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Straight from the Big Brother House to the Climate Curious Live stage, recorded live at Ladbroke Hall, we caught up with Daze Aghaji on the evolution of activism, and how culture with both a “big C” and a “small c” is upstream of social cohesion, and crucial for driving change. Daze shares how rumination can limit our vision of a positive future, as well as recounting her experience on Big Brother, specifically with communicating climate to the unconvinced.
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Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Introduction
00:51 Daze background and achievements
02:20 Big Brother experience
04:51 Challenges and insights from reality TV
10:00 Evolution of activism and cultural strategy
15:56 Connecting climate action and democracy
24:55 Final thoughts
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:00] Daze Aghaji: It usually always happens in museums. It always happens in art galleries, but what happens when you take it into somewhere that’s
[00:00:09] Daze Aghaji: slightly different?[00:00:15] [00:00:30]
[00:00:35] Daze Aghaji: Okay.
[00:00:35] Maryam Pasha: Um, we know days because days has been a guest. Mm-hmm. She’s also been a cohos. Mm-hmm. Um, on this podcast, but can we, Ben, can you just tell people about her a little bit?
[00:00:44] Ben Hurst: [00:00:45] Well, um, I hate doing introductions. I hate you doing the introductions. You want me to do the introduction? No, no, no. It’s fine. You can do it.
[00:00:50] Ben Hurst: You’ve done it now. You’ve done it now.
[00:00:51] Daze’s background and achievements
[00:00:51] Ben Hurst: Um, day days is, who are you days? You’re an environmentalist. You’re a cultural strategist. What is cultural strategy? Maybe we’ll get into that as we go through the conversation. And your work mainly explores ideas around identity, belonging, and our relationship. With the Earth.
[00:01:07] Ben Hurst: Right. So you started in human rights with Amnesty International before co-founding Extinction Rebellion Youth [00:01:15] in 2019, and then running for election as the youngest MEP candidate in 2019 also. And you are, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, you’re pretty committed to using diverse forms of STO storytelling to make [00:01:30] the climate crisis feel human and urgent.
[00:01:33] Ben Hurst: Um. Including Big Brother, which should, which is a wild left turn. We’re gonna talk about, we’re gonna talk about, we’re gonna talk about, we’ll get into in a moment. Um, and now you are the co-founder of Absurd Intelligence, which is a [00:01:45] narrative agency, reimagining Bold futures and you lead Speak Up, which is a storytelling and speakers agency da.
[00:01:51] Ben Hurst: This is a lot of stuff. I know this is a lot of stomach. I don’t
[00:01:54] Daze Aghaji: sleep very well. Someone asked me, how do I do this? I’m like. ’cause I’m up restlessly looking at the ceiling because I know what can I come up [00:02:00] with. Days is one
[00:02:00] Maryam Pasha: of the people who answers my emails at two in the morning. Yeah,
[00:02:05] Ben Hurst: last bit. Sorry I missed a beat.
[00:02:06] Ben Hurst: You also part of Hard Art, which is a cultural collective addressing the climate and democracy. Crisis. So just something like, for [00:02:15] a Monday afternoon. Yeah, Monday evening.
[00:02:17] Maryam Pasha: Then I know you wanna ask about big brothers Restart there. I need
[00:02:19] Ben Hurst: to, I need to.
[00:02:20] Big Brother Experience
[00:02:20] Ben Hurst: Alright, so this, this to me is crazy because I, I’ve heard of all different types at this point.
[00:02:27] Ben Hurst: Loads of different ways of approaching, like [00:02:30] raising awareness, uh, climate engagement, engage in normies in climate conversations. Can
[00:02:36] Maryam Pasha: I just say that I had to literally Google the word normie? Normie when just now when I said that, like, no, no. Like, okay. A few months ago, it
[00:02:42] Ben Hurst: is me, US norms. [00:02:45] Um, but. Big Brother was never on my radar, and I, I’m not sure I understand the strategy.
[00:02:52] Ben Hurst: Like what was, what was the, what was the plan with Big Brother? Like why did also, why did you do that?
[00:02:59] Daze Aghaji: Okay. [00:03:00] I’m like, where do we even start there? Um, well, I’m. I feel like there’s, there’s multiple levels to that question. One was like, I pretend it was like totally strategically planned, but it wasn’t ah.
[00:03:11] Ben Hurst: Um,
[00:03:12] Daze Aghaji: at that time in my life, I was really thinking about how [00:03:15] do we communicate climate to the unconvinced, you know, because yeah, like my work is in the intersection of politics, art, climate, um, and environment more broadly. It usually always happens in museums. It always happens in art [00:03:30] galleries, and I think there’s a beauty of that, of where it happens in theaters and music venues.
[00:03:35] Daze Aghaji: But what happens when you take it into somewhere that’s slightly different? And as someone who loves myself, a bit of reality tv, a bit of binge worthy like. After work tele. Mm-hmm. [00:03:45] Um, I was thinking about how do we reach the largest audiences and the largest audiences are watching these kind of larger reality TV shows after work.
[00:03:53] Daze Aghaji: Um, so strangely enough as though the universe couldn’t align itself better, I got a DM from a producer that was [00:04:00] like, have you thought about. Going on Big Brother before, so that’s funny. You should say that. Z Yeah, exactly. And the year before, like, um, I, I got, I’ve reached out to you and it was like an instant no, because I was like, who’s gonna pick up that call?
[00:04:12] Daze Aghaji: That’s crazy. Um, but yeah. But that year it was kind of [00:04:15] like, especially with the work that I do at the moment of where, you know, I’m working with really amazing. Culture makers and kind of convincing them almost in some respects to be able to, you know, grapple with the climate crisis and democracy crisis.
[00:04:29] Daze Aghaji: It [00:04:30] felt slightly hypocritical for me to be given this like weird opportunity that felt kind of like right for this moment and then not. Taking it. Mm. Um, so that led me to go into this. Yeah. Very strange world of reality tv and now I’m a reality TV star. Yeah. I love chasing myself [00:04:45] as
[00:04:45] Ben Hurst: that. Thank you.
[00:04:46] Maryam Pasha: We should have really read with that in the moment.
[00:04:48] Maryam Pasha: Yeah,
[00:04:48] Ben Hurst: yeah, yeah. Get the cash. Get the cash. Um,
[00:04:51] Challenges and insights from reality TV
[00:04:51] Maryam Pasha: what was it, what was it like being, I guess, a climate activist in that space?
[00:04:57] Daze Aghaji: Well, it was really interesting ’cause one, I realized [00:05:00] that like, so I grew up in like the kind of like hippie dp, world of extinction rebellion of where I was. We’ll start our meetings going, how are you, what are you holding today?
[00:05:10] Daze Aghaji: Mm. Um, and I realized culturally I was the weird one in the space of where like I’m trying to talk to someone [00:05:15] about my feelings and they tell me tear F off, like, you know?
[00:05:17] Ben Hurst: Right, right, right. And
[00:05:18] Daze Aghaji: it was like really strange because I realized like, oh, like the culture that I live in, my little. Bubble in my head of living in London, living in the Republic of Hackney, I love to call it, where it’s very lefty and green.
[00:05:29] Daze Aghaji: It’s not [00:05:30] the rest of the uk, you know, and it was the first time that I had to really engage with people who I wouldn’t ordinarily see. So I found that to be interesting. But then also I realized that like there was a side of it of where they didn’t really understand where I was coming from. Like [00:05:45] they kind of got the climate crisis to an extent, most of the people in the house, but they also didn’t really get the cultural element of like.
[00:05:52] Daze Aghaji: The fact that it’s not just about the climate, it’s about how we decide to live together and that these are issues that are intersectional, that everyone is gonna be affected by. And [00:06:00] then also, like, I think, you know, more like. Novelty side of it. It was like a lot of people were like buying from fast fashion and like all of these things that I felt quite inherently uncomfortable about.
[00:06:11] Daze Aghaji: Mm-hmm. But then also like actually having to have the conversation of why [00:06:15] people do that and then like me, like knocking myself down a few pegs to realize that in actuality, like it’s really difficult for everyone, you know? So it kind of took me from like, you know, me thinking that I’m not that militant as an environmental activist.
[00:06:27] Daze Aghaji: For me, even to have a moment of like [00:06:30] humbleness to like actually extinction
[00:06:30] Ben Hurst: rebellion days. That’s, it’s about as militant as it gets. No.
[00:06:35] Daze Aghaji: But yeah, so it was really beautiful. And yeah, I think to, to end that question, um, the end part is I met this. Amazing. Well, to be honest, I met some really amazing people in [00:06:45] there who I would’ve never met any other way.
[00:06:48] Daze Aghaji: And one particular person is one of my closest friends called Lily, who’s like a 20-year-old girl from Warrington and she just loves to party and get drunk. Um, and that’s her vibe. That’s a good, that is a good
[00:06:58] Ben Hurst: vibe though. Yeah. It’s such [00:07:00] a great vibe.
[00:07:01] Daze Aghaji: And meeting her one, like it made me recognize, I’ve spent my whole like young life having to.
[00:07:07] Daze Aghaji: Feel like I have to like do something for the climber and like always be in service. Um, and it made me like actually be like, yeah, I need [00:07:15] to like let loose a little and like enjoy life. But then also it is like even in her enjoying life and almost like this, like hedonistic, like 20-year-old, she has such deep thoughts about everything as well in the same way, whether it’s the climate, whether it’s about Palestine, and [00:07:30] she and herself is like really morally driven.
[00:07:32] Daze Aghaji: And even though we look. Very different, especially like, you know, like the way that we like present our sex, et cetera. Like at the end of it, like our call was the same. Um, so there was such beauty in that to find like, you know, similarity [00:07:45] even though there’s different.
[00:07:47] Maryam Pasha: You were, I mean that is I guess very, a very meaningful and important tool that you have now is this idea of being able to like understand how most people are thinking [00:08:00] about this and other priorities they have and just kind of, I think it’s hard to break out of our bubble as hard as much as we try.
[00:08:08] Maryam Pasha: We really don’t have that many opportunities to spend as much time as you got to spend with people that are just living a [00:08:15] different life than us.
[00:08:15] Daze Aghaji: Yeah, exactly. Like I went into that house where most people would’ve agreed that they should have arrested me on site, Uhhuh stuff I’d done in my past, you know, and like being part of this protest movement.
[00:08:25] Daze Aghaji: But then when leaving people had a very different point of view [00:08:30] of what a climate activist is. Yeah. Um, and I also kept getting that kind of. Messages and dms from other people in the general public who were like, at first I didn’t know if I actually could get along with someone like you. Yeah. And then by the end I just realized like you’re just a girl, you know, trying your [00:08:45] best.
[00:08:45] Daze Aghaji: And I, I think there’s something about that of where a lot of the time, especially ’cause of like the media landscape that we live in, activists are very much like. How do I say it? They’re like, yeah, they’re demonized. Yeah. Um, and they’re meant like, they’re seen as [00:09:00] like these, like moralistic characters who just like, you know, are saying that they’re better than everyone else, but actuality they don’t recognize that like all of us come from this, from a like really deep place of love for like everything, and it’s.
[00:09:13] Daze Aghaji: Because of that. That’s why we do what we [00:09:15] do.
[00:09:15] Ben Hurst: I, I do think I’m better than most people, so just, that’s just me though. That’s just me. On a personal level, it’s not, everyone don’t speak for all activists, but I do, I do hold that belief personally. Personally, we know it’s not, the first time you said that, I felt like I, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that.
[00:09:29] Ben Hurst: Yeah. It’s [00:09:30] like as,
[00:09:31] Maryam Pasha: do you think, I mean, you mentioned this idea of way, the way activism is portrayed. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which is becoming. More and more villainized, more and more demonized. Um, and yet, I [00:09:45] mean, we were talking about this, we were just talking about this upstairs, about this idea of like the role of those activist movements that are seen as quote unquote more radical in the ecosystem and how actually they play in a really important [00:10:00] role.
[00:10:00] Evolution of activism and cultural strategy
[00:10:00] Maryam Pasha: You, you know, you’ve been doing this now for quite a long time. You’ve had this evolution. How has. Those earlier days where you were in, what maybe some people view as more radical, um, changed the way that changed in the way that now you’re engaging with this issue? [00:10:15] Or has it changed or has the issue changed?
[00:10:16] Maryam Pasha: I’m just curious to know about your evolution. ’cause obviously you know what you’re doing with absurd intelligence. Speak up hard art, it feels like. A broadening.
[00:10:24] Ben Hurst: Mm.
[00:10:24] Daze Aghaji: Yeah. I feel like this is
[00:10:26] Ben Hurst: your, um, Angela Davis at the Southbank Center moment. Oh, really? Where you get to tell [00:10:30] us how it’s all changed as, as you’ve got older.
[00:10:32] Ben Hurst: Go on. Tell us as
[00:10:33] Daze Aghaji: we got older. Um, yeah, I think the space of direct action movements, it’s beautiful. ’cause it’s, it’s like I always talk about like this reckoning that people have when they come to climate. It’s, it’s this [00:10:45] moment of where you kind of have to decide whether you’re gonna do anything. Um, and I feel like everyone probably who’s like worked in the sectors, has had that moment of where they go, oh.
[00:10:52] Daze Aghaji: I, I could either decide not to, or I have to, and direct action movements put that into public space.
[00:10:59] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:10:59] Daze Aghaji: And [00:11:00] that’s what I find particularly interesting. And that was like my, like, you know, like a lot of my work in XR was around regenerative cultures, which is like the cultural, how do we be with each other again?
[00:11:11] Daze Aghaji: You know? And, and especially with the part of that, of where you meet people on the street who [00:11:15] actively. Dislike you because you’re blocking them. Mm. Um, you know, but you are kind of trying to figure out how can I be, how can I show my truth, my vulnerability to be met with that? Um, so there’s something beautiful about that, but also it pushes the level of acceptability as well.[00:11:30]
[00:11:30] Daze Aghaji: But for me, after getting a bit burnt out and then leaving direct action to go and work in comms, I went through this journey of recognizing that like. The reason why climate action [00:11:45] feels really difficult is because the systems have not been created to kind of be able to solve something so complex. Um, so even when you meet politicians who.
[00:11:54] Daze Aghaji: Um, in theory they want to do something about it. They didn’t know how to, and they don’t know how the system could even allow for [00:12:00] something as radical of a shift as we’re asking for. Um, and that’s made me kind of realize that, oh, actually maybe working on democracy issues and in like general politics could be the way to kind of start to tilt the door at least open a [00:12:15] door that can allow for the change to happen.
[00:12:18] Daze Aghaji: And then. After kind of like doing that kind of like democracy work of whether it was like suing the government or a bunch of other strange things. I managed to get myself into, um, I had this moment of [00:12:30] reading, like a quote that was talking about how. Culture is upstream from politics. And then it was like, oh.
[00:12:37] Daze Aghaji: So that’s how you get them. You get them by creating this cultural, you know, moment of where it feels so insatiable that people are willing to [00:12:45] ride with the vision that you’ve set out. You know, or even co-creating, co-design the vision of the future that you want. And then that in turn, that desire, that yearning.
[00:12:53] Daze Aghaji: We’ll end up making people ask for more in their political systems and then that will end up starting to open the doors for us [00:13:00] to get that racial justice that we need, climate justice, that we need. You know, and, and there was like this moment of realizing that, oh, actually what we need to do is we need to enter the culture space to be able to be the storytellers, the narrators of this time, to provoke that reckoning for [00:13:15] people.
[00:13:16] Ben Hurst: Sorry, you don’t have to, you can edit this out of the episode, but gimme the, the culture is upstream thing again. I just actually didn’t get it. Okay.
[00:13:23] Daze Aghaji: So like it was a quote that was saying how culture is upstream from politics. So in order to get to politics, you have to go [00:13:30] through culture. Okay.
[00:13:31] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:13:31] Ben Hurst: ’cause the culture allows
[00:13:32] Daze Aghaji: for us to, like for example, like extinction rebellion is really good example. So like, oh, politic is down screen. You created, you created this culture of where it was like actually quite unacceptable to not believe in the climate crisis, right? Know mean. And then in turn, politics [00:13:45] had to deliver on that, right?
[00:13:46] Daze Aghaji: Because people said, oh, okay, that’s really weird that you’re not doing anything right. And this is already happening and we know this is happening. So it is like culture is like the thing that you can get to and it’s, it’s something that. In a strange way, we were enacting, but we didn’t actually fully [00:14:00] recognize that.
[00:14:00] Ben Hurst: We didn’t. Didn’t realize. Yeah.
[00:14:01] Daze Aghaji: Yeah.
[00:14:02] Ben Hurst: And culture being art and. Prote not protest. What else? What, how do you define culture? Like what is that?
[00:14:09] Daze Aghaji: Yeah, so I have like two ways I like culture with like the capital C, which is the arts, the theater, the [00:14:15] music. And that plays a very important part in society. But then like there’s like Baby C, which is like cultures in like the ways that we decide to live with one another and the ways we decide to treat one another.
[00:14:26] Daze Aghaji: Okay. You know? And I think those two things at one point [00:14:30] in time used to be really connected. But then it kind of became fragmented from itself, you know? So like at a time, you know, like I, I’m obsessed with like folk culture and I won’t go on that rabbit hole today, but like folk [00:14:45] culture, especially around the songs that we would sing, would tell us a lot about.
[00:14:49] Daze Aghaji: How people used to live. Right. You know, and the values that people held. And that’s the example of like the baby C matching with like the biggest C of where you are listening to a song and singing a song. Being in turn you’re [00:15:00] learning the values of the song. Right. You know that the song is saying that we have, um, or even like, um, I love like football.
[00:15:06] Daze Aghaji: For example, and like football chance, create this sense of togetherness of where that’s the baby. See is like the idea of that we’re in this together, but [00:15:15] then it’s using the song to create that. You know? So that’s kind of how I would see it is like there is the culture, that’s the arts that we’re used to referring to as culture.
[00:15:23] Daze Aghaji: Then there’s the culture of how we decide to live with another one another. And democracy is an example of that. You know, these [00:15:30] are rules that we’ve created in order to. Hopefully like act out our values of how we think society should be run, but when it starts going square shaped, like what we’re seeing in the US and also here, you know, we have to start asking ourselves what do we do
[00:15:43] Ben Hurst: right?
[00:15:44] Ben Hurst: We do have to [00:15:45] start asking ourselves big questions. And this, this sounds like a real evolution of the way that you understand or not the way that you understand the issue, but the way that you understand how people relate to the issue.
[00:15:56] Connecting climate action and democracy
[00:15:56] Ben Hurst: How has that changed the way that you approach these conversations with people that you run into in everyday life or people that you meet at events?
[00:16:04] Ben Hurst: Because also, like one of the things that maybe we don’t talk about. Often within the climate space that I’ve been in anyway, is I think we all have this acknowledgement that [00:16:15] these conversations are like very heavy. They’re very difficult. Yeah. And we know that they’re very difficult and we describe it as like eco anxiety and we all talk to each other about it, but like there’s not loads of acknowledgement of like for the person who’s having that conversation for the first time, you are inviting them into quite [00:16:30] a like a depressing Yeah.
[00:16:31] Ben Hurst: Like scary petrifying world. So how do you go about having those conversations with people that you are meeting now?
[00:16:39] Daze Aghaji: Yeah, I feel like, you know, I did, I went through many different areas of days of like, I remember what it was like [00:16:45] the wet, what gonna die guys next Tuesday. Right, right, right, right. That was a classic.
[00:16:49] Daze Aghaji: Should do something about it. Um, right down to the, you know, the last time I spoke to you on the podcast was about, you know. How I started to realize like Grace is like a really large part of this forgiveness, [00:17:00] understanding, you know, this kind of like softer skills that we’ve lost in this like hyper, you know, patriarchal world.
[00:17:06] Daze Aghaji: And then now it’s even like even gone, more so of where I actually don’t think many people need to know that much about the climate. They just need to know that people are [00:17:15] suffering and that shouldn’t be okay and that shouldn’t be something that we allow, you know? And that they have agency as we all do, especially collectively.
[00:17:23] Daze Aghaji: To be able to do something about that. You know? And this is where it’s like, you know, let’s talk about climate. [00:17:30] Absolutely. But let’s talk about what’s affecting someone and realize that climate justice only exists if we actually sort out what your biggest problem is at the end of the month and connect it to the end of the world.
[00:17:40] Daze Aghaji: You know? And you can only have that. And I think that’s where a lot of my thinking has. [00:17:45] Definitely evolved around how do we talk to people. Um, and then there’s also like the second side of that is like, maybe we shouldn’t talk to people at all in some ways. You know what I mean? That’s like, maybe just leave people alone, but lemme land exactly.
[00:17:57] Daze Aghaji: Of where like, um, I’ve been really [00:18:00] obsessed with this. Like, there’s so much like in the. Like, kind of like, I would say like 2010 era. There’s so much research around social cohesion and how do you build a sense of togetherness because I, I feel like a lot of the political issues that we see is this lack of sense of social [00:18:15] fabric.
[00:18:15] Daze Aghaji: Um, and the mistrust in climate science, for example, it’s the same thing. It’s the same root problem. Um, so I, I’ve been like going down this rabbit hole of how do you create social cohesion? And there’s this, um, researcher called Martha Newsome, [00:18:30] and her work’s really amazing. She went from. Learning about football hooliganism to going down to ritual, which is like two things that I love so much to like figure out and learn about and read about.
[00:18:40] Daze Aghaji: Yeah, I know, right, exactly. But she has this idea of these four D’s. So it’s [00:18:45] drugs, drums, deprivation, and dance. And these are things that create this bond that people will be willing to self-sacrifice for. And I, there’s something about that that I find really interesting. ’cause what happens when you don’t have to like have the heady [00:19:00] conversation of like, do you know the climate science?
[00:19:02] Daze Aghaji: What is 1.5, dah, dah, dah. And you just get someone to dance to some music and realize like, we could actually be together like this. On a daily basis, if we sort out our economic situation, if we sort out democracy and if we sort out the climate [00:19:15] crisis, you know what happens when you tell someone like, we can actually live very differently and it’s totally possible.
[00:19:21] Daze Aghaji: You know, and that that’s, you know, it’s like the enacting of our principles in an embodied way.
[00:19:27] Maryam Pasha: I mean,
[00:19:28] Daze Aghaji: I have so many questions.
[00:19:29] Ben Hurst: [00:19:30] Yeah, you go. You go. Um.
[00:19:32] Maryam Pasha: I’m just deciding which route I wanna go down, I think. Okay. I’m gonna start, I’m gonna go two different routes. One is just this idea of what I’m hearing from you is this recapturing or reengaging with the idea of [00:19:45] empathy and love for each other, because I do absolutely think that this disconnection and this lack of like connectiveness allows people to ignore the suffering of others.
[00:19:55] Maryam Pasha: Do you think that some of the work around culture is about [00:20:00] finding ways to reconnect and to create empathy?
[00:20:04] Daze Aghaji: A hundred percent. I think like culture is like the biggest tool to be able to like create this reconnection because like, I think it was, um, Juliet [00:20:15] Stevenson was saying at one of our sessions at Hard Art, she was talking about how theater’s like one of the only places that you can.
[00:20:22] Daze Aghaji: Like have multiple realities live at once and it be totally okay. And I found that like a really interesting concept. ’cause the idea of like, you can [00:20:30] sit there. And you watch this person going through this thing and it calls on you to be present and to like view this piece of art, to feel the pain, to feel the sorry, to feel the laughter.
[00:20:43] Daze Aghaji: It’s like all of these [00:20:45] things can exist in this space of play, you know? And I think that’s where culture can kind of be that thing of where in everyday life it might not feel safe for a lot of people to have such deep levels of empathy, especially when your own suffering is also on the [00:21:00] table. But through arts, you can kind of like almost like see it as this time.
[00:21:04] Daze Aghaji: For you to like fully engage in something emotionally and embodied?
[00:21:08] Maryam Pasha: Yeah, I mean, I think what you’re saying, what I hear and what it reminds me of is, is kinda what we were saying before around how the Big [00:21:15] Brother, I remember bringing it all the way around, but the Big Brother experience allows you to spend substantial time with people and to understand them.
[00:21:22] Maryam Pasha: I think things. Like theater, like film, um, can immerse you in another reality so that you can [00:21:30] understand people in a way that a news report just cannot do. And it’s safe
[00:21:33] Daze Aghaji: as well. Yeah, especially fiction. It’s, it is so safe. ’cause you’re like, in some ways you’re like, this isn’t even real, you know? So you can feel like you can drop into your level of like actually having to empathize with someone.
[00:21:44] Maryam Pasha: [00:21:45] Yeah. I mean this is like maybe a tangent, but one thing that, um. One of the team here, Rebecca and I talk about like endlessly is years and years. Mm-hmm. And how it like shook us. If you guys haven’t seen the show years and years, it wasn’t that anything was [00:22:00] new. Like I know all those things intellectually, but to like,
[00:22:03] Ben Hurst: what’s, what is years and years.
[00:22:04] Ben Hurst: Sorry. Oh
[00:22:05] Maryam Pasha: man. I don’t even wanna give it away, but it’s been, spoiler, spoiler. It’s, it’s, um. It’s like a fic, it’s a fictitious telling of the present into the near future. So it [00:22:15] starts like tomorrow and then it goes from there and it just, it takes some really dark turns along the way, but completely plausible
[00:22:26] Ben Hurst: black real life.
[00:22:27] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And
[00:22:28] Maryam Pasha: so this is my other question then I’ve, I have [00:22:30] two more, but I’m gonna, I’m just repeat brief. One of them is a lot of kind of ways that we tell stories. They tell us about the worst things that can happen. But we’re not as good, I think, at telling stories about the best things that can happen.
[00:22:43] Maryam Pasha: Yeah. Why? [00:22:45]
[00:22:45] Daze Aghaji: Well, I think it’s, it is psychology, isn’t it? To a certain degree. I think it’s very easy. Like I think anyone can relate to this. It’s very easy to ruminate on that one piece of bad news and like the haze of all the good news. I think there’s something about that. Um, but yeah, I [00:23:00] think that we don’t, yeah, we don’t really think about it.
[00:23:02] Daze Aghaji: And also because at least for me, I find that. There’s nothing worse. Like maybe like for example, like whenever me and my partner, we end up like finding that London life is too hard, we always think like, oh, wouldn’t it be nice to like go and buy a [00:23:15] farm and become goat herders? No, but there’s something about that.
[00:23:20] Daze Aghaji: This is not your audience to that really. Okay. But that’s like my dream. Um, but there’s something about that that feels like really lovely to dream about and yearn of something that feels very difficult and like [00:23:30] almost escape from the sense, but then also like. The reality that that’s not gonna be a thing, or at least the possibility that like, I can yearn about something.
[00:23:38] Daze Aghaji: Right. That never makes it, you can imagine It also feels almost like heartbreaking in the same way. And I feel like on a larger societal [00:23:45] scale, we, we do that sometimes of where, you know. Constantly. Like I, I know I always talk about like the fact that we can actually really build the world that we wanna see because I grew up in a protest movement of where on my first meeting they told me we are gonna stop prep from getting their languages and we’re gonna block Central [00:24:00] London with like less than 40 people in the room.
[00:24:02] Daze Aghaji: And I believed it and then I watched it happen. So like you mean my ability to imagine beyond what exists is carved from my lived experience and even like going further back, like my mom who, um, she has like a really [00:24:15] amazing and compelling story, but my mom, she. She migrated here. She was in a domestically violent, um, relationship.
[00:24:23] Daze Aghaji: We were really poor when we were growing up, like living below the poverty line. And my mom literally just ha woke up one day and was like, I [00:24:30] have a dream. I’m gonna own a restaurant. I’m gonna make it happen. And everyone thought she was delusional and constantly told that she’s delusional. But then she just made it happen, you know?
[00:24:38] Daze Aghaji: And then I became very middle class and hence the accent. Um, you know?
[00:24:42] Ben Hurst: Yeah. But
[00:24:43] Daze Aghaji: it’s like when you watch that [00:24:45] happen, everything becomes. Possible. Right. But when you are constantly told, whenever you even dare to dream that you are wrong, you’re naive, why would
[00:24:53] Maryam Pasha: people
[00:24:54] Daze Aghaji: Yeah,
[00:24:54] Maryam Pasha: I agree. Okay.
[00:24:55] Final thoughts
[00:24:55] Maryam Pasha: I’m gonna take a left turn and talk, ask you one other question and then we’re gonna have to wrap.
[00:25:00] Ben Hurst: Will you do Big Brother again? No. Okay. No, no, no. My
[00:25:02] Maryam Pasha: question is not, it’s a bigger question around democracy. ’cause you mentioned it earlier and I, I feel like we’re having more and more of these conversations. Do we as the climate movement, need to start thinking more about [00:25:15] democracy and our space in bigger movements?
[00:25:18] Maryam Pasha: I worry that if we do not, there will be no space for climate action when there is no democracy.
[00:25:26] Daze Aghaji: A hundred percent. And I think this is the [00:25:30] thing that I, I find sometimes a bit challenging with the climate movement because we’re so focused on the end of the world that we don’t realize that people are actually going through like very evident things now.
[00:25:39] Daze Aghaji: And we also fail to recognize that democracy is the way that we get policy passed that ends up [00:25:45] protecting ourselves and the climate and our communities. So if that’s not working, you can, you can wish the rest of it goodbye, you know? And I think there’s something about that of where it’s like this. You know, there’s people not recognizing that this is a relational issue, the climate crisis, and I [00:26:00] feel like, um.
[00:26:01] Daze Aghaji: In order to really answer this question, I probably have to explain what I mean by that. But in my analysis of the situation, the climate crisis is almost like the final frontier of all the stuff you know, and [00:26:15] in actuality, when you start going back, you can almost like historically pinpoint it down to this disconnection of people and land.
[00:26:22] Daze Aghaji: People in nature and like all these kind of like stories, folk customs that used to guide us and then they got lost in [00:26:30] order to enable capitalism, extractivism. And that took place to all the values that we used to have around community and togetherness. So, you know, so there’s something about that of where the climate doesn’t realize that yes, it’s very important and like everything dies on a dead planet.
[00:26:44] Daze Aghaji: I really get [00:26:45] that. However. Yeah, all the other stuff is still injustice and it’s all interconnected and you can’t have one without the other. And you can’t have the other without the other, you know? And democracy is almost like, the way that I see it is, like, it’s the way that we decide to show love to one another.
[00:26:59] Daze Aghaji: You [00:27:00] know? How do we hold each other through hard times? Democracy is meant to be that thing. Um, so when that stops working, we can see the dismantling of everything, you know, so that’s why. Most of my work now is in service to climate and [00:27:15] marginalized communities, but it’s focused on democracy because that’s how we’re gonna really get that kind of like drastic change and democracy, not in the sense of what people think democracy is now, which is very.
[00:27:26] Daze Aghaji: Top down is the politicians telling us, but it’s actually like [00:27:30] the Truist reason, which is the truist meaning, which is demos, craus people power. Quite literally, democracy means people power. You know? It’s when people take back their agency in this system and tell them, tell the politicians what we want and what we desire and what we want to [00:27:45] get, and then that’s how we start getting things moving.
[00:27:49] Daze Aghaji: Amazing. That was a
[00:27:50] Ben Hurst: good
[00:27:50] Daze Aghaji: answer.
[00:27:50] Ben Hurst: Days. That was a good one. Good answer. That
[00:27:52] Daze Aghaji: was a good answer.
[00:27:54] Ben Hurst: That was a good one.
[00:27:54] Maryam Pasha: Um, I wanna leave it there. I think that’s a brilliant way to end. Mm. Thank you so much.
Maryam Pasha: Thank you for joining us this week. We [00:45:45] really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.
Ben Hurst: If you did, please hit the follow button to make sure that you get next week’s releases.
Ben Hurst: While you’re at it, please leave a rating and a review.
Maryam Pasha: Now let’s shout out to our fabulous team behind the pod
Ben Hurst: Executive Produced by Josie [00:46:00] Colter,
Maryam Pasha: Produced by Ben Beheshty.
Ben Hurst: Music, also by Ben Beheshty,
Maryam Pasha: Communications by Tara Cooper and Izzy Gladston.
Ben Hurst: Curation by Deesha Chandra,
Maryam Pasha: hosted by Ben Hurst.
Ben Hurst: I’m Maryam Pasha, and remember, stay [00:46:15] curious.
