 Really, it's about change about how do you affect change? And I think that in order to do that, I would recommend getting a really good understanding of how, you know, societies form and, you know, like, understand some sociology understands something about economics. And I'm obviously philosophy as well. But, you know, that sounds pretty dry, I guess, if you know, to a gender listen, oh, really. But, but, you know, it wasn't until I started looking at those things that I began to understand, you know, how this all works, how it fits together because I think that this, you know, you really I think really it's really it's important to understand what we mean by a system and what we mean by structure and structural change and structural reform. And until I think until you get to grips with that, you end up going down lots of, you know, blind allies. Blind allies. Graham Brown Martin is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas with Mark Buckley, brought to you by 1.5 media and innovators magazine Graham founded Learning Without Frontiers LWF, a global community bringing together renowned educators, technologists and creatives to share provocative and challenging ideas about the future of learning. His book, Learning Reimagined, a Study of Global Education Geopolitics produced for the World Innovation Summit for Education, WISE, was published by Bloomsbury in 2015. Graham is the founder of Beyond Tomorrow Global, a growing international intelligence network of interdisciplinary thinkers designing a blueprint for society to thrive beyond the 22nd century. He is co-founder of Regenerative Global, a transformative learning consultancy based in London and New York using circular economy principles to inform, innovate, learning and design practices. A sought after and popular keynote speaker, Graham has in recent years given evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, created an agile learning experience for senior leaders of the FTSE 100 Financial Services Company, designed a science program for primary school children using the Internet of Things, created an experiential program for children to learn about working with autonomous humanoid robots and was retained by an educational technology maker to lead their product and brand development education and communication strategies with teams in the UK, US and China. A little quote or saying by someone who recently left us and is very dear to both of our hearts, given the nature of global change, transforming education around the world is one of the deepest, most urgent challenges we now face. With his open but penetrating gaze, Graham Brown Martin is an ideal guide through the complex terrain of ideas and innovations that might just create a new form of education that we really need. And that was Sir Ken Robinson, who left us August 21, the day before Earth Overshoot Day and he, you and he had many past crossing and I know you, you worked on probably the book and some other projects together as well. I'm very saddened to see him gone, especially for something like cancer and during this pandemic time, but I believe he's left things in good hands with you and many other great leaders and people that he's inspired to continue the work. Welcome to the show on a somber note, but we'll we'll take it to much higher elevations throughout, but I, I thought it was very fitting that we, we honor him and also kind of discuss a little bit. What he brought to you were brought to the world and how you were doing this before and during and know him but kind of. Did I leave anything out in your biography anything that you would like to address I know I could go on forever but I think it's important our viewers and listeners hear about that. No, I mean thank you for that that lovely introduction I mean it made me sound very important indeed. And so I feel myself like blushing really I mean it's a good that makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about. So thank you know there's a I mean, you know, it's, thank you, I'm delighted to be here Mark, and thank you for inviting me to the show I feel honored. You're most welcome and, and you, you should feel honored because your bio is probably a lot longer you do deserve any one of those accolades and you've done a lot for the world of education and raising awareness empowering women and girls and people and changing our, our paradigm and a lot of respects on how we look at the world how we see solving some of these global grand challenges. Can you can you give us a and, and this is, I don't want to dwell too much on Sir Ken at all but can you tell us kind of how you guys not what you guys collaborated on and what during this this other depressing time of a pandemic and other world that that we now lost him how that maybe has affected you or change your vision or your determination to move forward and other ways. Yeah, of course, I mean, I, you know, like, like many, many of us, I mean it's, it's, it's very sad to learn of its passing, but it did make me reflect on, you know, on on Sir Ken and what he had achieved. And you know how it affected, you know, my practice and my interests with that, of course, you know, Ken has passed but he's still with us and will be with us, you know, for the, you know, for a long time because, you know, his legacy, I think was was was starting a revolution. You know, he, I mean he's best known of course for his, his talks about creativity and innovation and in the transformation of our education system to accommodate those things for very good reason. One for individual and personal well being but more importantly for the well being of society. You know, I think that, you know, in many ways there was much more that he was talking about as well. I mean, you know, we are involvement really was not so much collaborative collaboration, but more than through learning without frontiers. You know, that was probably all 15 years ago that we came properly into each other's orbit and giving talks and so forth but then as, as that developed, you know, we developed a friendship and, you know, we would meet occasionally if he was in London or if I was in Los Angeles, we would meet up have lunch and shoot the breeze and see what's going on I found those conversations really, you know, the inspiring. But you know he was looking at the not not just the, you know, in addition to that subject of innovation creativity but also the mechanics of the educational structure. The idea of these are these are these assessments and examinations, which are just, you know, pointless really, but, but he would recognize the business model in that and I think that you know I think there are other things that he would have liked to have talked about and everyone wanted that creativity, which is, which is fine because that's a sort of a that's what he'll be remembered for and I think that's a good thing to be remembered for. And I, but it's, it's, you know, it strikes me that many people have been having this conversation about creativity and innovation I mean you can go, you know, before. So Ken, I mean to John Dewey and so forth so this is a conversation which has been going on for a very long time. And yet, here we are. You know, there's, I was talking to some people to the day about you know that's going back to school. Because of the pandemic, you know, parents have had their children, you know, being homeschooled or online teaching because there's very little online learning going on. It's all online teaching, you know schools were thinking okay we're going to digitize and virtualize as classroom and then give it to you via a screen. They had the same kind of limitations and of course what was happening there is difficult to contain. And so young people would be going off and doing some actual learning that they were passionate about but parents were also noticing that what those, what their children were learning and being tested for was the same as what they were learning and were tested for when they went to school. And their parents and their grandparents. And yet, you know, the world has nearly 8 billion people on it we've had, you know, we were transitioning to AI and automation, you know, we're having major climatic events and a global pandemic. What is it that we're sending our kids to school and it's funny we're rushing into this new normal. But it's not, it's the old normal, you know, kids going back to school with masks and everything else but we're still going to do the same thing it's like a, like a mad computer system that's gone wrong it's like it's like it's just continuing it's like it doesn't recognize what's outside. And that's what Ken, I think was was recognizing and, you know, it was nice great fantastic to see the outpouring, you know on social media on LinkedIn everyone you know everyone had something nice to say about about Ken and rightly so. But what are we going to do about it. Exactly is my point. I mean 60 million people viewed his TED talk 60 million people who would have been touched by that and believe how many people have we heard, we come up to say inspired me, what if it inspired you do something. We're not, you know, we're still you know it's like yes, yes that creativity, Ken Robinson, yeah, but we're still going to go back to the old thing. And surely, surely, I mean the pandemic. I mean, you know, you and I both know, you know, the bigger picture on climatic change and that's really the big one. You know, we know about air pollution killing 7 million people every year, but it's not on your doorstep. And if it's not on your doorstep. You know, it's happening to those Africans or those engines, not really happening to us, which is, which is appalling, but it's also kind of how we operate, you know in society and I think that has to change the evolutionary so if we see a lion a tiger a bear or something we're like, okay, we've got to react we've got to get away we got to flee we got to do something but then, if we're presented with another graph or a chart we're like okay climate change is growing exponentially here's a graph here, you know, IPC report, that's 200 pages 3000 pages whatever says this that we're doomed and gloom they're like oh another report, you know, there's there's not that flight or fight or action. You know, it's great to hear a TED talk. I love this TED talk as well. But how do we put that into action how do we not get overwhelmed with this existential thing and say hey, here, here's how we put it into action. That's a rabbit hole you're almost getting down into right right off the bat and and I want to get I mean we're going to go into some because there's so much we need to catch up on it's been years since we've seen each other, but I do want to tickle that is that a civil civilization framework this the system's not working for us anymore we're just, it's Einstein's problem theory we're just continuing to repeat the same, use the same thinking to you know with the same problems instead of thinking a little bit different or user thoughts. Yeah, so it's fabulous that you asked that I mentioned that. So let me a very short story I'll try to keep it short. No problem. I had this epiphany. At the end of last year. You know, I mean, I've been spending a lot of my career, you know, flying around the world. I'm ashamed to say now, giving keynotes, you know trying to get this message across something because it was always what I was doing was, you know, bringing together, you know people said to know me from the education perspective but you know different phases of my life I've done entertainment and technology and economics and so forth. My talks really are bringing those together and joining the dots between these disparate interdisciplinary subjects as part of how my brain works to try and get people to have this conversation. It's easier to give a talk to about, I think it's like 4000 educators from from around the region. And, you know, it's great fun obviously and everything else and there's one particular day in the morning I was, I was, you know, having breakfast is beautiful sunshine, you know, you know how beautiful it can be. And then all of a sudden if it went went went dark, you know, and then the storm came in, and it was suddenly had to everyone had to be in their rooms, and it was just, you know, the rain that was coming down the wind and I was looking out my window and I had this really lovely room. I was looking out and I'm seeing the storm drains going out into the sea. The evening before I've been noticed all these plastic bottles drinking water bottles that were in the storm, you know, in the sort of that those ditches. But then I can see all these bottles coming out of the storm drain and then and everything else and it's kind of almost poetic because I was then reading the New York Times, which were reporting some information which I knew but hadn't been published which was where I was sitting and a lot of places in that region would be underwater in 30 years time, maybe sooner, you know, along with, you know, parts of Egypt and it's, it's hard but I'm sort of sitting there thinking. Wow. I mean, okay, this was monsoon, but I get the sense of what it might be like. I mean probably worse than that in a major climate this is yet to come. We know it's yet to come. I was thinking, well, gosh, I'm keep giving this talk giving the same talk really in different varieties of different forms for ages, but it's not, it's not landing everyone's agreeing with me but not not doing anything I mean this is, I guess, can frustration must have been like this as well I was reading that I'm not probably put myself on the same level but it was then all of a sudden epiphany, the penny dropped. You know, I failed to link things and then it dropped and as I just realized that, you know, for a long time, you know, to give my talks to educators, you know, I would say that well the purpose what is the purpose of education, you know, I would say, is it to produce human capital for the economic development plan. That sounds horrible, isn't it, people as human capital, right, or I would say, is it to equip present and future generations with the skills and knowledge to thrive in a rapidly changing world. And of course, you know, I was really big on that last one, you know, because everyone agrees with that right. But then it occurred to me that I was wrong. The answer to the purpose of education, not about learning, but about education, you know, that the system of education, the structure of education is to provide human capital for the economic development plan. There's no, you know, there's no getting away from it. I mean, you know, look at Singapore and their education system, it was, you know, Lee Kuan Yew resting in peace, you know, and people actually part of me. I think that was all predicated. He looked at every single structure in order for it to take it from a sort of post colonial swamp to a major financial services powerhouse was to use education as a way of developing human capital to fit into that growth plan. And if you look at it, that's the same everywhere on the planet, pretty much in the Western world at least. But then I thought, ah, if we accept that, we accept that as a thing. What happens when the economic, the global economic model changes? What happens when it shifts? Because that economic model, the one that we're in at the moment, we know it's broken. I mean, it's extractive. It's oppressive to the majority of people in the world. You know, if you're not white, if you're not male, it's oppressive. You know, it's structurally violent to them and the planet. So this, so we have this. This is before the pandemic, remember. And I'm thinking, okay, this is so why is it going to shift? Well, you know, it's like, you know, because we have been talking about this for a long, long time. And then it goes to me that there's a convergence of things happening. You know, we are, you know, we will take climate change and the environment and our one and only home seriously at some, at some point, hopefully soon. And that is the sort of catalyst for a kind of change really, because actually, I mean, it's like it's bad for business if you've got no consumers, I guess, you know, capitalism fails then. But the other thing, of course, is that, you know, we're seeing a new generation coming through generations that, you know, it's 2.5 billion of them, you know, the sort of, you know, 10 to 25 year olds. And, you know, like all generations, they have, you know, they're like teenagers. I mean, you know, not fetishize in them, but like all generations, they have they have them that they have their agenda and I think their agenda is to save the planet. You know, and I sort of look at some of their icons, you know, the obvious ones like Greta Thunberg and Malali, you know, there's an environmentalist and there's a, you know, some of this passion about education and so forth. And that gives me the optimism that that gives me hope, because 2.5 billion of them is the largest generation of human history. And, you know, they are, they all make the decisions that they make the decisions who they vote for the decisions about what they buy and how they consume will be pivotal, in my opinion, in changing that economic model so, and I think there have to be other levers as well, but I can see us. And I hope maybe it's idealism, you know, I have children I have to be optimistic. But a transition from this, you know, extractive linear economy that's just based on pulling stuff out of the ground I mean it's just goes way back, you know, to, you know, just about the second world war and the extraction of oil and everything in economics is, is the science of studying how we deal with scarcity. That's what it's about it's how we manage scarcity and it's different plans for how we manage it's just a plan it's designed. And the economy current model that we have at the moment is designed with extraction and then when the, with the, you know, resources and everything else and so, and if you look at that it permeates throughout our entire. There's only so many people that can get an A, you know, in a school test is only so many people that can get this is only so many people can be rich. It's, it's this kind of extraction extraction extraction, but it's designed to be like and you know, in many respects it's done it's very well the fact that we're talking to each other over a video connection and you know by food and the fridge and everything else is testament to that economic model. What we didn't realize of course is that the, the actual price isn't in the purchase cost. It's like you know it we've been offsetting all of those things as a result of our economy and you know, I'd be proud to be generous as perhaps you know 100 years ago when this was a hyac the economist in the US rather than Keynes, you know, but we didn't know, you know, maybe we didn't know that extracting oil and burning and throwing stuff away and all that kind of stuff. Maybe we just didn't know, but we do know now. Can, can that shift, can we shift, can we move. And I think actually, Jen said, but it's not just Jen said it's obviously who they influenced before and after their generation. Can that influence the things that how we make things how we design things how we. Because I think if you, if you offer like a, you know, it's possible to make products that are regenerative it's possible to make to keep the components and the stuff that we extract in in in continual use in a circular economy. So, and it doesn't necessarily need to cost more because this design issue I mean it's like, you know, we've been designing, you know, waste and pollution into our products. Yeah, so, you know, someone thought it was a good idea that they could glue the battery inside my mobile phone because it makes it all nice and pretty. But it doesn't make it serviceable. It doesn't keep the components in use and though, you know, Apple I'm not picking on them, you know, they have a machine that will recycle but, you know, we all know that a lot of these phones are thrown in landfill and everything else and but also the cost of extracting out isn't just the materials also the human cost, you know, slave labor involved with everything else. But if we could say like let's take a white white goods, you know, we take out here's a washing machine. Right that's designed using circular economy principles it's designed to waste and pollution out. It keeps the materials in, you know, you can wash an entire load of clothes with one, you know, with one point of water and it turns it cleans that water and turns it to drink or whatever you understand that kind of sounds magical circular. So here's this one to Jen said and here's this one which is the old way of doing it which basically you have to change it in five years time but don't worry just throw it in the, it out of the trash and and all that kind of the kinds of, you know, I think that most people I mean the generations that would go for the one that doesn't destroy the planet I mean it doesn't have to be because at that scale with 2.5 billion people you could build that at scale. You know, so it doesn't it actually costs less because actually the point is like you're actually doing these things. So I was thinking that could be one of the levers to switch us to, you know, sort of. I know it is a lever for for sure it's an absolutely is a lever and you're taking us down so many rabbit holes were. I'm so sorry. No, you don't need to be sorry we're going to have to put this into two podcasts this is so fabulous material is we have we haven't even really gotten we haven't even tickled the surface yet and we're already deep in into it I mean the, you know, as an educator as an innovator as a futurist as somebody who's been doing this for such a long time. It's though it's the overview effect we're all on the same spaceship earth and and there is no throw away. It all remains here. So somehow has to be worked back into the system and kept in a circular process otherwise it comes back to really affect human health our environment of, you know, because the, the trash does pile up eventually you know if it's not done in that that method so I'm in full alignment with you and also you address that the systems not working for us anymore this whether it's the economy and capitalism whether it's whether it's the nationalistic models of economy that are out there. They're just not working for us anymore. Our listeners don't know is we've known each other for a little while we haven't had too much time to really interact with each other over the years except for online cordialities and keeping in touch with each other. We met through Kinner net and have tried to, you know, stock each other online I follow you avidly because when when I heard you speak back then and got to know you, I just was absolutely fascinated not only with the way your mind works the way you see the system, the complexity of the way our world works and the systems of, and how education ties into all of that, as well as innovation, you know, keeping up with our exponentially growing world this innovation. Because you've doing been doing this for so long there's a certain amount of not only knowledge but resilience into your life that you you've been talking about you've been preaching evangelizing and trying to educate people about it for a while. But I presume and but I really know that you've applied a lot of these things into your own life and you've done it because you, you want to also try to empower people to apply it and change the system and imply it into their lives. Does any of that helped you to weather this pandemic this hard time not only with the pandemic but Black Lives Matters Beirut, what's going on, you know, Hurricane Laura and many of the other term oils these things where we're saying, Oh my God are we facing a collapse as the whole system falling apart you know, has that helped you whether this time that knowledge that experience. Yes, I mean it's given me a sort of perspective on what's happening at the moment and I think that perspective gives me a sort of a sense of resilience, but it's also a sense of frustration. You know, the point I was saying about earlier about the, you know, what education's role is, and it follows, you know, the economy economic model because the economic model is that that really forms our beliefs. It becomes our consciousness in the way because the structures that are supporting that model. Education is one of them religion is another mass media is another the political system is another and the digital system is another. And I think that that being able to look at that and understand that clearly, you know, that's that's when you're talking about systems and, you know, for example, they're talking about systemic racism, or structural racism, what they're talking about is this system and these structures I mean this is, you know, well known I mean in terms of sociology and, but also in the economics I mean, you know, quite often when you talk about that you get accused of being a Marxist. Yeah, which is there's worse things. There's a lot worse things, but you know, it's important to realize that Karl Marx was an economist. And it was just another economic model that he was putting forward, I mean, you know, theoretical or otherwise I mean it's sort of a conflating that with authoritarian leaders that in time, you know, use that to create versions of communism is incorrect. I'm talking about different ways of managing this and so it's really interesting mark that, that, you know, we're seeing a number of things happening. You know, the, the number of movements are at a zenith, you know, Black Lives Matter, the LGBTQ plus movement, the feminist me to movement, the environmental movement. You know, having a zenith during a global pandemic. Now I don't think that's a coincidence. You know, I think that's a consequence consequence of the current system that we're in, and it's very hard to imagine a different system it's like, you know, telling a goldfish doesn't really see the water. You know, you change it you can't imagine what that might be like so I can imagine what then what what what new really means. But the point is about those movements is that actually they all demand quite rightly the same thing. You know, a different operating system, you know, a different global economic model which shapes our beliefs and values and conduct, so that it isn't oppressive and includes, you know, those populations that is designed because that's what economies are designed for people and planet and profit fine I mean it's not it's idea that it's somehow anti capitalist is complete nonsense. Because the version of capitalism we have at the moment is designed to support the current system which we know is oppressive which we know is destroying the planet. You know, it's not that we have a choice about changing it I mean you know it depends on when we change it because, you know, this can't be this can't be a game where you win by being the last person on the planet with the last glass of water. I mean that's insane. When we look at those movements, you know, then this is the point about the resilience is understanding that they're connected now. The frustration I've been having during this lockdown and everything else is having those conversations and trying to encourage people to see the system. Very dispassionately but to see how those movements BLM LGBTQ plus me to feminism environment how all of them are connected, you know, there is a sort of divide and conquer which kind of works which is actually, you know, let's not let them combine but if you actually combine them. You know, that's the majority of the planet right. I mean, it's because the system that we have at the moment is being optimized for straight white men. I mean, I don't say that is any sort of self hating straight white man. But it just is. It's just a fact. I mean, you can see it in, you know, the things that have been revealed. I mean, the issues around statues, for example, and it's ridiculous kind of, you know, sort of nostalgia and feeling of something for a inanimate object, which is representative of a system which has been optimized for only a very small narrow population on the planet is revealing. So actually, why are these organizations getting pushback from, you know, the authoritarian rulers of that system. Why is Greta Thunberg being, you know, treated with disdain by presidents by the president, you know, a president's followers and so for why, why is the women told to mind their tone. You know, when they're merely stating a view which is different to the opposing view, you know, how can being an anti racist be declared that you are a extreme far left Marxist. How did wearing a mask in a global pandemic become a left wing. This is polarization is crazy. But I think it's because it's, you know, and actually Marx did write on this. I mean, when the economy, which is society's foundation, the base that's that's how we manage the resources on the planet, when that comes under attack to change to support other people to invite other people in to include them so we don't have this, you know, this kind of society, the structures. The education structure of religion and everything else, you know, judicial police, political and so forth, will then suddenly come to stabilize that. It's, it's, it's not, it does not necessarily deliver it. It's not unconscious how societies work. And I think that's the thing with it to try and understand that and, you know, it's interesting because you're having conversations with people in the black lives matter movement that talk about structural racism. I said, well, you know, can you explain that in terms of what the structures are and then the conversation stopped because it hadn't been understood. You know, structural racism or structural oppression or systemic racism, but it wasn't fully understood by a lot of people. I mean, obviously not everyone, but I mean it's ultimately didn't really understand it. And I think that's important because once we understand that it gives us the opportunity to change. Now, the pro challenge there is that if we look at history, and history can tell us what's happening now, I believe, is that the only way that we've managed to do that sort of structural reform. Is is through three particular ways war, revolution, or catastrophe. Now one could argue that we're heading for all three at the moment. The problem with all of those is that it requires, you know, it involves that the, the, the death of, you know, millions of people and destruction to the planet and it's like we must avoid that. And if we go back in time I mean during you know when the last time this happened the last time there was a structural reform, you know the 1920s there was a social political theorist called Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned under Mussolini. And, you know, he wrote some amazing things I recommend you know the listeners to just sort of tap into Gramsci. But one of the things he said and I'm going to misquote this but I'll try and get the juice just a bit what he said that the, this is the late 1920s he said that you know, we are, you know, it's because we are in this interregnum. They call it was Latin for interruption normally use it when the pope changes of time in between during this interregnum, because the old has not yet died therefore the new cannot be born during this time morbid symptoms will appear. And that was described in what's happened in Europe and America and everywhere you know the planetary thing that he was describing this sort of that at that time this with this movement to the populist right wing. You know this kind of view is so and German and Italian expansionism. You know and of course they were in a long line of other European expansionist. I mean, the Europe, Europe expanded diverse. But so during that time he was sort of morbid symptoms but it's important to understand what he was saying was because, when he said the old, he meant the status quo. Yeah, and the new the new happens it's going to happen. You know, but we don't know what it is and it's, it's struggling to burst through, but it can't because the gatekeepers of the old are still in control because they get into the control situation because you benefited from them. You know, it was like why when you go to most corporations in the world you see a white man. You know, this is how that's designed. But change will happen and I think that, you know, back to the point about how you know the resilience how do we get to the other side and what is occupying my mind is how we get to the new without destruction of people or planet. How do we you know mitigate that because we have to get to the new and I think the biggest challenge that we have at the moment is that we are constantly looking at what's happening right now. When we wake up in the morning we look at them, you know, whatever news source that we do with it social media otherwise, oh, what was that, what was that politician done now what have they said how outrageous that is I mean this is, you know, as we know, over the last 10 years that's got worse and worse and worse I mean there's nothing that could happen from, you know, from some of these governments that would surprise you anymore. And it's, you know, it's a dead cat strategy, you know, it's like the, you know, when there's something else happening you throw a dead cat onto the table. Someone goes, Oh, there's a dead cat and forget all the other things they're talking about and I think is we are as a global society falling for that. You know, it's like as soon as something else is going on over here, say something crazy say something about the military. We know these stories that are going on. But I caution us is if we continue to look at that stuff and ignore designing where we want to go and thinking about where we want to go and designing the next global economic system we will get what we're given. We don't have to accept it and at the moment, you know, it's looking like authoritarian rule, you know, just, you know, we're talking about it going to something, you know, beautiful something. authoritarian rule. We're also I agree with you totally we're getting distracted with this, you know, the cat that's thrown on the table we're getting distracted with the fake news are saying no it's all about just this one facet now it's it's much more complex and education. This intelligence really ties deeply into that I see it and you can correct me if maybe I'm wrong I'm glad that you brought up these recent examples, where we've had some some changes and different shifts, but it's this big history, you know this big history of our world about about what happened that I'm, I don't know if I'm worried but I wonder if the educational system or the gen Z who are really vital in this role are getting that correct information of the big history like I'll give you a couple examples and you mentioned one as well that was more recent. We had more than 12 civilization framework collapses early Mesopotamia early antiquity in because Aztec Maya's Greeks, Romans on and on. And as you also said, the majority of them all but two and you, you're well more verse than than I am fell because of the ecological environmental collapse, and all's we have left now are the ruins of those and some a little little fragments of cultural history left mainly today we're going out on vacation and taking a selfie a photo, you know of the ruins but we're not understanding the big picture of what that truly means, and then the two that weren't ecological or environmental collapse were some kind of a conflict or or other type of collapse and I personally feel we're also this unease this that we're in the midst of you know a lot of bad decisions a lot of nationalism a lot of culmination of things coming together. That we need to keep this bad system this global bad system afloat or spin the plate, while we somehow transition to something new. You know that I'm an advocate for the sustainable development goals and I speak about them a lot and I'd love to get your views or opinions. There's a few things one, it's the first ever global moonshot it's a historical precedence 197 countries came together for the first time ever and decided on a global action plan to December 2030 and the Paris agreement the sustainable development goals were done before in September 24 and then the Paris agreement came a little bit later in December, where we agreed that we wouldn't, we would cap the warming at 1.5 and not go, not go above that. I believe not only is that a historical precedence but all nations at one point or another whether they understood the full plan or not agreed that that's the roadmap in the plan that we should take the future that we that we want to reach. But what they didn't understand one they didn't present it to humanity properly they didn't educate us on how to view them how to understand them. But the, the, the biggest misunderstanding is that it is a brand new total new operating system there is not going back to business as usual it's not a tweak on business as usual. It's not even a modification it is a total new global economy total new level of setting the operating standard globally at a much higher level and saying as a world. We can still have dictators and crazies and systems and nations, but we're all going to say that we're never going to let humanity get under this level ever again. There's still going to be mistakes and crazies and things but it's just that we're saying, never again below this level and it's kind of a new operating system not only innovation digitization economies gender equality no poverty no hunger on and on these this new infrastructure is what what it will provide us. But hell, it just seems like, you know, did we understand that do we understand that it's really a new, a new, a new hope a new shift, the quality education I think is number four on the sustainable development goals which which is so vital to educate us, even what it means but not only that to change the entire system we've been working on, which I think it changed and so I'd love to hear your thoughts and feelings in this because what not only we're talking about you know, circular economy regenerative, what what new models are out there. Could the sustainable development goals could the Paris agreement, even though we're we've probably straight away from it or not unified on it as we should be. Could that be a solution, what are your thoughts I mean it's it's a it's an interesting question and it's one that comes up quite a bit, actually. Those strands together because you mentioned like Gen Z and are they getting the right information or this kind of business which I think is a very important question. And then, you know, the STG the sustainable development goals and STG for of course education and then the idea that education if you do get education right then we can change society. So I'll start with the end one, and then work my way back. So the, if we change education will it change society. No, it's it won't. And the reason why I'm definite about that you know this is respect to the point I was making earlier and also Ken Robinson and many many others, you know we're having this conversation about you know no one will disagree that we need an education system that is going to allow our children to thrive. When I when I did the book I traveled, you know, five times around the planet. Sorry, climate, everything else though, you know, but it was to visit people in everywhere and I went into, you know, refugee camps on the Syrian border. You know, to California in the offices of Google I mean it was like, you know, up a mountain in China after an earthquake I mean just looking to put all around the world talking to different children, parents, teachers, thought leaders, you know people like Chomsky and Ken and, you know, what came out of that was a sort of common theme. It doesn't matter where they were parents just wanted their children to thrive that's a universal norm. That's a universal norm. And so no one would would disagree that that's what you know education should equip, but but it doesn't. It doesn't have anything to do. And this is to answer your Gen Z question about education is is it's, you know, I mean it is a cultural reproduction system. You know, it's we had a thing here in the UK in England just recently, where because we had to cancel the examinations that 16 year old and 18 year old had the ones that will let you get into a university and so forth they weren't able to take those tests because of, you know, the pandemic. Even though there was a pandemic universities were hearing to this, you know, this gatekeeping model. And so what the, what the English, you know what they did in England the Wales was the Department for Education decided to write an algorithm that would determine what grades these young people would have would have received. Which kind of you know if you say it quickly sounds like a cool idea right it's like you know you would take into account everything you've done and where you go to school and what your background is and everything else. And of course they did the algorithm did exactly what it should do. But in doing so it exposed the structural inequalities in the system in that you know if you came from a you know particular kind of background and you went to a highly paid independent private school and everything else. Then you've got these grades if you went to a, you know, if you were in a less affluent area in a, you know, in a in a poorly performing school, perhaps, or whatever, you would be you would get downgraded. And so what all it did was really I mean people got very upset about the algorithm and everything else but they didn't fail to grasp that that's that's that's how our system works. I mean it's just, you know, it's a bit like the, you know, Google the search engine. I mean if you put in there, you know, criminal or whatever it will pick up certain kinds of stereotypes which are actually not true, but it reflects our society. And so, bringing those in closely I mean I think it's, you know, it's strange isn't it that, you know, the things that you know we have we have subjects that are compulsory in English you have to you know maths English. You can understand, but philosophy, economics, sociology, these are regarded as kind of well particularly sociology for example and political science and regarded as sort of a media studies even. It's like, it's a silly subject it's not worth very much but how can the study of how societies evolve and imagine being when you're armed with that knowledge. You kind of think that, you know, maybe that's a plan, maybe maybe you don't really want people to be aware and active and active participants in their democracy, because, you know, you can't have a democracy if you don't have, you know, informed people. And it's interesting to look at the statistics at the moment in terms of voting behavior used to voting behavior used to be social economic background you know if you were one particular social group you'd vote this way, and if you're another one you've got the other. That's not the case anymore. So the case, the key indicators of voting behavior now are age, that you know race and education. And it turns out that if you know you not particularly well educated and you're this particular type and this background, you will vote to the populist parties, and there's lots of you know we as a rabbit hole that we can go down. But you know in terms of how marginalized societies even when the, you know, in indigenous societies that then politicized and weaponized and so forth. So, I don't think that, you know, in the education system when I say education not learning I mean learning and education is, they're not the same thing. I don't think that Gen Z are getting it from there where they are getting it from and I can contest it it's like a 14 year old daughter very proud of. You know she's dual heritage her mother's Ghanaian, and she's been activated during this time off she couldn't be in she also could be less interested in what the school was sending her in fact she ignored all of it. But she got activated by the Black Lives Matter movement. And then, as a result of that started researching her own research about things started learning sociology and learning about politics and economic models I think this is 14. You know, never been interested in these kinds of things before and she was getting this from tick tock. You know, and this is Jen Z they live in tick tock, and it's not all, you know, I mean there's some funny stuff on there and all that stuff, but there's also some very cool stuff that generation talking about these issues. I encourage her because that inflamed her passion to go and find out more. I kid you not, you know, I've worked with Noam Chomsky and he's one of my heroes. She would be able to have a conversation with him and hold her position very very well. I mean I'm sure they would be violently in agreement with each other. And I think that's interesting. I mean that's really online learning. But you know, I mean, you know, Donald Trump, for example, was a shut tick top down. You know, I mean, you know, all kinds of reasons for that but so I kind of I still I still remain optimistic and then back to this point then about education, changing society. The problem with that of course is that like the SDGs, which sound wonderful, they are responding to that existing framework. That global economic model wasn't like it was. We wouldn't need the SDGs. You know, the fact that we need them is a testament to how broken our world is because poverty is manmade. It's not natural. You know, it's an outcome. It's a consequence of that global legal model. It's laudable. It's wonderful that we can see the inequalities in society and then we want to get all the countries to agree to make it a little bit better. But it's not looking at the real cause of the problem. It's maybe treating some symptoms. You know, I mean, you can treat the symptoms of cancer, but you're going to die if you don't treat the cancer. And the cancer is the global economic model. And the problem with the SDG force, of course, is they're forced to operate within that model. And there's a consequence. You mentioned the SDG for the consequence of that is that they are being rapidly privatized. And then, you know, in the global model and is a neoliberalism, it's free markets and everything else. And then as a consequence of that, you know, you're seeing the SDG force going through that prison that lens. And don't get me wrong. I'm absolutely supportive of these things. I actually, of course, I agree. The SDG force, which I know most about, you know, the issues around every child should have access to, you know, quality and equitable learning. But what's happening there is you've got, for example, on the African continent, you know, you've got corporations there, you know, for profit corporations going in and, you know, providing what they call affordable learning. You don't have it. You know, and it's a fit sexually profiting from the from the bottom of the pyramid. You know, so it doesn't really matter, you know, if you if you, you know, you're living on subsistence or you'll, you know, you'll you make your money from selling a crate of tomatoes on your head every day. You know, you look at, you know, they want like all parents that you want your children to do well. And so then hand over maybe, you know, it sounds in the West sounds like really like $20 US dollars per month to put your child through a school. But that's that's a lot of money to a lot of families and so therefore not every child can go but what that what these do I mean there's one provider called bridge international academies. They have like, you know, many hundreds of schools, particularly in Kenya and Uganda and I think they're opening up in India. And this is a company which is commercial it's registered in Delaware, you know, to tax arrangement there. It has investment from Bill Gates, it has investment from Mark Zuckerberg. It has investment from the World Bank and different and everything else. And what it does is it uses technology to deliver scripted lessons that a non qualified teacher will read to a classroom and it actually says everything on this cheap tablet, you know, even till the winter rub the board. You know, this is a very narrow version of education and and you know when I've spoken to this before people, you know, people in the West, you know, in influential people so well, what kind of education was they getting before. And of course, they weren't so surely that's better, but it's not, it's not better. You know, it's a sort of educational colonialism. It's actually impoverishing their education it's not allowing because the real issue is in SGG for isn't about privatizing it that's not, you know, that's a perverse cynical attack on SGG for it's not developing local expertise, you know, there are challenges on the African continent, you know in the global south there are challenges because of our system. And I think like that the thing, okay, how can we profit from this, you know, it's like the sort of like, it's basically turning the classroom into Uber. You know, you know, when you get when you jump inside an Uber car or lift car. You know, there's a driver is being told what to do by a by a by an app on a mobile device. You know, and it deals with the interaction between me and the driver and the driver just follows whatever that machine says. It's going to be a self driving car, and it'll take the driver out entirely but it doesn't have to be particularly skilled. So people think about Uber and they think how profitable that is and they think, okay, well, wow, why don't we have, you know, given that teachers cost a lot of money to develop and everything else, you know, if you invest in that, you know, a fraction by the way of what we invest in the military. Well, we could have a self driving classroom. Isn't that a great idea, the Uber of education, and that fundamentally misunderstands what learning and teaching is about, even with an education, because what's happened is it's it's it's turned what we call education into content distribution, and then, you know, the inculcation of facts and procedures, and then just vomiting them out at an examination whether that's in your high school or your university or whatever. And of course, this is a business model, you know, Pearson, you know, the largest education company in the world, the book publisher, its business model is copyrights. Okay, copyrights on all those books, it has no motivation to make those books free. Where they are, you know, that's why they've invested in bridge is, you know, this is a way, you know, because it's an interesting model. It's what we all do, you know, it's amazing. I mean they sell you the textbooks. And they own the examination, the measurement, and it's a kind of closed loop. It's like, you have to remember the textbook like memorise them, because we all did that right. You have to memorize them because we own the test to make sure that you have to buy those copyrights in order to pass the test and you have to buy the test as well. You see what's wrong with that picture. I mean if that was pharmaceutical industry, big pharma owned the hospitals and paid the doctors and everything else. You know, that you can see how that could go wrong but that's happening in education particularly as SDG for and it's an absolute travesty and a scandal. And I think that the U.S. go and so forth will allow this to happen. In fact, positively engage with it to such a degree so don't get me wrong. I absolutely believe in the intent and the direction of SDG for the problem, however, It's the global system and I know that, you know, probably quite rightly listeners to the show, but yeah, but Graham, how do we change that? How do we change it? Of course, I mean it's very hard. I mean, we are in the interregnum though. You know, as Gramsci said, we are in the interregnum started, you know, climate change is not, you know, it started, we're in it. Yeah, we're in thralls. I mean, Australia last year was on fire and now there's snow. I mean, yeah, not even last year was the beginning of this year before we went into the pandemic. They had released their yearly equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 just through the fires, you know, and we saw obviously the quala bears and the really dramatic issues of what was going on there, the animals and what was affected. But they released, you know, triple the amount that they release in one year just in that fire this year and then we go into the pandemic and we act like this little pause that we've had is going to be a big, a big reset or our savior to us. There's a lot of positives that have come out of it. But we need much more we need to leave the planet better than we found it we need to clean up we need to live in this circular economy in this regenerative thinking that brings me nicely into some other things that you're working on. You poke fun at your or tease you a little bit maybe have you explained so you have this fabulous book learning reimagined I never got a copy myself have tried to find a copy and buy one but I don't have 200 euros 200 pounds I guess because it's almost like a university book or it's a hard to get as probably out of out of print, but is there a way to get a PDF version or online version are you going to go into another copy of it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's um, you know I'm, I'm as frustrated actually if not more because because that comes up a lot and you know, it's a complex situation with with with with the book I mean I always wanted there to be an electronic version, you know, particularly because I mean, you know, the point of how do we get people to access the book, you know, we need the books are even more I mean, perversely, you know, books are printed books are much more expensive on the African continent and so forth and then they are in the Western world. But for a variety of reasons that has been done so the the the organization that commissioned because this was a very expensive production. We had a photographic team we had a video team, we were going into some pretty hairy places. You know, the logistics was, you know, big logistics team to get us around the world and to make that and everything else. And that was that was funded by the by the white by wise, which is which is a Qatar foundation. And I'm very thankful for them. But their, their view of it was not to make it, you know, as popular as it was I mean it just turned out to be much more popular than than they had imagined it would be I mean they, I think they thought that whether it was one print run. And that will be done. But what happened with that was that, you know, I did it in a different way I mean I tried to bring it was funny it was my little joke really was to try and rather than, you know, try to make the analog this this artifact as a as a as a portal into a digital world. So, the way I was doing it was that as I was going around the world, I was using Instagram and blogging and all this kind of stuff so immediately so I'd go in like like for example have an interview with Chomsky and then I'd release some of it online just so people could see and I would also just to pass ideas around to to the community that were following it and that what was happening was is that they were all these people were following this journey. And then they were commenting and in a way they were co-creating the book. And, you know, we had like, you know, we have over a million hits on on on my blog alone during this time and a massive following on Instagram at the time and everything else and Twitter and so forth. And I remember there was a conversation about how many books we should print and they made books before. And they hadn't done and sold very many. I mean, you know, maybe a few hundred less than 1000. And so they're using similar numbers and I and and this was a very different book I said like you're mad it's crazy because I mean they'd already been upset about me releasing the book publisher why why are you releasing stuff I mean it's like no one's going to buy the book. And I said no no, people are going to buy the book because they've been party to that journey, and so forth. And so, you know, they went to three runs. And then it stopped which is a great shame, because there is this demand. And then what happened was, you know, literally as soon as soon as the print came out it was sold out I mean it was like just the start of, you know, immediately which was which is, you know, very gratifying but also frustrating. What happened was the books then started selling on the kind of the aftermarket. And so then it was being traded as university prices I saw one point 1200 pounds, and people were either flaming me on social media writing to me and say why are you doing this I think I'm it was a commission I didn't I don't profit from the sale of books. I don't understand the frustration. You know I've got a couple. I've got a box of a few of them here so if anyone wants them contact me and I will send you I want I want. But it's, you know, there isn't, you know, and I've asked many times can we do a PDF of this and I will ask again after this show, but it's, it's for variety reasons like that it's not being responded to on the website learning dash reimagine.com is there a lot of information on there that we could go and get or is it just Oh yeah I mean the blog actually I mean the blog has a lot of stuff on there I mean it's not it's not exhaustive of what's in the book but I think what you can do is I mean hit hit the blog and have a wander around there. And that's learning dash reimagine calm. Find me on medium, because there's a learning reimagined publication on medium. So just go to medium and tap in learning reimagined you should find it. I hope, or you can also I would say go to my personal website. Because I put because when I was doing this we shot all these videos and interviews and they form the basis of interviews as a magazine kind of thing in its desktop. So, you know, this sort of, you know, this is this, you know, it's like a book that you display coffee table book, but also a lot of content, but we film things and I did it in such a way that you could use your, use your phone your smart your camera phone to look at a picture and that picture would take you somewhere so not QR codes this image recognition, and it would take you to these videos but then I put all the videos out on my website. So all the interviews, you know, with with with with the Ken Robinson with Seth Godin with no Chomsky with just one wonderful bunch of people around the world. All those videos are on my website so it's it's it's you don't mind you. It's Graham Brown Martin just one word. .com slash films. And it's all there. If you can't get hold of the book. That's the sort of the next best option. We'll put all the links in the show notes and then and with the description of your biography as well. That leads nicely into the first really first question now we're already an hour into to the to our discussion. You know, you don't have to apologize I knew it would be this and I'm so glad it is because we need to remove the bias we need to start doing some sense making we need to have these discussions and get into the depth and substance of this very complex situation we're in and kind of see how we can address it. I want your wisdom I want our listeners to have your wisdom so it's really important. I feel like you're a global citizen. And what would you feel about or how would you feel of in the future. There was a world without nations borders or divisions at least the divisions of human beings one from another. Yeah, I mean it's something I've been I'm glad you asked that because it's something I've been speaking about since I was a child. And one of those weird kind of things that was in my head all this time is not understanding why we needed passports. And I did find out why we have passports in there and they're quite recent phenomenon actually I mean it's 100 or so years isn't it. But we have passports so we can have poor people. That's it. That's the reason we have them. Suppress. Well, I mean, I think that's a that's a that's a, you know, so that was preceded by the, you know, because, you know, borders, again, particularly in the global south, particularly in the African continent and some parts of South America and Indian sub continent. You know, if you like, I forget the 1884 Berlin conference, I may have got the title wrong but it was where Europeans met. European is met to draw lines on on Africa and then, you know, not understanding how the, how that was just imprinting their beliefs and, you know, carving up because they wanted the resources. But at that point it was like, you know, they'd already dehumanized, you know, the entire population of that that content in order that people would go along with this. Yeah, which is insanity because there's so many pastoral indigenous and pastoral communities and cultures around the world that, you know, in one year they'll travel up to, you know, 1000 kilometers in one year with their roots or the way that they've lived for generation and generation and to have that be carved up by, you know, for, you know, this colonialism and capitalism, different type of thought processes is unimaginable. But so just just to finish on that one then. So, because you asked me the question is like, you know, would I be prepared to live in a world without borders and, you know, I mean, you know, global globalization project allowed for the free movement of capital. I mean, never allowed for the free movement of people so that would enable me to get, you know, there's a T shirt made by a child in Bangladesh and who doesn't matter whether she gets a PhD she's never leaving. Because you haven't got a visa, you know, little, little gay people in that kind of business. So how do we move I mean how would that work I mean either the arguments that we get now is that you know we're seeing it in in the UK right now with our Brexit. Which is, you know, we've got we've got our closed loop economy over here in the UK so if people just come along and then want to have welfare and want to get into that system and you know it won't fit those people. You know, as I say, come over here take our jobs take our homes take it's this nonsense, right. But that's because of how the systems designed so you could of course you could do away with passports and nationhood but, and actually I think the majority of human beings, who I think fundamentally want the same things for themselves and their children and so forth, and they would live in peace. You know, it's just, there are, you know, the people who have benefited from how it is, and can't see beyond it is back to the structure back to the system wouldn't allow that that that's the thing. But it's kind of crazy isn't it because if we look at, you know, the combination of what's happening on the world and we look at the growth in population which doesn't really really start plateauing until about 10 11 billion people. You combine that of course with the, the, the, you know, the very damaging aspects of climate change which are going to affect, you know, the equatorial regions more than where I am at the moment and so forth. And then making those areas unlivable, you know, affect droughts, floods, lack of food security and everything else because when that all happens of course is that you know when you get that kind of thing is things start decaying and falling apart and you get disease. What ends up happening is, is, you know, and these figures I think have been, been, you know, fairly well supported by evidence is that we could be heading to, you know, halfway through this century, you know, somewhere in the region of one billion climate change migrants, you know, and the question is like where are they going to go. And, you know, we kind of know what that's about that we're seeing that in the UK where, you know, they want people who are trying to cross the English Channel in being is to drown. You know, it's it's the, you know, I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true. You know, it's just, you know, we see the, the language of dehumanization, I mean, you know, the, the Mexican caravan, we're going to be invaded. We're all just in the opposite language. You know, these are our people. They're all our people. I mean, we're all distant cousins. We're all, we're all, you know, morally, I mean, in any kind of way you look at it, I mean, it's like, so, so one billion, you know, climate change. I mean, also, you know, back to the SG for, you know, SG's, I mean, it's like, okay, look, this is going to happen. Why are we not doing more to ensure that those, those people have the, at least a fighting chance. To support themselves during this massive change, but, but no. But Graham, it's, it's okay. I'm on the Titanic in the upper deck. I'm in the luxury cruiser. I got the whole suite. So, so it's okay. Right. But this, this has been a strategy. I mean, this has been a strategy. I mean, it's Kissinger. I mean, it's like, it's easy. You know, you keep Africa poor and diseased and the Middle East at war. You know, and then the result of that, because again, why, why, because the system is how we behave, you know, how we manage scarcity. And so the reason why that's like that it's a consequence of that system. So, you know, far better. I mean, think about it far better for the African continent to be poor and disease because that allows us to access a lot of those resources. Same with the Middle East, you know, whatever one kind of connecting, let's make sure that there's conflict there constantly, because that, that's advantageous. So just bear that out for a second. So people don't, the listeners don't think I'm just on some sort of conspiracy theory type thing. Absolutely not. You know, so, so, so Qatar, I know a lot about Qatar, obviously, and it's interesting, isn't it really because, you know, Qatar's wealth up until the, you know, about the Second World War. You know, there was pearls, pearl diving. You know, that's where they mean that it was the best place to get pearls and pearls had a value that made them consider very wealthy. And, you know, of course, you know, we came up with some of, you know, cultured pearls, you know, much had culture put the value of natural pearls disappeared. So, in the early part of the 20th century, Qatar moved from being wealthy to being in poverty. You know, no different from, from some of the countries that we see them relations that we see on the African continent. But what happened was, of course, you know, I mean it was delayed, but they struck gas and oil in their in their country. Very quickly, when you think about it, I mean, you know, less than 50 years, I mean, you just go to go to Qatar now. I mean, it's wealthy. There's skyscrapers as all you know it's become this, you know, powerhouse of wealth. And yet, you know, oil, I mean, you take Ghana, for example, you know, only about 10 years ago, oil was discovered in around an axeme on the kind of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana border. And so there were very excited, you know, that Ghana is going to be wealthy and it's going to have schools and healthcare and roads and internet and all this stuff. But of course, the oil wasn't being extracted by them. It was an American company called Cosmos Energy, who extracting the oil and so they didn't really get any access. I mean, there was a very five percent on the barrel is what what Ghana was getting to imagine that's seen. And now what happens is the oil gets extracted from Ghana, it gets sent over to to the US gets processed and turned into gasoline and the refined and then sold back. So I mean, how, why, why do you have countries in on the African continent? Why do you don't why why does the African continent after all these years doesn't have its own extraction companies and extraction engineers and all those kind of why. I mean, I don't want to get it. Yeah, it is a tangent but I mean, but I think that's that's that's what it was. So back to the point about. So yeah, it is a tangent but back to the point about nationhood and everything else. I think it's yes, of course, I think, you know, we should, I think we should have movement of people but we would need to have a different system to accommodate that. I'm not a believer in a sort of, you know, no world order or a one world government because I think the problem with that is it's like, you know, it's again this is a kind of this is a current system view of how you govern the left right type thing which is a false paradigm. I don't think if I can interrupt. No, you're fine. I don't think we were getting off on a tangent in that I wanted to kind of follow up what you were saying. So I totally agree. And that's just obviously one one example that you were giving there, but it's a resource curse and we see that resource curse and many many countries where they sell whatever the resources at the time whether it's pearls or whether it's oil or fossil fuels, or the African countries that produce a lot of food and use their land for other countries benefit. And, and I want to go back actually and tickle a little bit of what of what you what you said and let's get into the big thoughts of that and then I want you to finish your train of thought of where where you were going with that. I see it as a resource curse is that you have some form of land or fossil fuels or pearls or whatever resource diamonds, whatever it is. So basically, it becomes a curse because you short sell it for short term gains. And the crazy thing is, is it's being sold to other countries and nations that have absolutely no interest in saying that Ghana or Qatar or anywhere and the the example I like to use is actually New Zealand or Australia, or even Brazil where they allow animal agriculture that mass huge feed lots of animals to basically shit on their land and their environment use their fresh water crops to feed those animals. I have nothing against the animals, and, and then extruded enormous amounts of farts and burps and shit of methane into the atmosphere which immediately first affects New Zealand Brazil, Australia, and then they ship the product at a less than true cost total value of that product to some other country for their benefit. And that is whether you're a mathematician a scientist a farmer is a bad business model you're letting them use your country your resources as an open sewer as their toilet, and then reap and benefit all the benefits of that for the future and it's come back in this last fires that Australia had and, and then the year and beginning of the year, really is closely tied to that type of resource curse and any country you look that because for a short short term gain they're they're selling that, that that resource and it doesn't have that long term sustainability they say, all the money we make we're going to invest sustainably with infrastructure, so that in the future, it doesn't matter this little impact that we have now, because there are processes and we're going to be more resilient in the future. And that's something that I don't think is always discussed or explained how that works but it happens time and time again all over the world. And where it ties to Brexit is the initial big majority of the vote and I'm not I'm not from the UK so I really probably can't speak but you mentioned it was because they were worried they were getting their job stolen the majority of jobs that were being taken were you know, farming food production, those migrants seasonal workers who came in to do the food. So my first question is, as now that Brexit has occurred, did all those people who voted for that did they jump in during the pandemic and take those jobs that are now no longer so why the fuck did they vote for it why did they not say, oh yeah they got what they wanted but they did get what they wanted they fucked themselves as a country, because of that bad decision because they didn't think ahead and what happened is during the pandemic. So the production of that food got tilled back under because the workers weren't there to harvest it so what kind of a messed up system is that I mean I just, I don't know I hate to get off on a tangent. No, it does tie in all of these things tie in. They're all part of the same problem I mean the things you're talking about in terms of farming and the stripping back of deforestation in order to feed cows so that you can make burgers. I mean, you know, there was a lack of design I mean it's you know it's asking the wrong question I mean we need to ask a different question now it's like the question is, I think the question we should be asking is how, you know, how can we how can we create a society that allows all people to thrive, include and the planet. That's the sort of question that you design around that don't you design. Okay, how do we feed 8 billion people how do we feed 11 billion people how do how do we do that. And you know, and then you think oh actually look we could do that thing we could just take away the trees and have, you know, billions of cows farting, but it's going to fuck the planet. So let's not do that, you know, design it a different way I mean of course it easy to be wise after the event. Now, switching to Brexit. I think it's, it's unfair actually I think to blame the people who voted to leave the European Union because I think it's very complex that and I think that you know I think a lot of being saying oh they're stupid or this or that I don't think that you know I understand where those beliefs are coming from but I think this polarization of opinion is is is is manipulated and so forth I think there's to think to understand why it happened is actually there's a professor guy standing University College London, who wrote on this way before the EU vote. He labelled a sort of there's a class if you're like a new class of people that have emerged called he calls the precariat. You know, this is the salad, there's a salariat, the people that are salad a precariat who, you know, live hand to mouth, they don't have income security and so forth. The reason why the precariat I'll come to in a second. So, you know, if we look at this very quickly that sort of history of the UK, you know, there was a massive manufacturing capability, you know, part of the industrial let's forget the industrial revolution started here in Manchester. And so the original factories and the kind of the shift from or the transformation from craft production to mass production occurred here first through factories and so forth. So, you know, employment, the mines and everything else. Now, because of the system that we operate in those businesses are private businesses they are they they have, you know, the way it works is they have to return more value more profit, you know, we are a common economic model, consistent of continuous growth when it doesn't grow, we get worried, you know, all that kind of business we read in the papers. Of course, in order to do that, you know, we felt we eventually the rest of the world caught up and actually manufacturing this stuff was a lot cheaper in China. But it was here. I mean, it just, you know, crazy. So you're Dyson, for example, you know, you know, there it was he voted, didn't he for, you know, he's very pro Brexit but he gets his pit manufactured overseas. And that's because you make more profit and actually, you know, the China have got nailed. I mean, the quality of their manufacturing is incredible. You know, so rather than, you know, so why don't we have jobs so rather than actually say, well, it is because we move them because so we can make more profit. No, no, no, that wasn't said. Of course, you know, because that would that suddenly people would wake up and see the big picture, which is that you're being exploited, but instead it's much easier because once you have people who are, you know, maybe second generation unemployed they, you know, their father was only your mother and father was employed their unemployed it's like, you know, why is this happening to me why. And it's much easier than to weaponize those people if you want to manipulate those people you want to start using Facebook ads and Twitter AI bots and all this kind of stuff to polarize the argument. What you do is you tell them it's those people that don't look like you. You know, I mean, there's a gentleman over here called James of Brian, the great radio show and LBC the only good radio show and LBC because the rest is trash. But, you know, he does this interviews and you know he, you know, he has a perspective but he just asks questions people that voted for for Brexit. And so we'll, you know, it goes like this, you know, ask questions and so we can make our own rules and then it will say well which rules were coming out of a year that you can agree with and what do you think is going to change and then there's no answer of course because it's something they've read on a Facebook thing I mean it's not their fault though. I mean this is like, you know, it's a failure of government and failure of leadership. And then it goes to okay well so yeah, I won't have all those immigrants over here taking our jobs. And then he goes well, what do you mean which immigrants and then you'll find some time someone say well, you know, when I go to my supermarket, you know, there wasn't a single white person on the checkout desks. And then the question goes well. Okay, so leaving the EU is only about EU movement. So which European country, can you tell me that is majority not white. And there it is. So you've got a population I don't believe that the British are intrinsically racist. You know I think racism is something that was manufactured. You know, and for value, because the value of course of dividing people, you know the value of dehumanizing people and using the language of dehumanization is very profitable. You know, in this system that we have not you know it's not sort of conspiratorial I mean you know, but it just it works in that system and that's you know I think why I mean you know you had a society here that wasn't caring for its people. You know, the sort of London centric thinking, you know southeast of England thinking just ignoring really what's happening to large parts of the country we know we had a government here they mean actually the government that's in power now. You know, it was under facture where someone called Norman Tebbitt told people well if you haven't got a job get on your bike. You know, leave your community leave your family, you know, go somewhere else to get the job, not actually. Yes, we have to shut down mining. You know that we have to move on manufacturing so you know, use our education structure use our societal structure to kind of create new employment and different ways of working and so forth because whereas in the industrial revolution. In the early factories, you know, we were concerned about the inhumane nature of work, you know, long hours dark factories pollution and so forth breathing in. Now, we should be concerned about the inhuman nature of not working, because when you're not working, you don't have a voice in society you don't have agency you don't have equity, and therefore you are inevitably open to a different narrative. And that's the problem that's why I believe Brexit happened it was just a failure to look after our own people. And this is this is a result and I think what's going to happen because actually, you know, yes, Brexit has started, we don't actually leave properly that we don't put the borders up and the shutters up until the end of 2020. So we'll find out on the first check. It's difficult to see how it's going to work because it's clear now that there was a very narrow population but very important population within the current administration that wanted to crash out of Europe so to not have any trading a relationship even though it's a not just trading group on the planet to have nothing at all. You know, and just go on our own. I mean, like in 2020 2021 just go on our own and of course a lot of people because that's what they'd be reading, you know, we know that the leave EU campaign was a lie was fraudulent, and everything but it's foreign and external influences paying for those Facebook ads. We know it was illegal, but nevertheless we're going for it because you know what we'll end up with because they all everyone said we're not going to crash out we're going to have a friendly agreement with our European neighbors. That's all they said and now it's not going to happen. Now, I think this is a problem. This is a real problem now I think that that when our people when the people here. understand and realize they've been lied to. There's going to be trouble. You know, the trouble will initially start with increased violent racism. You know, homegrown terrorism in the form of white supremacist terrorism we're already seeing that we've got all you know organizations like Britain first video video in themselves and putting on Facebook walking around hot you know hotels that are putting up immigrants during the coronavirus and banging on their doors and terrorizing them. You know, just the other weekend into Fargo Square there was a protest that was sensibly about not wearing masks and anti mask and anti vaccine. And a group there felt absolutely comfortable were not stopped unfolding the British Nazi Party flag into Fargo Square. So what we're going to see is a lot of that you know people are going to continue to believe this false narrative about anyone that doesn't look like them particularly people aren't white are going to face a horrible time and that's going to trigger another reaction back. But after that what's going to happen is once all that's done is a realization that they've been played. And I think that's when things get really bad. I mean I think there's a belief and you mentioned earlier about the collapse of society. There's a belief that of course you know, real Britannia, you know, we are British exceptionalism. I think we're going to find a little lesson soon. I think that you know, as you described earlier, societies, you know, it's gradually then suddenly they collapse under their own weight and under their own exceptionalism. Well, it's very perilous. I mean, you know, we, we have a global pandemic. You know, we will get a second wave of this in the winter. It's quite obvious the R rate is going up here because, you know, stupidity really and an absolutely delinquent government and corrupt government. So that's going to happen. The obviously the flu and everything else will be happening and then crashing out of you where we can't get supplies of certain things and everything else. You know, I mean, I hope I'm wrong. You know, a lot of these predictions I always hope I'm wrong. I want to be proven wrong. But I think this is, this is we are on the brink of catastrophe here. It doesn't seem to be a, you know, we don't have the government that will enable us to go through because there is a group of people, influential people that, you know, that will bet on collapse that will disaster capitalism as it as it's called. And we are in their hands at the moment and it's, it's horrible to see that it's horrible to see this this country go through that, you know, I think, you know, we're definitely going to move here in a moment out of some of the doom and gloom or the panic in our discussion. We need to touch upon it because it does need, we need to kind of instill some sense making remove the biases and understand what's going on and what you just mentioned. It's not just Brexit, it's not, I mean, we've seen it all over the world and I, and you mentioned that, but I live in Hamburg, Germany and Germany seem extreme, you know, thinking there's a superior race and many issues there that how many things went wrong there but now you're seeing some new things where people are being led astray and they're showing that you know the Nazi flags and that Cambridge analytics and this fake news face fake media this way how the wrong narratives the wrong stories or also this information is bubble to the surface and people are lacking the time or the ability to make sense of it to kind of distill out the truths of what's happening and also have that longer vision that bigger picture of what's going on there. So, when we first began our discussion it was really interesting how we were talking about the masks and you just mentioned the masses again as a movement that we're not going to wear masks we're not going to social distance. A few years ago in Europe especially there was this big thing about you know burqas a religious thing for Islam, and that where you know you're not allowed to wear a burqa cover your face and that. Now, that there's no conversation about that they want everybody to cover their face and do it and it's now it's all all of a sudden, it's okay and I don't you know there's a different reason for that. You know, it's interesting how these laws these rules of protections can pivot on a dime they can change we're learning and evolving that we really need to get that sense making and put it into perspective on the big picture of of where we're trying to go. I don't know if you have any more to add on that but I think it's just important to realize that this. We're all distant cousins we're all on the same spaceship earth and by us working and taking an active part in our world and that change and that reshaping it really can change and outcome and unify us for where we want to go. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you're right I mean to touch on that really I mean you know this sort of the burqa and, you know, Nick have and so on this sort of anti Islam as a sort of a movement really I mean, you know just in a long line of movement so of course it's a, you know, it's just another way of dividing people. You know, it's, you know, we're seeing also we mentioned nationalism we're also seeing not only nationalism based on borders we're seeing ethnic nationalism emerging again you know which is I think very concerning. And it's actually self defeating. I mean, you know, the point is, you know, nature is really clever. I mean, you know, there's biodiversity, you know why is that biodiversity because actually if if one thing is struggling it has another answer to that struggle and that's why we have biodiversity. I mean we're reducing our biodiversity which is could be catastrophic. But the point is it's like having difference in that mix makes you healthier. So you apply that to human society. You know, actually, if you have mono cultures find it impossible to innovate, because actually innovation comes from seeing the world differently and joining up the dots between different things and even seeing dots other people can't see. Now if you're trying to innovate I mean actually having people from different backgrounds, you know, different nations different belief systems and so forth that's that's actually very useful, because it gives you alternative views alternative ways of looking at things and that's how innovation happens innovation could only happen through diversity. Now we have to I mean, you know, on the positive note, you know, I think that for one reason or another we are going to have to switch to a regenerative economy. That's beyond circular because sustainability is not enough. Now, it has to be regenerative. We have to regenerate. We have to put more stuff back and, you know, that's a design issue. But the fact that we have to switch to regenerative economy means actually. We have to go into education and into the new version of capitalism and everything else actually means we have to redesign everything. Every product, every service we have to redesign everything, because everything that we have at the moment is designed for a, you know, based around extractive a scarcity society. We need to do something different and this actually is wonderful news because people are worried about the future of work and unemployment and all this kind of thing. You think about, you know, we're going we're, you know, as the consequence of the pandemic we are heading into the largest global recession of human history and mass global unemployment. And yet there's an answer that's staring us in the face. If only we had a big global infrastructure program to work on. Well, guess what we do. It's called fixing climate change. It's, it's called fixing our home. And that is the biggest global infrastructure product law type it would involve everyone we will be heading to a golden age of innovation and creativity and globally because this will have to be a global. Well, because we're not going to Mars. You know, we're not going, you know, we might go there to have a look and see and, you know, understand things but we're not going to live that this is our home it's beautiful. I mean if you can't see if you might see that it's crazy. And I think that this is where this is this is our human destiny and all the things that we've covered in this conversation. The issues that people are concerned about in their movements with BLM and LBG plus and, and that all comes together the STG force you won't need them anymore because we have to redesign everything. You know, I do believe I have to be optimistic. We are going to head into the dark days first I mean again back to Gramsci. We are in the interregnum and in the interregnum morbid things happen there was going to be some really bad stuff that's going to happen. I mean, you know, there is is going to happen, but I do believe in human beings I do believe at some point we're going to see the light and I do believe there is a much larger movement of people who will say no more. That really leads me nicely before you get too deep because I know I kind of can sense where you're going we think alike in a lot of ways. My hardest question for you is really the burning question WTF and it's not the swear word it's what's the future. Yeah, I mean I think the, well I hope there is a future is my answer and I know it's you know the things that you know I'm concerned about now I'm interested I mean again you know I've got children and you know I believe in human beings. I don't believe in the in what we have I mean I think the question is what what is how do we get to the 22nd century. You know, because I think if we if on the current trajectory. I don't think that we are going to have the human society that we have now I don't think will exist I think that there's going to be we know it is that we're at a crossroads. At the moment, you know, we could be in a situation we continue down the sort of ethnic nationalism nationalism I mean. Let's give you example I mean this is what is two different parameters two different things I think that could happen. Let's say for example. We wake up in the sort of middle of November after the American election. And, and, you know, Mr Trump is as well a second time. Now, to be honest, I think the left right paradigm is broken I don't think it makes much difference whether he comes in or not but let's just go with that. So whoever you vote for that it is still the system. But anyway, it's like I've done that right. So Mr Trump Donald Trump becomes the president again second term now that that's a mandate really I mean for all the bluff and bluster and all the kind of hand wringing and and and name calling and all that kind of stuff it will be a mandate. Now, it's interesting we know we're seeing, you know, we've gone from make America great again to America first. Let's just hold on to what that means, because what I'm talking about is American futurism, which is one one real one possible reality. So what what that happens is is that you know, with America first you know I think it's like okay. They have technological leadership I mean once upon a time we had you know we used to make computers in Europe we used to have European operating systems and we were the leader in mobile friends, not anymore. The world is concentrated in Silicon Valley. Mainly I mean you've got all the these enormous apple worth $2 trillion you know we are relying on all these operating systems are mobile phones I think Google, Facebook, Netflix, LinkedIn, Microsoft, I mean, it's all there so you've got this technological lead that's going on. You, if we look at what's happening, they're going to the moon right now remember I was like you know I remember watching the alarm strong take that step on the moon. And it was for all mankind. Do you think they're going to say that this time when they step on the moon. No, America first. So the America first strategy I mean you know you just search forward you cut off the rest of the world. You extract as much fossil fuel and shit out of this planet and belch it all out, because America first you know we're going to have full employment. We're going to take up all the resources and this rather history, and I'm not this is not being anti American I actually love America and that's why I care. Okay, just to be very clear about that, but you can see how this is intoxicating this idea of you know yes you know we're going to go to Mars we're going to do this we're going to do this, and it surges forward because futurism is rooted in Italian fascism that's that's that emergence because as that goes on of course that isolationism you then start thinking about racial purity and all those kinds of things. The rest of the world then suffers because not being being not being shared how how do we respond. I think that's one possible future because then what happens is is that you know you get America first Britain becomes like a 51st state. You know you've got Russia for you've got that kind of thing going on and then the people who are poor now just get ignored I mean it doesn't matter we just extract everything out of Africa so you don't care. That's one thing. The other thing I think that you know the one that I prefer to believe in and hope is a future where, you know, for just reasons of survival but hopefully we don't get that point is that actually we come to our senses. And I think this is again, I think it's because of generations that I think as a catalyst. The generations in the side obviously have to be part of this but it's a catalyst. I think that that you know I think because using the levers of capitalism I mean capitalism in itself isn't necessarily bad. It's depending on what system of the you're operating in I mean you know we could get to a post scarcity society. So, where I'm thinking is that, you know, we move to a post scarcity society, which is, what do I mean by that. We go back in time, you know, we could have been there already I mean you know we go back in time so in in 1850. There was Augustus Moussin Augustin Moussin Moussin Moussin Moussin Moussin Moussin in France and Paris and then he built the world's first solar powered steam engine. I mean at the time 1850, I mean, you know, it was wood and coal that was, that was, you know, but he made a, you know, using a parabolic trough to capture the sun and beam it, you know, concentrate it into a pipe that had water and then turn it to steam and then was, you know, running a printing press and all those kind of things in 1850, using the power of the sun, you know, exhaustive supply of energy. So, moving forward, 1912. Okay, Frank Schumann, an American inventor, along with, I've got the name wrong, but it's Vernon boys, sorry Vernon boys, a British physicist. The other thing is that they continued the parabolic trough work that Moussin had started. And then in 1912 built a solar thermal power station on the bank of the River Nile that would pump using the power of the sun would pump 33,000 gallons of water every minute out of the Nile into our desert land. Now, why am I telling you that? The point is, is that at that point, this is 1912, we had a technology which could generate an infinite inexhaustible amount of free, clean energy. And there's a byproduct because of the way it works, an inexhaustible free supply of drinking water. Now, I just want to, you know, for us and the listeners to think about what would have happened if we'd have continued with that. What would have happened if every nation, every place, every person had access to free inexhaustible supply of energy and water? What would the world look like now in 2020 if we'd have done that, if we'd have continued down that road? You know, the variety of reasons that we didn't, you know, the wars that broke out, then, you know, the Spanish flu, you know, the Great Depression, another war and everything else is locked us in to a different economic model around scarcity. But just imagine for a moment, if we had cracked that because we could have done, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, this idea that we can't do solar. It's not as efficient. I mean, that's because that doesn't fit into the narrative of a world that's based on scarcity. So I think that, you know, if in a more positive way is that we can expand on this, we can innovate on this will have to anyway. Once we innovate correctly, because if the if we ask the right question, how do we support every person on the planet so they can thrive and the planet itself. The answer has to be post scarcity has to be around these kinds of technology. That's just for really good reason. And I think with that, we fall into a different kind of world. You know, because, you know, and actually, you know, we talk about AI and AI has a massive role to play in solving some of these complex problems but the interesting thing about AI is that it requires the computing power to do these kind of things that we keep hearing about requires so much energy. And the, you know, because even I think it's like, 8% of the CO2 in the air is created at the moment by computing technology. So the problem there of course is that the AI needed to do the things that that even the Elon Musk's of this world want to do, you would have to generate so much electricity and it will create so much damage to the planet that you wouldn't be able to do it. Unless, unless you had a parabolic trough and a free supply of inexorable supply of energy. And that's the point we know this, you know, if the planet is designed like this, you know, there is, you know, there's a reason why there's this enormous energy source that we see every single day. It's there, you know, we just use that and it's like we have to get over I don't think we will we have to get over the this, you know, the situation we have now, I mean you know it's like it is hard because how do you go to Jeff Bezos. You go hey Jeff, congratulations, you won that round. Now we're changing the game so put all your money back. That's hard isn't it it's gonna be hard. You know, but if we don't, it's going to be a lot harder. So I think I will I will vote for the future where we look after our planet and we look after everybody and I don't think that makes me a hippie I think it's just like it's just common sense. It's a better business model has better outcome. It's multiple desire resilient desirable futures. I'm in full alignment with you that I do agree with you on many things on on how you gave us kind of the two versions and you said that you know it will probably get worse and we'll experience those things. And we've known that for a while that's the book the the limits to growth the second version was beyond the limits to growth where we're kind of already outside of the safe operating spaces of our planetary boundaries it's inevitable that we're we're not going to face these, but there is a real way that we can as as exponentially and as fast as these things are going in the wrong direction, or even in the good direction. And that are those tools that have been around as you mentioned for a long time, just as fast to pivot on a dime to change things to change the system to make it work. And it's been proven and shown time and time again. I wanted to touch a little bit or maybe have you elaborate more. You're the co founder of regenerative global. And I use regenerative agriculture generative practices the actually in the endless amounts of re terminology that are possible repurpose recycle reuse replace regenerate rebuild you know it's on and on the the whole regenerative circular economy one planet living type of type of thinking is beautiful. Tell us more about regenerative global but also you. In the last few years you've come out more speaking about regeneration and other things and, and you've mentioned it this whole time in our conversation can you go more into depth about. I'd love to. Um, so yeah I mean I have been banging on about this for years I was sort of thinking about the day actually I remember as a 15 year old boy came to London with a friend to attend a Greenpeace meeting. I think I was like wonder why we were there so it has been a sort of an interest really about you know for a long time. So regenerative global I think was was really a sort of a sort of sandbox a sort of thinking tank, not a think tank but an area where myself and a friend and colleague bill ranking William, William ranking. Who, who used to what it's worth be the director of learning Apple in California, but also university professor and everything else, you know fiercely intelligent academic. And he and I, you know, we started with friendship and this was an area where we start doing some of our thinking as well blue sky thinking. And specifically around around learning and education I think we've both been interested in how do we transform the learning systems to this kind of, you know, creative and innovative get away from this kind of 19th century education system that we had so that was a starting place for that thinking and certainly that's that's where a lot of the writing, you can find on there, but also I think as we were developing those ideas. You know this kind of my interest in global economics and and all this kind of started shaping my thinking because I just again, I just didn't feel that we could change having tried it for a long time we could change education because it won't change we it's no point in carrying on trying to do that possible to for teachers to kind of do the kind of practice that we're talking about and get kids to these, you know arbitrary exams. So what we've been thinking about now and this is literally it's a blue sky thinking that's what the whole thing's about is then looking at, you know, I wrote this article called why don't you design a school. And what I think that this is a response really to the pandemic and people, you know, working from home and children. You know, using online systems and online teaching rather than online learning and I'm thinking actually, you know this the education systems really aren't designed for anyone really I mean you know we you know we accept that schools. You know, the, you know, headteachers principles will say, quite proudly that you know, 10% or up to 15% of their students get an A, or a plus in their end of, you know, period exams. Well, that kind of means that it's broken doesn't it. I mean if only 10% or 15% of the ones that can get through it. With that kind of life changing, you know, I think I mean that's wrong I mean you know if any other business said 10% of my customers are happy. I mean it would close wouldn't I mean the shareholder revolt and everything else. And I think that's that's the sort of problem so I started looking at, you know, also the school refuses the school haters I mean I was, you know as a child I was a school you know I truanted I made up illnesses. You know, I only found out later in life what that was I mean as I said as autistic. And that's quite a quite a thing amongst autistic and kids with ADHD as well and then I realized why I was doing it but it was interesting because I, you know, at that time I sort of just bunk off and teach myself at universities and all that kind of business and it really was a sort of auto didact. And everything I know I mean I've looked by osmosis I think I don't you know it's like I can sit around reading tons of books all the time and where it comes from. And that's just typical of some of the autistic brain I guess. But that's my thinking. Okay, well, if we were designing something that you know had this was some of it was online. I think it would be like because what I was realizing having then been spending all this time online, you know, as everyone else it was going crazy because the things I was missing with the bits in between. You know it's like the bits where you were going into another meeting or you were traveling or you know those are the things that so miss now. You know I go from, you know my week I go from meeting to meeting meeting I mean I've been in like Saudi Arabia Beirut California all in one day, but nothing in between. And so I then I was looking at conferences and how conferences were working, because what I just realized that all the conferences that I would have attended with online. And then I realized, oh, I could jump, but I could run like a good I could be at three conferences in one day and I could just curate and just go to the one I'm interested in this applying that to an idea of what what what would a different system for an online system be and I think this is where a generative lands, which was the idea that if we were designing a school we we we wouldn't, we wouldn't call it a school and in fact actually we wouldn't design a school because I think if you start with the question, then you end up with the wrong answer, you know, because school is a loaded it's a highly regulated space. You know, all the highfalutin ideas that I have you couldn't do in a school. So you have to ask a different question and the question then came back to the ones how do we create an environment where people can thrive. And so this idea sort of generated the economy and it was a kind of a way in answer to how do we get to from the linear economy to extractive economy without having catastrophe or war and everything else. And so this idea sort of generating and the idea that we were having and I call it, you know, regenerative dot OS as an operating system is operating this channel that the only way to do this actually would be to kind of create an environment which may be in the digital maybe in the sort of cyber world, but, but not not specifically as a learning type thing but that's a product of it because, you know, it's the idea of like, you know, going into an environment into a digital world which is a bit like war, you know, like sort of World of Warcraft, for example, you know where you're meeting other citizens in there and solving problems and challenges and things together as a sort of a thing that you do. I mean it's an interesting thing that you do and as a consequence of that learning lots of things but just because in order to advance through this this world. And so it's kind of like, you know, combining things like, you know, gaming technologies with collaborative technologies and all this kind of business and then I just saw that as, okay, what if you can crack that bit. I mean you still have to have the physical world right because if we if you don't interact with each other what's the point. You know, I mean in the physical world, but I was just thinking that this could change the way that we look at learning because it's, it's what we do is we sort of as a Seymour Papper, one of, you know, the late sort of Papper one of the people that I took a lot of influence from using this system we could abandon streaming kids by age. Why, why is that important to be streaming kids by age, we can abandon the curriculum, because actually, you know, design our own curriculum what's important to us, our communities and so forth I mean you know why do we have to have this curriculum because education is a cultural production system one. And so we can do away with the uniformity of what all children learn or all people know. And I thought this environment might be a way of doing that, where you start engaging and so as that OS develops. It's also where you go and sort of trade your skills and knowledge and then and then I'm thinking okay well that becomes a whole kind of different operating system this kind of place where you go and you could. If you wanted to put a form of currency or cryptocurrency if you if that's the kind of environment that you want. And so this was this is where it's always a long answer but this is where that I this is where I think it's going and and you know, I wrote this article I went out there it went viral. I mean, you know, I'm doing like hundreds of thousands of people hitting that that site and lots of interesting calls and everything else and it's on my media blog and regenerative dot global and find it there. I hope you like it I mean that you know what I'm saying here doesn't it sounds a bit amorphous because I'm trying not to use the wrong language it's almost venting a language because this is the problem about trying to imagine something that isn't what we have now. This site this system, the intention is that would have a decentralized AI decentralized is because all the AI systems that we see at the moment are centralized so like Google on them or Pearson in education want to use AI to sell more of their content. What was a centralized AI is that it know it has to know a lot about you, and therefore we've got massive privacy issues and everything else so I want to approach AI in a different way. I want to like as as anyone that comes into this OS, bear in mind it doesn't exist it's just in my head. When you come into this OS, you're given your own AI it's like a Tamagotchi doesn't know anything. It knows how to absorb information like a child baby, but it does it very fast. And it just follows you around in that system is like you know as even at the beginning where you, because people are asking what age group is this force of those for ability not age. You go in as you land in a system you might ask you a whole bunch of questions, you know, can you read this or kind of determine maybe maybe you're dyslexic maybe or doesn't really care doesn't label it but it just wants to know how you engage so this AI starts learning this stuff about you. And you have to give it access to you and your stuff, and anyway you can do that is make sure that you're the only one that owns it has to be decentralized it can't be owned by a Google or a major corporation, you know an Apple or whatever, you know, because ultimately, it will grow bad. If you do that, because you then you could use the AI to nudge people in all kinds of directions that we are on ethical, but the idea is that that would be the thing that would allow you to build a general purpose instrument for your life. But of course, trying to do this and create this it's very hard to speak to people there's no concise kind of elevator pitch this idea because it's too broad and obviously I've got to work on it a bit more. But it went from kind of a sort of fantasy to something that I'm now actively pursuing, because I think it's possible to do it, the problem, the challenge of doing is how do you do it without taking commercial funding. So you don't have like shareholders that want to return investment where they want to start selling advertising and all this, you know, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, say that that stuff doesn't have a place it doesn't have a place in this system. The simple reason is this isn't about exploiting people or monetizing them. It's about liberating them and I was hoping that in designing this system and you know which would require thousands of collaborators. It gives us the environment where we can start solving these big challenges. How do we, how do we fix stuff? How do we create stuff and doing so it provides that transitory technology, so that we don't end up having to have a war or a revolution. Exactly. And for this to happen, because it's like, you know, it's, it's, you know, I'm fundamentally against those kinds of things. I think that war and as famine isn't just a product of this is I don't believe it's human nature to stab each other in the back to get on top. I just don't, I think that's just an absolute nonsense that's been sold to us. I mean, that's not what Charles Darwin meant. Sorry, that was very long again. No, that's fine. I think that, you know, there's so many things that we haven't touched upon. I don't, I don't believe in neo Darwinism. I don't believe in neoliberalism. I believe that we're, we're all part of this symbiotic earth and that we're all distant cousins and the only way to really make it work is through cooperation collaboration that we really see each other as part of this symbiotic earth and what you, what you mentioned is really interesting. Just last, actually this week I had a podcast with Chris Boos, Hans Christian Boos, who does a lot with AI and the German government and miracle and that and I, you know, I also do a lot of this I work with a company out of Australia called Soul Machines I'm working on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the avatar thing. AI digital twin. I think I'm linked in with one of those guys. It's fabulous. Yeah, and so I, and it's all, it's all real a big experiment and there's a lot of, you know, controversy and discussion about it but I talked to Chris and, you know, I would like to see AI in some form. Help us get a real time update of collective intelligence, not only that we don't make the same mistakes that we made in the past but also, you know, just give us that information, that big history that maybe we might not be getting or the bigger picture and still leave it up to us to discern but just to have that information that we can't find on Google and can't find in books or that's not readily available there in some context. That's a whole different topic and that's also a whole different thing that we really didn't get a touch on that much during this discussion but we're not going to be able to but you do a lot with innovations technology you kind of have this techno luster you kind of a nerd like me in that respect. You have a long history, you know, if anybody's ever listened to your talks or that you give them the kind of that journey of how it began and how you got involved and and almost a punk cyber hacker, you know, there's a multiple different transition, how you got there, but innovation technology AI and those things also pay play a part in this transition in this, which, which you so nicely said, we won't be able to go into it because we just don't have enough time I need to actually wrap it up with our last kind of a question but it's a two part and that's really for my listeners. I want to encourage them to go to your websites I want to go to your blog to your medium to to that to learn more to also envelope and apply some of the things we've discussed sense making and you know, looking at the bigger picture and how they can play an active role in that future, especially Jim said, and that is I want you to depart to take a ways for listeners sustainable taken ways that they can apply to their lives that will help them make an impact help them get further along help them to maybe apply and change the system or be a part and actively applying what Sir Ken Robinson what you what we've discussed into their lives and and and I want to and I want to set it up maybe give you a little bit more help and that is what should young innovators in the field moving towards education or evangelism or innovation be thinking about if they want to make a real impact that's one. The second one is is what have you experienced or learned in your long journey and in your discussions and where you're still currently on the journey discovering that you would have love to know from the start. I think that there's a powerful question that I try to answer in a succinct way as possible. Um, so any, I think any, I think any anyone particularly gen Zeds that want to get involved in education but I think really it's about change about how do you affect change. And I think that in order to do that, I would recommend getting a really good understanding of how you know societies form and you know like understand some sociology understands something about economics. Um, and obviously philosophy as well but you know that sounds pretty dry I guess if you know to a gender listen oh really, but, but, you know, it wasn't until I started looking at those things that I began to understand, you know, how this all works how it fits together because I think that this, you know you really I think really it's really important to understand what system we mean by system and what we mean by structure and structural change and structural reform. And until I think until you get to grips with that. You end up going down lots of, of, you know, blind allies, I mean, you know, you know, I mean I did I mean I, you know, I for lots of reasons because it didn't work for me I wanted to change education like you think about was changing the way it was how it didn't work. But I failed to understand why it was like it was. And I think that, you know, understanding that bit is important and so it also the second part of your question is I think that's the thing I think that I wish. It's hardly regrets really I mean, you know, I've had a sort of the very strange, I think, you know, career and life. I mean it's only beginning to make sense. You know life is like that as it's lived forward and understood backwards, and I'm only going to understand more or I mean it's so disparate and people can find my CV I mean one minute music industry one minute feature films one minute you know the magic of how do I do all those things and but it makes sense in in my world. But I think that you know again, it would be like a wish I'd understood a bit more earlier on and I don't know where that would have come from because it wouldn't that it would still wouldn't have come from school. It wouldn't have come from university. You know, you know it's, it's, I guess it's that thing isn't it about life it's like you just really suddenly realize you haven't got enough left. It's, it's, it's, you know, more than halfway through it now. And it's, it's like where does that go it's like, you know, we wish I, you know, I wish I could do more, you know, I, you know, it's like, but it's taken me this long to know who I am. So maybe I had to do it. Okay, great. Did you answer the second one as well that was both of them wrapped up. Yeah, that was both wrapped up. I think it's like because the point that young people should, if they want to and I mean young people in a pejorative way I mean like, you know, if you're getting into this is understanding what systems and structure structure. And I think, you know, what a structure is and how the other operates and then get that through sociology and but an economics I know it sounds dry but just to understand that economics is design. It's a design of how societies operate. I think once you grasp that, then the changes you want to make whether that's working in education or healthcare or food or whatever it begin if you want to affect change, it has to be a system level. I mean the, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement I'm a, you know, passionate support me actually all of those movements I'm passionate supporter of all of them. The thing was is actually, you know, Black Lives Matter I mean I remember the first political rally I ever went to was, you know, when I was a young teenager in 1979. It was the rock against racism anti Nazi League, marched through London and ended with seeing the clash play at Victoria Park it was amazing. At that time, we felt that we've made a difference, you know, to the work, you know, because it was about racism, and trying to, you know, get that out of society. But we hadn't, we didn't. And because actually, that's if this is structure the society is is already built in is optimized consciously or otherwise to be racist effectively. And then you don't really get lasting change, you might get some behavioral change for a while but it soon disappeared and we're seeing that now of course I mean the kind of stuff which is now people feel able to say in public forum is just shocking. I'm glad they're saying it because it proves we haven't done it and I worry that, you know, that BLM or the other movements will feel that there's been some change because there's been some concessions. You know, maybe you will kill less people. You know, but it's not the change that you want me to bigger change, and that's going to be very tough and in order to get that change we're going to get a lot of pushback but as you understand what you're up against it's very hard. I mean you could end up, you know, I hate to say this with David Graber just passing, you know, the Occupy movement, you know, it had that momentum but didn't have a manifesto didn't have a what we want and that's in the other part of the conversation. If we want a different status quo if we want a different one from what's happening at the moment we have to unite. What our North Star is and work out what that blueprint or design or that that thing because we have to have a credible alternative that that everyone can get around everyone you know humans all over the planet can get around and we don't have that. It'd be like Occupy will get you know it was well intentioned but it didn't have that. Okay well you don't like that but what do you like how you know what how do we get there. And that's the thing we've got to work on. And I think that's, you know, passing that back from where I am now what I've learned it's that it's like we have to work together to work that what that is and you know, can we crowdsource that, you know, can you know because I think it's this idea of, well who's a leader, maybe we have decentralized leadership, I mean that was that was a point around a number of things I think it can work we have the technologies to do that now. And we did think in the 90s that the Internet and technology would liberate us. You know we never imagined it would be used in the way it is now. I don't think that games over. You know I think that we can reclaim the Internet we can reclaim the conversation that that's where I would I would be and the second part of that was really okay well, you know what would I go back and tell my my younger self it would be that I mean it was like I wish I knew a bit about that but as I say, you know, I only know that because of the experience I've had in my life, you know, it's frustrating, you know, what a time machine or something. That's fabulous. Thank you so much for those wisdoms and that's something they can definitely learn. I always like to to tell them something a good friend of mine john piece for like he's written a couple books he always says, find the who and basically means find the mentor find the who the person who has done it, who has thought about it who's written the book on it who's who's really trying to discover all they can about that you you are one of those people and I'm glad I found you to and we met in that we could we could depart this wisdom because there's so many things that can be gleaned from our discussion that can be put into practice to be applied and it's really great. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a sure pleasure and I hope we can do it again. Next year on another podcast get a catch up and have another deep dive we're going to split this into two parts and and put all the links and everything in there but it was so fabulous. Yeah, I mean Mark. Thank you. It's been actually wonderful seeing you again and having this conversation on I hope it's not going to be a year before we have another one. No, it won't. I'll make sure it's soon. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you to your listeners for for checking in. I appreciate it. Thanks.