 People love models. People love certification programs. People love best practice because that takes away the hard work of thinking for yourself. And because we believe that there are other people who are experts out there that know how things should be done. So we're just going to follow how those things should be done. There are some very brilliant people out there, but the truth is, if you're dealing with complex systems and we are, that the power of the collective intelligence is always going to be better and more powerful than the knowledge of individuals. Penny Anderson is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Jenny is a regenerative strategist, trusted advisor and agent for change who walks side by side with brands, organizations, cities, and municipalities who want to be part of the movement to create a new regenerative economy. As a strategist, facilitator, and educator, she harnesses the power of the collective intelligence of organizations and communities to create visions for the future. They want, together, and also finds the vitalizing energy, psychological safety, and will to sustain long term change. There's deeply about healing the story of separation between humanity and nature, and between humans themselves through divisive culture, social and economic barriers. She believes strongly in the power of connection between people in place. Well, work helps her to surface the bioculturally unique stories of people in place, which set and sustain vision to travel to tomorrow's regenerative futures. I'm the founder of the really regenerative community, a CIC, a regenerative economy learning center, which designs learning journeys for organizations, municipalities, and communities on regenerative leadership, economics, and bioregionalism. Jenny, welcome to the podcast. It's so good that you're here. It's so kind of you to invite me and I feel quite humbled by that introduction. When I, when I listen to that, it's definitely, that is my world, that is my work, and yeah, it feels quite, yeah, I feel I've challenged myself. I actually think you're right in the line with the way that the world is always worked, I think, for hinting to go deep right at the beginning, I really am a practitioner of regeneration and regenerative economics and really believe that it's the way our world is always worked and so I think you're pretty pretty much in harmony and you've really found back to that lost operating manual for spaceship birth or for Homo sapiens that that we never really truly received. That's just how it's always worked and we kind of got separated which in your bio it talks about as well that separation from nature and and that disconnect. I mean, I think, you know, it happens on many different levels, right, so for me as an individual, and I have my periods of not being in coherence in my life. So as a child, like most child, so it's very, very like really deeply connected to nature. You know, my parents were very poor, we lived in the south of London in the UK. They didn't have much. And like every birthday, every Christmas, what do you want, you know, for Christmas Jenny a pony, a pony didn't have any money to buy me a pony took me 40 years to get a pony, but I always wanted connection to animals and to nature so I used to sort of skip school and go up to a place called ups and downs which is just south of London where they used to train resources and lay in the grass and look up at the sun and have conversations with the sun which is, you know, kind of one of the reasons I can't see now. But that was always there as part of me. When you're born, we have an intrinsic biophilic need, right, we want to be, we want to be connected to nature. And then I think as you grow up and I got into business I started out in international development, but then I came back to London and I got into communications and brand marketing where I stayed for almost two decades. That puts kind of like an onion that puts layers of, let's call it civilization around you that you get wrapped in you get wrapped in being in a big city and it's fast and exciting and you're working with global brands like Levi's and Patagonia people like that. And I got to a point where really literally very, very suddenly I woke up and I was done, you know, it was enough. There was like a very deep and visceral call that said, you know, you're done here, this part of, you know, what you're going to do on planet Earth is over and I sold my business and carried on kind of freelancing. But that marks a starting point I was 40 at the time of unpeeling the onion, if you like. And that took, you know, quite a number of years and it's still like an ongoing process. So that's kind of what happens in an individual life. But if we look over like a 2000 or 8000 year periods of homo sapiens. There's a similar pattern there right over all of that that time. We, you know, we started to separate from nature from our deep relationship with nature where there was not really even any gender separation in society, much in the pre Christian pre Muslim pre pre monotheistic religion kind of era, we lived in harmony with the land and in harmony with nature. And as soon as we started to sort of build cities and settle in place and discovered agriculture and learn that we could manage and manipulate nature for our own benefits. That kind of story began, and it continued and continued over a couple thousand years to where we are today, you know, in the scientific revolution era, people like Dick Hark who told us, well you can understand the world through mathematics and Newton who taught us you can understand the world through force. That that that shaped a way of thinking and designing the world designing society that was then really deeply embedded when the Industrial Revolution came, which, you know, you, there are lots of different strands of developmental thinking you can call it mechanistic, you can call it orange you can call it, you know, scientific, whatever you like. The, the really is the core of how we designed the world around us. That's that story of separation it's between humans and nature. There's a space between humans and humans and that kind of manifests like in nation states as an idea, you know, it's a made up constructs not real. It manifests as different religions, racial tension, gender inequality, economic inequality. So, you know, two other really I think important things which is those two very important threads were accompanied by a real focus on the, and I'm kind of very dyslexic about left and right so I might get this wrong. Our left hemisphere brain qualities in detriment to our right brain qualities and you can call those masculine feminine psychological qualities so that the kind of mechanistic thinking of the day which is reductionist and breaks things down into parts, made us focus on notions of goal setting silo thinking competition over collaboration. And that's not to say that those qualities aren't really important, but they, they're very valuable, but they can become unbalanced. So there's something that we need to rebalance in our connection to nature connection between each other, and also that connection between left and right and inner and outer way in which we live to really up value, if you like, the development of humans rather than our external, you know, success image, climbing the slippery ladder of corporate achievement, you know, sorry now I'm now really like already we're into some deep stuff we're doing on here. We definitely have gone deep already and and that's okay. I want to reel it back in and back up just a little bit for a couple a couple reasons so for for my listeners, our past have crossed a few times over the years, although we've never spoken or met, other than in this podcast now. So we both have spoken for sustainable brands. You've done a couple, couple times for sustainable brands Turkey co and who is the founder and CEO of sustainable brands as a good friend of mine and I've spoken at all you know all over the world for sustainable brands a lot in Thailand and Turkey as well, different places. So you've also have a lot of similar acquaintances so Daniel Christian wall Carol Samford, you mentioned in your writings quite a bit. And you have wonderful writings on medium and we'll get into a little bit on this book that you've been working on for a long time and I know how that is and many of us know how that is and we'll talk more about that. But there's, you know, you talk about Dana. So, Danela Meadows, basically, and I just months ago just spoke with her husband he's permanently gone into retirement he doesn't want to have anything more to do with with limits to growth or saving a rescue in the world in any way. He wants to just enjoy his, his old age. And then, like I said there's probably I could go on and on and I have, I actually went I was preparing for our college, I put numerous books here that you've referred and your works right next to me on my stool here so I might hold some of them up to trigger some conversations. But you gave us fabulous TEDx talk in 2018 year great speaker. And in there, not only do you talk about regeneration but you also talked about the SDGs, you talked about how it's kind of a model for the future is a kind of a plan to December 2030, which I really like because I'm a sustainable development goal advocate have been part of the SDGs for a long time and I like how you kind of combine the two for this this better future and so I really want to know want the listeners to know that there's a lot of crossovers where I'm in a lot but you've been working on this for quite some time and studying with with the best and, and I guess recently Daniel Christian wall just got an award, you'd probably say more than that that you kind of nominated. Yeah, you nominated him for and many others did. This is wisdom that is out there this is knowledge and education learning that is out there and available, but not really in one spot, not in one book it's not a linear or siloed book that you can grab it's it's really a systemic of wisdom it's very complex but it's also found in numerous books I mean you know just like I said I think I pulled 12 books off the shelf where you can get this knowledge, but you have a course it's already full sorry but next next season, people can jump in on it through your own company really regenerative does this power of place it would it be safe to say a course on regeneration or regenerative economy economics. I would call it a journey. So, thank you for mentioning it. It's a, it's a, it's a journey that kind of lays out, I hope, the very many facets of what regeneration is with a focus on working in place so to come back to what you said about, you know, one book. There's no one place that you can go and get this wisdom. And I think that's really important. And it's really correct that it should be that way because what is part of the mechanistic mindset is the idea of expertise. And I would describe the regenerative field. It incorporates anthropology, deep ecology, developmental psychology, developmental biology it incorporates, you know, many more fields than that have kind of connected and come together to create a new field of thinking that probably has something at its heart at its core is living systems thinking is, you know, how, how do we design economies as if or places or businesses or whatever, as if we were living inside a living system. But there are many fields that add up and come together to do that. There's biomimicry, there's donor economics. There's lots of different contributors that make up that field. So, I think about it, if you think about the traditional way of studying a PhD, right, is there's a field of knowledge and your PhD goes really deep into one very specific aspect of it. And this is more like a PhD that's an ecosystem that it, you know, that joins together many different branches and fields of knowledge. But what is really critical, I think about this whole field of knowledge is that as you say, it's, it's not new. It's been somewhere since Big Bang. It is the way in which evolution happens. It's the way in which elders of indigenous wisdom understand and have connection to the world and I, and have relationship to the world. So, you know, evolutionary it is ever changing the, you know, we have lost while we've been chasing the dollar. It's that kind of break like like my break in my life where I was, you know, chasing the dollar. It separates you from that wisdom that is accessible to everybody so, you know, I think it's in these cases, we have an incredibly powerful role to play in living systems as both stewards and catalysts of what is evolutionary in whatever work we do in place and it's just we've just forgotten. We've just forgotten what that, that that is our, we're part of living systems that's, that's, you know, that horribly big human question, what are we here for in my humble opinion, that's what we're here for. But we just got distracted by thinking that we're here to build enormously successful corporations that whittle away and extracts fast dollars. You know, it's not that they shouldn't be there, but their purpose is has gone on a slight tangent that we kind of need to just come back on track a bit. Would you call that sheer capitalism or would you call that the human condition or a fault in the human condition. Well, how, how would you describe that how how do we get off track or how how does that that model or path get to get instilled in us. Why do people not have that you know that instead of discovering regeneration or peeling back those layers to find out how the world works. Why, why do we have to go through that process or what gets us on this other process. Now, that is that's like a huge question I'm just thinking about how long do we have. We've got the time. Okay, so if we come back to where we started how that evolutionary developmental check trajectory of humanity over time is, we have developed different ways of viewing the world as we have become more complex. As we have evolved, we have developed what we might call different worldviews or some people use the word paradigm. And so we're just on a trajectory where we need to develop the next level of thinking ahead of us. So it's easy to get into a debate about right wrong did we go off track with the industrial revolution. I think you can tie yourself in knots about that one. I think, you know, it was a trajectory that we evolved into and through. And what we understand now is the way of thinking that a company that economy has got us to where we are now where we're are at a number of different existential threats, whether it's climate change, the possibility of food systems going down, ocean acidification, all of which we know are interconnected. It's just a, you know, it's hard to look for truisms. But I think whether it's bucky fuller or or who said, you know, you're not going to create the new using the same thinking that created Einstein. The problem theory, you can't solve our problems with the same thinking you used to create it. I want to, I want to jump on a couple things there so and I want to get your opinion so I don't want to also kind of hold up some books in the process. And I might wait, wait on a few of you've all you just mentioned bucky. The great thing about this operating manual for spaceship Earth and the reason there's so many great things, the reason I really like it is because on the inside of it is basically his why or purpose for, for, for life what he hoped to achieve and what he really wanted and if any of us in the business world know Simon Sinek or some of the other great coaches as a why is basically your mission statement your purpose, your, your, how, how you run your business and your life and in the beginning of this book which was amazing and I want to read it to everyone now is really to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone. That was written in 1969. 1969 Jenny I mean the guy was amazing a front runner, but I'm sure that wisdom, and we can see it in the golden rule has been around for a long time treat people on planet how you would like to be treated the golden rule so to say, and to have this purpose that kind of has these undertones of regeneration, but yet we have this big disconnect and and I want to throw out something that and see your opinion because I believe that the, the you know you mentioned the industrial revolution and many other things that could be a debate that we could get into. I think that we got off course, and it's not even important when or how, with the misunderstanding on neoliberalism or neo Darwinism and the survival of the fittest natural selection we we we thought the way the world work is through severe competition only the strongest survive we have to fight to to win we have to work really hard to to get it to happen and to win over competition, and we thought that natural selection was the was what Darwin meant and we got it wrong because that's not what he meant and and has been clarified numerous times that actually the world works in symbiosis or regeneration, which is, you know, symbiosis is an ecological phenomenon and one of the best innovative phenomenons in our in our in humankind to get us on on the right side of history but also to get us up to speed with regeneration and the symbiotic earth. And so, I actually am more with Lynn Margolis and I've got her books right here and I know you mentioned her as you know this microcosmos and the symbiosis that we, that's the way the world's really work but we fought against. Both models the right word but we fought against that understanding that hey you can work in nature and harmony with nature and you can work together with other species and other animals we are an animal. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that that isn't because we were kind of brought up under this mode or that we thought that that's the way the world's works that's how business and organizations the model of our of our world systems is currently set up through nationalism competition. Yeah, it's. So, you know, you, I absolutely agree with you what you said about a misinterpretation of Darwin, but actually if you take yourself kind of mentally back to that period of time there's almost no other way that it was likely to be interpreted. Because we were in that scientific reductionist really strong new emerging era in the world at the time. So, so what happens is we design the world the way we think. So if you're thinking, if you're Newton and you're saying the world is understood through force because an apple fell from a tree and I discovered gravity which was amazed like beyond understanding at the time. So if you think that everything happens through force, then your attitude in the world and the way in which you design the world around you will involve force so we took you talked about earlier. So if you get on in, we believe you get on in the world who work really hard, you know, you'll get to the top that beliefs that has at its fundamental understanding force, that if you apply hard work to something, you will rise to the top. So that mindset being dominant when Darwin published the focus of the way in which people were thinking on the day went in on to competition. And as you mentioned so nature's got six at least different models of relationship, one of which is competition, and not the most dominant form of relationship that you'll find in a living system. The most dominant form of relationship in living systems is mutualism in its many different forms, but we grab told of competition as a model for designing the world. And, you know, it's incredibly prevalent, every way you look so at school you compete for places in the next school that you move to. You compete through doing exams, and the person that gets to the top of the class gets the best places at the next school, the people who get the top grades at university get the best jobs. So competition is a reinforcing feedback loop for privilege, if you like, that makes that's making it like massively simple, but but it's one of the outcomes and competition for the as a model of business in the market came as a result of that thinking So it's not to say that competition is always wrong, but if competition results in an extractive economy, then it then eventually, you know, you don't have a living system. So, you know, I was having this debate with actually some friends that sustainable brands a couple of years ago. So if you look at how did we get to a vaccine for COVID-19, you can say was because there's a competition dynamic in the market that large businesses could see a huge opportunity for income earning in what was transpiring through COVID-19 and that allowed them to create a solution, which is multiple different vaccination programs. And many of those organizations haven't taken profit out of it which is, you know, good on them which is amazing so they're acting in service of humanity but in general, the competitive business model it drives difference, it drives choice, but you know, the question is how much choice do you need what what is what is enough and competition driving an economy, which is based on the ability to have constant growth on what is a finite planet and the equation that again has got us where we are today. So it's not to say that competition is all bad. Sometimes it, you know, competition can be great fun if you're playing games at school, but there's always a loser in competition. You know, somebody to win, somebody has to lose and so, you know, you're in that zero some some game and get into games theory win-win zero some game things like that. Right now with the challenges that we have. And I think you can see this and a lot of big organizations that are coming together and looking at existential threats, collaborative advantage is coming through. So you've got a lot of organizations the size of Unilever and PNG who were saying, you know, let's collaborate together to eradicate plastic from the supply chain. Let's collaborate together and share emergent technology which we would normally use for competitive advantage for collaborative advantages to address these challenges. But that, you know, again coming when you were saying earlier is why don't, you know, why are we making progress, why aren't things changing is that incredibly deep belief in a model of competition in a model of, you know, having to climb to the top, being the best, being the expert, it takes a hell of a lot of unpicking to persuade, you know, that scarcity mentality that is really pumped into society, often through advertising, through creating an idea of scarcity where there is none, through plying people's emotions and need for belonging, their needs to be part of a tribe, their need for recognition, all of the needs they're absolutely common to every human being on earth. But if you manipulate those needs for gain, then, you know, then I think you are stepping into, you know, having been in it 20 years myself, is you're creating a society that is focused on fulfilling needs that aren't real, we just believe they're real. And one of the things that COVID-19 as an acupuncture point has done is give people pause, right, give people a little bit of pause to get off the treadmill of more, more work, more money, more bigger house, more better car, and actually think about what really mattered to them, you know, the silence that fell when cars stopped rolling and planes stopped flying and the cleaner air that came up, the opportunity to invest time in your family and spend more time with your children gave people pause to think, okay, that actually there is a better way of living. And now we're, we're the point that we're at now, and yes, there isn't a lot of time to, it is where there are a lot of people now thinking, okay, I want a different way of life. I want to live and work differently is how do we redesign our economies from what they were to become economies that create the conditions for life that are like living systems. And then immediately, two things kick in. One is fear is because we just don't know how to, how to do that. And the second is the failure of imagination, because we have spent so much of our time being taught what to think when to think it, what to do, how to become an expert is that there is a lack of capacity to think for ourselves and I know that sounds really bizarre, there's lots of incredibly bright people in the world. But we need to really lift up the capacity to think from scratch for ourselves, not to rely on the thinking that is in front of us and so how does that manifest. And people love models, people love certification programs, people love best practice because that takes away the hard work of thinking for yourself. And because we believe that there are other people who are experts out there that know how things should be done so we're just going to follow how those things should be done. And there are, you know, there are some very brilliant people out there. But the truth is, if you're dealing with complex systems and we are that the power of the collective intelligence is always going to be better and more powerful than the knowledge of individuals because complexity is gone beyond what any single human brain can compute. For the time being until maybe Peter down and saw some other incredible bright brain actually really allows human beings to live to 140 with the intelligence power 40 year old personally that's my idea of how, but it may happen. So. Yeah, that can be the definition of hell six. It's like damnation experiencing everything up to a point and then you can never learn or go beyond that or it's a point of a flow of stop or living, you know, forever, not experiencing anything new new no evolution, no revolution, no growth, no, you know, there's a lot of things you've you touched on so many things like, and it's really not about the debate when and who there's many factors around the industrial revolution industrialists and Huxley and many others who maybe influenced the thinking around neoliberalism neo Darwinism and kind of this survival of the fittest and that we thought that's how the world really works, but there are some models and you speak about this and a couple times you've spoken about it. organizations out there that have these other models that are more circular regenerative more holistic more. Free thinking free allow some different. liberties for the individual to set their own schedule and their own own methods and be to be empowered to be trusted to be. enabled with with the right tools to advance the entire organization or their section of the organization and to get more satisfaction out of work and I want to with that I want to touch on a couple other things that tie tie to this type of thinking so. So, we know that it's symbiosis we know that it's regenerative you mentioned regenerative economics, a few times just in our conversation and we need to break that down for everyone as well. We're, and to do that we need to talk about different economic models. I wanted, I want to tell you. And get into this discussion, a little bit in this direction. We've had more than 20 civilization frameworks in our world before early antiquity Mesopotamia Incas Aztecs Maya's Greeks Roman on and on. And all but two of those 20 collapsed, because of an ecological environmental collapse type basically tied to food and basic resources you know infrastructure basic needs of humanity that's why they collapsed and even see and hit big history lessons where there was descriptions of Alexander the Great walking and you know riding a horse in the Middle East and wow it's green and lush and food and abundant it's wonderful well that that same ride on the horse or truck or Jeep today is there's a lot of lush and abundant and it's a lot of desert and sand and hotter than heck. It's not there anymore so that that's you know the collapse has occurred and now we go to the Parthenon or to some ruin and take a selfie, but not even grasp. The meaning or the big history of that that that was a complete civilization just as an advance and had innovation and monies and food and tools and as we do but they're not here anymore. And that's that that's one part the the the next part is even more important for me because we I don't like to talk about models either but when we talk about economic models extractive capitalism or regenerative economics. We're talking about kind of a system for civilization we're talking about a model for civilization and if we look at all those 20 that don't exist not just the the two that were collapsed because of displacement or conflict but all of them. They all had a model that was a hierarchy model, a few kings and queens and lords and rulers at the top and slaves peasants farmers at the bottom. And we see that a lot of organizations that come and go that have a lot of job dissatisfaction that have a lot of bailouts and turnovers and are very extractive. And even business models the way they function, you know they go in and use contractors and consumers and resources. Like they're going out of style and then when they're gone they just move on to the next place to find where the resources are their model and a lot of us, especially the fossil fuel industry been working on these type of models so someone who's concerned about sustainability about the world about regeneration about resilience how do we get to these better futures. And you brought it up many times, we need to be well versed in the good economic models and also the bad ones so that we know is this a model that can take us into a better future take us into those regenerative civilizations or frameworks that provide us with something better. And to that I'm kind of a big history buffer nerd as well of of Herman daily so ecological economics so these are both his academic books I took his course and and studied ecological economics. In today's day and age, we have several different buzzwords and I want to throw them out we have ecological economics from Herman daily we have steady state economics which is also from Herman daily we have circular economy. We have donut economics which you mentioned mentioned from Kate rowers. We have mission economics from Mariana Mazzucata. We have something that could be a form of an economic model tied to our planetary boundaries from Dr. Johan Rockstrom. We have this one you talk about as well. The ecological footprint is the how we calculate the earth overshoot day or our global footprint or individual footprint from Matthias Marker model, and I actually think that that's a fabulous model that we've had over 35 plus years very successful it's accepted from the scientific community, but we use it in almost a negative way to calculate how how much bad or impact we have on our planet, whereas there's a whole another flip side of that that we could actually put in empowerment or stewardship to each individual and say this is how much good you could do or this is how you can live within planetary boundaries or how you could. And with good stewardship increase your global footprint or your global hectare that's replicable. And, and so, setting up that framework with these different economic models and what worse I am completely sold that regenerative model for civilizations and life is how our world is really always worked. And how do we, how do we realize boy, this hierarchy model that we've seen to tilt today has never worked and we keep repeating it over and over, even though civilization to fill. How do we, how do we jump into these new models, how do we, how do we take that leap how do we peel back the layers is a critical mass where do we need to go so I've asked you a bunch of questions, but I'm trying to set it up and see if they're in the same wavelength if there's some difference differences and and not only to push people to your course but also to kind of how can humanity who was who was asking these questions during a pandemic. So, these books that I've been showing go to the things that you're saying, and pulled together this complexity to say man. This is the future I want this is the economic model I want now I've got to take my leaders and those people in power or, or create or designed this new model and hold those people's feet to the fire I just left clock 26 and Glasgow. Yes, for me it was a good event but in many respects, a big failure, and it's our 26 time. We're good at repeating, you know, repeating the same thing over insanity, we need some better directions and tools and help and so that's that's my main objective and that's why I've come to you because I think you, you've also read these people on this and you have a lot to bring to us. I'm not sure where to begin. Okay, let's begin with civilization collapse, because I'm kind of also, you know, very interested in that from a just from a learning perspective. There are people like Sir John God taint her, you know that have written really produced really interesting work on that. So, so the bad news, as you say, is almost every civilization before us based on to make it simple a hierarchical model as collapsed. That collapse has followed the same trajectory over over time the same different ages, the age of pioneers, the age of affluence, kind of culminating in the age of decadence, which is almost where we sit right now. And those those works are really interesting for your listeners to go and look at that story of the rise and fall of civilizations follows a pattern. And we haven't talked about pattern thinking but we're about to now. So that's pretty bad news. But the good news is we are the first civilization, literally of all of those that has access to that body of knowledge. And theoretically, being able to see that every single civilization before us has that followed that basic model has ended in failure. You would think it would be a very simple thing to say, Okay, we're on that trajectory, we're going to intervene and change this now. Many hundreds of thousands of people that have sort of tweaked to that. Then the big question is, how do we do that. And we are also in a period of time where our impact is a civilization has created a global existential threat, which is not the case for every other civilization that we talked about here. We might have, you know, the Egyptian civilization rose and fell the Roman civilization the Aztec civilization, but none of them had an impact on the planet that put the stable stable living systems of the planetary ecosystem at risk. So that's a really a massive additional pressure for us to take on on board. But coming back to literally where we started there's no silver bullet like there's no magic solution for the situation that we're in but there is a journey into the future because there's always a journey into the future that's called evolution. Something will happen on that trajectory into the future. And I think if you try to think about it in very simple terms, things like the planetary boundaries just really help is what we have to design our civilization economies, if you like, because there's no point in an economy if you haven't got people that not only do not overshoot planetary boundaries, but rein in the ones that we already have overshot. So that's kind of very practical problem solving. Not simple, but problem solving. The challenge is the belief set around what that means to change from what we have today to what we might have tomorrow. And human beings are a really pioneering in spirit, but they're equally that power paradox of equally resistant to change. So it is about designing for uncertainty. And when I say uncertainty I mean recognizing that every change that has to happen, whether that's recycling my bins or whether it's changing my car from a petrol car to an electric car. So there's a decision making process within that that's enormously emotional. It might be practical, I can't afford that new car. But there's a decision in there somewhere that says, well, if I really want that new car if I really believe that's the right thing. And I can only afford it. If I don't have X, you've got to be prepared to lose X. So I think what is really the hard bit to address is our notion around, which comes from the extractive economy of what more is. So if more is more things, or then and your people around you are designing an economy where you'll have less things, resistance will kick in. If you believe your security, your emotional, your financial, your status security, your belonging security depends on things, you'll hang on to those, the idea of things. So in terms of economic design to meet that enormous body of resistance and fear and misinterpretation of what good life is all about. There are different economic models that address that pathway towards what might be a regenerative economy, and the circular economy is one of those. The circular economy doesn't necessarily solve all of the existential crisis we're facing, but it's a really good step on the pathway to what a regenerative economy. If we could imagine it might look like, because it takes everything that we've extracted out of the ground or system so far, and keeps them in circulation really simple until such time as we've worked out how the hell we're going to design economies are not based on fossil fuels for example. So it's a really important step along the way. Donut economics is another model that helps us address other questions. So if you look at the work that Kate has done with the city of Amsterdam for example and look at the city portrait model. You're asking, you're asking circular questions you're designing a circular economy but over and above that you're looking outside your city economy and saying, what place inside our economy are we having a negative impact on people on the other side of the world. And in what part of our economy, are we actually creating more division in our own society and continuing in it in equity. So that's another model that kind of helps us along the way. But the big question is after that, what's the next step on the way to an economy that is consistent with living inside a living system. So we're finding different ways as we go to address different aspects of the huge transformation that we need to make. And by the way, I just need to say here, I flunked every economics module and everything I ever studied I'm not an economist. Okay, so I'm an outside person looking into the world of economics. Hallelujah, because most economists are men wearing ties and they're, they don't get it anyway so I think I'd rather much rather have you be a modern day ecological economist or regenerative economist and anything else. I'm a generalist. I know lots of things about lots of things and I'm not an expert in anything at all. But you know I kind of think coming back to ecological economics and eco and designing economies around deep ecology and the values there's a shoot that's a huge body of work ecological values. The thing that you don't know anything is is to start with them. Right. So, so I know I'm not good at economics, but I'm kind of practical in my mind it's not that complex to me is that you, you know you can't take out more than is being put in. It doesn't take rocket science to work that one out. The critical thing is, is we're so trained to say this is the right way that's the solution that's the right thing. And what we have to kind of learn to do it's like Don Ellis said is, dance with the complexity, believe in the goodness of humanity and all of these different models, Mariana's mission, economics, Kate's donor economics, ecological economics, they're all making a contribution to the change that we need to make over a very short period of time. And what is critical within all of those models is how do we give enough people a belief in a different way of designing the world, while we keep the lights on. And it's, it's all very well to for me to sit here with my lack of economic training and say we need to imagine a different future, but every single person on the planet still has got bills to pay, right. Most people have still got a mortgage most everybody still needs to eat. So it's easy to be wise from your armchair. There that have a responsibility to keep the lights on generally called governments, and whilst they work with people who can try to imagine how the hell we can transition the economy that is extracting and crippling our life support systems to something that still keeps the lights on enables people to pay their bills in an economy dominated by by currently money as we know it. And so, you know, like net zero, for example, net zero is another, it's not the filter bullet, but it's a step. Well, I, yeah, I'm a big fan of William McDonough the sustainable architect and also Buckminster Bucky also said this in different terms. If you're net zero, you're flatlining you're dead. And even in the new book from Andrew Winston and Paul Pullman, it basically says if you if you if you're, if you're, if you're net zero or carbon neutral or that you're dead you're flatlining that that's that's not life because we're made up of carbon are we we need carbon in some areas of of life on earth. But we need to keep it within the safe operating spaces of the planetary boundaries and if we're this neutral, which could be a form of greenwashing, then that that could be just another form of death or flatlining as we know robots but net positive has been a much better step in the right direction. I always say those organizations and say you know will be net zero by 2030 will be net zero by 2025. They're basically saying that they're going slower in the wrong direction they're still doing harm they're still going to have emissions until that point. They're just doing it a lot slower, or they're reducing the bills who say you know 60 70% we're reducing our emissions this year next year that they're telling us nothing they're telling us they're going slower in the wrong direction. As businesses as human beings, we're here to be stewards of this plan we need to leave it better than we found it and also get back in that safe operating spaces or planetary boundaries that's kind of more. The direction I would like to see us go so to be on the right side of history. I want to kind of interjected a couple things in in our discussion now so you have this wonderful series which ties to the book that you've been working on for a long time the power place, not only the course, but also on medium right now I think it's 15 I don't know if it's set to go to 20 or if it's capped out at 15. No no it's probably set to go to about 40 but I just have to find. Okay. They're absolutely fabulous reads and I'll put a link in show note descriptions for everybody to go to on medium and subscribe and like and read their fabulous reads are well done. The books we've talked about today and many more you talk about them as well as well as connect to those thought leaders, you know from Daniel Schmachtenberg to Daniel Christian wall man many many greats out there that that you refer to and discuss who can give us these areas of wisdom these nuggets of education or places to look to get this bigger view of maybe your own model or direction of where we should go. I want to, I want to kind of drill or prod you a little bit with with this question. Besides what you told us in the beginning of the podcast. Was there a little bit something more that led you down this path to do this way it was just a day of total disruption that you said okay now I'm just done and you started to search for something else or was that the lights kept getting brighter over time. I think there was some other major things that happened so you know when I decided to sell my brand business. You know I wasn't conscious then that my self my soul was making a decision to, you know, like check on to a new path. I was made a decision you know I'm kind of done every brand challenge I feel like doing you know big changes coming digitalizations coming. I don't want to really play in the same market so I was ready to evolve myself to a new level. I wouldn't have described it like that at the time, I would have described it at the time that said, I really want to own a horse and I can't have a horse if I'm running around the world on a plane helping brands sell more stuff. But so I would say it probably a transformation began there, and then about six seven years into that onion peeling process. I was diagnosed with terminal and phone up, which obviously didn't turn out to be entirely terminal because I'm not a ghost I'm actually still here. And that gave me, you know, again time out which in modern business and work you almost never have, even though I had bought land, and I had horses I was still on a plane doing individual consulting, you know, I was still earning my living that way. And that took me out for a couple of years, because my strategy for survival was okay if my immune system is shot to pieces. I need to remove myself from humanity. I need to stay at home with the horses with the bugs I know I don't get on a plane I don't go into an office I don't go into a restaurant don't go on a bus. And I pretty much stuck to that and you know I eat myself as well as I can. So, and that gave me time to really dig into a field of study that I'd always been interested in because I was in communications which was developmental psychology so that was that added that was like, Oh, okay. There is more to this than I had understood and that's where I started to sort of see that evolutionary psychological journey of humankind I've never really paid attention before. And at the same time, I was watching the land that I was in caring for change and I think there is, you have a very different perspective when you're caring for land and you're out in the elements every single day. So, tribute to farmers here, you begin to see climate change happening. You experience it really viscerally. So I got over the cancer and another period of seven, eight years past where I was all I was learning a lot more I was starting to explore biomimicry. I spent a small period of time. I was looking through. The name is not coming to me out at the university. Peter Dimans is university in California. Singularity University trying to understand things like AI exponential tech didn't happen. It's just not my photo. Watching the land change because so the patterns of weather going from gentle every every couple of days rain England rain to long periods of drought huge downpours flooding the land. And back in 2014 2013 the winter had been very wet my house and my stables have been flooded and that was pretty bad and pretty exhausting. I was still really in recovery. In the winter of 1314 it was serious Christmas Eve. I'm trying to bring in for courses at start there. The land had already been flooded there were little islands that they could be on. And you see a silver wall of water coming at you through the darkness. In one minute it was around my ankles and next minute it was up here. And that that that stayed for eight weeks. So my my project my beloved horses I lost I had to make a choice. And then I found myself under attack on social media by animal rights organizations for choosing to have because I felt I had to have my final courses put down because I had nowhere for them to go. You know I was for really already very depressed at the time I just didn't realize that. And that's when I really hit rock bottom. You know it's like okay there's there's nothing left for me where's the neck where's the bottle of pills. And so when you hit rock bottom like that there's two choices you check out or the only way is back up again. So I think those two very existential if you like experiences. And that had an enormous impact on me as a human being. And kind of most people when they come out of cancer get very carpet DM and I was always carpet DM so I just I went the other way. That complete sort of crash gave me another moment if you like to sit there and say okay I'm going to stick around a really really have to understand where I can contribute with the rest of the years that I have left. That became a very accelerated learning journey I've had a, you know, good grounding in business and branding in developmental psychology and started to look at biomimicry, but then I kind of accelerated through a number of other fields. And where I came out, you know, particularly with credit to people like Janine, then yes, who really codified life's principles and people like rich of cat pros cat for course I did people like that too I went through the first course we might have been in there together. I'm a totally amazing person, but where I came out is is okay. So, how does the life actually work. It doesn't work globally, right, it works ecosystemically and bio regionally. That means, if we want to design a world, it, we have to change the way we think and the way we think is not global. It's ecosystem and can it's bio regional. And that means therefore that where we started out the stories of separation between human and nature, humans and humans. And how can we, can best be solved in place and place can be a city, it can be a town, it can be a bio region. But there's something intrinsic in that this is how living systems work. They are, they are place boundary, they're adjacent to each other, but life travels forward evolves in that model. That is the, that is the model at which life has continued to exist for 3.8 billion years. So for me that that it was that okay light bulb moment that said okay I can stay transforming working with global brands as long as I like. So it's my acupuncture point for work in the future. It is going to be in place, whether that is place based business place based community place based ecological regeneration. It has to be with a focus from place. But it was that journey, if you like, could do all those different things happening that brought me to that light bulb moment for me. I'm not saying by any means that everybody else has to think that that's how I got there which is a totally different place from where I began. I love that. I think that everybody has in some respect, a level or a place that they're at in certain times some are more susceptible or available to be picked up where they're at and to go on a journey or to discover. And others are just not ready I mean if you would ask me almost 30 years ago. When I was doing what I was doing today, I was nowhere close you know I said and I couldn't even think about sustainability or the earth and local and all the things that we've discussed here today. And I really appreciate you sharing that that in depth journey and I fully in an agreement not only the local economic aspect of that but also human health and your health, our health. And it's really a microcosmos of the world around us and it's not the world around us all around the world is the world around us where you're at and in the United Kingdom where I'm at and Hamburg Germany and even in a much smaller radius on how, how we're tied to that biome and how if the health there is good that's also a big effect on on us and how we see the world and how we interact with with the world. There's some mean there's so many books that I have here I don't want to talk about all of them, because we have touched upon many of them but the the new one I wanted to ask. Have you read this regeneration from Paul Hawking yet just came out September. I am plowing my way through it. I haven't got to the end yet, but it is it by the end of Christmas I'm sure I will have how I finished it a couple times so I was going to have them on the podcast and then things changed and I went to cop and I'm hoping that the beginning and next year in December, I will have them on the podcast. But how are you liking it so far what do you think about all you've learned about regenerative economics regeneration period. How are you liking it so far. I think you know what Paul does with his vast reach and his profile is he is able to curate on a global scale which isn't available to people, some more people like such as my as myself and I think that that is an enormous service. You know, to try to curate in one place. Everything that is possible that could be done to solve the current challenges we face. So far I have this bit that I is missing for me, and it's exactly the same with the SDGs that I felt was missing from the SDGs, and I'm coming back full circle and I'm starting to sound like I'm going to be boring here. It doesn't. I haven't yet arrived at a chapter that talks about how you change the way you think. Because if you address the problem with this thinking that created the problem, you just kicking the cans out the road. And I haven't arrived at that yet but I'm hoping to be surprised and find it somewhere. But that was my challenge with the SDGs is the SDGs are silo silo things that are deeply interconnected. But you have to try and find a way to shape a narrative that engages the widest number of people with the recognition that everybody is a different level of consciousness, different cultural history, different life experience different character personality. So the SDGs as a design might not have been perfect, but they're better than anything else that we had when they came out. And I will still say the same about diving into Paul's work so far and actually I was on the website this morning that can see what new thing had been added. It is that what we have to address is how we weave in the developmental aspect of the people that have the power to enact the solutions he is curating and weaving develop regenerative development the development of how we think of trying every single possibility that we can to uplift the potential of our thinking to a higher potential a higher playing is critical within all of those many solutions and challenges he's curating. That's always the bit that is missing for me, but I am very particularly focused on on that so that's the nominal body of work that I think it's, I think it's as good as good feedback and I think that that it also needs to be addressed. It's definitely not a perfect work it was really good I enjoyed as well and I think, you know, for us. Regenerations not a new thing but it in the last three to four years it's really become a buzzword and hype I was I did a podcast with with foothold capra. And we had a talk about this quite a bit that it's hype and it's new and it's not and he, I already knew this I knew it from the capra course that I took it. So I'm alumni from one of the very first courses. And, and he's, he's one of my favorite his books are all over my shelf and he and principle said, who was the first scientist to ever talk about regeneration, you know and I at the moment I was so starstruck that he was on the podcast I couldn't even think straight. And he says, you know, it's been around for a long time Leonardo da Vinci was the first scientist to write and draw and discuss regeneration and he used different terms and words, like you use as well, but it's, it's not anything new. And also, in the last four years when I've been asked to speak on regeneration because I come from a agriculture area, people always assume I'm going to talk about regenerative agriculture. I can, but that's not what I talk about it's as much more complex it's much more deep than than that. So, I'm glad that there's more emerging as far as where people can get the wisdom but I'm in full alignment with you. This goes back to something you touched upon earlier as well. How do we shift that paradigm and people how do we reach out and pick them up where they're at to take to shift that paradigm and to get them to learn, or to empower them with the knowledge of that there's more out there and you mentioned this earlier in religions and you you mentioned I when you said it you didn't use this term but I was thinking about network marketing that we are often born or we we want others to do the thinking for us we don't want to think so basically what you said is that that you know we need to do the thinking for ourselves we need to formulate that and collective intelligence cognition is is fabulous but we actually have to put not that it's hard we just have to put the time and take the pause to think it through and the answers are almost already within us already there. But we tend to sometimes get lazy and so we're born into a religion but we've never read the Bible or we've never read the Scientology books around El Hubbard or the Book of Mormon or whatever the Quran. We've never read it because we were born into it so we automatically believe it's true based on what others have read or others have told us or we're in a network marketing company and know just because our cousin or neighbor or a brother or mother is in it. We automatically assume they've asked all the questions and it must be a successful thing and we just continue down that path. The minute it doesn't work for us. And we find out wow this just isn't working for me then it's like oh well I only part of it because my parents were part of it or I'm only part of this because I was born into this. And then it's almost this resentment that you know but you didn't test it yourself you didn't ask the questions yourself you didn't have that self discovery. And I think that paradigm shift occurs when you actually can answer the questions yourself when you've taken the time however long it is to struggle with yourself and say, does that make sense. What do I believe, how does the world work how do I want to show up in this. I mentioned that right in the beginning and I didn't jump in then to talk about it because I've, I've done that. I ran across that my entire life where people depending on where they're born are in a religion or in certain type of poverty thing and they're just like well that's how it is that's how it's always been and that's how it will continue. That paradigm shifts and all the answers are within us they're all around us in these books that I've shown today, and the wisdoms that you write about. We just need to go out there and ask the hard questions and so I have six more hard questions for you before we're done with the podcast. My you've been working for for probably over eight years now on on the book the power of place or renewal is kind of has this this working title, but you're been so kind to actually share. Now I don't know chapters but sections out of it as it's evolved and as it's continuing to evolve on your medium so I thank you for that that we can see that wisdom and get those knowledge and be on this journey with you, whether it comes out to a book or not. But I want to ask you the probably the hardest question that I have for you today. And it's the burning question WTF and it's not the swear word. It's what's the future. Or I can formulate one, one other way and that is what does a world that works for everyone look like for you. That is a really hard question, because what it, what it immediately calls to is what we spoke about before is our capacity for managing something that is completely different from our experience is pretty limited. But I suppose I have a maybe I have a set of I ideals and ideals are always dodgy because if you try to implement your own ideals and other people you're a colonialist basically so I say the word ideals with tentativeness. I suppose what I image when I look into the future are isn't is a global economy, which has been not reversed, but strengthened at a bio regional level. That means let's say, let's say the south of England where I live as a bioregionist ecosystem bioregion. So, what would it, what would be possible for us to do here. We think ourselves more resilient as a bioregional economy and do less damage elsewhere around the world so you might start with something like food. Okay, so food is a global system right now but it needs to be re regionalised. And what do we produce, we produce a hell of a lot of our food in the UK actually by comparison to some countries that are much bigger than us outside is how can we strengthen our capacity to produce food whilst regenerating soil and biodiversity and reforesting where possible, as long as we don't stick up monocultures that would strengthen the resilience of our economy if the proverbial really hit the fan and global food system started collapsing under the threat of climate change. What could, how could we design our economies so that they are an evolutionary continuance of the biological and cultural patterns that have always existed here because that would be following living systems pattern pattern. So if I think about somewhere like Portsmouth which is a city on the south coast not far from where I live. There are patterns that have flowed through that place for a long time that have been very outward looking, and quite possibly inwardly ecologically depleting in the harbor. So when you project yourself into the future you still see an economy that's outward looking, but instead of exporting power colonialism naval power that it exports knowledge about how to regenerate the heart of an ecosystem. Because that is what is sitting on its doorstep. So if we looked at somewhere like I think it's Marjorie Kelly tells a beautiful story about the lobster fishing system in Maine. Which has has created a really regenerative sustaining economy from an economy that was literally ripping the heart out of lobster breeding on the coast of Maine. So, and I'll tell that story because I think it's really interesting. So back in the 20th century, back in the 20th century sounds like 20 or so years ago, the lobster population along the coast of Maine was really seriously depleting for a number of reasons, particularly corporate fishing vessels rather than family fishing vessels were coming into the lobster breeding grounds and stripping them of lobsters. And that meant that the family fishing enterprises in the area were struggling to economically survive and at the same time a lot of people were migrating out of New York and Boston and buying up waterfront landscape which if you're a fisherman you need access to because you've got to pack and transport your catch. So a social architecture was created in that region, which address both the law to make it impossible for corporate lobster fishermen to come out of business. That created a community financial investment company that helped fishermen to buy up waterfront properties so that they could continue and support their family businesses and the lobster growing economy. So they were a community to advocate for the, for the protection and the development of the coastline so that the community could come together and prevent corporate interest from coming in and building on the waterfront. And those things were linked together with collecting critical biological data about the coastal ecosystem. When I imagine the future, I imagine ecosystems and bio regions that operate in that in that way, so that they are creating successful communities, businesses, and at the same time revitalizing depleted systems, ecologies. And I don't know if that answers your question but if I multiply that by 100,000 whatever times however many ecosystems there are, that's where I see the future going is we still will always have, you know, we are a global world now. But wherever possible, to come back to what is unique to our local place, you know what is unique to the Gatwick airport economy which is over that way from me. Rather than saying we need to get Gatwick airport back to 2019 levels of flight. What is unique to that ecosystem that it can develop a resilient place based economy from that will still allow it to export things around the world but without turning that into something deeply parochial and protectionist. So we have to find a way to create resilience within a bioregional economic context, while still operating in a global context. So you know what we don't want is increasing polarization and protectionism to arise, which is the negative response to scarcity and fear for resources that we kind of seen a bit through Brexit and Trump and those kind of political manifestations of that. So it really needs a new social architecture, a place based social architecture to allow that to happen. And you're kind of seeing that happen, B corporations is an example of that. We need new legal forms for companies to operate. We need new governance structures to like to ensure that the community in place can ensure everybody's accountable to creating a resilient economy in place. I don't know if that answers your question. No, absolutely. And I answered about three, three of my questions, which is, which is really nice but I want to kind of dive just a little bit deeper as well. So cities really were formed around food and infrastructure and then that food and essential services were really then as the cities got bigger kind of moved on the outskirts more than industrial area, which disrupts the ecosystem, the original ecosystem is supportive and growing kind of in harmony to make it work as well. And now those are being pushed out further and further. And we're also commoditizing our food and resources and kind of not being very efficient and those and those respects and so what I'd like to know because I'm in full alignment there's some there's many other books and papers and thought leaders in Norberg Hodge Local Futures is wonderful kind of these local economies and I totally agree that that's a building community food webs. We need to revitalize these cities these communities these towns with production facilities with and that brings in that resilience aspect I want us to be able to talk about resilience that we're talking about resilient desirable futures, meaning that we still enjoy nature and air and clean water and sanitation and food and, and the basics. And we're not talking about the dystopian resilience that humanity still surviving but we're all running around with gas master space suits to enjoy the future that's definitely not what I would like and I hope no one else would like. That that we think that that resilience better and that's why I like regeneration because it's, it's, it's conservation it's restorative it's, it's regeneration, but it also provides that super resilience into the infrastructure and and when, when, when people talk about sustainable development, you touched upon that and back and forth a little bit. What is sustainable development well the core of it is development residential commercial city development of a place kind of an evolution of a place and your book your writings are about a place. An ecosystem spot and so sustainable development is really how do we sustain that in an ecosystem over time so that it is there for future generations that it has resilience. And the climate catastrophe so floods the droughts that the infrastructure is one to handle, not just the population growth, but also the food the nature of the sanitation requirements to sustain that influx over time. I, in some respects I've seen what you talked about with food and and the United Kingdom during the pandemic and how much food the United Kingdom does does provide, but there is huge disconnect twist between migrant workers and and the brexit and how much land United Kingdom uses elsewhere around the world five times the size of the United Kingdom to produce its food and resources from other countries which is taking that then then it's not global anymore and so we need these more resilient models during a pandemic or during a climate catastrophe they're not going to say boy we better get the salad and whatever it is meat to the United Kingdom. They're going to say no we got to get our own people the food we got to take care of our own needs and our own infrastructures and so we really need to find that harmony and that won't we're not separated through the United Kingdom, but also that we kind of make sure that we're living within the safe operating spaces of planetary boundaries so the question is I know long and drawn out. Excuse me. It's really about, although we want these local economies and these ecosystems. So much is tied to these global resources this global view of global citizenry. I want you to know how you feel about that. Sorry. Being a global citizen and the removal of borders walls and limitations and how we can. We can do that or how we should do that with this regenerative local ecosystem type of thinking. Okay. So, there's one thing I think is very important to step back and think about is one of the core pillars of the global economy is standardization. So whether that's because we believe scale happens through standardization. So if you're growing tomatoes, and you happen to be, I don't know Unilever or PNG or one of the big food companies. You want the kind of the same kind of tomato so that you can replicate the same recipe in 100 or 200 different facilities and your Heinz tomato ketchup comes out exactly the same wherever it is manufactured. So standardizations like the holy grail of global economies, but what happens with standardization is in order to get that tomato to be standardized you have to strip out all of the diversity within tomato growing. You have to engineer the tomato so that it grows as fast as possible one and stays as fresh as long as possible and one of the ways to do that is to thicken its skin for the end result is the nutrient density and the taste just disappears from the tomato. So we have completely same principle applies to the high street where once we had huge cultural diversity in different cities or towns and places across the world. Now there's a Zara or Louis Vuitton or whatever on every single, you know whether you're in Shanghai or New York or Milan by by large the high streets last look the same. There's almost the amount of cultural diversity in doing that what why why do I mention that because there is the balance that we're looking for is somewhere in that equation is what needs to be global and what needs to be local or by by by regional in scale. And that is also a conversation about what do we need and what don't we need. So if we take chocolate for example, chocolate is a global ecosystem. If you pick apart the history of chocolate cocoa trees event originally grew in South America and the Caribbean, and they ended up back in West Africa as part of the slave trade. As people were being transported so products got transported back to West Africa and a lot of cocoa beans that have grown in the world now grown in West Africa. That entire ecosystem, if you like, growing cocoa incorporated a lot of child labor, a lot of financial extraction from families who grew cocoa, a lot of mono cultures produced so you could get more cocoa beans, a lot of deforestation occurring so that cocoa beans can eventually be transported somewhere into the global north where they're processed into chocolate by adding the dairy industry which is equally impactful in the sugar industry which is equally colonial and very bad for human health. So, in terms of chocolate for example, you could ask the question does the world need chocolate at all. You could ask the question what kind of chocolate does the world need, which is a softer gentler question and doesn't make Barry Calabo and Mars take a hit out on my person, for example. In that question, you can then say okay, how can we be restorative in the chocolate industry. How can we give more value back to the people who are actually creating the original being then we extract within the global north. So there's a restorative step, both in terms of ecology and justice before you even get to regenerative to take in that in that industry. And we can ask those questions of every single global industry, what do we, what do we really need where it's harm being done. How can we restore justice and then how can we regenerate. So that's, that's a partial input to your question. The other part of that is a lot of this innovation and this thinking will come from the global south if we allow it to. If we do not impose big bro brushstrokes, global north thinking because the critical experience of what is happening in terms of rapid impact of climate change is happening in the global south. It's happening in the global north but it's happening faster and more rapidly in the global south. And the global south has been the been used as the engine of commodity production for the global north for for a very, very long time. So instead of always thinking perhaps or how can we design by regional economy in Maine. A really good question is to say, how can we take the biology and economy of West Africa that produces a product which we consume far too much of. So restoratively and regeneratively there in that in that region and that's not you and me that's not that's that's what would make that a better and more living a living system there. And you can do that with commodities, any commodity that you pick, because the vast majority of commodities, with the possible exception of wheat and corn, which tend to be grown. Or in more locations with commodities, get shipped out to the global south. So that would be a really interesting place to start is to be the standardized production and design and upscale regional cultural differentiation. There's three last questions I have for you. I don't know if you've read the book or shot or what you feel about Prince William but I want to know what's your shot. I don't know that I work on that scale. Any anymore, if I'm honest, my earth shot is in whatever small impact I can have in the years I have left. How many more minds can I help change to a living systems where thinking that yeah, if I had to have one that'd be mine. Great. If there was one or two messages you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change your life. What would it be your message. But there's no silver bullet. There's no one thing, but it just usually, I guess it's about use your time well. Because there is, we each of us have a finite time on this beautiful blue dot that we call home so that's that's the question that keeps me awake at night is am I using whatever capacity I have. And the hours I've got left well in service of life. And if we can each of us answer that one, then each of us will be making a contribution. Doesn't matter how big or how small we can't all be Nelson Mandela or you know we can't all work on the scale of Paul Hawking, but I think if we can each put ourselves in service of life in some way. Then, yeah, we might get that. I love that. Jenny, thank you so much for letting us all inside of your ideas it's been a wonderful journey, a sheer pleasure, you're a wealth of knowledge and so well spoken and I, I love your reads on medium I'm going to put all the links in the show description so everybody can go to your websites and read and check out and should that book ever make it to the day of light besides the medium article I would like to sign copy and I want to have you back on the podcast so we can take even deeper dive into it. If and when that time comes, but I'm just glad to be connected to you and thank you for sharing this with my listeners and me it's been a lot of fun. And thank you, you know enormously for having me it's a real honor to have been asked to join, you know, many of the people that you've interviewed before I consider my mentors my peers, my, you know, incredibly wise people so I'm hugely honored that you asked me to join you today and, and hopefully a little peek inside my head isn't too horrific for your, for your listeners. And thanks. Thanks very much. I look forward to joining you again in the future if that book ever sees the light today. You're most welcome and I think you touched the hearts of many people who are at that point in their life that they're also on this discovery also learning things and you you help us get to that next level to that next step of enlightenment. So really thank you for that. Have a wonderful day. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you. Bye bye.