 inertia is the most powerful force really and inertia is a negative force it holds us back it prevents us from changing things but right now we live in a time of the greatest possible misalignment of the geography of where our resources are and the geography of where people are and what stands in the way is the geography of borders and politics and we need to reconcile these geographies. Dr. Parag Khanna is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Parag is a leading global strategy advisor, world traveler and best-selling author. He is founder and managing partner of FutureMap, a data and scenario-based strategic advisory firm. Parag's newest book is Move, The Forces Uprooting Us. Just barely hot off the presses this is a physical copy I have but it's also available on Audible and Kindle. The Future is Asian is also a book he has Commerce Conflict and Culture in the 21st century released in 2019. He is the author of a trilogy of books on the future of the world order beginning with the second world empires and influence in new global order in 2008 followed by how to run the world charting a course to the next renaissance in 2011 and concluding with Connectography, Mapping the Future of Global Civilization in 2016. I have Connectography a copy of that. He is also the author of Technocracy in America Rise of the Info State in 2017 and co-author of Hybrid Reality Thriving in the Emergent Human Technology Civilization in 2012. Parag was named one of Esquire's 75 most influential people in the 21st century and featured in Wired Magazine's smart list. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Bachelor's and Master's Degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has traveled to nearly 150 countries and as a young global leader of the World Economic Forum. Parag, it's so good to have you. Welcome to the show. Great to see you Mark. Thanks so much. I'm glad you could come back on. The last time we spoke about a couple of your books and had you on the podcast and that was wonderful. It looks like you're out and about traveling today. We're doing the podcast from your car but it's a video podcast so we'll have a mix for those. Most of the listeners are on podcast format but I'm so glad you could take the time out of your busy schedule and you hold true to who you are. You're always on the move. You're all over the place. Renounding success since this book has come out. I've seen you all over speaking about it and heard you whether it's audio podcast or on videos. Speaking to the mayor of Miami and many other great people about this wonderful book and so timely and I can't believe how up to date everything is. How you just have your finger on the pulse of what's going on in this world and I'm sure that's because of your companies but I'm really glad you could take the time to be here. Thank you. Oh such a pleasure and it may seem like everything is super timely and up to the minute but that's I mean partially just an accident. The book was finished before the pandemic and I took a bit of time obviously to update it but not necessarily all that much because you know it's a long term thesis and the pandemic has accelerated some of the trends even in the area of mobility and that's obviously a great paradox to many people but you know now here it is it's out and we are entering gradually a painfully that post-pandemic world where I think we'll see a lot of these trends come to life around people yearning to relocate to new places as has always been the case throughout history. So I have a couple of questions specifically around that. With people experiencing this pandemic and seeing a lot of moving and uprooting during this time do you think there are some learning lessons that they're saying okay well this is probably not the first pandemic that that we're going to have or live through and so they're preparing like where can we live in the future? Where's the best place for this? Are you seeing any trends or anything that that people are preparing for maybe the next pandemic the next wave of something else and already preparing? Well I don't think that people are focused on the next pandemic because we're still in this one but one of the points I make is that a pandemic is just one of the big phenomena one of the huge kinds of events that has a systemic impact on economics, on geography, on labor markets that kind of thing but the others of course are political upheaval and political unrest right you know we're still in an age of civil wars and state failure and conflicts and that obviously shifts people and forces people to become refugees for example Syria, Afghanistan that hasn't stopped just because of the pandemic and the same thing is true obviously of technological disruptions which are accelerating right we've had globalization outsourcing of jobs and now digitization remote work all of that also enables creates more opportunities for people to relocate to new places and of course there's the demographic issues the imbalances between old and young in societies and that accounts for most human migration of the 20th century is simply people pursuing economic opportunity and obviously that has not stopped because of the pandemic so all of these deeper forces that compel people to want to move are as I say really in overdrive right now and we also have to take into account of course climate change and even though most people historically move for economic reasons there's no doubt that climate change is going to overtake all of those forces in terms of the driver the driving role that it plays in in migration and that's something that of course I focus so much of the book on you think do you think people are are trying to make their lifestyles more mobile in some respects regardless of what's coming in the future that they're able to go where where they can work the best where they can live the best at a moment's notice so that that they kind of might know that there are some unease or unrest in the world and they want to keep that that sense of security or resilience by having the ability to be mobile or to move to that place which which they can thrive as a family as an individual the best as possible that's right and that happens both domestically and internationally so domestically you can see in nearly record levels since the since the big broke out and again it kind of betrays the notion of a lockdown right because in fact you had record relocation during the lockdown enough people who could afford to say I want to move you know to have a more spacious home in a rural or suburban area or people saying I've been paying such high rent in a downtown city you know in San Francisco or LA and now my job can be remote so I'll move to a lower cost place and ultimately every person in a way has that has that right has that ability or ideally they do to make those choices but I think you know one of the things I point out is that we've got to appreciate the people who work in local domestic services where they are pinned down to a certain place and those people deserve to have a recognition for the for the I guess you would call essential services they provide deserve to be better compensated as well on the flip side to that there was actually what occurred in the brexit where during the pandemic where those usual migrant workers that go into the united kingdom were not allowed to not only because of lockdown but because of the brexit and so now we're kind of seeing as they merge out out of the pandemic or kind of start to ease travel restrictions and things that a lot of those delivery drivers even if they were going through the channel and those ships and those people who were doing those sometimes essential services are just not they don't want to go back to work anymore there there's just a kind of a hesitation that they feel that their the lifestyle is not as good as as it was before or that they've found they don't feel that long-term sense of security in those positions or in that country anymore and I'm wondering if it's not I'm sure brexit is the biggest part but are there are you seeing that elsewhere and what can you kind of tell us about that that those who who should be returning to work but are not it's a great point I think there are a couple of interesting things in there the first is that if you think about the european workers who were in the UK prior to brexit and then left because of the uncertainty of brexit the UK is now realized that they need them very badly during the pandemic the UK realized that had a shortage of nurses and now truck drivers and basically it's just been you know a reminder of how awful their immigration policy has been now why aren't the polish and other workers going back to the UK well because britain doesn't offer those kinds of generous working conditions and they're just offering short-term contracts come to the UK work for a few hours sure will pay you a lot more than you otherwise would have received but you're not going to get any benefits but if you're a citizen of the european union such as polish people are you're entitled to certain benefits and now that brexit has happened for the last few years all of them are now living in countries with better working conditions and higher salaries and fixed contracts so why would they go back to england so quite frankly i don't want to be cruel here but this is how countries learn either the hard way or the easy way and britain has chosen to learn the hard way that it's better to have these essential workers rather than castigate them and denigrate them and consider them to be you know unwanted extras when in fact they are truly the lifeblood of your economy and you were very foolish to let them go and now you're not gaining them back just when you need the most and that that's really kind of how in some respects you open up the book uh that that migrants really make the world go around and economies go around and thrive and flourish um can on the flip side can you give us any examples of places that really during this economic downturn and issues of the pandemic and other things really thrived and flourished and and we're seeing something totally different because they had a different structure or they were better prepared well i mean there are a few examples and i suppose that you could break them down into big and small countries i mean let's take a big country like canada canada has the most generous migration policy in the world and has continued despite the pandemic to import migrants in record numbers right literally about um you know 400 000 people per year an extraordinary number of inward migrants into the youth into canada and um and and you know they have this commitment they just had an election and even in their election you had a sort of you know a sort of um reelection of justin trudeau you don't have migration as a big politically volatile controversial issue in canada the way you do in the united states and i think that's a very positive thing in terms of smaller countries what you saw happen was that um you had about 75 countries suddenly declare that they are going to have uh nomad visa programs right and that's really remarkable that too is a reminder that countries realized that over the past year and a half two years suddenly immigration dried up right tourism gone conference conference events gone so they really were suffering because we realized how vital the tourism hospitality and travel industries are to our economies and suddenly once all of those guests and tourists dried up they realized oh my goodness we don't want to be xenophobic and populist and put up walls and borders we need to do the exact opposite we need to attract as many young people as we possibly can we need the digital nomads hence they launch these digital nomad visa schemes and they all got FOMO you know sort of so they all started doing it too so that's how you want wound up in a situation where instead of two countries having digital nomad schemes 75 or 80 countries now have those schemes and that's a great example of a learning from crisis be appreciating the importance of migration and talent and see this kind of really move into a new direction a new tangent where you know I think the new narrative is going to be openness and the desire to attract young people uh because we realize what happens to your economy when things stand still you don't have those young migrants and young professionals who make your country go around who make everything work I love that so there I'm sure there's many more forces that are uprooting us and for example I have a lot of from New York originally I have a lot of friends from New York and I just know that pretty much almost every one of them moved during this time to another place Santa Fe, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, some to Canada as you say and some to Europe and they're all really different stories and and then you saw these reports you heard these reports about this mass exodus from from people in America in certain states and just saying why pay this expensive rent and be in a place where I'm working from home anyway but I can work anywhere from from home not not pay these expensive cost of living has that slowed has that increased what what is what are you seeing not just in the US but all over during this time oh I think this is just the beginning of the shakeout and fallout from this process we have billions of young people who are mobile and we don't know where they're going to wind up and even the people who did make that initial move they'll keep on moving you know in the theme of this book is not really about one way moves it's really about constant mobility and the constant search for what I call the right latitude altitude and attitude or more formally you know the search for for social for political and for economic stability and well-being and that's not a search that ends in just one place and one promised land of course it makes sense for people to have chosen lower cost sunnier you know destinations with more fresh air but that doesn't mean that they're going to keep their job forever because the next disruption may be coming I quote the the British journalist Simon Cooper from the Financial Times who said if you can do your job from anywhere then someone anywhere can do your job so what happens if you say okay well I'm going to leave San Francisco and I'll hop in my trailer I'm going to move to Santa Fe I'm going to work remotely for a while but then your employer decides to give your job away to someone in India or someone in Egypt who's a really good software programmer then some of you realize uh-oh now I have to get this new job but they want me to go and do training and orientation so now I've got to go back to some town in California and that's the reality for most people even if they're lucky enough to be quote unquote digital nomads so it's a precarious existence you know for for young people even for young talent and so that's why I emphasize that there isn't a one-way street there isn't a single answer you know to where you go and settle this is not like our parents generation it's going to be constant movement and nomadism in the book you say one future four scenarios and was that what you just mentioned though are those the four scenarios you're talking about well actually so the four scenarios in the book are much more sort of you know you could say radical or extreme or or systemic the scenarios are really about characterizing the whole world in the future so one scenario is what I call regional fortresses right where the northern continents north america europe northeast asia these are regions that are rich stable secure they invest in their own sustainability they share some technology with poor regions but they don't actually allow a lot of migration it's kind of like the present extrapolated into the future and then there's a couple of scenarios I flush out called the new middle ages and barbarians at the gate where you have very little sustainability and uncontrolled migration either a little or a lot but the bottom line is it's violent it's not done sustainably and you can have resource conflicts water wars that kind of thing so it's kind of a hunter-gatherer geopolitical and archical kind of kind of world and the final scenario before and the one that I hope resonates most of all with people is what I call northern lights and in that fourth scenario you have a world where you have a relocation of populations that are vulnerable areas where we do a lot of technology transfer to assist popular vulnerable populations to allow them to you know do their own localized agriculture more efficiently provide them with water desalination solar power renewable energy technologies but where we need to we locate hundreds of millions if not billions of people to stable climate resilient areas in the northern hemisphere but again we do so sustainably we build new settlements that are also circular you know with with renewable power hydroponic agriculture and wastewater treatment rainwater collection all of these things so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past in terms of mass urbanization so the northern light scenario is unfortunately only one out of four scenarios in the book and it's not necessarily the most likely one but it's the one that I think we should aspire to throughout the book I see that you really touch upon sustainability and climate and the future and that is really not getting better and that there's that this also is a big factor of of your lifestyle and also why you want to be mobile and and why there's so many so many people moving around the world as well um this I do a lot with foresight and futurism and kind of speaking to organizations international organizations about what are sustainable futures what are resilient futures what are regenerative futures and that the whole basis of regeneration is sustainability and a solid infrastructure that no matter what happens tomorrow the economy goes on the energy goes on the food is still there you have a place that is pretty resilient and secure and not necessarily that it's it's continuing to get worse obviously with climate change and what's happening but it's been going on for quite some time I guess people are saying that there's really not one place to go and hide from climate change or to to say okay this is the only sustainable place on on the earth uh it's over and over again um it's it's moving it's constantly dependent upon those cities and those structures that are uh building the right infrastructures to sustain that that lifestyle and so with this foresight that you do with your companies and the mapping and in the book there's there's the beautiful mapping can you kind of is is there a form of a prediction is there a form of foresight there that you can see what some of those trends are and how how that's looking those cities and places that are really making that shift to provide those places of openness that's a great question mark so the thing is about scenarios is that you know all four of those scenarios that I mentioned earlier are kind of they're all true at the same time it just depends on where you are so there are places that are being generous and open and bringing in your new migrants look at Germany since the Syrian refugee crisis its population has grown because of these migrants its labor force has grown it's integrated into the economy it's raised its output it's made the most of the situation despite the tragedy of the Syrian civil war and so on again a place like Canada that I mentioned earlier that it's bringing in migrants from every corner of the planet four hundred thousand a year so those are examples of that but you still have places you know like Russia right they don't have as generous migration policies Canada even though they have similar size and latitude and are becoming trying to become more diversified economies so culture plays a strong role so the answer really depends on where you might say but one thing that is important is as you mentioned cities and what happens with thriving bustling global cities what they all have in common whether it's New York or Toronto or London or Dubai or Singapore they're always open to talent right they're always open to talent and they're more or less color blind about it and these are the places that are the most desirable places in the world they're the most productive cities in the world the most dynamic cities in the world and they have the highest percentage of foreign born people you know these are very diverse thriving melting pot places and I think that in the future we're going to have a lot more places like that because you can imagine that the new kinds of settlements that I'm talking about as populations recirculate and new economies and the northern parts of the world need to be developed and cultivated you'll see people from everywhere gathering there and this is what I write about in the book I talk about Northism you know Northism is that there is it's a sad fact that the northern hemisphere is going to in a way you know sort of survive climate change better than the southern hemisphere but Northism is this idea that actually the people of the Arctic regions and stuff have thought less in terms of borders and more in terms of nature and stewardship of nature and protection of nature and that's a very important thing that we should remember and some of the towns I've been to that used to be very under populated and very small tiny places in Norway for example now have Brazilians and Indians and all manner of people are living in these random villages in northern Norway because there's work to be done and we're building the future and one of the phrases I use is the Latin homo favor man who makes man who builds and you know that's a phrase from John C. Lee Brown who's one of the great Silicon Valley pioneers and my argument is that we need to really mobilize humanity to build those future sustainable settlements and in order to mobilize them we need to enable them to move unlock their potential by enabling their mobility because most people today are still trapped behind borders. Yeah in the book you actually even say homo economic and then homo favor and kind of how what it what it needs to or what would be a desirable future of how homo sapien kind of involves an integrated participation in those cities in those places that where they live to create a lifestyle but also to build that infrastructure of sustainability that we need. There is this huge war for young talent that's going on around the world and you were speaking just recently with the mayor of Miami and Florida and you know a lot of people see Florida as a place of where retirees go but they really are a young vibrant kind of hip place in many respects but all over the world we're seeing this this this war on young talent how do you see that applicable for for this move and what's available what kind of trends are you seeing there and and tell us a little bit more about that. Well young people are obviously central you know if this book has as one protagonist it is global youth right and that's not one person it's four and a half billion people who are young and Mark it's really very simple if you want to be a futurist and you want to forecast the future you don't look at the world through the eyes of the elderly you know and nationalists and parochial people you look at the world to the eyes of young people because they will inhabit the future they will dominate the future demographically they already dominate the present so I think that you know I consciously decided to take a youth focus lens you know in this book and in this research and to look at how youth identity has become something of a common set of values around the world and this is extremely important because in the 20th century identity was much more national right old Germans and old you know Brits and old Americans and young ones see the world the same according to their national prism but today what you have is this generational identity where young people value sustainability connectivity and mobility above all else and they have more in common with each other a young Nigerian a young Chinese person a young Mexican have more in common with each other ideologically ideologically than they do with their own elderly people in their own country so identity has gone from vertical to horizontal I love that a lot of this has to do as well with this identity identification actual IDs passports this global citizen concept this how what kind of visas and passports and and tools are being made available for this generation move so to say which you also talk about in the book to attract this young talent to attract those people and and are they the right setup I would make a presumption that the most most move to the big cities is because there's already some form of infrastructure but it's also those big cities are the ones that are that are in need because they have people who are leaving and saying oh there's got to be something better as well and so that it's a continual rotation so part of the the war for young talent is that you know again you're almost always fighting it because you know we were talking about Miami earlier right now Miami is a quote unquote winner lots of young people have been pouring in since the pandemic started but you know another place could become attractive too and then maybe young people will start flocking there so you have to retain those young people and part of it of course is the policies of those places are do they have affordable housing do they have access to good public services and education are they safe in terms of the physical environment security you know do they have a liberal culture right and embrace diversity those are things that young people want and so so cities that embody those virtues are going to be the ones that attract young people and hopefully retain those young people. Do you see any kind of new form of global passports nomad visas some new things emerging that are more on a global framework of like maybe a UN 2020 ID there's a lot of things going in with the WEF and the UN for these self-sovereign identifications or some kind of almost like a global passport discussions through blockchain and secure contracts do you see any movement or discussions in that respect and and hope from from those who may come from a place where they're very technically savvy but they don't have the best social services structures identifications passports visas etc a strong passport so to say right and this is a huge theme in the book a real priority for me something I've been pushing for you know 10 years now and I think it's an idea whose time has come and that is the so the so-called global passport now when you think about you know right now those people the billions of people who come from countries where they don't have a privileged passport you know that their their mobility is penalized by their nationality right their nationality prohibits them from moving freely and so this is an idea where if you can share your data on a secure blockchain and only when needed with the relevant authorities when you're applying for a job or a student visa and so forth you've you share your vaccination certificates your records your criminal history financial statements education records employment history this may seem like it's terribly intrusive but remember all of this data is already there somewhere right but it's your own benefit if you're from Bolivia or you know Equatorial Guinea to provide this data so that if a country you know is willing to accept applications or migrants from people anywhere you can provide this documentation prove that you are a person in good standing and maybe it'll be a lot faster to get approval because you've put everything on the blockchain rather than having to go fly on a plane save all your money to go fly just to an embassy that's not anywhere near where you're from and then stand in front of bullet proof glass and pay hundreds of dollars and wait months and months for potential approval we have the opportunity to short circuit and circumvent all of that and to divorce mobility from nationality and that's the goal that I have in mind and that's what I've tried to outline in terms of a strategy moving forward that's beautiful and I believe that also plays a lot into this concept of quantum people quantum experiences that I have a lot of books on my shelf here about quantum mechanics and it's kind of both at the same time on and off and you're this global citizen but yes you're from the United States or you're from India or you're from Africa but you're this quantum person and can you tell us explain how you see that what you mean by quantum people is this idea or this global passport a part of that or is there much more to it well so um you know I really enjoyed playing around with this terminology when I was developing this so you know it's the idea that you know people are going to be on the move especially young people to some degree you could say wealthy people of multiple passports and residences are on the move all the time but of course the quantum analogy is that you can know the location of the velocity of a particle but not both so you can know the location of velocity of a person or the direction they're moving in but maybe not both because that's how much some people are moving and you know to be frank the this is very important the quantum people that I really celebrated the book are not billionaires with 20 passports right the people that I celebrate are the Filipino nurses and the South Asian construction workers they are to me the quantum people they're the ones who are heroes they're building entire countries they're caring for the elderly and the sick they're the reason why people aren't dying and nursing homes and hospitals around the world they're building the modern infrastructure all across the Middle East and Africa and they're the ones who are moving on all the time and they're quite used to it right you know they're not flashy digital nomads they're not software engineers they're hardworking people who are willing to go anywhere um you know to care for their families and send remittances back and those are the real quantum people in the world I think more and more people going back to the homo favor point and the new geographies of growth in the north and all of the other disruptions those are the people who are going to be the kind of circulating workers of the world and I think that again we need to appreciate them and and compensate them because they're not only taking care of us through the work that they do but they're also sending that support and those their salaries back home to care for their families I absolutely love it and and I think you know that's that's what we should strive for for this more global citizenry this more open world and we see that all the time with not just Philippines and and Indians and and people from all over the world going up to build up complete civilization so United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Dubai have these numerous worker camps where people come in and they work hard and they send their money home the reason that I kind of want to dive a little bit deeper into that model is a lot of these have become worker camps and and we've seen it from Apple and and other companies where it's not necessarily a good thing for livability and worker conditions always and really needs a lot of room for improvement but with some of these passports these identifications with some other options hopefully that is a situation that they can say no we're going to go somewhere else that offers better working conditions and better living conditions but we've seen that over the years in India and China and Dubai even where they have these worker camps that are actually abhorrent conditions to live in in some respects and to work in and that's something that we really need to change the status or the level of of of inequality in people who are building these sustainable futures but then they're not really allowed to take part of it as they're building it in some respects and I think I'd like to know kind of your stance on that and how if you address that at all in the book and what your thoughts are on that I do it's something we have to track over time you know if you think about what's happened in the countries like the UAE or Saudi Arabia there have been improvements made you know I've actually personally gone to these camps I've gone there in the middle of the night because a lot of these jobs are done at night because it's so hot during the day this construction work is often done at night and these camps are often near the work sites and so on so I've you know I've tracked this issue closely and the more foreign pressure outside pressure or internal pressure or competition in the market has you know sort of been spotlighted in these places the more they've started to improve their conditions and in some cases quite substantially improve those conditions and I think obviously that's long overdue you know but but but I think that it's a process of learning that's going on these countries know they can do a lot better but one of the key things is also the workers themselves who are saying you know what the country I come from the economy is growing you know doing pretty well I don't have to leave and then you'll have those wage pressures and other kinds of pressures in these host countries so again I think it's a it's a process that that evolves and it's evolving in the right direction overall and do you do you believe that's just a general evolution of humanity is that a cultural evolution is it a mix between the scenarios that you talk about we we see and I want to give an example so that make it a little more clear we see cities like neom a sustainable city in Saudi Arabia that's popping up the red sea project and many other almost civilization frameworks these major sustainable cities that are popping up where they're thinking what is the future of mobility are we going to build another airport are we going to build something that maybe has biometrics instead of passports and contactless futures are we going to build something that's 15 these 15 minute cities and I believe you also talk about that in the book a little bit what what is your finding on that direction or movement moving forward for the the cities or the places of the future well you know I think it's a great point and again this is where history and pandemic experience really proved to have you know a lot of learning value and utility because you know we learn that we want that we value social connectivity social contact green space fresh air all of those things and and and that's what cities are striving and competing to do now a lot of people are looking at the post pandemic landscape and saying you know this is the end of the city you know it's New York is going to lose people in Los Angeles is going to lose people and so on well it's not that the city the city never loses right for 7 000 years humans have sought to move to cities and and congregate in cities you know because we're social animals and because there's an economic benefit logic to it but there are different cities now that they're going to really thrive it's not all going to be New York or London or LA or whatever so I what I do in the book is I tour around these places like Berlin or Toronto or Almaty and Kazakhstan and all sorts of places that are really becoming melting pots of the future because again they're attracting diverse youth from all directions and I think that's the kind of the strategy in the end that cities have to pursue and it'll be a new roster of the top cities and most desirable cities and livable cities in the future that it has been in the past that's one thing I really loved about the book there's a couple great things so right in the beginning you have a nice little acknowledgement from a super author super writer and almost futurist Kim Stanley Robinson says a real eye opener move makes clear that through mobility though mobility can be for some a desperate flight for refuge it's also for younger generations growing into a multicultural one planet civilization a new expression of possibility unbelievable statement from a fabulous I don't know if you've read all his books but fabulous books and fabulous future that he presents and throughout the entire book you touch I'm it's almost like you the geography lesson because you almost touch on every place in the world I think there was not very many that you did not touch on I'm sure there was but I could not believe places that I'd never been to never heard of that you were telling us what the culture what was going on there so it's a fabulous read I thank you for the read but I want to ask is there any takeaways that you can give us some things that really you you want to say with the book that maybe we haven't touched upon during our short little podcast here that you really want to hit home for people to know going forward some not only a sustainable takeaway but something that will kind of give them a knowledge of to put on a different lens on globalization on moving on the future well thanks for the opportunity and for sure you know I mean part of the the moral of the story of the lesson is that inertia is the most powerful force really and inertia is a negative force it holds us back it prevents us from changing things but right now we live in a time of the greatest possible misalignment of the geography of where our resources are in the geography of where people are and what stands in the way is the geography of borders and politics and we need to reconcile these geographies and this is fundamentally a book about geography kind of like all my other books too and at root but it's not about one geography the geographies geography again resources people borders and infrastructure and bringing those together in a dynamic way that actually benefits us because right now these misalignments don't benefit us they don't even necessarily privilege that many people they do a lot more harm than good and nobody mark not the United Nations not the American government that the Chinese government not an alien invasion is going to do this for us no one is going to untangle the situation that we are in for us we have to acknowledge it and do something about it and that's fundamentally what this idea of reconciling geographies is all about that I get into deeply in the book you definitely do and you do such a wonderful job of that my last question for you is a question twist that I asked you last time we were on the podcast together but it's one I ask all my guests and you probably answered in your last your last statement but I want to ask it again just to see if it's a little bit different what does a world that works for everyone look like for you it's a great question well there's two answers one is the philosophical and the other is the sort of material I want to hear about yeah so philosophically I call it cosmopolitan utilitarianism right so we treat each other with as equals with respect but we and we also want the greatest good for the greatest number and that's in a nutshell what cosmopolitan utilitarianism is about that's in theory and in practice what it looks like is again if we really truly care about each other if we really have this sense of fraternity besides just talking about it if you really want to do it and you have to enable people allow people to move you have to help people adapt and I you know I take for example you know bretta thunberg you know in the book and I say look you know it's easy not easy but but it's you know easier to be leading school strikes in a rich country one that benefits from climate change of course it's not her fault right you know I mean she's you know born into a privileged country but the true test of solidarity is not did you strike in Stockholm on behalf of the environment and then talk about the plight of people that are being afflicted by climate change at the end of the day there's really for me only one test is did you accept them did you welcome them in did you say who's ever faulted is this land is not my land this land is not your land this land is our land and you're only truly in my view you know a um you know embodying that principle of cosmopolitan utilitarianism if you're willing to accept people to move them across that border and to enjoy the same privileges that we do and that's what I want to see I love it in the book you have this you created a new term it's kind of a mix uh geography and philosophy together um you I can't even say it geosophy geosophy there we go I love it thank you so much prerog for letting us all inside of your ideas it's been wonderful please greet that wonderful wife of yours and your your family and I wish you all the best uh that's all I have unless you want to ask me something or have anything else that we didn't touch upon oh thank you so much mark it's been a real pleasure to see you again and uh these are great great questions such a great conversation and I look forward to next time uh keep up the good work you too I'm sure we'll see more books from you as well you're doing a good job thank you mark let's take care bye bye take care