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“We need to look in the rear view mirror of history and see what we can learn from the past to help us make decisions today.” Social philosopher and author, Roman Krznaric, spells out the importance of using history as a way to find climate solutions that exist in the past, not just the future. Recorded live in Oxford, Roman connects the dots between the role of radical movements across history and the climate movement, why stories told by oil execs today echo those told by slave owners in the past, and why cities are great places for climate action, and a climate confession involving a sneaky kebab…
If you enjoyed this episode of Climate Curious, watch Roman’s TED Talk, Lessons from history for a better future.
Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:29 Special episode at Oxford University
00:42 Introducing Roman Krznaric
00:57 History in climate action
01:50 Roman’s TED Talk and historical analogies
03:15 Learning from historical successes
14:12 The Radical Flank Effect in social movements
18:15 Cities as hubs of tolerance
28:25 The Empathy Museum
30:59 Discussing Roman’s jacket
32:02 The circular economy of Ancient Japan
34:09 Lessons from history: economies
36:14 Rethinking democracy: examples from the past
42:15 Climate Confessions
49:49 Closing thoughts
Transcript:
Introduction to Climate Curious Podcast
[00:00:00] Ben Hurst: This is Climate Curious, the podcast for people who are bored, scared, or confused by climate change.
[00:00:10] Maryam Pasha: I’m Maryam Pasha, the director and curator of TEDxLondon and the co host of this podcast alongside the amazing Ben.
[00:00:16] Ben Hurst: Hi, I’m Ben Hurst, activist and advocate exploring what positive masculinities can look like and self confessed climate normie.
[00:00:28] Maryam Pasha: Hey, Ben. Hey.
Special Episode at Oxford University
[00:00:29] Maryam Pasha: [00:00:30] So this is very exciting because this week we’re in Oxford University doing a bit of a roadshow with some of the brainiest people in the world. Yes. Um, literally
[00:00:38] Ben Hurst: some of the brainiest people in the world. Yeah. And exaggeration. No, it’s
[00:00:41] Maryam Pasha: not. It’s not at all.
Introducing Roman Krznaric
[00:00:42] Maryam Pasha: So today we’re very excited because we’re talking to Australian born social philosopher Roman Krznaric.
[00:00:48] Maryam Pasha: Roman’s books have focused on the power of ideas to create change and on themes ranging from long term thinking to the power of empathy. So you and I have seen this.
The Importance of History in Climate Action
[00:00:57] Maryam Pasha: I think sometimes we’ve done, I think over a [00:01:00] hundred episodes of this podcast and sometimes we can in climate be always looking to technology and to innovation for the answers, like it all lies in the future, but this week we’re actually going to be taking a beat to look in another direction.
[00:01:13] Maryam Pasha: We’re going to delve through the history books and see how it can help us chart a way forward.
[00:01:18] Ben Hurst: History has never been my favorite thing. It’s never been my favorite subject in school. So Roman’s here to share how we can use history not simply as a means of understanding the past [00:01:30] but also as a way of reimagining our relationship with the future and he’s gonna share a Radical vision of hope that could turn out to be our most vital tool For surviving and thriving in a world that’s affected by climate change.
[00:01:44] Ben Hurst: So Let’s get right into it. Thank you, Roman, for joining us today.
Roman’s TED Talk and Historical Analogies
[00:01:50] Maryam Pasha: You gave a TED Talk, um, a few years ago about being a good ancestor, and that has been hugely popular. Um, you have a new talk that’s coming out [00:02:00] about history, in a way. And actually before, instead of me trying to summarize it and tell you about it, for people who haven’t seen the talk, can you give us the headline on the talk?
[00:02:09] Roman Krznaric: I guess the headline is the idea that, look, if you’re driving a car, you’d never drive without looking in the rear view mirror. You know, and that’s the idea of the talk that if we’re going to go forwards and deal with things like the climate emergency or deal with risks from AI, that kind of stuff, we need to actually look in the rear view mirror of history and see what we can learn from [00:02:30] the past to help us make decisions today.
[00:02:34] Roman Krznaric: So good analogy. That’s why
[00:02:35] Ben Hurst: this guy keeps getting these talks. That’s two talks because that is a Good analogy. What did, there’s a phrase, isn’t there? Saying if you people are, I’m going to get it wrong, but it’s something like people who forget the past are damned to repeat it. Well, some of those who
[00:02:49] Roman Krznaric: cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
[00:02:52] Roman Krznaric: Right. But actually I have the opposite view of that in a sense. Cause if you think about that idea, those who can’t remember the past [00:03:00] condemned to repeat it, that’s thinking about history. About the warnings from history about everything that’s gone wrong and learning from that. And of course, I think we need to learn from that.
[00:03:08] Roman Krznaric: We need to learn from the history of colonialism or the history of high carbon economies and all these things.
Learning from Historical Successes
[00:03:15] Roman Krznaric: But I also think that we need to learn from what’s gone right. As well as what’s gone wrong. So when have civilizations managed to deal with problems, manage resources effectively, um, [00:03:30] struggle against injustices and succeed.
[00:03:33] Roman Krznaric: So I think there’s amazing inspiration to be found from the good stuff in history. So interesting.
[00:03:38] Ben Hurst: I don’t, I think that might be the first time I’ve ever heard of history being framed. As a positive, I feel like actually the subtext of that is that it’s always like it went wrong and we need to fix it.
[00:03:51] Ben Hurst: And we need to do better rather than like, Oh, these are some success stories of how people have actually got it right. Because instantly I start thinking of like Pompeii. And then I’m like, maybe, maybe we didn’t. [00:04:00] Maybe there’s something to learn here. I know. I don’t know why that’s just where my mind goes to.
[00:04:09] Maryam Pasha: There’s something about this that is interesting because there’s this. Area that I feel like you’re carving out right between what you’ve just said, which is history is a warning and the kind of very toxic nostalgia that people have about the past, right? Because this isn’t about that either.
[00:04:25] Roman Krznaric: No, absolutely not.
[00:04:25] Roman Krznaric: I mean, you know, talk to any politician or see any politicians [00:04:30] speak and they’ll often be referring to the past, often in a completely romantic and nostalgic way. And you often get this around discussions of immigration where you’ll get. politicians, particularly on the right, who sort of be telling this kind of story about their own country as if there were never any immigrants in the past.
[00:04:46] Roman Krznaric: And there’s this sort of pure national race. But of course, you know, every country is full of a history of people coming and going, you know, and so politicians have this. Tendency [00:05:00] to construct these historical stories, which are, I think, yeah, very romanticized, very nostalgic. And I’m not into that.
[00:05:08] Roman Krznaric: Obviously, I’m trying to draw. What do we actually know from what scholars and researchers have shown us? Um, and stories which often haven’t been told. Because when, again, when you look at history, we’re often told histories of big, famous figures, you know, Napoleon, Churchill, Nelson Mandela, whoever it is.
[00:05:25] Roman Krznaric: But actually, I’m interested in the history of people. Yeah. Collective action from below. I mean, you know, [00:05:30] people organizing in trade unions or in faith groups or in communities, stuff that we’ve done together to change society.
[00:05:38] Maryam Pasha: So my question is, because you’ve got some great examples, you’ve got a book on this that’s out, but also you’ve got the TED talk and in it you’ve got some examples and I want to delve into them and kind of.
[00:05:46] Maryam Pasha: pick apart some of the stuff we didn’t get to hear from you in the talk. But before we do that, how did you come across this idea? Like, what brought you to this point to think, this is really important, I need to write a whole book about it.
[00:05:59] Roman Krznaric: Yeah, it [00:06:00] was a kind of mad enterprise to write a book about the lessons of history because it’s just so big and crazy.
[00:06:05] Roman Krznaric: It partly comes out of a book I wrote before that called The Good Ancestor, how to think long term in a short term world. And the reason I wrote that book was because I was getting incredibly frustrated. With the way our politicians and policy makers were so trapped in the present moment, you know, the tyranny of the now, unable to see beyond the next election or the latest social media post or opinion poll.
[00:06:27] Roman Krznaric: I think there’s not enough long term thinking because of [00:06:30] course, the decisions we make have huge impacts on the generations to come, you know, whether it’s, you know, whether the airplane flights we take or whatever it happens to be the food that we eat. Um, but then I started thinking after I wrote that book, I thought.
[00:06:42] Roman Krznaric: Where can we find the real solutions to that? Because that book was really about why we need to care about future generations, like expanding our moral selves into the future. But when I thought, well, where do we find the solutions? Let’s actually look at what we’ve done so far. Let’s not just look at new technologies and [00:07:00] hoping that carbon capture and storage or whatever might solve our problems for us.
[00:07:03] Roman Krznaric: Let’s see, have we actually faced any of these problems in the past? So that’s where it kind of emerged from. And I ended up. You know, going into vast history around the world over the past 1000 years, and it did my head in, um, but after four years, I managed to write a book and then do a TED talk. So I survived.
[00:07:22] Roman Krznaric: So did you, sorry, did
[00:07:23] Ben Hurst: you find, did you find that people, is there actually a history of that? Of people like? Solving problems in the [00:07:30] past in my mind, the way that this works is like this is like an unprecedented problem. That’s like never happened before. And now we’re crisis point where we need to solve this problem.
[00:07:40] Ben Hurst: But like until this point, everything was just fine. But is am I making the offer? Well, I think
[00:07:46] Roman Krznaric: I think it’s true that a lot of the problems we face today in some ways different from the ones we faced in the past. It’s not like in the past. Yeah. Yeah. 17th century, they were, had societies that were pushing through planetary boundaries of like massive biodiversity loss of CO2 emissions, or they didn’t [00:08:00] even know that was happening, but they did have certain kinds of problems that they were trying to solve often together.
[00:08:05] Roman Krznaric: Like, you know, in the 19th century, trade unions were fighting for. You know, safety at work in the eight hour day and decent wages and this kind of thing. It was about people acting together. And again, you know, look today at the global climate movement. You know, it’s clear that we need people acting together.
[00:08:23] Roman Krznaric: Maybe the issues a little bit different and the policy solutions are a bit different. But, um, actually, the human side of it is the [00:08:30] same. It’s like, what can we do to cooperate? When does it work? How does it work?
[00:08:35] Maryam Pasha: And I want to, I want to get into these stories, but. And you can cut this out because we may not want to include it and you may not want to tell the story because You’re gonna want to
[00:08:42] Ben Hurst: tell the story you’re definitely gonna want to
[00:08:45] Maryam Pasha: tell the story There was something you told me about an inciting incident that happened Um, at a Ted conference that made you think about this.
[00:08:55] Maryam Pasha: Um, and so I’m just going to ask the question. So, so, okay. So [00:09:00] obviously think the writing, the good ancestor made you think kind of where do we find these solutions? Was there a moment at which it kind of crystallized for you that, that where you thought, ah, I’m seeing something here that I need to, to, to recognize.
[00:09:16] Roman Krznaric: Actually, there was a very specific moment. I remember I was at a TED conference in Edinburgh a few years ago, and we were all there and up there on the stage. Was [00:09:30] the CEO, the head of Shell, a guy called Ben, Ben Van Burden, and very slick. He’d been in the oil industry for 38 years, very good at his talking about how Shell was, you know, so advanced and revolutionizing.
[00:09:47] Roman Krznaric: It was very, very green and, you know, his children said that he must, you know, make his company more green and all that kind of stuff. And then when I was listening to him closely, I noticed something because he kept on saying, well, look, we realize that the [00:10:00] climate emergency is a big problem, but we can’t transform our company too quickly and get off the production of gas and oil too quickly because otherwise tens of thousands of jobs in Shell will be at stake and consumers are still dependent on the fossil fuel energy we supply them.
[00:10:17] Roman Krznaric: So we need to go gradually. So we’ll try and be kind of zero, whatever it was by 2050. And when I heard that, I thought, Oh my God. I’ve come across this argument before, almost exactly the same thing. [00:10:30] 200 years earlier in the 1820s, slave plantation owners and financiers were making almost exactly the same arguments when it came to the slave economy.
[00:10:42] Roman Krznaric: Because back in the 1820s, over 700, 000 enslaved people were working on British owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean, in the West Indies. And back then that’s exactly when the plantation owners were saying, well, look, we, we admit that slavery is morally questionable, but let’s not [00:11:00] end it too quickly because otherwise our economy would just so dependent on slavery may well collapse.
[00:11:05] Roman Krznaric: So instead we need to go gradually and it might take several decades for us to move away from this. And I thought this is exactly the same foot dragging arguments. Made by today’s fossil fuel executives that I heard at that TED conference. So, suddenly I thought, so there are these parallels between the past and the present.
[00:11:25] Roman Krznaric: And there’s this other really interesting parallel, which I kind of realized at the time. Because, [00:11:30] you know, in the 1820s, all these arguments were being made about why Britain had to still have these, these slave plantations and things like that. But then something really interesting happened, because in 1833, There was an Abolition of Slavery Act in Britain, which made plantation slavery illegal.
[00:11:46] Roman Krznaric: Now, it wasn’t perfect by any means. There were reparations or payments made to slave plantation owners for their so called lost property. And, and also enslaved people had to keep working for several years as what they called [00:12:00] apprentices, which was a kind of forced labor. But there was quite a shift then.
[00:12:03] Roman Krznaric: But why did it happen? And one of the reasons that explain the timing of the 1833 act was something that happened in 1831 in Jamaica, which was the great Jamaica slave revolt. Whenever 20, 000 enslaved workers rose up in rebellion, they set fire to over 200 plantations. Now the revolt was brutally Crushed, um, but it sent a message to the political and economic elite, which was this that [00:12:30] basically the elite started fearing panicking that if they didn’t give emancipation to the slaves, then they may well lose control of the whole colony of Jamaica and this tipped.
[00:12:41] Roman Krznaric: The policy context into then having this, um, Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833 and what I realized was that actually when you think about today’s, you know, the more radical wing of the climate movement, you know, Extinction Rebellion and just a boil or end a calendar in Germany, these organizations in a [00:13:00] way they’re part of the same disruptive traditions.
[00:13:03] Roman Krznaric: I’m going back to the slave revolts of the 1830s or to the suffragettes campaigning for women’s votes in the early 20th century or the movement for Indian independence or the civil rights movement in the US. They’ve always been disruptive movements, which have sometimes broken the rules and sometimes the law as well to create change to change the conversation.
[00:13:24] Roman Krznaric: And, uh, so, yeah, I mean, I think in a way history. So. Alive when you think about it [00:13:30] like that. And you know, today there’s what there’s I think nearly 20 people in Britain, um, in prison for, you know, going on climate protests and things like that. And actually they are part of these, this kind of long tradition of people fighting for justice now ecological justice.
[00:13:48] Roman Krznaric: And I think it’s a real travesty.
[00:13:50] Maryam Pasha: Because Right now the dominant narrative around particularly these kinds of more let’s call them their name radical movements is That they’re [00:14:00] harming the climate movement, right? That’s like the the narrative that wants to be the people want to push is that taking it too far.
[00:14:06] Maryam Pasha: They’re alienating people It’s not working etc. But you’ve not found that in history, right in the
The Radical Flank Effect in Social Movements
[00:14:12] Roman Krznaric: yeah, actually well the way kind of works I think is what’s called the radical flank effect Okay. And let me just explain how that works and what it is. So take an example like in the 1960s in the U. S.
[00:14:24] Roman Krznaric: where you had the civil rights movement. There were basically two parts to it. You had a more moderate movement around [00:14:30] Martin Luther King Jr., you know, who were doing things like sit ins and strikes. And then you had the more radical wing, the black. Panthers, the Black Nationalist ideologies, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, people like that.
[00:14:40] Roman Krznaric: And what the, that radical flank, it’s sometimes called, did was they almost made the mainstream moderate movement look more acceptable by comparison. And that really helped them. So they helped shift the, the conversation. And I think if you look today, At the climate movement, you’ve got your mainstream organizations, say, around [00:15:00] something like Friends of the Earth and organizations like that, um, or the Royal Society of Protection of Birds, all these conservation organizations, and then you’ve got your more radical organizations like Extinction Rebellion, and their job, as I see it, is that they create the space.
[00:15:13] Roman Krznaric: For the more moderate movement. So they’re actually really important.
[00:15:15] Ben Hurst: It’s true.
[00:15:17] Roman Krznaric: Yeah. I mean, it’s true. They, they do put off some people, right. And that’s, has always been the case. You know, when women were campaigning for the vote in Britain, a hundred years ago, the suffragettes, people hated them. They were called terrorists.[00:15:30]
[00:15:30] Roman Krznaric: Right. And they were being put in prison for chaining themselves to fence and breaking windows and things like that. Um, but again, I think a little bit of history helps put it, it all in perspective. And let me just add another thing here that. You do have to look at the actual evidence. You have to look at the data to see whether the more radical movements today, are they actually converting more people than they’re putting off?
[00:15:52] Roman Krznaric: And there’s really good evidence emerging of just how many people are starting to put the climate higher up their [00:16:00] list of political priorities. Because of what these movements are doing, and yeah, they do upset some people, so the evidence suggests that the more radical movements, well, they do put off some people, they convert lots of people, and then I’ve also found myself, like, lying on the street, blocking the road in front of Parliament in London with my teenage daughter, because I’m just, Exasperated by the government’s lack of
[00:16:23] Ben Hurst: inaction.
[00:16:24] Roman Krznaric: Yeah. Action. The glacial pace of change. And to be honest, I can’t think of a better way to be a good ancestor. I [00:16:30] know blocking the road annoys commuters, but our inaction’s gonna infuriate future generations even more. Yeah. And so, you know, I like spending most of my time in old libraries reading books and stuff, but, but because of what I’ve discovered in those books about the power of the more radical fla movements.
[00:16:45] Roman Krznaric: Movements, that’s why I found myself, you know, giving a bit of support. This is. Incredibly interesting, because
[00:16:51] Ben Hurst: the place my brain goes to is like, what’s the decision making criteria for whether you like which side of the movement you join? [00:17:00] You know, like, how do you how do you reach the decision? But I guess you’ve just outlined that, like, when the frustration grows too large, then it’s time to start doing something.
[00:17:09] Ben Hurst: But how did you decide, like, between research or laying in the road? I
[00:17:14] Roman Krznaric: mean, I think I think it’s really important to recognize that We can all play different kinds of roles and many roles need to be played. They need to be people inside the system, you know, lobbying politicians. They need to be people in the media doing podcasts, you know, like yourselves.
[00:17:29] Roman Krznaric: They need to be [00:17:30] people writing books, uh, you know, like I do. And they also need to be people on the streets. And I think for any one of us. They’ll always probably feel be a place that feels more right than some other place. I found myself sort of shifting a little bit, you know, obviously I spend most of my time writing books, but I found myself more on the streets than I ever thought that I would and I think it’s because.
[00:17:54] Roman Krznaric: Political situation is changing, although there’s lots of good stuff happening, you know, the price of solar [00:18:00] is going down and all those kinds of things. Governments, though, are in many ways becoming, um, you know, closing down the place for voices of protest about the ecological emergency.
[00:18:12] Maryam Pasha: So, okay, let’s think about.
Cities as Hubs of Tolerance and Climate Action
[00:18:15] Maryam Pasha: Because we’ve talked about the abolitionist movement as one of the examples in history that you, that you saw, um, another one that you talk about that I find very interesting is around, um, and particularly relevant for this podcast, I think is around cities and the [00:18:30] role that cities played in bringing together different groups of people.
[00:18:34] Maryam Pasha: And I think in climate, this is particularly relevant because we know that there’s going to be climate driven or climate related migration and. And I have to say that, like, my background is in migration and I, and I find the way that we talk about it in the climate movement terrible. And the migration and the rights, like, rights based migration movement, we’ve spent decades trying to get people to not fear migration and not see it as a bad thing, but to actually see it [00:19:00] as the thing that it is.
[00:19:01] Maryam Pasha: Factually is which is contributing to society and unfortunately in the climate environmental movement It’s used as a stick like if you don’t do something floods
[00:19:15] Roman Krznaric: Refugees by 20 exactly gonna survive. Yeah, and
[00:19:18] Maryam Pasha: so we’ve we’ve we’re playing into a narrative that’s very dangerous for all of us Um, which is this isolationist, xenophobic, racist narrative.
[00:19:27] Maryam Pasha: But I think you’ve talked about it and you talked about it in the [00:19:30] talk as well, that there are great examples of cities and diversity and actually that maybe there is something there for us to actually learn from as we inevitably have people who will be forced or choose to move due to the impacts of climate change.
[00:19:46] Roman Krznaric: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we kind of have a bit of a narrative of an inevitable clash of civilizations, you know, that, you know,
[00:19:54] Maryam Pasha: it’s come back into vogue at the moment, back
[00:19:55] Roman Krznaric: into vogue that, you know, the West and Islam or whatever can never [00:20:00] live together and they cannot coexist. But actually, the amazing thing, if you look through history, you can find these Periods of time where people have managed to live together in cultures of relevant, relevant, you know, tolerance.
[00:20:15] Roman Krznaric: Um, so if I was going to back, go back to any moment in history, I would travel back in my Doctor Who time machine to about the year 1000 in the Spanish city of Cordoba, which at that time was part of the Islamic. [00:20:30] Kingdom of Al Andalus, which ruled over the southern part of today’s Spain, right? And the amazing thing about Cordoba then, um, is it was a big city, like nearly half a million people.
[00:20:40] Roman Krznaric: So one of the biggest cities in Europe at the time, because often, you know, we think about medieval times, we think of like, you know, Game of Thrones and, you know, people killing each other with axes and knights and so on. But actually go back a thousand years to the south of Spain in Cordoba, you basically had a, yeah, A civilization in a big city [00:21:00] where Muslims, Christians, and Jews managed to live.
[00:21:03] Roman Krznaric: Side by side. Now, it wasn’t perfect. There were everyday tensions. There were outbreaks of violence occasionally, but basically people managed to get on. They would be trading together in the marketplaces, going to public bath houses together, playing chess and music together. Um, and I think this says something about how cities are really actually a brilliant thing.
[00:21:25] Roman Krznaric: Technology in a way, a social technology. They’re really good at mixing people [00:21:30] together, you know, not perfectly by any means. Of course, go to the barrios of East LA or something like that and look at the racist policing. Of course, they’re not perfect. But actually, if you want to get people of different backgrounds to get on with each other, put them together in a city.
[00:21:46] Roman Krznaric: You know, and over time, again, not perfectly, they will start mixing together, you know, whether it’s kids playing in football teams together with people from different backgrounds, or people you go to work with, or you meet in the cafe, all these [00:22:00] kinds of things are creating what it’s sometimes called, we’re putting into practice what psychologists sometimes call the contact hypothesis.
[00:22:08] Roman Krznaric: And this is the idea that if you want to build, Empathy, tolerance, mutual respect. You basically put people together from different backgrounds and conditions of relative equality and get them to do stuff together, you know, that could be being in a football team together. And there’s amazing evidence in social psychology, showing that in about over 90 percent of the time.
[00:22:27] Roman Krznaric: When you do that, people do build tolerance rather than [00:22:30] build more animosity and conflict. So, you know, this is where cities are really, really cool. I think actually really important places off tolerance building.
[00:22:40] Maryam Pasha: You know what it is that it’s interesting about all the, the ways that you’ve drawn these lessons into the present is that they are very local ways that you are.
[00:22:50] Maryam Pasha: Implementing them and I think that there’s definitely a misconception that in order to make, have an impact, make change, do things that you have to be big, like [00:23:00] it doesn’t matter unless it’s like changing the law or I don’t know, something massive, you know, something at a national level and actually.
[00:23:09] Maryam Pasha: What I’m hearing is that lots of these building blocks are local.
[00:23:13] Roman Krznaric: I totally agree with that. And if you look at it around the world, where have you seen the most progress on dealing with the climate emergency? You’ve seen it on the level of communities and cities. You look at a city like Paris, which is saying, right, by 2030, no more fossil fuel cars.
[00:23:27] Roman Krznaric: Or, um, you’ve got new traffic [00:23:30] regulations, you know, in lots of cities in the UK and other places, you know, where, you know, the stopping cars coming through, this kind of thing. And it happens through local action. You know, actually, I think. You know, people acting in their own communities can make a huge difference.
[00:23:43] Roman Krznaric: They create a model which can then be copied in other cities and places around the world. So it’s a kind of peer to peer inspiration model. So I think everything that we do on that local level, particularly when we do it with others, not just changing a light bulb in your house, you know, but changing the light bulbs in the [00:24:00] local school, you know, you.
[00:24:02] Roman Krznaric: That can really make a big difference.
[00:24:04] Ben Hurst: You mentioned earlier, right, that idea of like, the stories that we get told about history and how it works is it’s always about the individual who made the big change rather than the community that mobilized for that change to be possible. So maybe, I don’t know, I just have this sense of like, am I just taking the easier it out?
[00:24:25] Ben Hurst: Lay down in the road, you know, I mean, I think to be honest, I think some people have
[00:24:29] Roman Krznaric: to be making the [00:24:30] sacrifices, you know, there are people that need to lie in the road, but you know, even my experience, you know, which is not huge of going on, you know, climate protests and stuff like that and blocking roads a little bit is actually it’s quite enjoyable in the sense of you feel like you’re part of a community.
[00:24:46] Roman Krznaric: You’re part of a kind of a tribe and you feel that solidarity with people, often strangers, you know, very different age groups. You know, uh, I remember one, one of the first times I went on a, on a climate change march, I met this woman who was a [00:25:00] grandmother and she had a little kind of brooch around her neck.
[00:25:02] Roman Krznaric: It was a photograph of her granddaughter. And she said, I’m here for my granddaughter. Who’s like two or three years old. And just, you know, to feel that you’re connected with someone from another generation. Yeah. Um, that’s quite a beautiful thing. Yeah. Um, so, yeah, I mean, I think in a way, being an activist in various forms, you have to sort of be ready to feel the whole landscape of the emotions, you know, yeah, you [00:25:30] feel like frustration that you’re not making much difference.
[00:25:32] Roman Krznaric: Then you also feel joy at meeting people and sometimes there’ll be a win and, but I think that’s just kind of life.
[00:25:39] Maryam Pasha: It’s also, it takes you out of the isolation because I think, uh, so I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what’s been happening the last few days in America and, um, and one of the most insightful things I’ve, I’ve read about it is that it is supposed to feel overwhelming.
[00:25:55] Maryam Pasha: Like it’s a tactic that it’s, it’s a deliberate strategy is [00:26:00] to make you feel so overwhelmed that you just think I can’t do anything.
[00:26:03] Roman Krznaric: Exactly right. And the Canadian writer, Naomi. Uh, Klein called this the shock doctrine. And the idea of the shock doctrine is that what you see in the last 20, 30 years is you’ve got these extremist political and economic elites trying to push through very radical policies, often very right wing policies.
[00:26:21] Roman Krznaric: And the way they do it is they Flood the media and stuff with a whole load of policies with crazy pronouncements. And they create a sense of [00:26:30] crisis and then they make a kind of smoke screen. They bamboozle you to push through the policies that they really want. And this is exactly what Trump has done, you know, 37 executive orders in the first week, then saying, we need to clear out Gaza.
[00:26:42] Roman Krznaric: We’re going to take back the Panama canal. We’re going to put all these tariffs on everybody. And behind that. Smokescreen, you can do things like withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord or give pardons to 1500 people who attacked the Capitol building in 2021. Um, and do these things which are [00:27:00] actually quite extreme measures, but that chaos that’s going on allows them to do it.
[00:27:05] Roman Krznaric: It’s that shock and awe strategy. So I think you’re absolutely right, Mary. So I think
[00:27:09] Maryam Pasha: this is what you’re saying actually is about. The only way to overcome that is to feel in community, like it’s to be with others is to feel a sense of, of, even if it’s like just not being alone, because I think the loneliness is probably one of the things that is really affecting people is that, is it the, the, when, when you feel so overwhelming, you just [00:27:30] retreat.
[00:27:30] Maryam Pasha: Um, and you can, and if you, but if you’ve got on these marches, or you have a movement, or you have your street fair, or you have your football club, you don’t retreat because you have a place to go. And I think that actually is quite radical.
[00:27:42] Roman Krznaric: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it taps into something really amazing about human beings, which is that we are social animals.
[00:27:48] Roman Krznaric: We are wired for empathy and social cooperation and mutual aid. We are homo empathicus. Um, and, You know we actually get meaning from being with other [00:28:00] people you know if i think about what does a meaningful life look like or how can we be happy what is you know i think it’s partly we need a sense of autonomy i think we need that um i think we need a sense of kind of purpose something.
[00:28:13] Roman Krznaric: Bigger than ourselves that we aim for in life. The third thing, I think we need relationships, you know, and that could be in family, but extending that out, I think, is something that we’re actually really, really good at.
The Empathy Museum
[00:28:25] Ben Hurst: I meant to ask you also, I read something about an empathy museum, but I don’t know what an [00:28:30] empathy museum is.
[00:28:31] Ben Hurst: I can tell you. Please do. Because I founded one. Please
[00:28:34] Roman Krznaric: do. Yeah, yeah. So, I founded this museum, uh, back in 2015. It’s called the Empathy Museum. And it’s all about giving people the experience of how to step into the shoes of other people and look at the world through their eyes and so one of the exhibits that we have, and by the way, I’m just the chair of the board now.
[00:28:51] Roman Krznaric: It’s run by proper artists. So I’m just a philosopher. You are a proper artist as well. I don’t know. Um, but so one of our exhibits is called a [00:29:00] mile in my shoes and it’s a gigantic shoe box. And which travels around the world and you actually go inside it, um, and it looks like a shoe box and it’s the world’s first empathy museums.
[00:29:10] Roman Krznaric: You go inside and someone will fit you with a pair of shoes belonging to a stranger. So it could be the shoes of a Syrian refugee or an ecological activist or a buddhist monk, and you can literally walk a mile in their shoes while listening to an audio narrative of them talking about their own lives in their own words.
[00:29:27] Roman Krznaric: So we recently, um. Curated a whole [00:29:30] bunch of stories on the theme of migration is we had different kinds of stories of migration. We’ve curated stories around climate. In fact, we’re just, um, planning now to go to cop 30 big climate meeting in Brazil next year and collect new stories from the Amazon because wherever we go with the shoe box, we collect new shoes and stories.
[00:29:51] Roman Krznaric: We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of, of pairs and think about it. It’s really, it’s kind of intimate and it’s kind of fun because you go along and you put on a pair of shoes, yeah. You [00:30:00] might put on the shoes of a Syrian refugee and you think you’re, you know, you don’t know what you’re going to expect. Um, cause you, all you know is the size of the shoes.
[00:30:07] Roman Krznaric: You don’t know the name of the person or anything about them, but then often. The stories are often surprising. So the story of a refugee might actually be hilarious. It might be really funny. Um, and you know, you might think it’s going to be tragic, but not. Um, and I think that’s part of showing the variety of human experience.
[00:30:24] Roman Krznaric: And so the purpose of the Empathy Museum is to try and create this kind of [00:30:30] asobia, this collective solidarity, knit our societies together again. Do
[00:30:34] Ben Hurst: you give people new shoes or do you just take the shoes and?
[00:30:37] Roman Krznaric: No, we’ve got, no, if, if, if you were part of this project and your story is being recorded, we would have a pair of your actual shoes.
[00:30:45] Roman Krznaric: You donate them. You donate your shoes into the collection and they stay there forever. So you’d have to lose that pair of shoes. I’m not sure. Come on, you must have a pair of
[00:30:55] Ben Hurst: shoes. You’ve got a beautiful kind of round,
[00:30:59] Maryam Pasha: unx on.
Discussing the Jacket: A Cure for Consumer Capitalism
[00:30:59] Maryam Pasha: [00:31:00] Since we are talking about clothing, since we have gone there, I think we’re going to have to ask you about your jacket.
[00:31:06] Maryam Pasha: Cause. Obviously, if those of you listening cannot see this, but Roman is wearing a very cool jacket, which you can see if you watch his TED talk. So you can go there, but tell us about this jacket you’re wearing.
[00:31:19] Roman Krznaric: So the jacket I’m wearing is, you may not realize this, a cure for consumer capitalism. Mmm. Um.
[00:31:26] Roman Krznaric: Probably better. Better
[00:31:27] Ben Hurst: for me.
[00:31:28] Roman Krznaric: Yeah. Yeah. better explain it. So look, [00:31:30] if when I go to my local shopping center mm-hmm. Right? And I see people just buying stuff and basically using energy or creating carbon emissions, all these kinds of things, also having a good time. I thought you sort of think this system, we could never change this, you know, like, like our addiction to Black Friday shopping sprees and things like that.
[00:31:48] Roman Krznaric: Yeah. And, but actually, if you look through history. There are whole societies that have done large scale ways of actually running their economies totally differently, much more low carbon, much more [00:32:00] ecological. And this links to the jacket. And I’ll tell you why.
The Circular Economy of Ancient Japan
[00:32:02] Roman Krznaric: Because if you go back to Japan. Right in the 18th century to the ancient Japanese city of Edo, which is now called Tokyo.
[00:32:12] Roman Krznaric: Now that was a city of over a million people, so a huge city. But they also had something amazing going on. They also operated what we would today call a circular economy, where they would reuse, repurpose, recycle almost all of their materials. So they would reuse, [00:32:30] repurpose, and recycle almost all of their materials, partly because at the time Japan didn’t trade a lot with the outside world.
[00:32:36] Roman Krznaric: So they had shortages of things like Was this when the
[00:32:38] Ben Hurst: borders were still closed? Yeah, borders were closed. Right,
[00:32:40] Roman Krznaric: exactly. So they had shortages of wood, shortages of cotton. And so a tradition of patchwork developed known as Boro, meaning tattered rags, where fragments of old cloth would be sewn together into garments, which were then passed on down the generation.
[00:32:57] Roman Krznaric: So what I’m wearing is a [00:33:00] traditional Japanese Boro jacket, which is over 100 years old. And as you can see, it’s been stitched together out of lots of bits of cotton cloth. And this is the circular economy of ancient Japan that I’m wearing. I think we need to be doing more of this today. I mean,
[00:33:19] Maryam Pasha: what’s interesting is that you, and you talked about this in your talk, that these, these cloths would have like a whole lifespan, right?
[00:33:26] Maryam Pasha: They would be used in so many different ways.
[00:33:28] Roman Krznaric: Right. Yeah. So you might have a kimono [00:33:30] as well, and you’d use it until the cloth began to wear out. And then you turn that cloth into nappies, sorry, into like pajamas that you wear at night. Then you cut it up and turn it into nappies. Then you’d use it as cleaning cloths, and you’d finally burn that cloth.
[00:33:43] Roman Krznaric: precious cotton cloth as fuel. So nothing was ever wasted. Or there were people in Edo, ancient Tokyo, who would go around collecting used candle wax to form it back into candles. Well, people would even come and collect human waste from your home, pay you for it, and then sell it as agricultural [00:34:00] fertilizer.
[00:34:00] Roman Krznaric: So
[00:34:00] Maryam Pasha: nothing went to waste. And this is not a small city, right? No, this is, there were
[00:34:04] Roman Krznaric: thousands of these businesses. There were a million people in Tokyo, Edo at the time. So.
Lessons from History: Transforming Our Economies
[00:34:09] Roman Krznaric: You know, when people sort of say, Oh, you know, we, we can’t, you know, they sort of say, we can’t sort of transform our economies. It’s too difficult.
[00:34:16] Roman Krznaric: Actually, in the past, we’ve done a really big scale. And look, all I’m saying. I’m not saying we should be like ancient Japan exactly because they did have feudalism, you know, which is maybe patriarchy and, you know, peasant poverty [00:34:30] and all that kind of stuff. But I think it just sort of opens up our imaginations to a different way of doing things.
[00:34:35] Roman Krznaric: And I think that’s the beauty and value of history is sort of saying that. God, maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. You can look around at the world that we’re in today and say, maybe it doesn’t have to be this. Maybe we don’t have to have these gigantic fossil fuel companies or big tech companies dominating everything.
[00:34:49] Roman Krznaric: Maybe there’s another way of doing things because actually, I’m not making this up.
[00:34:53] Ben Hurst: There’s history saying that it could be a bit different. Yeah, I just find that really
[00:34:58] Roman Krznaric: inspiring that actually we used [00:35:00] to do things different in the things like this jacket. I’m wearing this bottle jacket. If you talk to your great grandparents or something, you know, let’s say they were still alive in the Second World War.
[00:35:10] Roman Krznaric: Um, you know, they may have been, they might remember how people would not waste. Or not waste food. So I think all of these things are in our own families too. And I think it’s really important to sort of dig where you stand, dig into your own personal history. Yeah, it’s great to learn about the history of ancient Japan, [00:35:30] but actually look in the history of your own community or faith tradition or your own family.
[00:35:35] Roman Krznaric: You can find. Lessons for history too. And I think that’s really empowering, you know, history connects to all of us, we’re all inheritors of, of the past.
[00:35:47] Maryam Pasha: Talk about so many different examples, um, that are amazing. I want to ask you, is there one that you, is there something that you found in all of this research that you haven’t talked about yet, because I’m sure these are some of your favorite, where you were like, [00:36:00] Oh, I can’t believe I found this, this is incredible.
[00:36:02] Maryam Pasha: This is like a real nugget that I want people to know.
[00:36:05] Roman Krznaric: Yeah, I found loads of those nuggets. Maybe that’s because I’m incredibly ignorant. I kept being like shocked for like, why the hell didn’t I know that? Yeah. Okay.
Rethinking Democracy: Examples from the Past
[00:36:14] Roman Krznaric: So like, I don’t know about you, but I look at our democracies today and think like our political systems.
[00:36:23] Roman Krznaric: Just not very good at dealing with like a long term problem like the ecological crisis, for example, or even not [00:36:30] delivering on basic things like job security and housing for people. And no wonder so many people turn against the traditional parties. And when I was looking at, I was thinking about look. Is there any better way of doing democracy?
[00:36:41] Roman Krznaric: I don’t want to go down the route of authoritarianism and have a military dictatorship, but can we do democracy differently than just like putting an X on a ballot sheet every few years? And then I started reading, for example, about how in the 19th century, when British colonial forces went into The lands of Igbo [00:37:00] communities in today’s Nigeria, they were looking for, they were trying to find the chiefs or the kings, um, and they couldn’t find any.
[00:37:07] Roman Krznaric: They assumed that their politics was hierarchically vertically kind of organized. But in fact, what Igbo communities did, the way they govern themselves with through, through very local democracy, where most decisions were made in the village level. With men and women participating, deliberating, talking together, coming to decisions by consensus, and then, if they had to make decisions at a, for a regional level, they kind of sent delegates up, like have [00:37:30] councils of elders making decisions.
[00:37:32] Roman Krznaric: And it wasn’t only in the 19th century in Nigeria, Igbo community did that. In Europe as well. Um, there are lots of examples of this kind of, Grassroots communal decision making or go back to ancient Greece, right? They had what today we call sortition, which is the random selection of people for public office like we do for juries today.
[00:37:51] Roman Krznaric: You get randomly selected for that. But in ancient Greece, which was not a perfect democracy by any means in the 4th and 5th century BC because they, you know, no voting rights for [00:38:00] women or for slaves or for immigrants, but for so serious limitations. But for the male citizens, they were randomly selected for the equivalent of the parliament.
[00:38:08] Roman Krznaric: The House of Commons. It was called the Council of 500. Right. And just imagine if we did that today where our politicians were just everyday citizens, randomly selected. And the amazing thing is that this is happening today in the citizens assembly movement. You might know like. Over the last 10 years, across Europe, particularly, um, there have been [00:38:30] over 300 of these citizens assemblies where governments have, like, wanted an issue to be discussed, whether it’s climate or the risks of AI or an aging population, and they select maybe like a hundred random Citizens controlled for gender and ethnic background and age and they get them to meet up and discuss an issue.
[00:38:49] Roman Krznaric: And one of the things we found is that particularly around climate issues, um, the citizens tend to have much more transformative ideas of what policy should be [00:39:00] implemented compared to your regular politicians. Um, and this is really just a kind of a, an old form of democracy. I’m going on, which is much more direct and participatory and because you know, like, I mean, the idea, you know, if you go to your local election, but the ballot sheet every few years, just putting an X down, I mean, is that really what being a citizen is all about?
[00:39:21] Roman Krznaric: Surely we can do better than that. And there are all these examples from the past that we can draw on to say, Hey, Hey, Let’s try and involve people more directly. Let’s give [00:39:30] people a feeling of agency and choice, a sense that like I can make a difference. My voice actually matters. Someone’s listening to me.
[00:39:38] Roman Krznaric: And I think this is also really important to deal with extremism because I think a lot of people who support, you know, for example, the far right populist parties in Britain, in Europe, I think a lot of those people don’t feel heard. Right. Yes. And I think a citizens assembly is a way for people to be heard.
[00:39:55] Roman Krznaric: Um, people are not always going to agree with each other,
[00:39:58] Ben Hurst: but actually [00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Roman Krznaric: what citizens do, they kind of take off the sharp edges and help people find common ground. So, um, unfortunately I didn’t have time to talk about this in this TED talk, but actually history. It’s really important to rethink democracy and, and, you know, you’ve got a, uh, a podcast about being climate curious.
[00:40:17] Roman Krznaric: Well, if you’re curious about how to deal with the climate crisis, you also need to think about how you’re going to change the politics. Yeah. Because
[00:40:23] Ben Hurst: yeah,
[00:40:24] Roman Krznaric: you know, if we’re keeping these short term political cycles, we ain’t going to get anywhere really. It’s going to be really tough. So we [00:40:30] need to redesign democracy.
[00:40:31] Ben Hurst: This is so, do you know what I was literally just thinking? I was like, I wish there was a book where I could read about all of this stuff. And you literally read, I read
[00:40:38] Maryam Pasha: that, and I have to say, the book is called history for tomorrow. I’ve read it. And I, and I’ll tell you the feeling I had when I read it.
[00:40:47] Maryam Pasha: Um, as before, the first time we got to really talk about it, Roman was that feeling I was saying again, community where you feel less alone and less overwhelmed. That’s the feeling you get when you read this book, because all of a sudden you think, [00:41:00] Ah, well, these people figured stuff out and they probably felt very overwhelmed by their problems at their time because whenever, whenever you go in history, people were dealing with things that for them were big, right?
[00:41:13] Maryam Pasha: Even if for us, they don’t seem the same way and they figured out solutions. They found ways forward. They did things that worked. So maybe we have it in us to do it as well.
[00:41:23] Roman Krznaric: Yeah, and I think what I learned from writing that book was the power of two tiny words. [00:41:30] If I may explain what I mean, if you look at those who struggled against the odds, you know, people like those who are campaigning for independence from British controlled India, they probably thought, God, we’re never going to succeed here.
[00:41:44] Roman Krznaric: But they acted as if change was possible, as if they could succeed. And so I’m not saying that. Changing the world is easy. It’s not right. It’s not, but we have managed to make progress and, and, and create cities and [00:42:00] civilizations tackling justices often against the odds. And it’s been, I think, largely through acting as if you could make.
[00:42:08] Roman Krznaric: Change and so that’s where I find hope in those two tiny little words
Climate Confessions
[00:42:15] Ben Hurst: and now it’s time for our climate Confessions, let’s fess up to the bad habits. We just can’t kick
[00:42:24] Maryam Pasha: You don’t have to be perfect and do everything right to be part of the climate movement. Although sometimes that’s what it can [00:42:30] feel like so But I’m going to start with you so that you can, um, kind of ease us into it.
[00:42:36] Maryam Pasha: Do you have a climate confession?
[00:42:37] Ben Hurst: Oh, yeah. So now that I’ve, now that I’ve learned about this jacket, this 120 year old jacket, clothing waste has got to be a big thing for me because I don’t reuse anything. Not that’s, I do wear things for a long periods of time, but you wash them in between. I wash them.
[00:42:54] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Fingers when I can. Yeah. Um, but I’ve got, [00:43:00] uh, Like vacuum packed bags of clothing in my loft that have been up there for a long time now that I just have no intention of revisiting I don’t I would buy new things before I reuse any of those items of clothing so much so that I don’t even know Actually what’s in there?
[00:43:16] Ben Hurst: But now maybe there’s a way that I can repurpose some of those things into new stylish and fashionable garments And so I’d say my clothing waste is probably a little bit out of control at the moment, especially with boxes. Underwear is like, cause [00:43:30] we’ve been through this. It’s just too much. But now I can use them as rags for other things.
[00:43:35] Ben Hurst: Or maybe is it okay to burn them?
[00:43:37] Maryam Pasha: No, no. Don’t burn them. Not today.
[00:43:39] Ben Hurst: My next episode is going to be like I’m burning my underwear, but yeah, that could really catch on actually. Yeah. And
[00:43:48] Maryam Pasha: we should, we’ll, we’ll try and look it up, but there’s some, I know there’s one not in the UK, but I know there’s a really amazing place in LA and the name of it has slipped my mind, where you can, where they take clothes and rework them into new [00:44:00] items, because a lot of times the stuff you give to charity shops is just not usable in and of itself,
[00:44:05] Roman Krznaric: but if you take it there,
[00:44:06] Maryam Pasha: they’ll actually cut it up and make stuff from it.
[00:44:08] Maryam Pasha: Well, one
[00:44:09] Roman Krznaric: really cool one I heard about recently, there’s this Swedish sportswear company called Houdini, and they have totally like recyclable clothes. And one of the things they’ve, they’ve done is that when you like you’ve grown out of your, Houdini hiking jacket. Um, you can give it to them. They put it in a skip and then it like disintegrates and turns back into soil.
[00:44:28] Roman Krznaric: And then they’ve served meals [00:44:30] to their customers made out of their old sports clothes.
[00:44:33] Ben Hurst: Oh, I love
[00:44:34] Roman Krznaric: it.
[00:44:34] Ben Hurst: What the meal is fertilized
[00:44:36] Roman Krznaric: by the vegetables, which has been made from their jackets. Sorry. I didn’t quite get that right.
[00:44:44] Maryam Pasha: It’s okay. We got it.
[00:44:47] Roman Krznaric: Eat your clothes.
[00:44:49] Maryam Pasha: It’s brilliant. I like that is my
[00:44:52] Ben Hurst: clothes.
[00:44:52] Ben Hurst: Yeah, we should go to. Yeah. Um,
[00:44:55] Maryam Pasha: do you have a climate confession?
[00:44:56] Roman Krznaric: God, I have millions of climate confessions. Uh, okay, [00:45:00] what’s the most recent one? Okay, the other day, um, so I’m a vegetarian, right? I’ve been on this long journey, um, knowing that if I look at all the statistics, I know that Going towards being plant based is good for the planet, right?
[00:45:15] Roman Krznaric: It’s one of the most obvious things we can do. So actually, it’s turning a slightly longer story. Wasn’t going to say this, but I’ll just tell you it anyway. So I mean, it’s not that interesting, but so the first time I tried to go vegetarian, I just didn’t do it very well because the food that I made [00:45:30] just wasn’t as good as the meat that I used to eat.
[00:45:32] Roman Krznaric: It wasn’t delicious. I was feeling kind of weak and pathetic. And so I gave up. I went back to eating meat again. And then the next time I tried to go vegetarian, I actually thought, I’m going to make better food than I used to. And in fact, and that’s what, that’s where I am now. So I like, I put a little bit more effort into my cooking to make amazing things with tofu with peas or with, you know, whatever it happens to be.
[00:45:55] Roman Krznaric: And I try and feed my kids better food. Um, now I haven’t yet gone [00:46:00] vegan. Right. And so that’s on that journey. But anyway, this is what I wanted to tell you. So I was walking down the street around the corner from here the other day and I always go and get a falafel wrap, vegetarian falafel wrap for lunch.
[00:46:13] Roman Krznaric: And so I went to this kebab shop and like I was feeling really knackered. I’d gone to bed really late. I hadn’t slept well. I was just kind of feeling, I don’t know, like I needed a kind of boost. And I went in there and I went to the kebab shop, right? And I was about to order my [00:46:30] falafel wrap. And suddenly I saw this turning thing of like chicken on a meat on a skewer, like probably really dodgy.
[00:46:38] Roman Krznaric: I don’t know. But I looked at that and just thought, and there was like these like fat dripping off it. I thought to myself, I want that. I need it. I need it. So I ordered this chicken kebab roll thing, and it was so delicious. Yeah. Like it was so Did it not
[00:46:53] Maryam Pasha: make you really sick?
[00:46:54] Roman Krznaric: It was a little bit weird in my stomach, you know, but you know, at the time it tasted really, [00:47:00] really
[00:47:00] Maryam Pasha: good.
[00:47:02] Roman Krznaric: And I, and I was walking back and thinking like, I need to finish eating this before I get home. Oh yeah. So that like nobody sees me sleeping. Nobody actually knows I’ve eaten that chicken, uh, kebab, not even my, my kids or my wife or anybody. So I’m saying it here for the first time. We’re
[00:47:20] Maryam Pasha: going to send this episode to them, see if they listen all the way to the end.
[00:47:26] Maryam Pasha: That’s brilliant.
[00:47:28] Roman Krznaric: The way I look at it, like with this food [00:47:30] stuff is. I don’t think you’ve got to be puritanical, you know, I think that works for some people. Um, I think it’s about being really mindful, you know, um, And that’s
[00:47:37] Maryam Pasha: really good advice what you just said about making food that’s more delicious if you’re going to change something.
[00:47:42] Maryam Pasha: Yeah,
[00:47:42] Roman Krznaric: I think this is really important for climate change stuff in, in, uh, In general, like, for example, like if your city is going to say, look, we’re banning fossil fuel cars going into it, and that’ll upset a lot of people who maybe drive a car. And, but what you’ve got to do is put something better in its place, like better public transport or even [00:48:00] free public transport and trams and buses and things like that.
[00:48:02] Roman Krznaric: And I think on the individual level too, if you’re going to make the change, let’s make it better. I agree.
[00:48:07] Maryam Pasha: I agree. I had the other day for the first time, um, a coffee with. Pea milk, like milk made from peas. Oh, wow.
[00:48:15] Ben Hurst: I don’t know. I said, Mmm, that sounds delicious. That doesn’t sound delicious at all. It was delicious.
[00:48:19] Ben Hurst: It was delicious.
[00:48:20] Maryam Pasha: And I thought, Ah, another kind of milk I’ve discovered. I think sometimes it’s also just being like, I’m going to try it and it’s okay if I hate it.
[00:48:27] Roman Krznaric: And I think peas are the secret food of the future. [00:48:30] My wife’s favorite food is peas. She wants dressed up as a pea for a fancy dress thing as a princess in the pea.
[00:48:36] Roman Krznaric: She was the pea.
[00:48:37] Maryam Pasha: I’m not big
[00:48:38] Roman Krznaric: into peas. I’m on the journey towards peedom. Try this. Try
[00:48:41] Maryam Pasha: this pea milk. If you can, they need to find a better name for it. I’m not
[00:48:45] Ben Hurst: going to try that. I don’t think I’m going to find
[00:48:47] Maryam Pasha: it for you. I’m going to get you
[00:48:49] Ben Hurst: to do that.
[00:48:50] Maryam Pasha: Uh, I do not have a climate confession this week, but I’m going to give one from our team and I’m not going to mention who it is because I, she doesn’t, hasn’t consented, but I see.
[00:48:59] Maryam Pasha: [00:49:00] Who is it? Our whole team is, is, has she’s pronouns, so it doesn’t really, um, she told us this and actually our producer Josie told me and I think it’s great that, uh, I don’t know who this is. You know who this is. Um, every time she hates doing laundry. So every time she has new guests in the house, she buys new sheets.
[00:49:20] Ben Hurst: No, that’s, that’s expensive. I know. What does she do when there’s not new guests in the house?
[00:49:27] Maryam Pasha: She just uses the sheets she has, but when she has [00:49:30] guests in and she wants to change it. I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask
[00:49:33] Ben Hurst: her. It’s okay. Right. No problem. But
[00:49:34] Maryam Pasha: it just, it comes along the lines of your clothing.
[00:49:37] Maryam Pasha: Yeah. Same thing.
[00:49:38] Ben Hurst: She’s got a lot of rags
[00:49:39] Maryam Pasha: that she could use. New sheets,
[00:49:41] Ben Hurst: new underwear. I think you could team up with this person. Yeah. Yeah. We could trade. We’ll figure it out. Next episode, we’ll come back to
[00:49:48] Maryam Pasha: you.
Closing Thoughts and Farewell
[00:49:49] Maryam Pasha: Uh, Roman, it is such a pleasure to chat with you. Yeah,
[00:49:54] Ben Hurst: honestly.
[00:49:55] Maryam Pasha: This is, I think, a conversation that a lot of people need right now.
[00:49:58] Maryam Pasha: And it’s just been a privilege to [00:50:00] have it in your home. I feel so
[00:50:01] Roman Krznaric: inspired. Well, thank you. Thank you. And I’m shocked that I made my kebab. Confession brilliant interview somehow you made me say something I’d never said before and I was going to keep to myself to the grave is for a better future. Don’t worry,
[00:50:19] Ben Hurst: transformation,
[00:50:20] Maryam Pasha: please, please do yourself a favor, listen to it.
[00:50:23] Maryam Pasha: Romans talk, read his many books. And remember,
[00:50:27] Ben Hurst: Stay curious.[00:50:30]
[00:50:31] Ben Hurst: Thank you for joining us this week. We really hope you enjoyed this episode.
[00:50:35] Maryam Pasha: If you did, please hit the follow button to make sure you get next week’s release.
[00:50:39] Ben Hurst: We are now officially crowdsourcing Climate Confession, so please leave yours in the ratings and the review section and we’ll shout out for you next time and shout out to our fabulous team behind the pod.
[00:50:53] Maryam Pasha: This episode was produced by Josie Colter, artwork designed by Rebecca Menzies,
[00:50:57] Ben Hurst: curation by Maryam Pasha,
[00:50:59] Maryam Pasha: [00:51:00] mix and engineers by Ben Beheshty,
[00:51:02] Ben Hurst: music also by Ben Beheshty, presented by Ben Hurst and Maryam Pasha. Remember, stay curious.
