 Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Meena Alaraby and I am delighted that I get to moderate this session. The power of narratives. This session is being webcast and of course it's on the record because I think all of us here on stage are used to being on the record. So there are no politicians in sight, so we'll be speaking on the record. For those who are online and want to join the conversation, the hashtag is hashtag WEF20. I was told by the organizers to mention that. So power of narratives. We all come here with a story. It's always interesting at the World Economic Forum when we come to these events that we all have our name badges. So you know my name, my title, and the country I'm supposedly from. Often it's linked to where we work and it's always interesting that we had to take off our badges and suddenly we have to create new narratives of who we are. Yes. There's... So I will introduce my great panel with their titles. Of course, first I have Professor Robert Schiller who's a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University. Angelique Kichou is a musician and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Yo-yo Ma, who very humbly just calls himself a cellist. That's what he is. And Ken Roth, a human rights watch executive director. So Yo-yo, I'd like to start with you. We were talking about the power of narratives and what is the currency of different narratives we have. And you put it into great perspective. You said that currency of politics is power. The currency of economics is wealth and the currency of culture is trust. And so when we're working on all of these three, how do we develop those narratives as individuals? But also, how do we communicate them as societies? What a short question. I think in everything that we do, that we can build upon, we actually need a number of fundamental values. And I think trust is essential in any community, in any discipline, in any framing of anything. And certainly, I can't perform on stage with another musician if we don't trust one another. Because otherwise, we're just automatons producing something without a connection. So that's one thing. And I think I'm actually thinking that because there's a lack of trust in so many, from people to institutions to governments, that I'm very concerned about how we rebuild a trust into a world that actually is inclusive. So in terms of a narrative, I feel we need a planetary narrative these days because of the internet. And so because we have access, we can't hide, we can't have too many secrets. And so if we're to build a narrative which actually every time I perform, it is a narrative. And so I'm always experimenting with narratives and how it works, how it speaks to somebody in one place or another. And all these things change. And it's an awareness of the other. And in culture, you actually can turn the other into us. And so that's for me a good way to start building trust. And trust is so important, as you said, across the board, but we have people questioning the trust in our financial systems. And the narrative we've had, and many people speak about us here attending the World Economic Forum and the trust in the capitalist system, there are questions about that narrative. So Professor, I wanted to come to you about economic narratives and how people buy into a system that dictates our day-to-day lives. How do you build that narrative, but also how do you restore trust once that narrative is tainted? Again, it's a big question. Coming after Yo-Yo Mahtar, I have a book called Narrative Economics. You can read my book. It's 400 pages. But I draw a parallel between music and literature and stories and music. There's a human universal anthropologist especially by what's true of all human cultures. They all have music and they all have stories. So I think we're in the same dimension here. You're talking about how to build narratives. That's the marketing department. I've become a... I have become a... I'm in the economics department, where I teach. But I become an advocate of their understanding of narrative. Advertising is about creating a narrative about some product. So in my book, I tend to describe narratives as successful narratives or not generally the creation of some committee. In fact, you look at novels. Can anyone name a novel that was written by a committee? A successful novel? There's something about human spark and human spirit that impels narratives. And I'm thinking that economic narratives are just as important. Economics is not in the habit. Most economists are not in the habit of talking about what narratives are going on right now. They tend to like to talk about what is the central bank doing and they quote statistics like interest rates and price earnings ratios. I don't mean to malign my own profession. I was president of the American Economic Association. I admire these people a lot. But I gave my talk, my presidential address, on narrative economics. Because I think that profession can improve itself if we start to think more clearly about the impact of narratives on our economic lives. Because essentially narratives is story and it's the act of how you tell that story. And so your rights in some ways when people read just numbers or statistics or there's a very rudimentary way of telling that story, it does feel detached from people's individual lives. So how do you bridge that and not through marketing? Well, I'm a social scientist and I have been talking more to researchers than to narrative builders. That's called the journalism department. So for talking to financial analysts and economists, I see them as beginning a new adventure in economic theory that is spawned by data that we now have on narrative. We now have digitized newspapers, magazines, books, business briefs, legal briefs, church sermons and even personal diaries. And you can search all of these now. It's amazing what you can search. And I think you can find that narratives change through time and they are sometimes changed by governments because people who find themselves as leaders in government are people who already appreciate narratives. They already have a skill and they listen to other people and they discover narratives that are contagious and they pile onto them. So I'm thinking that if you were asking how can we create a narrative of trust, for example? Well, it's hard to give a prescription. It's a creative thing. I'll just close with one example. A man named Parsson Weems, right around 1800, published a biography of George Washington. Have you heard of this man? George Washington. And he told a story about George Washington, which was, it's very brief. George was 12 years old and an impulse. He took his hatchet and chopped down a cherry tree. His father came up to him and said, did you chop down the cherry tree? And George Washington, at the age of about 12, said, father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree. Now, that's the end of the story. Now, that is not a particularly great story, is it? But it's been remembered over 200 years. I grew up with that story. And maybe it helped promote trust. It helped promote trust in George Washington. Yeah. Give me a pop, baby. That's it. So Angelique, I want to turn to you. Because I think it was very interesting what Professor Schiller said, of course, about journalism. Because we journalists do believe that we write the first draft of history. Sometimes you write it accurately and sometimes it's opposed by the victors in that history. So I wanted to come to you about that, the idea of who writes the historical narrative and through your work what you've been trying to do to change some of those narratives. While for my work what I try to do is to create bridges between cultures because I grew up in a household where every time I ask a question it's answer. Because my father said if you don't ask the question and you don't have an answer you don't know. But what is interesting to me in history is most of our history books and a lot of them have lies in them. Especially the history of the creation of the rich countries. When you have people working for you for 400 years and you don't pay them and that they use human being as a collateral to have credit in the bank and the banking system everything about the economy is based on the sweat and the blood of a category of human being and that story is not told correctly that the people having done wrong too are made responsible for what happened to them. I'm talking about slavery simply because slavery is they always say Africans sell Africans. It was a business proposal at the beginning. So if we want to blame somebody we have to blame everything we call business. Because if you come with a business proposal to me and then I want to do business with you if it turns bad who to blame both of us. Right. So that history have defined the artist that I am. My engagement in that social entrepreneurship my engagement in music how do I turn that narrative around to tell my own story. Because as a black person when you get somewhere the look people give you doesn't matter where you go even in the most liberal places you don't belong. The look that give is that what are you doing here what you have to offer. We already own you. We own you because we tell your story and there's no way we can get out of this narrative. Every time we try to talk about it you have a response I tell you it's been in the past it's too far away. We can't talk about it and we are we are in that kind of no man's land where we have no words. We have no history. We are not human being. We have been dehumanized and that dehumanization have profited people till today. So that history create economy. The economy started with slavery. The money making tons of money making without paying no one have created the wealth of the rich countries. So as an artist how do I maneuver in that history is by creating music by doing collaboration with people. And I was raised which is very ironic in my story is that I grew up with parents both my father and my mother were educated and they will never stop telling me a human being is not a matter of color. Do not come back home and tell me I fail because I'm black because that's the day you're going to see the worst of us. So I grew up being color blind basically because every kind of human being were welcoming at my house. It was the open forum for everybody. And then I get out in the world and then the wall just go bang. Yes. The door is slam on your face. Your story. No one want to hear it. Who you are. No one want to know about it. What you have to offer color culturally. Nobody want to know about it. So I'm like you know what I'm going to force my way through because I have a voice. I have a story to tell and I'm ready to work with any artist in the world. I just go everywhere. I'm going to work with your mom. She even is was nice to me and said let's work together when we met. I was not like you. That's it. I'm going to hit you up. Wow. No. No. No. No. No. Get down. Get down a little bit. I'm your joy. I want to follow up on this because I think it's really interesting what you said about your parents when they said actually there's no excuse. And you know there's there's many conversations amongst women about this idea of do we talk about you know being a woman and therefore being pushed forward or actually no women have to earn it themselves. And so it's always an interesting conversation with women when you have that. And so I wanted to ask you how would you tell a younger audience today who are who are traveling with history that we carry with us but also want to look forward. What is your advice to young people who are dealing with these narratives and the changes narrative. Well I'll give them the advice that my maternal grandmother gave me. 12 years old I was coming back from school because I started singing at the age of six. Suddenly out of nowhere people I don't know starts throwing stone speeding at me calling me prostitute because if you sing when people are kicking you are marriable. You're not supposed to be going to school. Not at all being on stage singing. And I came home that day crying telling my grandmother I don't want to sing anymore. She cleaned me up. She sat me down. She said stop sobbing and tell me your story. So I told my grandmother what happened. And my grandmother said to me I have one advice for you. Whatever you do with it is your choice. In this house did anyone tell you not to sing. I said no. Isn't everybody in this house supporting what you do. I say yes. And then she said to me if you want to live a life and be happy and be strong and bring something to the table to this humanity let people speak. People you don't know the opinion can't matter. Let them speak because if you let someone defines you you lose your essence. You're no longer a human being. You just like a leaf that the wind blow from left to right. Let them speak about you bad or good because the day we stop talking about you it means you're six feet under. That's what I have to say to the young. So some marketing departments will say any publicity is good publicity. Right. So so maybe so along. Oh yeah. I mean how many times I've been calling different kind of name. I say yes bring it. So can I can I want to turn to you because you know these are powerful stories that we're hearing. But today of course the digital world is changing how narratives are told. Now here we've seen conversations about deep fakes and there's concern about narratives being twisted and the speed with which a story or a piece of misinformation can take over. And so how when we think about narratives in this digital era do we do we deal with that. And do we maintain the beauty of individual stories that we're listening. Well see I we've always had narratives and traditionally there were relatively few ways to disseminate them broadly. And this gave a huge advantage to governments for example because the government always has an audience. They usually would work through traditional media of which they were a handful and only relatively elite access to them. That was a real privilege in society. And so most people didn't have much of a role in shaping the national narrative. They had to kind of go with a few options that were were disseminated in the traditional way. Now social media has changed that. And you know I know social media is stubble edged and I you know I recognize the problems here. It can be divisive. It can spread hate. It can spread disinformation. You know governments are learning how to disseminate you know bots to try to you know take control of it. But you know nonetheless social media has been a huge plus in my view because it has democratized the ability to tell narratives and to disseminate them. And so I mean I'll just give one example that you know people will be familiar with from the current times. Trump liked to justify his effort to have nasty portations by portraying any undocumented immigrant in the United States as basically you know a rapist a drug dealer or a murderer. And you know that sounds pretty bad. You should probably should get rid of those people you know. And so that was what the national narrative was and the traditional media dutifully recorded that. We were able to push back through individual stories. My organization even I thought we actually put people on the border. And with just a video we would record their stories as to who they were. And you know who they were reflected the reality which is that two thirds of them had been in the United States for a decade or more. They all had U. S. citizens spouses and kids. They had jobs. They had mortgages. They were Americans in every way but legal papers. And that is very powerful because that does change the narrative. And it has two big advantages that I see. One is that you know stories are always stronger than abstractions. And and so the public you know by operating through individualized narratives has that ability to push back against the abstraction and to show you know you may be saying it's this way but you know here's the person and people remember the person much more than the abstraction. So you've got to get the right person the right story. But also the fact that anybody can do this. Now I don't pretend that anything goes viral but anybody can get the word out. You know you you staffed if you had a different narrative from the official story you could you know say it around the kitchen table you could say it around the campfire. You know a handful of people would learn today at least in principle you can get it out widely. And that you know has huge advantages first because it enables us to learn what's happening in places where the government actually doesn't want you to know what the narrative is. They want to just keep us in the dark. And it's really hard these days to keep anybody in the dark. You basically have to shut off the internet which in a different sort of way shines a big spotlight saying there's something wrong here. But the you know it also just it allows people around the world to explain what is happening with their lives. And in a way that we've just never had before. And I you know our access to information and to powerful stories about what events mean in individuals lives is so much greater today than it was a decade ago. So despite you know all the evils and I know them social media has been hugely democratizing in terms of enabling all of us to state our narrative and have some chance of getting into the public domain. Yeah I want you to pick up from there because because that is that opportunity and for that democratization of information. But also I mean today almost anybody who has any social media account is a publisher. And so for us as journalists we say they're not necessarily journalists because there are certain standards but you're a publisher you can publish and you can get the word down. When it comes to the arts there is still very much you know a way of getting your music out or reaching to greater people. But you can also be a great artist and go viral on a YouTube channel. And so how do we understand where the arts are going where music is going and the narrative of music with all those changes with that democratization between somebody who's got a whole machine behind them and somebody who's in their bedroom with a camera. Well I think this is a very good question. I can just very truthfully say that since 1998 I would not have been able to do any of the things I've done since that time without using the Internet. The Silk Road project was founded in 1998. None of going to Central Asia going to Aleppo in 2001 nothing would have been possible going to be and and getting Mongolian musicians out with with what you know with. And so that's one thing and the tour that I'm doing right now. The Bach project I'm going and playing music on six continents as a listening tour to find out what local populations are thinking and what they're what what they're concerned about and what they're proud of. And to Ken's point I think I think I agree with you and I hesitate to say this but because this may sound really awful and controversial but you know the NRA thing that says guns don't kill it's people that kill. Well I could apply that to you know social media internet. It's another trust issue. It's people that do the fake news. It's not the Internet that it enables it. We have developed such strengths in tools and that we can actually go either way because that's in our nature and that's what I worry about is how we educate ourselves with a sense of you know right and wrong gray areas trusting telling the truth and and really having a way of looking at our whole planet and asking the question who are we and how do we fit in the world. Because if everybody asked that we then actually start to get closer to looking at what the world looks like from many different points of view. So I think that's a beautiful sentiment but then politics and interests and harsh realities come into it. If we say we have I mean again if we talk about sustainability for example which has been such an important theme this year here at the World Economic Forum we are it's one planet there is no you know plan B this is it we have to take care of it. But then the way we're organized whether it's nation states or communities or companies there are interests and often it's hard to get that win-win scenario to be agreed upon by the actors. So how do we how do we bridge that between that narrative of I must win I must succeed I must be competitive and between yeah we want to create a win-win situation. Well you bring me to the most difficult part of my study of narrative. How do we we're actually at a point of relatively low trust. You seem to be positive about the internet creating allowing to create trust but it hasn't worked out that way so much and one thing is that we have many different voices on the internet many people or maybe most people listen to the ones that they favor yeah and and they can create an illusion that everybody agrees with me. So that is a fundamental problem that I agree with Ken though that the internet is wonderful for what it allows in fact checking. The problem is that many people don't do fact checking. They will but only in a limited domain. I think look we've the internet forces us all to become our own editors you know it used to be that you could you know trust to some degree the newspaper editor the TV show editor and there were problems there as well you know there's Fox News they have editors there too but they spew this newspaper editor is okay what about but I think the point you raise very important because that ability to get different sources. Yes so another we you know for better or worse relied on people to give us what was this you know this traditional portrayal of the truth. Now we're getting it without that intermediary. So we do have to educate ourselves as you know and pick and choose you know what sounds plausible and what doesn't. There is this sort of echo chamber effect although you know I mean I've seen studies that suggests that the Internet is actually less of an echo chamber than people's ordinary lives because your ordinary lives you tend to surround yourself with you know a relative handful of people who tend to similar views. The Internet is so easy to get different points of view so even if you know 75 percent of what you hear agrees with you you're going to bump into the other 25% and so that you know that forces a degree of critical viewing. But we do I think you know starting in grade school. We got to teach kids not to believe everything they see on the Internet and to be skeptical readers and but but there is you know that skill yes we have to learn it but it's within an environment that is much richer and has a much greater diversity of narratives than was the case you know less than a generation ago. Yeah but I have a different view about Internet. One thing that is really positive for me in Internet is as an artist Wikipedia is just one of the most powerful business cards you can have because what you put on Wikipedia is you have to what you put in there has to be accurate. You have to have a link of where the source of what you put in there. But apart from that Internet has been an abusive place for a lot of things. The right of artists single songwriter we don't have any right from the platform that use our music. YouTube all of those dog Spotify all of that is complicated. They pay the record company. The artists are the one that cut out of the the the the the the money. So if you are in your artist and you start today unless you have your own YouTube channel or whatever it is and you make money for another way if you are counting on your right as a writer you will not want to even get a penny. So that's one thing about Internet that is not good at all. And one thing also that is Internet and Internet is really scary for me is bullying people on Internet. Our children are subjected to it. You have predator on Internet and our government is not ready enough to put some safeguard in there to protect our children. Me I'm a mother. So for me all that is really my theory for me to think that. But if we go back I mean to the and these are all valid points but if we go back to the premise of this idea of the power of narratives because this idea is the narrative that the Internet allows you to do to be exposed to all these other things. But like you were saying it's a tool. And so the tool could also be used for bullying. So how do we take ownership. Could I make a point that maybe some of you might disagree with or might agree. But I'd like to make the point that everything that we have all the ways of thinking that we have all artists that have created things what. Politics. Economics. We invented. So basically we invented systems that worked at a certain time. And we as evolutionary beings have to live with the things we invented at a certain time. And we're always rechecking whether those things are actually serving our interests. That's the service part of it. You do economics but you think about how it applies. How it actually benefits people. Yeah. Eventually. And you're an artist because you are thinking about a narrative that you want people to understand. You're serving the people whose voices are not exactly powerful. And you use the tools at your disposal to make their voices heard. And all of these things all of these acts we invent. And I want to maybe posit the idea that we should invent the structures that fit the reality of our world. I say yes. For example when we invaded Iraq. Let's do it. Right. What killed me. Was. You know it was all about. Winning. And. And I have to say I grew up with the I think in fourth grade we study ancient civilizations. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Do you remember that. Was there ever a mention of the Tigris and Euphrates. You know the cradle of civilization. The museum that was unguarded with all the treasures looted. I mean what. What was the big idea of invading a place and actually and not safeguarding the very treasures that. We have we have declared were world. Class. I mean that defies. Everything everything that I've been taught. So thank you. So as an Iraqi I appreciate you raising that. I was I had warned my audience that I will bring Iraq into the conversation at some point. And you brought it in because you know we have demonstrations at the moment in Iraq. Since October and six hundred people have died. Six hundred young. Some of our brightest stars have died and over twenty thousand people have been wounded because they're fighting to own their narrative. And it's to your point because when you look at communities and you decide you're only going to be soon she accrued and forget your history and forget your title and that that gets imposed. And they're fighting back to reclaim their narrative and be able to tell their own story. And so I'll segue to you. Professor about that because in in your research in your study on this issue of narratives you know we have not only societies and political structures but even politicians you know it became very famous when George Bush went out and said mission accomplished the end of the Iraq war for example. And if a politician goes out says the mission is accomplished and then whatever comes it's not a problem. And the headlines have to take what this official says because we as journalists have to report what people in power say how do we deal with that as a society or if you're if you're on the receiving end how do you deal with the fact that you may disagree. But that's what an official has said and declared. How do you change that narrative. Again it's difficult. What you have to do is come up with a counter narrative. If you want to be heard it's not enough to be on a new show once you have to generate word of mouth and that people trust people that they meet direct. That's why advertisements often simulate word of mouth. You know when they're advertising a product on TV they show someone like like your next door neighbor. Yeah yeah do you know do you like this. But they're trying to create it's called word of mouth marketing. And the problem is it's it's it's an art. It's not something that I can quantify. It relies on experimenting. You try some different story and see if it if it's contagious or not. And if it is you amplify it. What can I say that there was just give two examples of counter narratives that that. So in in the 1980s not that many people outside of South Africa knew Mandela's name. Right. So I was in school when there was you know students were talking about divestiture of investments and so this is like in the mid 70s. But since the 80s the the number of musicians that actually you know Harry Bellafonte onwards that actually brought awareness of apartheid and Mandela's name absolutely out so that it actually became something not an anonymous person. And that was huge and further back during the Civil Rights Movement when there was again another narrative out there and a counter one. And and I can't tell you that the power of young people who were were meeting life for the first time and and saying why is this that this way. Right. You don't and you question it and then it actually takes hold the power of musicians and so many the journalists the writers people that and and it's not so when there's gross injustice at some point like in Iraq and now people come out and say the piece that was before the Internet. Yeah. And so and those are cultural shifts that I think takes people with tremendous courage and stubbornness and maybe you know maybe bullheadedness it to change a narrative and the Internet in this era if we're again today at the place where we need it to free Mandela Internet we have amplified the message to the point where it would take less time to mobilize for him to get out. So it takes us longer time because I arrived in France in the 80s and I start going to the concert being there because I heard about Nelson Mandela when I was 15 years old and because we were switching to the TV in Nigeria and I was hearing Winnie Mandela talking about Nelson Mandela until then till I turned 15 I knew nothing about what was going on and I was so enraged and when I get to Paris I say I want to be part of this march and I will go everywhere sometime I'll just leave my school and just go free Mandela free Mandela I've done that all the time when he get out of jail I sat and just take a big it's like a broaden have been lifted from my shoulder. Can I can I follow up on the idea of activism and and the narrative of we must we must all you know be behind this particular cause and and you're right because pre-internet you might hear it through some foreign media and then there's a protest march and we all and we all have memories I guess of those sorts of things. But now people are quite distant from it and you almost worry about the narrative becoming oh I'm part of the community that supports X or Y with a hashtag and doesn't take you to the next level of actually being part of a movement beyond the digital. Well I mean you're bringing up the question it doesn't matter whether you go in the streets or not and I mean I started with governments governments they all have a narrative you know they're not dumb and so today the dominant narrative you know for a lot of these autocratic populace is we are serving the people you know there's some problem that everybody acknowledges whether it's inequality or climate change or you know joblessness or the problems of globalization or technological change there's always something. And so the populace their classic evasion is to say oh yeah I know the problem the problem is those immigrants you know the problem is those Muslims the problem is the gays I mean it's always you know some minority I'm scapegoat scapegoat them yes and then so like me I'll serve the people. And so that's that's a very common narrative you see this many many times over and the antidote to that is to try to at a much more personalized level show what's going on in society. And you know we're in the middle of doing this right now in Hungary where Victor Orban with his liberal democracy says you know I'm serving the people I'm getting rid of all these Muslims and immigrants with a Soros fellow who was a Soros fellow he's kicked out Central European University but he so you know the European Union has been subsidizing him on a per capita basis more than I think any other leader in the European Union and he takes this EU money and he builds football stadiums which he then you know hires his cronies his contractors and half the money disappears and you have a bunch of football stadiums where you don't really need them. Now so we're in order to counteract this view that he's serving the people. We're talking to ordinary Hungarians and saying what's life like under the door but and we've decided to focus on hospitals because when you talk to ordinary people part of their narrative is you go to a hospital and there is nothing there. There's no medicine. You've got to bring in your own food. You've got to bring in your own toothpaste. There's like nothing. So why does this government have all this money to spend on football stadiums when it can't even provide basic health care. And that's you know we're just trying to change the narrative by entering into the reality of people's lives. And it's just it's a matter of you know I feel that my job between rights watches to you know you first of all figure out what are the most important stories to tell. But then you let you know individuals who really have you know relatively little voice tell their story and we project it and we projected in writing but these days we project it visually and through social media as well. And that just you know it is so powerful and it just takes you a handful of stories for that to register as people will then walk away and say there's nothing in those hospitals. What is this serving the people. You know so. So but if we flip that also I mean country societies do also need narratives that pull people together. They can be used in a in a negative way or in the various way. But then you also need to do whether it's nation building whether it's getting people excited around an idea and I remember London during the Olympics everybody you know whenever there's a big national thing to get people together. So how how do governments also use that in a way in this era when there are so many other voices. Well right now there is concerned in the European Union that it has lost its narrative which has held it together. And I've been meeting people here who it comes up repeatedly that somehow it has gotten lost. And so I look back at at the history of of narratives in the European Union type narratives. And I find that talk of one Europe or United Europe goes in and out of favor. There was a lot of talk of it around 1960 when we became when they became the European economic community and also a lot of talk in the 1990s with Maastricht and with the European the Euro currency. So I can't explain part of it is the forgetting of the World War two narrative. That was a horrible tragedy and so the European Union was counterposed as a counter narrative to that. But as that began to fade the European Union narrative needed some support. The idea of issuing a common currency seemed to me it was a brilliant stroke to put a visual image onto the narrative of one Europe. Because in fact they did it with such care of everyone knows this. They decided to put monuments to European greatness. But the in the form of bridges bridging people who are otherwise disparate. But none of those bridges is real because if they made them real they would have to people would figure out what country that was and they don't put any picture of a human being on their currency because that would again highlight one company. So that was carefully constructed narrative and they put it in so that you have everyone would be carrying around those notes Euro notes. Unfortunately we're not carrying them around any so much as we did before. And I think we need a new narrative but it has European Union needs a new narrative. But it has to be one that is somehow contagious and it has to again you can't you can't just dictate this narrative. You can't have a committee writing that there has to be some recognition of what is exciting to people. At your point no no committee wrote a novel that caught on was anyone know of a committee written novel but I do know of a piece of music that was written called F.A.E. as in Frey Aber Eindsum Free but Alone written by I think Brahms Schumann Joachim and it's a sonata and each person wrote a movement and it's played and it's beautiful. But but I think film is actually a collaborative enterprise in there. That's a lot of but still it tends to come from a novel written by one person maybe but some some scripts were actually so different mediums actually can allow for things and for example you know the giant telescopes or CERN are in fact massive collaborations by countries all around the world and without their contribution it would not be made technologicals as as well as as monetary. So we've only got them. OK. It is the one thing I just want to your response to how do governments build narratives. I think the challenge in this kind of illiberal age is that it's easy to build an exclusionary narrative. It's hard to build an inclusive narrative. And so if you look at the narratives that governments like to develop they are you know the flag waving kind we have an external threat. You got a rally behind the troops. We got to protect the nation and those easily define the nation in sort of monochromatic terms and it's harder for those of us who want to promote a more inclusive national narrative because you know you tend to fall back in abstractions like respect or liberalism or you know things that are a bit you know harder to to feel in the heart. And so I think the challenge for us is to find personal ways to portray that narrative to show the kind of different form of community that can develop from a you know a society that does respect differences respects the individuals and doesn't try to put everybody into some national nationalist form. Ken I think you actually said the word inclusive narrative. I think that's in a way key to forming an each narrative these days because that's what is demanded is needed. And I believe strongly that if that narrative that comes out whether it's written by one person or by a lot of people it comes out includes the values of of trust truth and service as in government of the people by the people for the people. Right. I mean it's it's not a new invention. But if that is is in that narrative and inclusive includes the Gen Zs that they're going to be 34 percent of the world population and that will inherit trillions and trillions of dollars and who are consuming based on trust of the companies that they buy from and the truth of what is there that they seek and that want to give service but not to institutions that are far away because they may be untrustworthy. I think working with them generationally at this point will make a huge difference in accelerating the possibility of the narrative for a planet that may come to be. Thank you. So on that note we have to wrap up because we're out of time. I would say that you're right about inclusiveness about how we build our individual story and learn how to tell it but also the importance of knowing how that gets passed on and how people understand narratives. And Ken to your point you know Benedict Anderson's book imagines communities as my favorite books and in it this idea of the imagined community and as a print journalist I love the idea that we were an imagined community of everybody read the news same newspaper and now that's all evolving of course if you're part of a certain social network online and so forth. So I'm glad to be part of this imagined community of thought leaders. Thank you so much for making the time and thank you so much for joining us.