 I was curious, how do you get to de-growth? Because you kind of mentioned, okay, the first element is to be really curious about the environment and what degrades the environment and how just and unjust some measures are, either when you implement it beforehand and they have environmental implications or afterhand something that is supposed to do good for the environment, but it's just for the rich few. So I started, I mentioned just before, like around the 2011 to read about it. I think it was in French with Serge Latouche. He had some very small books about de-growth, which is a nice introductory to the topic. How did you, is it like a logical arrival to talk about de-growth when you have your academic backgrounds? Do you feel that anyone who should have more or less done the same path as you would have arrived to de-growth and write this book as you did? Oh, it's a good question. No, I don't think so. I think for me it was a logical arrival, but it's a logical arrival. It always has a biographical element in it, right? So same two people can follow very logical steps and arrive to different conclusions because the assumptions are different. So I think it's important to think that logic is a method of analysis, but you always need premises. So like if your premises are very different, I don't think you arrive to the same conclusion. So for me, it was a logical process. So I arrived to it, let's say I arrived to it through my mind and through my thought I didn't arrive to it by being an activist or by being involved in some environmental conflict, which is the way many other people arrive to it. So yes, I studied environmental, I did environmental engineering because my master's then I said, okay, I wanted to do a PhD because I felt I wanted to go deeper. I worked for a year in the European Parliament and what we were doing there was we were supporting parliamentarians with, that they wanted, it was called the science and technology option assessment unit. So the idea was like someone who wants, parliamentarians who wants an assessment on a particular policy they are preparing, they would ask us to prepare a small study. So we would normally commission it to a consultancy, but in my case, I did the study myself. So it was at the time we were discussing the water framework directive, what later became the water framework directed in the European Union, our main water legislation at the European level. And I was started with a study to assess like certain aspects of changes that they were going to be introduced in European water policies. So that's what I did, but I realized by doing, let's say a consultancy and working with consultants, that you need to really go deeper. You write things on the surface, you don't really get to understand them. So I thought, okay, maybe a PhD is where you do that. So then I did a PhD. And water somehow accidentally, you know, there are these accidental tastes, but also accidental in life. Not so somehow I was really motivated to study water, but I've never been motivated to study food. I don't know why, although I like eating and I like food, but like people tell me, let's do a project on food sovereignty. Somehow it doesn't, I don't know why though, no, it's, you're that kind of a person. Okay, I understand. I don't judge more into construction, but sure, okay. So, yes, I did my PhD, I started working on water. And the thing I did was like a little bit similar to your research and to your podcast in the sense that I was studying water management and water planning issues in Athens. That's how it started. But then over time and through European project and the collaborations I had there, I started looking at these questions much more critically. So we were looking at Athens and Athens at the time had a big drought. So there was a discussion whether Athens should construct and develop a new dam or focus on demand management and water conservation as it was called in the American literature at the time. And me as like, let's say a green person, I was very much in favor of water conservation. I thought there was room for Athens to manage demand and not necessarily build more dams as was the dominant idea at the time. How was that perceived? How was it, sorry? How was it perceived, this type of idea? Because I guess there were two kinds. It was discussed, generally. It was discussed a lot in England. It was discussed all over the place, like demand management and even in Greece, like people understand it. But then I started getting more and more into the logic of how the whole dynamic of the water system was working. And on the one hand, you had engineers very much trained and always thinking, okay, there is a lack of something. People want more, so we have to provide it. We're not gonna question whether people why they want more. And in one sense, these people were also creating the desire for that more, you know? Because it was like, okay, you were building bigger dams so then you had a lot of water, it was very cheap so you could have suburbs exploiting in Athens. You had the city getting bigger. You had half of the water of the country going to Athens. So of course, half of the population also of the country was in Athens. So then I started understanding this link between, let's say supplying water with big dams, creating water demand, growth of a city and growth of the resources going to that city, you know? And there I understood that demand, what was called water demand at the time, but we can think about energy demand. You can think about other stuff. It's not something that it's exogenous only, you know? Because planners, engineers tended at the time to take it into exogenous. But you would see in their work that they were not just analyzing demand. Let's say they were making these projections. Now how much water will Athens need in 10 years? And they were making these graphs. But then you would see that these were ideological graphs because they were assuming a... It's the status quo that would continue and everybody just wants to consume just a bit more, right? Yes, everyone wants more water. And the city must grow. Like, who are we to say that the city of Athens should not grow? Who are we to say that people cannot have? I think Donald Trump said that yesterday, actually. It was in a... He started the ranting and people have put it on the YouTube as a rant, but he was talking about it. Who is to tell me that I can't open the water tap and the water doesn't flow on full... He was talking about removing some water restrictions in Iowa that he was talking. He was very proud of saying no more water restrictions, no more water demand measures. Who is to tell me that my sour is not gonna be on full, full blog? So that was the logic. Now we can't tell people they want more water. The city has to grow. So this is where I realized that that's an ideological thing. So when I started working more and more on that, then I started a little bit water issues in California where these things play out on a much bigger scale and there is a lot more written. And then you realize how, for example, the growth of Los Angeles was predicated on securing water resources from the north of the state at a massive scale. And you see also the organizations of elites, of growth interests to make that happen. So again, it wasn't just a natural process of people wanting more water. So by the time I arrived in Barcelona and then when people introduced me to the idea of the growth, because it wasn't something I read, but it was the conference 2008 in Paris and then people from my group went there and came back. They were very excited. And they started introducing me to the growth. For me, all this made sense now because I realized that the driver of the... It was just a missing word somehow. You already had everything, all the pieces of the puzzle together and someone just put it there for you, I guess. Exactly, because for me it was like, okay, we have to talk about is this growth of Athens necessary? Is this growth of water use necessary? And we have to satisfy it? Or can we change what we do in order to have big girls? So the world felt pretty well there.