowd, not because.

And I'm not, I don't want to, make a kind of moral criticism of that. I just think it's very easy to do stuff just because. It's what you do, or what other people around you do. Keep questioning that. Again, all I can do is answer for me, but I find myself happier when I stop and think, am I really happy doing this thing?

I often ask myself this question, particularly if I feel frustrated or annoyed. I'm having a bad day, or I think, why do I have to do this thing? Whatever it's to [01:05:00] do with some obligation. I stop and think, what's the counterfactual, what is it I would rather be doing?

And sometimes it's just hey, I just don't want to have to go to this meeting, in which case maybe I just should go to the meeting in some instances. But sometimes it's no, maybe I should be living in another country or maybe I should be writing about different stuff. So think about the counterfactual, is my answer.

[01:05:21] Ben: Yeah, that's really good advice. Just think about the norms that you just follow, maybe because you've always followed, and check whether they are still what you want to do. I do, want to have one follow up on that. So apart from stopping and thinking, or maybe even asking chat TPT, is there a good way of doing that?

Because sometimes you don't really know that you do things like you've always done. And you might not be challenged about it. I may have always eaten meat for a huge amount of time and it's quite hard to, you never get the external trigger. I guess this is your point about indoctrinated thinking about children when they don't meet those different ways of thought.

Is there a good way of snapping yourself out of it? 

[01:06:00] Rebecca: That's an excellent question. I don't know. So two things, one in terms of how you work out what the things are, you just do an audit of what the things are you do in your day. I'm a big believer that you could always find a little bit of time to do something you want to do.

So I do 10 minutes of exercises a day and go for a 10 minute run because I can't really say I don't have 10 minutes. I find that's really valuable to me in so many ways. So yeah, just one way to work out whether you're doing stuff just because you do it is to think about what the things are that you do.

[01:06:32] Rebecca: Then how you assess the value of them is difficult, isn't it, right? You want to be thinking about it in terms of whether it's good for you, whether it's good for the people around you. Whether you enjoy it, but that can't be sufficient, because sometimes you enjoy bad stuff and you shouldn't.

Being aware of, how it interacts with basic values, so I'm a big value pluralist. Is this furthering freedom? Is it furthering justice? That sounds like a very fellow affair arrogant philosopher's answer or something. But thinking about how your life interacts with basic values, thinking about what those values are.

Thinking maybe something like, the domains in which you want to succeed or you want to offer something. What are the things that if you, when you die, you'll be sad you didn't do, hadn't done. And there are always these like flippant answers to that, Oh you'll never, you'll never wish you'd gone to another meeting.

You'd wish you'd spent more time with your kids. No! Maybe there are some meetings that you would wish you had done. Maybe you don't want to have kids. I don't want to have kids. I don't want to have kids just because I don't have the instinct to, and I don't think you should if you don't want to. But also I think a lot of people have kids just because they think they should.

That's not to say having kids isn't a good thing. I think it's for many people the most valuable thing they do in many ways. But yeah, think about just what a good life is, and what the things are you think are sufficient for a good life. The things that are necessary, so if you haven't done X and Y, you haven't led a good life.

Or if you have done X and Y, you haven't. If you've murdered somebody, it's gonna be hard to argue you've led a good life. You might do some good stuff. And then what's sufficient? What is going to be the thing? Like I say, for many people, having brought another human being into the world and loved it and made it, set it on the route to being fulfilled itself is a sufficiently good thing to say that you've had a good life.

What are the other options on that? So, there are some easy answers like, Hey, I cured polio, or I wrote the world's greatest novel, although some people might think that isn't a sufficient one. That's, I think, for me, a really big and important question that we should all think about explicitly.

I think we do think about it implicitly. But one of the great things about being a human is being able to reflect on these things and reason about them. And I think if we don't do that, we're really missing out on something that is it's not just part of us, but it's also something that we have the capacity to build on I think that's my answer.

Ben: That sounds  great yeah, think about your norms and think about what it is to have a good life. So with that Rebecca Thank you very much. 

[01:08:56] Rebecca: Thanks so much Ben. I really enjoyed it

In Podcast, Life, Writing, Arts Tags Rebecca Lowe, philosophy, fiction, freedom

Peter Gray: Transforming education, play, self-directed learning, parenting | Podcast

November 1, 2024 Ben Yeoh

Peter Gray is a psychologist and author of Free to Learn. For many years, he has been studying play. He keeps a substack here. 

Gray discusses his perspective on the ideal education system, which he believes should be a bottom-up movement rather than a top-down imposition. He emphasizes the importance of self-directed education where children have the freedom to follow their curiosity and interests. Gray explains how traditional schooling stifles curiosity and playfulness, and traces the historical roots of the current education system. He also highlights the sociopolitical factors that have contributed to the decline of children's mental health, arguing against the popular notion that social media is the primary cause. Additionally, the conversation touches on the impact of economic inequality on parenting styles and child freedom. Gray shares his current projects, including initiatives aimed at encouraging more free play in schools and educating pediatricians on the importance of play, while offering practical advice for parents to support their children's independence and curiosity.

"If offered the opportunity to redesign the entire educational system as a top-down thing, me being the czar of education and telling everybody else what they should do, I would decline the offer...it really has to emerge from the bottom up."


"Education works best when the people being educated are in charge of it... Children are biologically designed to learn through exploration, through play."

"Our school system suppresses curiosity and playfulness...the two primary biological educative drives in children."


"Ask your child: 'What would you like to do that you haven’t done before that might be a little bit frightening but that you’d really like to try?' It’s how children build courage and how parents build trust."

Watch above or on YouTube, or listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods.

Transcript and contents below.


Contents

  • 00:19 Redesigning the Education System

  • 01:41 The Role of Curiosity and Play in Learning

  • 05:55 Historical Context of Traditional Schooling

  • 08:26 Children's Rights and Freedom Over Time

  • 12:11 Cultural Shifts and Parental Concerns

  • 15:28 Impact of Economic Inequality on Parenting

  • 18:53 Rise of Stranger Danger and Overprotectiveness

  • 28:14 Common Core and the Mental Health Crisis

  • 38:28 The Evolution of Reading and Technology

  • 41:17 Balancing Screen Time and Real Life

  • 43:12 Reflections on 'Free to Learn'

  • 45:07 Evolutionary Psychology and Its Impact

  • 50:28 Advice for a Fulfilling Retirement

  • 01:00:04 Creative Processes and Inspirations

  • 01:05:45 Current Projects and Parenting Advice

Transcript (This has been AI assisted so mistakes are possible)

Ben: Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to the psychologist Peter Gray. He is the author of Free to Learn and an inspiration to those interested in self directed education. Peter, welcome. 

Peter: I'm very happy to be here. 

Ben: If you could redesign the entire education system, what would it look like to you?

Peter: First of all, let me say that I would if offered the opportunity to redesign the entire educational system as a top down thing, me being the czar of education and telling everybody else what they should do, I would decline the offer. I think that, I think it has to be a bottom up movement.

No educational system is going to work. unless the families believe in it and want it. So I think that the way that the educational, I'll get to your question, to the intent of your question in a moment, but I think that the educational system, it really has to emerge from the bottom up.

My ideal would not be a single educational system. It would be the many opportunities for learning many different ways of learning, many different and where families would have options of what to do. Some families would homeschool, some families would get together with other families and create little parent co ops.

Some families would would opt for something different. But my own beliefs, of course, are that education works best. When the people being educated are in charge of it, that when the children, if we're talking about children, when children are making their own choices about what it is that they're doing and learning children are really biologically designed to learn through through exploration through play.

They're born highly curious. That curiosity leads them to want to understand the world around them. And they're born with this strong drive to play and play in many different ways and play is how children develop skills so that it's, if instead of the question, how would I design it for everybody?

What I would try to encourage everybody would be to create for their children or for the children that they would like to. draw into it opportunities for self directed education. This is what I've been involved in for a long time, where the children have many learning opportunities. There is all sorts of tools for learning available to them, where there are adults who can help them if they want help and whatever it is they're interested in, but where children are really free to follow to develop and follow their own interests.

That's really the education That I that I believe. I think that the first, that the years of life that we call sort of the school years, especially the early school years, up onto maybe the mid, up as far as maybe the mid teenage years, are really times for exploration, for discovery, figuring out who you are, what you like to do.

And what kind of life you would like to have once you're an adult we're not giving children an opportunity to do that now because we keep them busy all the time. We keep them busy with school work, which is mostly irrelevant to them and with with extracurricular activities outside of school. We don't give them much chance to really, I even asked the question, who am I and what do I like to do?

Though that's what children really need much more opportunity for. 

Ben: And why do you think traditional schooling, let's call it that, stifles curiosity and motivation so much? Is it simply because we've set them this curriculum and we fill it with all You know, our ideas, which might not be their ideas, or is there some particularly strong lines of evidence that you think that why traditional schooling seems to stifle so many children in terms of this curiosity, motivation, and those kind of things?

Peter: Yes both of those are correct. The, first of all, why does it stifle? Of course it does. You can't curiosity. is disruptive in the typical school. You can't have, the child who wants to explore things is disruptive in the classroom. You can't have, you can't have 30 kids in the classroom.

You can't even have 10 in the classroom. And expect them all to be interested in the same thing at the same time. They're all curious about the same thing. Curiosity doesn't work that way. You've got to, if you're going to have a, have an educational system in which you, in which children can explore based on their curiosity, you have to expect everybody to be doing different things.

You can't expect, you can't have order in the classroom, where everybody's sitting in seats and everybody's doing, and you also can't have certain, Expectations that everybody's going to learn the same things at the same time that just can't happen. And of course, curiosity is destroyed. So is playfulness.

Because if you're playful, that's that gets you into trouble in school. That's just so so our school system. So the two primary biological educative drives in children are curiosity and playfulness. This is nature's way of educating children and schools just have to shut them off. You can't run a school in our traditional way.

It has to be an entirely different concept of a school. But a somewhat, more historical answer to this is the original purpose of schools was precisely to shut off curiosity and play. The school, the schools that we have today, the western type schools that we have today, which are now all over the world, really started in the 17th century, even somewhat before in response to the Protestant Reformation, where the belief was that we need to educate children so they can read the Bible and so they will be obedient.

And so the schools were designed primarily in Prussia the German state of Prussia, to educate them. to suppress children's spontaneous ways of learning, deliberately to suppress that, that it was believed at that time that children were born sinful, and that things that they did themselves would be sinful and harmful, and that the primary thing that children needed to learn is to is to be obedient to authority.

And so schools develop deliberately to suppress children's own endeavors and get them to obey to authority, to the school master, as they were called at that time. And so a school system developed that for that purpose and we've still got that same school system. Nobody that I know who goes into teaching says, I'm going into teaching so I can suppress curiosity and so that I can inhibit playfulness and so I can indoctrinate children.

Nobody says that. But. Every teacher who goes into the traditional school system is going into a system that was designed for that purpose. And no matter what the teachers say they're doing or want to do, they are suppressing curiosity and they are indoctrinating. They may not be indoctrinating them in the Bible anymore, but they're indoctrinating them in whatever the curriculum is.

Because it the school system is not designed for questioning, for critical thought, for for people having really different ideas. It's designed for uniformity and it's designed for learning a particular curriculum, whatever that curriculum is. 

Ben: And do you think children have more rights today than or fewer rights, if you trace it back, historically children were allowed to work.

Then they were looking too long hours. We decided, Oh, that might not be such a great thing. But then rather than giving them more time to play we put them in an education system. And then there seems to be over history, talk about 50, a hundred years a kind of. tension between giving children more rights and more say in what they do and less rights or less ability to move around and go out and play or take their own transport and things.

How do you think that's evolved? What do you think we should be doing about it? And do you think children have more or less rights and should we be giving them more understanding of that? 

Peter: That's a really good question. So there's some ways. And there's some ways in which children right now have more rights than they have in at least in Western history, in modern Western history, they have more rights in the home to talk back to their parents to eat what they choose to eat rather than what their parents tell them they have to eat, to dress the way they want to dress.

We're even talking about the rights of children to change their gender if they want to do that, right? These are rights that were not present when I was a child as much as they are today. Certainly not present 150 years ago as much as they are today. On the other hand children in the past certainly when I was a child and before that weren't watched all the time.

We had certain kind of restrictions in the home, but we spent a lot of time outside of the home with other kids, playing, exploring, doing things that kids have always done. And there, children were free. And now we're not allowing that nearly as much as in the past. That's been largely cut off. Children are not free, at least in the United States, to just go out and play on their own and with other children, without adults there guarding them, protecting them, telling what to do, and so on and so forth.

So in that respect, children have far fewer rights. They have, as one author who's looked at the history of this put up, children have more personal rights in the home than they did before, but far less freedom outside of the home than they ever have had before. It's also the case that the school system over time, certainly since the years when I was in school many decades ago, has become far more time consuming.

And far more restrictive of what you can do within the school than it used to be. So school has become less free than it used to be. We used to have much more time for recess. We used to have a long lunch hour. We had shorter school days. And in elementary school, we didn't have homework. So when I was a kid, school was not as oppressive.

It was not as big a deal in children's lives as it is today. So that's the in the long run, in the very long run of human history. We were probably freest, children were probably freest when, back when we were hunter gatherers. The studies that have been done of hunter gatherer cultures that have survived into the 20th century at least, and studied in the 20th century children have amazing amount of freedom compared to children in any modern day society other than the hunter gatherer culture.

Ben: Yeah, I recall when I was 12, I took my first solo plane trip and now I think about it and speak to people are amazed that a 12 year old would take a solo plane trip and it wasn't a big deal. And I think there must be multiple causes of this decline of play or the the freedom or the agency that we give children.

What do you think are the major ones around it? Do you think it's just a cultural shift, the sort of media narrative and these institutions and structures? And if it is that, is it something which is going to be really difficult to reverse? 

Peter: Yeah, I think it is going to be difficult to reverse. First of all, regarding your solo plane trip, I, my son His first solo plane trip.

He, when he was 12 years old, he told his mother and me that he wanted to go to to, to England. He had been playing Dungeons and Dragons and he was really interested in castles and Neither his mother or I at that point had ever been overseas. He knew we were sticking the mud so we weren't going to go.

And so he planned, this was before the internet, this was in 1980 he planned his own trip he, and he announced to us that, and he said that he was going to go and he said, don't worry about the money. I'll earn the money, which he did. He was working, he worked in a restaurant first washing dishes, and then they put him on the line ticket.

At 12 years old and he earned his own money for this trip. He figured the whole trip out by himself at 12 years old. I believe he was 13 by the time he left. He claims he was 12. We've had a discussion about it, but I would have to look up the actual dates. But I think he had, I think he had barely turned 13 at the time.

I think he left after May 25th, which would have been his birthday. So that so that was, now that, at that time even then, that raised some eyebrows. But it wasn't, People wouldn't have regarded his mother and me as negligent. They wouldn't have put us in jail for allowing that to happen, right?

Today, they might. The airline probably wouldn't have allowed him on, unless there were guarantees he was going to be met. And on top of this, he was a child who's, Type 1 diabetes. So he, it needs to monitor his own insulin and all of this kind of stuff. No, I wouldn't do that today. Not because I wouldn't trust the child to do it, but because it would be so against the cultural grain.

So even since 1980, there has been a huge change in the way the culture looks at this kind of thing. So I think that the change in the culture has come from a variety of causes. It is interesting that In the United States, the biggest shift occurred in the 1980s. Some of this was building up gradually before, but the biggest shift in thinking about this occurred in the decade between 1980 and 1990.

And there are several things that happened in the United States that I think all contributed to this. One of them was was the election of Ronald Reagan as president and the and and a legislature that was with Reagan. And what happened beginning in the 1980s is that the economy changed dramatically in the United States.

Such that the gap between the rich and poor increased and has been increasing ever since. There's a lot of research that shows that when the gap between rich and poor is great, when you lose the kind of of safety net that occurs when government provides supports for people who are poor.

When you lose the safety of labor unions, which were more or less destroyed during the Reagan era, and when you begin to greatly decrease the taxes on the wealthy, and therefore have to cut back on safety measures for the poor. Suddenly now, parents become far more concerned about whether their children are going to make it financially or not.

Back when I was a kid, parents weren't that worried about that. I grew up in a working class family, and neither of my parents at that time had gone to college. My uncles, with one exception, were not college educated. They all had. decent jobs. They all could support a family. They could own a home.

They could even own a little cottage out in the country, and without, and it, and the ed, that this educational achievement was far less of a big deal. Then with these changes, people began to worry. And we also began, there were also other changes that occurred that, For a variety of reasons, some of those working class jobs went away.

People began to think that the way that I can make sure. that my child, or at least increase the chances that my child will succeed as an adult, is to make sure that my child is well educated, that they do all the right things in order to prepare themselves in what suddenly now is seen as a very competitive world.

We didn't see it as so competitive, and so there's actually research that shows cross culturally That in countries where the gap between rich and poor is great, parents are far more controlling of their children, far more concerned that they do the quote right thing educationally, far less likely to simply let them have leisure time and explore and all of these kinds of things.

than in countries where the gap between rich and poor is less. So for example, in the Scandinavian countries, Finland, for example, the, there the gap between rich and poor is far less than in the United States. And children are afforded much more individual freedom there than they are in the United States.

There's actually graphs showing that if you plot on one axis, the degree of economic inequality. And on another axis, parents attitudes about parenting and put it on a kind of controlling versus permissive spectrum, as you go out towards more and more economic inequality, you go towards more and more controlling, less and less permissiveness.

So I think that was part of it. In addition to that. In 1979 and then again in 1981, there were very much publicized cases of a young boy being kidnapped, in one case murdered, in the other case lost, never recovered. In both cases, if I remember correctly, there were six year old boys apparently snatched away by a stranger.

And suddenly we now had warnings about stranger danger. People were, you would hear in the United States in the 1980s, public service announcements, do you know where your child is now? And so the concern about watching your child all the time, because they might be snatched away. Now this is, was then an extraordinarily rare crime.

That's why it was so newsworthy. It's still extraordinarily rare. It almost never happens. But people began to become afraid of that. And that became a reason not to let your child out of sight. And that reason has even grown over time even for this irrational reason that, there's this tiny little probability, little chance that your child might be snatched away by a stranger.

It almost never occurs. But people think it occurs frequently because of the way it's publicized. So that, that, that played a role. And then there's one other thing that happened in the 1980s, also at the direction of Ronald Reagan, which was the a book that a federal analysis of our school system, which concluded, in fact, this was a foregone conclusion based on who was chosen to work on this study and write this book, that our school system has become too lax we are not keeping up with other countries, particularly not keeping up with the Southeast Asian countries educationally, and we're going to fall behind.

And so this book was published and that became then that initiated a new way of thinking what then was regarded as a reformation in schools, which was the opposite of the kind of reformation I would be wanting. More and more classes, more and more testing, less and less freedom of teachers to do what they wanted.

And then that ultimately became incorporated into the No Child Left Behind Act and then Common Core. Which greatly restricted what teachers could do in the classroom. So school became ever more rigid, ever more controlled by top down by a curriculum. So all of those kinds of changes, I think, are, have led to the system that is leading children to suffer so much today.


Ben: I hadn't put together the politics of it or the emphasis that Reagan had on, the individual and the ability or opportunity for jobs and that type of thing, as well as say, the stranger danger and articles on school. It's interesting because for instance, in Finland, you don't go to school until five or seven, even it would be, you could easily just go and no one would blink and in some cultures like in japan They make a big deal of the first time you could go to the shops yourself, which you might do at three four Three or four or something like that and have this you know that from the cross cultural and in the uk we had a big splash again with a missing child Maddie, I believe a daughter, which again became very salient, but to your point, the statistics of it are extremely rare, much more likely for all sorts of other incidents than that.

But I guess that brings us to the point today that parents fear that they will be bad parents, or, even there might be some legal act against them if they take their children out of school, if they feel that the school's not working for them and that type of Atmosphere or even within school just to try and give children perhaps more agency Around how they would live their lives even within the school system What would you say to parents who feel that they might be bad parents or what we can do?

Around letting children have a bit more agency in play 

Peter: Yes yeah, you make a good point that, so it has now become a moral imperative that you and in some degree legal imperative, not actually written in law, but treated as if it were written in law, about always minding your child, always watching your child the One of the things that's happened is that social child protective services in most states have a requirement that if somebody calls the police or calls the hotline and says there's a child out there not being watched by an adult, that they have to investigate.

And so a lot of parents who allow their child out in the way that. All parents would have and, decades ago have had this experience of social services showing, social protected, child protective services showing up at their home. If you're white and middle class or above, you will fight it in court and almost die.

essentially always win or win even before it have to go to court. But if you are black and poor, the statistics are there's a pretty good chance that they would take your child away. So people have become vigilant for that reason, even over their children, even if they know that it would be good for their child to go out and do these things on their own.

It would be developmentally appropriate. It would be valuable. The child would enjoy the child would grow from it. So people are afraid for that reason. And then in addition to that, it has really become it has become such a norm and it's been present for so long that people begin to feel that if you're not watching your child all the time, and if you're not there to teach your child and direct your child, that you're not a good parent, you're a bad parent.

And of course nobody wants to be a bad parent and even people who intellectually understand this, it would be perfectly safe for my eight year old, nine year old child to go play in the park by themselves without me. And they're perfectly responsible, they could do that. Even they, And even if they're not so concerned that some neighbor is going to call, but most people are concerned about that.

But even despite that, they might not do it because there's something in their head that says everybody around me says this would make me a bad parent. Maybe it would make me a bad parent. You don't necessarily think it through that way. But we automatically believe if we're not doing what other people do, Is there something wrong with us?

Is there something, we're all creatures of norms. That's part of being a human being. And if we're not behaving like other people are behaving, we begin, not only are we worried that other people are going to question us and criticize us, but we begin to question ourselves and criticize ourselves about that.

So absolutely. What can we do? I try to whenever I speak to parents and when I write articles and books to him towards parents, I really try to talk about all the what are the myths here and what are the things you can do? And given the constraints, what can you do in our society today?

Without that would give your child more freedom, more opportunity to play more control over their own lives, more more possibility that they can grow up with a growing sense of independence and responsibility and therefore become competent, mentally healthy adults. So the and there are things parents can do.

Ben: So you touched on mental health. And there's a lot of concern, in the media about mental health in children, although some of that might be due to more awareness and diagnosis and the like, and some of it might be a trend. I think you've argued for this connection between the decline in free play and the rise in things like anxiety and depression amongst young people.

We've had others more recently, hate who's made a lot of a kind of social media hypothesis, although there's been some pushback from that and some articles in nature. And I think you've been a little bit skeptical about whether the evidence is around that. I guess there's also a complication as maybe if you're if you have too much screen time, you're not out playing in the park, then again screen time might be one of the times when you are able now to get together with your like minded peers and hang out because you're not allowed to hang out elsewhere.

So you might as well hang out digitally. I've seen great adventures in things like Minecraft worlds or chat groups and things like that. So I'd be interested in your view as to whether there is, how strong the phenomena are. of concern about mental health in children is and perhaps the weighting that you would put on a decline in play arguments for it versus say social media hypothesis and the like.

Peter: I think it is primarily the decline in play, the increased toxicity of school, the way we do school and and and the decline generally of opportunities for children to do things independently. It's not just play. Play, I define as an independent activity. If it's controlled by adults, it's not play.

But other independent things, like just traveling around the neighborhood by yourself, getting places by yourself, doing what you did at age 12 and what my son did at age 12 or 13. Those kinds of things. Yeah. We don't even allow kids to go, downtown by themselves at age 12 anymore, in this country.

So that's, so all of that is, of course, that is going to make kids, that's going to stunt children's mental development. Now, in terms of the, in my mind, the best measure of the decline of the, of the decline of mental health is probably suicide rate, even though that's just the tip of the iceberg of suffering.

because it's a solid number that the way that you measure anxiety and depression, you're right, could possibly be changed in terms of people's willingness to report it, to admit it and so on and so forth. But the suicide rate is by 1990 was already about five times what it was in the 1950s for teenagers.

and it peaked in the 1990s. There's actually, let me spend a couple minutes on this because it, this also gets to the difference between what Jonathan Haidt believes and what I believe about this. Between 1950 and 1990, you had an upward slope of suicide rates. To the degree that we can, we have data on Based on assessments of anxiety and depression, those also were upper sloping.

Reached a peak, interestingly, in 1990. That was the peak. That peak was as high as it is today. We're not higher today than we were in 1990 on any measure of mental problems among young people. Fight ignores that totally. So that was all before the internet. That was all before most families had computers in their homes.

We had all, we had already been changing the nature of schooling. We had already been depriving children of free play and a lot of the freedoms that they had before by 1990. Then. What's interesting, and I only began talking about this recently, I tended to ignore it as everybody else did, things got better for a while.

Between 1990 and 2000, suicide rate went down. So did depression and anxiety, to the degree that we have reasonable measures of those things, went down. Not to 1950s levels, but went down by about a third of the way down. Then leveled off between 2000 and 2010. Now, why did they go down? The only answer I can come up with is they went down because of the internet.

It went down because we had by 1990, we had pretty much prevented kids from interacting with one another, playing, exploring, but now they had a new way to do it. They had a new way of doing it. They had they figured out how to use these computers before most adults did. Once that but by the time by the mid 1950s, by the mid 1990s, most families with teenagers had computers with an Internet connection.

They were playing games with one another. They were playing multiplayer video games. They were communicating with one another. They had also some kind of expertise that many adults didn't have. You would go into department stores in the mid 1990s to the computer section, and there would be a teenager there explaining how these machines worked.

So suddenly, kids found a new way to communicate. They gained a new kind of status in a sense, because they had figured this stuff out and I think that's why it went down. It didn't go back because this didn't, this was not as good as what kids had before back in the 1950s, when you could just go out and play and explore and do all these interesting things outdoors as well.

But this was better than what you had in the 1990s. Then So then the question is, why did it start going back up again? Beginning around 2010, it started going back up again, and we're now back at 1990s levels on all of this. We're not above it, but we're back at 1990s levels. We've still got the internet.

We've still got video games. What happened to bring it back up? And it's not that suddenly we're allowing children more freedom. I, my explanation for it, and I've written some blog posts about this. I'm currently writing a book that deals with this. But the, my explanation, Is common core.

This is when this increase, by the way, despite what height says in the book, did not occur worldwide , this increase in it did not occur throughout Europe. It just did not occur. I've looked at the data, it didn't occur there, . The suicide rate has been flat there. It was flat in Canada, it was flat in the whole EU suicide rates.

And as. probably the most reliable measure, did not increase among teens between 2010 And and 2020, which is usually the decade that Haidt is looking at so why did it increase in the United States and not those other places? Those other places, they have the internet, they have social media, they're not deprived of these things.

They're on it as much as our kids are, but they're not suffering in the same rate. Why not? It's because the suffering is not because of being on the internet. It's because the suffering is because we've done too much. What we've done with our schools, their schools changed dramatically with the onset of Common Core in the United States.

There's no question about that. Every study that's been done in which teenagers themselves are asked about what is it is the source of your anxiety and depression. Every study shows that the answer they give you far and away more than any other answer is school. And beginning after 2010, beginning with Common Core, really beginning around 2013 when most states had Common Core, that answer became even more common than it was before.

So just to give you an example of the American Psychological Association did a study in 2013 called Stress in America. They do this study every year with adults, but every once in a while they include teenagers. 2013, they included teenagers. They found that teenagers, by their measure, were the most stressed out people in the country.

And when they asked what the source of stress was, 83 percent cited school. Nothing else came close. You could list more than one thing, but nothing else came close. The same study that was done four years earlier, when they asked teens that question, it was something like 50 percent said it was school. So it jumps from 50 percent to 83 percent saying school is what's stressing me out.

I think that, and that, that was the time, and there were also by, at that time, by 2013, there were many more kids who said they were feeling stressed, they were feeling anxious, and so on, that was true. So Hyatt and some others show this curve, they don't show the fact that things were going down before that, or that we were just as high before, they show this curve and they say what else could it be?

This is when cell phones came into being. And my answer is something else happened at that same time. And that's this dramatic change in school. 

Ben: That's fascinating. I haven't heard that as well articulated and I look forward to reading your book on it. I wonder if there's any data then on depression rates or suicide rates in those who are at self directed places or homeschool, unschooled.

Because there's probably a large enough sample in the U. S. now. Of that, maybe even in the UK, because there's a reasonable home education part, and maybe that would provide some evidence for you. It also leads me to think that means that you're probably less worried than, say, the media would suggest on how children are using screen time.

And would you basically say that, that you could just let them be? And is that from any age, or is maybe nine or ten a little bit too young to have unrestricted screen time? Again, just let children be let them have agency. They can maybe suffer the consequences of a sleepless night. Maybe they'll learn from that.

Are you generally less worried about screen time or is there still an opportunity cost for these other kinds of play, which would be maybe similar to what hunter gatherers or others do have more outdoor play and or does it matter less as long as it's an independent child chosen activity, 

Peter: So I think one thing, if we want kids to be on screens more, we have to let them be outdoors more.

We have to allow them other options. And what that means is not putting them into adult directed sports. That's not play, that's just more like school. That means really allowing them to be kids, allowing them. So in self directed learning centers, kids are allowed to be on screens as much as they want.

And they are on screens a fair amount. Why wouldn't they be? It's the biggest tool we have today. It's a bit, it's a major educational tool but they're also outdoors a lot. They're also playing outdoors. They're doing a lot of things because they can. They've got a big menu and most of them are taking use of it.

Now, there's always been some kids, even when I was a kid in the 1950s, there's some kids, we call them nerds, right? They're indoor people. Back in my day, they spent all their time reading. Why would they read? Why would they want to read instead of go out fishing with me? I couldn't figure that out.

There's still some people given a choice. They want to be on the computer all the time, so that's the but so there's their individual differences. And we've now had this round long enough to know that those who are on the computer all the time, they can learn all. They go on to find lives, they go on to a whole variety of lives.

Many of them become computer technicians or computer specialists of one sort or video game designers, but they don't all do. Some of them go on to become anything they want to be. They develop skills, they build competence. The computer, these computer games are extraordinarily complex and difficult.

They're, they build your intelligence in ways that you can apply in all sorts of ways. So I'm not that worried about it. I do think, here's what I do think, especially for young children. So back when I was a kid in the 1950s, concerning going outdoors, doing things outdoors, parents understood that there are dangers.

And they taught us about the dangers. They taught us safety rules look both ways before you cross the street. If if somebody stops in a car and offers you candy to get into the car, go away. If they try to pull you in, scream at the top of your voice. We were all, Spirits weren't naive, they were, they knew there were some dangers out there.

The risks were pretty small about the stranger thing, but the risk was there and they taught us what to do. There was also general advice, generally speaking, especially if you're going to be out late at night, be with a friend, don't go by yourself, there's safety in numbers. There were these kinds of things taught to us.

I think. We also need to teach young people about safety on the internet. There are dangers on the internet, including the danger of just getting sucked into it and spending too much time, wasting your time more than even you would really want to do. So instructions in time management, how to control your time.

I also think it's appropriate to have certain rules about, I wouldn't take, I think it would be terrible idea to take away the cell phone. It's the most powerful tool we've got, educational tool. It's also a safety tool. If you, if something happens to you, you've got that in your pocket, you can call your parents or you can call 911.

Why take that away? But, There are safety things about it, don't, just like you don't, if somebody offers you candy to get into the car, if somebody meets you on the internet and wants to meet you and you don't know them, don't do it. These are common sensing. Most kids beyond the age of about 13 understand this or about the age of 15 understand more so today than in the past.

They're pretty savvy about this kind of stuff, but there may be some who aren't. Yeah. There are also times in places where none of us adults as well as children should Should allow ourselves to get on our screens like at the dinner table. Let's all put our computers away So let's all put our cell phones away so we can be with one another at dinner don't I think it's good advice to anybody who's tempted to keep their phone on at night to just not take it into the bedroom, keep it outside of the bedroom because it might keep you awake.

You might not, you might hear it pop. You might hear a little ding and be an irresistibly wanna answer it. It's going to keep you up at night. Don't do that. So keep it out of the bedroom. Yeah. If you are involved, if you're going to a place where you're having a meeting with other people, like you or I would be very rude right now if we picked up our cell phone and started checking our email or our social media contacts.

What a rude thing to do. So don't take it to meetings where you're talking, where you're supposed to be there talking to other people. I think it's perfectly appropriate in school settings where you're going to have a discussion about something and you're all supposed to be present to say, park your I also think summer camps would be quite legitimate to say this is a camping experience where we are learning about being present in physically with one another and being outdoors.

And the smartphone is a distraction from that. So no smartphones during camping period. I think those are all legitimate things to do. To do but taking a smartphone away from a child of any age is taking away the most valuable Tool we have in our modern society. 

Ben: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense give them rules and principles you know the advice that you'd want to give anyone including ourselves but don't take away don't take away the actual tool.

Your book free to learn I think it's over a decade old. I was wondering in those years or even from looking all the way back. Do you still feel the core ideas are as important now as ever? I get this feeling as yes. And has anything changed over that time when you would put more emphasis on something now than you would have done previously?

Have you changed your mind about anything? 

Peter: I haven't changed my mind about any of it. The, As I've explained, if anything, the school system has become worse than what I was describing there, and I might have, if I were to do a revision of the book, I might put more emphasis on the harm of of schooling as we do it now, and especially of, especially since Common Core.

Common Core was just beginning to come into effect at that time, and so I didn't really have that data. But on all the other things things have gotten worse. I would have also, however, which I didn't do in that book, talked about the, I did in that book say that, people who are worried about about the internet and online activity, I did say this has been, if anything, the saving grace rather than the cause of the problem.

I would even emphasize that now more than I did that now that I have really looked at the data showing. That things improved, meant improved for kids during this, that decade between the time that we had, we began that most kids now had online access and the time when common core took effect, we had actually improvement in children's mental health.

I didn't talk about that at all in free to learn. That'll be a big topic in my next book. One of a number of big topics in my next book. 

Ben: Yeah, I think we're all very quick to jump on risks, but not so much on the opportunities, which are more slow moving. I guess in terms of your writing as well, you wrote one of the first psychology textbooks.

I looked up, I think the first edition was maybe around 1991 and you introduced concepts of, evolutionary or evolutionary psychology of the time. And I was just thinking about the influence that had on also your work on hunter gatherer societies and learning. And I think you're still updating or maybe that textbook is being updated, but I was wondering over that period of time, what do you think has changed in core psychology ideas?

And I don't know, why were we so late to thinking about evolutionary psychology? And do you think it's still influential in our thinking today? 

Peter: That's a good question. So at the time, so when I was, it would have really been in the 1980s that I was writing the first edition of the textbook.

And you're right, I think it probably came out in 1991. I subsequently revised it for six more editions over many years. And then the book was taken over by somebody else to revise who did two more editions of it. So it's currently in its eighth edition. It's been around for a long time. But at the time that I was writing it the idea of bringing an evolutionary approach to psychology, there was a lot of stigma about that idea.

There were a lot of negativity about it. I think that Nazi Germany put in everybody's minds a bad taste. about thinking about human beings from a genetic biological perspective, because in some sense that was the essential rationale of Nazism. And it was also an argument. It was an argument. There were arguments at that time based on kind of pseudo evolutionary thinking, pseudo biological thinking about racial superiority of whites over blacks, about the superiority of males over females.

There was a kind of There was a kind of general and some of the books from an evolutionary perspective at that time fed into that belief. So the kind of belief that distinctions between men and women, for example, are biologically ingrained and men are going to be dominant and women are meant to be mothers and domestic.

These kinds of. Things graded quite understandably on people. And so it gave the whole idea of looking at human behavior, talking about it in terms of evolved tendencies, gave it a bad name. And feminism was coming into its core, and the feminists at that time were adamantly opposed to biological theories about human beings, at least some of them were.

I had the advantage, and I think this was very clever on the part of the publishing company, of assigning an editor to me, who was not only a very experienced editor, but also was an ardent feminist. And I had to, in order to, in order I made it a goal. Anything that go, went into the book I had the right.

They were very clear. I could put whatever I wanted in the book. The editor was there really for, to help me. And I took that quite literally. I said to myself, if I can't, convince Phyllis, my editor, that this is real science, that this is legitimate, that this is, and that this is not something that's harming women then it's okay to go in.

And I think the book came out far better because I took that on. I didn't want to make the mistake of presenting Things that were biases that were came from a particular way of thinking. So this was also a time when really the evolutionary approach was just beginning. And so my textbook, my introductory psychology textbook was the first introductory psychology book really to bring an evolutionary perspective to bear in a real way.

Into the book and run it all the way through the book. I think it helped change psychology I think a lot of people who then became professors of psychology had learned about psychology as freshmen in with my book And I think it played a role not necessarily the major role, but it played a role in the evolution of psychology as a science to be more accepting of an evolutionary perspective about human behavior 

Ben: That's brilliant.

And it helped you retire or semi retire in your in your fifties. I say semi retire because you went on to do tons of other stuff as as well. I'd be interested perhaps a couple of things is for those who might be thinking about retirement, you seem to really enjoyed it and you've been doing lots of things.

What advice do you or thoughts do you have about retirement? People using their leisure time. I think you put a survey out also on your sub stack. I very much recommend listeners to check out the sub stack. But yeah what do you think people should be doing with their leisure time? And should we be looking to retire earlier?

Perhaps not all of us have got royalties from a textbook to rely on. But this thinking about how you've enjoyed retirement and what to do with our time. 

Peter: Yes. For me, it was a very wise decision. I, I did it for several reasons. I was far from typical retirement age. Professors tend to stay on forever.

Sometimes the administration wants to get rid of them and it's hard to get rid of them when you've got tenure, but some I was far from retirement age from typical retirement age, but I had already been teaching for 30 years. I had been chair of the department for a small portion of that time.

I was often involved in administrative responsibilities and I was And as much as I enjoyed some aspects of teaching, there were, as you might guess from my book, Free to Learn, there were other aspects of teaching and grading and so on that I was beginning to not enjoy and not really believe in any longer.

And I, and I certainly wasn't interested in becoming a dean or working on more administrative ways at the university. And I did, because the book made enough money I was set enough for retirement. I didn't have to worry about giving, maintaining that salary. And also, frankly, the university changed a little bit.

The the, I think people, I think that the spirit of kind of collegialism changed and this was not just at Boston College. This was everywhere. The, it became more driven by, universities wanted everybody to get grants and to get grants, you needed to publish a certain amount of research and people began to publish research just for the sake of publishing research to get grants.

And no longer were people spending, one of the great, leisure things about being a professor is just, like having long lunches with your colleagues and talking about ideas and people weren't doing that anymore. Here's the downside of the computer. They were eating their lunch in front of their computer, right?

Catching up on their email, maybe communicating with their colleagues on the other side of the world, whether rather than their colleagues down the hall. And so there was less of a kind of collegial environment that I had always enjoyed at Boston College. So that was another reason. And then finally, this is a personal thing, but my first wife died around that time.

And I began to realize life doesn't go on forever. And I really want to be sure that I'm spending every day doing what I most want to do and not wasting time doing things that I think are not. near the top of my list of what I want to do. And among other things I wanted to start writing for the general public I wanted to do.

And the research I had in mind doing didn't require that I be in an institutional setting. Although I could have continued to do it at Boston college if I needed to do it in an institutional setting. So all of that played into it. And And it was a great decision for me. What I can say, and I've told people repeatedly every day I wake up and say, whatever I do today, it's because I want to do it.

There's nothing that I have to do except like maybe wash yesterday's dishes. But the but in terms of the great bulk of my time, it's, it is in a certain definition play because it's my choice to do it. Or not to do it. I have, as a consequence, been able to do much more research much more writing than I could when I was when I was a full time, full professor at Boston College.

And I also have time for creating a great garden, for bicycling. I'm big into bicycling, kayaking, cross country skiing. I'm 80 years old and I think that the fact that I retired when I was in my 50s, which gave me time to, For leisure time and X and doing things outdoors that I enjoy doing. And I think it's been great for my health.

So it was a great decision for me. Now. I can't tell other people that it would be a great decision for them. But I can say if you're thinking of it and if you, if there are things you would like to do that, you don't have time to do it. And if you can afford to retire. Retiring early, I think, is a great idea.

That sounds excellent. There are some people who retire and they don't know what to do. 

Ben: You picked up on your own thing in your life. I I followed someone called Bernie DeKoven, who was someone who was all into, I guess we call it adult play, but it isn't. Like that, it's what, what you allude to, it's about independence, it's about agency, it's about fun, it's not about competitiveness, play, which you might think about, but all this playfulness and that comes into a lot of, I think, creativity and artwork.

I was thinking then if you had anything you would have said to perhaps your younger self, I don't know, your 16 year old self or your 21 year old self, or maybe speaking to a 16 year old today with all of this life experience that you have is there anything you would have particularly Advised your younger self.

It sounds like you know retire as early as you can sounds like a good piece of advice Or make sure like you say make sure every day you're trying to do things that you really want to do is there anything you would have thought 

Peter: you know, that's a really good question. I think that it's hard when somebody is fairly happy with their life which I am, it's hard to say that I would have changed something when I was younger, because if I had changed something when I was younger, I might not be who I am now.

So it's a little hard to say that. It's a little hard to say that for sure. I do think that, I do think that I do think that, like many people, throughout my younger years, I was too concerned about other people's judgments. And I think I restrained myself in a lot of ways. I think I'm not the only person who does that by any means.

We're all that way. I tend to be a little bit more that way than many other people. And I think that It was maybe too important to me that people like me all the time. And I think that was constraining on my life. I think I've gradually somewhat overcome that with time. But I think that, I think what I would say to young people today, but it's a different world today than the one I grew up in, is that is don't worry so much.

About school . Don't worry so much about that, because now I've been studying the, I've been studying now people who don't go to school who are self involved in self-directed education, either as homeschoolers following the following, the method of unschooling where they're pursuing their own interests or going to a school.

Like the school, my son went to Bury Valley. where you can follow your, and I see they're doing very well in life and they're discovering their passions. They're going into things that they enjoy. I think if I had opportunities like that, it might have, I might've gotten into what I ultimately got into quicker.

I went through a conventional school. I went to graduate school not really knowing what I wanted to do. I went to graduate school primarily as an alternative to going to Vietnam. I, and at that time you could still get a student deferment. And then by the time that was no longer case, I was married and had a child and had a deferment for that reason.

I didn't go into, I didn't go on to graduate school because I had a particular intellectual passion. I hadn't really developed an intellectual passion at that point. I was interested in a lot of things, but I wasn't passionate about them. And I ended up being a brain researcher, studying the brains of rats and mice and bindings of hormones.

And I did competent work. And I found it somewhat interesting but it wasn't passionate for me and I never was fully into it. I never felt it was really all that important. It wasn't until much later after I was already a professor at Boston College doing that kind of work that I then got interested in child development and that really was interesting to me.

Now the roots of that interest came were really present long before, but I never followed those roots of that interest. I followed what seemed to be a more conventional, safe path of brain research. I I got into a very, happened to who knows why into a fair, very selective university working with Top people who are doing brain research, and I felt boy, I really achieved that, and it was more like, because I could do it, I had to do it, with as opposed to, this is really what I want to do.

And so I think that, this is almost sounds trite because people say it at graduation speeches all the time, follow your passion. But to follow your passions, you have to discover what they are, which means you've got to have time to play and explore. And I, and although I had much more time than most kids have today, I wish I had even more time.

For that and had the opportunity To then by the time I was of college age to really know what it was I wanted in life and would have pursued it in a more direct fashion got into it earlier on 

Ben: That sounds like excellent advice. Don't worry too much about school and don't worry about too much about what other people think as long as you get on with it, that's great.

Okay coming to our last. Couple of questions then You what I had is around your own creative process, you write quite prolifically on your sub stack. You used to keep a blog kind of blog posts before you've also done research. Are you a sort of have to write two or three hours?

a day? Do you write more morning or night? Does it just come to you? You obviously spend a lot of time outdoors as well so you have all of these activities I guess does your walking activity outdoors spark the thoughts that you're having and where do your ideas come from? I just, everyone seems to have different creative processes, so I'd be very interested in how yours come about and how your writing in active day is.

Peter: Yeah, I think that so because my it would be different if I were writing fiction. Sometimes I wish I were writing fiction I could just make stuff up But since I am writing I'm trying to write I'm trying to present to people What we know about? or at least what we have good reasons to believe because of research evidence.

So I spend a lot, I spend more time reading research and doing library research than I do in actual writing, sitting down and writing. So I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. I used to spend a lot of time in the library. Now, fortunately, I can sit in front of my computer and get all the information that way, download articles from the library or from the internet.

So I spend a lot of time doing library research. I spend a certain amount of time doing still empirical research, but it's empirical research that doesn't require being in a laboratory survey research and so on. And but I also do spend writing. Interestingly has never been easy for me and maybe that's why I'm attracted to it.

Who knows when I was in school, I always got A's in math. Math was simple for me, but I never really was that interested in math. Writing was more of a challenge. Reading was more of a challenge. I was a late reader, and here I am, a life of mostly reading and writing. The and it's still a challenge.

I'm writing is and I have to go over and over. I try to make it look in my blog posts and and substack posts. I try to make it look as if it's coming easy and spontaneous, but that's the result of a lot of going over and over for the most part. So the other thing that I think helps in terms of the creative aspect is taking time off from it.

So when I'm out bicycling, which I spend at least three hours on average every day outside, is that an exaggeration? I don't think so. If I were really to average it out at least two hours every day outdoors. I have a habit of going for a 15 mile bicycle ride every morning as part of my routine. When I'm on my bicycle or when I'm kayaking or doing cross country skiing whenever we have snow on the ground in the winter, these kind of rhythmic activities in my mind is very free.

I very often come up with with ideas that hadn't come to me before. I, it's like the back of my mind, even though I'm not consciously thinking about it, is working on this and suddenly this new insight. sprouts into my mind. This is not unique for me. There's actually research showing that people have these kinds of insights when they have been working on some problem to be solved, some general area, and now they take a break from it.

And then suddenly some insight comes to them about what they had been working on before. I think the brain, I think there is a sense in which the unconscious mind continues to work on the things that your conscious mind had been working on before. And it's often in those instances that you come up with what we call insights, come up with a novel way of looking at what you have just been struggling with consciously before.

And so I think that's Part of it I really I really think that it, I believe this is part of the way the human mind works, that everybody who's involved, whether you're in, whether you're a writer, whether it's a fiction writer, whether you're a scientist, if you're involved in things that involve You know, a mental process that involves some sense of creativity combined with knowledge that breaks from what you're doing are really important and the kind of break that's best, at least for me, and I would guess for other people, is the kind of break where You're taking a break.

You're doing something that's refreshing and your body is involved in it, but your mind is not focused on that new thing. Your mind is running free. You're enjoying the scenery. You're enjoying the snow. You're enjoying the physical activity, but your mind is not. consciously occupied in a focused way on some new issue so that, so for example, playing chess would not be a good break for me to come up with insights about my writing, whereas bicycle riding would be a good place for that to happen.

Ben: Yeah, that sounds excellent. I recall reading, there's a Japanese author Murakami talked about it, running and thoughts, and I remember the, probably apocryphal, but the little anecdote, I think, is it Archimedes about his eureka, eureka moment in a bath, or it does stretch back. Yes 

Okay, great.

So final kind of double question, maybe for you one was, did you want to highlight any current projects that you're working on? So we have the Substack blog and your, you, seems to be some ideas writing in your book. And then maybe you want to give us any parting advice particularly I guess to parents and family about what your kind of work says for them.

So it maybe touches on your current projects, but current projects and any final parenting advice. 

Peter: So one, one current project I'm working on is what I'm, what I've been calling the Pediatrics Initiative. I'm, I've I've come to the belief that if the world is going to change on the things that I think they should change on, if parents are going to come to realize that their children need more free play and.

and and freedom in general outdoor freedom, independent activities. They have to hear it from their pediatricians. Pediatric, parents listen to their kids pediatricians and they visit them, at least once a year, all the way sometimes into the teenage years. And my wife initially convinced me of this.

She's an OBGYN and and so I've been working with the, with people at the National Institute for Play, which I've become involved with on developing information for pediatricians about the value of play, which they can then, in their well child visits with, clients, they can then talk about this value of play and even prescribe play to the kids with the parents permission standing there.

And so that's something I'm working on. We've developed a nice brochure to give out. If there are any pediatricians in your, and you're listening to the podcast get in touch with the National Institute for Play and you can get some of this material. We're also sharing this with psychologists who, psychiatrists and psychologists who work with.

Parents were sharing it with schools. I've been working with for some time with the non profit organization, Let Grow, which I was one of the founders with a lot along with Lenore Skenazy and Jonathan Haidt years ago bringing more play into schools. And we're involved with that. I designed a research study looking at the effects of these interventions, where children have an hour of absolute free play at school, age mixed play, and what consequences does this have for the kids and for the school climate, and so on.

I've been, that's some, so those are a couple research projects I'm involved in. And as I mentioned, I'm working on a new book. My working title for the book is Restoring Childhood. I believe that over time we've been gradually taking what is natural childhood away from children. And we need, if we're going to have healthy children, we need to bring childhood back to them.

And so that's what the book is about primarily.


Ben: Last question would be on any parenting advice or advice for families it sounds like that's the whole theme of our podcast is essentially bringing play back to children not being not being so worried, giving them more agency but any final advice maybe as to the principles there and how we can actually put that into action.

Peter: Let me, I could go on for two hours talking about that, but let me say that if I were to make one suggestion that, that isn't exactly what I've already said, as we've talked so far, is that, If you're a parent, it would be a good idea to ask your child this. So what is it that you might like to do that you haven't done before that might be might even be a little bit frightening to you, but you would really like to do it?

And then to have a talk, discussion with that child, with your child about that. And then think about whether you would let your child do that. So maybe your child, so this is a way of counteracting our tendency to restrict our children's activities. This is a way of saying, not imposing, not telling the child to do this or that, but finding out what the child would like to do.

that the child currently isn't doing, maybe because you haven't allowed a child to do it, maybe because the child just assumes you wouldn't allow them to do it, maybe because the child has been over, so overprotected that they haven't even thought about what they really might want to do. But you're raising that question, and Maybe even make a list of things he would like to do.

Part of the and so this is actually something that we are also doing through schools, where teachers are Asking that question. And then they tell the, then they tell the child you have to negotiate with your parents about doing what it is you want to do. And then you can report back to the school class.

We call this the let grow intervention is one of our interventions in schools and it works brilliantly, but it also could work at the. parent level, doesn't have to be a teacher, the parent who says my child really maybe needs more adventures that they're not getting. Let me talk to my child about this, what they would like to do, and then let me think about whether I feel comfortable with them doing it or not.

And maybe it could be even a whole list of things. There's a lot of evidence that this is how children build courage by doing things that they might be a little afraid of and realizing they can do it. And it's also how parents build trust in their kids by realizing, seeing that their parents, that the kids do these things.

And that it makes them happier and makes them stronger to do these things. Why not? One of the things that reinforces this, we did another little research project that I was involved in during the period of lockdown during COVID was a survey of many families about how they were adapting to this lockdown period when they weren't going to school, they were shut at home, all these extracurricular activities that kids were involved in were no longer being held.

And how were, what were kids doing? And we asked both the kids and parents several thousand over the course of two months that we surveyed. And what we learned is that at first the kids were quite bored, they didn't know what to do. But they mostly learned, they mostly figured out interesting things to do.

And parents were surprised that many of the kids wanted to do things that the parent never would have believed. Cook a meal, learn how to cook because here they were at home and they, and the parents were delighted in some cases to with what the kids came up with on their own. And in, in this let grow project that I've just described, sometimes kids say, sometimes they say, I really want to be able to ride my bicycle by myself to my friend's house, those kinds of things, which I would expect they would say, but sometimes they say things like, I would like to.

Cook a meal. I would like to know how to bake a pie. I would like to, and to then be able to do it by myself. Some of these things that we almost used to take for granted, of course kids would learn to do that. We'd want them to learn to do that. Some of these are things that parents are actually not providing their kids the opportunity to do, and they may not even realize the kids want to do it.

So that question of what, At talking with your kids about what they would really like to do that is and what they would like to, maybe they would need some help at the beginning, but ultimately to be able to do it independently. 

Ben: That sounds excellent advice. And what would you like to do? And it sounds to me like it should extend definitely to children, but maybe to all of us, that should be a question we should.

Peter: That's a really good point. 

Ben: And maybe and that's the thing it's like actually what's relevant for children is actually normally relevant for everyone or vice versa and maybe more people will end up wanting to do solo travel perhaps as young as 12, but maybe for all of us, but that sounds excellent advice to question.

What is it? We would really like to do so. With that Peter Gray. Thank you very much. 

Peter: Thank you very much. It's been fun.


In Podcast, Life, Science, Arts Tags Peter Gray, Education, parenting, play, psychology

Julian Gough: Minecraft End Poem, Evolution of the Universe, being creative | Podcast

September 20, 2024 Ben Yeoh

Julian Gough is an award-winning writer and musician. We explore the breadth of his creative journey, from crafting the 'End Poem' in Minecraft to writing children's books and rock band experiences

We discuss his latest project 'The Egg and the Rock,' which investigates the universe's evolutionary complexity, paralleling biological evolution, and its implications on life, consciousness, and AI. 

This conversation extends to a critical reflection on current scientific approaches, the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and writing in public and creative processes. 

“…the universe does love us, and we are love, in a way. I think love is a kind of an interface with the universe. You can think of love as our interface with the universe. Love, if you are loving and loved, you're probably living correctly. The way in which you're aligned to the universe is good. It's a feedback mechanism."

Julian’s substack blog is here.

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Video above or on YouTube.

  • 00:33 The Creation and Impact of Minecraft's End Poem

  • 03:58 Julian's Rock Band Days

  • 07:14 Writing Children's Stories: Rabbit and Bear

  • 12:35 Julian's Writing Process

  • 16:34 The Goat Bubble: A Satirical Play

  • 20:06 Exploring the Universe's Evolution

  • 38:07 Building Complexity from Simplicity

  • 38:43 The Eternal Existence of Matter and Time

  • 41:21 The Fermi Paradox and Alien Life

  • 42:30 Darwinian Evolution of Universes

  • 43:53 The Role of Intelligent Life in the Universe

  • 47:35 Predicting the Early Universe with James Webb

  • 58:09 Writing in Public and Creative Processes

  • 01:07:50 The Egg and the Rock: An Evolutionary Analogy

  • 01:09:56 Advice for Future Thinkers and Creatives

Podcast links:

  • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo

  • Spotify: https://sptfy.com/benyeoh

  • Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh

  • All links:https://pod.link/1562738506


Transcript (part edited by AI so errors are possible)

Ben: Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be speaking to Julian Gough. Julian is an award winning writer and musician across many forms, including novels, children's stories, plays, and the like. He wrote the ending to Minecraft and is currently exploring ideas about how the universe has evolved on his sub stack, The Egg and the Rock, which you should check out.

Julian, welcome. 

Julian: Thank you, Ben, for that fantastically professional introduction. I feel like a complete human being. 


Ben: Which you are. So you wrote the end poem for the end of Minecraft. These lines have now been read by millions of people and include the line, And the universe said, I love you because you are love.

What do you make of so many fans taking these words to heart? What would you like people to take away? And maybe what does the poem mean to you today? 

Julian: Okay, my relationship to the end poem is complicated in that I don't feel I should take full credit for it. It's one of those strange pieces of writing where about halfway through writing it, I wrote it longhand.

They were first draft, longhand. And about halfway through, it felt like wasn't writing it anymore and this is a common experience for writers and musicians. Keith Richards says half the Rolling Stones songs, he just woke up and something just came straight through and he recorded it and fell asleep and he has no idea where it came from.

So it's, I'm not claiming anything special here, but halfway through I found myself not knowing what the next line would be. And I was watching the lines appear on the page. With great interest, because I thought, I actually do not know what's happening here. I don't know what's coming next.

I got into a really beautiful flow state, which doesn't happen very often in my writing. It happens sometimes. But this is a really clean version of it. It's wow, I have no idea what's coming out until I read this. And that was one of the lines, that line you quoted is one of the lines. And I had this reaction to the line where I thought, I don't think that line's true.

That shouldn't be in there. And I was going to strike it out because I thought that's too much. That's too, my experience of life is a lot of suffering. There's a lot of unnecessary suffering. I wasn't sure, does the universe love you? Are you made of love? I felt it was that it didn't match my direct experience.

So I was going to strike the line out. And I had this very strong feeling that something bigger than me didn't want that line knocked out. I got this very strong resistance to knocking out that line. And I thought, okay, whatever just wrote this through me wants that line left it. So I left the line in.

And then it became people's favorite line. People get it tattooed on. Like I've seen a bunch of people with that tattooed on. And that line really lands with people. And I get a lot of, I get a lot of messages from people who say that the end poem, especially the second half of the end poem, it was read out at their brother's funeral or something like, things like that, like very, it has, it's really meaningful to a lot of people. I, and since then, that's, I wrote that in 2011, since then I've changed my mind. I think the universe does love us, and we are love, in a way. I think love is a kind of an interface with the universe. I think You can think of love as our interface with the universe. Love, if you're, if you are loving and loved, you're probably living correctly.

You're, the way in which you're aligned to the universe is good. It's a feedback mechanism. And you can say that in purely evolutionary biological terms. Love is a great sign that you're interacting correctly with the universe. That's wonderful. 

Ben: And it strikes me also, we have this with a lot of creatives where one of your points is that sometimes the creative process, you're not quite sure where the inspiration is hitting you and it just comes out.

And like you say, a lot of artists have talked about that, but then also when it goes out into the world, it has a life of its own. So the audience and the readers actually bring maybe more importance to it and things that we didn't. Yeah. Initially think about the line and then it, it changes us.

It changes us back as well. Like you said, like the line actually resonated with so many people and you can realize that perhaps it was more important than you thought. You mentioned singing as well. And I know you were in a rock band like earlier, but what's most in this misunderstood about being in a rock band and singing and that part of your life?

Wow. 

Julian: Yeah, I was the frontman with the band. Were we a rock band? Were we a pop band? We used to argue about this all the time. Is this rock? Is this pop? What is this? I end up calling it lit pop. It was literary pop music. Man, what's not understood about it? I, if you're the frontman of a band, that's another job where you're not entirely just yourself.

I think you're incarnating Dionysus, you are Dionysus when you're fronting a band and the gig is going well and the audience are really into it. And so you have to represent all of their desires. So I think that's, I think that's, I think when I was being the front man, I was I felt I should be available to the fantasies of everybody, that you shouldn't be narrowly straight or narrowly gay or whatever you are in your private life, you should be unbounded.

You should be you're representing Bacchus or Dionysus, that may not have come across on stage, but you do end up with this very Powerful moments where again, something's moving through you. That's bigger than you and it's bigger than the crowd. And it's and you can get quite, people can get quite carried away.

I remember doing a gig, but then you snap back into being yourself. So that can be embarrassing. If it happens halfway through the gig, like suddenly you're 

Ben: Channeling a God, then you're mortal again. Yeah. 

Julian: And then you're mortal again. This happened. I remember one gig we did in London at the powerhouse, I think in London, which is a fun venue.

And we had done a very barking. Performance, two of our friends were dressed up in togas with laurel wreaths, handing out grapes to the crowd and it was very over the top. And I was wearing a, I was wearing a one piece cat suit, very tight. I think it was a woman's catsuit that I bought a lot of clothes from second hand shops.

And I think halfway through the gig, it was going really well, a woman in the front row unzipped me and reached into my catsuit and pulled out my genitals. And we just looked at each other, and I was like, do what you've got to do, but, whatever. Carnage and Barker's here, but this is slightly embarrassing for both of us, isn't it?

And she was like, looking up at me and going, I think I've gone too far. And she put everything back and sent me back up and we went on with the gig. So it was, so yeah, you get these moments where it's am I a god of excess or am I just a guy singing in a band who likes books? 

Ben: Yeah. Handling everything else which is going on.

It's almost like an emergent property of gigs or things like that. Emergent properties of a crowd. Something happens and it has to land on someone. 

Julian: Yeah. No, there's definitely emergent properties in crowds and anyway, gigs that have a similarity all around the world, no matter what, there's a type of music that's rhythmic that leads to a kind of, ah, exaltation in the audience.

That's it's really primal and really important and it's very strange if you're just a normal nerdy guy to Find yourself incarnating that, yeah. I thoroughly recommend fronting a band. 

Ben:  I was reading part of an essay you've done, and it had the phrase, I am not nice, friendly, and perfect.

No one we know is nice, friendly, and perfect. And I thought that was also a perfect segue to speaking about children's stories and Rabbit and Bear, which supposedly are written for. Five to eight year olds, but I've now read them all and I think everyone should read them and you had a I think the latest one was out just a few months ago.

So everyone should check them out. But how have you found it different exploring the stories of rabbit and a bear as opposed to works, which are only for adults or anything? Is there something special about children's stories? I guess from my point of view, I think at the moment.

Children's stories, which I think are everyone's stories are almost in a golden age in the sense that we have more diverse, more special stories, as well as perhaps more boring ones. But there's a lot of them coming out. I was interested in your line of children's stories work. 

Julian: Yeah I think we are probably in it, a golden age children's books, yeah. There's an awful lot of crap out there still, but there's a lot of very good stuff. I love writing children's. For children. I love it more than I probably expected to. I think It's incredibly difficult and enjoyable.

You've the constraints are really interesting. I love constraints because I'm a very chaotic person. I'm interested in everything. I like doing all kinds of different stuff. I very easily distracted. I really helps if I've got tight constraints to keep my. expression inside of a frame so that you end up with something that's useful and it just doesn't turn into 3, 000 unfinished things.

And there's huge constraints writing for five year olds, six year olds, seven year olds, because they've got a very limited vocabulary. And they've also got a very limited understanding of the world, but they're incredibly eager to learn new words and new concepts. They really want to know. They're hungry in a way that maybe adult audiences aren't. Adult audiences tend to be more jaded and also adult audiences are more set in their ways. They tend to, you're not really going to change the life of that many adult readers. You can really change the life of a child, especially if you solve one of their problems.

Like one of the, something I've done with the Rabbit and Bear books is I've tried with every book to solve a different problem that I might've had at that age that I wasn't able to solve at the time. It's a way of Writing these books is a way of sending a message back to me when I was like five or six or seven and saying This is how you maybe could how you can fix it But obviously I can't do that for me but I can do it for all these other kids that are the age I was then so it's a very nice process very Satisfying and especially when you get again messages from parents or from kids themselves because they'll dictate to their parents.

I'll get sent the email Saying the books really worked for them really landed with them and parents will often say like we use You Rabbit and bear to talk about, if my kid gets really angry we can, we know how, we have an angle on it now because we read this particular book or if my kid gets very upset by this particular kind of thing in the playground, like we have a, we go straight to rabbit and bear and we have a way of dealing with it now that we, cause, cause rabbit found a way to deal with it.

Yeah. I love it. It's very satisfying. 

Ben: Wow. A letter back to your five year old self. So what problem did you want to solve at five or six, which initially you couldn't, you 

Julian: You've got huge, you've got loads of problems when you're that age because it's better now. I think parents are better now at explaining the world to kids and explaining emotions to kids and things like that.

But you used to be just left to get on with it. Like when I was a kid, it's yeah, you've got problems. Everyone's got problems. I don't know. They wouldn't even necessarily notice you had problems. Yeah. A lot of it's emotional stuff and a lot of it's theory of mind stuff. A lot of it's explaining why other people do what they do because it's mysterious to you when you're a kid.

It's a parent or a teacher or someone in the playground is like really angry with you about something and you get into loads of trouble for something and you can't work out what you did. And it's really useful if you can have a story that explains sometimes it's not what you did.

It's sometimes it's something that's happening in their life or their head. Or their way of dealing with things, or they're overwhelmed, or whatever. So a lot of it's translating the kid's internal emotional life into something, into an explicit sort of story. The way they can see what's happening, played out, and then they can apply that to their own internal life.

Because the characters in the book really are aspects of ourselves. They're not, Rabbit and Bear are both aspects of me. Rabbit's knee on a normal day, bear's knee on a good day. But they're both aspects of me. So what you're doing is you're taking aspects of human psychology, putting them out as animals and watching them play it out in a forest.

And then you can take that story and put it right back into your own psychology, into your own life and go, Oh yeah, I'm being rabbit now. I really need bear to come in and give me a hand. Where's bear? I'm bear too, and it's, I think that's what's going on in those books a lot of the time.

There's a sort of Jungian, a bunch of archetypes fighting it out in the forest. 

Ben: They say sometimes it helps to have a a character in your head who advises you the other way. Like you say, Oh, I need some bear now. Let's bring him. Let's bring him out. Do you, have you come to a particular type of writing process then?

So I picked up earlier that sometimes you write longhand. So maybe you go from longhand then to computer or that. And do you, have bursts in the morning or evening or you've got a thousand and one things like you said and it seems also you quite can call them constricting forms because that almost opens more freedom up to do things because you're knowing what you're doing, whether that's a poem, play, children's story or the like.

Yeah, so I'm just interested. It seems to be there's a thousand and one writing processes or more, but how have you arrived to yours and what do you think about it? 

Julian: I am very chaotic, so I don't really have a set. process. I've, it's changed over the years. It used to involve a lot more writing longhand and then typing up.

Now I do a lot of editing longhand. Sometimes I write stuff longhand. I do still do a lot of stuff now though, straight onto the machine, which I actually don't think is the best way to do it. I've been experimenting lately with transcription with like dictating and talking. I'm always trying to find a new way to get.

First draft down, so I can, and then when the first draft is down, I often print out and edit by hand. I do a lot of hand editing. And if I'm really, if the structure's all over the place, I'll do a helicopter draft. I'll print out 30 pages and lay them out across the floor in a grid and just stand on a chair and look at it and mark bits in colored markers, like this character's here, this character's here, and then stand up and just try and get an overview of what the fuck's going on here.

Oh, I can see from here, now I can see the structure's rolling up. Shuffle the pages and cut bits out. And it's very messy. I'm a terribly messy writer. I think huge number of drafts. 

Ben: And do you write in short bursts, long bursts, or just varies? It's constrained by having a five year old ?

Julian: whenever I can, a lot of the time I do my best work in the morning and I do my best work when I switch off the internet and I often don't switch off the internet and I just wrestle with that every single day. But if, my best work is if I get up in the morning, drop Arlo into kindergarten and then either into the office, I rent a little office or I come home. At the moment I'm working on the balcony at home because I get sunshine and it's nice. And I do a couple of hours in the morning with the internet off and that's ideal.

And then do slightly less taxing stuff in the afternoon and rewriting, catch up on notes. I'm not 

Ben: a morning writer, but I definitely write. Best when I switch off the internet and actually I turn it off everything and all of that. And even actually have to make sure like phone or messages don't ping me as well.

So that's somewhere else because otherwise you get pinged.


Julian: I don’t have notifications on anything. I don't let anything ping. I don't think anything I own pings.  And I use freedom as an internet blocker to switch it off. But then I'm constantly fiddling around with that.

And then sometimes I have to do something in the morning and I have to unblock all my internet blocks because they're, I can't, I need to go online for that period. And it's yeah, my first, the first novel I wrote I was such a procrastinator. I set myself a target of writing two hours a day, five days a week.

So all I have to do is 10 hours. Of actual writing. But if I, if I looked out the window for 10 minutes and wasn't even thinking about writing, I'd stop the clock. If I, went off and made coffee and had biscuits, I'd stop the clock. So it had to be actual to write. But I would relentlessly through writing that book, I would get to midnight and I hadn't started.

I was a student then, I was young then, I wasn't a student, but I was a young guy in a band and I was writing a novel in my spare time. And so at midnight I would go out to a cafe Java's in Galway and start writing, and I'd get two hours solid work done by 4am, because then, because I had baby breaks then as well, I'd be like done, and and then they closed at 4am and I'd go home and go to bed.

having got my two hours done, but I would put it off all day. I'm unbelievably bad at procrastinating. I'm just a terrible procrastinator and there's loads of resistance and yet I love writing. Go figure. I don't know. Yeah. 

Ben: I see. It's probably helpful for marinating in your brain, but yeah, getting over that energy hump to actually write the thing.

Yeah, it's a, there's a technique and trial in itself. You've written a play about a goat and investment bubbles and investment hedge fund managers satire, so why a play and why tackle the financial crisis and all of the issues around it? 

Julian: It, it started, that started as a short story.

Okay. That started as I was reading the newspaper and I saw an interview, it was an article in the independent many years ago. And it was an interview with The guy who was in charge of air traffic control for

Somaliland, which is part of the former Somalia, and he was in, I think, Ethiopia, running air traffic control because it was too dangerous to have the air traffic control run from Somaliland, and He was recounting a story during the interview of how the guy, the airport manager in Hargeisa, which is the capital of Somaliland, had contacted him to say a local guy his goat had been killed on the runway by one of the UN planes landing.

And and he was going to pay the guy twice the price of a goat in compensation because that was the tradition in, in, Somaliland. And the. Air traffic control guy said, you do not do that if you cannot do that. Because if you do, if you pay twice the price of a goat for a dead goat on your runway, you've created a market for dead goats on your runway, everyone's gonna be driving goats onto your runway because that's the quickest way to make the price of two goats.

So he didn't do it, but I read that article, I thought, oh my God, what if he did do it? How out of hand could this get, so in the story I wrote, he does pay out the price of two goats. But the guy I have with the dead goat at the start is a, I have in my story is an economist. He's an economist who's been displaced by civil war.

All he has left is one three legged goat. And he thinks, what can I do with this? He drives the goat onto the runway. It gets killed by a UN plane. He goes to the air, Airport manager gets the price of two goats, buys two goats in the market, comes back the next day, drives them onto the runway, they get killed.

He goes, gets the price of four goats, buys four goats. But then people start to notice what he's doing and they all start to drive their goats onto the runway. And so you get this goat bubble and then the price of goats starts to go up in the market. Because now there's more demand for goats, and then, and then the, they get they negotiate with the airport manager to index link the price the compensation price of the goats to the new price of the goat market.

And then eventually they're running out of, then eventually the UN has to start flying in goats to finance the goat compensation. So now the UN are in the circuit supplying goats to the goat market so that they, to make profit to pay the compensation. And it gets out of hand and eventually there's too many goats on the runway.

for this to work. So they start going to virtual goats and you end up with this virtual goat bubble and then the financial institutions start to realize that goats in Somaliland are the biggest, are the fastest rising asset price in the world. So they all get involved and you get this, all the big Western banking, private equity, everybody gets involved and it becomes this So it's a satire of of financial crisis, but it was I I gave it to my agent and she really, it was, at the time it was Pat Kavanagh, and she really liked it.

She said, where should we place this though? It's very technical, it's very esoteric. I was like, send it to the Financial Times. I said, try The Economist and The Financial Times. And she said, you know they don't publish short stories, Julian. I said, they'll publish this one. And she sent it to The Financial Times and they published it.

It was the first short story they'd ever published it. They published it in their Christmas issue. 

Ben: Ah, excellent. Also your description of the complex system of goat bubbles. Although I guess it isn't that complex. This remind me of thinking about, Evolution and the like, and there's a good segue into your ideas about the universe.

You're writing about the universe and essentially how you think it may have evolved from lesser universes. So some ideas which are around, but you really picked up on this. So how did you come to that? And why do you think our current universe may well have evolved from lesser universes? 

Julian: Okay. I think if you look at my entire career that I've thought about this recently, I think there's a sort of common thread, which is I want to see reality more clearly with the children's books. I'm trying to help children see reality more clearly so that they have a better understanding of their world so that they can navigate it better.

And I think it's been true for all of the art I've made. And the ultimate version of that is seeing the universe more clearly, I think. I've always been interested in the universe as a thing, and I've always been slightly dissatisfied with the way we talk about the universe, the language we use.

It's always described in this very, reductionist materialist way. The standard language about talking, when you talk about the universe is, you're going to it's very likely the language you use to talk about particle physics. It's as though you can explain the entire universe just using the terms out of particle physics.

And I don't think you, you can, you can't there's too many emergent things happening. There's too much, there's too much complexity emerging. And the way that complexity emerges, as I, thought about this and read about it and pondered over the years just seems seem to me after a while to be awfully like the kind of developmental process in an evolved organism.

It's very step by step. It's very, okay, let's describe the primal problem that interested me here. This universe starts out at the Big Bang as a, maybe a singularity, and it expands into a cloud of incredibly hot, dense gas. Completely undifferentiated. No structure. And over time, step by step, it builds out galaxies planetary systems, orbiting stars, those planetary systems that we know from our own direct experience can then complexify up into something that contains life, which can then generate a biosphere that is stable over tremendous periods of time that can then generate life.

Intelligent life forms like you and me, and then we can generate technological a sort of technosphere that, so we're supported from one side by a biosphere and the other side by a technosphere that we've actually built. And we're now talking to each other in abstract language, using technology in a biosphere that can maintain itself for billions of years.

supplied by energy from an external source that is homeostatic, dynamic, out of equilibrium. And we're made out of 90 something elements, stable elements, that have been in turn built and assembled over about three rounds of star formation and distributed out of the bottom of an incredible gravity well by supernova explosions to make the next round of stars, to make the next round of stars so that you can build complex planetary systems out of these 90 something elements.

That looks like a developmental process. That, that does not look like ran. Random, right? And if a universe has, the standard view of our universe is that it has random arbitrary characteristics. It's a one shot universe. We know there's one universe. It's a one shot universe. It's, all of its characteristics are random and arbitrary.

There's no meaning to any of them. And a random arbitrary one shot universe doesn't do what our universe does. It doesn't self complexify to this extraordinary extent. And it, it seemed to me like this looks like it's been fine tuned and the only mechanism we've ever heard of that can fine tune parameters to give you this kind of self complexifying developmental outcome is evolution.

And it seemed to me like the universe evolved and this is something I then at that point I googled and thought has anyone else been Discussing this thinking about this and discovered that like Lee Smolin, the theoretical physicist, had put forward a pretty excellent mechanism for how that might even happen, almost 30 years, 30, 30 years ago now. And I read up on that. And as I got into that, I realized, holy shit, the idea of an evolved universe has not been explored for purely sociological reasons, not scientific reasons. It's completely in the knowledge shadow. There isn't anyone to take responsibility for it. Like imagine you today, it was definitively proved, let's say that our universe.

was an, had evolved from earlier universes that have fine tuned the basic parameters of matter so that it self complexifies. Who's in charge of the research program on that? The cosmologists know nothing about evolutionary theory, so they don't, they're not going to feel qualified to deal with it. The evolutionary theorists don't even know about this theory, mostly, and they know nothing about cosmology, so they don't know how to apply there.

There's literally no faculty on earth qualified to explore this theory. So I ended up for the last decade, exploring the living shit out of this theory. And I've realized that for a while, you can actually make predictions with it. There's the implications of this theory have not been explored to an astonishing extent.

The guy that thought it up is brilliant. He's he's a theoretical physicist, but he's a theoretical physicist. He didn't even understand the implications of his own theory because they play out through evolutionary mechanisms that he had to. A simple basic understanding of, but not a profound understanding.

So a couple of years ago, the should I expand on what's like Smolin's theory is first? 

Ben: We can get to the theory also, I think we'll cross black holes, aliens and the like, but I was going to maybe take one step back. What you said about the societal. Aspect there's a sort of almost history of ideas about why this has come to place because I think you make the point really well and you've written in one of your sub stacks essentially around how Galileo for really good reasons thought, you know what, I'm going to have to couch everything I do in the language of numbers because the church can't attack me with the language of numbers.

And I just saw, one of my mates. Get, doofed by trying to encroach on the church's and church's terms. And I thought also this echoed some of our history of writing in the novel or in the fiction. So today, not quite, but a majority of what we write is in this kind of style of where we think it's quite close to our reality, right?

You have a story that go around, you have a holiday romance and type like that. Yes. Yes. And if. If you're, if you throw in something which seems too fantastical, we go, Oh, that can't be true. We disregard that story. So stories actually, not all of them cause we have magic realism and the like, but quite a narrow amount.

We read now a lot of non fiction, because we go, oh my god, could that really have happened? And it turns out that life is now more fantastical than a lot of our novels, and our novels, there's an argument about the split of why the novel happened, (Tristram Shandy) versus or not, but there's quite a small amount exploring fantastical ideas, and we do have it.

Children's books, fantasy, science fiction, magic realism. But it's actually quite a narrow domain versus the classical novel today, which is a little bit like quote unquote, real life. And we're allowed just one fantastical thing to happen because if you do more than that, the reader suddenly thinks, Oh, that can't be like real life.

And I just thought thinking about that is like the novel has tried to do the same thing that Galileo did, which was like, Oh, we somehow think it's safer to conform to this for all of these societal reasons. So in the history of ideas, I thought when I thought about that, it's and that completely explains why these ideas are under explored and could potentially well, definitely underrated and could potentially be right.

And I thought that was a key insight for almost the human explanation. For why this hasn't been explored before we even get on to the fact that actually the ideas could well have strong merit on themselves. And is that, have I thought about it correctly in terms of your thinking about the history of ideas and why we've ended up in this place?

Julian: Yeah that's basically, I think, in the introductions of the book, I talk about how Galileo, his founding principle was the truth about the universe is mathematical and the language of science is mathematics, and I'm certain that it was partly because Bruno had just got burnt to death for speculating wildly about other stars being other suns and having other planets and other people on, living things on them that had souls and, that, that was one of the reasons, there were other reasons, but that was one of the main reasons he got burnt to death in the, in, in the public square after being tortured by the Inquisition in Rome.

And Bruno had applied for the same job that Galileo had nine years later, when after the years of trial, when he was, when Bruno was executed, they were, they overlapped, a lot. So Galileo did not want to extract the meaning from the data. He just wanted to stack up the data.

He was just going to do a mathematical science, purely mathematical descriptions of reality, nothing about the meaning, right? He's leaving all that to the church, but that leaves out huge areas of truth that are really important. There's, there are truths in, Carl Jung, there are truths in the Buddha, there are truths in transcendental direct experiences, there are truths in the way Aretha Franklin sings, that are not captured mathematically, and, but are nonetheless true and useful.

And we've had this weird flip over the last few centuries where What started out as a vow of humility, science is a limited construct that will just give you mathematical truths about reality. There are many other truths that are more important, that used to be left to the church has flipped to science is the church.

Mathematical descriptions of reality are the only real, valid, important descriptions of reality and everything else is underneath that in importance. And that's a complete reversal of what was like, intended at the birth of science, 

Ben: What's your what's your reading then about this possible theory of the universe and I guess bringing in your humanities and view.

I had a really simplistic take when reading yours and skimming the small and with, you had black holes and a singularity and you have the big bang and a singularity and hey presto, that seems quite a big coincidence. And then let's see where we go from there. But there was a lot of things in that.

So how are you thinking about it? And maybe you can also roll in because from that you have got predictions like you've, Mention and we now have all of these structures and the things that we're seeing from the web telescope Which are going lo and behold they don't fit in our what is it called the standard model of the universe?

I think that's what physicists have said. Oh and physicists have always said the standard model does not explain everything It's just what we have and the web telescope is going. Yeah, and look at all of these structures which are not Explainable without that, but it seems that the theory you're exploring, seems to have some of that.

What's your view? 

Julian: First little point though. I think they used, there was a long period of time where the artists extracted the meaning from the data that the scientists provided. I thought that was a very healthy ecosystem. The, galvanism was just, was it.

was demonstrated by a scientist who was putting electricity through frog's muscles and the dead frog's muscles and they were twitching it. And this was witnessed by, Mary Shelley probably saw it. If she didn't, her brother definitely did. And then she writes Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the artistic extraction of the meaning from the data of the early electrical experiments.

And you, and Jules Verne sends men to the moon and invents submarines and does all this stuff, extracting the meaning from a lot of the technological and scientific data around him at the time. You had people fly around the world in hot air balloons and you've got, he's doing, he's extracting the meaning from the data.

H. G. Wells was doing the same. Heinlein was doing the same in the golden age of science fiction in America. You had, Asimov and Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Arthur C. Clarke was not just a science fiction writer, he predicted geostationary orbiting satellites, in a paper he wrote in 1849 or 40 something.

And I think we've, the, as science has got more and more specialized, Writers have retreated from trying to understand science and extract the meaning from it. And they have gone to where you're talking about, where they're doing a lot of gritty realism and a lot of realistic accounts of normal human lives and not really going big. Because it's hard to follow. It's really difficult to follow modern science. It's become a whole bunch of subs, subspecialities with privatized jargons that, and they don't even understand each other. That's one very interesting thing. And I definitely found that talking to a range of scientists about these theories.

They really don't even understand each other. So it's totally fragmented and there's no one synthesizing it because all of the most interesting truths tend to come from taking an idea from one field and applying it to another field where it has wonderful application that nobody's. And there's hardly anyone doing that.

So I think that's my role in this. So going back to the black holes thing John Wheeler had this great American physicist, had this interesting idea that there was, we had two problems in our universe that involves singularities and you described it well, that like one is black holes. Mass energy collapses to a point and vanishes from our universe, and one is the Big Bang.

It's a singularity where mass energy appears from nowhere and expands into a universe. And John Wheeler said, what if they're the same thing just seen from different sites? What if a black hole in a parent universe punches down to a singularity, bounces and forms a big bang in a child universe? Forms a child universe?

That gave you a me a way for universes to reproduce. He thought maybe the child universes have randomly different basic parameters of matter, randomly different laws of physics here. And that might be an explanation for why you have this crazy, complicated, strange universe that we're in, which seems bizarrely unlikely.

random. It's not a great explanation because you're just throwing lots of random universes at a problem trying to get something really sophisticated. But one of his students was Lee Smolin. And Lee Smolin realized, because he was reading some evolutionary theory at the time, he was reading Stephen Jay Gould and Lin Manuel Margulis he realized, wait a minute, if the child universe, If the basic parameters of matter in the child universe, which means like the mass of the electron, the speed of light, the the strong nuclear force, these various little things that make up the basics of our universe.

If they varied, not randomly and completely, Wheeler suggested, but if they just varied slightly, you would get inheritance. And you would get Darwinian evolution of the universes. It just, it's automatic, because if the child universe has its basic parameters of matter vary slightly, that will make it either more likely or less likely to produce more or less black holes.

Which means it will make it more or less reproductively successful. And so the ones that are more reproductively successful will have more offspring. They will be tending in that direction. So some of those will have even more offspring, some will have less, but you'll end up with a, you'll end up with a kind of branching, an evolutionary branching where the number of universes in existence gets dominated by highly reproductively successful universes.

You can get runaway reproductive success because the thing about universes is they're not. They're not in competition for resources. Each one is its own space time. Each one is it. Each one is both organism and environment. So You know, there are limits to biological offspring because they're born into a constrained environment as they, and they fight for resources and, hippopotamus that has 3 million baby hippopotami does not end up being reproductively successful because you can't feed 3 million.

Hypopotamite in that little bit of wherever it was, wherever they were born. But you can have three, three million offspring as a universe and they're all new universes. They're not in competition. You can do that. And universes are essentially flat. Like the mass energy and the gravitational energy in universe net out to zero in our universe.

So you can make them for free. It's not like they get smaller every time. It's not if you make a million babies, they're a million times smaller than the babies you would make if you only make one baby. They can all, because they net out to zero, they could all be full scale, full size universes.

So you can get runaway reproductive success. And our universe, if you count the number of black holes in it, and they've done a recent assessment of that, you have to guess slightly, because, but if you work out the number of stars, the right mass and how long they live and all that, you can work out the number of black holes.

And there's 40 quintillion black holes in our universe. So if black holes are reproductive success, we're pretty reproductively successful universe 40 quintillion already. 

Ben: And does the net zero equilibrium explanation give a hint at the where the singularity comes from, because it strikes me you have potentially a chicken and egg problem around I could see how it starts off black hole singularity evolution and that explosion.

But do you still need the sublime to, to explain the origin of the singularity, even if it might be a net zero construct? 

Julian: I think you don't. I think one of the reasons I really love an evolutionary theory is. You can just, you don't have a starting problem. You don't have a, where did it come from problem?

If you explain our complex universe like ours by invoking your God or something, now you've invoked an even more complex entity. Where did that come from? Cause you've got Gaul's law kicks in here. Gaul's law states that any complex working system evolved from a simple working system. You can't start with an incredibly complex system.

You can't start by building Concord. You have to. Build the Wright Brothers plane out of bicycle parts that flies a hundred yards. You start with that, and you iterate and iterate, and eventually you get Kongol, but you can't start with Kongol. You can't start with a human being. You can start with a protozoic, you can start with some kind of metabolic process happening in mud that eventually gets a membrane and turns into a protozoic, creature.

And prokaryotic bacterium or whatever, and then eventually you get eukaryotes and so on. And you can get your way to human beings. Which are complex working systems, but you have to start with a simple working system, and I think the same thing applies to universes. The, for me, one of the beauties of this is the starting point is there was always something.

There was always something, and it was unbelievably simple. It was as simple as it gets. There was ur matter, right? There weren't 96 elements doing all kinds of complicated things. There was just something that is, as simple as you can imagine, simpler than a hydrogen atom. And all it, all you needed to do is to split in two at some point, collapse into two things.

Some of, if you've got something. And time, and therefore change, eventually, because you've got an infinite amount of time, some it shuffles, it collapses, it falls to, to some point where it collapses into two things. And now you've got two things. And if one of them is more successful than the other at collapsing into things, you've got evolution, right?

And eventually you get to this more complicated version down the line. 

Ben: So I can see from simple, we'll build more complex Your first one of your statements within that was essentially saying that you don't need, I don't think we quite have the language for it essentially, but we don't need a time before because you don't need this time before.

Yeah. The simple, whatever you want to call it Oh, Matt, because we don't have the language for it. It just probably the simplest thing you can imagine just was. And from that, everything can flow. 

Julian: Yeah. There was always something existing in time. There was always something, and there was always time inside our space, time bubble.

Starts at zero for us because space time itself starts at the singularity, but it's emerging from the space time of the parent universe. There was space time in the parent universe as it collapses to a point and then bounces to form our space time. So there was space time in that universe. That universe was born from a point that came out of a parent universe.

There was space time in that universe. There's always time, there's always something. But it gets more complicated as it goes on. In the same way, there was always, at a different scale, there was always matter on Earth. There was always 96 elements in a puzzle. There's a worm puddle, a billion years ago, and you, as you start to get separation and differential reproductive success, you get evolution and it gets fucking complicated really fast.

And I think the same thing happens with universes. And we're in a pretty, relatively complicated universe. There are probably more complicated universes. And ours may well be. There are less complicated universes. And we're spawning more. Let's assume we're mediocre. Let's assume we're mediocre.

And we're spawning more. And we're spawning enormous numbers of universes that are related to ours, that will be variations on ours, yes. Yes. And 

Ben: there's the fact that we don't seem to have detected any alien life as yet. Yeah. Does that have any, I guess some people call this the Fermi paradox, and I believe the scientists actually think that it is actually likely there is alien life out there.

But we lack the technology slash the scale slash haven't been around for long enough. There's a civilization that could detect this thing with like maybe a couple of decades and you need to go a billion years or so to do that. But is this a challenge or evidence for either way? Or actually it's just neutral because we simply don't know on the alien question.

You can make predictions based 

Julian: on theory. So the if this is going to evolve, if our universe is, I should actually walk you through this. The version of the theory I've ended up with in more detail, it's the one that makes predictions. Yes. And it also plays into what we're talking about here.

So the short answer to your question is the theory says there should be a lot of life in this universe. Life should pop up again and again on multiple worlds, probably a lot on icy moons will also sometimes on exposed worlds like ours. Okay. Wherever there's a lot of water and an energy source, you're probably going to get some sort of life form eventually.

But okay, I'll walk you through the theory. So that Smollett, let's go back to Smollett. He predicted That you would get Darwinian evolution of universes and that would ultimately fine tune the basic parameters of matter to optimize for black hole production. That was his version of the theory, right? So our universe has a lot of black holes and that was where the theory stood when he started it out. One reason by the way that didn't get any traction at the time is it's not a full version of the theory. It's been expanded. But he published it in the Journal of Classical and Quantum Gravity, which is read by 200 people, all of whom are really interested in quantum gravity and have no interest in evolutionary theories. And don't know anything about them. So it was, and this was before the internet, so I rang the, I talked to the, I emailed the editors of that journal recently just to double check everything, and yeah, they said yeah, we didn't go online for another six years after that paper. So no one can access it, right?

It's in, on paper, in a few libraries. And it's being read by nobody outside of quantum, the quantum gravity fields. It, it got, it, so it, by the time people hear about it, they're not even reading the original paper, they're just hearing a cartoon version of it that a friend mentioned.

And it just didn't gain traction, and it was dismissed by other physicists. Using arguments that actually don't hold up, but Smolin didn't know that because he doesn't know enough about evolution. Okay but one question that comes out of this is, if the universe evolved, and this is a developmental process that's been fine tuned by evolution, why is there intelligent life in it?

Intelligent life is a very odd, complex, energy intensive thing to generate, and it clearly, this universe puts a lot of energy into doing this. Why? How does that benefit universes, reproductions? If the universe is the, the unit of selection is the thing that's reproducing, what's, why would it generate intelligent life?

What's happening there? And a few people Clement Vidal John Smart Louis Crane Michael E. Price, a few people have they're mathematicians and philosophers and so on, systems theorists dug into that. And they came up with an idea, which I think is definitely true. And. Smallin doesn't like, he thinks it's too science fictional, but okay.

Which is, intelligent lifeforms, they will, they use energy. And they're going to try and optimize their energy use, right? Everybody does. Every creature, no matter how great or small, will try to get the most energy out of the environment they can with the least effort. So we see with ourselves, we've, we used our muscles.

As a power first, then we used animal fossils. Then we used burning wood, burning coal, oil, gas. Now we're using nuclear fission. We're trying to unlock nuclear fusion, and what you're doing is you're pushing up the energy efficiency slope. All of those are more efficient than the previous ones. You're getting more energy for less, out of less matter each time.

The ultimate end of that in our universe is, The production of small black holes, because if you can, if you drop matter into small black holes, you can actually get, if you can extract up to 42 percent of the mass as energy, which is way more efficient than fusion. Fusion you can extract 0. 7%. Of the mass as energy.

Fission, fission reactions, you splitting atoms, you can get 0. 1 percent of the mass out as energy. So by far the most efficient thing is dropping energy into a black hole. And if you can make small black holes technologically, manufacture them as energy and use them as energy sources, that's gonna, you're gonna do that.

That's the ultimate, that's where technological species will end up automatically. It doesn't matter what they think they're here for, that's what they're going to end up doing. I think that was the most interesting thing. And that's About two and a half cuts, right? You need two and a half cats.

Yes, you do. The cat is the, sadly, the cat has become the unit of the unit of energy for, the battery to drop into black holes. But you can, I think you can power all of Norway for a year with, is it two and a half black cats? dropped into a black hole. Yeah. So any universe that just randomly exploring the possibility space of matter generated intelligent life, technological life, they would then be able to manipulate the matter of that universe into making small black holes in a way that nature couldn't.

Nature on its own can't make small black holes. It can make star sized ones. And we know it can make supermassive black holes. It can't make really small ones. But if intelligent life does that, then that universe is going to be colossally more reproductively successful than one that doesn't produce intelligent life.

So intelligent life will be conserved. Once it's popped up once, it will be conserved. It will be very successful. And then, as generations go by, the basic parameters of matter will fine tune to make it more and more easy for life to develop until you get this kind of universe we're in now, which where it pops up pretty easily on this planet and develops into complexity pretty easily.

Other predictions. Okay, so that's where the theory was at when I got involved. And I've met Clement and John and people since then they've emailed me smaller than that. But then the James Webb was coming up the James Webb Space Telescope is NASA's latest space telescope, and it's a really revolutionary breakthrough because It's super cooled down to very close to absolute zero so that it can detect really difficult to detect infrared light from the very early universe because if you after the Big Bang, the light from the first billion years after the Big Bang has been stretched so much by the expansion of the universe.

As it's passed through the expanding universe, that its wavelength has dropped right down into the infrared. All the visible light from there is now right down into the infrared. And that means we can't see it on earth because we did, we radiate in the infrared. Everything radiates in the infrared. Our telescopes radiate way more in the infrared.

You can't pick up the light. So we've got, had literally no data from the very beginning of the universe up until the James Webb Space Telescope. So I thought as this was coming up two years ago, I thought, hang on, if this theory is correct. And if this universe did evolve. I should be able to make predictions about what the James Webb Space Telescope will see that are better than what the mainstream are predicting.

I should be more, I should be able to get a more accurate picture of the early universe. And that would be fucking fantastic for the theory, if I was right, if I was wrong, it'd be incredibly hideously embarrassing. And I would have to slink away and abandon investigating this, but it was a great natural experiment.

So I thought through the implications of the theory from scratch. Okay. And to understand the successful prediction I make, you've got to, you've got to realize. Or you've got to know that every galaxy we look at, all the spiral galaxies we look at and so on they seem to have a supermassive black hole at their center.

They all have a supermassive black hole at their center. You can tell that because the stars near it are going whizzing around something invisible really fast that obviously has a tremendous amount of gravity. So we know there's a supermassive black hole there. And some of these supermassive black holes have masses that are millions of times the mass of our sun.

Some of them have masses that are. Billions of times the massive. So they're really huge. Now a black hole is a point where Mass, mass energy has collapsed to a density that even light can't escape from it. Nothing can escape from it. It's gone from our universe. No information can come back out of the black hole.

But these supermassive black holes are immense. And they're at the center of all the galaxies. Now, the classic theory for how they came to be was that lots of stellar mass black holes, lots of, because when a star gets to the end of its life and uses up all its fuel, there's no longer radiation pushing out against gravity.

It runs out of fuel, the radiation pushing out against gravity that stops it collapsing is gone. The star collapses under its own gravity. And if they're much bigger than if they're, Five times, eight times bigger than our sun. If they're much bigger than our sun, they will keep collapsing until they form a black hole.

They just, they'll collapse to the point where even light can't escape. So that's how most black holes are formed. That's the, those are the black holes that Lee Smolin was talking about. They're stellar mass black holes. They're the mass of a sun, a star. Several times the mass of our sun, but they're the mass of a star, big star.

The old theory was lots of those must somehow come together to eventually form a much bigger black hole that pulls in a lot more matter and gas and therefore it eventually grows to be a supermassive black hole. It was a bottom up process where they slowly assemble from very small star mass black holes. Here's a consequence, here's an implication of the evolutionary theory, which I've never, I never had, I, which nobody had, scene, because nobody's fucking thinking about this. Nobody's thinking. Ten people are thinking about this, and they're thinking about it from their own specialized areas, right? The earliest, most, the earliest, most primitive universes if they reproduce through black holes, would have pr reproduced through really big, simple, direct collapse black holes. direct collapsed supermassive black holes. The simple matter that they were made out of would crunch down to form a really big black hole, because they're not producing very many black holes, so a lot of mass will go into each one.

If you divide a universe by five, you end up with really big black Oh, supermassive black holes. If you divide it by trillions, the way we do in ours, because we form trillions of stars, you end up with lots of very small stardust black holes, right? So the early ones were direct collapse supermassive black holes.

We have supermassive black holes in this universe at the center of every galaxy. If it's inevitable, if it's an evolved universe the way that those direct supermassive black holes were, are produced will be conserved from the earliest universes. They will be direct collapse supermassive black holes, right?

They won't be put together from a complicated process involving stars going through a whole load of processes and then eventually they collapse and then they all stick together and eventually they make a supermassive black hole. No, if we have supermassive black holes, they're almost certainly the mechanism that produced them is going to be direct collapse and it's going to be conserved. My theory was, what we should see in the very early universe is a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation. By direct collapse I mean they don't form stars first and then burn out and then collapse. They just go. You're going to see direct collapse, supermassive black hole formation.

And after that, you're going to see star formation and galaxy formation. And here the early universe is incredibly smooth. The gas is really smooth. Okay. It's actually hard for cosmologists to work out how you get star formation in the early universe because it's so smooth. What you need are density areas to nucleate out little, you need seeds of gravity to nucleate out stars.

And you don't really have that in the early universe. It's super, super smooth. It's not optimized for star formation. So my argument was, it's gonna be optimized for supermassive black hole formation because huge areas will collapse. And as huge areas collapse, they don't nucleate out into stars and form lots and lots of stars because it's too smooth.

They form a supermassive black hole. And that supermassive black hole then optimizes conditions for star formation. That supermassive black hole, matter will fall into it, gas will fall into it will heat up and give out. Absolutely tons of energy as it does. All the brightest things in our universe are matter falling into black holes, quasars, they're all matter falling into black holes.

That supermassive black hole, as the energy falls into it, they, what they, what happens is they get really hot and they generate huge relativistic jets of matter shooting charged particles shooting up at the north and south magnetic pole of the spinning supermassive black hole.

Supermassive black holes have enormous magnetic fields and they jet these. Particle jets at close to light speed. They accelerate and close to light speed north and south. We know this from looking at quasars in the more recent galaxy. In more recent universe, in closer galaxies, we know this happens.

Those radiat radiation jets, these, those jets are charged particles shock the surrounding gas. And those shock shockwaves nucleate out. They shockwaves are density waves. They nucleate out star formation. So what I predicted you would see is a super massive of black holes rapidly generating. Spiral galaxies and so forth around the supermassive black hole nucleating out tons of stars.

So you would see rapid early galaxy formation around an ex a pre a supermassive black hole which precedes the galaxy formation. And the galaxy forms around the supermassive black hole rapidly and early. That's what, so you can get compact early galaxies. Built around supermassive black holes, dominated by their supermassive black holes.

That's exactly what you're seeing with James Webb. And it wasn't predicted by anyone else. Now, I want to give credit to one group of scientists, Priya Natarajan in Yale, and a few other scientists had done work on direct collapse supermassive black holes, and they knew they were theoretically possible.

And I drew, when I was making my predictions, I referenced their work and drew on their work, because I knew that direct collapse supermassive black holes were theoretically possible in our universe. But I was saying, they're not just, they're not just theoretically possible, there's going to be almost a phase transition in the early universe where, pretty much all the supermassive black holes we see today will all pretty much form first and then generate the galaxies around themselves.

And it's what we're seeing. 

Ben: That's amazing. I don't know enough to know if there might be alternative theories, but the fact that this theory, your interpretation of it, predicted this in advance, and then we saw it, seems pretty amazing. Pretty strong evidence for me, particularly at the very least that this is an underexplored idea that more people need to think about.

Julian: It’s always possible I'm wrong but it's always possible I'm wrong, but this is very strong evidence. There's something seriously worth exploring here. 

Ben: And that actually more cross, Disciplinary thinking, probably from non mathematician quantum people, or mathematician quantum people need to go and think about evolutionary or other ideas around that complexity.

It does strike me, this might be completely left field, but I don't know whether there's our current thinking around consciousness, or the fact that we don't understand that much about consciousness, have anything to say about this. 

Julian: Okay I'm leaving consciousness out of my book because it makes it a whole other book, a whole other book, a whole other ten  books.

But yeah clearly an evolved universe that generates conscious entities like you and me. And the listeners, I assume the listeners are conscious of it if they fall asleep. You're gonna have some very weird dreams, you're gonna have some very weird dreams. Universe that generates, builds out through a very complex multi step process.

Conscious entities like us is a very weird universe and frankly I'm out of my depth when I, when it starts, when we start to think about what the implications are for consciousness in in, in evolved universes. I have my thoughts and theories, but they, but I'm, that, that's me. When I do those, I'm starting to move into a kind of a transcendent realm of direct personal experience of the universe that would freak out the the kind of materialist reductionist that I want to talk to in, in this book.

It does definitely have huge implications for consciousness in the universe. It does huge implications. I, again, there was consciousness in the previous universes that generated our universe. 

Ben: I know. I would also say like we, humanity itself knows so little about this consciousness thing.

I spoken to some people who think have got to potentially some sort of enlightenment states, those who've taken sort of mushroom type stuff, or even neuroscientists who've just said, look, what we understand about consciousness. is very little. All of this stuff is really very weird, which is what you get.

So it's really interesting around that. But you're writing this work you're writing it in public on your sub stack and, it's coming through and there'll be there'll be a book as well. So I'm interested in how you're finding writing in public and also, you know that mixes up with personal story as well so how you're finding that and maybe how perhaps readers or listeners can interact and help evolve your theory or thinking but I guess this writing in public is a In some ways, there's a relatively new creative phenomena.

Obviously we've always had like serials and stuff, but the fact that people can comment in, with a newsletter format and then next week there might be another newsletter which interacts with it. I guess it's an offshoot of blogs. 

There seems to be a creative a growing creative outlet for that and also explores ideas like this.

So I'd be interested in, in, in how you think, how you've been finding it and and how people can help. 

Julian: Yeah I think new technologies always generate new art forms and I'm, one way of putting what I'm doing is, or phrasing what I'm doing is I'm writing the book in public. Another way of putting it is I'm, there's a, there's an art, I'm exploring an art form, which is.

Which you can call writing a book in public. So I use the Substack platform to do the, I've got a custom domain for it now because, for various reasons but I'm basically using Substack and it's, writing it in public is, has been fantastic. I you end up meeting people that you wouldn't meet otherwise, you end up in conversations you wouldn't have otherwise.

The Substack version of the book is re, is a really important version of the book. There will be a print book at the end of all this But I think they're both vitally important. The subsec isn't just a means to, to, to the end of the book. It's also a thing in its own right. And, there's a lot of material on the subsec that won't end up in the book, because, the book has to be tight and focused and go in this, beginning to end tell you the story.

Whereas I can ramble around the place and explore little various offshoots of the ideas. 

Ben: Have you thought of making a kind of GPT version of the book? Tyler Cowen did one on greatest economist of all time or something like that, Goat which was a much more entertaining way of actually engaging with the book and actually exploring it deeper than simply reading the text I felt for that.

I am thinking about doing something like that. Yeah. 

Julian: Cause also I have this, I use Roam and Scrivener to do my, I put all my rough stuff into Roam and then, which is a kind of a graph tool for connecting data and all kinds of. Texts in all kinds of interesting ways. I think and I, and then I bring stuff across into Scrivener and I make a more formal post or chapter in Scrivener over multiple drafts and then something goes up on the subset, but there's a huge amount of information left behind, it's also quite interesting.

So what I'd like to do is throw all of the material, all the Rome stuff, all the subset stuff into, yeah, into a bucket and to have a, Have an AI be able to answer questions from that huge bucket of information, which is way bigger than we'll end up in the book. Yeah. I would like that. Yeah. Yeah. I might talk to you about that if much about how best to do it.

Ben: I think the cost of doing it was going to drop dramatically and actually will be really interesting. 

Julian: The number of tokens, yeah, it's dropped a huge amount.

Ben: That little thing about AI as we've entered into the conversation, also strikes me as hearing what you've said about being more efficient and energy and where evolutionary processes go.

And I guess some who speculate around AI think AI heads to its own singularity as well, but just reflecting what you've said, it seems to me that this could simply be an energy efficiency type thing, which you don't necessarily need to get to a singularity for. But have you had any speculations on how your thinking has been impacted by what we're talking about?

By the technology that we're seeing in AI agents. 

Julian: I think, okay, in an evolutionary universe that there are implications I think for our future as humans and our future And are the future of our technologies. I think it's all one thing. It's all one thing like human beings. It's just in the design of a human being to feel that they're separate from the universe and they're separate from everything else because you need a an ego.

You need a sense of self. You're just you're this membrane bound isolated thing. To function and to survive, and that's fine. But we're not membrane bound isolated things. Oxygen is flowing through us. Carbon dioxide is flowing out of us where food is flowing through is flowing out. The cells are replacing themselves all the time.

We're completely social creatures and isolated human being dies. We are completely in social relationship to others, and we're completely in relationship to our technologies and we're all part, and the technologies are changing the biosphere and the biosphere is pushing back against the technologies and we need to find a kind of an equal.

Not a dynamic out of equilibrium balance as we move forward into the future that where we can maintain ourselves, the aspects of ourselves that we like. And so I think we are going to, we are going to merge with our technologies to a huge extent, and AI is going to be part of that.

But I don't think, I don't think AI's, in a way, I don't think AI's are as separate from us as we tend to think of them. AI's so far, large language models in particular, they're really the collective unconscious made manifest. They're only, all they have are the thoughts of millions of people encoded and then linked.

They're just the collective mind of humanity, they're not separate from us in, in a lot of ways. And I think as we move forward, we'll find that we're, our relationship to AIs will become very symbiotic over time. I don't think one has to annihilate the other or replace the other. I've clearly limits to biological development that we're constrained by the fact that we are this biological memory and there aren't similar constraints on aspects of AI because you can throw more compute at it.

You can do, you can change the software. You can, there's a lot more but ultimately I think we, we are both. It's part of the development of our universe, both the biological and the technological. And you're never going to just have a purely technological universe. It doesn't, I don't think it quite makes sense to have a purely technological universe.

I think there's a role for we're, I think we measure, I think we measure, I think we're important we're not going to have a purely biological future. It's going to be highly technologically mediated. What that does is expands out what we're going to be able to do then is explore the possibility space for this universe to explore the possibility space for matter in this universe.

There's a lot of rocks floating around the asteroid belt that were just. Be having a lot more fun if we were turning them into weird disco globes full of dancing semi human, offspring that, that are maximizing for techno happiness, that would be great. And there can be a monastic asteroid conversion somewhere else where people can just pray all day to their specific God and there's going to be another asteroid somewhere else where people just do maths.

Thanks. With their AI friends constantly, and we can massively expand the possibility space for consciousness and life and matter itself over the next, next few centuries. I've never heard that expressed by AI doing it. 

Ben: I've never heard it expressed like that, but I think it's plausible.

I spoke to someone not podcast who essentially had grown up deaf and now can hear. And she has a very different relationship technology because the technology is part of her. I said, this is one way of doing it, which might be like a 3PO (Star Wars), but also how she interacts, how she speaks to technology.

Isn't quite like a person, but it's beyond is beyond the pet say. So I know it's a whole other, but it's like, why would you treat something where you can? It's completely, profoundly changed your interaction with the world. You're dependent on it and you have this sort of symbiotic relationship.

She jokes about the fact that, she is part cyborg and what does that mean? And it's actually completely plausible, completely great for all entities. Imaginable. Yeah. 

Julian: Yeah. I think that is very plausible. Yeah. And she's a vision of the future and the future isn't scary when you meet it.

It's like someone who used to be deaf and now isn't, and it has a beautiful relationship with the technology that helps her become fully what she is capable of becoming. And we can be in that, we can be in a beautiful relationship to our technologies. 

Ben: Yeah, great. So any couple couple of closing questions then would be any other current projects that you're working on?

It seems like you have a thousand and one things to do, but Substack is obviously an important one. You had the children's book this year. Anything else on your mind and you combining it or anything else you'd like to highlight? 

Julian: My various publishers want me to write more children's books, but I want to finish the I want to finish The Egg and the Rock.

I want to do this book first. That's what I want to do next. And I want to do it on Substack in public and I want to talk to people about it and get ideas. Please, if you're listening to this and this interests you at all. Go to TheEggInTheRock. com subscribe to it and comment and answer the emails and I read everything, I don't necessarily answer everything because sometimes I'm overwhelmed, but I do read everything, and the feedback from readers has been unbelievably helpful to the book, unbelievably helpful, because I don't, I, and you don't have to be a, some kind of, expert in a particular domain here to be really helpful here, but it's wonderful to have someone say you haven't explained what a black hole is, and I don't really get it.

Or to have someone say, I literally can't tell the difference between a galaxy and an asteroid, please explain it. I don't know what people don't know until they tell me. So it's really improving the book to have people give you feedback, yeah. 

Ben: And I didn't pick up, why is it called The Egg and the Rock? 

Julian: It's the analogy I'm using at the beginning of the book, I'll send you chapter one and it will explain it, that the the, at the beginning, I talk about an egg, which the egg developed into my son, Arlo, the fertilized egg that developed into my son, Arlo. And I talk about a rock, which is the rock of Cashel, where my family were buried.

It's a big limestone rock sticking up out of the ground in in Tipperary. And I talk about the fact that they contain exactly the same atoms, they all contain, carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, calcium. And yet they, you watch them over the next few years, that egg becomes my son Arlo, a very complicated little individual running around, and the rock just sits there and decays slightly over time.

And what's the difference? The difference is the egg has an evolutionary history. The egg has an evolutionary history that has fine tuned it so it undergoes a developmental process, the energy flowing through it is organizing it. But the rock does not have an evolutionary history. The energy that flows through it is disorganizing.

It's not organized. And my question is, when you look at our universe, going from the Big Bang and a hot ball of gas to this here now, Does it behave like an egg or a rock? And the answer seems pretty clear to me. It's behaving much more like an egg than a rock. It's getting more complex and there's more structured order emerging over time.

Energy is being, channeled so as to enable complexification over time in a way that is far more like an egg than a rock. And if that's the case, you have to explain why. And I think the only possible explanation is an evolutionary one. The only explanation we've ever come up with for entities that behave in that way is an evolutionary explanation that there were earlier, more primitive ones that couldn't complexify that much, but they've, They fine tuned and fine tuned iterated, and the feedback comes through reproductive success that the offspring that will, if the increased complexity leads to increased reproductive success, it's, it is conserved.

You get to this kind of universe and then, yeah, and that's why the egg and the rock. So which is it? Is this an egg or a rock? Are we living inside an egg or a rock? 

Ben: Great. Okay. And then final question is, do you have any advice for people? Maybe this might be life advice, those who want to be creatives or explore this thing or we've talked a little bit about the importance of being creative.

Into, in, across disciplines, how to live a kind of a life well lived. But any closing thoughts on advice for listeners? 

Julian: Wow. I don't I'm, you are all, everyone's on their own journey and their own path, and I've had a very idiosyncratic and strange life, so I'm not sure if my, the advice.

That I can think of would be generalizable but I do think there's a specialization across everything that has had tremendous benefits, but there haven't, there aren't enough people putting it all together again. So if you think you can, if you think that there's some field you're involved in has missed something really big, that everybody has missed it because you have some information from somewhere else.

You're probably right. It's what you might not be right, but you there's a better chance than you think that you're right. Whole fields go wrong and nobody notices. So I think, try and put things back together because at the moment we're in a very fragmented era, and there's wonderful ideas lying all over the place that are in the wrong box, and they need to just being taken over to here where they were doing even more good at that.

And I think that people are doing that. We have an unbelievable number of PhDs in hyper specialized subjects, and we've got hardly anyone step, standing back and putting it all together. All the real, all the interdisciplinary stuff that people actually do, it's mostly bullshit. Like they'll have three meetings a year and they'll talk to each other and go, that's weird.

There isn't nearly enough putting it all together again. That's not really probably useful to most people, 

Ben: I don't know. I didn't hear about that. If you see an idea or a thing, which you think is in the wrong box or suspect it might be in the wrong box, go in, go and find it, drag it out into the light or put it into a different place.

That seems to me like a great idea. 

Julian: Yeah. I think we're moving into a golden age where science can be more, I think science that we need, I really want to pin some theses to a door here. I think we need a reformation in science. Science needs a reformation. Science has hit the end of a reductionist, materialist road, and its wheels are really spinning in the mud at this point in a lot of areas.

And it really needs input from people that aren't just reductionist materialists. 'cause reductionism is a phenomenal tool. It's the best tool we've ever come up with for uncovering certain kinds of data, certain kinds of truth. But at the scale of the universe, it breaks down. Reductionism will not explain the universe to you and it will not explain an entire society to you, and it will not explain the entirety of a human heart to you.

And, we need a reformation in science and there's, I'm trying to do it. Adam Mostriani, who has a subset called experimental history is trying to do it. There's a bunch of people, Matt Clancy's trying to do it. There's a bunch of people out there trying to help science realize that it's reached the end of a particular kind of problem.

way of doing things and we thank it and we're very grateful and we will continue doing reductionist material science forever because it's an unbelievably great tool but it's not enough for some of the problems we're facing right now and some of the mysteries we're trying to solve. Yeah and it strikes me It's a reformation in science.


Ben:

If I listen to a lot of cutting edge scientists on neuroscience, physicists, Nobel Prize winning speeches Oh, neuroscience is a really bad case of this, yeah. They always talk about we, the frontier, we need something more like this. But it's but we don't understand it. Yeah, it's 

Julian: unbelievable how many Nobel Prize winners in their speech will say, Reductionism isn't enough.

We are drowning in data, but we don't have knowledge. We're drowning in information, but we don't have wisdom. Some equivalent of that line has been said again and again by Nobel Prize winners. They all know there's a crisis. And they don't know how to get out of it, and it's, the trouble is the escape won't happen from inside the field, I think, at this point.

This is why I'm happily doing this from outside the field. I'm I think I have to disrupt it from outside. There's no point in me trying to get a paper into the Journal of Classical and Quantum Gravity that will be ignored for 30 years. That hasn't worked. It has to be disrupted from the outside.

And the problem there is most people who want to disrupt science and think they have a big idea that's better than the current idea are wrong. Most people are wrong. Most people, there is, the Dunning Kruger effect is real. A lot of people don't know what they don't know. But there are certain areas where the scientists themselves are not going to be able to find the solution to the problem because the problem crosses too many boundaries.

The boundaries of science are in the wrong place for understanding the universe. That's a big problem. That's a big problem. 

Ben: That sounds excellent. My takeaway is Try and go beyond the data or sideways to the data to the meaning or to the something else. Go to the meaning, 

Julian: But hang on to the data.

Don't deny the data to make your crazy theory true. Your crazy theory has to map onto the data. That's the difficult, that you've got to, you've got to just, you've got to hang on to the incredibly important data we do have. And then find the meaning in it. Yeah. 

Ben: That makes a lot of sense.

So on that note, Julian, thank you very much. 

Julian: Thanks. Thanks, man. That was a very enjoyable conversation.

In Life, Arts, Podcast, Writing, Theatre Tags Julian Gough, Minecraft, Universe, creativity, writing, physics, Creativity

Ruth Chang: Making hard choices, philosophy, agency, commitment, Derek Parfit | Podcast

August 2, 2024 Ben Yeoh

Ruth Chang is a prominent philosopher known for her work in decision theory, practical reason, and moral philosophy. She is a professor at the University of Oxford, holding the Chair of Jurisprudence. She is well known for her theory of "hard choices," where she argues that many choices are not determined by objective reasons but instead involve values that are incommensurable. Her Ted Talk on the subject is at 10 million views.

Chang challenges the traditional framework of decision-making, which views choices as being simply better, worse, or equal. She introduces the idea that some choices are "on a par," meaning they are qualitatively different yet in the same neighborhood of value. This perspective suggests that the balance scale often used in decision-making wobbles without settling, reflecting the complexity and richness of our values.

The conversation explores how this understanding can be applied to career decisions, illustrating the importance of identifying what truly matters to us and recognizing that our agency allows us to commit to paths that align with our values, even in the face of hard choices. Ruth discusses the importance of commitment and the role it plays in rational agency, highlighting how it can guide our decisions and bring meaning to our lives.

The episode also touches on the implications of this theory for public choice situations and AI development. Ruth emphasizes the need for AI systems to account for hard choices and incorporate human input in decision-making processes. This approach could ensure that AI aligns with human values and contributes positively to society.


Further, Ruth reflects on her experiences with influential philosophers like Derek Parfit and shares insights on the state of philosophy as a discipline, particularly the challenges it faces regarding diversity and representation. She offers her perspective on philosophical movements like effective altruism, emphasizing the need for depth and complexity in philosophical discourse.

The episode concludes with Ruth sharing her "A.U.T.H.O.R." framework for making choices and becoming the author of one's life, encouraging listeners to embrace hard choices as opportunities for agency and self-expression. This insightful conversation invites listeners to rethink their approach to decision-making and consider the profound impact of values and commitment in shaping their lives.

To become the author of your life, ascertain what matters, understand how alternatives relate to what matters, tally up pros and cons, and then open yourself up to the possibility of commitment. Realize yourself by making new reasons for your choices.

In facing hard choices, if you can't commit, it's okay to drift—dip your toe into an option. This way, you gather the information necessary to discover where you can truly stand behind a path."

Transcript below, video above or on YouTube. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.



  • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo

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  • Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh

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Contents

  • 00:36 Understanding Hard Choices

  • 04:37 Applying Hard Choices to Careers

  • 08:55 Rational Agency and Commitment

  • 18:37 AI and Hard Choices

  • 25:35 Philosophical Influences and Effective Altruism

  • 45:34 Current Projects and Life Advice


Transcript (errors are possible as this has been AI aided in generation)

Ben: Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be speaking to Ruth Chang. Ruth is a philosopher and Chair and Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University. Ruth, welcome. 

Ruth: Thanks so much for having me. 

Ben: I'm trying to decide who is better, Taylor Swift or Paul McCartney? How do you think I should think about that decision?

I guess traditionally we've argued for three positions. Taylor is better than Paul. Taylor is worse than Paul. Taylor is equal to Paul. But your thinking from what I've read suggests that about hard choices, that might not be the context that we should use. We shouldn't perhaps think about it differently.

What do you think? 

Ruth: So that's a great way to enter into my world. I'm interested in trying to understand a very structure of normativity and value. Okay, so what you just said, that we think that when there are reasons to do things or things are valuable, we can only array them in one of three ways, better, worse, or equal.

And I think that's a mistake, and I think there's a diagnosis for why we make that mistake that's perfectly reasonable, and that is, we, when we're trying to tame the external world by measuring quantities of stuff, we find more or less than equal the right framework with, within which to operate in understanding the external world.

But the external world. Also includes values, reasons to do things, and we may, we need to make a distinction between non evaluative properties and evaluative properties, or non normative property and normative properties, and the normative properties in the world aren't like the non normative properties, so they can't be represented as quantities.

And once you recognize values, they can be so different in quality. They also have different amounts and so on. They're much more complicated. Then things like length and weight, which can be fully represented simply as quantities. Then you start to think maybe this framework, what I call the trichotomous framework, better, worse than equal, more or less equal is not the right framework for thinking about how to live, how to deal with values and reasons.

So if you think about Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney, if you're a certain kind of person and what matters, And let's say a choice between how to spend your hard earned bonus concert there. You might think that's a case where it's a hard choice Now, it's important to figure out what do we mean by a hard choice?

What is a hard choice? And if you go out on the street, most people will say a hard choice is a choice where I just don't know enough. I'm uncertain. Or something else they might say is a choice is hard because I can't measure the values of the options. But I think both of those common answers are mistaken.

The lack of measurability is a kind of surface symptom of something deeper, and that deeper thing is that the value of going to a Taylor Swift concert, and the value of going to a Paul McCartney concert, they're qualitatively different. And so the choice, Is hard because the options are what I call on a par.

So one, one way I think about this is, I think that most people when they make decisions they take out of their back pocket, a balanced scale. I think, okay, I put one alternative on one side of the scale and the other alternative, the other. And then you wait and you see how the balance scale settles.

And on the trichotomous framework, of course, it's going to be like this, or like this. But I want to say that in most of the interesting voices we face, It's going to be like this. The balance scale is going to wobble. It will never settle. And that's because the options are qualitatively different.

And yet, in the same neighborhood of what matters and the choice between them overall. So they're on a par. 

Ben: And so how might we apply that to thinking about careers? So I can see that these choices are hard, might be on a par. And you've spoken about this, but maybe I'm thinking about being a yoga teacher, or maybe I'm thinking about being a lawyer, or I guess you had to choose at some point between being a lawyer or being a philosopher.

And I guess. If you think about society, they're paying lawyers more money than yogi teachers on general. So that's one element But it strikes me that this is a hard choice And I was reading some of your work and you had this notion of I guess commitment a willful commitment potentially having agency in your choice Being something to take into account So if people are thinking about some of these difficult to measure and hard choices like in a career or something like that. How should they think about that framing?

 

Ruth: Okay. There are two points that you raise. One is whenever you face a choice, hard or easy, the number one thing that you have to figure out is what matters. And you have to frame a choice in terms of what turns on this choice, what matters to me, or to society, or whatever, in choosing between A and B.

That fact, that all choices are relative to what I call a covering consideration, Is still extremely under theorized in philosophy. And, quite frankly, if you think about a huge part of decision making, theorizing about decision making is focused on the surface phenomena, things like what are the circumstances?

What are the background social structures that create a social choice architecture? Tell me more about the alternatives. Which is better for me, so on, but really we can take all of the questions that have been swilling around the surface phenomena in decision making and recast them in terms of features.

Of what matters in the choice, that is features of the covering considerations that matter in the choice if you really understand what it is that makes for a good career, right? Goodness of a career is your covering consideration when you're choosing between being a lawyer and a philosopher will immediately see that the trichotomous framework is silly.

Because there are lots of qualitatively different ways of having a good career, and we shouldn't try to force them into one of the three boxes or onto the balance scale because that's just a mistake, right? So one way to think about approaching hard choices in choices between careers or, how to spend your life. The first thing you have to do is you have to really sit down and think hard about the covering considerations that matter to the choice. Having said that, second, if the choice is hard, if the alternatives are on a par, if they're qualitatively different with respect to what matters in the choice, and yet in the same overall neighborhood of value, then we're stuck, it seems, because what it is for the

that are relevant, given what matters in the choice, to have run out. So that's it. You're out of reasons, you're out of values. So now what? You might think the thing to do is to just flip a coin. But if, as I think, these kinds of hard choices are ubiquitous, they're all over our lives, that gives us a picture of life that is It's mostly random.

We don't seem to have any authorship or agency over. It's just the world throws us a bunch of things that are on a par, and so let's just flip a coin and go one way as opposed to the other. That strikes me as unsatisfactory. So what I suggest instead is that we need to expand our understanding of what it is to be a rational agent.

As something that isn't simply recognizing the reasons and the values that the world throws at us, figuring out how they relate, and then responding appropriately. Rationality essentially, and centrally, involves this other capacity. It's a capacity to put our very selves Right to stand behind something and thereby endow it with value or normativity and this capacity it might sound a little strange, but I think we do it.

Most of us all the time. Here you and I are, we're sitting and chatting about philosophy, but guess what? There's a bunch of other stuff we could be doing.

We could be writing checks to Oxfam. We could be saving lives and many other things. I could be having some tea. You could go play with your child. So what explains and what justifies our being in the choice situation where right now we're chatting about philosophy and maybe The choice you face is between asking me one question as opposed to another question and the choice I face is how much detail should I get into this?

And, what should I say? Why are we in these choice situations and what justifies our being in these choice situations? So if you zoom out for a minute and think, wow, our entire lives are filled with these moments in time in which we're in a choice situation, but we could be in so many others.

You might wonder what explains why we're in the ones we're in and what justifies Are being in the ones we're in and here I think we have to appeal to the idea of our agency or our commitment to a certain path that makes certain choice situations, the right ones for us. You at one point committed to creating this podcast and, that commitment then makes certain choice situations pop up and be more salient for you than others. Your agency is what makes true that you're justified in being in the choice situation you're in. And we can't explain why you're justified in being in the choice situation where you're contemplating what should I ask her next?

In any other way, that gives you agency over your life, right? The standard, if you ask someone on the street how come I'm in this situation? The standard answer will be entirely passive. It will be done in terms of causation, like you just cause you to find certain things salient, and then you form an intention, and then there are norms of structural rationality given that you form this intention to make a podcast, then, if there aren't countervailing reasons, then you're structurally rationally forced to be in these kinds of choice situations, supposedly those But notice you drop out of the story, like where are you in this story?

It's just stuff happening to you. So probably the kind of deepest thing I want to say is that rational agency shouldn't be understood as this essentially passive set of capacities passive in the very deep sense of There's no room for us to actually create reasons for ourselves or to add normativity to things.

Ben: That's very attractive to me because it strikes against determinism. It brings in agency as well in this kind of willful commitment idea. I was also wondering how you might apply that to public choice situations. So here in the UK, we have a a budget on healthcare, and one dilemma which comes up quite often is this idea of do we give money to the preterm baby?

And save their life a cost of something like half a million or a million dollars. And do we spend more money on diabetic patients who tend to cost twenty to forty thousand dollars? And there's a complicated way that they adjust this into kind of dollar per life years to get some sort of comparable measure.

But then actually here in the UK, we've said we don't think that's quite the only way and the kind of narrow thing about just cost benefit and expected value doesn't chime with what everyone thinks. And so then we also ask people, how do you think that calculus should be done? And we weigh it to that.

So that's why we do spend some money on preterm babies. If you were just narrowly thinking about a dollar per life, you might always choose. The diabetic, there's this thinking about how actually maybe that kind of way of thinking isn't as helpful help in that decision, or is it to comment that you made?

It's just we haven't quite still got the theories and structures to really help out in making some of those tough choices. 

Ruth: I think a lot of the work that is currently being done in healthcare policymaking and, bioethics and so on, is extremely important because what it helps you do is zero in on the kinds of factors that are relevant in determining, what we should do overall in these difficult cases.

And that's important because, you got to understand what's at stake. And I assume what matters in these cases is, what is it that matters? Doing the right thing? No, it's probably not just morality. It's probably some plurality of goods that matter, and it's very hard. To me, I think it's interesting that the philosophy of healthcare stuff that I've seen doesn't actually try to list the things that actually matter because it's controversial, but you need to do it.

There's no shortcut. You got to roll up your sleeves and have the arguments about the things that matter. And that will then constrain the merits and demerits of the alternatives. Having said that, the kind of case that you raise seems to me probably a hard case. And if my theory is right, the thing to do is to understand that there's no right answer that you have to try to figure out.

But instead, you have to actually shift your decision making protocol. To recognizing that there's a hard case here, and then realizing, we as a hospital, what we can do is we can commit to treating preterm babies, or we can commit to half of the money going to preterm babies and half going to diabetics or, but recognizing that we just, that there's no right answer, that if we can stand behind spending our money, In this way, as opposed to that way, that gives us a kind of identity and clarity of purpose, right?

I think this is probably happening in the US, at least legal system, right? Different jurisdictions have different characters, right? They stand for different things. In this appellate jurisdiction, they care about. Actually it's more plausible district courts. The example I'm about to give, they care about indigent circumstances and vulnerability while committing the crime over here, this jurisdiction.

No they just care about the cost, the economic costs of the crime and so on. And that's a little crude, but there's a way in which a judge. Who has authority over jurisdiction can create the character of her court by committing to certain values over others. In the hard cases that she faces.

Ben: That's a lot of food for thought. So I can definitely see that being hard cases and how you might think about that. It brings to mind, then currently there's a lot of talk about how now in the future we might use AI to help us do decision making and it strikes me that this is something that we might want to think about in terms of what we put into.

Algorithms and choices, or even if we're using AI somehow to help humans make choices that this idea that there might be for hard choices, a different way of thinking about it. Quite important. Do you think this is relevant to AI? And what is your thinking about how we might have AI aligned, make sure that AI is.

Helping and enriching humanity as opposed to the other way around. 

Ruth: Absolutely. You put your finger on, I think, probably the most important application of this idea to the near future. And that is AI. It's coming like a juggernaut down the pike. And if you look at machine learning algorithms and even most symbolic systems, they're built on trichotomy.

Right now, a machine learning protocol will give you only three good results in the context of decision making. This is better than this, it's worse, or they're equally good, and then everything else is a bad case. I just throw it out or do something else with it. That means if, in fact, You and I are facing a hard choice about whether to spend the hospital's money on preterm babies as opposed to Diabetics and we get an algorithm to help us.

It's going it's already designed to force the choice into one of the three Categories, it's better to treat preterm babies. It's worse or it's even worse Toss a coin. But we know that the choice is a hard one. So if we could redesign our machines to allow for four good positive outcomes, to allow that there are some hard choices, that is in addition another way, it's a kind of new interesting way of getting the human in the loop in machine processing.

So the machine hits a hard choice. And it sends up a flag and says, Humans, I need some input and it's at these points that a committee can review the information and actually make a commitment or do this other thing, which I think is okay, which I call drifting, but let's stick with the commitment case, commit to, preterm babies.

Let's commit to. To spending money on them and sends that information, then back to the machine. And now the machine adjust its algorithm so that the, what was a hard case, right? Preterm baby or diabetes. Now becomes an easy case, right? That the preterm baby is better than cheating diabetes, and it adjusts its algorithm the minimal amount to make it true that's the right outcome that would reflect the commitment of the hospital to put the money on preterm babies. Two things, right? We need AI to have four and not three good outputs. In order to match human values, right? Because human values, you and I, we face hard choices all the time. And so why are we building these tools or decision makers who don't face hard choices? They need to face hard choices too. And second, these machines cannot.

Ever be fully autonomous because when they hit a hard choice The human has to come back into the loop and provide some input. Because this idea means that you have to have small AI, you have to have AI that's carves at the joints. It's got to be, it's, you need a design for each joint and figuring out which those joints are. That's hard work. Someone's got to do that. But I think that's the only way we're going to get value alignment.

And it's just, it's sheer lunacy to think that without putting hard choices into machines that we're going to get value alignment. It's just not going to happen. There are going to be many people who are harmed by machines deciding A is better than B when in fact, A is on a par with B. 

Ben: I think there is room potentially for a small AI or small AI startups, they will probably always be. In the minority versus the juggernauts, but at least then they could be developed. And if they do turn out to be potentially better, we'll have these uses than that.

That will still be useful. It also strikes me coming back to the individual choice, that we should probably not feel as bad as many of us do when faced with. hard choices that actually if we commit or maybe you can touch on drifting that both of those are plausible ways of trying to weigh up these choices and actually we should perhaps not feel quite so bad about making these choices if we do commit to one or even if we chop and change and drift would that be a way of thinking about it or not?

Ruth: Yeah, so we shouldn't think of hard choices as these horrible things that that we all have to face in life. They're amazing thing that we face in life. Because they're the junctures at which we get to express our agency. We get to stand behind something and add value to it. We get to direct our lives in a certain direction as opposed to another.

So the standard picture of rationality is here's your job as a rational agent. You've got to wake up and figure out all the reasons and values that the world throws at you, figure out how they relate, and then respond appropriately to you. That's the standard picture for millennia, okay, and that picture leaves no room for us as agents, and I call it the pacifist view of rationality on an activist view.

The picture is the world. You wake up and the world's going to throw a bunch of hard choices at you and each of those is this precious thing where you get to express your agency and commit to one thing as opposed to another and add value to it and in that way craft your life, right? You justify living like this as opposed to that.

Even though that alternative path is not better, worse, or equal to the path that you've committed to, they're just different. They're on a par. 

Ben: That makes a remarkable amount of sense to me, on a par. We've talked a little bit about this phrase, what matters. And that's perhaps a good segue into Derek Parfit, who I think you studied with.

And I was podcasting with David Edmonds and reading his book on the Derek Parfitt biography. And it struck me that he influenced the thinking, or in fact helped the thinking, of so many philosophers and wider thinkers. And there was a particular point in time also when he was with Amartya Sen, who went on to win the Nobel Prize and had a lot of thinking within economics as well.

And I'm wondering a couple of things. One was, what do you think might be most misunderstood about Derek Parfit? And the second is, how, what was it like listening to and debating with Parfit and Sen and to give a sense of what it is to be a a philosopher during our times? 

Ruth: That was a very heady time, and I feel extremely lucky to have been in Oxford during that period.

So there was something that was called the Star Wars Seminar. It was Ronnie Dworkin, Jerry Cohen Amartya Sen, Derek Parfit I think I'm missing someone. Let's see, who would I be missing? Anyway amazing lineup all in a row and All Souls old library and the room jam packed. It really makes a difference having a bunch of Very accomplished and interesting thinkers, all working together in a way not working on the same idea, but working in a way that they can feed off one another. And I think that was very important. I think one of the most important things that we academics can do for our students is to just give them a sense.

of what, philosophy at the highest levels is like. So too much philosophy today is just people writing down and publishing things that are just not the sort of thoughts on the way to something worth saying, but not really worth saying. And I know there's so much pressure to publish, but I think it's ruining the profession.

If we could all chill and just write down things that are worth. saying I think the profession will be much improved. And I think that generation of amazing thinkers did exactly that. They just wrote down things that were worth saying. So it was a great model. For how to do philosophy.

As for Derek, I feel so fortunate that I was able to study under him. And he was someone who gave me a sense of what philosophy at the highest levels is like. And we want to impart that to our students. But of course the flip side of that is that you spend your life falling short. But it's important to know what that is.

Instead of thinking, oh this is what philosophy is. It's just writing down anything I happen to think that has a little bit of rigor. So that's, I think, the most precious thing I learned from Derek. And of course, I am constantly falling short. So it makes for not a great life in some ways.

But if you accept that you are what you are and you do the best that you can I think that's better than, and while you know what it is to do philosophy at the highest levels I think that's a better situation. It's better for you, and it makes you a better philosopher than someone who doesn't even know what that is. Yeah. Okay, so Derek, it was just amazing, it's just spending. Eight, 14 hours with him just talking. And, to be frank, most of our discussions were not about my work, right? He wanted to talk about the things he was interested in and I was all too happy to oblige. So it was a way of cutting your teeth as a young person and being critical and, thinking about interesting ideas at a pretty high level.

And it was great fun. He really was indefatigable as far as how he's misunderstood. I guess it's a shame, I think, for him to be blotted into a certain type of philosophy, which I think is not fair. I think he admired and was glad for Effective altruism, that's not who he was as a philosopher.

So people who want to paint him as this flat footed, quasi utilitarian, I just don't think that's right. And it's convenient to take someone who's a big figure and use him as a foil, but I don't think it's accurate. 

Ben: His work's just that much more complex than, like you say, effective altruism or quasi utilitarian thinking.

Ruth: And that's not who he was as a person either. , I was just reminiscing about, lunches we'd have together and he would just suddenly burst into tears, he was a feeling person and and he believed in respect and duties and obligations and all that stuff. And he was extremely empathetic, right? So you can be like an old world British socialist who's got empathy for a group or some abstract entity. He wasn't like that. And I sometimes worry that people paint him as that. He was empathetic individually, for individuals. And he could occupy other people's shoes.

I think the thing that was most remarkable about him, maybe the thing I admired most about him, was that philosophy wasn't about himself. There was no ego in what he did. He was, he had, I think, a healthy ego, but when he did philosophy, it was all about the ideas. That's all he cared about.

And it wasn't about putting other people down and showing that they're more, he was more clever than them. So he was a role model for how to be a philosopher in that respect. 

Ben: How to concentrate on what matters, there. That scene that we come back to that's a good segue into whether you have any thoughts on How good effective altruism is or what its state today?

I guess some people would say that Derek Parfitt's kind of the grandfather of that kind of movement Although some of it, you could only take maybe a handful of his pages to get some of that. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that

Ruth: Are you asking me to say what I think about effective altruism? Maybe I 

Ben: could answer. We could do a little, I was going to do this in maybe underrated or overrated or maybe something else without that. But you said, yeah, maybe if effective altruism is a underrated philosophical idea or overrated, it probably hard to boil it down to one thing or any thoughts about where the movement is.

I guess it's been more. influential with young university goers than perhaps they they might've thought. But in recent years, it's also attracted quite a lot of criticism, maybe because of this perception of it being a kind of narrow cost benefit utilitarian idea. I'm just intrigued and what you make of it as a movement and how it's doing. 

Ruth: There's the movement and then there's the philosophy. And as far as the philosophy goes. My own view is that it's worth taking an idea and exploring the heck out of it, right? Go down all the alleys, that's what we should do. But then there's also kind of judgment about which cluster of alleys, you're looking down at which ones are worth spending a huge amount of time on. And I think that effective altruism, The philosophy of it is an alley that it's worth going down, right? Go down those alleys. That's great.

As far as the activism side, I guess I'm a little worried as to why this cluster of philosophical ideas has got so much traction, especially among young people. Like, why do they find it so attractive? And I worry that the reasons are not the right reasons for a theory to gain traction. To have something neat and fairly clean and in some ways not terribly complex and gives you a sense of virtuousness. I think that if that's what's going on, those are very bad reasons to cotton on to a philosophical theory and champion it. 

Ben: Yeah, that makes sense. 

Ruth: Yeah if those are the reasons, then things will peter out, right? Because the philosophical theories that have, Insight to them. Those are the ones that need to live on, even if they're messy and complicated and not easily summarizable.

That's what we need to be championing. 

Ben: And with that, with the sort of reasons part, how much weight do you put on intentionality when we come to choices and thinking? 

Ruth: So according to some studies, about 40 percent of the actions An average person performs a day are automatic.

So there's no intentionality at all. You just turn on the alarm, you make the call, right? And sometimes it feels like we're just on autopilot, right? We just go to work. This is what we have to be doing. We have a script that we're following. I'm trying to fight against that. And I think your use of intentionality is something I would call here's this opportunity we have for commitment where we can actually put ourselves behind a certain course of action instead of just drifting into it. Intentionality as you mean it, that is there are two things you might need. One is something that's close to what I think of as commitment. The other is, let's reflect and think about which path we should be taking and we should certainly be doing that. I think no one thinks we shouldn't be doing that.

I want to say that there's something else we should be doing that is not cognitive, is actually volitional. So yes, we need to think and contemplate whether this course of action is better than that one. But we also have to understand that our role as rational agents is to Throw ourselves behind something and create value for ourselves and thereby become the author of our lives by adding value to things for ourselves, right?

We make it true that being a philosopher is better for us than being a lawyer. 

Ben: And It leads to your point that hard choices are there for an opportunity. They can be great because you can bring your commitment, intentionality to it and bring it value to yourself. 

Ruth: One thing is that most people who have written to me about their hard choices, trying to get some help, they're in a position where They can't commit.

So it's all well and good for me to say, Oh, yes, and hard choices. You have this capacity to ground new will based reasons to create value for yourself, for an ordinary person when they face a hard choice, usually they're not in a position to make the commitment. So in that case, what do you do?

Like you're torn between being yoga instructor and lawyer. If you can't throw yourself behind one option as opposed to the other, what I tell people is to go ahead and drift in the sense of dipping your toe in one of the options as opposed to the other in the hopes, right? In the broader context of seeing whether you can commit to that option.

So in my own case. Should I be a philosopher? Should I be a lawyer? I was really torn. It seemed very clear to me that dipping my toe into law was a kind of safe thing to do because I'd be financially secure. Philosophy is a very dangerous, risky profession. So I dipped my toe into law, and I found myself unable to commit to being a lawyer.

So in law school, I took as much philosophy as I could. I couldn't commit to the way of being a successful law student, right? To be a successful law student, you have to do what's called issue spotting, and they give you a scenario and then you got to spot a bunch of issues and what I would always do is I pick one issue and I try to think about it philosophically, that one issue.

And so I'd miss the other dozen issues. So I wasn't a very good law student. I just couldn't do it. I just, I couldn't stand behind doing that. And when I practiced law, I kept thinking, I really want to go to foster graduate school. So that was a case of drifting into one option, dipping my toe in, seeing whether I could commit to it, and discovering I couldn't.

And that's a way to get information about what you can commit to. It gets you in a position where you can then throw yourself behind a path that looked too scary, five years ago. 

Ben: . 

Okay, I've got a couple of more big ideas, which I hear around and I'd be interested in your opinion as to whether they're overrated or underrated and in the same thing, and then finish off with a couple of current projects and perhaps overall advice or life advice questions.

So one is, there's some thinking around so called existential risk or tell risks of bad things happening. Some people talk about man made pandemics or I guess nuclear war or rogue artificial general intelligence. Do you think those are underrated ideas or overrated?

Should we be spending more time thinking about them or less time or maybe is it about the right amount of time that people are spending thinking about existential risk problems? 

Ruth: Existential risk is very sexy, but it's way off. I think we should be spending more time now trying to solve immediate problems. 

Ben: I guess there's two parts to sustainability, which is meeting the needs of today, as well as meeting the needs of tomorrow. But if your tomorrow is perhaps a thousand years or 2000 years in advance, or some people talk about a million years in advance, it does seem a little bit far away. We touched on the ideas of pluralism, kind of putting weight on a few things. I guess some people mean a bit differently by it. But do you think that's a kind of overrated or underrated explored idea, this idea that perhaps we should be more pluralist in our lives?

Ruth: I, it depends on what you mean, but in a kind of broad brush way, yes, let's be more pluralist. And one way we can be more pluralist is to have different communities. that are very fixated on one single idea or one religion or way of being and so on, so long as there's peace, right? And as long as one recognizes that mine isn't better than yours, they're all on a par.

Ben: Great. We just happen 

Ruth: to commit to this religion, and they've committed to this other religion or this other way of being. 

Ben: And that's okay, right? 

Ruth: That's okay. 

Ben: Okay. And then last one on this would be a universal basic income, some sort of UBI. Good idea, bad idea, neutral. We don't know enough about it.

Ruth: I don't know enough about it, but other people must on the face of it. It seems to me really intriguing. And I know there've been little pilots. Studies in small places. Just speaking personally without knowing anything about the topic. I love it. Like I'd love to try it and just see how we evolve as humans.

Ben: Great. Okay. And then last one I guess this is sometimes comes up in your work as well, but what do you think about the value of transformative experiences in terms of, big experiences that we have, which might change our views or things, or perhaps also how we should go about either kind of being more open to transformative experiences or not. 

Ruth: I think of transformative experiences as of a piece with ordinary experiences. You could have an ordinary experience that makes accessible to you, some value that wasn't accessible to you before that changes the weights of values that were accessible to you. Transformative experiences are ordinary experiences on steroids, where they're, they have this funny effect of.

Changing a huge swath of your value profile in a way that you couldn't have anticipated, right? Perhaps. Whether the epistemology is as people think is one, one has to argue about that, but, you can have experiences in life that change what you consider valuable and how valuable you consider it. And those are, as it were, small scale transformations, but you can also have these big scale transformations. And transformative experiences understood as the big scale ones, I think, are interesting. But I think they should be understood in a broader context of different ways in which our value profiles can change.

Ben: Great. And final couple of questions would be are there any current projects that you're working on? That you want to share. And, last one would be, life advice or advice that you have. But maybe starting with current projects that you're working on, or in the future that are interesting you at the moment.

Ruth: So the two projects That I'm working on now have to do with trying to locate and propose changes for what I consider two fundamental misunderstandings about value that are currently embedded in AI design. And I think that unless those two mistakes are corrected for, we're never gonna get alignment.

So they're not just random mistakes. 'cause any ologist will tell you AI when it deals with values gets a thousand things wrong. But these are two things wrong that I think are absolutely central to human alignment, human machine alignment, value alignment, and of course. As a philosopher, you can just say stuff, but no computer scientist is ever going to listen to you.

Especially if you have a proposal for how to fix what you claim are fundamental mistakes in AI design, you better speak their language. Kit Fein, I have prevailed upon to help, to create a mathematical model that could fit. What I think are the ways to fix these two fundamental mistakes.

So that's one project. 

Ben: And just to say that the two mistakes, because one was about hard choices, that there should be four ways rather than three ways. 

Ruth: Yeah. 

Ben: And what was the second mistake? Or is, and that, because it has to hand back to humans. Is that related? 

Ruth: No, the other mistake I haven't talked about yet has to do with an assumption that the way you achieve a value.

is through a non evaluative proxy. If you're trying to build an AI to hire the best candidate, right? Best candidate, that's evaluative. How do you achieve that? You put in the reward function some non evaluative goal, like Sort all the resumes that look the most similar to the resumes of the people we've already hired.

And all machine learning is like that. And that's a fundamental, I think, mistake about how it is to achieve an evaluative goal. You can't do it through a non evaluative proxy, and certainly not at scale. You can jimmy up a small AI that will work for, but that will be useless. This goes back to what I was saying before about how I think we need to have small AI that carves at the joints and getting the right joints is absolutely crucial.

So those are the two mistakes, values proxies and making no room for hard choices. So the second thing I'm working on now is related to something we talked about earlier and it has to do with how, here's one way we can get meaning in our lives. So it's about how do, how is it that you achieve meaning in life?

And, it's not about achieving things or having great relationships, although those things could be important, the ways of having meaning. I think it's about

committing or putting yourself behind certain, what I call well formed choice situations. as opposed to others. Like you and I get meaning in our lives by putting ourselves behind well formed choice situations that have to do with executing being thinkers or, talking about ideas. Other people get meaning in their lives by putting themselves behind being wolves of Wall Street.

And the idea is that you can contrast the case where you put yourself behind a certain set of choice situations. As having more value for you than others. Contrast that with a case where you just passively, look your father worked on Wall Street. His father worked on Wall Street. You went to fancy schools and Wall Street firms came a callin and handed you a job on a silver platter.

But where you just drift. into a path, but you don't stand behind that path. You haven't actually added value to that path. You're just blindly drifting. And a life like that, I think, doesn't have the kind of meaning that I'm interested in. 

Ben: That's fascinating. Oh I look forward to reading more about that.

And I guess final question then is, do you have any Advice that you'd want to share to listeners. It can be advice about choices, although I guess we've talked about that or life advice about career or how to how to live a flourishing life. It sounds like you're alluded that to you and your sort of current project around thinking about being committed to choices and the like, but I don't know if you'd sum that up in a particular piece of advice you'd like to share. 

Ruth: I have this kind of cute. Recipe for making choices and being the author of your life, right? A, ascertaining what matters, U, understand how the alternatives relate with respect to what matters, T, tally up the pros and cons of the alternatives with respect to what matters. And then here, we tend to draw a line.

That's it! After we've tallied up, we can figure out what we should do. We'll recognize that

often, we don't get an answer. So what we do is we go back to A U T again, and try to figure out where did we go wrong? We have to just be more careful. Instead, I think we need to move on and go to H, which is to home in on the fact of parity, right? There are hard choices. And then O is to open ourselves up to the possibility of making a commitment to one of the options.

And R, by opening ourselves up to the possibility of commitment, and then committing or drifting, right? We realize ourselves by making new reasons for ourselves if we've committed. By not making new reasons for ourselves, if we drift. So that's how we can become the author of our own lives. 

Ben: Great.

That's a really neat little recipe. A U T H O R. Author. Great. So with that, Ruth, thank you very much. 

Ruth: American spelling! 

Ben: Yeah! 

Ruth: If I were British, I'd have to add a U. Anyway. Okay. Alright. 

Ben: Thank you. 

Ruth: Thank you for having me.

In Arts, Podcast, Life Tags Ruth Chang, podcast, Philosophy, decisions, career

Hansong Li: China, Tangut, political economy, history | Podcast

June 14, 2024 Ben Yeoh

A podcast with Hansong Li, a political theorist and historian of political, economic, and legal thought. We discussed a breadth of topics ranging from the Tangut language, Eastern philosophy, development economics, to modern political ideologies and cultural expressions. Hansong’s insights shed light on historical contexts while drawing connections to contemporary issues.

The conversation delves into broader philosophical and economic themes, comparing past and present political thoughts and examining the effects of international aid on development. Hansong emphasizes the importance of learning from history and cultural interactions for a more nuanced understanding of contemporary global dynamics.

Transcript, contents and summary below.

  • 00:18 The Tangut People and Their Language

  • 11:16 Modern Interpretations of Chinese Philosophy

  • 22:07 Global South and Regional Concepts

  • 27:09 Montesquieu and Sea Imagery

  • 32:55 Rousseau's Plan for Corsica

  • 37:56 Economic Development in Northeast Asia

  • 40:34 International Aid: Help or Hindrance?

  • 46:56 Global Economic Thought: East vs. West

  • 56:29 Hamilton: A Political and Cultural Analysis

  • 01:01:51 Underrated or Overrated?

  • 01:06:04 Current Projects and Life Advice


The Tangut Legacy: A Journey Through Language and History

Our dialogue began with an exploration of the Tangut people and their language. Hansong provided a richly detailed account, explaining that the Tangut were referred to by the Mongolians, while the Chinese knew them as the Western Xia. Significantly positioned along the Silk Road, the Tangut introduced their own script, imitating Chinese characters but retaining a Tibetan-influenced grammar and syntax. 

"Learning the Tangut language is fun," Hansong remarked, pointing out its synthetic nature, blending elements from Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. He also emphasized the diverse cultural fabric of the Tangut, mentioning Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Han Chinese influences, and how insights into their daily lives reveal much about medieval Northwestern China.

In discussing the Tangut’s military prowess and strategic diplomacy, Hansong noted their frequent military victories over the Song Dynasty. He highlighted how Genghis Khan's frustrations with the Tangut contributed to his deteriorating health.

When questioned about the regulatory landscape for something as mundane yet fundamental as opening a bakery in that era, Hansong illuminated the extensive yet fascinating legal codes and contractual details. This granularity highlighted the historical depth and richness often obscured in conventional narratives.

Modern China: Misunderstandings and Moral Vacuums

Transitioning to contemporary topics, Hansong challenged the notion of a moral or spiritual vacuum in modern China. He argued that, despite China's complex relationship with its traditions post-1950s and post-1989, a rich tapestry of normative traditions persists, driven by intellectuals and everyday people alike.

"There is a world full of normative traditions, contentions, and intercultural contestations in China," Hansong asserted, adding that today's intellectual landscape thrives on the interplay of Marxist, Confucian, and other philosophical streams.

Economic Thought and Development: Lessons from Rousseau and Modern Implications

Hansong's reflections on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s plan for Corsica drew fascinating parallels with contemporary development economics. He praised Rousseau's stage-by-stage approach to building economic surplus, emphasizing its relevance to modern East Asian economic models where initial industrial policy laid the groundwork for technological and innovative leaps.

This led to a critical discussion on international aid. Hansong acknowledged its varied impact, cautioning against viewing aid as a one-size-fits-all solution. He stressed the importance of domestic capability in creating surplus and self-reliance, advocating a balanced approach akin to China’s industrial policy.

Western Economic Philosophies: Evolution and Reflection

Discussing Western economic thought, Hansong spoke about the ongoing evolution from 1970s neoliberalism to today’s reflective and sometimes critical stance. He emphasized the significance of considering both distribution and production in economic models, rejecting binary views in favor of nuanced, context-specific strategies.

Cultural Reflections: Musical Theater and Classical Music

We concluded on a lighter note, reflecting on cultural phenomena like the musical "Hamilton." Hansong critiqued its oversimplified portrayal of social mobility and individual heroism, while acknowledging its power to communicate complex narratives. He pondered the power of performative arts in shaping social and political discourse across cultures.

Travel and Inter-Normative Thinking: Life Advice

"Traveling a lot and being open-minded to different ways of life is essential for any public intellectual," he emphasized.

Transcript (AI derived, mistakes are possible)


Ben: Hey everyone, I'm super excited to be speaking to Hansong Li. Hansong is a political theorist and a historian of political, economic, and legal thought. Hansong, welcome. 

Hansong: Thank you so much, Ben. So glad to be here. 

Ben: What can we learn? from the Tangut language and people? 

Hansong: The wonderful question to start us off to start, of course, the Tangut and the word Tangut is the actually was a Mongolian reference to the people whom the Chinese call Western Xia.

And they occupy to the [ ] corridor so somewhere between modern day, [Gangsu and monglia] there were people who basically occupy this very strategic place in what we today would call the Silk Road as we reimagine it. And at the time of course, it creates some troubles for the Song Dynasty because they really blocked the pathway to Central Asia and to Eastern Europe.

We can learn a few things from the Tangut groups. First of all, the way they created their own script in imitation of Chinese characters, but also preserving that [ ] somewhat, it was rather close to Tibetan in, in grammar and syntax, but with a lot of loan words from across the board from Sanskrit, from Chinese.

So it's a very synthetic language, and it's just so much fun to learn. I started learning it when I was 13 or 14 reading martial arts novels, which involved some characters from the re imagined Tangut dynasty, but and then I wondered, I really wanted to know how they spoke and what they really thought and what kind of buddhism did they have and how did they treat people of different cultures, religions and ethnicities, because it was not just a regional kingdom, but there were [ ] medieval Uyghurs the [Hui] people who were conquered and incorporated in there. There were Tibetans, there were more Central Asian peoples.

There were obviously also a lot of Han Chinese influence. And it was a very diverse. And incredibly rich source of historical imaginations. And we can also look into the daily lives at the micro historical level, the way they contracted loans and investments. And my favorite piece of artifact was really just a piece of paper saying all the things you need to start a bakery shop and all the utensils you need and how much it cost it. And of course, you have to rent the room to open that bakery shop. So all the details you need to know about ideas, we would call it high medieval, late medieval Northwestern China.

And their interactions, their diplomacy, their economic life, their total activities it was just a kind of black box because it's not officially classified as 1 of the 24 histories and dynasties of Chinese history for complicated reasons. But this mysterious dynasty really has a lot to offer once you open up this black box and you see all the treasures inside. 

Ben: I mean arguably it was on a par with the Song dynasty. Is that correct? ... the 1100s to 1300s 

Hansong: Exactly and it overlapped with both the northern southern Song dynasty. So it started in the really in the heydays of northern Song dynasty So [they] able to battle off both the Khitans and and Han chinese And then later on, the Khitans were replaced by the Jurchens and the, the Song Dynasty, the Imperial Dynasty, then retreated to the South, but it continued to exist until the Mongol conquest.

And obviously the Mongols had a lot of troubles conquering the Tang groups. And it's rumored, several sources, including some Mongol sources, that Genghis Khan really was infuriated at the slow pace that Which they were [attacking Tangut] territory. The Tangut was really good fighters in terms of military power, not in terms of economic power.

They were probably much superior to the Songs. There were more victories on the Tangut side than on the Song side throughout the North and Song dynasties. [it is said on Ghengis Khan... that] The frustrations he had with his Tangut campaigns might have contributed to [his] the worsening of his own health situations and might have even contributed to his death. And, but of course we can't really verify that. 

Ben: And were there many bakery regulations? Is it like today where you needed lots of licenses and tax inspectors, or was it relatively simple still to open up a bakery? 

Hansong: It involved, of course, the regulatory regimes and and the legal code was extensive.

The Tanguts ... learned from both the Tibetan and [ ] their Chinese sponsors, patrons, peers at the time, and they also compiled they learned both from the [Tang] and the [Song] codes. And to open up a bakery shop, of course, you have to have a certificate. You have to have the permission to do that.

But then the taxes, right? All the the loans, the pawning and the transactions the land. Ownership and all of that have to be sorted to legally and we do have these legal codes, both the code itself and how it actually applied because we have the contracts and the laws and you can compare if in practice, they were really enforcing what the law says.

It's incredibly fascinating that you can do a lot with these materials. Then sometimes you can do with the seemingly richer Chinese sources at the time. 

Ben: And was it predominantly a steamed bread or a baked bread? And I was bread more popular than noodles, or I'm assuming rice at the time.

Hansong: Yeah. Northwestern Chinese. [The Tangut] took over basically the agricultural zone of the yellow river[ region quickly but] they never gave up on nomadic ways of life. They kept herding hunting and other activities, but they also took over the local agriculture of Northwestern China.

And so these are rough. pies with, I I don't think there was a lot of filling in there. But then there is also this question of the evolution of things like. Momo for example, in this Northwestern Chinese dialect, it really just nowadays, it meant just a bun without any filling in there.

But and then what the Chinese would call baozi and jiaozi nowadays are closer to samosa and momo and manti. But all of these words, of course, come from Tibetanized Chinese. Or other like Turkified Chinese. And so all of the new, so you can basically, like an average Chinese tourist would go into these Central Asian or Eastern European restaurants and order by speaking Mandarin.

Ben: What would have been the greatest cultural artifacts of the region in the time? 

Hansong: In the territories, it would be, architecturally, these magnificent pagodas and the imperial mausoleums actually, it's been the government of Ningxia has been petitioning for a UNESCO status for the Tangut Mausoleum, and I was involved in translating some of the documents that was also very tricky, right?

If you want to call it the tombs or mausoleums, and if it's like classifying it as a kingdom or an empire, it also has geopolitical implications hence also political sensitivities. And these are architectural wonders. On the other hand, you also have Buddhist sutras and also block prints, because the Tanguts were very advanced in book printing.

Towards the end, because of a lot of fiscal disasters and also because of the high expenditures on military campaigns it suffered a dearth of resources. So at the time they were using a recycling papers a lot. So in, in towards the end of the Tangut Imperial history, you will see that all the sutra pages were recycled and you would write your personal like diaries or practice your calligraphy or even write out your contracts On the flip side of maybe a sutra or some kind of textbook so it becomes messier at the time. It's a combination I guess to answer your question. It's a combination of textual artifacts and then there are a lot of These Buddhist artifacts these boxes where you will put in a tooth or it's or there, there will be like larger architectural artifacts.

So we, we have a lot of these and also inscriptions and steels and other things spread out across mostly Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia. 

Ben: And what would have been the dominant philosophical thought of the time?

So there was obviously Buddhist influence, a kind of Tibetan Buddhist influence.

You also had the nomadic people. There was, a spirit influence. And I guess there's a little bit of a, one of those medieval diverse melting pots we would, might say today, but I was interested about that philosophical thought either I guess a little bit is economic military philosophy, but also the kind of [ ] spiritual, how should they live their life?

Hansong: Absolutely, it's also fascinating if I could time travel, I would definitely try to reconstruct a kind of cosmology of the 10 groups, but I also, I guess it would have been a melting pot and even just officially the 10 groups had bureaus, they had bureau, Creative structures, which regulated Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

So you have the Confucian academy system. You have a regulatory regimes overseeing the conduct of the Taoist monist. Of course, part of it is also to make sure the religious sectors don't get subversive and they're well regulated. So there's that kind of state to view it through the eyes of the state.

There is that regulatory intention there, but also it says a lot about the prosperity of Buddhism and even Taoism, Confucianism. And of course, at the imperial level, there were all ways. These more like pro harm confusion. Sectors, and there are these more Buddhist state sectors, and there are the more kind of authentic, if not indigenous 10 good intuitions about, we should be more nomadic and less sinicized.

And so there's always this contention from within the Imperial household. Sometimes the the clan, the maternal clans of the Empress would be a little bit more pro Tengu, pro like more indigenously minded and sometimes the male clans would be a little bit more pro Confucian. And then on top of that, of course, you have military treatises, which are also very philosophical.

You have. receptions of all kinds of thinking from the Central Plains, from Tibet, from, India directly, indirectly through Tibet. And so you have this kind of synthetic cosmology in which different sources of normative and philosophical religious thinking would come together. And usually the Tengu are very versatile in synthesizing them and they print all kinds of texts in all across traditions.

And they're quite proud of that. 

Ben: That's a good segue into thinking perhaps around today's thinking, tracing it through a sort of history of economic thought or philosophical thought. What do you think is maybe misunderstood about China today? Or perhaps another way of thinking about it is, it seems to me that an understanding of Chinese philosophy or, different parts of it still seems to be an underrated way or lens [of thinking about China].

You've already mentioned a few the Tao or Confucianism and obviously you've got that through to thinking about modern China today. What do you think are the important to understand about how China's come about and it's thinking tracing it through the history to where we get today?

Hansong: Yes, absolutely. I think there are several intuitive assessments of the situation in China that I think needs to be more qualified or enriched or expanded. And the first is that there is some kind of moral vacuum, a spiritual vacuum if not post 1950s. ... at least post 1989. So this thesis about moral vacuum or spiritual vacuum could either come from neo left reactions to China's integration into global neoliberalism is a kind of discontent with the fact.

And now we only care about the market and no longer about the morals. So that would be one critique. And the other critique is, Oh, you've got, you've lost all of your Confucianism since the 1950s. This obviously is an oversimplification because since I would say since early modern China, at least not since the Jesuits came in, there was this kind of a first and the Jesuit pivot to the Buddhists.

And then they gave up on the Buddhists. And decided to align with the confusions against the Buddhist and talking about the material moment. And and then after that you still have this continued legacy of inter cosmic or inter epistemic contention, which exploded of course, in the aftermath of the Western.

Interventions in China since the open war. And this and then with the the reception of Marxism, you have traditional, and it must be emphasized this, a very heterogeneous traditional world of Chinese philosophies, which shouldn't be too Confucian centric about it the Confucian, Buddhistic other Traditions of thinking heartening back, of course, to the late spring, autumn, early warning states periods.

This entire internal world of contention descent then interacted with, of course, the Marxists and the liberals. And you literally see the receptions being parallel and also crisscrossing overlapping with each other. And we're very much in the aftermath of that kind of molten. Multiplex reception and today, of course, you still have intellectuals adhering to or mixing and matching these very different traditions.

And it's really not the case that you have a vacuum. If anything, you have a world full of normative traditions. Contentions and inter normative, international, intercultural, inter religious contentions. And I think that's a very healthy thing. So I don't think there is a moral vacuum. And I think it's actually a, an exciting moment to look at the ways the Chinese not just intellectuals, academics, but also the ways that people on the middle or bottom level.

Understand and different sources of normative. Imaginations, right? So that is one big thought that I think it's there, there's a lot in there. And secondly there is a kind of post colonial reading of China, or a And also it's not appropriate to say indigenous, but it's kind of NeoCon confusion or neo post-colonial reading of China, as you know now that China's reacting against the whole, the entire legacy of post imperial, then post-colonial, and then post-war liberal international order.

And it's responding to that, reacting against that with his own tradition. But then here are my responses again that the Chinese tradition must be unpacked and and deconstructed. And it's not just about Confucianism. It's a lot of things in there. And to what extent China's opposed colonial has a.

Post colonial mentality, it's certainly strategically and geopolitically identifies with the post colonial moment, but it's also a very special case. So I think the best way to approach the thinking world, the thought world of China today is to look at, first of all, the genealogy of these ideas and how they contest each other in the long duration, not just in the past 10 or 20 years after reform and opening up.

But throughout the 20th century, going back to the late imperial moment but also to be open minded about the many ways that different sectors of the Chinese public sphere part choose to participate in these different kinds of problem consciousnesses. 

Ben: So that's a rejection of both. The simplistic view that you could understand China today just as a post colonial thinking, or also a rejection of just thinking about China entering a free market, neoliberal type of thinking, either way seem too simplistic.

And the best way of thinking about it is still a pluralistic melting pot of many traditions which have been there for hundreds to thousands of years To, to where we are today. So perhaps thinking today and crystal ball into the future, how do you think this might pan out? And maybe we could maybe make it a little bit simpler because you already pointed to the fact that different parts of Chinese society think differently, and you can think about this almost urban countryside, elite, non elite.

Technocrats merchants versus bureaucrats. So it there's no one answer either because it's a pluralistic kind of view of the world. But I guess with the dominant thought on the government side, or perhaps trading merchant side, where do you think it might be going? Is any one of those threads of thought potentially becoming more dominant or some intersection of that where you think this is maybe a little bit misunderstood and seem to be a more dominant piece of thinking which might last for now and into the immediate future.

Hansong: I see the continued relevance and prevalence of this idea that we we're bear, we're torch bearers of this particular socio political economic tradition that Situates us somewhere in as a kind of dual track policy thinking mode and in between big bang neoliberalism and old fashioned collectivism.

So I think that kind of middle ground, the post 1980s, 1990s. Eastern European moment when, of course, China sent economists to the Eastern Europe to discuss what to, what should be done or what is the old Leninist question what is to be done now that we share the kind of global East mindset, we don't want to go back to this basically empirically.

Ineffective mode of collectivist economic production, very imbalanced, very unhealthy, does not even deliver on social welfare that we pride so much we pride our system so much on and but on the other hand. Not only the symptoms of, the old Martian language, the inner contradictions, but not so much.

The, just the state of crisis in a blind and unreflective kind of neoliberalism. So I think it's now become a kind of implicit tacit doctrine that we are somehow a dual track. Political economy, and that's when the state comes in to correct, say, during a crisis panic moment all the prices go up irrationally.

Of course, the state will come in and instruct some state enterprises to lower the prices and to stabilize the markets. So the there was no no, no feeling that this is somehow working against the logic of the market. It's if anything, as opposed to moderate, the irrationality is propping out here and there and not wait until a hundred years when, for the market mechanism to really work out.

And but on the other hand, the idea of the market primacy as the main market. Place for for transactions and as the way to distribute resources. I think that's not going to be shaken. With whichever administration comes in place, which, whichever kind of ideological orientations.

Is taking precedence within the standing committee within the Congress. I think that stands that socioeconomically. We are a dual track political economy. We stand ready to use whichever instrument that will deliver. We will use industrial policy to support new energy, knowledge, technology, Economy based, I know the industry, there is no qualm about using industrial policy.

And so it's, if anything, it's harmonized with the market reform logic. So that's something I see at the end, since you were asking about the governmental side, I think that's going to be like a very. Stable policy, but as for how to interpret that kind of dual track identity, and as for which one to use at what moment, that is definitely a matter of prudential judgment.

And you do see ideologies coming in when the committee members or the, the top leadership. Selectively uses the different elements of that dual track identity to further its own vision of what is better for the country going forward. So it's so I guess it's not purely ideology, but it's not purely like 1 of the 2 political outlooks.

Say it's it's, there is something stable there, but also it depends on the floods and the reflux of ideological leanings. 

Ben: That makes a lot of sense. So in principle, dual track, but case by case, hard to know which track [has most of the waiting and in the moment] 

Hansong: But having, but basing your legitimacy on the dual track identity, I think, I personally find it a better alternative than many others, but I think it provides a source of stability because if you can't walk back on the dual track ideology, [...] Then at least you wouldn't go full mode, [Thatcher, or]

[Reagan] on the other hand, you wouldn't go full mode.... let's return more power to the state. If you can't really say that within the framework of legitimation then if you must provide some kind of explanation for why you're sticking to the dual track identity, then I think that's at least a constraining force and it's a good thing to have it because otherwise you could have much more unstable policies that confuse people and potentially damage the ecosystem that has been built over the past 40 years.

Ben: Sure. That makes sense. And I guess a lot of western thinkers have come out with large, broad based concepts, sometimes geographic or things. The Global South and South Asia, you've done some work on Indo Pacific. But actually, on some of those concepts, Take one, which has talked about when you unpack something like the global South, it seems so much more con complex than that broad based element.

How helpful do you think some of these concepts are? And maybe if we would unpack global South, or we could also comment on South Asia and Indo Pacific, are they. too simple as to actually being potentially not helpful or as a way, particularly for those in the West, or maybe when you're thinking about some of the causes that the global South tend to campaign for is that a useful framework for them for now and into the future?

Hansong: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I think these spatial concepts are becoming more and more ambiguous and fluid. There is a narrow reading of the global South. And there's a narrow reading of the global East and the narrow reading of the global South is the Latin, Latin American, African, Asian solidarity in the 1970s moment.

When these postcolonial states sought statehood and autonomy and self rule and self national determination, UN seats and all of that, they did share and you can All that entire blog, global South. But of course now in that post 1970s moment, what is global South? That becomes more ambiguous and the global East.

Also, there was a narrow definition, all the post Soviet Eastern European or central Asian moment of, what to do now. And do we preserve the Soviet institutions? Do we mix and match? Do we grow food like EU mode? And where are we turning? Is there a third path? So that's a narrow reading, but nowadays you have plural and parallel solutions to that.

You can for example, if you're a post Soviet Central Asian state, you can go to the Turkic coalition. It's not only not yet a Turkic union, but it's a kind of international society. You can go to an Islamic world. You can go to the Eurasian, the Neo Eurasian you can do the Eurasian project of Russia.

You can do belt and road. You can do Shanghai cooperation treaty. You can do all kinds of things. So nowadays it's hard to say, what is the global East? What is Eurasia? What is global South? And it's hard to say what is the Indo Pacific? Because even if you're looking at it from the point of view of institutions, political institutions what are you going to do with South Asia?

And even just India looking at India... western all cruise type of think tankers who would like to simply impose Western liberal assumptions on the largest democracy in the world always have trouble understanding ... what exactly India is doing. It confuses them profoundly because they don't really look.

Go into the cultural aspects. So it, it's hard to pinpoint these concepts nowadays, but to look at them as intersected regional phenomena of intercultural and international development to look at them as for example, to look at. Southeast Asia as a whole, as a source of innovation.

I think that made sense to look at the global south in the South Africa and South Africa's pleading at the ICJ and all the signatories too. South Africa's case against Israel, you can definitely see some kind of coalition building there, and that's most. Around the global south. And then that kind of goes and then it conquered the global north.

'cause all the European states then decided they must side with South Africa on this limit. [At least on the li more limited] limited side of the argument that and then you have China coming and say that we have to go back to the 1970s- mode and say that anybody under occupation has the full right to resort to even violent means to to regain their territory.

And that is a pretty strong argument. So China clearly is also trying to give itself a post colonial, anti colonial identity. So you have these moments where you say, okay, these kinds of regional spatial concepts somehow make sense, but when you really try to pin down where is where it's, it becomes very fuzzy because we now live in a very, we now live in a world of parallel alternatives and all of these overlap is very hard to even single out. If there is a US backyard, a Russian backyard, if there is a region that's dominated by a set of cultural norms, because it's all very fluid. And so we live in this kind of world of of normative and in geocultural fluidity.

Ben: That makes sense. So in the historic moment, the narrow definitions make sense descriptively, like you said, East Asian moment global South moment, post 1970s or post that. But in, in today's case it's much more complex where even nation states have different things going on in them.

I'd like to turn to a couple of pieces of your work, which are I guess slightly esoteric, but still seem to tie up to me. I'm going to turn to Montesquieu and sea imagery. So I was reading that someone interprets Montesquieu as saying his law is like being a fisherman's net. So this idea that often you can swim through it and only big things get captured.

So you go through most of the time and the laws don't really affect you and obviously he was very influential to many legal systems and constitutions like the U. S. Founding Fathers and a lot due to this idea of separation of powers. But I think you've done some work on the sea imagery in Montesquieu.

So what's going on with this, the sea ocean trade and is this a way of understanding Montesquieu and economic thinking of the time? 

Hansong: Yeah, it's of course, it's one of my passion projects and Montesquieu being one of the first Western readers I came across when I was a child growing up in China.

And he's very hard to pin down because Montesquieu is very versatile and is all over the place. It's very hard to know what is Montesquieu all about? Of course, the Americans have a Separation of power in their mind and it's that kind of label Montesquieu Montesquieu wanted to be a natural philosopher.

He wanted to be even an engineer at some point. He there was a famous story where Montesquieu, of course, would go to the school. And we know this from the Asian experience. Teacher would tell you all the, horrible things happening with your child and why you should help the teacher and inculcate and infiltrate the mind of your child at home and make it easier for the school.

Also someone just went up there and asked the teacher, what's happening with my son and the teacher said I'm not sure if you're smart enough. Is really into the natural science. So he seems much more interested in the literature and the humanities. And won't just to hearing this fell back onto the chair and all growing pale in his face, Oh, no, he's not going to be another useless humanist like me.

So he's really he would rather be and a hard Art science professor and not a a rambler about law and philosophy. And and I find some of that, of course, in his early writings on the natural sciences. And he was chairing, coordinating, and sometimes writing natural science words.

And when he was traveling and noticed that he was really interested in the sea, the lagoons, and these water projects, these aquatic engineering projects. And he even had thoughts that he was going to build a machine that takes out all the mud from the lagoon. So that as to so as to facilitate a maritime traffic and trade and on the other hand.

So this is the natural scientific leanings. On the other hand, I read a lot of very classical Western thinking about the sea and land and starting with Plato and Aristotle, they wonder. Plato famously was skeptical of the port. He decided that if you have a port and everybody's coming in through the port, what's going to happen is that you will have a lot of different normative thinking and a lot of ideas of how to live your life.

What is the best way of life coming in? And it will be very hard. Yeah. To to implement what you think is the best form of civic life. So it's very dangerous to have a port. You don't know who's coming in. You don't know what's being talked about in the marketplace once you open up the port. On the other hand, he realized, oh, if we have to have a port, let's have a port.

You have, I have to have some kind of trade with other cities, other polyas. Plato never was that autarkic. He always conceded, especially in the laws, not so much in the politics. That you need to have some kind of intellectual exchange between the police. You need to have certainly some kind of trade as well.

The Montesquieu was living in a moment when commerce was really taking over with the post Machiavellian moment where there was no return. You have to have trade. And the question is how to tame trade and use trade. In a way that doesn't end up in disasters, but actually benefit your physical well being and all the entire health of the civic body as a kind of in a physiological sense as a body politic that the money is circulating through your body.

Rousseau would call it would make the metaphor. The money has blood going through your your body. But if you have too much finance, unregulated finance, it's almost like having too much fat clodding your veins. Montesquieu was already thinking in those terms. He said that Marseille classical, like ancient Marseille, and also in his own time, was it, it's good to have all the ideas coming in and all the different groups and services coming in.

But the question is how do you think about it legally, philosophically in such a way as. To promote and not to damage the health of the citizenry. And so those two strains of thought, his interest in the sea as a natural phenomenon is interested in the fact of human sociability on the sea.

So maritime sciences or oceanography, there wasn't like proper oceanography yet, but some kind of oceanography. And maritime sociability and the political philosophy, legal philosophy of of human movements of people, ideas, goods, materials, tests on the sea or came together and made Montesquieu this this, I think a major thinker of the sea.

I identify him as a pivotal moment in history, political thought. And and I think he really made a huge Impact his nose, his diaries during his voyage went directly into it. So the the spirit of the laws where, you know, the founding fathers of America founding moment they drew a lot of inspiration from it, but I think it really was a kind of collection of reflection on what he saw and thought during his travels.

And he thought a lot about the sea during his travels. 

Ben: Okay, I hadn't appreciated that and then the interlink obviously at the time that to see was so important for trade and trade being the lifeblood of what's going on there. But like you say, needed to be tamed. You don't want it to be clogged. You mentioned Rousseau as well, and I hadn't realized until reading your work that he had a plan for Corsica and its government in the mid 1700s.

And this kind of plan has echoes today about. Or perhaps it doesn't we can discuss that relevant to thinking about what do we do for developing countries? Yes, should other richer nations have a plan for these countries? What should that plan be? Is international aid good or not? Do you wrap it into your own political ambitions... like give cheap loans... buy land... belt and road or international aid or whatever but maybe we could start with what do you think about Rousseau's plan for Corsica in the 1700s? What did that mean? And has that actually influenced our thinking about global development today? And then what people think about, these supposedly less developing countries and what other thinkers should demand or suggest for them in terms of their own development economy?

Hansong: Absolutely. It's a wonderful question. It would allow me to be very honest about it because when I was looking at Rousseau's historical thought on what to do with Corsica, I was completely, my mind was completely filled with development economics as a discipline and my reflections and critiques Of that and my own preference when it comes to thinking about development in our own time.

So I think they're really connecting. It's very personal as a piece of history of political thought. It felt very personal to me. So Rousseau was invited to give a constitutional plan. It wasn't really like a constitution in like strict doctrinal legal sense, but he was reflecting on the situation in Corsica, so it's a very contextual piece.

Not only that we need to contextualize him in that moment, but that piece itself reflects the way he contextualizes Corsica at that particular moment. And occasionally he made the essentialist remarks on the, how the Corsicans are brave and they're just intrinsically good as a people. But of course, you have to say that when you're legislating for them, you're all stupid.

And here I am, I'm your legislator, but he certainly thought a lot about an African. of an affinity with the core students. But more largely, he was thinking systematically and it was thinking he was trying to apply, really what he thought about the the questions bothering Europe at the time, which is the physical, the fiscal and financial imbalance, which Took many years and centuries for France to resolve.

At the time, the question is, are you going to use finance? If you use finance, and if you finance your your military campaigns, are you ever going to pay it back? Is there something else? There's some other way to finance the army is, They're another way to finance these other development projects.

Rousseau's answer is surprisingly pragmatic, but it's also, at the end of the day, I think it's quite radical. He believes that Corsica first of all, since we were talking about the sea, the Corsica is an island. He says you should close it up for a while. Most readers of that piece think that he's autarkic.

He wants to close the entire island to the outside world. I disagree. He clearly, there is a temporal thinking there. He wants to close this, the island to the geopolitical threats for at least a while enough time so that Corsica could grow into an economic not an economic power, but at least grow to a sufficient degree where it would be able to finance its own defense. So in the here and now Corsica should start with agriculture, and that's why people think he's autarkic, but you have to start with agriculture and then go into industries. And for now, the different regions of Corsica, given these different geographical features, they should trade inter regionally.

And if you don't have a healthy cash flow- barter, no but you trade by goods first, and then you can have a currency system. So he's not against currency, he's not against trade, he's not against opening up, he just thinks that you need to do it step by step, stage by stage. And then we're getting very close to the kind of economic development idea there.

And he thinks that you should build up a surplus in course of time, a very rudimentary sense of surplus by agriculture and industry and collect that surplus invested in where you think matters the most and in a sustainable way. The extraction of salt should be very carefully deliberated because there are these easier to extract harder to extract or higher quality salt that you want to export 1 day.

So please try to do it sustainably. There are woods of different calibers. You need to save up the best wood that in the future will be used to construct warships. But for now, you're not having a Navy because you're not there yet. And let's. Use the worst would for just daily consumption. So he's very careful at every step.

He wants to make sure you're doing the right thing so that the plan would evolve into the future. And how does that teach us? What does that teach us about economic development? This whole idea that look at Northeast Asia, look at Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan for a while, when during the cold war They were very much using industrial policy to build up surplus at home.

And then they were using that surplus in a very centralized way. The Republican Chinese government in Taiwan, of course, used industrial policy. Korea, South Korea used a lot of industrial policy to build up the surplus. And Japan, under all the influence from the U. S. Still, it tried to really concentrate its energy on certain sectors and to succeed from that from there.

And China is also a [an example..] China is a great example that we built a surplus from, manufacturing and other industrial activities. And then selectively and concentratedly use that surplus to advance other knowledge, economic productions. And so as to to leap across certain stages of development and to go straight to the more innovative parts.

And there is a certain level of success. Empirically it, it worked to some degree, at least that's from the anxieties we see now with Chinese export of EVs back to Europe that this idea of. Building a surplus investing strategically and then going straight to the more innovative sectors and then while maintaining an overall balanced healthy economic development.

That is very resilient to me. That's very resilient. And it's not just about opening up. And then you naturally see the. Then the resources will flow and the incentives will work. And then somehow in 300 years, it will grow to a some kind of natural, naturally grow into a political economy that you're teleologically determined to be.

There is, there's not that kind of big band full blown. I don't think any economies, even my Chicago teachers, I don't think any of them really think like that. I think there was Rousseauianism in every. Economic thinker of development. So that's what I learned from it. And I think we can learn a lot from Rousseau's thinking.

Of course, it's not just authentic agrarianism. It's very sophisticated in step stage by stage. He walks you by the hand and tells you what to do. And and it's a very open minded outcome there. 

Ben: It's really fascinating. And just seeing how these patterns of economic thought, go back and where they start and how they then express themselves today.

I guess that leaves me also with a couple of thoughts. So one is for particularly the poorest nations is international aid potentially then more detrimental than not, I guess there's a couple of schools of thought. So one school of thought which Deaton, the economist suggests is that if you give international aid, the country itself cannot develop its own... that well, its own infrastructure, its own form of government or institutional capacity. International aid will often misallocate not very well and therefore produce more harm than good. The opposing thought is that. You get there's a kind of hump that you need to get over in terms of some sort of surplus or you need some capital they don't have access to cost cheap call it cheap capital so if you get cheap or free capital from other places you can make really big differences in terms of things and the so that's One blob I'm thinking about and then the second kind of almost riffing off You're saying is I can see the success of so Korea or Singapore and in Japan And then you've got those which look like they might be doing something similar So say Vietnam, which is still a little bit manufacturing But you can see is going up into some higher knowledge even Bangladesh Which has been pretty successful in clothing other manufacturing seems to have other elements going through you parts of India, whereas that whereas it looks like this could be quite hard to replicate in places like Africa, where it's hard to see what even their domestic surplus would be.

I don't know. There's kind of arguments Other side of that. And so whether that playbook will still work for some nations, it could actually still definitely work in places of Latin America. Arguably Mexico is actually doing this similar idea as well. So I guess there's two components because international aid listed on that.

So do you think it will still happen that way? And we should encourage that. Today and where does international aid play if that playbook is the one to follow or not? 

Hansong: Absolutely so the part one of the question is about international aid and I think there are different levels on which we can think about it.

Some international aid is through international, Organizations institutions and humanitarian aid, and that's one thing. There are compensated compensation, motivating international aid. And then there is also this kind of development oriented loans and other forms of aid. And if you're talking about.

Political science literature is on the effectiveness or political economic literature is on the factings of these international aid. It's very context dependent. Once the aid or FDI, in more like classical or neoliberal terms, come in and gets injected into the domestic political economy, a lot depends on the ecosystem in that country and how it's being channeled into the economic lives of the people.

I think it's the aid loans and foreign direct investment, and then they certainly form an important channel through which the initial surplus, the initial capital could be found. But we shouldn't simply. Assume that the allocation will be uniform across the board because it depends a lot on, again, on the ecosystem at home and the ecosystem cannot always be dependent always be dependent on because it fluctuates from government to government from, factors like corruption to simply how favorable it is to do business and invest in these projects.

And from the bottom up, we also see entrepreneurs Either from homegrown entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs with education from abroad who need to then adapt to their home environments. They could also come in and feel those institutional voice when you can't really rely on the government and providing a perfect Martin environment then you can do something that will also alter and hopefully optimize that that environment.

I think a lot of the. I guess the ways that this model cannot be simply generalized and applied in across geocultural regions is has to do with that. But I think the people on the ground and with, if you can negotiate different kinds of expertise is a little expertise scientific expertise and marketing incentives an effective way to negotiate these Different sources of knowledge, so this kind of epistemic synthesis, if it works well, then you can adapt in different contexts.

But I think across the board, what is general about this? So an insight is that you need to before you can strategically invest in anything that then make up your political economic identity to even get to that stage of being able to choose. The Milton Friedman says the free to choose, but you have to have a base from which to choose.

And how do you get that base? Is I think all the African students whom I've come across at Harvard, they tell me that what they envy about, or they, what they want to emulate from like these Northeastern nowadays and Southeastern Asian countries is is to get to that base. And not to emulate or imitate any of these models, there is no such thing as a Chinese, Korean, there's no, no such thing as a Northeastern or Southeast Asian model of development, but there is that sense that you need to have a base and just blindly waiting for FDI to generate the base for you, or to simply let loose your speculative financial system and wait until the free investments from random incentives takes place.

To do the magic of building your base is probably not going to be as effective as if you're also willing to combine it with some kind of industrial policy or some other kinds of planning that of course, should not interfere then with the market mechanism. So it again comes down to if you can do a dual track or multi track kind of development.

Ben: That makes a lot of sense. So that, international aid compensation or humanitarian, whatever it is, can work on a context specific basis, but you need to get all of those things together, but in terms of overall development, if you don't have a base [to] work with some sort of foundation where you're at least neutral or ideally have some surplus, then it's really hard.

So you might be aiming at the wrong question. If particularly for really poor, say African nations where, you know, where they are below that. Okay. So trying to put a lot of this all together So this is impossible task. I'm going to put some things to decide because obviously we got Chinese political and economic thought.

We're going to loosely call that dual track. You've got actually another kind of geopolitical axis centered around that. Perhaps you have Russia, India, Indonesia. So this is one whole axis. I'm going to slightly put that to the side because we touched on it slightly in terms of development economics and Chinese thought.

And then if you put the other side, the kind of Anglo Saxon, Europe, UK America, North America. There's a sense here that there's been a split as well. So I guess we've called it a neoliberal or free market, although they would argue how free it, it really was. And now there's a kind of pushback.

You've got the extreme pushback, which I would say, they tend to call this then, late capitalism or post colonial and leads into arguments around degrowth, which is a kind of very Malthus, Malthusian idea, actually which, we can comment on, but really backs away from economic growth, which is problematic in its own sense, but it's a kind of backlash from some of this.

And then you've also got, even in Western thinking it comes and goes, but in terms of industrial policies, but the U. S. with the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA is a kind of industrial policy piece. Actually, if you unpack it, if if China or Russia announced it, you go, Oh that's definitely industrial policy.

It's interesting that you've had that and some supply side, economics with it. When we stretch it all the way back to economic thoughts, you can go back to Adam Smith, you can even go back earlier to some of the the Roman or other thinkers or trade thinkers.

It just seems that we're having another evolution in, in, in the thinking about what what markets or what capitalism would be. How do you think that that balance is at the moment between the opening up that we had over, the Thatcher, Reagan years Friedman with, much more free markets less regulation, but what do we do with the lifeblood of trade to where we are today, where there's been a partial backlash.

Some of it is still going on. We've got some places which have some industrial policy. We've got pushback on both sides, from left and right as to working out, particularly in Western thought. But if you look at growth today, it's muddling through, it's positive, not as high as it was, but it's certainly not is not yet sort of recession.

And then these are just tensions between free markets, industrial thinking, Or all the way, is that how you would think about that Western part of the world? And do you see that balance shifting anymore into where we see the near future? 

Hansong: It's an enormous question. I certainly now as a now, as I'm pretending to be an international lawyer in Germany, I I always hear this nostalgia, of course, for the 1990s and nostalgia coming from the legal, juridical community is that it was a time when global institutions diffused.

Of course, that meant Western transatlantic values and institutions diffused, but of course it diffused. Until recently only because of this 2 reasons. 1st of all, there is the Western and transatlantic NATO domination in the security sphere. And then there's the economic consensus that free market has 1 and so there are these 2 reasons.

So it values institutions only diffused under these 2 umbrellas now, both are being challenged because with the diffusion of material power and agency no, you no longer have those kind of us Western European led global security system on the 1 hand. And you also don't have this universal uniform consensus that there is 1, only 1 way to advance economically.

So I agree with you that we're not in the complete, moment of rejection of of the post 1970s, 1990s the golden era of a global liberal economic doctrines. We're not there yet, but there's definitely a lot of reflections, as you also pointed out and critiques of that, and both from the left and from the right and part of the critique.

At home across Western nation states especially in the U. S. and Europe with where you, I didn't really see this so called back right wing populist backlash has to do with socioeconomic inequalities and different the hierarchy of priorities when it comes to socioeconomic distribution. So it is fundamentally a question about distribution- distribute distributive justice. Now the right things we have the wrong priorities. We prioritize all of these global projects or liberal elite projects and spend a lot of money on these leftist ideological programs, but do very little about the very basics. If you go to a [poor/run down] in the rural areas of Northern Netherlands.

Of course, the peasants used to vote for the Communist Party, but now they have no viable leftist alternative. So they do turn to the right wing parties for simply the socio economic quest of, more egalitarianism or something like that. And then on top of this kind of distributive discontent, you have a productive reflection, which is holding production constant, we're moderately growing. The question is how to distribute more fairly. You also have this question of can you sustainably grow or even grow further into the future? And then you look at different modes of growth and not necessarily the rates of growth. That transatlantic economies are no longer the sole drivers of innovative economic productions, right? You now have productive hubs, innovative hubs across the metropolitan areas of East, South, Southeast Asia, Latin America. Occasionally also, in Africa, there was a lot of, it's just not as systematic, but there are a lot of these innovative hubs across Africa.

And and of course you still have Silicon Valley, you have Boston, you have Frankfurt, you have other places, yes, but this diffusion of innovative capacity and agency is definitely a fact. So now the question is, are you going to have something to say about production, not just distribution?

Are you going to have something to say about both? And to think about it more productively, I, on the level of production, I think. There is a kind of sober moment where this idea of the, reindustrialization in it may be not in, in the literal sense of it, but it's introducing some industrial policy elements or to think about, is.

Technology uni is technology linear in its development evolution. Do we have different preferences and aesthetic tastes when it comes to what to innovate? If we have scarce resource to invest in Potentially 10 different things, which ones do we care more about at the normative level? And to go back to the Chicago school, if you look at Frank Knight and these 1st generation, 2nd generation, even and even Milton Friedman and certainly higher and others, they draw a clear line.

Between aesthetic taste and market efficiency. And so the whole idea is that only if you hold taste and aesthetics constant, can you have a framework of price theory or can you have a framework of market mechanism to allocate resources effectively? But of course, we have different philosophies of aesthetics.

So I think that- that also means that when it comes to technology there is not a linear progression towards something like a particular kind of AI or something. You can choose what to develop. China chose to invest fully- emotionally also- but also financially in EVs, but you don't have to do, you can do something else because there's only so much you can do with your limited time and resource.

So I think we need to rethink at least on the level of production, what to invest in, which ones are worth our time and energy and thought. What do we care about as a political community? And as humanity as the human collectivity. Yeah. Altogether, but whichever way we go and whatever we think it's no longer viable to simply sit there and say that the global distribution of labor and the way we invest in these alternative projects of economic production is simply.

Something according to a magical algorithm embedded into whatever we received from the 1970s and 1990s global economy, because that has drastically and dramatically changed. 

Ben: I hadn't picked up on that point on aesthetics about having an agreed set of taste, which does it. And actually that you can see in some places, for instance, in the Nordic countries where they become more heterozygous, they just weren't, they weren't as, they were more homogenous than perhaps they had realized.

So with this has produced. Difficulties in terms of setting that and that interesting thing about actually nation states will maybe have to decide what they want to focus on and they can focus on all sorts of things, whether it was, EV or batteries or art or whatever it will be, but they might have to focus.

Excellent. Okay. Running through the last couple of sets of questions, something a little bit more fun for, although also with that it's thinking about Hamilton, the musical. And I hadn't realized in your reading of Hamilton that actually there is, in some ways, if you look at it today in its reading, there's a kind of almost pro Democrat, pro Biden sense to running through Hamilton.

And that actually. It's it can be thinking slightly selective in terms of what you want to emphasize or not emphasize within the musical as well as all the dance numbers and songs and things. But do you think is your reading of Hamilton that its current reading is actually slightly more democrat than Republican?

Does it have a politics to it? And how else should we understand both the songs and the story narrative in the musical version that Lin Miranda did for us? 

Hansong: Thank you for asking that. It's a very fun question. I, my reading is that the Hamilton is A great piece of art but of course it was produced in the late Obama context where a more progressive and appealing sense of social mobility was used to provide a kind of.

Common ground on which we can reason together as as, one American nation. And so the idea is that Hamilton technically it's not an immigrant. If you went from one British colony to another and Lafayette somehow, they like they. A clap hands and they feel like we, we immigrants do the job and something like that.

I'm Lafayette was certainly not an immigrant. He was a French. But this whole, I, this emphasis on immigrants rising right from random, from poverty, all the way to the founding father status and and this kind of heroism in that story of social mobility. A very individualistic heroism and romanticization of social mobility in a pivotal moment in American history.

So that's, of course, a, I think there is that's definitely a, an undertone that a basso continuo throughout the musical. And is it's, of course, a lot of the in that historical inaccuracies come from the book on which it was based. So I wouldn't blame the production team for that, but at least the kind of ideological message there.

That America is socially mobile, that you can be an individual hero from just being ambitious and hardworking. And this idea that Hamilton started with calling his mother a whore and son of a whore and goths and Scotsman. It's not true that his mother was called a whore by in the court by someone who was trying to abuse and and and vilify her, but what's she.

So this over emphasis on him being from very humble backgrounds, but just through his own exertion of energy and and effort rose to what he was. And then where is Hamilton's financial ideologies? Of course, not emphasized. His hawkishness is neglected. So all of the troubling things that still matter.

America today, right? Hawkishness in foreign policy. This trust in, of course, we shouldn't over, shouldn't oversimplify that either, but his trust in them the financial system that he created and all of these are omitted in preference to, to give time. To glorify this individual heroism and social mobility story.

So I, I think that is quite ideological. And then, of course, at a superficial level, we can also look at the way the production team and the actors and actresses literally intervened, lecturing Mike Pence, not that he shouldn't be lectured on, but it just, now that you've seen the show, here is something we want to say to Mike Pence, who's sitting right there and the way they gave free tickets to the Hillary campaign.

It's quite obvious also at that kind of campaign political level. But I care more as a political philosopher, I care much more about the messages it delivers. And. Of course it resonates with Upper East Side, Upper West Side, New Yorkers who see it. But if you go to the Rust Belt, if you go to the Deep South, if you go to rural America and play Hamilton does it resonate with them?

Are you going to use Hamilton to turn around the upcoming election? I am seriously skeptical of that. 

Ben: Maybe not. Although that that doubling down on this idea that the underdog through Just hard work and become the pinnacle of being America is the American, I'm going to say myth in the kind of most positive sense, like every nation state has to have it.

It's missed the British like underdogs and we like royalty, right? And the Americans like this American dream that, immigrants and that. And so it's really interesting the way you see it. And you can see from the outside that's being constructed. And yeah, there is a Democrat slant, but the actually it's, it is a left and right thing.

This idea that no matter how poor you start off with hard work, you can make it to the top, even how mythical in actual practice. That is for the average anyone, but average Americans, that's interesting. Wait, okay, we have a short section of underrated and overrated, and then we'll finish on current projects and life advice.

So just a couple of things random things about whether you think these things are underrated or overrated. 

Sauerkraut. 

Do you think sauerkraut is underrated or overrated? 

Hansong: Underrated because of how global they actually are. And of course, German sauerkraut is overrated, but there is a global sauerkraut phenomenon.

Ben: So that's like kimchi and all the fermentation foods. Yeah. Okay. All right. Global sauerkraut. Underrated. The German version maybe not so much. Great. I stick on the food theme. Rice porridge or congee, do you think it's an underrated or overrated dish? 

Hansong: Overrated in the white rice version of it.

Of course, you can have millet and other things we eat in the north. So I think because of the Cantonese influence, we always think of it as white rice. So again, I think it's. The narrow sense is overrated, but the broader idea of the porridge with grains in it. It's... underrated. The grain porridge.

Yeah. I've been cheating. I've been cheating. It's always the same. 

Ben: Go into politics. On the one hand. Yes. On the other hand. No. So I'll take votes from both sides. Very good. Classical music today. 

Hansong: Today. Yes.

Ben: No, I guess in the, in history, but I guess how we do it today. So is it underrated or overrated?

Hansong: Oh, wow, that's very difficult. I think it's I think it's still underrated. 

[Cross-talk] Neutral. Yeah still under Yeah, I think it's the right amount in terms of the I think it's overrated in the industry. 

In the industry I think the musical the classical music industry is in terrible shape so it it's not healthy but I think in terms of it's impact on the way of the way of thought.

In the way that we talked about the musicals it's underrated because we don't realize how it actually shapes society in very profound ways. But I think the classical music as an industry as a group of people doing what they're doing, I think it's overrated in the sense that there is inflated and it's not it's not.

It's all the market incentives are distorted and you don't have jobs for the musician, it's in horrible shape. 

Ben: Okay. And last one on this, then maybe harking back to Hamilton, musical theater overrated, underrated. Should we have more or should we have less of musical theater? I 

Hansong: think the right amount or a slightly overrated because but I shouldn't say that.

Let's say the right amount, because I think the at least by Broadway standards, I think it's still healthy. Yeah. 

Ben: Yeah. It's still very influential on, on the world. I think that's the one thing about arts and humanities, because we don't realize how. Yeah, so you don't have like in the hard sciences, you don't have exact answers and they change we know in the moment in the context. 

They are so influential on [absolutely] how we are

Hansong: I would say it's underrated in China where I write these musical reviews.

Musicals have not become the standard currency of language or currency of thought In east asia yet. There are a lot of fans because But they don't really delve into the musicals in the ways that musicals are obviously scrutinized and interrogated very deeply in in Anglo American art.

So I think it's underrated in East Asia, I would say. 

Ben: Yeah. It's interesting if I think of performative arts in the broad sense the popularity of TikTok to me. is a slight sign about both the power of essentially performance. These are just mini performances done by individuals.

Some of them are that, but the fact that it draws in such an audience and you have everything from the really banal and not to quite political thought embedded within essentially these performances, they were a form of performance. And I think it's a form of social artifact. Really social media overall, but even in the TikTok form I think it's a, it's a broadly thinking it's a kind of form of art or expression and actually it's a form of social expression.

[So absolutely] Yeah, it's really intriguing. Great. All right. Last couple of questions. What are your current projects that you're working on or anything in the future that you'd like to share? 

Hansong: I'm working on a few projects. One is a global micro history of Shanghai's sand shipping industries in, 17, late 17th to the early 20th century. So from when sand shipping... 

Ben: is that shipping literally gravel? 

Hansong: In this, it started as a way of shipping on sandy maritime terrain. So you could easily run into these sandy rocks and other things. So it requires a slightly adjusted technology when it comes to navigation, but then it got into deep oceanic waters.

So at least start at the start, it was more like on the. In the yellow sea in the northeastern Asian seas, and then it slowly was able to go into the deeper and stormier waters of the South China Sea. The, but it's I also looked at the sociological phenomenon of sandshipping merchants, the way they integrate in an infrastructure.

Urban development in Shanghai. They were financing police stations. They were financing lifeguards along the seacoast, and they were building theaters for the city. And they also were increasing the enrollments of local academies and sending more people to Beijing for civil examinations. These are like, Shanghai is the Gentries who were generous who generated the profit from from shipping and they went to Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, but also just between North and South China.

And then used to use our language of the surplus, to use their surplus to do these projects, these cultural projects, these political liaisons they've built within. And so it's a kind of global micro history of a. Of Shanghai as it turned from the late imperial to the international status.

So that's one project. 

Ben: It's interesting how a lot of these big, important organizations, companies even call them put this, call it civic arm onto themselves as they get to a certain size. Even if you look at a Google alphabet today, they have a Google culture. Thing Apple have the same Facebook meta has the same micro Microsoft of this, the same.

And some of it is now called this. Social responsibilities here, something, but a lot of it is this, you're influencing the humanities and arts for either locally. So local companies always do it in their community, but then when you reach this global scale, because of this interaction of essentially social phenomena, which you then become a part of.

And if you don't influence it or steer it into your favor you're not as You're not thought of as the same as you're not as important. Absolutely. Anyway...

Hansong: As a historian of political and economic thought, I would add that in the early modern moment, the idea of the state as a corpus, as a body, and the idea as a of course the body and the state and the corporation.

And that's how it the, these ideas ran in parallel that the corporation was a corpus and was also a kind of state and the state was a kind of corpus and a corporation. And these three metaphors really were blended since the early modern era, and we're still living in that kind of intellectual legacy and thinking of states and enterprises, right?

We still draw these analogies between states and enterprises, but that's a small note. Yeah. Yeah. And the other project I am working on is a book on the ideas of interpolitical justice. In. In Western Indian Chinese traditions. So I draw from my classical and in analog chronological musings to shed light on how political communities have thought about ideas of justice across.

Territorial and cultural borders. And so it's a kind of comparative and connective a study of ideas of common justice in 3 different thought worlds. And so that is the more theoretical and normative project. And the Shanghai merchants are the fun project. 

Ben: Excellent. Great. And then last question is, do you have any life advice or advice that you want to share?

Maybe advice thinking about being an international public intellectual or scholar or advice on music or the arts or your career or anything you'd like to share with us? 

Hansong: My advice would be just to do a lot of travelings, because I'm a enthusiastic traveler, and of course, to the idea of being open minded to different ways of life, I think it's a very Herodotian anthropological starting point to be, to be in any but of course, certainly to be a public intellectual nowadays you have to be an inter public intellectual.

It's hard to be a public intellectual in the U. S. or in Europe without having something to say or just being able to understand what's happening in Ukraine and in Gaza. So it's no longer viable to be a public intellectual, you have to be inter public, and to be inter public you have to be able to think inter normatively.

How do you think inter normatively between different ways of different cosmological approaches to making sense of what's happening around the world of course learning more languages and talking to people from very different normative backgrounds, and of course to go there and take a look. So it's but it's also not this kind of globalist ideology of, Traveling around and it's, it could be very, it's in China, it's a medieval ideal of traveling around and blending in with with the landscapes wherever you go.

One of my favorite thinkers, poets writers, literati from the Weijing period, late Three Kingdoms, early Weijing moment Renzi, he was famous for having said, I think he said he his ideal life is Huo Bi Hu Shi Shu, Lei Yue Bu Chu. I would rather stay at home and close my windows and read for months and not go out.

Or he would travel around and and and forget to even return. So you can go in between these two modes and but the idea is, That is no longer viable to stick to a very enclosed a normative framework. Now that we have no choice, but to have something in mind about what's happening around the world and all the, and even just locally, how a global divisions of labor are affected.

In our local lives, and how we can no longer take anything for granted without regard to what kind of global understanding. So I think that would be a nice to travel a lot like Herodotus did Montesquieu did, like Montaigne did, and keep a travel journal as I do. Write down your conversations with the locals and reflect on them many years later, show it to your friends and families and hear what they think the more communicative assets to invoke the Harvard Marcian concept to globalize it, because Harvard must distort ethic is still quite limited in my view, but to expand it and have a kind of global discourse assets and do the conversations like we're doing right now with more people.

Ben: That sounds great. Yes. To travel is to learn. With that thank you very much. 

Hansong: Thank you, Ben. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. I enjoyed the conversation.

In Podcast, Politics, Life, Arts Tags Hanging Li, Travel, Economics, China, History

Hana Loftus: architecture, regeneration, planning, resilience, design | Podcast

January 10, 2024 Ben Yeoh

Hana Loftus is a co-founder of HAT Projects.  HAT are award winning  architects, planners and enablers for the built environment.  Projects include: London’s Science Museum Smith Centre, transformation of Trinity Works (a disused church), Ely Museum, Jerwood gallery and Jaywick Sands’ Sunspot. As well as practising planning and design, she writes on the subject and plays a great fiddle and violin.  

Architecture: Building Answers for Systemic Problems & Rethinking Urban Planning


The overall podcast discussion is around the challenges and opportunities in architecture and urban planning. The topics range from finding systemic housing solutions for poverty-stricken communities in Alabama, exploring the importance of practical real-world experiences for architecture students, 

"I think as a young architect, firstly learning how a building is actually put together; nailing bits of wood together, wiring a house, plumbing a house, pouring foundations, all of that practical stuff is critical... And anybody can do that. Anybody can get tools and learn how to build something."

and discussing the Sunspot project that addresses affordable business units in Jaywick Sands, a poor area of east England. Hana talks about the lifespan and adaptability of buildings. She highlights the critical aspect of maintaining quality in construction and the risks in cost-cutting, referencing the Grenfell tragedy.

We discuss the political challenges of the Green Belt policy, proposing a 'finger model' for development, and the importance of exploring rural domains. Hana emphasises acquiring practical experience and making a concrete impact in the world.

Transcript and summary bullet points below.

  • Building Houses and Rural Studio Experience

  • Understanding the Realities of Rural Alabama

  • The Impact of Building with Your Own Hands

  • Working with the Community: The Story of Miss Phillips

  • The Importance of the Front Porch in Southern Homes

  • Reflections on Building Experience

  • Transition from Alabama to East of England: Jaywick Sands

  • Understanding the History and Challenges of Jaywick Sands

  • The Regeneration Strategy for Jaywick Sands

  • The Complexities of Place-Based Regeneration

  • The Role of Consultation in Community Development

  • The Sunspot Project: A Case Study in Localised Economic Stimulation

  • Reflections on the Success of the Sunspot Project

  • The Balance Between Planning and Unplanning in Community Development. The role of beauty.

  • Nationwide Economic and Climate Perspective

  • Local Agency and Development Opposition, Challenges in the Planning System

  • Inequality and Climate Resilience 

  • Design Codes and Pattern Books: A Debate

  • The Aesthetics of Development and Cultural Relevance

  • The Lifespan of Buildings: 

  • The Future of Building Design and Sustainability

  • The Role of Transport in Sustainable Planning

  • The Impact of Construction Industry Structure

  • Rethinking Greenbelt Policy for Sustainable Development

  • Current and Future Projects: A Glimpse

  • Life Advice: Making a Mark in the World

Podcast wherever you get podcasts or links below. Video above or on YouTube. Transcript follows below.

PODCAST INFO

  • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo

  • Spotify: https://sptfy.com/benyeoh

  • Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh

  • All links:  https://pod.link/1562738506

Hana Loftus and Ben Yeoh Transcript

(Only lightly edited with AI assistance, there may be errors)

Ben

Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Hana Loftus. Hana is a co-founder of HAT Projects. They are award-winning architects, planners, and enablers for the built environment. Projects include the London Science Museum Smith Centre, a transformation of Trinity Works at disused church, Ely Museum, Jerwood Gallery, and Jaywick Sands. As well as practicing planning and design, she's a writer on the subject and plays a great fiddle and violin. Hana, welcome.

Hana

Thank you so much, Ben. So nice to be here.

Ben (00:33):

Let's start with building houses. You spent some time in Alabama at the Rural Studio where they try and build houses for $20,000 or so, and you helped build a house. Tell me what that was like and what you learned?

Hana (00:00:48):

Well, the Rural Studio is a really unique program, and for people who might not know anything about it, it's an outreach program of the University of Auburn, which is one of the state universities in Alabama. It was founded by an extraordinary man called Sam Mockbee, nearly 30 years ago-- It'll be their 30th anniversary coming up this year. Because he felt the architecture students weren't having enough exposure to real life problems and real life communities. That they were too stuck in their studios in the world of theory and not really learning how to build things, nor in fact how to work with real people who needed buildings built for them. Alabama obviously has some of the most poverty stricken communities in the whole of the United States, and he had grown up just in the other side of the Mississippi/Alabama border in very similar situations and been working in those communities.

So he thought, "I'm going to just take a bunch of students out there and make them build things; make them actually build practical, helpful projects in the community as a way of educating them very differently." So it's a really extraordinary program, and it has been going since then. Samuel sadly died about 10 years after he founded Rural Studio, but it's actually been continued funnily enough that the director for the last many years now is actually an Englishman, a Yorkshireman named Andrew Freear. It is a really extraordinary program. Over the years, the Rural Studio has built dozens and dozens of buildings; many houses, but also some public buildings, library, fire station, park projects, lots and lots of different things in the community. The project, when I went to study there as what's known as an outreach fellow, we were tasked with trying to crack open really a systemic housing problem-- a problem of kind of failure in the housing system in the United States, which has many failures.

I think when you try and understand the context of this going to these small, very rural communities in West Alabama, it's like nothing else. To my mind when I went there, it was such a surprise even though I'd had friends who'd been there and heard obviously a lot about it to find in the richest country in the world. These communities that are living essentially in shacks and shanties; no running water sometimes, no sewage system functioning a lot of the time, in trailer homes that are often second or third hand; terrible, terrible housing conditions. And whilst in theory there is funding available to construct new affordable homes and practice the way that that funding worked, negated any practical solutions because it was essentially a low cost home ownership grant that you could get.

But if you are on the very minimum social security payments that families might be getting-- so in the States at the time, that was a disability payment of around $500 a month. The maximum loan you could get would be $20,000, and nobody would bill you a house for $20,000. So there was this problem. So my group of outreach fellows were the first fellows to be tasked with trying to crack this and say, "Well, actually as architects, as designers from a multitude of different backgrounds-- actually, the Outreach Fellows is this kind of multidisciplinary unit at the time-- Could we think more creatively about how to solve this? Our house was the first in an ongoing series. What's so fantastic about the Rural Studio is they can iterate because they've been in the same community for such a long time.

They have now iterated the $20,000 house for the last 15 years or so to learn every year the lessons of the last ones. Now, it has grown into a much bigger initiative known as the Front Porch Initiative, which is actually rolling out partnership programs that are building these very, very low cost homes across not just parts of West Alabama, but other parts of the Southern United States as well. In terms of what you learn from doing that, I think as a young architect, firstly learning how a building is actually put together; nailing bits of wood together, wiring a house, plumbing a house, pouring foundations, all of that practical stuff is critical. And I think that Samuel Mockbee, when he founded the Rural Studio thought about the disconnect in architecture education, I think sadly is still very, very true today.

Most students that come out of architectural education are often actually scared of the process of building. They find it kind of terrifying. They find it mysterious. They don't understand how a building can get put together. They feel that it's somehow beyond them. And actually, the process of building with your own physical hands in mud, in the sun, in all different weather conditions is really demystifying. You realize that a building is just a series of things that are put together in different ways. And anybody can do that. Anybody can get tools and learn how to build something. So whether that's small or big, I think that's a really important lesson.

But the second piece is obviously working in a community like those communities in West Alabama, to see how you actually communicate and work and collaborate with people from a very different background from oneself with a very different life story, with a very different set of priorities and principles. And how do you not only just design with them, but work with them as human beings. The client for our house was an extraordinary lady called Ms. Phillips. She was in her late eighties when we were trying to build this house for her. She lived in a house where the joists of the floor were so rotten. You would walk on them and you'd have to take care to not kind of fall through the floor. She was diabetic-- she had type two diabetes brought on by the kind of diet in West Alabama. She was descended from obviously an enslaved family and then a sharecropping family in that part of the world. She grew collard greens in her backyard. She loved gardening, but she lived in what can only be described as a really precarious level of poverty. But she was amazing. She would sing songs and she would kind of make some food for us sometimes.

You learn how to both be really humble in those situations. Not to step in thinking you know the answers. And also, how to see beyond someone's current situation to kind of imagine what a future might look like that is a little bit more sustainable, a bit less precarious without destroying what is sort of fundamentally important. The reason the Front Porch Initiative is called the Front Porch Initiative now at the Rural Studio, is this cultural importance of the front porch in southern homes. The front porch is where everything happens. You really cannot have a home without a porch. In fact, you might almost be better with the porch and none of the rest of the house sometimes because it is so important to have that space in the heat and the humidity. So there's a climate element, but also socially. So the house that we built for Ms. Phillips, the house itself was pretty tiny. The porch was nearly as big as the house-- the screen porch-- because actually, that extends the living area and gives that continuity in terms of how the kind of culture of family life, the culture of those communities work.

Ben (00:08:52):

What was your favorite part of building, or maybe what was perhaps most misunderstood that you came to realize, "Ooh, when you put this together, this happens?" Or you could also reflect on what was your least favorite part of building, maybe when it was raining on you. But yeah, what was your favorite part of building?

Hana (00:09:10):

I love learning how to do wiring and plumbing, actually, because I gave up science subjects relatively early after GCSE. I felt that that was something that I was never really going to understand. Actually, now I can do the wiring and the plumbing in our house, and I feel confident with all of that which to me, that was good. I'd done carpentry before because I'd worked in theater and I'd built sets. So carpentry was a sort of relatively familiar skill set and sort of allied trades to that. But I think for me, it was great to actually learn how to wire and plumb a home and that stuff. Again, it's not mysterious. It's just gravity and basic physics and being rigorous and systematic in your work and you will get there in the end.

Ben (00:09:59):

Yeah, very in demand. So I'm going to jump from Alabama, to the East of England to Jaywick Sands, because I've observed your work over the decades and I see there's a lot of interlinks. Jaywick Sands is also a relatively poor place. There's a lot to do with working in the community and what they really want. Would you maybe describe what you learned from working on Jaywick Sands and where the project stands now?

Hana (00:10:23):

Yeah, I think it's a really pertinent analogy. I remember actually saying to Andrew Freear, the director of the Rural Studio a number of years ago, probably the place that is closest to West Alabama in the UK is Jaywick. So again, for those who might not know anything about the history of Jaywick Sands, I think it's really interesting to give a little background. A hundred years ago, this community that is now over 3000 people on the Essex coast, there wasn't a single home there, there was nothing. It was just a salt marsh. But something happened in the late twenties and early thirties in the UK, in parts of Southern England, which was called the Plotlands Movement. And what this was, was at the time, there was an agricultural depression. Developers started to buy marginal agricultural land and divide it up into tiny plots and sell those tiny plots off mostly to working class or lower middle class Londoners as holiday plots where you could then build a little chalet, a heart, bring a railway carriage or something if you wanted. And in way, have your weekend escape out of the crowded city, out of what were quite often difficult conditions in the city, but enabled by the fact we now had railways. We had omni buses and things that could take you out of the city quite quickly.

You could have a little kind of slice of the English countryside to yourself because there were no real planning rules at the time in the way that we have them now. Jaywick Sands was one of those plotlands communities that was founded at that time by a developer called Frank Stedman, a land speculator, who was a sort of funny mixture of a socialist utopian and a kind of speculative investor. It grew quite quickly. Tiny, tiny plots, really glorified beach huts. You could buy a kind of prefabricated one or one out of a catalog of little patterns that he had or you could build your own. It was a fantastic holiday resort in the thirties; wonderful pictures of people enjoying themselves, splashing around on the beach, having this amazing time.

But after the Second World War, when many of those Londoners had been bombed out of their homes in East London, many of them started to think, "Well, why can't I just stay on my plot full time? Actually, I've got this little piece of land. I've got the basics of a small house there. Maybe I'm just going to stay here. Seaside is nice, have happy memories of it." So what was intended to be a holiday community without any permanent residence started to have a permanent full-time population but with no infrastructure. So Steadman had always struggled to try and get the council to make kind of water connections and sewage connections through the water boards and so forth at the time-- continued to struggle. So you've got this community growing up-- Again, very like those West Alabama communities in some senses with very, very little basic infrastructure, but people wanting to be there and starting to assert their rights as well to say, "Well, we are living here. We should be having services. We should be having our rubbish collected. We should be having water and sewage and electricity."


But really for most of the next decades, the story is one of a struggle between the local councils who really didn't want anybody to be permanently living there, and the freeholders and the residents themselves who wanted to be there. The councils really-- to simplify-- took the view that if they did not provide all of those services, people would not be there. But that eventually had proved to be an unsustainable situation and gradually over the years, some services were introduced. So it's a community with this really extraordinary story of resilience and this kind of self-made DIY ethos. It looks very unlike anywhere really in the rest of the country. There were other plotlands communities around the place. So Laindon Hills near Basildon, which was pretty much demolished when they built Basildon New Town. Down at Shoreham-by-Sea there are still some remaining plotlands-- Canvey Island, a few other places at the Thames Valley as well.

But most of them have been translated over time to what I would call a fairly normal suburbia for England. Jaywick still has a completely different pattern, a completely different look as a place. Still, very much the bones of those original tiny timber frame chalets very, very tightly plotted, much more like you would see in the states in some sort of shotgun house communities in places like Houston. Little gable fronted houses onto the street, tiny, tiny backyards very, very, very tightly packed, and everyone different. They've all been customized and adapted by their occupants over time.

So it doesn't have the sense of that kind of if you like regular housing estate with this sort of uniformity that we might expect in other places. It's got this very ad hoc nature. The residents are fiercely proud of their community and they are very, very fond of its character. But the reality is that unfortunately, Jaywick is mostly in the news for having the worst deprivation statistics for the whole of the United Kingdom, which goes across all of the indices of multiple deprivation, health, employment, access to services-- education outcomes, et cetera. So it's a community with some really big challenges. And coupled to that, it was built on a salt marsh and it's in the tidal floodplain. In the 1953 floods, 37 people were killed there. And with climate change, obviously the flood risk is increasing all the time. Now, again, even though the flood defenses were improved after 1953, but they're starting to reach the end of their lifespan again and there need to be some improvements. Sorry, that's a long piece of background, but I think it's important to kind of situate both socially and historically as well as environmentally the place.

Our practice were commissioned by Tendring District Council as the council of the area back in 2018 to try and look at a regeneration strategy for Jaywick Sands to address the housing quality issues. Because whilst some of the homeowners look after their homes really well and are very house proud, the reality is there's a lot of homes that have become part of portfolios of private rented accommodation in very, very bad condition. That in terms of housing policy and how our world works in this country at the moment, I mean, I think it's a huge, huge scandal that we have essentially allowed the outsourcing of affordable housing provision into the hands of private landlords who are being paid by the state through the benefits system.


But the consequence in a community like Jaywick is if you have parts of that community, some streets where we'll have 50, 60% private rented accommodation that has a really serious impact in terms of blight on the wider community and serious social impacts because there's no sort of support. So they wanted to look at housing quality, they wanted to look at the issue around flood defenses, and in the longer term, what is the strategy here? We did some initial research in late 2018, 2019; some initial engagement and consultation with members of the local community there. Pandemic then came along, bit of a pause during the pandemic. Although actually, one-- if you like-- sub-project of this wider strategy got picked up through stimulus funding from the pandemic. That's a building that we have now designed and built and opened earlier this year which is called Sunspot, which is 24 affordable business units there as part of the kind of economic approach.

Anyway, after the pandemic, late 21, early 22, we started back on the kind of regeneration strategy. And now, we're actually at the moment in consultation on what we think that looks like. We did a further consultation last year on some options and scenarios. This year we've kind of gone back with what we think and with the council the kind of best strategy might be. And it's really complex. It's a fascinating and complex place because-- I won't go into all the details of the strategy. Everyone can read it online. But it's a place where the issues around climate change and deprivation really intersect in a way that kind of amplifies and multiplies their effects. 

A community that had that level of climate change threat, flood risk but was more wealthy, frankly, one wouldn't worry so much about because the people who would be living there would have the resources to be able to firstly know and understand those risks. And secondly, if the bad thing happened, the financial resources as well as their own personal capacity to probably be able to cope a lot better. But when you're talking about a community which is firstly very aging now-- So the demographic skews very old although there are patches of families with very young children, so it's kind of quite a divided demographic. Secondly, has very poor health. So mobility, people with oxygen cylinders, people with diabetes-- very serious health problems in a lot of parts of community. And very low cash resources. A lot of retired people who have sold up their house in East London bought a little homey house in Jaywick Sands based off the back of their happy childhood memories of seaside holidays there and are living off the difference. They're eking out that difference in the kind of cash value of a house in London for half a million quid, and a house in Jaywick Sands for 60 to a hundred thousand.

So they've got very little resources to fall back on if a bad thing happens. This question about, "What is the duty of care of the state? What is the duty of care of us to our fellow citizens in a time of climate crisis, in a situation where people do not have those resources?" We are seeing that with the cops obviously globally in terms of small nations and so forth being threatened and saying, "Hey, there is a responsibility, but we have that right here in our own country. We have this really, really pressing question about what is the responsibility. Is it sustainable for communities to even exist in these locations? If so, what should they look like? What should they feel like? How would they be best defended against the floods and against the tidal flood risk? How is that equitably dealt with when we've got such disparities and resources across the country? How do we find a system that is fair here?" Because there are parts of Central London that are as bad a flood risk as Jaywick Sands. But the real estate there is worth billions. The owners of those parts of land and the councils and so forth are very different. How do we find some way of calibrating that? If I'm frank, I don't think at a national level we have that sorted out at all.

Ben (00:22:29):

That's really fascinating on the policy level. So perhaps we can dwell on that. And maybe you want to comment about the actual little business unit project as well because there are so many things within that. So some of what we hear in other places where you've got rural communities, I guess is as often the very naive urbanite view, which was expressed by the councilors is, "Surely they should move. Not sustainable, climate risk, why should we give them a hospital for 200 people when that or schools and services and all of that." So I'd be interested in what the responses and the kind of things that you talk about which have been in this discussion. And I guess the second one then going one level down from that is this sense of the balance on consultation that some people think, "Oh, we're doing too many consultations of the wrong sort."

Then if it's something that government doesn't like to hear, they don't follow them anyway. And if it's something that they like to hear, it feels like it was a setup. On the other hand, often a centralized or even a regionalized area or government zone doesn't really know what a local populace wants which is the whole point of consultation. Then you have this higher level-- I guess it's kind of the paternalistic versus not as does a centralized force ever really know, "Should it do it, should it just let that," which is, I guess this on the extremes between completely planned to versus unplanned and everything in the middle. It seems like Jaywick is at the center of a lot of those debates. So I'd be interesting in any reflections that you have about whether we should be abandoning communities or not, and even how you do that. And then that level down about do consultations really work or how do you get them to work-- would probably be the better question. And then maybe how you then through an economic lens seems to be one bit, which at least there's some agreement from some sides is possibly a way to work through this.

Hana (00:24:35):

Well, to address that sort of question about should we be "abandoning communities," there have been some tentative moves towards what's known as managed retreat. The world of risk management and climate change is full of these wonderful euphemisms. But managed retreat essentially says, "We won't no longer maintain the flood defenses in a particular area." I grew up in the coastal floodplain-- Actually, my parents' house is in the coastal floodplain, and my father has lived there since 1947 and lived through the 1953 flood. So this was all quite sort of familiar territory to me on a personal level. Fairbourne in Wales is actually the kind of first community of homes where a decision was announced a few years ago to say the defenses would no longer be maintained and essentially that community was going to have to look to be decommissioned, which of course, the residents there were furious about.

I think there's an interesting question because this country has so far sort of said, "We won't compensate people." Sort of what they're saying is, "We'll give you warning, we'll give you kind of 20 years warning that we're no longer going to maintain your defenses. It's up to you in that time to make your own move. We're not going to give you a relocation package. We're not going to actually financially support that" which is unlike many other countries. So other countries are providing relocation packages, whether it's looking at some of the Nordic countries, whether it's looking at parts of the states even actually. They are looking at supporting people to move.

I kind of think that we have to have a bit more of a national debate about that because I think the reality of these communities, as I said, is that you can have great disparities of wealth. Where I grew up is near the Suffolk Coast, and there are communities on coasts there which have some houses in the floodplain and they're owned by very, very wealthy people. Sure, I don't think we should be subsidizing them to have to relocate. They could relatively easily fund their own support. But when you're talking about communities in these much more deprived places, the reality is that people don't have that money and people therefore won't move. So Fairbourne, from what I've heard recently, in a strange way, the property prices have actually gone up there which is very unusual and the sort of relocation decommissioning program seems to have gone quite quiet.

We need to have a national debate about this. And I think this leads to your second question around consultation. These are really hard, big, tough questions for which there are no answers that are going to make everybody happy. It is not possible to somehow make some magic consensus where everybody is going to go, "Oh, you know what? We've just found this magic bullet for this. What a brilliant idea. God, you've cracked it. Here's a perfect solution to making it fair and affordable and all the rest of it."

Ben (00:28:11):

We've discovered a magic floating islands where we can live.

Hana (00:28:13):

Yes, there are no easy solutions. So this takes leadership, but it does also take that consultation and engagement with people. There's an intergenerational aspect here. When we do consultation in Jaywick, some people are saying, "Well, frankly, I'm going to be dead. This is not my problem." That's a totally fair point for them to make. They just want to live the rest of their however many years happily and in their community with their friends with the sea view that they love. What comes after that is not their problem. At the same time as obviously there are generations to come not only in that community-- children and the younger people, but also nationally, the generations that we're going to have to pay for and look after and take care or take the actions that are needed. And how do we make that fair?

My personal view is that I don't think that there is too much consultation. I think in many cases there is too little, but I think the kind of consultation we do is very, very flawed. So we do a lot of work around community engagement, consultation, participation-- call it what you wish. I'm kind of constantly trying to shift the emphasis of that away from the sort of stereotype of, "Have your say." To me, that's a phrase I ban from our office. Never advertise a consultation with, "Have your say," because really what you're just saying is come and spout off and shoot your mouth off about what you do and don't like, and we'll just listen to it and do absolutely nothing about it. That's not the point.

For me, the point of talking to people-- and I think we've got to call this what it is. It's just talking to people. Talking to people, normal people in the street could be your neighbors, could be your friends. It is a research tool and I think we should be taking much more from the social sciences and less from the way that policy makers have often approached consultation as part of a sort of systematic process towards getting a policy agreed. We need to look at it as research. We need to look at it as insight. Understanding those very human factors that are at play, understanding how people understand their own environments, their own situations in life and being able to take that research away, analyze it quite methodically and use it to inform better decision making. 

So it's understanding that those people are the experts in their own condition and the job of ourselves as "experts, policy makers, planners," whatever you might say. Our job is to try and untangle what they tell us about their lives and their environments, and understand where the interventions can be most effective in that based on what that research is telling us. Then there's a secondary job, which is about education and capacity building. We have communities-- particularly low income communities, who the kind of failures of our education system over the last decades really fall heavily on. Their ability to understand the very complex nature of these risks-- and risk is hard for anyone to understand. We are notoriously bad as humans understanding and quantifying risk. When you are trying to talk to people about a 0.5% AEP probability of a tidal flood risk happening, that just means nothing to anybody.

We need to be able to take the time to sit with people and explain that to them in simple terms, step by step. Allow them to absorb that, allow them to cogitate on it, allow them to come back with more questions and say, "They don't understand it, or can you go through that again? Or what does that really mean? I've been thinking about what you said and this bit doesn't make sense." That can't really be achieved in a six or eight week consultation period which is this kind of process that typically has gone through. That is a much more embedded process of saying, "Well, actually, how do we allow people to make good decisions about their own lives?" So I do think that we need a bit of a rethink on this. Of course, as a role for if you like the sort of statutory consultation where you go out to your statutory consultation bodies-- Natural England, or the Environment Agency or whoever, they're professionals. They know how to respond to things within a six or eight week period and write you a very lengthy response. And you can go through it point by point.

But when you're talking to communities, it's just a bit of a crazy system. So we try to advocate with our clients for a rather different approach. As always, they're local authorities and they have to abide by certain rules. So we have mixed success with that and I think we try to carry that through. But having worked in Jaywick for nearly five years now, I think what is interesting is that at least I feel like our team has started to grow some of those relationships in a different way. It's slow, slow steps gaining trust, not being seen too much as the sort of consultants from outside who just come in to try and tell people what to do, even though we're quite local in the sense of our office is very locally based. So yeah, it has been a really interesting process and a lot of lessons for wider policy making, I think.

Ben (00:34:08):

How did you arrive at the structure that you arrived at? And I have so many other thoughts as kind of like, I'm thinking why do we not really have a Rural Studios here in England or the UK and all of these other types of things. But maybe we can see it through the lens of the actual building that you came up with and why it is how it is, and the process you got to.

Hana (00:34:31):

Yeah. So the building that my practice completed-- and I think what's fun about our practice is that we do operate across these scales. So we kind of work on these strategic projects and planning projects as well as on individual buildings and spaces. The building that we completed is 24 affordable business units for affordable rent plus a covered market, plus some public open space; community garden, bus stops, and practical things like that. It came out of the fact that when we started to talk to people in Jaywick about their issues, whilst the council was saying the focus is on flood risk and all these sort of big, naughty, wicked problems, the thing that people were saying to us in the community was jobs and services. "There are no jobs here and it's impossible to get to any work." It's a relatively isolated community. Clacton-on-Sea which is just up the road is not so far, but Clacton is also very deprived; not many jobs there. The next nearest economic center, to get there you would need to take a bus which would wind its way through villages for an hour and a half each way, and actually wouldn't ever get you to work on time and couldn't get you home. So there's this really big problem.

And by the way, around half of the households in the most deprived bits of Jaywick Sands do not have access to a car or van. So you've got a community who are totally dependent on foot, public transport, or bicycle. So people were saying, "They're no jobs here. They're also saying there's no services here." There's no kind of basic-- lack of shops to buy things in-- food, as well as in a way the things that make you feel good about your life-- hairdressers, things like that. Very little in the way of local economy. So we sort of thought, "Well, actually this is something that something can be done about more short term." We were talking to the councilors, our client about this and saying, "Maybe you should consider looking at this economic question a bit further because don't these two things go together? As in if you have more local services, there's also more jobs in the community that can also employ people." And actually, this question about how do you make an economy in these sorts of places that is kind of for the community and by the community, that keeps that spend local. It's not about trying to attract some sort of big external investor who's going to open a factory or something. But all of that money kind of disappears into the wider world. It's, "Can we look at a more localized way of simulating the economy?" 

So happily they were interested in that idea and commissioned us to do a little bit more research and market testing to see whether that was feasible. We did that market testing in a rather different way than you would normally do it, because normally if you ask someone to do a market study on making new business space or workspace somewhere, they'll bring up a bunch of estate agents and say, "How many people have you got on your books looking for an office or an industrial unit or whatever in area X?" Well, obviously nobody was going to be on the books looking for a workspace unit in Jaywick Sands because it wasn't a sort of established employment location. Didn't already have a kind of pool of businesses that people just not thinking about whether they wanted to locate there.

So we did two things. Firstly, we looked at the wider data across the area. So there was a quantitative aspect and we found that there was a shortage in the wider area which was actually in the council's own economic studies. A shortage of startup and grow on sort of small units for obvious reasons; not very viable commercially for developers of commercial space to provide that kind of space. So actually, there was a lack. So then we sort of said, "Well, that means that there's a hidden economy of people who are needing space but are not finding it. And in the meantime, they're working from home or they're working out of kind of garage, or they're working out of a sort of rather ad hoc, renting an old stable on a farm somewhere or whatever it might be, or looking to Colchester and other further afield places."

So we sort of thought, "Well, if we can go and talk to some of those tenants and we can establish whether they would see it as a barrier to come and actually locate their business in Jaywick Sands." So we went out and actually just talked to a lot of businesses. What we found was no, it was absolutely not seen as a barrier for them to come and locate in Jaywick. They weren't put off by the unfortunate stereotyped bad reputation of the community and the press. They were mostly local people, that didn't really bother them. Really, they just needed space. It was affordable, suitable-- obviously for their needs, and accessible, which if you are a business with, it's actually got fairly good road access or public transport access.

So we managed to demonstrate that we felt there was a sufficient pipeline of businesses who would be interested and take up space, and particularly at two ends. One being small retail. So this point about actually, there's few shops and services there, but you've got this beach as well, and you've got this opportunity to really trade in the summer off of visitors. And secondly, at the kind of smaller workshop through to the small end of light industrial type scale. So kind of small type manufacturing type businesses and things like that.

Ben (00:40:28):

And how many have been taken up? Is it all full already? Do people pree these?

Hana (00:40:33):

Yeah, it's full. I think they may have one or two units left, but it's full. It opened in late September and it's doing really well. I think the other bit is the market. So the market's really important both as a way of providing additional retail for the community. So being able to have food stalls and things like that. But also it's a stepping stone towards startup business. It's the cheapest way you can try out a new business idea is to rent a market store for 10 pounds or whatever a pitch, and have a go at your idea. It brings a community together as well in a way that's social. So yeah, it's exciting to see it really be busy now and bustling and a huge diverse array of businesses working out the building.

But also the building, I think from a design perspective, it's really important that it's a visible symbol of change in the community. We aren't just interested in making space for space's sake, but it's also got to say something. Buildings, spaces, environments - they have meaning-- they carry meaning, and the value and the quality of those spaces says something about how valued that community is. I think too often we are-- particularly in the public sector, I'm afraid to say at this time-- unwilling to have higher ambitions and aspirations for the sheer beauty and quality of spaces that we make for people. It's not really a cost question in my view. It's not more expensive. It's just about actually how do you procure, what kind of procurement do you have of your teams that are working on these projects, and how much do you really care about the communities that you're building them for? Don't look down on them. Don't give them sort of the dumb answer just because they might be poor or more deprived communities. Give them something that is bright and bold and exciting and is something that people can take some joy out of in their everyday life.

Ben (00:42:38):

And what do you find beautiful about the building? I've heard people note the colors-- the color palette. And also the space and the quality of materials, which actually to your point, aren't super special. You're not talking about imported granite or anything like that. But what made you think this building is of quality or of beauty?

Hana (00:43:01):

Yeah, I think it is a very economic building. It's built in a way that the technology of it is really just the technology of a normal kind of light industrial shed. But there is so much you can do with shape, firstly; just sort of subtle changes to the way that the shape of the building is designed. The fact that when you see it from the beach it has this kind of zigzag profile rather than just seeing a kind of long, monolithic, eaves profile like a sort of typical shed building might have. And color is really important. On a gray, rainy, February day, a community even on the beautiful beach that there is there right in front of the building can feel quite grim. So it was really important that the building never felt grim; that it always felt joyful, uplifting, and generous.

Color is part of that form. Also, there's things like the canopy; the canopy that shades and shelters space around the building. That's practical. It prevents the south facing units overheating in the summertime. But it's also about saying actually, it's dry. The building is kind of bigger than it would otherwise be. Things like the bus shelter which no one had really thought of, but we kind of said, "Well, there's no bus stop here, and the bus stop just down the road is literally a pole and there's not even a pavement to stand on." So we moved the bus stop and we made a bus shelter with a bench, and shade, and shelter, which sounds extremely simple, but actually makes a huge difference in a community where most of the bus stops have no bench and no shelter.

The work was put to try and say, "Well, without it costing more money, without it being impractical, using materials that are extremely robust, using profiled metal and things like that, that are typical for modern seaside buildings-- like buildings that are built on the piers or buildings that are built in seafront arcades and amusements, the similar language to that." This is not about parachuting in a design language that is alien to the place, but it's got to feel joyful and people have got to feel proud of it in the community. Something that they can actually say, "You can't miss that building. You can look out for it. It's a landmark."

Ben (00:45:43):

Does it have a nickname yet?

Hana (00:45:44):

It's called Sunspot, which is great because actually, that's the name of the old amusement arcade that used to be on the site which was pulled down when the holiday economy started to tank. So it sort of also revived that name and the kind of hopefulness of that name, which is really sweet.

Ben (00:46:03):

That sounds like just such a brilliant example of place-based regeneration done right. I guess there has been a lot of debate around it because quite a lot of place-based regeneration hasn't worked so well, and this tension between people and place. I thought for a moment, "I might go up a level in thinking about policy or some of the ideas behind that." Although reflecting on this, it seems that it's just getting a lot of detail and right on the local level. But that does seem to be one of these arguments about place and people. And I guess at this very high level in thinking about globally, there are these people who believe places or cities or towns should generally be driven by jobs; maybe put in some transport and service infrastructure, but essentially let it be unplanned or limited planning. And I guess particularly you see this in some of the non-Western countries. That's essentially how they develop.

Some of those develop really well and some of those develop into slums. So you can kind of have arguments on both sides. Or you go to the other extreme when you think, "Okay, can I completely plan this place or city?" And maybe sitting around that you have this idea of charter cities, like maybe we can just completely plan something from scratch. And actually, you have some examples of planned places which work quite well, and some examples of planned places which don't work well at all. So there's probably no real consensus on it. But I guess given that policy and maybe either reflecting globally on cities or in the UK, do you think you lean more to elements of planning or more elements of un-planning or jobs, or how do you meld the best of both of those sets of ideas?

Hana (00:47:46):

So yeah, I'm a planner as well as a designer, and I think there's a really important role for planning. But I think you touch on a really critical point, which is actually human behavior is not a plannable thing. People are going to do things that confound the expectations of economists and planners who like everything to be extremely orderly. But people just don't behave like that. And people also want to feel that they have freedom and they have choice. One of the things that's so important in Jaywick Sands and why people love it so much is-- coming back to this point-- that every house looks different. They love the fact that it's their own identity; it's stamped on their own physical environment. One of the things that they said to us through the consultation when we talked about kind of new design guidance and coding for Jaywick Sands is, "It's really important that we don't lose this sense that every house is different. You can't make them all look the same."

People do want to feel that they have agency and have capacity to make choices. So whilst I think the economic planning-- and I think strategic spatial planning is really important. It's something that we have completely lost in the UK, I'm afraid over the last 15 years. We used to have regional spatial plans and strategies. We no longer have them. So it's a very, very disjointed approach to planning that we have and I think that does urgently need to be addressed. We cannot look at this country from an economic or a climate perspective and not look nationwide. We're not that big of a country. We really do need to be looking across the whole country and having a joined up economic and spatial strategy.

But I also strongly believe that we need more ability at the local level for people to feel that they do have some agency. That's a really difficult one because the reality is that the person who moves into a new build house on a new build housing estate, practically the day they move in, they become opposed to any more development in their local area. That is a known fact that just happens. They've been the beneficiary of housing development. But as soon as they're in that house, they want to be the last house that was ever built in the area and never see anything change again. So trying to find a way to say there are some tough messages here that actually, "You know what? Maybe you can't be that selfish always. You're going to need to see change." But also, there's a quid pro quo there that actually you might have more ability to change your own house, to be able to extend or adapt your own building.

People get so frustrated when they see their own back extension or not being able to do simple things get held up in the planning system at the same time as it appears that major housing developments-- thousands of homes get sort of waved through. I know behind the scenes those are not waved through. Those big schemes go through a tortuous and very time consuming and very rigorous process, not always with the right outcomes, but they do go through a process. However, to the person on the local level who doesn't see any of that, they see a system that is not working for them. They see a system where they can't add a conservatory or change the color of their front door sometimes in some cases, or put solar panels on their roof or whatever it might be. We've got to look at what the quid pro quo is in the planning.

But to come to your wider point, to the wider scale of unplanned development and some development and so forth, it's really problematic. Obviously, I think we are very far in this country from going down that route. But globally, when we're talking about inequality and we're talking about resilience to climate as well, you look at some of those very precarious slum communities and they do tend to also cluster to the parts of the land, whether it's favelas in Rio that are on the very steep mountain sides, very vulnerable to things like lands slips and landslides and heavy rain, through to development in India and places in flood plains along rivers. The poorest people often end up in the most physically vulnerable places. So I think there is a real obligation on city authorities and regional authorities to be more strategic about that, to take more of a grip on it, and to actually help provide for citizens in a way that isn't going to endanger them.

Ben (00:52:39):

One last thought on policy before turning to perhaps another project or two. So there has been a little bit of talk around design codes or use of pattern books, which actually, I think it was a conversation we had either on email or X Twitter or something like that about the fact that they've gone back in time. I think that Dutch had quite a few of these in the 16 or 17 hundreds as a kind of way forward. Critics might say you get these very identical, no identity, but perhaps also poorer quality poor materials particularly on the edge of towns and suburbs where you're going, "This is not housing which makes anyone filled with joy." On the other hand, proponents are talking about-- I guess they say gentle densification in urban areas where you've got stuck in this planning or can you do extensions or things like that. I picked up that it seems that some architects seem to be a little bit tentative or not particularly involving themselves in the pattern or patterning decision or this debate, which perhaps surprised me, but I'm not particularly hooked into the system. So maybe there is more debate. But do you think design codes or pattern books are one way of some sort of compromise unlock on here and do you think that's an interesting policy idea?

Hana (00:54:01):

Yeah, so we work on some design codes, and I guess that shows that we do think that there's some value in them. I think we've gotten into a kind of rather curious situation at the minute with regards to the aesthetics of development, the style of development with some odd politics, if I'm perfectly honest. I think around what's seen as kind of good, "attractive," "beautiful," "development," stemming from things like Building Better Building Beautiful Commission, which was chaired by Roger Scruton until he died and things like that, which are seen by many as quite backward looking, sort of everything needs to look like a Georgian or a Victorian street or terrace. And not maybe acknowledging some of the ways that culturally we need to be building for today and for today's communities.

Obviously, the Georgian and the Victorian and the Edwardian stock that we have is in many ways wonderful and in many ways synonymous with England. But I think when you cast a look at the economic systems that they derived out of and the social systems that they derived out of also, and question what are the lessons that we take from them from today and what are the lessons that maybe are not relevant. It's an area that I think we are treading carefully around at the minute because I think that there's a real, real value to having more of a pattern book approach. But I think it's got to be much more genuinely based on how is the functionality of these buildings working on a number of levels, not just a technical functionality.

So building regulations and so forth obviously should be taken for granted. But things like climate-- so overheating is a huge, huge problem. We must be designing and if we are having new pattern books, they must be including things like external shading for south and west facing windows. Really basic stuff, but really important. And other climate adaptation measures actually as much as mitigation because the reality is we are in a very different world. And secondly, that I think this focus on aesthetics needs to focus on the different communities that we have now. There's a question around the meaning that's attached. I suppose this is where sometimes I'm a little bit surprised because the kind of gentle density proponents-- and I think it's a well-chosen phrase because you can't really disagree with it. We all want to see that.

But when I see the buildings of Whitehall be held up as kind of an example of how everything should be built now and why don't we build new office buildings like the Foreign  and Commonwealth Office was built in the early 20th century. I think one also has to say, "What are those buildings really--? What are the meanings that they're embodying for a more diverse society with very different backgrounds and cultures?" They're quite problematic buildings. They are loaded with meaning around imperialism, around their references back to ancient Greece and Rome, of course, through their kind of neoclassicism. There's a lot going on there. And I think it behooves us to unpick a little bit more around this question of style that's not just, "Isn't it pretty? Isn't it attractive to the eyes" of whoever it is who's making that statement? I think beauty comes in many forms. I think we could be a little bit more generous in finding beauty in different forms. But also I think we absolutely need to push back on the lowest common denominator meanness of design that one sees from a lot of the commercial development sector.

Ben (00:58:32):

Yeah. That's really nuanced. So obviously there has been ongoing debates on form and function and this unspoken-- well sometimes spoken as we know humans give meaning to any big endeavors, building places, art, all of this, spaces porch, all the way back to what seems like simple structures and the like. That's before you consider that buildings designed 17, 18 hundreds or even 50 years ago, are not designed for technology, sustainability, climate, all of the things of today. I've been in some of those Whitehall-- in fact, I've even worked in things like Corbusier buildings and the like which are just very poorly considered in terms of heating and all of that because it wasn't a challenge of the time, it wasn't of their consideration.

Hana (00:59:22):

Or it wasn't even a priority. Sometimes those buildings function badly from the outset.

Ben (00:59:27):

They did.

Hana (00:59:29):

I think what is wonderful about us as humans is that we are really able to adapt things. And I think we shouldn't be demolishing all of these buildings-- their embodied carbon, their structures. But actually, the ability to adapt them over time, adapt them to be quite radical about how we adapt and change them, and then learn from that as well. This is where I think we can afford to relax a little bit more. To say, "Well, actually, the most important thing is that we kind of build well, as in the structures that aren't going to be needing to be pulled down in 20 or 30 years’ time. The buildings that actually can endure and have that ability to change and adapt as we learn, as our technology changes." We are working on all sorts of ages of buildings at the moment and that kind of robustness to be able to say, "Well, yeah, it can take a bit of a bashing and it take a bit of a change" I think it's really important.

Ben (01:00:28):

Yeah. And that begs the question of how long should a building or structure last? Because if you do carbon analysis and you're assuming the building is going to last a hundred, 200, we have buildings which are 500, arguably a thousand years old. It's a very different calculation to 10, 20, 30, 40. Perhaps that's one to consider about the age of buildings and that in public space. But maybe you could do it through the lens of just choosing another project that you'd like to talk about. Could be one of yours, could be something else, but obviously you've done a lot of this public space as sort of museum and gallery work which I guess we would assume is going to last a long time as well as some private space work. You could also comment on other projects or things that you see in the world. But yeah, any other project you'd like to pick on and maybe picking up on the themes of how long building should last for-- I guess we've done aesthetics a little bit and sustainability a little bit. So any project you like.

Hana (01:01:30):

Yeah, I think that time dimension is something that we're really interested in and that spans across all of the kind of planning projects as well, where we're talking about 20, 30 plus year strategies. I mean, a hundred years is what we're planning for in terms of flood defenses in Jaywick Sands. Who knows what the world is going to look like in a hundred years and what kind of homes, but the flood defenses need to look at that time horizon. We do work with quite a lot of existing buildings. For some reason we've worked on quite a few town halls actually, which came from the late Victorian period, kind of great municipal flowering of all of these big municipal structures that were built for a very particular point in time as a very particular expression of civic pride. Fast forward another 120 years, and the way our civic bureaucracies work is really different. So a lot of those structures have fallen into new uses or into no use at all, and a lot of the time we're charged at bringing them back into use. I think they are fascinating. So we've worked on a number of them. We worked a little bit on Shoreditch Town Hall a very long time ago, early days of its conversion into kind of arts and cultural use. We've worked on Redbridge Town Hall which is in Ilford town centre, and that also was working with Space Studios to make artists workspace and gallery space there.

We are currently working on Lowestoft town hall up on the East coast in Suffolk which is a quite a major project to bring this civic building back into use. This question of robustness and what you keep and what you have to adapt is really pertinent to them because ultimately it's the kind of basic structure as well as the external materials of wall and to a degree roof, that matter. If those are starting to fall apart, you've got a really big problem. So long as those kind of basic elements remain in fairly good shape, it's an onion. You can replace other layers in and around that. It's quite easy to replace a roof covering and renew that over time; much easier actually than replacing walling to a lot of degrees. Part of that is also about the aesthetics. You can replace wiring, obviously plumbing, floors, wall finishes. You can make partitions or take partitions out that are non-structural. You can kind of rethink a lot of things around the building, but still, there's something of that physical essence of it that is remaining. And I think that continuity is really important for communities as well, that these buildings are landmarks within your mental map of your community. You want to have that continuity at the same time as, "Look what you could explore, this kind of very different way of using that building into the future."

We do talk a lot about the age of buildings. We've worked on some buildings much, much older. So back to 13th, 14th century bones of a building. They're these remarkably enduring things. And I think it's wonderful to observe the completely unpredictable ways that these buildings have been used. Someone who built a church in-- I mean, we're doing some public realm around a church that was built in 938 or something. A Saxon Church Tower which then was much adapted in the medieval period. They couldn't possibly imagine the environment that this now sits in, the kind of world that that sits in. But it sits there as this kind of artifact. It's like a sort of sentinel observing this really long time scale of change. I think that's kind of remarkable and wonderful, and I would love us to take and to be able to persuade our clients to take more of that approach to new buildings that are built now.

We often talk about trying to create the heritage of tomorrow or the next generation; the buildings that are going to be those much loved, really enduring buildings that do stand the test of time. I wrote a piece recently that was sort of talking about this a little bit and noting that a little bit like children, when a building is first finished, actually it's the start of its life. The completion of the physical building is the beginning of its life as a thing in the world. And like a newborn baby, everyone kind of goes, "It's so beautiful and it's so great and cute." Looking and can't get enough of the pictures of it, and it's all shiny and perfect. Then they do tend to go through a period which is like the sort of awkward teenage years where everything just seems to go wrong. They're starting to look a bit shabby. Things are starting to age. Even wiring and plumbing and all those sorts of things don't have a very long lifespan. They do need to be renewed on a relatively quick timescale.

Maybe the original owners or clients for the building have moved on and you've got new management who maybe don't really understand it so well, or don't love it so much, or are stretched on their budgets and they can't afford to maintain it that well. There's a common misperception that new buildings don't need any maintenance. They still need a lot of maintenance. You need to invest in your maintenance from day one. So they go through this sort of awkward period. And then also their aesthetics tend to go out of date. So people start to not find them that attractive. This is a danger point because at that point people can go, "Let's pull it down. It's just too expensive to maintain. It's not working, kind of ugly." We've seen this with Victorian buildings.

The great campaign to pull down loads of Victorian buildings in the kind of mid-20th century, seen as overly ornamented and too gawdy and too this and too that. "God, we just don't need them. They're just so out of date." Now, we see it with brutalist 1960s and 1970s buildings. People saying, "Oh God, they're just big lumps of concrete. Let's pull them down." But if you get beyond that, actually people start to love them again. They start to have this kind of different life again. So I would almost like to see a rule that you couldn't pull down a building, that you were forced to look after it, that you had to look after it for at least a hundred years and see what happens over that span of three or four generations. What new things come out of that? There are some wonderful examples of buildings that have been completely reimagined. I mean, you could go to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, which is an amazing art center and this kind of old grand palace; very radical. You could go the other extreme and look at-- There's a car park in mid Wales which has been transformed in an art center and a market. It's a very ordinary concrete car park structure. There's so many amazing examples. I think we need to be a little bit less quick to judge on the successful failure of a building before it had time to grow up into its adulthood.


Ben (01:09:01):

That's a really insightful way of thinking about buildings which I hadn't really come across. And it reflects on a couple of things around this idea that buildings can also have a part of humanities or art in them. They are still, in some cases, a kind of vector for ideas that has meaning. And actually, there are so many parts of humanities which are no longer so much vectors for ideas because of the way that things have gone. Arguably, even economists are now dealing in the micro of business, whereas a hundred to 200 years ago, they were dealing with socialism, capitalism, what systems that they were vectors for ideas which broadly speaking, they are no longer. And I think about this in terms of theater, because plays, still are, although again, perhaps fewer, but they are vectors for ideas as well about how maybe we should aspire to be on a big scale or little scale.

Actually, they sometimes go through a similar lifecycle. Sometimes the beginning, the really good ones are great and then you don't hear about them again. And then maybe they reemerge with a lot of arts practice. which is perhaps a good segue to your very early life where you did have some theater practice actually, both in helping design theater buildings, but also as a theater and opera director. You worked a little bit with Peter Brook who was one of my most famed theater and opera directors, but also found and I guess light touch rejuvenated a theater space in France, Gare du Nord, which you worked in and which I've seen work in.

So I guess this is a multi-part thought question, which you can handle which was why did you lean into architecture and design when you could have lent into theater? So the roots of your own thing. And what did you learn perhaps from Peter Brook, or that theater or that space, or your work within design? I kind of think when I reflect on looking at your wider work that because you've been so sensitive to humanities-- I think your music playing is great. You've done theater work and things. There's something about your places and your design, which reflects this humanities. Yes, you've done the consultation and that. But actually, you have got an eye or an ear out for not to channel Marie Kondo too much, but the kind of a spark of joy, something other, something to aspire to, which are what humanities and arts have as a question. So anyway, bringing it down theater, Peter Brook, design, why architecture?

Hana (01:11:52):

Oh, gosh, great question. And maybe if I was to speak to my 20-year-old self from today's perspective, I might tell them to just stick with the theater. The thing with architecture, the built environment or the environment more generally is it's kind of inescapable for everybody. Theater and the arts by and large, the audience makes a choice to go and engage with that. But actually, you walk down the street or you drive around the city or the countryside, wherever you might be. Whether or not you want to be affected by the environment, you are affected by the environment. And I think that felt to me really important that one was trying to influence that process to the best possible degree. I think it was a really interesting time and maybe we're going to come full circle with this in a bit because it was kind of early 2000s when I graduated and I was sort of working in the various different things and as you say, in the theater and thinking about what to do.

We'd come out of obviously a period of quite difficult time and there was a huge amount of energy going into regeneration and urban development; a lot of ideas, as you say, a lot of really big ideas about what that might look like. It was a time of people like Richard Rogers writing ‘Towards an urban renaissance’ and advising government at the highest level. I don't think we've ever had an architect since him have that actual influence in government saying, "This is a picture of how our society and our cities could look really different." So it was a sort of interesting time to be moving into the built environment. But I think what I've taken from theater and from working with Peter, which was a huge privilege and an amazing thing to be able to do, was this idea that it's the human activity that is the center. The kind of job of the person shaping the environment is to make the conditions for that human activity to be as meaningful and as joyful and as fulfilling as it could be.

That way that as when you put a play on the stage, the focus is the actors. The focus shouldn't be the set or the lighting. If the set and the lighting is wrong, you notice it. If you go to a play and you are noticing too much about the set and the lighting, it's probably a problem. If it forms the perfect setting for the human drama, that's when it's really working. You almost don't remark on it because it's just working so brilliantly. Peter took that to an extreme where he had barely any sets for anything; a prop here or a bench or a curtain or something, but almost nothing. He was really paring back to the idea that you just needed a space and a group of people watching.

I think there's something about that to say, "Well, actually, what is the least one can do?" It's not about putting your own ego on the stage as an architect or as a designer or as a placemaker. It's what is the least you can do and what is the most strategic and clever way you can do those things that they have the greatest impact. Just subtle placement of elements and space or subtle sequence of spaces that can be made. Then what are the moments where you do need drama, surprise, joy. Those are the things when you turn a corner in a building or down a street and you see something that you weren't expecting and it makes you kind of amazed or surprised or maybe shocked as well. It's important sometimes. 

These are sort of human emotions that are really important. The built environment can only not just be about things that you could have love. And coming back to our earlier point, not everybody loves the same thing. Some people will find a building or a space amazing, and other people will absolutely hate it. Doesn't mean either of them are right. But I do think it's important that we try and actually engage with those emotions and create some response a little bit from people. We're not trying to make everything kind of gray mush just because it's a path of least resistance, but actually, sometimes you need to do something that is really surprising,

Ben (01:16:27):

That seems to be a call to arms to designers, planners and architects everywhere. Great. So I have a short section on underrated, overrated, and then wrap up. So if that's good for you. So you could pass, you could just quick overrated, underrated, some semi-random things here. So overrated or underrated, concrete.

Hana (01:16:50):

That's an interesting one. So I actually think that concrete currently, at least if you talk to those who are sort of talking about embodied and energy and so forth, is actually underrated. There's this great push to get rid of concrete out of buildings which is entirely understandable for many, many reasons. However, done right, it is an extremely durable building material to this point of longevity. You can look at the past and you can look at all these Roman buildings built with concrete thousands of years ago. I think we need to be much more discriminating about where we use it. But used selectively, carefully, smartly, it is a hugely important material. I think that we just have to be clever about where we choose to use it. There's a huge wastage of concrete, for instance, I mean, road construction. Let's forget about buildings. Road construction is the single biggest use of concrete. The amount of concrete that goes into our infrastructure is hideous and I think we should do something about that. But in buildings, I think it's actually quite an important material to use still.

Ben (01:18:04):

Yeah. And I think, as we said, if you take a two or 300 year view, not as bad. I've been announced to a couple of sites. There's one outside Copenhagen, whereas at Brownfield they managed to use a process of recycling the concrete and the studies for that showed it was pretty good in terms of carbon. Okay. Second one, heat pumps.

Hana (01:18:25):

Oh, heat pumps, definitely underrated. Heat pumps are great. Heat pumps should be everywhere. We should be making this really easy.

Ben (01:18:35):

And planning means it's kind of not easy sometimes.

Hana (01:18:38):

I think it's a little bit of a misconception actually.

Ben (01:18:42):

Is it just heritage areas?


Hana (01:18:43):

Yeah. And not even that. This is an area where I think codes should be used because I think we just need much clearer rules.

Ben (01:18:49):

Yeah. And you should be able to pattern code.

Hana (01:18:51):

Yeah. Really simple, really clear rules. Can be quite challenging actually with the retrofit of historic buildings because they need air and they need to be out in the open. They can't be hidden in a basement boiler room like an old boiler. But they are good. I think the other thing that is good about them is essentially they are a kind of plug and play system. So what I mean by that is this technology is going to continue to change and evolve and maybe in 20 years, everyone would be like, "Heat pumps, what was everybody thinking back in 2020s? What a daft idea. We've now got whatever-- some next generation." But actually, they still work off-- broadly speaking, pipe work and so forth that you could cut that heat pump off and put something else in and make it work. So I think that they are an important one. Making space for them in development, making enough space and making it easy to actually change that technology later down the line is really important.

Ben (01:19:53):

But the infrastructure of heat pumps or say heating networks and the likes could well last for a very long time. The physics of it aren't going to change because it's built on a fundamental physics principle.

Hana (01:20:06):

Yeah. They heat water and water runs in pipes and that's pretty straightforward.

Ben (01:20:12):

And that's likely to remain.

Hana (01:20:13):

And the fact that they're electrically driven and we obviously are decarbonizing our electricity grid pretty successfully so that kind of all works.

Ben (01:20:22):

Sure. Underrated, overrated, self building?

Hana (01:20:27):

Well, a little bit of a mixture actually of underrated and overrated. I think it is hard for people to build a home themselves. And when we say self building in this country-- and this obviously doesn't apply to Africa or parts of the subcontinent that are seeing shanty towns and things. That's a totally different thing. But if we're talking about-- broadly speaking-- developed economies. When we talk about self building, we're not actually talking about building one's own self with one's owns arms. One's talking about employing a small contractor, a small builder to build a house that you have gone and gotten planning for that has been drawn by somebody. You are paying for a small scale construction industry to take place on your plot. I'd love to see more of it, but we have a big skills gap. 

I think we are not confronting the skills gap here in terms of the technical knowledge and skills within the construction industry. Actually, it's bad at all scales. It's bad at the big company scale as well if you go onto job sites and see what people are doing. But if we're trying to build energy efficient buildings and we're trying to build durable buildings that are going to last and not need to be pulled down or have terrible failures in the future, we need to have a far better sense of training and system and value really for construction trades as things. We slightly do need to get back to the idea of a master mason and people who were the most valued members of society at the time because it's difficult to build well. You need to care, you need to have an understanding of physics, you need to have an understanding of technology, and you need to have pride in your work. The conditions in a lot of job sites aren't that at the small or the big scale. So I'd like to see more self building, I'd like to see our system set up better for that. But I don't want to see it if what it really means is poor quality construction, poor quality design coming through.

Ben (01:22:44):

And is that an education and training challenge or like you say, a value in society challenge. Arguably, we have a similar issue with teachers and nurses. Or is it a money problem as in, "We're not paying them enough in the value." I guess all of that is a little bit interlinked. But would you put equal weight on all three or do you weight one of them a little bit more as a priority to try and invest in?

Hana (01:23:11):

Two things I think are a problem. Firstly, I think there's an issue around the structure of the construction industry, the economic way it works, which is essentially a system of subcontracting and subcontracting down to the individual. So if you are a very large construction firm building however many hundred homes, you are essentially just a layer of managers. You then subcontract the brick work, or the concrete, or the timber, or the plaster boarding, or the electrics or whatever. Let's just take one of those as an example. You're brick laying so you'll employ a brick laying subcontractor and you'll say to them, "Please do all of brick work for these 300 homes." They actually then end up subcontracting that again and again and again down to the individual so that actually that individual brick layer who's on the site will be a self-employed brick layer. They're not within a structure that is valuing or sustaining or helping them grow their skills. It is a system that rewards, "Get it done as quickly as possible, get my day rate--" which is actually there are good day rates in the industry. I don't think the problem is necessarily money. "Get my day rate and go off and never be seen again." Then if there's a problem with it down the line, it's like everyone has sort of vaporized into thin air.

Ben (01:24:44):

Yeah. And the risk doesn't sit at the proper level, if it sits anywhere because it's essentially being atomized away in legal contracts which is fine on paper, but doesn't address the practicalities of, "Do these people know how to build whatever they're building? Are they aware of the right materials and design to use regardless of what's told to them from above?" Because they can look and go, "Well, this isn't the right sort of material. This is going to be flammable. I don't kind of care what something said. It's just not right because I know this." Yeah, I think that's a very good point.

Hana (01:25:15):

So I think it's a really big problem. And when you get to the individual workmen on the site, they're not bad people. They're not necessarily even that ignorant, but they're being incentivized all the time to cut corners. We haven't mentioned Grenfell, which we should really because that is absolutely-- That's laid bare in that project and that terrible tragedy. It's really disappointing for me as an architect to walk onto a job site, to inspect work on site and talk to operatives and see things being done wrong and be told, "Well we were just told to get on and do it like that because we needed to get off site and get it done in this amount of time." There's just no custodianship of quality. With some honorable exceptions, very little custodianship of quality in the process.

Ben (01:26:10):

Yeah. And we don't seem to have learned-- Actually, I did a recent podcast with Lucy Easthope, who's a disaster planner specialist, and that's a similar theme coming through from that. We're currently recording in a studio which is in the shadow of Grenfell, so it's definitely something on the mind. And that's it. You've got the causal problem, fire and cladding. But actually, those are the surface elements of the structure and system whether you want to think about how we do social housing and things that we touched upon, or the nature of contracting and subcontracting and risk and how it's all thought about which could do with a real strong rethink. 

Okay. Last one on the overrated, underrated and the wrap up would be green belt land.

Hana (01:27:00):

Well, I'm not sure how you can either overrate or underrate it. I suppose the land itself is just land. The concept of the green belt, I suppose is maybe what you mean as a planning construct.


Ben (01:27:09):

Yes, I guess as a planning construct. So I guess to unpack it a little bit, people seem to think there is actually good parts of the green belt and bad parts of the green belt. And because of the construct of the green belt, we can't at the moment develop anything on what probably geographers and planners and people would say, "Oh, these are bad bits." And then because of the politics of the matter, it's very log jammed. But people accept that there are good bits and bad bits. So that's why it's kind of interesting to see whether net it's an underrated or overrated concept or neutral.

Hana (01:27:45):

Overrated, I'm afraid. I'm not a big fan of green belt policy. I understand politically why it arose, but it's like so many parts of our system-- politics and this applies in many different fields and subject areas. Sometimes something that was kind of put in for short term pragmatic political reasons to try and get a bigger picture question pass through ends up being so enduring. One can think of, for instance, the decision to allow GP practices to continue to be essentially self-contained businesses. It was sort of seen as just really necessary at the time to get the NHS over that hurdle. But boy has it created problems for us. And I think likewise, the green belt was seen as a sort of necessary adjunct to other forms of planning that were coming out in the post-war period to allow people to feel like, "Oh, this is just not going to be uncontrolled sprawl."

But it has really provided a problem for us ever since. I'm a strong proponent that we need to be transport led with our planning in terms of where we plan for additional development. From a sustainability perspective, it is really imperative that we stop having to use our cars so much. Electric cars are not the answer here. EVs are great, of course. They are part of the decarbonization process, but it is completely unsustainable and insane, frankly, how much land and resource we give over to road infrastructure and how much time as well. So I am a strong proponent that we need to look at planning along transport corridors. What that means in practice is more of a finger model of development than a kind of donut ring form of development.

I would like to see more of a green finger approach than a green belt approach which says, "Let's protect and enhance the green spaces that sit between these transport corridors. How do we make them work best for not just agriculture, but also for nature and biodiversity, and also for people to enjoy? Let's refocus our strategic planning along those transport corridors rail mainly and rapid bus and tram and so forth so that we can intensify those communities as huge amount of wasted space. I did my dissertation for my architecture part two, a billion and one years ago on exactly this, looking at a rural rail line and the tiny amount of land that was actually available for the development around it because of all of the various restrictions and how completely mad that was, which still 20 years on or more, this hasn't being addressed


Ben (01:30:43):

Very clear. Great. So would you like to comment on any current projects or future projects that you've got in the works, either in terms of writing projects or design and planning projects?

Hana (01:30:54):

Well, we've got lots of really fun projects in the studio at the moment. Mentioned this kind of project up in Lowestoft Town Hall taking up a lot of our time at the moment, but really interesting and hopefully quite impactful. Also, more sort of policy space projects and things like that as well. We're really interested in rural questions. So London and the big cities, loads of great architects and thinkers and people sort of constantly pouring over them. The rural space is relatively unexamined so I think we feel that there's a need for more thought and interesting approaches to be looked at in the rural domain. On a more sort of personal level, a few projects sort of developing. One little project that I don't know where it's going to go in the new year, but I'm actually going to be doing a little bit of recording work with someone who runs an amazing apple farm near us.

He knows more about that land and that climate than really anybody I've ever met intimately. And I think it might be a really interesting lens to talk about climate change as well. I'm very interested in these kind of long-term futures and how we go and look beyond the sort of immediate short-term generation that we live in. I guess a tree and an orchard is a kind of good vector for that in terms of those wider processes of renewal and change. So yeah, looking forward to talking with him and recording him and hopefully doing something with that in the future.

Ben (01:32:43):

That sounds really exciting. And would you like to end on any life advice or thoughts that you have either about someone wanting to have a career in design and architecture, or someone wanting to make their mark in the world in terms of sustainability or arts or just anything you've observed. We haven't touched upon actually, your music which is also something which you perform really highly at. So any life advice or thoughts.

Hana (01:33:15):

I mean, I always hesitate to give too much life advice because it always just sounds like an old person being kind of patronizing to young people to a degree. You and I, I think we were actually very lucky in the generation that we grew up in, in terms of the way that the world opened up for us more than generations before, and in many degrees, more than the generation that's coming up behind us. So I do feel that we were very, very lucky to be able to broaden our perspectives; still have a pretty good education at low cost or no cost. 

I would say the thing I think is really important is to actually do things in the real world. Do projects that get your hands dirty, practical things, and probably not just things that exist online. Maybe they could be online, but I would tend towards saying make something. Like run a market stall or make some furniture and try and sell it. Or try and design some clothes and see how that process works, or take a disused space in your community. You walk past a derelict lot and you think that could be amazing community garden or something. Try and make something practical happen in the world because what you learn from that is firstly, you can actually make things happen. You don't need to be scared of it. Really, it just takes someone with some persistence and energy to make things happen and then it can happen. 

But also, you learn an awful lot about the nature of bureaucracies and about the barriers that exist systemically as well as about how to talk to communities, how to work and collaborate with other sorts of people. I think getting out from behind the screen and into that space where you're having to negotiate and work with often frustrating things, but also with real people, learn to communicate, not be shy, just get out there I think is really important. I would definitely encourage anyone certainly coming up into my field, but I think more generally, it's wonderfully liberating to find out how much you can actually make happen if you just sort of dare and go out there and aren't afraid to break things and get a bit messy and dirty in the process.

Ben (01:35:49):

That sounds like excellent advice. Be a builder, be a maker. So on that note, Hana, thank you very much.

Hana (01:35:54):

Thank you Ben. Lovely to be here.



In Arts, Podcast, Life Tags hana loftus, Architecture, planning, design, urban, climate, jaywick sands

Lucy Easthope: disaster recovery, risk, hope, planning, memoir, When the Dust Settles | Podcast

December 10, 2023 Ben Yeoh

Lucy Easthope is a professor, lecturer and leading authority on emergency planning and recovering from disaster. Lucy has advised on major disasters over the last decades including the 2004 tsunami, 9/11, the Salisbury poisonings, Grenfell, and the Covid pandemic and most recently the war in Ukraine. She challenges others to think differently about what comes next after tragic events, and how to plan for future ones. Her book When the Dust Settles is both memoir of her life in disaster recovery and a personal journey through life, love and loss. You can find her on Twitter / X @LucyGoBag.

I ask Lucy about what she is hopeful about looking to the future. 

"I think one of the things is this ability to be able to back, back and forth between really terrible thoughts and risks which we have to do in emergency planning, and then just take incredible joy from a moment in the day... My work is one of the greatest privileges of it; is just seeing people being great a lot. So that gives me a lot of hope."



We talk about how many disasters I’ve been a by-stander to (Thailand tsunami, 9/11, Grenfell, 7/7, mortar bomb attack) and how disaster is recurring. 



We chat about Lucy’s activism from young and growing up around Liverpool. 


Lucy has been very involved around personal items, and the belongings of people in disasters.

I ask  about why it's such an important part of Lucy’s work. We chat about the interdisciplinary nature of here work.

We talk about the Welsh notion of hiraeth /ˈhɪərʌɪθ/. This longing for a place to which there is no return.

I ask about Lucy’s writing process and how she writes. We talk about themes in her life and writing such as working class roots and feminism. We discuss the importance of humour and why Lucy is pranked a lot.

We touch on Lucy’s personal losses of miscarriage.

I ask about what is misunderstood about disaster management and what organisations and people can do. How to think about balancing risk and opportunity. We talk about the problems of systemic and structural challenges.

We end on Lucy’s current projects and her life advice.

“Don't go to work on a row. I was reflecting with a friend recently and she said, "A lot of people say that they live life as if it's precious and you might not be here tomorrow, or the people you love might not be here tomorrow. But you Lucy, really do." And what does that look like? Everybody I love knows that I love them. Every time I say goodbye to my children, every time I go to work, it's always on the premise of how fragile this is. I think if we remember that, it sets us up to perhaps be kinder to each other. I also think that one of the most important things to me is to go back to those basics about particularly as we go into yet another difficult winter or difficult times, is think about just that couple of things that can make a difference. I think people are very anxious about trying to save the whole world. You don't need to save the whole world, just make somebody a cup of tea. Just make that tiny little kind of chaos theory difference, and that's enough.

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PODCAST INFO

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Transcript (only lightly edited)

File: Lucy Easthope

Ben (00:00:03):

Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Lucy Easthope. Lucy has written a beautiful and insightful book, “When the Dust Settles.” The book is part memoir and recounts her life as a professional in disaster planning and recovery. I've had the privilege of hearing Lucy in person, and she is as wonderful as I would've thought. You can do two things if you're listening. You can follow her on Twitter if that's your thing, and you can buy her book, which I very much recommend. Lucy, welcome.

Lucy (00:00:32):

Thank you very much for having me.

Ben (00:00:35):

I'm going to start at the future, actually, and I'm going to ask what gives you hope? So you wrote in your book, "The value of a horizon to swim towards, the importance of trying to build something afterwards, to stay living, breathing, that had to be a purpose, a future, a bluer sky. And I thought about that about one of your themes in the book of being hope as well as loss. I thought I'd ask, what gives you hope.

Lucy (00:01:03):

Oh, that's a brilliant question. I think one of the things is this ability to be able to back, back and forth between really terrible thoughts and risks which we have to do in emergency planning, and then just take incredible joy from a moment in the day. I find people are absolutely hooked on that and they're desperate trying to see if that's authentic. So I keep my hope, I think very boundary. I know there'll be dark times both personally and also for the world ahead, but lots of little things give me hope. And I think in the same way as when you see extremists as frequently as I do, you also see reasons to be cheerful as often as I do. Anybody in my friendship group, whoever has a baby knows how much I enjoy that event. I spent far too much of my money on baby things. I find children and babies and futures and the idea of something has to have a point going forward, being very purposeful. And also people are great. I think that's the other thing. My work is one of the greatest privileges of it; is just seeing people being great a lot. So that gives me a lot of hope.

Ben (00:02:18):

I often say that because sometimes I get accused of hopium, which is sort of being-- I tend to say I'm cautiously optimistic about many things around people and about the fact that although there are a lot of bad things and a lot of bad things are going to continue, we've been slowly improving across many dimensions. I've also seen people at their kind of best and also at their worst. So I have a confession. I almost didn't read your book. That was because I'd been a bystander in about five disasters, four of which you cover in your book and I wasn't sure I wanted to revisit them. But full disclosure, I should probably recount them because it's kind of quite likely. So I live in the shadow of Grand Paul. That morning I opened the door to ash raining down on me. I was near Liverpool Street over 77. I had left the beaches in Thailand the very morning the tsunami struck. I was in Manhattan over 9/11, and I heard the Downing Street mortar attack.

I was kind of around the corner, which is probably one of the smallest of the events. But I was quite young then so it left quite an impression. And I guess I can add a six in the sense that we've all lived through the start of the Covid pandemic and it echoes through today. People kind of ask, "Oh, that seemed kind of unlikely." But actually, I think it really isn't. These are kind of predictable risks, predictable surprises-- this thing on that. And we all live with-- I think you said the when, not the if; this idea that tragedies happen around us every day. I think we'll cover those. But I wanted to start actually with your youth as we go in through to this because I had this sense that your activism started really early; your sense of importance of resilience, the questions that you had, and you spent some of your youth with work experiences with coroners. Can you tell me about kind of how you started and your activism and your youth and your interest in this?

Lucy (00:04:15):

Yeah, absolutely. You introducing your experience there, I think a lot of people are touched statistically more than might seem possible by events. But also I think certain people tune into them. Sometimes people will say to me that they realized only afterwards that they were on the periphery of something, but there's other people who feel them very acutely. And I think that's very important as well. So for me, actually, I was profiled in New York in the summer. For that, my dad was interviewed and he said the first one he really remembered me becoming very agitated by was when I was about six or seven which was the Bradford City Fire disaster. Then a couple of years after that, we were on a school trip, and that's sort of where the book starts really.

We sailed past the Herald of Free Enterprise which was a passenger ferry on its side. It had gone to set sail with its bow doors open and a massive safety failing. We passed it a couple of weeks after the initial tragedy but they were still conducting recovery work. And what my dad says in the interview-- is these were very, very big questions from a very small person. This was somebody really activated and interested and worried and desperate to understand where people were now; where the dead gone, where had the living gone, where was everybody, were they okay? Then as I go into most detail in that first chapter in the book, is my dad and my mom actually were teachers in Liverpool and Birkenhead. They had school children at the Hillsborough Match on the 15th of April, 1989 and I had classmates-- I was in year six. I had classmates at the game.

From that moment on, really, I think I'm changed forever. There's a lot of discussion in modern times now about the ripple effect. So I'm not at the match, my parents aren't at the match. We don't see the things that many of our fellow community members saw. But we're very affected by what it does to those families and also we're very affected by what it does to our community. So I talk about driving into Liverpool with my parents soon after, and people are standing on the edges of the road outside newsagents and burning copies of the Sun Newspaper who have perpetuated some very terrible myths about the fan's behavior. So many experiences I think that you see in activism, they start young.

My dad uttered some words that really stayed with me. He got angry and angrier, really; very sort of gentle, but passionate man angrier about the situation. He said, "Somebody needs to sort this." And what he meant was, "This isn't fair on the fans and the families." I took that as a huge direction. That shaped me and I became a very activist teenager, and off I went to study law because I was going to make things different for the families. That just stayed as my kind of mantra throughout my life really.

Ben (00:07:27):

We recently met briefly in Liverpool. And so for those on the video, I have a purple bin.

Lucy (00:07:35):

The purple wheelie bin.

Ben (00:07:36):

I think of course, a little bit blue on the video.

Lucy (00:07:37):

That's quite blue.

Ben (00:07:38):

Yeah, but it is actually purple as a symbol. I think the ripple effect was really interesting. And there's just a small second order detail which I just recall now. In Manhattan, for those of us who were there, we really remember the smell; this visceral attack on you-- well, a kind of air attack. Some of us are still kind of triggered by it now, the kind of air ash burning. There's actually all of these pollution effects as well. And for those who would sort of remember things, it's one of the things which link us and there's this kind of ripple in terms of a shared memory of that. I guess one of the other things is the personal effects, the belongings, which has been a really important part of your work. And I think you've sort of said something like, "Remember every disaster by its personal effects. The aftermath is all about these." I guess on the one hand you think of them as small items, but incredibly important. How did you come to sort of find why that was so important and why it's such an important part of your work today?

Lucy (00:08:55):

Yeah. So when I was at university, I discovered this wonderful group of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters who'd lost their loved ones in disasters in the UK in the eighties and nineties, or in disasters overseas that had affected British citizens. And also within that, there were survivors of those disasters. They were very generous with their time and I'm joining them to listen and learn in the late nineties. One of the themes that's coming up from multiple disasters, Britain was hit by just a series of what we call kind of mass fatality incidents at that time. It was how poorly the families were treated in so many ways. So in terms of information and care, tea urns that said, "For police only" so that families couldn't get a cup of tea, all kinds of poor treatment.

But there were some specific things that stood out around things like the care of the deceased and then specifically, the care of the personal effects. So one of the things when families don't get a body back or the body is difficult to view, or it's damaged, the personal effects take on a much greater meaning. We were seeing everything from personal effects being thrown away-- and this was an international problem. The Americans had a very similar problem in the 1990s. Personal effects were being thrown away, or if they were returned at all, they were often returned without warnings to the families. The families have the right to have them back as they are, but they also now under legislation in America, have the right to have them cleaned or repaired.

But we were seeing things like black bin bags being delivered to families with the personal effects in. And that seemed like something I could work on. Ironically, when I went to work much more in the field with a private firm, that was one of their specific areas of contracting. So I moved into specifically being in charge of taking care of those personal effects. And that is the greatest privilege, the custody of those items and the tender care of those items. It's actually the part of the work that I find hardest. It's interesting to hear you talk about what we kind of technically call olfactory trauma or olfactory memory. So for me, olfactory memory is my most kind of likely to provoke a fast memory or a fast image, as you say; aviation fuel, smoke, ash.

There's other things for me I talk about in the book a particular cleaning fluid. So these are those moments that kind of stop you in your tracks. The personal effects, one of the ways that they kind of linger in your memory is they're often so mundane and you'll end up sort of going home that night and seeing exactly the same thing that you've been working on to return to a family. So I talk about biro pens and water bottles and wash bags. The other thing about sort of attributing them to particular types of incidents is that incidents-- When I reach into my memory trove of experiences, I'm linking particular types of things to particular events. You mentioned 2005 and the four bombings across London. And generally there, the deceased were quite young, young commuters in their mid-twenties.

So it was a sort of commuter's personal effects. It was a packed lunch. It was the big Nokia phones. It was paperback books bit doggy-eared that you would read resting against somebody else's shoulder on the tube for other incidents. One that I didn't personally do but I attended the debrief at Interpol Four that always stays with me is a bus crash of schoolchildren where every child had an iPod shuffle. So different incidents come with a sort of story of the loved ones that are lost and affected.

Ben (00:12:50):

I keep a memory box-- a lot of on my travels, not from every disaster. But for instance, I have a shell from that Thai beach. I think this link to memory also to smell. I guess it goes to the amygdala and the deep parts of our brain. But when I talk to friends, I do think that some form of however you want to do it memory box or taking things which live with you so you can sort of treasure or recall or compartmentalize those moments can be an important thing to do. One thing which strikes me about your work is how amazingly interdisciplinary you are. I think there has been-- particularly in hierarchies and organizations, I guess it goes that way. You have a silo, "Police do policing and doctors do doctoring."

You sit around all of this and in particular, you represent the victims so well. You kind of just calmly seem to hold your ground. I'm sure it's not calm all the time. You just have, "Well, this is right and this makes sense to me." So just by your very presence and knowing much about these, you can kind of cause an intervention just by being a little bit; just saying like, "This is going to be a voice in the room." Did the interdisciplinary nature kind of just come about slightly by accident or you just seem to know a lot about a lot of things and then you are in the situation where it makes a difference. This seems to be so rare and also just so amazing. Talk about that.

Lucy (00:14:29):

And so frustrating as well. When you're in a university environment, I've had many of the research coordination managers sit me down and say, "Lucy, what is your discipline?" Where are we going to go for the ref grant? The big grants in HE, what are we going to do with you? The interdisciplinarity, now it makes perfect sense, but it can look very scatter gun. So my degrees are in law, in disaster management and risk, and in medicine; a PhD in medicine. I asked my mom just two weeks ago, "Did I ever look like I didn't have a plan?" Certainly a couple of family and friends were like, "What are you doing in your twenties?" She's like, "I think I always felt you had a plan."

But you are right. You have so many tabs open at once, so many things that you're drawing on. And what I love about it now-- there was a funny moment-- I was giving some advice last week and somebody who didn't know me very well-- Because obviously, when I'm starting to chat to somebody it'll be quite gentle. It'll be quite kind of light. I know I'm going to have to raise some difficult subjects. I started to chat in a sort of normal way. It wasn't a scholar's way with loads of citations. The person in the room said, "Do you have an evidence base because you've said about 14 things there? What's your evidence base?"

Everybody in the room went, "[gasps]." It was like a Marvel comic. They were like, "Don't do that. Don't feed her after midnight. Don't ask her for the evidence base because of course, there's an evidence base." And as you say, it's drawn from about 150 disciplines. So it's a lot of work. The two things that this brain holds onto is anything told from any field; everything from educational psychology, to chemistry, to kind of the business world, all these different kinds of things. It will hold onto, it'll retain, it'll connect, it'll think how to use that and celebrity gossip. It remembers nothing else. Having the book out there prompting conversations, it has prompted conversations with family, particularly about how annoying that is.

It's terrible if I buy the Sunday papers because I can make every article relevant to what I'm doing. I'm very lucky to have academic positions because then I have access to every potential journal pretty much that I could want. And that's how I operate. One of the things I would say is-- And I met a chief executive recently-- very, very impressive woman. She did something similar. She gave herself a couple of hours in the morning for kind of reading time what was going to be their articles. You have to find ways to absorb lots and lots of information very quickly and that would be one piece of advice that I would have. The other thing I've loved-- and I know it's not always terribly popular, is the discovery. I came to it late, but the discovery of social media for me because if you curate your feed well, you can get that digested to you a thousand times an hour. I love that, but I know it's not a very popular thing sometimes to do.

Ben (00:17:45):

Well, you straddle all of that. I don't know how many people have actually read and downloaded-- did your academic papers. But I read the recent one. I have to confess I understood the abstract maybe around the first page or two, and then you lost me.

Lucy (00:18:00):

That's how it should be in academic.

Ben (00:18:03):

And theological study on DVI on basically victim identification and all of this. It just struck me that there were a lot of people working on this and it flows through into the frontline. The other thing I got from your book though, is this idea that-- It's a common sense idea that nothing really goes to plan. So you've got to have the plan, but somehow then realize that it isn't going to go to plan. And that again is one of your skills which comes across. Just ability to put forward the things which you would know, or which you might know if you could be objective and calm, but you wouldn't necessarily know in the moment. Like the cup of tea, or the clean clothes, or that very human element which doesn't come through on the papers. And again, if you just developed that through time, how would you talk to people about making sure that element comes through in however we go when we're either responding or being out in the world.

Lucy (00:19:09):

That's such a lovely question. The answer always becomes very clear to me when I'm with kind of groups of my kin; when I'm with my aunties and my older cousins. They're just this mass group of nurturers. So in our family I think there was always-- You did perhaps reach into areas that were perhaps a little bit more personal. "Have you got your cup of tea?" A lot of my female matriarchs are teachers, so it's like, "Have you got a coat?" All the questions they'd ask a year seven. "Have you got a coat? Have you had a cup of tea there?' There's a lot of nurturing goes in, in our family. There's a lot of interest in everybody's welfare in our family. I was out with a big gang of them recently and I thought, "Yeah, this is where a lot of this comes from."

And actually, one of the things that I've learned going out into the world-- And obviously, you see how other people operate is that actually can be quite intrusive. Saying to somebody, "Have you had a chance to get the loo? Have you had a shower? Have you had food?" Those aren't necessarily normal questions I'm not about to ask you all those questions now. They are really good crisis interventions. They're really good to go, "Okay, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I'm going to go really basic here. I'm going to show you where the loos are. I'm going to make sure you've had a cup of tea before we put you into an interview with the police" or anything like that. So family was a great training for that. I think the other thing is the ability to look slightly into the future of where something's going to go.

So one of my most controversial topics over the last year-- and the book has given me a lovely platform to try out other discussions. When disasters happen, some of the worst things you can do are things that feel like they're absolutely the right thing to do. So I have a hashtag #cash, not stuff, which is about not donating all of the old things from your back bedroom to the nearest disaster. They often become the second disaster. A much better thing is to donate cash. So one of the things that I would find is I would mention that people be horrified. This is us showing care. This is something we want to do. So often where the plan fails is not because it has gone horribly wrong or because it's so unsurvivable with the situation.

It's because people are perhaps doing things that feel right in the moment, but not doing a longer term risk analysis. And I think the public sector struggle with that. Often when I'm working with the private sector, because for example, their financiers and their legal teams will tend to have a long range view. They are often easier to brief with me going, "Hang on, there's a hidden consequence." What I'm learning and still learning-- I learn constantly-- is there's a real responsibility to playing that role. Somebody asked me the other day, they wanted to write a briefing on an incident that's just happened. There was just too much information in the briefing. It wasn't going to land. I advised on two or three things that needed to come out. Afterwards I thought, "That's quite a big thing you just did there." Because those two or three things-- I've obviously said, "Put them in another paper that goes second." But you're making some big choices and people are kind of looking at you going, "What's the right thing to do here?" We've talked about the evidence base, but you also have to have mentors that you check in with. So 11 o'clock last night I was speaking to a colleague that is a sense maker for me, and that's a really important part of this as well.

Ben (00:22:31):

That's really fascinating. And that part about cash really resonates as well, because partly when you're reaching out to help people, you are thinking in your own shoes sort of like, "Oh, what would I like? Where am I sitting?" Whereas often from the other person when they have nothing anymore, they need to kind of be empowered to make their own choices not given by some other direction or something like that.

That also leads me to think another theme about your book. So you deal a lot on the near term and the aftermath and then the kind of medium term, a little bit like that. Then for some things, the sense of justice and the fighting for those. Then there is the kind of medium to very long term-- these echoes. I mean, in Liverpool you have the echo today. I think the city will be forever shaped by what happened; so that's going to be that. Manhattan is shaped, I think forevermore with that. You have this Welsh term which I'm going to mispronounce. Is it hiraeth?

Lucy (00:23:37):

Yeah, beautiful term.

Ben (00:23:39):

This longing for a place to which there is no return. I think you say an echo of something that can never be found or something that no longer exists. I'm going to wrap it around as well because my son is autistic and there are some things which disappear from his life like trains or other things. I see this in other parts which have been my life, and they are no longer about. Some things when you do break, you can't really put them back together. When I came across that term, I thought that is exactly right. But what would you say in your interactions for that, what we should do for this sense of missing, the sense of whole either at the kind of city organizational level or on the people level now that you've been to so many of these places and keep them alive with you. What do you think we should do with this hiraeth sickness for something that no longer exists?

Lucy (00:24:35):

Well, I think the first thing you have to do is acknowledge hiraeth. It's something that doesn't sit well with framings of modern mental health. It was one of the things that I'm growing increasingly concerned about when I do respond initially to a disaster is rhetoric from both kind of some mental health professionals, but also politicians that this will be overcome, this will be bounced back from. That resilience is you forgetting or parceling or being able to move to the next stage. Hiraeth stays with you. I think that's a really important recognition. Certain parts of the book flowed very easily. Hiraeth was a part of the book that flowed easily because it was the word that was working most for me when I was meeting with both community groups and responders in Grenfell. So this was a diaspora of multiple communities, many languages, and this one word was doing this work. It was connecting everybody's feeling.

Everybody loved it, but also was desperate about it because I wasn't offering a fix. There is no fix for hiraeth. And with a lot of things, I think similarly bereavement or a massive career change, there is a loss of the life before. What you watch people do in the early stages of something like bereavement is kind of try and fight it. You also watch the people around them try and fight it. For example, in my work, I've often seen people interact with very, very newly widowed young women. People are like, "Well, we can get you that life back." Way too early and way too soon people are saying, "There's still a life. We'll find the life." People are very desperate to try and convince you that it will be okay which is understandable. But hiraeth doesn't go anywhere.

A lot of the conversations that I have with communities affected by disaster stems from a life before and a life after. They will still see moments of joy. They will still see moments of hope. They might like their new leisure center better than the one before. But it doesn't mean that hiraeth is not very, very permanent. The other thing I really like about the use of that word particularly is it's a kind of direct challenge to where I go on in the book, which is the sort of modern spin of emergency management. I was quite shocked at an event a couple of weeks ago. We are still talking about minimizing the effect of these events. The ultimate role of emergency planning in the UK is to kind of minimize these events so that they almost feel like speed bumps in the road. And you're like, "Are you kidding me? These are so fundamental to the fabric of society." And also the way you described your experiences. They're so fundamental to the fabric of you that I don't believe that how we measure-- whether something has come back from somewhere-- is their ability to forget it. My much truer test is their ability to live alongside the horizon.

Ben (00:27:33):

That really resonates with me. I mean, part of my experience with my Thai friends and also in Manhattan is that I keep their stories alive by including them in my own. That's something that you sort of talk about in the book. There is this acknowledgement about how it shapes us and that we don't forget. We have this around Grenfell as well. So that idea that it shapes us on that by keeping their stories alive. The other thing which I think on that with what you're talking about, kind of this modern idea that these are just blips in the road with resilience, these kind of things will never happen again. Yet they're all predictable surprises. We know these things are happening. It seems to me that maybe some of our organizations have entered into a failure of imagination somehow. We've got these process and things and we just can't think outside the little box or even just outside our recent history. You don't have to go back very far. Or in fact, sometimes not even history if you just look around the world to what is actually happening. Do you think there is this kind of failure of imagination, or how would you say the role of thinking bigger and wider, particularly in terms of resilience is planning out?

Lucy (00:28:57):

That's our question of the moment, really in emergency planning. I often attribute a lot of my ability to both be effective as a planner, but also to have been, I think, quite prescient in the things that I've predicted to just a really good imagination fostered by lots of love of story and fiction and nonfiction. I joke in the book that I was very much a child of certain types of telly in the UK. So watching casualty and watching Brookside and all the things that can happen. Also, you mentioned right at the start that I spent a lot of time with my aunt and my uncle who were both coroners and coroners in their inquest process. So they look at how and why and when somebody died, but they also look at the kind of circumstances around that.

They're often a little bit like a mini episode of casualty themselves. Maybe if the ladder hadn't been against the rickety wall type thing, the person wouldn't have fallen off. So there's an awful lot of kind of joining the dots that I do. Imagination is woefully lacking in my field. But more importantly, I think very difficult in central government. One of the places that I go to in the book is that it has become more and more difficult to use what we would call in emergency planning, the reasonable worst case scenario. "So paint me a picture of a reasonably worse day." There are no aliens in there, but it's pretty bad. And what happened was that became about political football. So I'm on record talking about-- In 2009, I was raising the concern. I raised it at an Irish emergency planning conference and it was written up on the internet, which I'm very glad about because it puts a date stamp on it. I raised a concern that we were planning for a difficult exit from Europe, but our pandemic plans were being kind of pushed into the long grass. The idea was being put out by central government in England that you wouldn't get a pandemic at the same time as a no deal.

The idea was being put out by central government in England that you wouldn't get a pandemic at the same time as a no deal Brexit and that's a failure of imagination. We first saw this term failure of imagination in the commission report into 9/11. For me, it's one of the biggest issues. People like their scenarios very safe and very optimistic. Also, I'm starting to use it to challenge other things. It's not a failure of imagination to imagine, for example, what happens if we don't get to net zero/ Failure of imagination works very well with climate change discussions because you have to be able to explore rather than-- You said right at the start hopium is a big issue in emergency response. If we don't hit some of these targets, if we exceed some of our concerns, if we don't put the mitigations in place for certain things, let's accept that as a reasonable worst case scenario. Let's imagine what that looks like and plan accordingly.

Imagination stands you very well, I think as well in your kind of personal and family life. So you kind of picture what might go wrong and you mitigate or you can also-- we talked a little bit about joy and hope. It's a way of picturing what a good thing might look like as well. So I think imagination is very much linked to, in the business world, what we might call kind of scouting and foresight.

Ben (00:32:23):

Yes. So one of the hats I wear is I write plays, I make theater. Actually, my current show which is coming around again in January 2024, is around death. It's part standup comedy, part one man show. But you get to plan my own funeral. So I now have a joke that I'm the only person who's been to their own funeral five times because we kind of talk about what music you would choose, what images, and it is this sense of just imagination for things around death which are definitely going to happen. So that's not an issue. I think climate's really interesting so I do quite a lot of work around here as well. I think one of the problems we've come across is actually the way that a lot of our standard fiction and our standard stories happen.

If our fiction seems too close to the real world and in the extraordinary, we say, "That would never happen. That's only science fiction. That's only fantasy." Even though if I'd wrote a little fiction story about what has happened around Grenfell, particularly post Brexit or post that amount of time, it would've been dismissed as completely unbelievable. "There is no way this would happen. We are not going to publish this as a fiction story," and then it happens in real life so you can't countenance it. So there has been something which has happened where we can only believe it as science fiction and not as real. So that's something to do with that part of story.

Lucy (00:33:51):

Definitely.

Ben (00:33:52):

Maybe that's a good segue into perhaps a couple of more personal aspects. Thinking about story, do you have a particular writing process? Because your writing is really beautiful.

Lucy (00:34:04):

Thank you.

Ben (00:34:07):

It is what we, I guess would call life writing or non-fiction writing, but it is very stylish and every chapter tells stories. They tell your stories, they tell other people's stories. Do you have a process? Everyone has a different process. Do you like write in verse, evening, morning notebook? How do you write? What's your writing process?

Lucy (00:34:32):

That's a lovely question. It goes back as I think as well to your earlier point about trying to write with academic writing. I think the article that you are referring to was in production for four years. I struggled terribly with academic writing. And I think somewhere on my wall I've pinned a review for an earlier piece of academic writing that says, "Credit should be given to the author because English is clearly not her first language." We all know reviewer two in the academic world is particularly brutal. My PhD thesis, I really discovered ethnography and auto ethnography. I was very lucky that the school of Medicine at Lancaster University was very supportive of exploring ethnography which is very intimate; attention to detail, but also centering yourself in the writing.

That released me. I mean, the things we had to do-- We had to get permission for my thesis to be in the first person, and that became my academic monograph, the recovery myth. We had to at every stage up to Viva, and even at Viva, although had very supportive examiners you're justifying the first person in writing which of course isn't true in memoir or life writing. Of course, you'd be writing in the first person. But what I discovered was how much I love that which is a slight death now to being an academic. I still am an academic, but why do I struggle with not being able to write? There were some real inspirations in my writing which were perhaps a very-- Obviously, they were people like Patricia Cornwell and Stephen King. So they were huge influences.

I had also started to really enjoy the professional confessional type memoir, the revelation memoir, the nonfiction, the celebrity nonfiction that as you say was much more kind of life writing, much more true to self. I was on an academic writing retreat, and a colleague who very sadly is no longer with us-- We were having a coffee in the afternoon and I said, "My brain, there's nothing coming out. I can't write this paper." She said, "Well, write what you want to write." That became the prologue, that became that opening chapter. I never showed it to anybody. Then like halfway through the-- I'd got the book deal and I was putting in chapters and my editor was saying to me, "We need a chapter that sets the scene." I attached it to an email and sent it in. She was like, "My goodness, where has that been hiding?"

I do follow religiously all of the good proper writers on Twitter who tell me how to do it. I know I'm supposed to try and get a few words down every day and I know I'm supposed to have times of the day. It was quite revelatory writing up my thesis. I went to a writing workshop and they said, "Find your golden hours; the hours in the day when you can just flow. Don't have your computer connected to the internet. Just write." My goals now are between about five and 7:00 AM which is horrible for the household. Then as the day wears on, I get sort of less creative and I just do my editing or whatever.

But different chapters have been written in different ways. One of the ones that I really remember with a kind of energy was I was so grateful to Hodder and Stoughton; they let me write about flooding. Flooding is just this grim, chronic aftermath that we're going to see so much of in the UK. So I really wanted to write about flooding, and I felt it was brave of them because it wasn't the big, dramatic types of disasters that I was writing in other chapters. I wanted to meet a deadline, but also we had a new dog. If I went downstairs, the dog would bark and wake the whole house hold. So I sat on the bathroom floor, cramped legs, and just powered through that chapter. I think there's an energy-- It becomes the hiraeth chapter. There's an energy to that that always makes me smile when people say kind of, "What's your technique?" Because sometimes it's very much built by circumstance. There are bits written on the train, there's bits written exactly as we're supposed to in my golden hours.

Then the other thing I found, I think having been through the rigors and the brutality of academic writing, I had huge respect from the outset for the editorial process. So when people said to me, "That goes, or that doesn't work there," I just listened to it. And I'm so glad I did because I think what you get is a quite a tight narrative and a coherent narrative which was something before the book that I think I would've said I struggled with.

Ben (00:39:14):

And do you write long hand by notebook and then into computer, or straight into computer? Or it seems like it varies. It doesn't bother you kind of.

Lucy (00:39:23):

I love a notebook. I do have a notebook of ideas. My main business expenditure is very nice notebook. So I do have notebooks for initial ideas, and then I get very upset because I'll get a smudge in them from my pen and then I don't want to use it anymore. I'm terrible; I'm very obsessed about my notebooks. But then it's on the laptop-- And what I do-- I've always done this-- It's like a shuttle launch. I get the workspace set up and I've got inspirational quotes on the wall, and these are the books I'm going to refer to. I don't do that at all. I sit in front... The way my brain works-- this is a terrible confession that you've lured out of me. But I quite often need something going on in the background.

So people will say to me, "How can you have been both producing an article that's out in the independent tomorrow and you also seem to know all of your selling sunset gossip?" It's because I have it on at the same time. And I think it's that thing about having all the tabs open. I can write, which I know people find abhorrent the idea that you would have that much background noise. But I write better if I've got something fun on the telly over here. I just sit and write stuff. So yeah, I'm fascinated by process. When the book came out I did a lot more literary festivals and things, and I realized how much newer writers and aspiring writers really hang on to the idea of process. I felt a little bit of a fraud there because I'd sort of sat with my Mac Air and Selling Sunset.

Ben (00:40:50):

I've interviewed-- I would probably say hundreds of creatives in some form. The one dominant thing is that there is almost no process that is for certain. Now mainly, there's some in the sense that if you are a writer, you need at some point to write words. If you don't manage to get words down, you don't have anything. But it can be at 5:00 AM or 5:00 PM. You can want silence. You can want a lot of noise. Some people use notebooks, some people go straight to computer and all of that. But one of the things I guess is you have to do it. One last one on your writing because I think it is so beautiful. You have a lot of beautiful sentences. And I just wonder at the level of the sentence, do you hone and reedit-- Obviously, you'll have editors who do things. Or do the sentences come out mostly fully formed when you are writing them-- your particularly beautiful ones? Are you kind of at the level of the sentence going back and back and back, or they kind of flow out because you've had it all up in your mind and you've now got the time and it's all coming through? Well, you probably don't really think about it. But at the level of the sentence, you've got such beautiful ones and the phrasing is different. I mean, it's almost towards poetry, but it was within prose. But to someone who's sensitive to writing, it definitely jumps out as in this is someone who has written special sentences throughout the book.

Lucy (00:42:20):

That means the world. Definitely like I said, I listen closely to my editors. I think also, there was a technique that had certainly been beaten out of me in academic writing, But I'd always loved in things like Stephen King's writing, which was maybe that last sentence in a chapter would kind of kick you in the guts. I think there's lines where he'll say, "Susan Jones really enjoyed her last breakfast," and you know that things are going to get really grim in the next chapter. I like the power of a last sentence. It's interesting now I've been to-- Again, because the book has thrown me into this wonderful world of literature that I hadn't been exposed to for a long time. I've been to a lot more poetry workshops and poetry events over the last year and I've realized how much I like alliteration and how much I like kind of trailing off a stream of adjectives and description. The power of constructing a sentence that is quite clashing.

That was really important I think for some of the content that goes to more difficult areas; some of the things about you might say the more forensic areas. And what the editors would do for me there is they would say, "Go away and write. We are not going to be scared. We are not going to be horrified. Write everything that you felt." So I quite like a sentence that maybe has a clash. The best thing about the book for me was something for the first time had finally captured what happens if I go and speak somewhere. I'd never been able to marry the two. I'd never been able to get the writing to match up to the kind of way that I like to speak about things. I think the other thing was there's a lot of noise in the world. And when you speak about these things, people are moving on to the next thing all the time. I wanted to grab attention. Nobody has described it quite like that before, so I thank you for that because it means a lot.

Ben (00:44:32):

Well, when I met you and heard you in person, I thought, "This is definitely the person who has written this book. She's not used to ghost writer. This is her," which you can sometimes see. You know you always little wonder. I was like, "No, this is her voice."

Lucy (00:44:51):

That's a lovely thing to say and very validating. But yeah, no, definitely not.

Ben (00:44:55):

I'll reflect on one other thing because your writing particularly on some of those harder parts are neither super clinical nor morbid, nor have they kind of gone so lyrical that you just think that this has got off towards high art. There was a sentence on disaster which I just pulled out because it really struck; partly just because of its construction. "Disasters are about total loss, tangible losses of a person, a house, a place, and intangible losses of a feeling of safety, trust in authority." Just the way you have these contrasts and the losses come back and the tangible and intangible as just a kind of normal-ish sentence coming through on that. The other thing about your writing which came through to me is it seemed to be rooted in yes, your childhood, yes, Liverpool. But also working class and also feminism or being a woman. I was interested to how much that has been influenced. This idea that the working class voices are often not that well understood, not well represented. I think you can say the argument is the same for female voices even today. How important is that to you, and is that a theme which kind of sat at the surface of your writing? Or is it just more of an undercurrent across the fact that that is who you are?

Lucy (00:46:25):

Yeah, it's a really interesting one because I think-- Sometimes only after you put something out or when you are kind of slightly pushed or tested on something you realize where your activism lies. The other thing of course, as you know with a process like this goes out into the world and people draw different things from it. So the role of the woman in emergency planning has definitely been something that people have really picked up in that. There's certainly, I think six or seven times in the book where I make a clear distinction that by perhaps-- You talked earlier about how difficult it is to sell something that's only a story. I make the point in the book that I'm called a hysteric, I'm called a fantasist.

I didn't want it to sort of beat people over the head. And also, I wanted to be very clear that this was very much a book of allyship; lots of people working together. But certainly there's a theme in the book, I think of the unheard voice which is a very important theme for me across the gamut. We're seeing it in the Covid inquiry. We're seeing it in other disaster inquiries constantly. Who gets their voice heard at the table and why was probably the bigger theme for me. And then since the book has been out, I think partly because sometimes I'll deal with it in quite a light and very perhaps quite, gently combative way, it has been a chance to explore through things like magazine articles and things how women... In my case, I talk a lot about advising in the pandemic. There was a very, very privileged wealthy lens on how people would respond to something like lockdown.

When you come from a place like Birkenhead, you certainly know that nobody is going to get through lockdown easily. You've responded to the Grenfell disaster. You understand challenges around housing and lack of garden. The point that I'm making in both the book and then in some of my social media is trying to penetrate places like Westminster with the idea that people have very different lived experiences on the ground. I think the biggest thing for me would be challenging the who gets heard. Another aspect of that is we are very, very bad at listening to any group that probably isn't. There's a long history and emergency planning of a lens of white male heterosexual. It's great to see that being challenged more and more in my field of practice and very, very robustly.

Ben (00:49:16):

Another thing which comes through-- And maybe it comes through even more in in person, is the fact you are very funny. There is a slight thing through the book, but obviously it's kind of shadowed by all of the hope, last disaster.

Lucy (00:49:33):

You had to take out some of the jokes.

Ben (00:49:35):

Yeah. I mean, I guess this is it, because that's the other thing having been a bystander or just really close to all of this. I guess you call it gallows humor, but actually, it's strangely really important to get through if you can't laugh. And I found some of the acquaintances or friends or peers of that who just somehow couldn't find something to laugh about have really suffered more. Maybe it's a kind of almost-- I wouldn't want to say condition because you're just seeing a certain lens to it. But this ability to laugh through things. Another thing which happens-- maybe it's every two or three chapters-- maybe not quite of that, is you seem to get pranked a lot.

Lucy (00:50:18):

Yes.

Ben (00:50:19):

I was interested in what's the best prank, the worst prank, and do you actually end up pranking anyone else, or are you just always the one who goes, "Yeah, that's right. I'll just walk naked in this suit around this site because I trust the forensic people to have my back," or whatever that is. Best prank, worst prank, and do you end up pranking anyone else?

Lucy (00:50:46):

Well, it's a really good point, I think about the humor because when I started in the field, there was definitely a recourse to gallows humor. There has even been kind of journal and scientific articles written about gallows humor. What I'm always very clear on-- and this is very genuine-- is for me, the humor is never, ever, as you can imagine about the incident or anybody affected by it. But what we are is a very-- It's a very intimate collaborative, I think; a disaster response team in whatever guys it takes. We're very self-deprecating. And in the same way as we go to those basic needs that people need in disaster, we're also looking after each other. So a lot of pomp and ceremony is stripped back and people are looking after each other and making sure they've got the paracetamol they need or whatever.

So there's a lots of camaraderie. It's very militaristic in that way, I think. For me, the humor, I mean, probably for all sorts of reasons some of the funniest moments as I say, never at the instant, mainly at my expense should probably stay locked in the annals of my memory. I can't think I've ever pranked anybody. The one thing I do remember in the book is falling for-- So I say in the book that we often use celebrities in our disaster scenarios. I don't because I think it causes all sorts of confusion, but it's quite a common thing to do. I've had this notification that we've had a major plane crash and all of the spice girls are on it and I run upstairs and activate all of my colleagues.

They point out that actually, "No, just ring the airline back and check that it's an exercise." And of course, for the history of pop, fortunately it definitely was. So there's always those moments and then you sit back and think, "Gosh, what a crazy day." I do tweet moments that are slightly more-- they've got that levity in them. So we have what's called the Lucy Inject, which is when I put into a scenario something that I consider perfectly possible, but my colleagues will often laugh at that scenario. So we tend to have a lighter experience now. There's a group of us on Twitter that will also pick a disaster movie and tweet through it and tweet the moments. We're quite skeptical sometimes and quite harsh on various movie creators.

But it's interesting the point of the lightness. I know it's so trite and it belongs only on bathroom walls. But the phrase, "Live, love, laugh," that's always how I've done. Working in this field you know how fragile life is and you laugh, I think differently as an emergency planner. Everything tastes more intense. You love differently, you laugh differently, and you live differently. I just think that that's what gets you through. We've just had a major event for the emergency planners. One of the things that we talked about was how-- We haven't really done much face-to-face stuff for four years. It was like de-mobbing from a war. It was so lovely to see everybody. I've just seen the edits of the award ceremony that we did; a kind of lighthearted award ceremony, and all you could hear is me laughing. We needed that.

Ben (00:54:21):

I mean, it's a great part of the book because it sits in really great counterpoint to all the loss that we read about. Another element which comes through in the book is some of your stories of personal loss, which I think you could have edited out. Some of this is around miscarriage and some of it is around your own personal. I don't know whether you want to comment on why you left that in. It's obviously interlinked very much in who you are and how that think through. It does seem to me it has been taboo subjects again. It's a motherhood subject that we kind of don't talk about probably for the wrong reasons, but it's a very strong theme. I don't know whether you reflect on it today and whether that has also been very meaningful to mothers or people who'd like to be mothers who'd been reading the work. Was it really important for you to keep that in and to explain how that made you feel?

Lucy (00:55:22):

Yeah. Again, thank you for that. Yes, it was. And certainly when the book goes kind of out on the road and you're doing the book festivals, that's a great connector. Again, it's a bit like your experiences with disasters and the disaster statistics. One woman might never experience pregnancy loss and one woman might experience 10 pregnancy losses. It's not an equal spread. So you end up meeting women out on the road and their partners who it was the first time they explained it. When I originally wrote my PhD thesis, I wrote a chapter about-- I mentioned before, this kind of intimate ethnography that I was doing. The whole time that I was doing my field work for my PhD in some form or other, I was in early pregnancy, and I lost several pregnancies.

And what that did was I was working on the flood recovery that I was writing about, but it endeared-- The other women affected by the flood, they changed their relationship with me, they get me a chair, they get me a cup of tea. So I wrote this chapter about intimate auto ethnography and I took it out because that wasn't what the thesis was about. And what was important to me was it is relevant, I think, to who I am as an emergency planner. It's very relevant to who I am as a woman. It was very relevant to me and Tom. But also, there were these very important parallels. The form that I was asked to fill in when I would lose an early pregnancy is the same form that I'd helped design for disaster response.

We essentially use the same kind of, "What would you like done with the tissue?" It's the same form. So you would go from workshops on the Monday, to how you would use this form in practice, to filling it in on the Thursday. And I thought that was really important to me. It allowed me to have discussions about-- again, going back to the earlier point-- about being a woman in this field and kind of keeping some of this from the wider world. As with all editorial processes, I think that you write it and then it made sense. Some people have said to me, "Did you feel it was too much?" I'm very comfortable. But the nicest thing for me was-- and it still happens-- it happened only last week, is actually particularly partners of women who say that the way that I've described it has for the first time given them an insight into what their partner loses, what the products of conception as they are euphemistically called feel like to lose. So I've had some lovely thank you letters, particularly from men, and that that was enough. That was justification really.

Ben (00:58:04):

Does Tom read your work before it goes out? I think you describe him as a man of fewer words, and he's a really important presence; not the one where there was so many words written about. My impression is family and him in particularly, I think used the word scaffold in one of your notes. That seemed really just such a correct word. I don't know if you wanted to have a little comment on the importance of Tom, either to you or how as a theme through the book. There were other pieces of loss around that as well; our relationship with our work and our relationship with how all of that works. But yeah, I just wanted to note that there was a really important piece of scaffold there. And that definitely comes through the book about how that is an anchor for all parts of your life as well.

Lucy (00:59:02):

Yeah, it's funny because it's such an important theme. And I think again, that was a reason for talking about the pregnancies as well because that's a two person-- and in fact, of course, wider family; grandparents and others as well. That's a two person journey. There was a lovely theme that I'm able to draw out of basically not bringing work home. I met a prison officer this week who had read the book and they were saying that that was the part that made them go out and buy the book for their partner because they wanted to say, "Lucy does something different." But it's got that same thing that I might come home and be a bit difficult or a bit inside my own head, but this is why.

So one of the lines that I have the most response to actually is the line that says, "The hardest part of working in disaster is going home." So it was an acknowledgement and an appreciation of maybe how difficult that was. He didn't read my work and also didn't really tend to know what I was up to. And then for legal reasons when the book was just about to be published, he had to prove he'd read it and signed a disclaimer. So that was quite funny. He said something very similar to actually what my dad said. My dad basically very honestly said, "Well, I bought a copy when it was out because it's you, you're my daughter. But what I didn't expect, I didn't expect it to be a page turner." Tom said something similar like, "I don't like reading, but this is really good." So he was pleased. I remember he was reading in bed and he shut it and he just put it down in the bed and he went, "Fly me." I’ll always remember that.

But he is the scaffold. One of the things that I think again, a lot of people have responded to at the book festivals and in discussion of it is, "You can do anything when you are coming home to scaffold, kept going home to support." I don't get carried away because that's how you rattle the fate. "He has gone very quiet so he's probably leaving me out there somewhere." People would say, "Where does the strength come from or where does the joy come from?" It's coming home to him. But the joy as well was also that this was not his world. I used to be quite envious of colleagues and couples who were both-- say police officers. I was like, "How brilliant must it be for you to be able to sort of share your day?" And now I think through the process of writing the book I've realized what a gift it was to not bring that home. So yes, his view was very important and continues to be on it really. And it's his book as well. I think that that's the other thing. There's a big theme about him towards the end which I won't spoil, but also the babies were his too. So he's a huge part of that.

Ben (01:02:00):

Yeah, that's very important. I guess turning back to the whole area of disaster, what do you think is perhaps most misunderstood, either in and around disaster or in and around what disaster responders or planners do?

Lucy (01:02:18):

Well, I think the biggest issue we have, and I name it in the book after the most recent James Bond films. I do genuinely think that the Skyfall effect is a huge problem in disaster management. And this is the idea that this amazing capability is coming over the hill to save us. It's one of the problems we have with climate change as well. It's not. It's people like me and my colleagues and there's a tea club and there's a basement in a town hall where we use a lot of Excel spreadsheets. I always get asked to do quick summaries of my day or would I wear a body camera so people could see what exciting stuff I do. I'm like, "I might literally just be on a phone for an hour talking about a flood rescue strategy," whiteboards and Microsoft Word. It's not always very glamorous.

There's this huge misperception I think, of what we have at our disposal. But of course, the other side of that is what we also have at our disposal that we perhaps underestimate is just the amazingness of each other. One thing I find very difficult watching something like the Covid inquiry is that by necessity, and for many understandable reasons, it will tell the stories of what went wrong. But if you are me and you plan for a pandemic since 2004, you also got to see all the things that went much better than we ever had hope. I write a lot about things like our death care professionals, our registrars, our mortuary staff, our funeral directors who far exceeded the best case in our plans. The supermarkets far exceeded the best case scenarios we had, and that's not the story we'll tell. So I think sometimes we both simultaneously underestimate the fellow humans and overestimate the kind of quality of the Avengers response that we're going to get.

Ben (01:04:13):

That really resonates with me particularly also in climate work like you mentioned. Technology itself will not save us. On the other hand, we can save us because it'll only come from us. So you don't want to be in a position of helplessness thinking, "Well, I can't do anything, so I'm not going to do anything." On the other hand, you also don't want to say, "Well, it's just going to be done by someone else. Some other technology is going to come along." So you've got this interesting dilemma between actually, "Well, it may be some form of technology, but that's only going to be driven and powered by the people. You can't just let it be someone else."

Lucy (01:04:52):

Yeah, absolutely.

Ben (01:04:53):

Maybe that dovetails into the last kind of few questions. One was kind of around what people or organizations can do. So I've read in your work the things like citizens’ aid and things that you can do. And maybe on a sort of personal level, you might want to think about some of these situations that you might have. I was wondering any reflections on that. Then maybe at one level up, most of us work for organizations of some sort. So either small or large. I guess the larger ones normally think of some sort of planning, but it's usually to do with if the internet goes down or something like that, so it's sort of backup. Are there any thoughts that you have for maybe if you're working with a smaller or medium sized organization or even up into the larger ones about how we should be thinking about this?

I mean, it's not something that you need to spend 50% of your time on. But a little bit of time or resource seems to be able to go a long way, particularly because one of the themes I talked about right at the start is that a lot of these are kind of predictable surprises. You don't know exactly what the surprise will be, but you'll know it. I do quite a lot of work in healthcare and I've been in sort of 20 years speaking to virologists. They're saying, "Yeah, some sort of viral pandemic every 10 to 20 years is roughly what we would expect whether that's a different kind of flu or a different kind of virus. We can't tell you exactly what year it will be, but it will happen." And I guess the same, you can think about people living around San Francisco. They don't know when in the next hundred or 200 years that there will be some sort of earthquake, but it seems extremely likely that there will be. And so they think about that. But actually, it seems to be the same at the company or the personal level. So I don't know if you had any reflections about what we should think about.

Lucy (01:06:44):

Yeah. So taking the second one first, I think one of the things that we often do in emergency management is we sell to our kind of executive team that these are really good kind of business ideas anyway. It often improves the quality of other types of planning if you are looking at the kind of foresight issues and you are looking at risk. The fairly easy sell is that risk management is part of effective strategic management. It's an interesting one. I've been introduced recently at a couple of conferences where people have said, "If we keep getting our safety culture right and we keep getting our risks right, Lucy shouldn't be needed anymore." I don't think that's the case. I think we will always see emergencies and tragedies. We cannot design them out completely.

So thinking about as an organization how to overcome them when they do happen is important. We're following various seismic events at the moment and that's an example where people will have very high expectations of the warnings they're given, and when we know, and how much we know. That's what it is to live on this mother earth, isn't it? Her do her thing all the time. So one of the difficulties I think is making your peace with the idea of constant environmental and seismic and sociotechnical challenge. The lessons for both households and businesses are the same and preparedness is a win. The only downside to it is that sometimes done badly, people will feel scared.

So if you go in and go, "Oh my goodness, where's your insurance?" If you've done all of this, people will feel unnerved. But looking at things like what they would do in certain scenarios, thinking about prepping a go bag, looking at your insurance cover whether you are a household-- so many households now are underinsured. Looking at your insurance as a business, these just make good sense. So I think that's probably one of the things that I would most like to encourage. I tweet regularly ideas about going into the winter doing both an adult first aid course and a pediatric first aid course, learning about citizen aid which is how to support with more kind of catastrophic medical injuries; all of those kind of things. Knowing where your defibrillator is and just upping your level of preparedness skills really.

Ben (01:09:13):

So I go into some places-- I do a lot of site visits, and I'm often feeling quite comforted when I see a kind of safety culture, again, depending on the site and industry. You've mentioned this. You can kind of sense it, the signs are clear, they're well kept, and all of these type of things. But on occasion I've gone to places which have some of this or even all of this, but it's tipped over slightly into tick box. So they've set it all up but they've actually forgotten the bit about the preparedness is that other layer. Is there something to do with how we don't want to make it a bureaucracy because we kind of wanted to make it a slightly living thing? And I guess there is a slight tension sometimes.

So I got to do it in the extreme. So Silicon Valley sometimes says, "We got to move fast and break things." And I always kind of think, "Well, can we not just move quite quickly and just not break anything rather than...?" That seems to be much more sensible with that sort of thing. But there is maybe a little bit of attention. I don't think there is with actually true being prepared because as you say, I think that's sort of sensible. But where can it go wrong in terms of just getting a tick box culture and a bureaucratic culture, and how do you have this tension between the risk and opportunity side? Because on one hand, if we never took any risk; you never leave the house, you don't do anything so it's a kind of tension to think about. I've met some people also who I would say at the margin, perhaps a little bit too scared. You also have to live your life and deal with the fact that risk is all around us and accepting that. So I don't know if you have any thoughts or comments about that balance and bureaucracy and how you should think about risk, but also the reward about going out and living life.

Lucy (01:11:03):

Yeah. And it's such a challenge. The biggest evaluation I think I did was once I became a parent because then it's, "How do you not impose on those beautiful children that need to go out and live their lives and do their own adventures?" How do you not impose those worries on them? That has been a really interesting balance for me. So both of mine are very active and both of them are into quite high risk sport. So that's a true test of letting people live their own lives, do their own risk assessment. I remember a young youth worker saying to me many years ago, "It's you that's not normal." And she was quite glad that people didn't worry about the risk all the time.

You have to live and we wouldn't get innovation, we wouldn't get excitement. The NASA kind of-- the bravery and the ambition that goes with risk taking. So I'm all for a kind of quite risk tolerant society, but that does its assessment well, that does its mitigation well. Then as you say, something that's very important to me is the overt signs of safety culture. So I'm very interested in an organization where if I go into somewhere and they've got their very good food standard rating and food hygiene rating on the wall, but I can see the staff are miserable. There are other indicators that we all use to look.

I've also talked a lot more recently-- and I've just done a big interview on it-- about instinct, the power of instinct in our guts where the ancient Greeks believed all our emotions lived. Knowing when something's very wrong which I talk about in the rollercoaster chapter. So I think it is a really difficult one. The other thing that's happening is people have had their risk calibration completely discombobulated by the pandemic. This was starting to be very wary of. But what we did as a nation and several nations follow the same sort of path is we terrified our public. So what would've felt like something in their gift to weigh up, they're now very afraid. And now we continue to terrify them. The world's gone to hell in a Hancock, here's an environmental crisis, you can't swim in your own river. We're constantly bombarding people with information that makes them afraid. And that as mentioned before has a fundamental effect on parts of the brain. So one of the things I think I would recommend people do is remind themselves-- as I do towards the end of the book-- that the world has always been like this. Focus inwards, focus on what's controllable. But going back to the earlier point, you can't let it get in the way of life and living.

Ben (01:13:52):

Yeah. I think that's really right. That's one of the reasons I started with a question on hope because I strongly believe that in the long run, fear is not a winning strategy regardless of everything else. Governments, or organizations, or even people use fear at actually great long-term costs and I think we've learned that. People know, but obviously in the moment there is that. One comment on normal, there's a phrase I like which is that, "Everybody is somebody's weirdo."

Lucy (01:14:27):

Yeah.

Ben (01:14:27):

And that's how we have it. But if you found the true normal, that would probably be the weirdest thing ever if you could really find it. Okay. Last couple of questions on this. So one was going back to Grenfell and another will just be on in general life advice or thoughts that you have. I just wanted to finish on this because investigations are ongoing and things. We have, I guess what I would say is the direct cause, the first order cause via refrigerator and things like that. But when I talk around in my community, a lot of the anger is going up a level and so you can talk about the building and the construction and the policy and that.

Then you can even go up another level because there is this systems piece that we seem to have which weighs against so many types of groups. So whether that's poverty, whether these are immigrants, people who don't speak the language of English and all of these type of things. I think that's where you get a lot of this sense of injustice that you go, "Okay, we have a proximal cause. It was poor police officer or poor policing decision." But that comes from this system of policing or things that we have on a hierarchy we think about. We have poor housing and poor individual building, but it seems to be a system about how we think about social housing or how we treat poor people and things like that. So obviously, there is no consensus or solution for this because if there was, I think we would be pursuing about it. But given that you have been in so many of these events and communities and things, do you have a thought on that systems piece as well about what we should be thinking about or how we could be doing-- which takes us from one cause up from, "Yes, poor cladding, and yes, poor buildings." But is there something we can do on this systems piece or the social politics that means that we could try and make these better decisions for the things and listen to people when they say they've got problems within all of that?

Lucy (01:16:37):

Yeah. This is where you get quite radical as a disaster planner, because these are terrible acts of what is essentially state violence. The only way to explore improving that is to in some ways challenge and even perhaps tear act some very existing systems. You mentioned how many disasters I've seen and how many inquiry reports that I've also seen that go with them. The themes are always the same. There's very similar themes in Grenfell as there were in Hillsborough, very similar in Southall, very similar in Marchioness. I can just list places for you. So one of the things for me is there is a fundamental requirement to agitate. One of the reasons I've been independent since 2004, I have my own business is because if you get involved in disaster response, they're inherently political and they're usually embarrassing somebody and groups quite senior within the state.

So for us to really improve how the UK handle disasters and prevent them would involve us asking some very difficult questions of where power is held. And there are big questions there as I've said before about equal voice, being able to flag early, being listened to, exploring why people are ignored in the response. They are shamed and condemned when they raise these issues. And that's a very common theme for me. Also, there's often a sort of follow the money type angle as well. And afterwards when what we call the tombstone imperative, when the dead have been lined up-- if you will. It can seem so easy and simple to have prevented something. I don't think people always understand how hard it can be to try and whistle blow before something. There has been a theme throughout today's podcast, the ability to whistle blow on a story, on a hunch, on an instinct. People will say, "We could have prevented it this way, or we could have done that, or we could have done..." I still don't know how you do that.

Ben (01:19:04):

Yeah. When those in power don't really want to listen, doesn't really matter what you tell them.

Lucy (01:19:10):

No.

Ben (01:19:11):

Great. Okay, last question. What do you have as, I guess life advice or thought that you'd like to share? We touched on a little bit in terms of preparedness planning and also not living in fear and things. But is there anything else you'd like to share about your experience having come across some of the worst of times, but also the best of humans?

Lucy (01:19:34):

Yeah. There's so many things. Don't go to work on a row. I was reflecting with a friend recently and she said, "A lot of people say that they live life as if it's precious and you might not be here tomorrow, or the people you love might not be here tomorrow. But you Lucy, really do." And what does that look like? Everybody I love knows that I love them. Every time I say goodbye to my children, every time I go to work, it's always on the premise of how fragile this is. I think if we remember that, it sets us up to perhaps be kinder to each other. I also think that one of the most important things to me is to go back to those basics about particularly as we go into yet another difficult winter or difficult times, is think about just that couple of things that can make a difference. I think people are very anxious about trying to save the whole world. You don't need to save the whole world, just make somebody a cup of tea. Just make that tiny little kind of chaos theory difference, and that's enough.

Ben (01:20:51):

Yeah. I think I have another quote here that you quote on grief really, but it's the sort of thing. "Grief is best dealt with in the tiniest of incremental steps. How about you make the cup of tea today? Shall we walk to the end of the drive? Let's redecorate the kitchen."

Lucy (01:21:09):

Yeah, absolutely.

Ben (01:21:11):

Excellent. So on that, Lucy, thank you very much. I will once again recommend the book, "When the Dust Settles." On that, please do grab your copy and thank you very much.

Lucy (01:21:12):

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

In Podcast, Life, Arts, Writing Tags Lucy Easthope, disaster, risk, memoir, pocast, podcast, writing
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