 If we, in Europe, would do, as an example, two things. Make it criminal to throw food away, like the French moral, perfect. Because then, around 50% of what we produce goes into the bin to rubbish, because island currents are not beautiful enough, or we mismanage your logistics. So if we make it criminal to throw it away, there's no shortage of food supply. It's a question of management, or appreciating carrots which have small issues which you might have to cut off. So there's no shortage of food. Number one. Number two, if we as a society change the way how we look at children and the upbringing of children. So what we have right now is what I call the civil war at home. We know that Luxembourg, 90% of marriages end up in divorce. They have enough money to pay family lawyers. So we know that when we know romantic relationships are not always working a lifetime, and that's OK. What we as a society do right now, we then celebrate people who create a war at home. So custody battles, access to children, parental alienation, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a reason why the guys we meet at the Cairo Summit or H Farm, why they have one or two burnouts in the early 20s, because they grew up in a civil war at home. So if we stop that, if we have the food situation making it criminal, second, a society say, you know what? If you don't provide equal access to the child to both parents, then you are actually wrong. We don't want to know the rest. If there is no security or safety issue, then children should have equal rights to be with both sides of the family. If we establish that as a status quo, things will change in no time. Andreas Vil Gerdes is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas. Andreas is an entrepreneur, world citizen, and a passionate father. Andreas sold his first business at age 20 working out of a garage. He then successfully built what would become part of Orange PLC. Andreas has been at the forefront of the mobile telecoms revolution, empowering lives for over 25 years. From the 2017 multi-innovation summit where we actually met, there is many wonderful things that he talked about there and engaged with other social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs that are solving global grand challenges. Andreas is a multi-based German entrepreneur who brought ideas for the recovery and progress to Croatian connected with Croatian entrepreneurs and activists. Andreas is interested in bringing progress to this country as well as ideas and innovative solutions that are simple and scalable. He feels it has utmost importance to boost health and our immune systems. He believes in Croatia's unique potential, living and healthy and happy lifestyle first and foremost. Finally, Andreas envisions mothers as the agents of change in the healthy food revolution. Despite evolving gender roles, mothers play a fundamental role in raising children and mother and child both benefit by fewer illnesses and less visits to the doctor. Andreas and I know each other from a couple of different areas, not only the multi-innovation summit but also Kairos Society as fellows as well as H-Farm, we've been on different workshops and seen each other there as well. And we both sit on the Manabu Board as advisors and an initial evangelist promoting the empowerment of women and girls and especially the education and knowledge of children around the sustainable development goals. Andreas, welcome to the show, so good to have you. Good to be here. How have you been? Reconnecting with my home in Malta and enjoying the kickoff of the autumn time, which is the most lovely part of the year. I love autumn and winter in North Africa, so it's beautiful, so enjoy. Combination of sun and sea and as long as our fiber optic cables work, it's a great place to be. So we already did this recording before, we did it when you were still in Croatia at a beautiful hotel, but on my end, I must apologize, the audio for some reason did not work and we cannot hear you as well, although the background and location is wonderful. That leads nicely into kind of where we're going as you're, and you were in Berlin a few weeks ago and you're kind of this global citizen in Malta, Germany, Croatia, and you're traveling around, moving around a lot. You know, I've seen you in Italy and different places. Has any of your numerous experience of the past helped you, whether this pandemic or this lockdown time better? Yes. How? I was born close to the Dutch border on the German side. So one of my very early childhood experiences was to cross the border from a place called Münster where I grew up and go to the Dutch side and I realized how different things are within 40 minutes there, treadle. So no curtains, you can look into the buildings, more colors, more diverse, the farmer's market feels and smells different. So that was something which I was curious about to learn why it's different. What can I pick up from it? And that kind of fear has been with me all my life. When I see now how we lock down borders, how we try to make this experience and make it a national issue, we can realize how irrelevant it is. The virus doesn't have a passport. It doesn't care about Schengen or not Schengen. It doesn't care about immigration. It does not. And ever since I picked the home base in Malta, we have thousands of birds visiting us every spring and every autumn. And they join the pool, they have a good time and they don't have any paperwork. They have no proof of any vaccination. They are just happily commuting between Africa and Northern Europe. So it is something where I realized our current way and how we manage different countries is a very male way of doing it. And kind of we protect our borders. And I can only recommend for everybody to watch the last 1000 years of European borders. So it's something which you find on Facebook and online, you find a video which shows you the last 1000 years of European borders. And they have been moving all the time. What they did not put into the video yet is whenever it moved, how many people had to die for it. So if the people in charge would have been women who would have given birth to all the people who were killed to move borders slightly to the left, slightly to the right, with no real impact in the long run, you would have realized how irrelevant it is. And the pandemic is a beautiful reminder that anything which we try to address from a vertical perspective on a nationalistic basis is dysfunctional. It doesn't work. Now you cannot export rubbish because it stays with the same mother earth. So if you chop mother earth's toes off, she will still die, even though her head is in perfect shape. Yeah, so it's hard to remember whatever you touch has an impact. So that really opens up a lot of different rabbit holes. I'd like to try to go down a few of them with you. And do you have really overarching philosophy or vision of how our world should work as far as I heard some of it coming out and how you were describing this, there are no borders on how they've moved and how the pandemic is truly a global citizen as well as you and I speak about food and different things as well. How food is also a global citizen. It's not bound by borders or nations. Is there a philosophy or a vision or a goal that you're working towards something whether it's global citizenry or kind of a symbiotic earth or the evolution of Homo sapiens to more Homo symbios? I think the simple answer to this is collaboration. And the only person you should compete with is yourself. So if you compete with being a better version of yourself every morning you wake up and reflect on what the day before was before you move your legs out of the bed, that's helpful. But otherwise, accepting that we are great the way how we are and that we don't have to compete with anybody and not compare ourselves with anybody that would make a huge difference and take the motivation out of a very male driven way how we operate governments, which is on the compete level and which is limited in the most cases to the next border. Yeah, so the only person who I realized was different on that issue was the guy who I met one hour probably 95. I called Helmut Kohl and I asked him at that time and said why are you so passionate about the European Union? And he said, young man, we stopped killing each other. He said, before every 50, every 70 years we killed each other on a kind of an industrial level as a millions had to die. And he said, that is stopping. So that was kind of the essence of his answer. He didn't come across to me as a intellectual, strategic brain but as a very grounded person with a mission. And that mission is actually an excellent mission. And if I hear people asking me questions like, do you believe Europe will survive? If you look back at the last 10,000 years it has never been as peaceful, as collaborative as it is right now. And we have a tendency of looking at negative news which is not stimulating for me. But if you look at the things that's like what Helmut Kohl achieved, he not only achieved that we now have another ever since he told me this 25 years of collaboration and peacefulness. He even mentored somebody like Angela Merkel who in her existence and humbleness and humility does a pretty good job and continuing the collaboration path on the European level. It's great to see. It is beautiful to see. So I'm also a big proponent that there is no such thing as neoliberalism, neo Darwinism, survival of the fittest, only the strong survive, fierce competition, the natural selection, those things absolutely do not exist. Those are our competitive corporate philosophies that got pulled into Darwinism and many respects that we have to compete with each other. And actually what I mentioned with the homosymbios comes from a symbiotic earth. And really we've long found out many, well over three, four, five decades ago that it just does not exist, not only in a mathematical science way, but everything in our world works in harmony with collaboration and cooperation with another. So I love the term that you're using with us and in alignment with you, hoping that the world will make this transition to a symbiotic earth or this true collaboration that not only can go further, but we're all distant cousins. So why are we dividing ourselves from each other? Why are we competing against each other? Instead of building us up and seeing a bunch of videos online during this pandemic a lot, where now some sports and some events have started to go on. Come up again, where there's been some competition in sporting, but where at the last minute before the finish line, somebody trips or gets off path. And the person who was in second place stops and helps that person get back across the finish line. Say, no, that was an honest mistake or an error or something that happened in the past. Or something that happened and he would truly or she truly deserved that first position. So I love to see that and I know our world functions much better when we move in that direction. My question is though, was there something with your mother, with a female influence in your life that kind of has pulled out in you some experiences that you say, let's empower women and girls if we can have a more balanced female influence or the direct, the goddess or the patriarchal female figure in our world that it will actually, we will all do much better. Is there some influences in your life that have led to that? I'm sure, I'm sure. With hindsight, with hindsight, yes, I'm sure my mother has strong influence on that. And they send me to a girl school. So my secondary school was a girl school where we had 1,000 girls and we were the first eight boys at that school. That's eight, so gradually we were a grade five and up to 13, they only allowed, see whatever, they only added every year new fifth graders. So there was a quantity of women and that largely created a different operating system. And I believe we should start from perspectives we don't have to empower women because they are empowered. You just have to remind them. I have always, I enjoy that dialogue with women rights organizations and to remind them they might want to change their name. As long as they claim that there is a need for women rights organizations that automatically suggest there's an inferiority because that's why they need them. It's the wrong way around. Yeah, so you don't have, they have the power, they can withstand more pain as we all know and they have the gift of creating life and we can support it. This is how we have been designed as human beings. Operating from a level of perceived inferiority doesn't really help. They are the ones who still are the majority at the strongest influence when it comes to the operating system of children. So if we have today a man who as an example paying companies lower salaries to women than to men they were all raised by a mother. My recommendation when I read those things I always tell them, why do we talk to their mother? Something must have gone wrong. If he was brought up in the way that he shouldn't wash the floor then maybe his mother should remind him. So the women who complain about it and then fight against men and say, let's unite against men. It doesn't help anybody. It just creates a separation. Raising children in a positive manner without preconceived ideas of who should do what. Yes, so my oldest boys know very well how to lose a laundry, how to lose the ironing, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, I went to girl's school. I learned knitting and I learned all this stuff and had a good time doing it. Yeah, and they were not beating each other up on the courtyard during breaks all the time. So there was a different energy, correct? It was more collaborative, correct? And I think that's for me natural. Yeah, so when I was asked to run super fast otherwise I wouldn't get a medal. I said, you know what, the other guys were half my size why should I physically be able to run faster and short distance than this guy? It doesn't make sense to me. And I always had to struggle that if it doesn't make sense I would happily accept the teacher to give me whatever grades but I would not follow his direction. So, but this is what led me to leave school early. Yeah, there was a strong influence and but I think we all have it. It's again, it's come back to the mothers. The mothers allow our boys to be boys in an open and an open source model. That's great. If they tell them you shouldn't do this because your sister should do it then we create the next generation of challenges. Yeah, right now we only have women shelters for domestic violence. If you really check the facts and look at countries like Canada and they have thousands of cases they realize that 70% of the domestic violence cases are actually women. Yeah, we as society don't see it. I experienced those things myself. Go to a police station and say by the way she hit you with a pen, they love. Yeah, and enough jurisdictions. So, and this has to change. And the core again for changing this allowing both genders to grow up in a happy and healthy childhood is to remove the limitations. And allow them to be human beings not predetermined by pink and blue or by certain behavioral patterns which just creates a problem for the next generation. Exactly, that's really where we're going as well is we wanna set up the future generations with positive desirable futures and not something that they're already behind the game and their progress and evolution because they're still trying to fix things that maybe we've put into place or stigmatisms or other borders or restrictions for their positive future. That, I mean, I think we've gone down enough rabbit holes on that but it's beautiful to see that your way of thinking and how that do you have a set kind of a mantra or an idea of some specific things that our generation could do to influence, evangelize or take some actions to set up that next generation or the future to usher that in. There's some things that we need to do or maybe not do to make sure that that gets into place. Yes, I had the pleasure of working on that together with Tiana on this Manabu movement and the core thing is to talk with children, not two children, to accept them as equal human beings and to not, because they are born with ideas, they are born with creativity and it's not up to us to tell them what is right and wrong. It is up to us to provide an environment which is safe, that's correct, but otherwise talk with them as a core, listen to them is the most important part and this is not happening. In the most cases, if kids address others, let's say adults or parents, we are busy, we are busy, we are busy. So that's one thing. And so it is good to always, when they talk to you, say give me a minute or give me five minutes but then actually stick to it. Yeah, and when I talk to them, I normally go on the floor and me because I know I'm on the same height level, yeah. Just imagine somebody more than double your height and you look up to that, it's not too much fun. So talking with them means either going down or sitting next to them, but you're on an eye-to-eye level and then listen and take some chairs. They come up with stuff which is amazing, yeah. Ken Robinson who recently died, he brought up in many of his beautiful pieces of documentation and videos that pre-Kindergarten kiddos are tested when it comes to divergent thinking on a genius level. And this continuously goes down with what we call formal education, yeah. And so let's embrace what they have and talk with them and listen to them. This is what's going to make the difference. This is why the Manila Movement is focused on following their ideas and if they have an idea, support it and allow them to implement it and back some up, but let them do it. Kids who at age five, six, seven, realize that they can, they will be unstoppable. Now they are ready to challenge all of what we believe are current problems with great solutions which many of them we haven't even thought about. For agriculture, for nature, I really like biomimicry a lot, but there is a human mimicry. Our offspring and other children mimic a lot what they see the adults and what you presented in front of them, whether it's on television or media or their surrounding family influence. And so I really, it's a different form of mirroring as well that can strongly influence children so that a nice household, something someone that listens and sets good examples I think is vital. I'm a grandpa, I will have my fourth grandchild on hopefully October 14th, my son's daughter and I have four adult children and you also have children and things. And so we've kind of been around the block on seeing on children and families and there's no manual that comes with them. I was looking around where did the manual pop out when my children were bored and it wasn't there. And the only thing I had to reflect back onto is my mother and my father and the examples and the experiences they give me and thank God they were wonderful. They were positive examples and maybe who I am but also gave me the insight on how I can maybe try to do better with my children. Why don't we have that? So why don't we have basic driver's licenses for parents? Why don't we include in those not only first aid? Yeah, so if they choke, they actually don't have to die? Yeah, why don't we include in those the importance of immune system boosting effects? Why don't we include in those basics? Because in certain jurisdictions where I travel to or where I spend a few months, they have a tendency of giving antibiotics to kids all the time instead of allowing them to have a fever for four days. Yeah, so having a fever for three or four days, yes. It takes an parental effort but it boosts the immune system in the long run. What in some of your addiction they do because probably somebody who imports antibiotics loves that business model and most people prescribe antibiotics all the time. And so if you, if we would say if you drive a car, you need a driver's license. If you want to have a weapon, you need a license. In many things we already have that established but for something which is as important as the future of the planet, we have zero basic mandatory features and there shouldn't be somebody who is around a child 24 to seven who doesn't have first aid training. I see countries where kiddos choke and die totally unnecessary because nobody bothered to train them and they didn't realize it might be important. So we in society totally fail that. And then more important is even how to make sure the immune system of a kiddo stays on a 10 out of 10 level. This is what came up with this pandemic right now. People ask those questions and they told people stay in the house, stay in the house and stay in the house. For me that doesn't make sense. I understand social distancing, cool but I took the kids two hours per day into nature six out of seven days. And I would not do anything different. I would rather change location where I am for them to be around the trees, enjoy the rain or whatever it is but get a feeling and the connection to nature I think is important for the immune system. Yeah, so this is something where the basics like a parental driver's license should be the minimum requirement we do as society because Mark we have right now, as you know, a level of teenagers where two thirds identify with mental health issues. We have a suicide rate of teenagers which was never higher as it is right now. Or if we go to a Kairos Summit, the fact of 20 year olds who talk about their second, second burnout is high. Yes, absolutely. And that is all related to the limited to the upside potential which parents have if we would provide them with some basic, which we don't. I think you touched upon it properly. I may be divided whether we need a driver's license. I have a friend, a good friend from the Philippines. I go to the Philippines a lot and have done some trainings and talks there. Worked with some indigenous people in the Philippines and he has eight children. Him and his wife have eight children but he actually should have had 12 children but some of them died because, not because there was no driver's license but because he's impoverished. He is so poor that his only joint hope is a family and he knows and going into it him and his wife that some might not make it. So they continue to have children and that's part of life. But it goes back to this maybe driver's license concept of parenting. It's the basic rights. Basic and alien little universal rights of human beings that aren't being covered or met. We're not having basic resources, basic infrastructure, basic food, basic education and knowledge and awareness so that we can sustain ourselves replicably as human beings. And if we had those basics, me, it met. I think that would be the most in my opinion, the most ideal driver's license for life that any of us could get so that we weren't panicked or in fear or worrying about or competing about the basics of life just to get from one day to the other. Instead, we could be creative and get educated and thrive with families and flourish and go beyond our health and infrastructural needs to much greater things of reaching those desirable futures. And that's the true driver's license. Instead of universal basic income, I would like to see us all receive a global universal and aliable hectare for everyone that's replicable that they each get and that we're all stewardship over that. And as we have children and as they come into this world, we pass that stewardship that they don't inherit it because they get their own but we pass that stewardship and how to make it work and how to make it thrive in abundance onto them which is the learning manual, the knowledge of this symbiotic earth which we touched upon as well, this connection with nature because you're so right that the biome of our gut and our body and our health is integrally tied to the biome of our earth which we're polluting and harming in many different ways. And those two things, if they're not in alignment then that's when we get pandemics and viruses and many, many other problems in our world. You mentioned Ken Robinson. He passed away 21st of August, I believe, it was day before Earth Overshoot Day. He was not only a mentor but I had a podcast with Graham Brown Martin who wrote this book, Learning Reimagined and Ken Robinson is in this book and we actually had a long talk about him on the podcast as well because I think it was only a couple of days after he'd passed away and they'd collaborated and worked on some things but I find it unique that you bring him up because a lot of that ties to education and imagining, re-imagining learning that they both discussed and they worked on that really where we've been educating our children for so many centuries in the absolute wrong way. We're setting them up to be slaves and laborers and not creative and very restrictive and so I know you have some thoughts and philosophies as well as you mentioned with Manabu. I'd like to hear your thoughts and feelings on education and learning and what you mentioned nature. Is there some things that you could depart with us in that direction? I always introduce to him in the context of a guy called Edward de Bono who's still alive and Edward is a neighbor of mine in Malta so when I bought this house here in 95 I learned that Edward de Bono is on the other side of town so we can see each other from the roof and he introduced me to Richard Warman the guy who started TED at the time and brought me to New York for one of those events and this is however plugged into it. What I realized is that what we are now familiar with what we're now familiar with through the generation of smartphones that every few weeks pops up and says you need an update, software. What I realized very early on that people in the early 20s when they finish their studies, get their masters, maybe a PhD that they believe that they know what is needed to be known. My education, my personal education has been that still is very different because I love to learn all the time. What I realized would be we have software and software updates where we are not consciously aware of then we have headwear but lots of people forget the source code and don't understand how to update it and so if we bring to the awareness of the people the not only important to press the yes software update on your phone, but accept the fact that to realize that they don't know what is needed for the next update and they accept to look for it that would be already a major game changer. And what we introduced 200 years ago probably is the idea of offices. If you look back to the Roman times they were operating mobile that little stone plates and we're taking notes the idea of sitting in an office during the golden hours of a day between whatever eight or nine and five was the pretty unhuman feature of the industrialization. But if you look at the existence of mankind we have for the longest time not done that. We came up with the concept of spending the golden hours of day in an office the last 200 years. And now through what I believe in empowering people they can use their intrinsic mobility and the combination of visualization to work from anywhere. And they're just a big feature right now and this again is thanks to the pandemic and so people are realizing that they pick up new ways of operating which I believe will be if we look back in 10 years positive effect of COVID-19 is the fact that people consciously realize they have a source code and there's a hope for an update and in any case they can imagine it exists. I'm not saying they accept it for a lot of people to realize to realize that we should know that we don't know and we keep learning is not something which goes well with people who have been going through an ongoing extended conventional education because they believe they know more than others do because they went to the full university they did another master's and did another this and so they believe they know. And I always operated in areas where things change all the time so I don't believe the state is cool. Yeah, and it's there. That's how I operate. That's fabulous. That's really crazy because today we just released another podcast we released on Tuesdays and Thursdays and it was with Christian or Hans Christian Boos, Chris Boos he's on the digital council for the federal government of Germany was appointed by Angela Merkel and we spoke about AI and we last saw each other this year in DLD in Munich and I asked him sort of almost similar to what you were just saying about this operating system and the update. They said, wouldn't it be nice to have a real-time update of collective intelligence? There's obviously misinformation and fake news and information overload out there but a lot of us are missing just this update of things that we would probably would empower us or help us in one way or the other if we had the knowledge that it even existed or what was transpiring in other places in the world or even in our close proximity. And I said, can we hope for that with AI in the future? And he said, we don't want that. We want free will, freedom of that but then we digressed a little bit and he said, we should kind of it would be nice to have something like that that was also on the level and then you still had the free will to decide or listen or to choose to accept that into your operating system but that it was out there because today there's just so much confusion and misinformation and information overload of things that do nothing to better our future more to dumb us down and the real vital information that would help us progress as humanity is missing for a lot of us and we're getting stuck on in many different ways. The COVID, the pandemic is the first wave but there's actually three other waves behind it that are coming, not only climate change but the biggest is probably a biodiversity loss that we're having that is having a tsunami effect on our world and so it's interesting that you see it in that same respect and that you're talking about there I wanna put your feet to the fire. What's your take on how we're gonna get that update? Is it AI? Is it something more with what you mentioned the connection to nature gives you that automatic update of operating system that puts you in your place or is it something else? I believe it's already happening. It's my book. So if I look at how many people right now the whole discussion of vaccines and non-vaccines the fact that the mass media comes up with information about vaccines being finished and prepared in three to six to nine months. If you look at AIDS and other issues which we have or cancer we haven't managed to come with vaccines in the last 30 years and now people start asking questions, tell me. So we haven't managed this one but this is ready in six months and I'm supposed to take it for sure and even though the virus is mutating and changing all the time so people ask themselves questions which didn't happen before. Yeah, look at what happened with our current Pope of the Catholic Church. Three weeks ago he went out and said by the way the rainbow movements actually a positive feature and God loves all of us. He's embracing people as we are. For thousands of years we have been fighting that. I arrived in Malta early enough pre-fiber optics. So you had copper lines which were actually shady. So I was part of connecting it to fiber optics. I was part of Malta when it was hardcore Roman Catholic. So the same Malta today is number one globally as a rainbow index country. Wow, it is number one in Europe for the safety of women. Wow, it is number one for GDP growth in Europe for the last whatever five years. So something is working. So look at it, go back now 20 years. Hardcore Catholic, the rainbow was kind of not heard of. We fly a rainbow flag on our buildings since a few years and it's becoming a movement. And now the Pope, two weeks ago I believe, Deutsche Telecom changed their logo to rainbow colored. Wow, for my birthday kind of, it's the same thing. So it's nice to see, it is nice to see. So I see things changing. This is the way I look at it. And don't forget, places like Lidl as an example, they address an issue which is food expiring or making it cheaper. You know, they say 30% of the growth your your court officially expires in three days. We all know it's good for another 10 days and you can buy 30% cheaper. If we in Europe would do as an example two things, make it criminal to throw food away, like the French moral, perfect. Because then less, around 50% of what we produce goes into the bin to rubbish. Yeah, because island currents are not beautiful enough or we mismanage your logistics. So if we make it criminal to throw it away, there's no shortage of food supply. It's a question of management or appreciating carrots which have small issues which you might have to cut off. So there's no shortage of food. Number one, number two, if we as society change the way how we look at children and the upbringing of children. So what we have right now is what I call the civil war at home. Yeah, we know like Luxembourg 90% of marriages end up in divorce. They have enough money to pay family lawyers. So we know that when we know romantic relationships are not always working a lifetime and that's okay. What we as society do right now, we then celebrate people who create a war at home, yeah? So custody battles access to children, parents, the alienation, et cetera, et cetera. So this is the reason why the guys we meet at Cairo summits or H farm, why they have one or two burnouts in the early 20s because they grew up in a civil war at home, yeah? So if we stop that, if we have the food situation making it criminal second, as society say, you know what? If you don't provide equal access to the child to both parents, then you are actually wrong. We don't want to know the rest, yeah? If there's no security or safety issue, then children should have equal rights to be with both sides of the family. If we establish that as a status quo, things will change in no time. Is it two things? Totally in alignment with you. So I used to be a priest, religious priest and I'm not religious anymore and I don't belong to any faith, but I think the things that the pope did, if you ever watch a, I believe it's a Netflix movie, the two popes, if you watch that, that's fabulous, a little bit of history and insight to how things evolve. But he is the most progressive pope we've ever seen, absolutely fabulous. He's a people's pope and he wrote the encyclical, which is all about our planet and our environment and how we have a deep stewardship for it and the things that we can do. And the things that have come from him have just been absolutely amazing that a leader who has so many people around him is so progressive about the burning topics of our world. And the reason why that's important is because if I believe religion is mythology, mythologies don't evolve, they eventually die out. So all mythologies, all Greeks, Romans on and on, they die out, we see the ruins, if they don't evolve, if they don't evolve, especially with the world. And there's so many Catholics and people who are religious around the world, if they don't keep up to time where our world's growing, then some problems will occur. And so I love the fact that the pope is, however, his divine inspiration goes that he's seen that he's disseminating that information and he's also evolving with the world so that we can, because we need that unification. I mean, that's such a powerhouse that we unify and see ourselves as part of the symbiotic earth. There's something you touched upon earlier with children and monabou that I like, maybe wanna make a statement about or have you go into more depth as well. I believe that a lot of the answers to our problems in our world, we already have, they're within us. And if we, through our parents or us as children, as our children, when they reach, I guess, a level of consciousness or when they ask those questions, those very hard questions, they can be existential or earth-shattering sometimes. But if we ask those questions back to ourselves or if a parent mirrors those questions back to us and we actually have to think about them and go into, is that true? And just by almost remimicking that question back to somebody after they've given it or the answer that they've just given you back to them makes them think even more. Can that be right? Is that true? And I believe the majority of dancers because we're deeply connected to this earth are already in us and they just need to be asked. And a lot of times with kind of trying to tie these together, not only religions, but direct marketing or snowball systems and network marketing, the reasons why they're so successful is because you're born into them or your mother, your father, your cousin, your neighbor is already amongst those religions or network marketing or those organizations that are really large. And so you say, no, I think they asked all the questions. They know that it's right. They know that that's the plan and the direction that we need to go. And so I'm not gonna ask it myself. And then we get to a point in our life where all of a sudden we're like, no, there's something wrong. And then this is existential problem comes to us but also where we are trying to do this right of passage where we're confused. And even as adults, this level has moved up significantly where we're like 40 years old, some of us now and still don't know the meaning of life or where we're going and don't have a goal. That's kind of a scary deal because we haven't asked the hard questions. And that's a lot of work. So I don't know if there's a true question or any thoughts in there for you to jump on but when you were talking about the children and kind of working through that driver's license or that education with them, how that can evolve. Open source. Yeah, open source. If you look at the religion model, my mother wasn't a nun. She was put into a nunnery by her family. And she resigned from it in four years before I was born. And so we have a tendency always to put things, we baptize children at a day in age where they are not involved in that decision. Yeah, which is, I believe, wrong. So we should expose them to different belief systems but we shouldn't say, by the way, you have to use Apple only for the rest of your life and we determined this at age three weeks old. Yeah, so you get an Apple ID, it's tattooed on your forehead, yeah. And don't ever change it. So I have this discussion with my sons when they come up with which phone right now, why is this, and they look at it from different angles. And so it's nice to see that you have teenagers who look at the Apple philosophy and they look at the Google model, they look at open source models and they realize the differences and the differences exist for a reason and they empower different people for different aspects. So, and this is what I love about the multi-example coming from a Roman Catholic background before it has been for over 20 years in Muslim country. If you go to a Maltese Roman Catholic church, in Maltese they call God Allah. So for the only Roman Catholic church where you can go and pray loud to Allah, yeah, which I always, I like that. This for me is a little bit charming, yeah. And I grew up as an altar boy believing that Jesus was born as a baby with curly blonde hair and blue eyes. And we start, and the Pope might do it at a certain point or actually bring to people the tension that nobody, nobody in the Bible is actually white. Impossible. So if you think that's true, then the whole migration issue and we will love people from Syria, we would celebrate them because you know it, who knows who's the next is from an enlightened perspective, et cetera. But we have not, we're not teaching that. If people would realize that nobody in the Bible is actually white, the decorations they put up for Christmas with baby Jesus having white, white skin, blue eyes and blonde curly hair, if people would come from Copenhagen, it's not actually, it's misleading, purposely misleading, which is wrong. Yeah, so we like the Pope now in the recent weeks celebrating the rainbow factor, I'm sure it will come up and then we will embrace the diversity and that's the powerful feature. Yeah, so as I said, you can see as an example like Malta, you can make it again more multinational, you can boost the economy, you can boost the safety for women and for everybody who lives a rainbow related lifestyle. It can be beautiful. And my kids, including a seven year old celebrates a rainbow without thinking through that it has anything to do with potential sexual perspective. She just celebrates a rainbow. And that's how we should do it because we as human beings take focus of rainbows all the time. Yeah, so that's what it should be in the rest. It's important to live a happy and healthy life, boost your immune systems. And you said, yes, they're 14 year olds who have not asked themselves some hard questions but you know what? Our formal education system is avoiding any hard question. They don't even explain you how to calculate a loan. They don't even explain how to check your addiction. I have this with digital nomads who ask me questions. And I tell them, by the way, did you look into the legal framework? And they, if they didn't study law by coincidence, they wouldn't, that question doesn't cross their mind. Yeah, so basics of being successful are not taught to keep people depending. Yeah, so and this is the wrong way around. I love empowered people. And this is why Nanago is cool, a whole bunch of the Cairo's concepts and ideas of the original founders from Cairo's and the US are really cool. Yeah, so there are great things which we can support. And as I said, making food waste of wastage of food, throwing food away, criminal is powerful because we realize we already have enough. People always tell me there's not enough food on the planet. I said, I don't buy that. I don't buy that. We spend so many new subsidies for people destroying food to balance market prices. Just make it criminal. They will find a way to give it to people and we don't have those food issues. And legal is a good example. They were, from my knowledge, the first ones who said, you're your court or whatever it is, 30% less. Cool. And there are some people who only buy those because they know they're still good for a week and they eat in any case. They don't buy to store it. So the solutions are there and so you have to implement it. France is also a great country, especially around Paris, they've had a lot of laws and implementations. Carrefour is a big progressive grocery store chain. It's done some positive things. So I'd love to see that as well. You've almost answered this already. It's really now we're almost halfway into it or more. The first question, do you feel like a global citizen and what are your views if maybe in the future we break down these walls, borders and divisions of humanity? How would you answer that question or what are your thoughts and feelings about it? I think we're all born as global citizens. We're all born as citizens and the kids of mother earth. Yeah, and you're not born as a son of mother earth, only allocated to her elbow or only allocated to her ear. You're not, who ever said this is the following territory and you're only supposed to be here because these guys are bad because they have a different flag and you know what? It doesn't make sense. Look at the majority or look at the animals what they do. The birds who commute. Yeah, try to establish any Schengen rules for dolphins. They laugh about it. It does not function. It's a conceived issue because of fear to manage borders. So this is an identity which we are educated with. And as I said, luckily I'm the youngest of many kids and I had more or less attention so I had more freedom and I was close to the Dutch border and this was exciting. And then I did projects here in Hong Kong, I was two years in Indonesia and I learned a lot. I looked at people, what are they doing differently? So what is, what is, what can I pick up from it? Yeah, and why do we have now a place like Bali being so compelling for an international community? Yeah, without any specific rules or regulations just because the way how it is, how people operate and how people treat each other on a day-to-day basis. So answer, I think we're all born as citizens of Mazuris. Everything else educated. And you can see this, this whole border issues. You have this, even in a small town which is our home here in Malta, they have a difference between the people who are living up in the town which is 500 meters up and down because up are the farmers originally, down was a fisherman. Yeah, so if you marry a farmer's daughter and you are from a fisherman family that was an issue 30 years ago. Now they have rainbow flags across the country and it's a little different. But the kids work remotely on laptops with clients and projects all over the world. Wow, so this is, this makes the issue of nationalities irrelevant and Skype started with it because you didn't have any more international access codes. Because I remember when I learned there's a plus four nine for Germany. Wow, that's interesting. And then there's so many other codes. How do we ever remember those? Now nobody asks for that stuff anymore because Skype started, Facebook followed, Google did it. So you call a name or a photo, so much more human. Yeah, so when our kids do it, they just look at photos and then they press the photo and then the person pops up and they don't ask the question of where is he or she? Which country, which jurisdiction irrelevant? And this is thanks to some people who believe in the European Union that we have right now a prototype of a model the most successful on the planet so far where it works reasonably well. And I can tell you that I learned from my experience now in the Balkan area, their first cities where the mayor puts everything online. So every money he spends for the city is online. So he makes it super transparent and people love it. And now I learned that the prime minister in Croatia who was recently reelected, he said, I want every city in the country to follow that model. So but this eliminates corruption. This makes sure things are transparent. People know their rights. Yeah, so that is what I call integrity, openness and transparency. This is what I call IOT. So it's the equivalent or it's an alternative to the internet of things. It's really IOT for integrity, openness and transparency. And I saw that two mayors were elected in Romania, a country which was known as being super corrupt. There's now a German guy who became the mayor of Timisiura. I think it's called the city in Romania on Sunday. So it's possible. People with a message of transparency and openness get elected in countries which have a history which was really difficult. So they go from really difficult to fully digitalized and transparent. That's powerful. That's a European model that German citizen who now lives in Romania becomes a mayor based on our entire town being excited about this new age of transparency. And that's powerful and the kids love it. Yeah, I think that's fabulous. And I'm seeing that more and more around the world, different places emerging and becoming more open and transparent. Would you please tell us a little bit more about your journey in the last few months of the pandemic. You and your family have been on Croatian and television a few times. So your kids have been on TV for Manabu and you've been on TV regarding some agriculture and eating things, dealing with pesticides. Can you tell us a little bit about those things that you're working on and that you've been addressed in the news with and what are you going to manualize? I have a history of going to places and seeing things which people probably don't see who live there all the time. There's a beautiful feature of not being a tourist but spending let's say two months or three months in a place which allows me to get a feeling for it. It always takes me around a week to actually energetically arrive. So even if I jump on a plane somewhere, I don't feel I'm there yet. So it takes me a few days, sometimes a week to do that. So in Croatia, I came to Croatia first in October 2017 because of an abduction case of my second daughter that actually started my interest in the Balkan area. And so then I was asked by people because of this abduction case and media started interviewing me and I told them what I think. And I don't make a secret out of what pops up in my head. I don't consider it as my ideas. I just consider it whatever the universe puts into my head or into my heart at that point in time. So, and so I saw Croatia and the country which reminded me a lot of Berlin after the war came down. A lot of the architecture is very similar. Beautiful people from a DNA perspective. And so, you know, Deutsche Telekom bought the, owns the majority of the state telecom companies. So their fiber optics and the infrastructure works perfect. You can walk through a place like Zagreb and you have WhatsApp video calls with no interruptions. It's, wow, it's pretty unheard of. And I said, wow, if you have that place, you could do actually magic with it. Yeah, right now, Malta is the number one country in Europe when it comes to brain drain. So from the people who grew up, they want to leave. In Malta, we managed to change that by a lot of people coming, interesting people coming and celebrating the climate, celebrating the mindset, et cetera. Croatia has, is number two with lots of people leaving. So far, people are only coming for tourism. Nobody stays. And so I said, you know, if you want to change that, come up with a model where people are excited to spend three months, six months, nine months in the country. So as the communication started, I was interviewed by the media to make the long story short. I had then people reaching out to me like Tiana and others and then develop relationships. And I love to mentor people because for me, it's something which is great for my intellectual and mind-stretching experiences. And I love to contribute and take certain things from A to Z and allow them to think in slightly different terms. This is what I've been doing and that triggered projects. And I've been invited to talk, I've been asked questions on a regular basis. Yes, and we weren't TV because I was, when during the pandemic, they were in the town and it was still legal to walk outside of grocery shopping. So I took my son on my shoulders and my daughter next to me and we walked grocery shopping in the TV stations, asked us why we do this. And I said, we get some food, number one, but number two, actually we walk always through the park, we go to the forest for the immune system. And then they asked questions. Then I was interviewed and I said, I believe number one thing you should do is boost your immune system because immune systems have been dealing with viruses for the last millions of years. Yeah, if you weakens the muscle of your immune system, it doesn't work. So I said, immunity wellness should be a core issue. And you have a country which has ample space, which is unused and the climate is perfect. Compared to Malta, it's dry like a desert in summer, but Croatia, even in summer, it's green, it's amazing space. Logistically, you can just put on truck, drive it to Frankfurt. It's kind of an ideal setup to grow something else. And I said, you know what? You have Deutsche Telecom digital lines, you're part of Schengen, you have space to grow stuff. People can work remotely, make it something to focus on. Focus people to boost their immunity, spend three weeks or three months in a health environment with toxic free food, and was functioning fiber optics. And that led to say, yes, that makes sense. So that's a short version. And I'm sure they enjoy this on their good morning Croatia program because it seems to be simple and whenever it's simple and scalable, it's actually against momentum. And this is the same thing Tiada sent me a message last weekend and said, Andreas, I got messages from Croatia. People are copying the Manabo movement. And so we both came to the conclusion that the best thing which can happen, that people are not only talking about it, but they creating copycat versions, which is perfect. Yeah, every local kindergarten should have their own brand. Yeah, under their own logo. And they don't have to say inspired by Manabo. That is not important. It's important is to have 10 more children feeling great about themselves and that they can trigger change. And your kids were also on TV for cleaning up trash and cigarette butts and plastics in the park. And that was beautiful as well. Nice to see. And I think there wasn't a lot of momentum around that examples that we've seen all over. And it's always nice to see you guys online, especially social medium. Now my first- I got messages from Belgrade and from Bucharest from homeschooling parents who are now all on this kind of school lockdown model. And they said that the kids themselves picks a subject of street cleaning. Street cleaning is popular. Yeah, I remember when I was really young it was always that if you're not successful in life, you have to clean streets. There were these people who are doing homeschooling, the kids themselves picked the activity of half an hour, 45 minutes, clean the street going around and they celebrate it because they feel that they made a difference. They talk to adults, don't throw the stuff around. And so parents hosted it from Bucharest and from Belgrade in the last 10 days. So it's nice. It's unstoppable because the kids love it too. That's beautiful. It's a lot of fun and it rallies a nice momentum. I wanna get to my first and hardest question for you probably that I have today and that is the burning question, WTF. And as you know, it's not the swear word, it's what's the future? And I'd like to get your perspective. I don't want you to necessarily tell us what the governance or governments or others need to do, but what's your vision of getting you and your family to a future? What does that look like? The happiest moment which I heard people had was when they were actually considered as dead but were brought back to life. So I had some experiences talking to people. I read about this in the media as well. So people who actually already were considered as medically dead and were brought back to life through medical intervention, said they saw so much white lights and they felt for the first time in their life to be actually perfect the way they are. So they felt so good about it that they were unhappy to wake up. So what I'm trying to say is we will look back probably in 10 years to this pandemic experience as a booster of positive awareness of being great the way we are. So, and that is what I believe makes all the difference. So if you question is what is important for the future that each and everybody doesn't have to be experiencing death to feel the light. The fact that we are born and that we picked our parents and assigned a lifetime to celebrate life and boost the planet is fantastic. It's a gift. And so I hope that more and more people realize this on a daily basis can celebrate this for five minutes or 60 seconds or maybe 30 seconds before they get out of bed. And share that with their immediate people in their life could be family, could be kids, could be friends, whoever are the three closest people. This will raise the vibration to such a positive level. That the rest will unfold and then the things feel natural. Like for me, it feels natural to go in my knees and talk to a child. And because I don't want to look like this when I'm in that position. Other people look at me and say, why is he doing that? So if people celebrate the fact of being alive and being perfect in where they are as a modus operandi, then more things like talking with children instead of talking to children feel the most natural. Yeah. We spoke earlier about religion a little bit and I want to get into what you just addressed with the vibration and see if you have any more thoughts or feelings about it. I've experienced this many times over the years. When you're, it doesn't matter what religion or what church you're in. If you have, you know, 20, 50, 100, a couple of thousand people all praying the same prayer or thinking on the same thought or meditating on the same thing. There's a form of a vibration, unified collective intelligence, minds coming together, focused on the same vision or goal. Whether it's religion or network marketing or business or meditation, whatever you box it into, whatever you put it into, but if you unify those minds and that thoughts and that voice towards that there is a vibration and a super strong energy that moves naturally. It's a universal law that will move us more in that direction. So I love that you touched upon that because I totally believe it, even though I'm not religious, because I know there's a lot to that and whether you call it another form of spirituality or another form of a law of attraction or a universal law. Do you have any more you'd like to say about that or your thoughts or feelings on this vibration that maybe could give us some tips or tricks to get more in that direction or to unify us with some positive outcomes for the future? I think we should just consider treating religions like an app on our smartphone. Yeah, so, and that's great to celebrate the wide range of their existence. And you have a choice. And sir, I believe religions are great because as an example, my mother loved to spend an hour in a place where she felt good in praying the rosary. It put her into a nice mindset. It was a grounding experience. And yes, you can have similar experiences applying different methods, but for her, it was a rosary experience. It was her Roman Catholic perspective. And that is perfect for her. So people should have apps, like to have apps on their mobile phones. They can download and put themselves. And if you want to do this and do this and if you want to do this, follow the other one. So there should be openness and tolerance. And this is like the current hope of the Catholic Church is celebrating that. I experienced great things in the largest Muslim country in Indonesia when I lived there for two years. It's beautiful to celebrate the diversity and like a rainbow, the different segments of the color and they can all happily coexist. That's the core. And if we are on top of that, on top of all the apps accept the fact there is enough food. Yeah, there's no reason to be full of fear and make people fearful. Yeah, so why are you afraid of death? Is this the only guaranteed factor of life? Yeah, we have managed to convince billions of people to be afraid of death. While it's the only thing, which is sure, we're all done. But if you think that's true, it doesn't make any sense. And I believe that like a rainbow concept and like a mobile phone, religions and disbelief systems which trigger positive experiences, you have that if you're a musician, you're on stage with a thousand people in the audience, yes, those energies exist and they're beautiful. They're great to move mankind to higher vibration, absolutely essential. And so you have that in nature. Yeah, you can have it by yourself. You can have it with a thousand people. This model coexist. I have it a lot when I go swimming in the ocean. It doesn't have when I go swimming in the pool. It actually happens when I'm in the ocean. The salt water is everything around me and this feels different. It has that effect on me. So it exists for different people in different setups. The important thing is to take the fear factor out because that is what makes people that often aggressive and try to say, this is better than the other and celebrate their coexistence. Yeah, so people don't say, look at a rainbow, take a photo, they don't try to split the colors off. Nobody does that. No part of the world I found where people look at the rainbow, they say, oh, it should be only this or only that. No, they celebrate the existence of the rainbow and that's it. They don't go into the separation of color or the argument about it. You might have already answered this in a different way. What does a world that works for everyone look like for you? I think right now it already works for everyone because as I said, we have not killed each other on an industrial scale in Europe. That's better. Yeah, we can travel around the world more than we ever could before in a peaceful manner. Yeah, and so there are so many things which we can achieve today, which are amazing. And if we start celebrating the things we have, then the other ones will naturally unfold. Yeah, so I believe it's great the way it is and accepting who we are is the number one issue. So I believe everybody loving themself is the core factor to make it even better. But I believe that the world we have right now is a great world to live in and I'm grateful for the fact of being alive. It is, it is beautiful. I'm a sustainable development goal advocate, as you know, and that's why I'm on the Monobu board with you. How do you feel we're doing with the sustainable development goals and are you convinced and excited about the potential that they have to get us to a better future by December 2030? It is already getting us to a better future every day in which we make that a subject to talk about and educate our children as they realize packaging is questionable. You don't need packaging for everything. So the current awareness is changing the scenario. People realize they don't need blueberries 12 months per year. Yeah, why do you have to grow so many blueberries in Peru and change the ecosystem over there and the setup of nature? So for a situation where people need everything all year round, it's cuckoo. Yeah, so this is happening right now, I believe, and it should, it's circularity is the most normal thing. If you put your litter next door in front of the neighbor, he will put it somewhere as it doesn't disappear. Yeah, so circularity is the way how we operate. If we drink, we sweat. So it's a circular process. Yeah, so that is core to be part of day to day life and bring it with awareness. If you dump something somewhere, it's in front of somebody else. Yeah, and if you create an issue, it doesn't disintegrate by itself. And so what you have behind you is a map. It doesn't matter where you export it to, it's still hanging out there and considering Mother Earth as one being, as I said before, if you chop off the toe and you don't address it, she will still die. She could be smiling for a certain time, but it will have an infection and will trigger issues. She will continue bleeding, et cetera, et cetera. So we have not looked at it from a holistic perspective for a long time, but this is changing. And a generation of people who do not consider country codes, who speak to their friends wherever they are on the planet are exactly as they change agents, which makes a difference right now. And Sarah, they don't care about borders, about any of the stuff which we artificially create. And we are lucky that Sarah, this is gaining momentum. And as I said, people celebrate the rainbow any part of the world. I have just three or two last questions for you. They're more sustainable takeaways for my guests and mainly the young innovators, entrepreneurs, even the youth. What should young innovators in your field or in your areas be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make real impact? What are some advice or things that you can give them for their journey? I think the core thing is to make sure it's actually their journey. Yeah, so what I see with several of them, they still follow models. People call themselves serial entrepreneur and this kind of stuff. So there's still so many stereotypes and the generation which are late teenagers up to their late twenties. So what I feel when I listen to some of them that there's still a majority of them who follow stereotypes and follow models which are motivated by stuff which they are fed through media, through social circles, which very few cases only it feels authentic as being their driver. So that's probably I think the number one issue. Make sure it's yours and spend time somewhere by yourself listening only to yourself and if you do this for six weeks and still is what really resonates with you do it. But otherwise if it's something because somebody told you it gets you to this or to that, it's all this is the hot air perspective or the stereotype perspective is over and above 50% at this stage. So we've both been around the block a while on this planet and have created some beautiful families have a lot longer to go and we're gonna have a wonderful journey but is there anything that you could depart to our listeners that you say, boy, I wish I would have known that from the start or I wish I would have learned this one thing early on because it would have made my journey a little bit easier or better. I think the number one issue is to the cross the human design borders. Yeah, so I believe part of secondary school if we look at current education terminologies should be they just spent one year, so two years, one year in one place one year another place with multiple religions cultures upbringing diversity. I think that's the number one most powerful thing. Yeah, so I only experienced that in my or I experienced by crossing the borders in Netherlands. The fact of me actually being in Hong Kong and places like this was my late teens early 20s for longer periods of time and but this should happen at an earlier stage. Yeah, so being able to experience that I believe is the number one most powerful thing to for a better life and to raise the well-being of mothers because we are only limited to ears to elbows to shoulders to kneecaps whatever you to compare with human body and that just doesn't do it. Yeah, and people will fight with you and say this is the best year because we are sitting in Norway or we are sitting in Hong Kong or we are sitting in Sydney and this is the best kneecap. What are you going to call it? And it's logically it's a nice angle but the lamp shade is here. It's not here. It's not over there. It's here. And the guys who tell you this are very stuck in the lamp shade and which is understandable but you will change this only by changing by making it a given experience that secondary school age. You have two years, 12 months in this part of the world, 12 months in that part of the world. We will spend so much less afterwards on defense budgets. Yeah, on border control issues and who builds which fence. Yeah, that's what will happen but you need that experience first. Yeah, the money that we're stealing from each other for defense budgets and for border controls is it's just stealing it from ourselves. We could have a much better life and have more basic quality of life if we didn't spend all that time fighting against and separating each other. To end all this up, I'm pretty much done but do you have any questions for me or is there anything that you would like to add before we say goodbye? Any words of wisdoms or things that you would like the listeners to know before I wish you well? No, our path has crossed a lot and it will probably continue to do so and I believe we covered many subjects and I'm looking forward to seeing how the audio work today and otherwise we do it for a third time. So no problem, enjoy. I enjoy putting this together and it's a wonderful experience of a digital in power 2020 and I think it's important to do more of those because this is actually where knowledge gets transferred. I remember that my oldest sons at a certain parts when they were really young I made it mandatory that they watch one or two TED talks. They could pick which one and they listened one or two TED talks and gave a summary one evening during dinner and they got so excited about it because this was so much more interesting than listening to people at school. But we're talking now about something which is 10 years ago, 10 years ago. So what we were doing today is a similar way of sharing perspective and this kind of content is absolutely essential and need to be found. And so people look at rainbows differently probably after listening to all that work right now and they might actually look into the last 1000 years of European borders and start smiling about it. Yeah, so then your next time you do a border crossing or somebody says, wow, you are from so and so and so they have a different more humorous way to relate to it. I love it. Thanks so much, Andreas. So good to see you and please take care and squeeze those wonderful kids and family of yours and tell them all hi. I will. Thank you. Enjoy. Nice talking to you.