Links (end): AI capability, institutional governance, regulation, prediction markets, research tools, and AI-native startups.

This week’s letter is about complicated progress. Cancer care is much better than it was, and still painfully hard to endure. Climate outlooks have improved, and still imply serious damage. Silicon Valley has optimism, money and technical energy, but may have lost culture. China can build at astonishing speed, but also has culture/moral challenges.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about healthcare in the last few weeks. Well. I think about healthcare a lot by default, as investing in healthcare means I do a few hours a day on healthcare research on average! But theory and desk work have a different quality versus when it touches one’s physical and tangible world.

Swimming in the back of my mind is my conversation with my friend Salima on her cancer recovery. 20 years ago this process of chemo to shrink tumour small enough to cut out, then cut out and have the all clear would not have had a high chance of working. Now the chances are good.

Salima Saxton on cancer, honesty, estrangement, and creative work in real life. Salima is Ben’s longtime friend, and they talk about her cancer diagnosis and what she calls an unexpected new “year of undoing”, a return to herself rather than a neat reinvention story. “Be the sky, not the weather. The weather passes through.”

In the US, where there is decent data we can see US age-adjusted cancer mortality has fallen by 34% from 1991 to 2022, averting about 4.5 million deaths, and five-year survival for distant-stage cancers in the US has doubled from 17% in the mid-1990s to 35% for diagnoses in 2015–2021.

Still. While relative improvements have increased, the absolute numbers are still low. Distant lung cancer only has 1 in 10 with a 5 year survival rate, great that it is up from 2% to 10% but still very low.

New drugs are increasing in this area. Average annual FDA approvals of oncology and hematology new molecular entities rose from 3.5 per year in 1998–2010 to 12.2 per year in 2011–2024.

Note, when a drug enters phase 1 human clinical trials, the chance that it will make it to market is in the order of only 10%, and it still takes 5 to 10 years (occasionally quicker in exceptional circumstances) to make it, at a cash cost of between $200m to $1bn dollars; and an all-in (risk and opportunity cost) of double that.

Biopharma people tell me (and I assess myself) that AI will speed this up, although still some time away from a 10x improvement. I think a 5 percentage point improvement in success (at phase 1) from 10% on average to 15% and cutting 2 to 3 years from timelines would be a pretty great and just about plausible achievement, although this will take at least 10 years to nudge towards. The AI people who see clinical times reducing even further than that, do not understand enough about biology and human trial bottleneck, although one day much further in the future, we might get there.

I have another friend who told me about a recent late stage lung cancer diagnosis. She is my age. While I have dealt with this area in my Bigly Death show and have all the theoretical knowledge on latest lung cancer treatments, it still makes my ponder on the time we have, what makes us human and what we should be spending our time on.

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Another area that has popped up, and I keep bumping into, is around British education and disability educational needs. I continue to note the range of views that my university friend, Naomi Fisher, highlights via her podcast and blog. (She attracts criticism from many sides for highlighting a range of views, from those still operating inside the medical model (eg Uta Frith) to those who espouse the social model).

One area I had not thought about enough until it entered my life is in interacting and representing people who can not easily advocate for themselves. Stephen Unwin wrote a book about it (Beautiful Lives, Amazon Link)

For much of history, people with learning disabilities have been regarded as unworthy of interest - often seen as a threat to the social order and sometimes dismissed as barely human. While recent years have seen an improvement, learning-disabled people are still treated as fundamentally different. Beautiful Lives is a personal and pragmatic account, told through the eyes of a father whose son has severe learning disabilities.

and mentioned it on our podcast (if your speech is absent or atypical, then how are you represented?). There is a classic psychology / science / philosophy question which interrogates whether language is an important or even the only differentiator between humans and animals. We should not treat humans who don’t have conventional means of communication poorly, but overall we do not do well in this regard.

I don’t have fully developed thoughts here but I feel it is a serious issue that is often hidden from public view and remains under-grappled with by society at large.

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In climate world, there has been discussion of the high end climate scenario, known as RCP 8.5, being retired. RCP 8.5 was pointing towards a 4c world. It was already known for a few years that RCP 8.5 was not very plausible. I discuss this with Zeke Hausfather in my pod in 2021 where we already concluded RCP 8.5 not likely. Median policy (see above) is hovering in the 2.5c to 3c range of scenarios with upside to the 2c to 2.5c range as plausible.

Zeke Hausfather comments: ...two things can be true at the same time:

RCP8.5 (and its successor SSP5-8.5) were designed to be a worst case emissions scenario, not the most likely outcome even in a world that did nothing to address climate change. We were probably never headed to a tripling of global emissions by 2100 (to say nothing of a five-fold increase in coal use), even in the absence of climate policy.

Rapid declines in clean energy costs have bent the curve of future emissions downward, with new scenarios designed to reflect current policies notably lower than most baseline scenarios in the literature. The 21st century is now unlikely to see a continued expansion of fossil fuel use globally, with current policy scenarios reflecting relatively flat global emissions going forward.

Me. The counterfactual is hard but it seems that current base scenario estimate is for a 2.5c to 3c outlook.

And it is also plausible that both technology progress and policy progress has lead to 0.7c drop in warming outlook (maybe even more) compared to outlook in 2015 or so.

Zeke concludes: “A tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100 may never have been particularly plausible even back in 2011 when RCP8.5 was originally published. But a 21st century of increasing fossil fuel use leading to a doubling of emissions was within the realm of the possible. The fact that we are no longer heading toward that is a sign of progress, rather than somehow undermining the edifice of all of climate science as both President Trump and some overly excited internet pundits claim. And of course, we still have a long way to go to get emissions down to (net) zero and stabilize global temperatures.” Link to his blog.

I suppose it is hard for people to keep these two ideas in mind, but from a climate perspective it means that the future outlook has become better, materially better (by 0.5c to 1c range) due to policy and technology (although some still argue impact has been more limited) but that there will still be significant damage that it would be better to adapt and mitigate etc. for at these current median scenario ranges of 2.5c to 3c. Both things are true. Here is BBC 9 minutes on it as well.

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I had an excellent chat with Dan Wang which is now out. Dan has lived in and comments on China and the US in his best selling book Breakneck. We do go pretty off-piste into theatre and food.

We start on whether / why Silicon Valley has lost its sense of humour. We think it probably has…. The ideas is that…Humour requires looseness, self-mockery, tolerance of ambiguity, and the ability to puncture status. If Silicon Valley has lost that, it may signal a deeper narrowing of personality and imagination. We suggest this as a shift from earlier countercultural playfulness toward harder-edged founder seriousness…. We think SV contrats with NYC and London as it doesnt understand culture in the same way…

Dan suggests: Silicon Valley has optimism, money, technology and energy, but thinner cultural life; London has theatre, conversation, museums, music, food, soft power and social sparkle, but lacks optimism and cannot build. … I still remain in the minority of being optimistic on London, and suggesting it can solve some building problems, but Dan is not convinced…

On China… Dan gives China enormous credit for physical achievement, but argues that censorship, weak journalism, falling reading habits, and constrained artistic production are flattening cultural life. I add…China’s physical engineering has been extraordinary, but its social-political engineering may be the medium-term weakness. This weakness might be fatal, in particular: its one child policy.

We have a ‘food becomes a theory of society’ discussion… Dan notes in China food delivery is a metaphor for optimisation: speed, standardisation, platform logistics, and central kitchens can make delivery astonishingly efficient while subtly worsening cuisine. That mirrors the wider China argument: extreme operational competence can produce hidden cultural costs.

Dan also suggests that immigrants are especially able to appreciate what works and what fails and it makes us the best cultural critics!

We also have a great section on writing-craft (copying out prose, keeping a phrase scrapbook, writing plays by hand, reading dialogue aloud, and noticing punctuation is one of the richest sections for your literary audience) and Dan argues knowing which rules to break is an important life advice idea!

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I also had a brilliant chat with Brian Wang on the frontier of viral research. We moved across innate immunity, respiratory viruses, AI in biology, and why some scientific fields suddenly become ready to engineer.

The conversation stayed with me because of the broader idea: perhaps medicine can move beyond one-virus-at-a-time defence and toward something closer to durable biological resilience.

Most of us think about immunity through the lens of vaccines, antibodies and T-cells. That is the adaptive immune system: highly specific, targeted, and enormously powerful. But Brian is working on the other side of the immune system: innate immunity. This is the faster, broader, older part of our defence system. It is less precise, harder to tune, and historically harder to engineer safely. But it may also be better suited to defending against many different viruses at once.

One thought on the chat was how fields develop, they don’t move in a straight line from unknown to solved. They pass through phases, then progress when ideas, data, tools are developed enough to create new ideas and to test.

Another thought was on the purpose of ARIA. ARIA is trying to shape a whole opportunity space. A conventional startup might pursue one modality. A pharma company might wait until the commercial path is clearer. A university grant might fund one narrow academic question. ARIA can back a portfolio of approaches: DNA, RNA, proteins, small molecules, trained-immunity vaccines, delivery technologies, academic groups, startups and unusual teams.

That is a different model of innovation. It says that some problems need an ecosystem before they can become a market.

This is especially important in frontier science because early categories are often misdescribed. Before there is a product category, there is a cluster of half-formed questions. What is the right modality? What is the right safety margin? What should be measured? Which model systems are predictive? Where does biology cooperate, and where does it resist? A good funder at this stage is not just buying answers. It is helping create the conditions in which better questions can be asked.

We also remain positive on the UK!

The chat details below:

Ben speaks with Brian Wang, Programme Director at ARIA, about one of the most ambitious ideas in biotechnology: using the innate immune system to create a new class of preventive medicines that could protect against multiple respiratory viruses at once. At the centre of the conversation is ARIA’s Sustained Viral Resilience programme, which aims to develop “sustained innate immuno-prophylactics” or SIPs: potential medicines that could provide months of protection against a wide range of respiratory infections from a single dose.

“Your immune system is just an amazing kind of laboratory in and of itself.”

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Quick hit links:

OpenAI model solves something hard in maths. I do think this is another notable milestone.

Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan CEO) on what to ask a board rather than a tick box Chair/CEO split and LI comments on why this is an issue in the UK.

Social Media ban in Australia not working. NBER paper (LI post). I know people (mainly certain parents) feel very strongly about this, but I wish they would look more closely at the data and, even if it is still concluded that this is worth doing, come up with a better solution, such as using parental control features. I’ve blogged about this previously and it has nudged me further into classic liberal thinking.

AI LLMs and writing style paper (Ethan Mollick tweet).

Sharps on prediction markets (NYT)

Johan Fourie token efficient Claude skill on collating papers. (I’ve not tested) but seems good. X post.

YC on experiences building self-improving, AI-native companies. X-post. Many are going to fail, but I judge that a new breed of companies will be coming through this decade.

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• Home Ed: what I learned on the 38 bus route

• London: an old Synagogue site and Samuel Pepys being wrong

• Theatre: narrow and speculative interpretations of Measure for Measure; different visions for theatre

• Podcast: Phoebe Arslanagić-Little On Fertility, Family Policy, And The Birth Gap

• Reading/Theatre links end including: Tyler Cowens AI enabled book on marginal thinking, Jon Fosse’s Septology, Stories About Autism, Fuchsia Dunlop, Soumaya Keynes; Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain; Stephen Sharkey’s translation of Irresistible Rise of Arturo Ui; Mark Ravenhill directing Salome.

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I’m aiming to walk more at lunchtime. I’ve worked in the City of London, off and on, for the last 25 years. Over that time I’ve made my way through most of the City churches. There are still 50-odd in the Square Mile and, historically, there were well over a hundred before the Great Fire remade the place. So now, on these walks, I’m often doing two things at once: passing old sites and looking for a decent lunch.

The other day, I passed this small plaque in Creechurch Lane: the site of the first synagogue after the resettlement, used by London’s Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation from 1657 to 1701. Bevis Marks, opened nearby in 1701 and still in use, is the more famous building and rightly so. But this was the earlier site, the starting point. Before the better-known synagogue, before the grander architecture, there was a converted house in the City and a community beginning again in public.

I like that. London often hides its first drafts in plain sight. You are walking past offices, cafés and delivery bikes and then suddenly you are standing on a spot that quietly marks a large change in English history.

It was famous enough that Samuel Pepys visited and wrote about it in his diary in October 1663. His original words are memorable, if not especially generous:

“Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew… But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God…”

The important point is that he almost certainly turned up on Simchat Torah, which is exactly the sort of day when a synagogue is meant to be lively, musical and processional. It is a festival of rejoicing in the Torah, not a model of quiet Anglican decorum. So Pepys recorded something real, but he also misread it. He saw joy and interpreted it as disorder. He saw a tradition he did not understand and assumed it must be deficient rather than different.

That seems to me part of the point of London, then and now. The City can look hard-edged and commercial, but underneath it is layer upon layer of encounter: old and new, local and foreign, familiar and strange. Some of that mixing has been awkward. Some of it has been misunderstood. But a lot of the strength of London comes precisely from that friction, that exchange, that constant addition of different people and different ways of thinking.

I like that this history survives not only in major buildings, like Bevis Marks but also in a quiet plaque on a lunchtime walk. It is a reminder that London is not just built out of stone and money; it is built out of arrivals, returns, tolerance, argument, commerce, faith, reinvention, and people making room for one another, sometimes imperfectly, but still making room.

That, to me, is one of the best things about this city.

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I ventured with JP to a heritage running day where old buses took you through London. In the spirit of home education and continuous learning, this is what I learned, courtesy of the internet.

The history of the 38 bus route is a mini history of London, and of engineering, industrialisation and then, perhaps, de-industrialisation.

So how does the Routemaster connect to industrial expertise?

The Routemaster was at the forefront of 1950s British engineering, incorporating techniques adapted from Second World War aircraft production.

• Lightweight aluminium: it used an integral design rather than a separate chassis, helping make it relatively light and efficient for its size.

• Technological firsts: it introduced power steering, an automatic gearbox and independent front suspension, all features that were strikingly advanced for buses in the 1950s.

• The open platform: the rear platform and on-board conductor made the 38 legendary for a hop-on, hop-off style of travel, especially in slow-moving traffic.

We actually managed to run towards a bus and hop on like this, with a willing conductor.

The 2005 withdrawal and the bendy bus interlude

On 28 October 2005, the 38 became the second-last route in London to lose its original Routemasters. They were replaced by the articulated Mercedes bendy buses. These were efficient at moving large crowds, but they never quite had the same character and, for many people, never quite looked right on London streets. The route later moved on again to the New Routemaster.

The New Routemaster (2012 to present)

In February 2012, history came full circle. The 38 was chosen as the first route for the New Routemaster, the LT class. These buses were designed to echo the spirit of the old Routemasters, with three doors, two staircases and, at first, the return of the rear platform and a passenger assistant.

That rear platform idea did not last in its original form. It turned out to be expensive to staff, too easy for fare evasion, and awkward to operate consistently on a modern bus network. TfL eventually moved to front-door boarding only, with the middle and rear doors used for exiting. So the back platform survives as part of the design, but not really as a live version of the old hop-on, hop-off system.

What struck me in the end was simply how much fun it was to be on a Routemaster. The seating felt cosy, almost companionable in a way modern buses rarely do. It was nice learning a bit of this with JP. And yet it also felt like touching a piece of a disappearing world. With electrification coming, and bus design moving in a very different direction, these vehicles will increasingly remain as pieces of history rather than part of everyday life.

Coda: if you want to try one out, the old TfL heritage route 15 is gone, but there is now a private heritage T15 tourist Routemaster service in central London that gives you much the same flavour. A little bit more in this blog about it here.

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I found myself circling the interpretation disagreement on Measure for Measure in Henry Oliver’s Conversation with Tyler that to me encompasses a larger question about a reader/audience/director bringing their view to a work.

It brings to my mind the practical consideration of new theatre writing where there can be a tension between implementing the writer’s vision or the director’s (or others’ vision). Famously, Beckett disliked his vision being touched so directors even now mostly implement his vision (of their views of it) rather than a more interpretive or distant vision.

…here is also another kind of reading, less literal, less close and more interpretive, where the point is not simply to decide what happened, but to notice what a work makes possible, what it invites, what kinds of unease it generates even if it stops short of spelling them out. (This type of reading may well have a higher chance to fail in awkward ways but it can also open up new ways of looking at work.)

That is where Barthes, and the cluster of ideas around reader-response and post-authorial criticism, become useful. This view argues that a work of art does not belong entirely to its maker once it enters the world….

…Meaning is not only deposited by an author and retrieved intact by a careful reader. It is made, or at least completed, in the encounter between text and reader.

This perhaps has more weight with time. The meaning we give cave art is our modern day meaning, we can not possibly know what the original artists (and whether they even considered themselves artists) thought or meant. The interpretation is mostly the viewer’s….

….Henry may be right that Tyler’s reading is not the best literal account of what happens in the scene. But Tyler may still be right that the scene, and perhaps the play more broadly, is structured in such a way that his reading has genuine interpretive force. This is because strong works of art exceed any single paraphrase of their meaning. They remain open enough to support serious disagreement.

This is part of Shakespeare’s genius…. More in this blog here.

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Why are people having fewer children than they say they want? In this episode of Ben Yeoh Chats, I speak to writer and policy thinker Phoebe Arslanagić-Little about one of the most consequential questions in modern Britain: why family life seems to have become harder to start, and harder to grow, even for people who want it.

Phoebe’s starting point is what she calls the “birth gap”: the gap between the number of children women say they would like to have and the number they actually end up having. That gap matters because it suggests this is not simply a story of changing tastes or shrinking ambitions. It points to something more complicated: a collision between personal hopes and the social, economic, and cultural realities of modern life.

“I don’t really subscribe to any of the theories that say, oh, it’s this one thing. I think it genuinely is like a confluence of factors.”

We discuss why this is not a one-variable problem. It is not just about money, though money matters. It is not just about housing, or childcare, or biology, or shifting values, though all of those matter too. As Phoebe argues, fertility is shaped by a confluence of factors: career timing, the costs of parenthood, the social contagion of what we see our peers doing, the changing meaning of adulthood, and the ever-rising standards many people feel they must meet before they are “ready” to have children.

“I think the state should very openly say there are people who want to have children. We think that’s great. We’d like to help them.”

That leads us into the policy debate. Phoebe makes the case for a more openly pro-parent state: one willing to say clearly that if people want to have children, society should try to make that easier rather than harder. We talk about the practical measures she thinks could make a real difference: better maternity pay, front-loading child benefit into the early years, improving maternity care and women’s experience of childbirth, more realistic thinking about paternity leave, and greater recognition of the role that grandparents and wider family networks can play.

We also talk about what governments signal, not just what they spend. Phoebe reflects on the long legacy of overpopulation thinking, from Paul Ehrlich to the anti-natalist policies of countries such as South Korea and China, and why state messages can shape behaviour long after official policy changes. We discuss universal versus targeted family benefits, the politics of fairness between parents and non-parents, and whether the state can ever really be “neutral” on something as foundational as family formation.

Along the way, the conversation opens out into some of Phoebe’s wider writing and interests. We discuss single-parent families, childcare ratios, dating apps, ultra-processed foods, shrimp welfare, astrology, lab-grown meat, pubs, Lime bikes, and the broader question of how modern societies make trade-offs between freedom, comfort, order, and community.

The episode also has a more personal side. Phoebe talks movingly about what surprised her most about becoming a mother: not only the practical challenge, but the strangeness of meeting your baby and realising that this tiny person, so important to you already, is also someone you do not yet know. It is one of the loveliest moments in the conversation, and one that captures something the policy debate often misses: family life is not only an economic or political issue, but a deeply human one.

This is a conversation about fertility and family policy, but it is also about modern adulthood, social expectations, cultural drift, and the kind of world we are building for the next generation.

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links here. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on Youtube.

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Here is the round up of books I am dipping into and shows I’d like to see:

Tyler Cowen’s AI enabled book on marginal revolution thinking, human bottlenecks and the future of AI. Asking Claude/AI about thoughts on the book really is a better way of engaging with it. One of major points is around human bottlenecks and how leaps forward happen. Check it out here.

I’m reading Love Needs No Words (James Hunt) which is a memoir on raising non-verbal autistic boys. There is a well-followed instagram on Stories About Autism. Link to book here.

I’m lucky re: upcoming podcasts to have advanced copies of:

Fuchsia Dunlop’s new cook book (pre-order The Five Tastes: The magic of Flavour in a Chinese Kitchen Amazon link) which is great.

Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown: How to Win a Trade War Amazon link. They speculate what all-out economic warfare might look like…. Spolier: It doesn’t look good.

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On London and UK theatre list there is so much… a few highlights:

I note John Proctor is the Villain sold out at the Royal Court. American playwright Kimberly Belflower. … a revisionist take on the classic American play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, centering on a group of modern-day high school students and their interpretation of the historical events the play is based on… has Taylor Swift songs … My guess is that if they can hold enough of the creative team together this will transfer to West End.

Stephen Sharkey’s translation of Brecht’s Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Mark Gatiss at RSC Stratford. …While the Great Depression inflicts hardship across the nation, Chicago’s underworld festers with sex, scandal, violence and corruption. It’s the perfect storm for a schemer like Ui, his reputation as hot as hell…. New music from Placebo.

Finishing, 12 April is Tim Crouch in the Tempest, it’s a somewhat meta-theatre take, which is good if you’ve seen or read Tempest already and want a non-literal take (see above re: Measure for Measure). At Globe, later In April/May: Deep Azure (Chadwick Boseman, 2005) a riff on black british and black american experience… ….Inspired by the murder of Boseman’s friend Prince Jones, Deep Azure transforms personal loss into something ‘undeniably poetic… a rich blend of hip-hop, song and verse’

There are 6 shows in April of Strauss’ Salome. Mark Ravenhill directs fringe opera in York Hall, Bethnal Green. Comes with sx and violence content warnings… opening weekend includes immersive dinner.

I’m dipping into Jon Fosse’s Septology. The work starts with the word “og” which is “and” in Norwegian. The piece is written in one long sentence and riffs on stream of consciousness forms. Excerpts below:

And I see myself standing and looking at the picture with the two lines that cross in the middle, one purple line, one brown line, it’s a painting wider than it is high and I see that I’ve painted the lines slowly, the paint is thick, two long wide lines, and they’ve dripped, where the brown line and purple line cross the colours blend beautifully and drip and I’m thinking this isn’t a picture but suddenly the picture is the way it’s supposed to be, it’s done, there’s nothing more to do on it, I think, it’s time to put it away, I don’t want to stand here at the easel any more, I don’t want to look at it any more, I think, and I think today’s Monday and I think I have to put this picture away with the other ones I’m working on but am not done with, the canvases on stretchers leaning against the wall between the bedroom door and the hall door under the hook with the brown leather shoulderbag on it, the bag where I keep my sketch-pad and pencil, and then I look at the two stacks of finished paintings propped against the wall next to the kitchen door, I already have ten or so big paintings finished plus four or five small ones, something like that, fourteen paintings in all in two stacks next to each other by the kitchen door, since I’m about to have a show, most of the paintings are approximately square, as they put it, I think, but sometimes I also paint long narrow ones and the one with the two lines crossing is noticeably oblong, as they put it, but I don’t want to put this one into the show because I don’t like it much, maybe all things considered it’s not really a painting, just two lines, or maybe I want to keep it for myself and not sell it? I like to keep my best pictures, not sell them, and maybe this is one of them, even though I don’t like it? yes, maybe I do want to hold onto it even if you might say it’s a failed painting? I don’t know why I’d want to keep it, with the bunch of other pictures I have up in the attic, in a storage room, instead of getting rid of it, or maybe, anyway, maybe Åsleik wants the picture?

The original:

Og eg ser meg stå og sjå mot biletet med dei to strekane, ein lilla og ein brun, som kryssar einannan på midten, eit avlangt bilete, og eg ser at eg har måla strekane langsamt og med tjukk oljemåling, og ho har runne, og der den brune og den lilla linja kryssar einannan blandar fargen seg vakkert og renn nedetter og eg tenkjer at dette ikkje er noko bilete, men samstundes er biletet slik det skal vera, det er ferdig, det er ikkje meir å gjera med, tenkjer eg og eg må få biletet bort, eg vil ikkje lenger ha det ståande der på staffeliet, eg vil ikkje sjå på det meir, tenkjer eg og eg tenkjer at i dag er det måndag og eg tenkjer at eg må setja biletet bort til dei andre målarstykka eg arbeider med, men som eg enno ikkje er ferdig med, dei som står med blindramma ut der mellom døra til kammerset og døra til gangen, under knaggen der den brune skulderveska i lêr heng, den eg har skisseblokk og blyant i, og så ser eg mot dei to stablane med ferdige bilete som står stødde mot veggen attmed kjøkendøra, eg har alt eit lite tital større målarstykke ferdige, og så fire fem små, noko slikt, i alt er det fjorten bilete, og dei står i kvar sin stabel jamsides ein­annan der attmed kjøkendøra, for det er ikkje så lenge til eg skal ha utstilling, dei fleste bileta er meir eller mindre kvadratiske, dei seier, tenkjer eg, men stundom målar eg òg bilete som er lange og smale og biletet med dei to strekane som kryssar einannan er rektangulært, dei seier, men det biletet vil eg ikkje ha med på den neste ut­stillinga eg skal ha, for eg likar eigentleg slett ikkje biletet, og kanskje er det ikkje noko mål­arstykke i det heile, herre to strekar, eller kanskje vil eg ha det sjølv og ikkje selja det? for det finst dei bilete eg vil ha sjølv og ikkje vil selja, og dette er kanskje eit av dei jamvel om eg mislikar målarstykket? ja endåtil om det kanskje må sei­ast å vera eit mislykka bilete så vil eg kanskje ta vare på det og ha det sjølv? og ikkje veit eg kvi­for eg vil ha det sjølv saman med dei få andre bileta eg har ståande der på loftet, på den eine kvisten der, og ikkje vil verta av med, eller kanskje, forresten, kanskje Åsleik vil ha biletet?

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Thanks for reading!

I ventured with JP to a heritage running day where old buses took you through London. In the spirit of home education and continuous learning, this is what I learned, courtesy of the internet.

The history of the 38 bus route is a mini history of London, and of engineering, industrialisation and then, perhaps, de-industrialisation. It stretches across more than a century of urban evolution. The route was introduced on 16 June 1912 and remains a frequent service, connecting the West End to the East End.

The Early Years: From Victoria to the Forest

When the route first launched, it ran from Victoria Station to Leyton Green. Back then it was operated by the London General Omnibus Company using open-top, solid-tyred B-type buses. These sturdy vehicles were the workhorses of the era, and many were later requisitioned as troop transports during the First World War.

There was also the summer Sunday extension. From the 1920s until 1965, Londoners could board a 38 at Victoria and ride all the way to the Wake Arms in Epping Forest. Supposedly, the trip was a favourite for families looking to escape the city for a day in the woods.

The home of the last open-staircase LTs

Before the Routemaster took over, the 38 was famous for the LT-type, the three-axle AEC Renown. While most of London had moved to enclosed buses, the 38 remained the home of the very last open-staircase buses until 1949. These must already have felt slightly vintage by then: drafty, impractical, but still offering a distinctive view of the city.

The original Routemaster era (1971 to 2005)

The classic AEC Routemaster, both the RM and its longer brother the RML, did not actually arrive on the 38 until January 1971, replacing the post-war RT-type. Once it arrived, though, it became the route’s defining feature for more than 30 years.

This little piece of history connects in my mind to the industrial and engineering techniques coming out of the post-war period.

I’m unsure whether central planning and industrial policy can really recreate this. Certainly China is having a go where the UK is not, and maybe the US is having another go too. The UK still has some ingredients but manufacturing now feels more fragmented and global. Even many electric buses associated with London have involved international supply chains and partnerships rather than one clearly British industrial story.

So how does the Routemaster connect to industrial expertise?

The Routemaster was at the forefront of 1950s British engineering, incorporating techniques adapted from Second World War aircraft production.

• Lightweight aluminium: it used an integral design rather than a separate chassis, helping make it relatively light and efficient for its size.

• Technological firsts: it introduced power steering, an automatic gearbox and independent front suspension, all features that were strikingly advanced for buses in the 1950s.

• The open platform: the rear platform and on-board conductor made the 38 legendary for a hop-on, hop-off style of travel, especially in slow-moving traffic.

We actually managed to run towards a bus and hop on like this, with a willing conductor.

The 2005 withdrawal and the bendy bus interlude

On 28 October 2005, the 38 became the second-last route in London to lose its original Routemasters. They were replaced by the articulated Mercedes bendy buses. These were efficient at moving large crowds, but they never quite had the same character and, for many people, never quite looked right on London streets. The route later moved on again to the New Routemaster.

The New Routemaster (2012 to present)

In February 2012, history came full circle. The 38 was chosen as the first route for the New Routemaster, the LT class. These buses were designed to echo the spirit of the old Routemasters, with three doors, two staircases and, at first, the return of the rear platform and a passenger assistant.

That rear platform idea did not last in its original form. It turned out to be expensive to staff, too easy for fare evasion, and awkward to operate consistently on a modern bus network. TfL eventually moved to front-door boarding only, with the middle and rear doors used for exiting. So the back platform survives as part of the design, but not really as a live version of the old hop-on, hop-off system.

What struck me in the end was simply how much fun it was to be on a Routemaster. The seating felt cosy, almost companionable in a way modern buses rarely do. It was nice learning a bit of this with JP. And yet it also felt like touching a piece of a disappearing world. With electrification coming, and bus design moving in a very different direction, these vehicles will increasingly remain as pieces of history rather than part of everyday life.

Coda: if you want to try one out, the old TfL heritage route 15 is gone, but there is now a private heritage T15 tourist Routemaster service in central London that gives you much the same flavour.

• Life: A glimpse at home education and a big sewer

• Life: A glimpse at Boston, what unites us

• Pod: Surviving cancer, friendship, a chat with Salima Saxton

• Pod: Theatre performance, ensemble vs script lead, a chat with Simon Kane

• Event: Unconference invite and dinner.

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There are pros and cons to home education life. One advantage is to lean into outings regular schools can’t or don’t do. JP went to visit the new Bazalgette embankment. This interconnects a few ideas we like puzzling on: lost rivers of London, public realm art and infrastructure. In one version of home education life, you learn as a guide along the way. These are some questions this raises for me.

• Who was Joseph Bazalgette? What job did he do in Victorian London?

  What problem was he trying to solve?

• What was the Great Stink? Why did sewage end up in the Thames in the first place? How did dirty water affect people’s health and daily life?

• What is the River Fleet, and why is it called a “lost river”?

• On London. Why is building new infrastructure in London difficult? What problems do engineers face in an old city with tunnels, pipes, railways and historic buildings? Why do people argue over new building projects in London?

• When does “improving a city” become “damaging a city”? Should public space be used for beauty, utility, or both?

• On art. What do the poems add to a place like this? Should infrastructure also try to be meaningful, or just functional? Does the poetry make the hidden river and sewer history feel more real? Is abstract sculpture a good way to mark public works, or is it too vague (cf. war memorials; 9/11) ? Who is public art really for: locals, tourists, artists, or future generations?

• On mystery. Why did Cobden-Sanderson destroy his life’s work by throwing his type face into the Thames in 1916/1917? And what connects this to art in Bazalgette?

The Bazalgette Embankment is the first new London embankment in 150 years and only recently opened to the public. The works reclaim land from the river and mean the City of London has expanded. The embankment began as part of the Thames Tideway Tunnel project, the “super sewer” built to stop sewage overflows into the Thames. The works intercept discharges from the Fleet Sewer that had previously sent more than 500,000 tonnes of sewage into the river each year and reroutes them to a treatment plant in east London.

Nathan Coley’s work, Stages, is a set of five sculptures that frame views, create focal points, and make places for sitting, gathering and looking at the river. The broader idea is to give visible form to the huge engineering below ground, the new sewer and associated structures that most people will never see.

“The furious Fleet flows red with Roman blood, Boudica battles bravely.”

“The stillness of refuge seeps from old St Pancras Church, soothing this troubled mind to recovery, a tranquillity sourced from the buried river.”

“St. Barbara’s defended, lost. Buried beneath you Bazalgette’s workers, tunnelling mudlarks swathed by the forgotten rivers of this town.”

There are a set of poems (written directly on the three ventilation columns) by Dorothea Smartt that riff on the area’s history and the lost river fleet which has been buried underground and which is now embedded in the sewage system.

The poem is written in Doves Type font. A typeface originally made for the Doves Press in Hammersmith around 1900 (based on Renaissance Venetian letterforms). Cobden-Sanderson was in a dispute with Emery Walker and dumped all copies of the font in the river around 1916/1917. More recently, typographer Robert Green digitally reconstructed it using original metal type that had been recovered from the Thames (story at London Museum). You can listen to me chat with mudlarker Florrie Evans here on mudlarking the Thames.

The whole tideway project cost about £4.5bn and after 18 months in planning took about 9 years to construct. The positive is that such infrastructure did get build, but compared to what Madrid has done with its metro, this seems a little slow and costly.

Still, I view the project as a success and a sign London can still build albeit slow and costly, and with some art and a nice spot to meander past. Thinking about the project can also connect you to history, mystery, public policy, mud larking, poetry and art and more….

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Last week, I was in Boston for a healthcare investment conference. I’ve been looking at healthcare innovation for 25 years over now. Over this longer span, it’s notable to me that life saving medicine and technology continues to improve across almost all areas. We can argue about the cost and rate of improvement but so many more diseases are now treatable, and we continue to advance steadily and surely. It’s worth celebrating. I can also report in my little glimpse of Boston that life is marching on. (Much like social media reports simply being wrong about the supposed dangers of London), on average, going through American immigration into Boston is smooth and uncomplicated currently. Boston shops and restaurants are all ticking along normally in minus 10c snowy weather. Sure. America, and everywhere has challenges. And, in particular, media headlines are alarming of late. But my off-hand thought is that if you can overcome that, you should still go and travel and see first hand how the average person is living, working and dreaming. This is true of Boston. This is true of Accra, Ghana (my visit last year here). There is more that unites us, than divides us.

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I had a very personal conversation recently with my friend Salima, who I have known for 30 years. She is recovering from cancer. Writing a memoir and we talk about the creative life, being estranged from her father and what being a bad patient is all about.

“Be the sky, not the weather. The weather passes through.”

We discuss why the language of “brave” can feel wrong, why “What can I do?” often misses the mark, and what Salima means by being a “bad patient”.

The conversation turns to Salima’s Substack essay “Build-a-Dad” on estrangement and what outsiders routinely misunderstand.

“‘Blood is thicker than water’ is not advice I believe in.”

Salima also shares the hardest things to write in memoir: telling the whole truth, including the parts that do not flatter you.

The chat then touches on anti-heroine storytelling, friendship breakups, social media’s double edge, and what creative work looks like without romantic routines: write where you can, start small, “plod”, find mentors, and build community.

“There’s never a perfect moment. Start with something tiny and plod.”

A lighter finish includes an overrated/underrated game (champagne, dressing up, height, hustle culture, social media, coconut oil), Salima’s plan to audition again, and why dark humour matters when things get rough.

“A sense of humour is absolutely vital. You either laugh or you crack.”

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links here. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on Youtube.

On a different tack, I had a deep conversation about theatre performance with the theatre maker, Simon Kane. In particularly, looking over the London theatre scene and the nuances between devised theatre work, and work which focuses on a script.

Excellent for theatre nerds, but also if you want to listen in to some deep theatre chat.

Is “immersive theatre” just walking around a set, or is that missing the point entirely?
Ben Yeoh talks with Simon Kane, writer and performer whose work spans Shunt’s devised theatre, BBC radio comedy (John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme), and a lockdown project performing Shakespeare chronologically. Simon argues that immersion is about intention and attention, not just set-dressing, and that “fun” is not a genre, it’s a craft.

We get into:
-How reframing Richard II unlocked the story
-How devised work can start with space, not script
-Clowning, “yes”, and the creative power of “no”
-Voice work vs live performance
-How to consume culture on purpose in the autoplay era

Chapters, transcript + podcast links here.

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I am hosting an UnConference and dinner on 25 April. This is the blurb:

I believe unstructured meet-ups for doers + thinkers are important for human flourishing and future progress.

There is no centralised agenda to the UnConference, but if you need a spark, many of us are working with ideas connected to human flourishing and we believe ideas matter.

So, what will best make humans flourish? What ideas are you working on that you think matter?

What is an UnConference?

Unlike traditional conferences with pre-set agendas and passive listeners, an UnConference invites all attendees to participate actively.

Everyone is encouraged to propose topics, lead discussions, and contribute to conversations in a meaningful way.

While a conventional conference treats attendees like a passive audience to be entertained by the organizers, the UnConference format gives everyone a say by building something together.

UnConferences are choose-your-own-adventure. At any moment there will be multiple talks happening.

The UnConference board is the centre of the event. The board is a large grid representing the schedule. The time slots start out blank. We fill them in the opening circle but they can change and combine throughout the time (especially in longer sessions).

Example UnConferences are:

• Devoted and Disgruntled for Theatre in the UK

• Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator

• the Google-hosted Sci Foo

Further notes on an UnConference from Devon Zeugel are here. Ben Yeoh’s notes available on request. Highlights from an EV UnConference here.

If you think this might be for you, then reach out the event is free but not publically listed. Core attendees are from Emergent Ventures and Civic Future, who are sponsors.

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Salima is Ben’s longtime friend, and they talk about her cancer diagnosis and what she calls an unexpected new “year of undoing”, a return to herself rather than a neat reinvention story. Check out her substack here.

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“Be the sky, not the weather. The weather passes through.”

They discuss why the language of “brave” can feel wrong, why “What can I do?” often misses the mark, and what Salima means by being a “bad patient”.

The conversation turns to Salima’s Substack essay “Builder Dad” on estrangement and what outsiders routinely misunderstand.

“‘Blood is thicker than water’ is not advice I believe in.”

Salima also shares the hardest things to write in memoir: telling the whole truth, including the parts that do not flatter you.

The chat then touches on anti-heroine storytelling, friendship breakups, social media’s double edge, and what creative work looks like without romantic routines: write where you can, start small, “plod”, find mentors, and build community.

“There’s never a perfect moment. Start with something tiny and plod.”

A lighter finish includes an overrated/underrated game (champagne, dressing up, height, hustle culture, social media, coconut oil), Salima’s plan to audition again, and why dark humour matters when things get rough.

“A sense of humour is absolutely vital. You either laugh or you crack.”

Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on Youtube.

Transcript (lightly edited, transcribed by LLM AI, so mistakes are very possible)

Ben: Hey everyone. I’m super excited to be speaking to Salima Saxton. Salima is a brilliant writer, performer, and podcaster herself. She has her memoir the Year of Undoing, which should be out in 2027. She’s also my friend of 30 years or maybe more. Before we had mobile phones. She was my friend. She was my first friend I know to actually have had a mobile phone.

I’ve directed her for the London stage. I’ve climbed mountains to go and visit her and we still argue about who is taller. Salima welcome.

Salima: Thank you so much. Just to clarify one thing, I am certainly tall now I cannot believe we’ve been friends for 30 years. That’s terrifying.

Ben: Says something about our age.

You are also gonna shrink more than me.

Salima: Oh God. You have to get that in, don’t you? All I remember is that you arrived exhausted halfway up the Himalayas very early one morning when I was living there

Ben: I carried coconut oil. Do you remember that? .

Salima: Yes. I remember that very clearly. [ ]

Salima: As a proper friend, someone who carries coconut oil halfway up the Himalayas.

Ben: You are having a year of undoing or maybe more than in a year. What are you undoing this year and what are you trying to rebuild in its place and why are we undoing anything?

Salima: Oh, great. Just give me five questions in one, why don’t you? So this year was unexpected, so this year I got quite unwell. I had a cancer diagnosis, which has involved two massive surgeries and a lot of chemo. And I’m on the, I’m on the mend now, so I’m, very blessed in that it was caught in time and everything.

But I wasn’t expecting this latest year of undoing the year of undoing that I write about in my memoir, which by the way, you are in was about changing our lives when we left London, when Carl’s mental health had gone up in the air, is the politest way of putting it. And we changed our lives radically overnight.

One lesson I have learnt in these last few months with the further I’m doing and I’ll get more into what I’m doing actually means in a minute, is not a midlife crisis. Is what? Which is what many people seem to think it means. Is that, I thought that year, that neat little memoir year would be it.

I romantically thought I would get through this year and then it’s plain sailing until my hundredth birthday and I’ll die in my sleep. The end. And what I have really learned over these last few months, and perhaps a little bit too late in my life, considering I’m in my late forties and I’ve known you for a hundred years, is that we’re constant.

There’s going to be. There. There ‘s that old saying, isn’t there about, be the sky, don’t be the weather. The weather just passes through, right? We’re the sky. So we just have to be, we just have to remind ourselves that we are that big blue sky and that the weather will pass through no matter what.

And I think I’ve always thought that for other people, but I didn’t include myself in that rather childishly. So I always assumed that, yeah, that can happen to other people, all these things, but it’s not going to happen to me. And then it did.

Ben: And so are you rebuilding anything or We just undoing like a midlife crisis would’ve been easier.

That’s like standard.

Salima: Yeah. Midlife is just buying a motorbike. Or I don’t know. Yeah. Leaving your marriage or just like turning a table upside down. No, this is slower. This is me coming back to myself. This is me coming back to the 18-year-old that, like I feel like I lost that girl for many years.

And that girl who wasn’t intimidated by Mark, I arrived at Cambridge, didn’t I? State school kid. Wasn’t intimidated by the fact that you all knew each other and you did, all of you knew each other and was just interested and you know how I was just curious and enthusiastic and pretty optimistic.

Still always worried about everything as you remember, but I just assumed everything would work out, and I think I lost that a bit over the years and got closer to catastrophizing about everything. You know this more than anybody.

Ben: I still thought you had it, have it even, although, I guess perhaps that’s one of the things we’re just growing older with all of these things is more, we get more baggage to catastrophize over.

We’ve got 30, 31 years of it.

Salima: Yeah.

Ben: Compared to when we were 17, 18. But I guess what’s, is there any small or maybe weird detail from the last few weeks then, which is captured? How has your life changed from that in terms of capturing back the younger you?

Salima: This is gonna sound quite brutal, but I’m not gonna talk about the beauty of walking through the fields and living in the moment because I haven’t found that has happened for me.

And I think for a lot of people when they have health scares, they fall in love with the everyday and domesticity and the normal stuff that hasn’t happened for me. What has happened for me though is that I. I’m really aware, first of all, of who I want to talk to or spend any time with.

And you know this about me. I’ve collected people over the years where I’ve just hung on to friendships for sentimentality. But over this period, some people you included, have appeared for me and. And just being, and just speaking very truthfully and reminded me of who I was.

Other people have disappeared, have totally disintegrated in these people I wouldn’t expect. And in observing all these new dynamics in my life, which I wasn’t expecting over illness, I’ve really realized I’ve had a, I’ve got a real awareness of that. My energy is finite and I must only spend energy on the people that I really love or the people that I’m very energized by, or who really see me.

But I used to compromise a lot more. So I’ve done the opposite. I haven’t become like that. Sanguine wise little owl over these last few months. As you know from reading some of my essays, I’ve become like a pretty cantankerous bad patient, but I see real beauty in that.

Yeah, for my own take.

Ben: I think there’s actually really relatively few people who do this mindfulness thing. Maybe they write about it on Instagram occasionally, but that’s probably fake, I reckon. You’ve got a handful of monks dying breed. Yes. And some mothers because I remember now, this is ages ago now, this is over 30.

This is over 30 years as well. When my dad had cancer, he got a bit annoyed when people used to say, oh, you’re being brave. And he was like. It’s just, there’s no bravery stuff about it.

Salima: Yeah, exactly. I can’t, there are certain words and phrases that I haven’t been able to stand over the last few months.

Yeah, so definitely you are being brave. You are so courageous. You’re and also, the, what the famous, what can I do, which I think is the worst question to ask anybody who is unwell, what can I do? Really puts the onus on that person. And I think when, whether you’ve just had a baby, whether you are unwell, whether you’re going through divorce, like you just need people to turn up.

Just to call you or just to check in or just to send the thing or whatever that you haven’t got space in your brain to know what to ask that person to do.

Ben: If you’d figured it out, you’d be doing it.

Salima: And I think it’s a little bit of a get out of jail card for people because then they feel they can give themselves a pat on the back.

They’ve said to the person, what can I do? And so they’ve done their duty, but actually, yeah.

Ben:I don’t even remember. In Cambridge one of my close friends Nadia died and it was a little bit like that. Although you’re surrounded by 18 and 19 year olds, they don’t really know how to react.

Anyway, although it hasn’t changed that much in 30 years, ‘cause most people don’t come close to death for quite a long time. COVID changed that a little bit, but you’ve written this series, I guess this is your sort of second year titled bad patient. I’m interested, what does being a bad patient mean, mean to you?

‘cause it isn’t just really being cantankerous, it’s like you say, being a little bit more you, but with these different elements to it. Why did you decide to write about being a bad patient and what, what does bad patient mean? Because actually it isn’t being bad. It’s bad. That sense of, again, when we were young, when bad was actually good.

Salima: Exactly. I suppose a bit of it is like. Because I didn’t feel that I was being good enough, or grateful enough, because people told me early on, while I was lucky, it was lucky it’s been found, it is lucky that we’ve, we were doing this. It’s lucky this is happening, and I didn’t really feel lucky at all, until very recently.

Since I’ve had, since it’s out. There’s a bit of me that feels lucky. Now I can see how that is. How I will feel more like that in six months time possibly. But back then I didn’t. And also I gave the impression in my NHS ward that I was a very kind and kindly patient, but I wasn’t, I was doing that in order to make sure the nurses took care of me.

So I knew I needed to be charming and kind and ask after their son and ask whatever, so that they came back and checked on me because I could see how overworked everybody was and I could see what they were fighting against. So I knew they had to remember me, remember my name, and they had to like me so bad.

Patient was also outta that, in that I was very consciously being good.

Ben: There is no altruism. Maybe we are kind to others, so others are kind to us.

Salima: I was buying biscuits for everybody and everything, but that again, that was to be like, oh, the lovely lady in bed one A, so that they come back and check on me because I could see what happened when you didn’t behave.

I am, I had to have this nasal gastric tube inserted, which was horrendous. And another lady in the ward was arguing about why I should get this special window bed because that’s like the best bed. And she was so rude about it. But then she effectively got punished because.

The matron came to see her and then like they weren’t checking on her as much I could see, so I could really see things, really see, that’s no one’s fault. It’s just natural

Ben: They’re all overworked already, right? So

Salima: They’re all exhausted. They don’t get paid for their lunch break.

They don’t get paid for their breaks. As I met incredible gems there, I was also working the system. So I was really aware from very early on there was a real dichotomy between who I was perceived to be and who I actually was.

Ben: But I think maybe you’re just being honest about it. I think the majority of us, most of the time are like that and there’s only small glimpses of when I think we’re feeling particularly 150% good, then we can have that excess and it spills over into the spills over into the world.

Salima: Yeah, because also I was humoring people all the time, but then that’s how I got an extra blanket, or that’s how I got a bit longer with the consultant or whatever.

And also look, I’m, I was very lucky in that I had a combination of private healthcare and NHS healthcare for all of this. So like straddling the two systems and and obviously I’m incredibly privileged to be in that situation, but, but

Ben: You’re also really unlucky that you had to be in that situation at all.

Salima: Yeah, and also, but just like how much work, how much emotional work I had to do whilst in the NHS, whereas that didn’t exist for me within the private sector. I didn’t have to do any of that work.

Ben: Do you think there’s do you think people are more receptive now to this, I guess honest writing about how things really are, not how we would want them to be or how we wish them to be, but how things really are.

Salima: I think so. Particularly from women. I think they might have received it from men, but I think it’s a much, it’s much newer that we’ll receive this from. A female voice.

Ben: The lived experience of women. I guess you, you explored this on your own podcast that it’s been so undertold for so long. We don’t have those boluses of stories and they’re not what they tell us in the movies or the books, or at least the bestselling books.

It’s actually the range of experience and what you can feel is just it’s a myriad of everything. Yes. And that hasn’t really been expressed.

Salima: And also that there’s going to be a constant dissonance between what you are feeling. There, the heroine doesn’t exist.

Like the, he, the heroine is made up of the villain and the heroine always you like for all of us. And I think we’ve only been ready to hear that. From Women’s Voices relatively recently. So I, and for me, is really the cornerstone of my writing. When I’m writing memoir or fiction, I’m just finished I’m just finishing a novel as well about a kind of anti heroine, and that’s really important for me because I cannot stand it. That’s part of the reason that we get on so well because you are so blunt, cannot stand people, what’s the word, Ben? When someone’s not ready.

Ben: They’re pretending

Salima: They just pretend. That’s as simple as that, right?

Yeah. You can dress it up. Not so ways, but like I know if I ask you a question, you’ll answer me truthfully, even if I don’t like hearing the answer.

Ben: Yes.

Salima: That’s right, that’s why I married Carl. Carl’s similar, right? In that he’ll, that’s, I always say that’s part of the reason I married him, because he’ll say things to me and I don’t like the answer, but.

Answer, then I feel safe. But I think that is a direct result of having been raised by someone like my dad, where I never knew where I was.

Ben: Yeah. Never got the answer. That’s a good segue. You wrote this long essay memoir piece, build a Dad.

Salima: Yes.

Ben: I’m interested in what you were trying to understand in that piece, writing from your perspective?

Salima: I was estranged from my dad for the last 10 years. I chose to be estranged from him. He was a kind of alcoholic, he was an alcoholic. And I had a very difficult relationship with him. Not really, I think anymore because of the alcoholism, but because of who he was, which was an overused term at the moment.

But, a kind of narcissistic self engrossed. Artist who didn’t really, beco didn’t become the artist that he thought he deserved, he should be, and was very angry and bitter really, and bored. He was a very bored man. And he wasn’t really cut out for fatherhood. I can see that really clearly now.

So builder dad has fed really into my memoir. I write a lot about it because in the year of undoing, my dad also died and left explicit instructions for me not to be invited to his funeral, and he cut me out of his will. So it, my relationship with my dad is ongoing, even though he’s dead. And

Builder dad. That Substack piece was really about the fact that I have looked around for years. Other examples of father figures, not necessarily even fathers in the traditional sense, but people who are playing that kind of role and were always seeking edges of that even…. Don’t you remember that very much older boyfriend that I had?

Like that was definitely part of it, seeking that kind of like male elder reassurance, and trying to work out for me what a father was because I didn’t really know what a father was meant to be. Luckily I’ve married somebody who I think is an amazing father.

And he’s had to work it out himself ‘cause he wasn’t fathered in a traditional sense either. But I am quite obsessed by the ideas of motherhood and fatherhood and what they mean to all of us, and, and what we all come from. They’re dominant themes in my life.

Ben: And what do you think outsiders misunderstand about what estrangement is or what estrangement is in, in your experience, although I guess this was two ways you chose first, and then in some ways he was making a point in his will. But is there anything you think on the outside looking in, it’s just oh, this, these are the pieces that you just really don’t get?

Salima: Oh yes. And I’ve had many people’s opinions over the years. Normally really well-meaning, but just not understanding, so the most obvious. People literally have quoted blood is thicker than water at me so many times, which I don’t believe. I don’t believe in that. And many people ask me, what will happen to you when your father dies if you don’t?

Resolve it. But look for me, and I can’t speak for other people, I would say that my father died many years before he actually died. So there wasn’t a big moment when he actually passed away, and I heard that he had done. I didn’t disintegrate into some big thing and if only, I felt really sad.

He had just never been able to be the father that I had wanted. But I had been grieving for my dad probably since I was a teenager, to be honest. So I think that’s an odd thing to hold above someone’s head. It’s like holding someone’s finger to a flame, but what if they die?

What if they die? I don’t believe in mending, fractured and often harmful relationships. Just because somebody might die. That makes absolutely no sense to me.

Ben: And I guess this points to the fact that the family we choose, or the friends we choose in some ways then are more important and could be more painful if friend, I’ve seen this now, getting a little bit older that I’ve seen some friendships have broken up, and I look at that and say, actually that’s more painful than other things.

Salima: I’ve had friendships dissolve and it’s been really painful. I was very good friends with somebody and. I think I kind of misunderstood that friendship because we became friends when our kids were tiny. And she was a school mom. And I, somebody once said that when they saw us together, it always looked like we were having a party.

Wherever we were, we were always laughing and things. And that friendship, she walked away from that friendship. It wasn’t me at all, and I was heartbroken. I was completely heartbroken. I never quite understood it. Nothing there, there wasn’t a big argument or anything, and who knows what it would be from her point of view, but I was really blindsided by it.

And, but also look, when you’ve got tiny kids, I had three tiny kids who knew where my brain was at that point. But yeah. But coming back to people misunderstanding, estrangement, everyone’s obsessed at the moment about Brooklyn Beckham.

Ben: Yes.

Salima: And sure, okay, writing on your Instagram stories. And it’s all very public.

But even though that’s all he really understands, isn’t it? That’s how he’s grown. That’s his language. He doesn’t understand privacy and handwritten letters. Obviously, that’s not how the Beckhams have brought him up. But who knows, who knows? And I think that’s the main thing that I would say to anybody who judges quite harshly about estrangement, unless you were there. It’s very difficult to know what’s happened in the

Ben: Yeah. Understanding that in the li well, understanding one’s own inner life is hard enough, right? Like, how am I actually feeling, let alone other people’s inner lives?

Salima: And also, Ben, if you think about it, you were around, like you were around when I was 18, 19.

And you wouldn’t, I didn’t talk about it then. So you wouldn’t have seen me, we had that nice house, didn’t we? It all looked quite pretty. I dunno whether I did ever mention anything, but I think I kept it all fairly,

Ben: not until we are flatmates in our twenties, then it,

Salima: right exactly.

You do it, we had that lovely thatched house and I had piano lessons and then I went to Cambridge and I was head girl and it all looked very beautiful and in control. But things were very out of control actually. Things were really out of control. That’s partly why I loved school so much.

I would never have shown that to people wouldn’t have believed it at the

Ben: time. Yeah. Even if you did, it would be like, this is the thing about some nonfiction is if you wrote it as fiction, nowadays, people don’t believe you.

Salima: Yeah.

Ben: It has to be written as well, no, this is my inner life. This is how this

Salima: course, what, and also look, I think with alcoholism as well, it was all kinds of things. I became a very hypervigilant kind of kid because I could just sense things turning in the evening or I knew and things wouldn’t go the wrong way at home when, when it was all gonna explode. And then everything would be fine in the morning.

Nobody would talk about it. Like I remember going to a birthday party when I was about 10 and my dad was really drunk and I was very upset. And my mom just said, put on a party dress. Here’s the present. And we just left. And she called me to blow my nose. And then I went to the party and I was completely fine at the party and I remember enjoying it.

There was a magician, I remember really loving it, but I was very used to, from quite early on, just going, okay, that’s happened. Blow your nose. Don’t tell anybody. Get on with it.

Ben: Wow. So what’s your story? E either bit of the story, bad patient or build a dad or anything which you’ve most resisted writing down, but I guess have written down or there’s something which is resisting at the moment and you think, oh, maybe I’m, it’s not even gonna make it in.

Salima: The hardest thing to write about has been the day of my dad’s death, not because of the news, but because of my behavior with my mother on that day. So mothers,

Ben: mothers do it to us, right?

Salima: They do. So my mom, although she’s been divorced by that point for nearly 30 years, was catatonic with grief and I lost my temper.

And behaved really badly. You’ll have to read my memoir to see just how badly, but I just

Ben: but you did manage to write about it then if you’re not gonna

Salima: leave it out. No, I’m not gonna leave it out because I think it’s a really important thing for people to read about. If you’re going to write about estrangement and you’re going to write about difficult dads that I think you are owed, you owe the readers like all of it.

Yeah. ‘cause if anyone’s reading this that has any overlaps with this kind of thing, I want them to know that they’re not imagining it or by themselves. I think that’s what I felt for years. Oh, I’m making this up slightly. Yeah. Drunks drink whiskey for breakfast and they beat their children, don’t they?

Black and bloom. But when it’s emotional stuff, like I hit my dad never hit me. When he was very drunk, I pushed my dad. I hit my dad as a teenager in a very out of control way. And know, we hear about the extremes, don’t we? We hear about, yeah.

You are beat in black and blue by a parent, or you hear about the other extreme, the kind of like the best of the best parents, but this kind of murky middle, which left me. Pretty I was always worried really as a kid, and you knew me from the tail end of that, where I was so happy to be at Cambridge and be meeting people and doing all these exciting things.

But

Ben: and as part of your point that it’s. I guess it’s not that it’s okay to behave badly, but that it happens and it happens. I’m guessing you’re still talking to your mom and life also goes on and we have to admit that these things happen. And put it where it is and potentially learn from it, or at least acknowledge it and see what happens in the future.

Salima: And also look, you know my mom, mommy has had a very difficult life. She came here at 16 from Pakistan Scholarship to Guda and Lama. Amazing, but a fish outta water, obviously. Then even had, got, had an arranged marriage, then left that it was an abusive relationship.

Then married my father and was with my father for years and years. Living in the middle of the eighties British countryside, where she really was like the only South Asian for a hundred miles and everyone thought she ran like the local Indian takeaway. And my mom. I owe my mom a lot.

‘cause my mom kept everything going. Always. And you know what she’s strong at. She’s got some overlap with your mom, hasn’t she? Actually. In terms of what they demand of us, what they expect from us. But it hasn’t always been easy with my mom, you know.

She’s not an easy woman. But I also admire my mother and I do respect my mother. But we don’t always get on.

Ben: Is your mother as present in the year of undoing as your father or,

Salima: Yes, she is. Although that’s the interesting thing about writing a memoir, isn’t it? Because I also feel that I want.

Look after my mother.

Ben: Yeah.

Salima: She’s alive.

Ben: She’s gonna read it. Probably.

Salima: Yeah. Although I’ve told her not to read it because of my dad and everything, but no, I, because no more, not because she’s gonna read it or even, because even if she wasn’t alive, I would feel the same about my mom actually, because for all the difficulties and complications my mom has.

Really, I, I know. My mom would always do anything for me or my sister. We might not agree with it. We might not agree with oh, the way she thinks about it, she is, she’s a very strong, a strong woman who’s also pretty blunt, yeah, I’m truthful about my mom in the year of undoing, and we went to live with my mom for the first few weeks when we left London, and that wasn’t always easy, particularly she’s got a much more traditional Pakistani way of like bringing up children compared to my EZ fair, more relaxed way of being with kids.

So that wasn’t easy, but

Ben: I still remember. Your mum is teaching me how when you put things in a bin, you can eke out a little bit more volume depending on the way that you turn around your cartons. And I think about that sometimes when I reverse it goes, oh, you know what? That’s crazy. Silly was who was, mum was the one who advocated this way of bin filling.

So there you have it. I don’t think that says anything about anything, but I do remember it

Salima: also. But you know what, my, my parents were, before it was fashionable, like in the eighties and nineties when all my friends had immaculate Kneehigh white socks and like fabric conditioned, school uniforms.

My mother knitted my brown socks. We lived on dhal and rice and stew. Everything was composted. She didn’t believe in heating, so being a child around my parents wasn’t the most cozy experience. We lived in this massive house that we couldn’t really afford, so we only heated half of it. And the other half was just absolutely, I like, icy basically.

And my dad would run over pheasants and then pluck them at the kitchen table. They were like hippies in many ways.

Ben: Does that make the book? ‘cause I guess that’s not the year, but that’s the background.

Salima: Yeah, it does because it also explains how. Why I am me and what, what creates the contradictions within me.

Like I am more material minded. Partly because of that, because there’s a lot of discomfort

Ben: Yeah.

Salima: In childhood. As I like glamor.

Ben: Yeah. We often go the other way, don’t we?

Salima: Yeah. So I like the aesthetic is really important to me, I think because my house was just full of books.

Ben: Yeah. Still filling your teenage hole.

Salima: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Ben: And as in your creative process then, are you more of a procrastinator or do you get it all out? Are you a morning writer? Evening writer, 3:00 AM writer. Anything goes. And from your performing stuff, has that informed how your creative process works?

Do you have things or rituals you go to? What? What is your writing process?

Salima: I have no writing process. I, and I think that is informed from being an actor. So I’m really aware that like sometimes you’re just not in the mood and sometimes it’s just impossible. But you’ve gotta get, I don’t know, 2000 words done by the end of the day.

So maybe we start at midnight or maybe I’ll write it in the morning or maybe I like it, so I try to be quite instinctual about it. And obviously I’ve got three kids. I’m so busy with my family, home life, so I’m not, like I’m not a single white man who can just go to my office. And write for.

I don’t… that’s nothing to do with being white.

Ben: But sometimes I was thinking about this famous sculptor, about a hundred years ago. Giacometti was really famous, but he had essentially two women running after him. So he could do sculpture 12 hours a day.

They would literally feed him and make everything, everything goes, and it can work fine and no. Consensus genius art, but the enablement to have that genius art done to dedicate yourself to art is a strain on everything else around your life. Yeah. And that is really interesting how many artists are like that.

I wouldn’t like to say it all because it isn’t always like that, but it is interesting when you look at those that there is a cost to all of that.

Salima: And also I’m not willing to sacrifice family life for that. So I could be more boundaried and say to the kids, when you come home from school, mommy’s in her office.

I don’t know. I have Carl’s office. Don’t disturb me until 5:00 PM or whatever. But I don’t, I just, that for me just doesn’t feel right. And I’ve always wished, like even when I wrote a novel that didn’t get published, but they got me a literary agent. When I was writing that, the kids were tiny, so I would just write, I’d write it even in the car at pickup, I would just have my laptop.

I’d get there half an hour early and I’d just do an extra half an hour of cafe bits and pieces like that, so I think also. There’s a romance that people attach to writers, to actors, to artists, but I think we need to really get rid of that romance because I think it’s quite damaging for a lot of people.

Ben: It’s really rare. There’s some who have that in them, like Giacometti, but it is really rare.

Salima: I was gonna say, let’s say you’re a trust fund baby, and you’ve. You don’t have to think about money or anything like that, then of course, great. And then you can go and writers retreats and you can write your novel halfway up, a mountain on a beach, Bali, whatever.

But the reality is 99% of people that I know who are doing anything creative are, if not struggling, are very aware of finances, right? Because increasingly. These kinds of lines of work don’t pay huge amounts. And you have to

Ben: fit it in with the rest of your life,

Salima: fit it in. And also if you want other elements of your life, do you want a long term partner?

Do you want children? Maybe not, but if you do want those other things, you also take up time and energy. Yeah. And some days, your 16-year-old comes home, she says, pulls up from her boyfriend. You can’t just disappear. And go back to, you’ve gotta just sit on her bed with her for that.

That’s the end of your day. There’s no way around that.

Ben: What’s the best advice you have that you’ve subsequently just ignored?

Salima: The best advice I’ve had, but then I’ve then ignored why is it the best advice?

Ben: It doesn’t need to be best, but there’s some, like I’m I’m always ignoring this whole, oh, you’ve got a show, not tell.

Salima: oh, I see.

Ben: Let’s just ignore that, or I don’t know. It could just be advice. Yeah. It might be more funnier because it’s like classic advice and then actually it’s not reality.

Salima: So I think you make a good point about the routine thing. In that, I would say, let’s just blast out to smithereens, because you’re never gonna start, if you are a normal-ish person, that’s just never you.

There’s never gonna be the perfect moment and the perfect space to do it. Yeah. But often people write their first novel whilst they’re in the office, and then they get, eventually get a book deal, and then they realize maybe they can write full-time or whatever, and that’s like the lottery winning writer, so yeah.

Ben: I ignore sometimes the thousand words a day thing in the sense that sometimes I just do one sentence and that’s you know what? That’s a win. I’ve managed to even get a sentence like, I was just sitting on the loo and I thought of one sentence. Yes, I’ll take that, that

Salima: I’ve just noticed something down.

Or I just know I noted down something about or what’s it called that the Japanese way of repairing things with gold.

Ben: Yes. [Kintsugi]... Something

Salima: like that. Exactly. I just noted something about it the other day and I was like, okay, yeah. And then I will write more on that, but I haven’t …

Ben: One day….

Salima: I’ve just added it to my manuscript and I might expand on it or I might not, who knows?

Maybe that just that thought in a week’s time could end up taking you somewhere interesting. So I think that’s it. Like not waiting for the perfect. Moment to start anything and also remembering as well, much like we remember as actors, right? Or directors that like when you’re in the rehearsal space or when you’re in your early drafts, just get something down or just do something.

Just play with some words. Pick up the script that’s already written or write your own thing and it can be absolute gobbledy gook, but then that gobbledy go will become something.

Ben:. Do you have any rituals or quirky rituals or even quirky rituals? Just generally. I still remember, so this is the coconut oil.

Again, it was coconut oil with green socks. Like I don’t remember why I remember the green socks, but there was a for skin moisturizing. But do you do anything?

Salima: These are socks your wife actually sent me. They’re very cozy pink socks I live in. I still have to convince myself that I’m not working. I still have to trick… Do you remember when I was revising finals and things like, I was very much like never in the library. Like handles buy cookies, like incense has been in my bed. Like I still write often in my bed under a duvet on the sofa. I’ve always made it very nice.

So I’m like, oh, I’m just opening my laptop and Oh, I just happen to be writing. Yeah. It would be disastrous going to a library every day.

Ben: Then it feels like work.

Salima: I had to kid myself.

Ben: I remember advising, spending a lot of time just sleeping.

Salima: But you got that kind of super brain for those kinds of things you didn’t need, you didn’t need to do what the rest of us needed to do…

Ben: Let’s do, I dunno if you played this little game, we’ll just do, it’s, we do overrated or underrated. So I give you a thing and you say whether you think this is overrated or underrated or maybe even correctly rated. And you can just say, you can just say why or not. Okay. Champagne overrated or underrated?

Salima: I think you know what I’m going to say. Underrated, but vintage champagne overrated.

Ben: Okay. And that’s ‘cause vintage champagne just doesn’t taste very good

Salima: Exactly as you found out.

Ben: Okay. Alright. Dressing up. Overrated or underrated?

Salima: Underrated. Always feel better when you’re dressing up. You can never be overdressed.

Ben: Never overdressed. Very good. Being tall, is this overrated or underrated?

Salima: Overrated. There’s no need.

Ben: Yeah. What is With all these tall people

Salima: There’s no need.

Ben: Your head on the doors

Salima: There’s heels, there are step ladders. Many ways to get around things.

Ben: Hustling, hustle, culture.

Salima: Underrated, underrated.

Ben: We’ve all gotta be doing something. Side jobs.

Salima: Yeah. Always. Even if it’s just to keep you awake, like even if you don’t really need to just, I think it’s like you are really great at that, right? If you think about what you cram into your life. You managed to hold down this very serious job.

I don’t really understand what you do. And you do things like this. You are always doing creative side projects and things that you always have done right?

Ben: Yeah. So hustling is also underrated. Okay.

Salima: Yeah.

Ben: Social media

Salima: quick aside, do you think that’s partly being second gen immigrants?

Ben: They might be attached to it. I think there’s also a little, for me, it’s a little bit. Money, although a lot of these things aren’t money, but it’s like you’re doing things, then your opportunity might happen. Yeah. You’re not doing anything. Opportunity won’t happen particularly creatively where

Salima: yeah,

Ben: It doesn’t, and then a little bit actually was not quite death, but Nadia dying and my dad dying.

But the little bit, just knowing, if you want to get on and do things, you should need to do it because you don’t know. What’s, you dunno what’s gonna happen. Yeah. And then a little bit I think is the immigrant thing, but I think that just, you just get that from your parents so it,

Salima: Yeah.

Ben: It doesn’t necessarily have to be that, but obviously if you think about why people tend to immigrate or tend to leave their home country, there will tend to be a bit of hustle. Because if you were very comfortable where you were in your home place, then usually you don’t wanna move. Because it’s comfortable.

So why are you moving? So I think there is like a little bit of that and I guess I’m probably, I get bored a bit as well. Yeah. And then it’s what do you do with boredom? Am I sometimes being bored for a tiny bit and then it would be like, you gotta do something.

Salima: Yeah, I agree. I think that’s heavily linked to the immigrant experience though. Like your mom and my mom, neither of them are still people.

Ben: Yeah, they’re not, that’s true.

Salima: No. So both of us have grown up with mothers who were like, busyness is a necessary part of existence.

Ben: Yes. I think that’s true, although it is hard to know whether that’s just our sort of mothers, but then you get them from immigrant mothers, don’t you?

Okay. Last couple on overrated, underrated social media. Overrated or underrated?

Salima: I would say neither. Okay. Because I love it and I hate it.

Ben: So it’s correctly rated or it’s like it’s both.

Salima: Both. It’s both. Yeah. Yeah. I’m confused by social media. I’ve met some great friends over social media and actually it helped me get my publishing deal because of that moth talk that I did.

It went viral and then the publishers were very interested in my pitch, I think partly because of that. So it has really helped benefited me. But I’m not immune to comparisons and forgetting. Like you were saying about my bad patient writing and how people write about having realized certain things on social media when they become unwell or something.

Ben: Yeah.

Salima: So often it’s just curated.

Ben: We’re not immune to the algorithm and the things. I think that’s all true. I do think that we do sometimes underrate other communities that it can bring, I see this in autistic communities and other special interest communities and ‘cause they’re not loud, right?

Yeah. Groups of communities which are interested in street food or buses or landscape or geocaching. And I think so. If you’ve just got a geocaching Instagram, that’s all you are seeing, you don’t actually complain about it much ‘cause it’s doing your thing so it’s not noisy. So I do think there are actually, quite a lot of those quiet communities there probably are overshadowed by all of the other noisy stuff, but there are interesting things happening.

So it is, it’s a complex one, which just reflects humanity, right?

Salima: Yeah, exactly. Although I love seeing your newest foodie things.

Ben: Yeah. I’m going into food again, yeah, I’m just really interested about food com and particularly London. I think London is underrated for food and if you want to eat cheaply you can, but you generally have to go out of zone one and you have to go for slightly more interesting food.

Okay. Last one, because it’s been our recurring theme. Coconut oil. Is this now underrated or overrated?

Salima: Underrated. I still absolutely adore coconut oil. Still good. I cook with it. I eat, make chocolate from it. I moisturize my sculpt with it once a week. I use it as a body moisturizer. I pretend to my kids.

It’s a medicine. I’m still pretty obsessed with coconut oil.

Ben: Okay. So it is a magic ingredient. All great. It’s,

Salima: Yeah.

Ben: Okay. And so in terms of current projects, you have two books on the go, the Substack, you do your own podcast. Yeah. Anything else you wanna mention in terms of current and future projects?

Salima: Yeah, so I’ve recently agreed with my acting agent, I’m gonna start auditioning again actually. So although I took a break from acting, with all the health issues, yeah, I’ve just thought, I’m just, this is the year of saying yes. So I’m just gonna go for everything and see and see what happens.

And also my energy is very up and down. I’ve still got a few more weeks of treatment, so I’m just trying to say yes to whatever I can and what, yeah, what works. If I have to not be able to do it because I’m still not feeling a hundred percent fine, but yes is 2026 for me.

Ben: What do you think, if you look back on this year, last year, are you gonna look back and find anything funny about this or oh, that was a thing, or you’re still too much in the middle of it?

Salima: I sat because Carl, as his sense of humor is incredibly dark, already laughing at lots of it.

Listen, only three and a half weeks ago, I was dragging the drain from my wound along the corridor of an NHS ward to try and get someone to change the dressing. And Cole was just appalled, but I just knew that was the only way to make things happen. So we were laughing about that last night.

So I do think a sense of humor is absolutely vital for life, even more so than I even thought. Like I found, I’ve had some of the funniest moments. Over the last six to nine months, in really in situations that appear very dark. Yeah. And gruesome. I had some very funny moments.

Ben: Yeah. You either laugh or you crack.

Salima: Yeah. And also, look, I think the funniest things about life tend to be on that kind of precipice, right? Is it horrendous and are you going to sob or is it very funny? Like those. That they’re the highest stakes, aren’t they? So actually they can be the funniest things about life because actually most of life is pretty ridiculous considering we’ll both be forgotten in a couple generations time.

Ben: Yeah.

Salima: We all think we are, these kinds of our egos as humans generally are pretty inflated considering what kind of little dots we actually are.

Ben: Yeah. Who’s remembered from a hundred years ago? Like virtually nobody. Yeah. Famous people then. Great. Last couple of questions then. What do you think you’ve got anything to tell someone who’s in the middle of a thing, which they’re trying to do?

Find it hard to fix or maybe that they can’t fix. And maybe we can broaden this out as also, do you have any thoughts to people who wanna be creative? Or I guess you’ve got lots of bits to talk about, like being a bad patient or building a dad and estrangement, but is there anything you’d like to offer as thoughts?

Salima: Yeah. I’d like to say plot. I think it’s really important. Okay, so let’s say you have a burning ambition to write a novel, for example, like lots of people do, they’d love to write a novel. They just dunno where to start. So start with the tiniest thing. So start with like a hundred words a day, like 50 words a day, like whatever, like on your bus route home.

Write 50 words. 50 times, seven times four. Oh God, I don’t know. But that’s up, that’s 1400 words a month. So and that’s with barely any effort whatsoever. So these little micro habits I think are really very vital. And like you were saying, you’ve just written one sentence that day, great.

So I think plot is a, is actually a word that can be used. In a way that we don’t normally use. Like the mechanics of creating something are just like habits. It reminds me of how when you were in your twenties, you had on your computer these screensavers. Do you remember?

Ben: Yeah.

These are my, like lifetime goals.

Salima: Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember? Because I really remember that. I won’t say what they were, but I do remember what they were.

Ben: I’ve hit a few of them. On

Salima: done. Yeah. Yeah. I think anything like that appeals to you. We’ve gone peak, manifesting peak, manifesting boards and all of that, but there’s lots of different versions of that.

It doesn’t have to be pretty. Collage that you put on your wall. It can be a screensaver or it can just be like some, like random notes that you make to yourself. So starting small I think is one massive thing. Start

Ben: small and plod.

Salima: Plod. And lastly, there’s no. I need some help.

‘cause I think these things are rarely created in a vacuum. So for example, years ago I did a favor and favor, those courses? Just an online writing course. ‘cause my kids were tiny so I couldn’t do the one that was like in their offices. And I just did a mini six week course of that.

And that got me, I think that was like how to write the first three chapters of a novel. And I think I wrote a few chapters from that. So whether you have a friend who is a writer or an actor or or you can find a mentor, I think that’s really key to, rather than just taking yourself off and doing it.

And it also holds you accountable. Somebody who’s gonna check in. It doesn’t have to be something expensive. There’s lots of versions of this, I think the collective, the community is really important when you’re doing something creative.

Ben: That sounds excellent. So just start, plod keep going.

Find a mentor.

Salima: Yeah, exactly. And whatever that person is,

Ben: Excellent. Anything else you’d like to say?

Salima: I want to thank you for being my friend for so many years.

Ben: Let’s hope it’s gonna be we’re, we could go for another 30 that should be within…..

Salima: Come on.

Ben: Yeah.

We’ll be approaching 80 then…

Salima: I’m just living to a hundred remember

Ben: Yeah. Okay.

Salima: So I can, we can do another, we can do another 30 to 40. Yeah. I think, ‘cause look. On a serious point, it is rare that you find people who then know you in that way. I can use a shorthand with you. We can pick up when we haven’t spoken for a long time, and I can speak to you very directly and in a shorthand that I can’t with very many people.

Ben: That’s true. Cherish your long term friendships. On that note, Salima, thank you.

Salima: Thank you so much.

I’ve been busy with the investment world dealing with the fallout of the latest AI advances. It is possible that historians will look back and pinpoint this week, as the date of a turning point in history (although of course it is not a point in reality), the vibe I judge from equity markets certainly feels like this might be the case - although extremely hard to judge while living through historic moments. It could be just a normal week in 2026. I’ve been at 9/11, 7/7, great financial crisis, intern bubble and bust; thai beach tsunami and I know it’s hard to know when history is happening. The vibe was not quite like then, but part of the equity market vibe was. I will comment a little below. More fun, I’ve been asked how I think about choosing food when considering value for money; and I took a trip to the end of Essex, UK, and I lean into what we can learn in a life / home education way.

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We went to Canvey Island, at the end of Essex, which no one really recommends. These are six items I learned about Canvey as we meandered to the end of the bus line. I wrote up some draft life notes and took some very very ordinary snaps. My friend comments:

That’s the most flattering account of the island, I’ve read…

1. Canvey is a reclaimed, ultra low-lying estuary island. Sea walls and flood defences are not background infrastructure, they are the condition of daily life.

2. The island’s modern town grew out of plotlands: small cheap plots that became DIY bungalows and holiday shacks, later hardened into permanent settlement.

3. A niche global-history footnote: Canvey played a role in early (gas) LNG-by-sea importing and storage, helping prove an industry that later scaled worldwide.

4. Canvey Wick is a conservation oddity: a former industrial brownfield that became an SSSI largely because of endangered invertebrates, a reminder that “wasteland” can be ecologically elite.

5. Labworth Café is an architectural surprise: a 1930s modernist seafront building and a rare piece of Ove Arup’s work as an architect, not just as an engineer.

6. Canvey now has a small but established Haredi (Orthodox, including Hasidic) community, largely relocated from Stamford Hill for cheaper, larger housing within reach of London, and it has built local infrastructure (shul, kosher provision, schools) as it has grown.

We took the 27 the way you take a local bus when you are not trying to “get somewhere” so much as trying to be somewhere. The bus as method. The bus as ritual. Travel defined by attention rather than arrival.

Southend loosens its grip slowly. You can feel it in the spacing of the houses, the streetlights, the way the sky looms. The 27 just keeps going, patient and ordinary, which is often the most revealing way a place can be.

More here as draft life notes.

This is also how I try and approach a lifelong education and home education. I’m leaning into learning about where I am and why and, to some extent, I pass this on to my autistic son. Following his curiosity and interests and seeing where they lead, and using that to find out more about how and why we are.

This is an expression of the “be curious” mantra given out. I keep swinging back on if you can “teach” curiosity. I think in some ways you can and that is something I think Home Ed / Unschooling can lean into. At least, in this case though, I think the learning companion has to be - or want to be - curious as well.

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By popular demand here are some thoughts on eating out. I have loved food from young. I love eating in all forms: from street food and home cooking to extortionate, celebrated destination restaurants. I love cooking, shopping for ingredients, and thinking about the history and culture of recipes and gastronomy.

I think food represents human flourishing. It captures vital elements about a nation, city, or culture that you can miss from books or even travel if you pass over the food. Eating with people is fun and taste is pleasurable!

These are some ideas, riffing on other foodies (from economist, expected value thinkers such as Tyler Cowen, Nassim Taleb, to food critics and cooks like Anthony Bourdain and Jay Raynor) about how to approach eating out (eating in is a somewhat different matter, to which I will mention only one idea here: cook at home what restaurants struggle to cook.)

It’s worth noting I’m not a snob on pop art food nor a reverse snob on high art food. If I don’t understand a dish there is a good chance it’s my taste, not necessarily the dish. There are strong moral and environmental reasons to eat less meat but I’m afraid my cultural leanings have left me very omnivorous. I do think if we’re going to eat animals we should respectfully eat all parts presented to us.

Here are 10 ideas to help you think about eating out, particularly in London. The ideas lean towards “value for the food”. Many people will eat out for other reasons beyond food (eg to be seen in a cool place! Or to be in a well designed space), and I note uniqueness as a quality potentially worth paying for, but this note focuses on value for food. In zone 1 you can just about do much of this for £15 but hard to get below £10 although there are notable places you go below £10. Outside the centre, you can eat well for £10

The Mental Models

1. The Economic Equilibrium of Rent (Adapted from the Cowen Rules)

Tyler Cowen, the economist philosopher, suggests that quality food and high rent are enemies. If a restaurant is in a gleaming glass tower in Zone 1 with high footfall, the equilibrium suggests you are paying substantially for the real estate, not the ingredients or the cooking.

This applies also to places where people go to look beautiful and see beautiful people. Or, a restaurant with a beautiful view, high up.

There are plenty of exceptions where unique food experiences combined with the other intangibles you are paying for make the restaurant worthwhile but you should know what you are paying for.

Paying for a view may well be worth it, but you are paying for it.

(Side note: in my opinion, a good value view in London is in the Tate Modern restaurant; food is passable - you are paying for the view).

Nassim Taleb expresses similar views and extends the thinking towards Michelin starred places. Taleb argues you are paying in excess for such things.

I’m not a reverse snob - some of those places are unique experiences but you may be paying over the odds food-wise. That said, excellent and unique London food can still be inexpensive.

The Heuristic: Look for the “Low Rent” signal. If a place is in a basement, (in the U.S.) a strip mall, an industrial estate, or a “bad” neighborhood yet still busy then the money is likely going into the food.

All over London, there are cultural communities such as Nigerians in Peckham. Inexpensive but popular restaurants there are good places to try with this method as well (see below).

2. Don’t pay for the interior design and furniture; also consider survival or “lindy”

This extends to how a restaurant looks. If the chairs are uncomfortable, but the place is packed with locals, the food is often exceptional and cheap. That is a reason it survives.

Nassim Taleb has spoken about the idea of good things being lindy. They survive through time. [The name comes from “Lindy’s Law”, an old showbiz rule-of-thumb that got written up in 1964: comedians and theatre people hanging out at Lindy’s delicatessen in New York City noticed that a show that’s already run x weeks tends to have an “expected remaining life” of roughly x more weeks. So look for a place that has endured.

There are differing reasons why a restaurant might be lindy but it can be a useful signal. Although it can also fool you because the lindy quality might be its location, not its food.

Restaurants in this category in London might be Wong Kei (50 years, Chinatown; a cheap eat), St. John (30 years, although perhaps too young, Farringdon; moderately priced at bar), Cockney Pie and Mash (Portobello, 70 years; cheap eat); Sweetings (137 years, Mansion House; not cheap but pretty unique), Quality Chop House (156 years, Farringdon; moderate priced). Many of these are cheap eats

Even if the place is surviving for a non-food reason, it often makes the place unique and worth paying because of that.

3. Psychogeography and food hunting by community.

For good value food, you might think of London as a doughnut (H/T Jonathan Nunn of Vittles). The centre is an efficiency trap due to rent and plenty of people (tourists, maybe office workers) who will pay up as they have to.. The value is in the outer ring… the “outer boroughs” (zone 2+) often where diaspora communities live.

Now, I’ve had to travel all around London by bus with my bus-obsessed son, I’ve seen this first hand and has allowed me to try excellent Ethiopian, Nigerian, Kurdish, Bengali and Romanian food amongst others.

The Heuristic: Go where the community eats. Some London examples: Peckham for Nigerian, Walthamstow for Ethiopian, Green Lanes, Haringey (Kurdish, also Turkish; as an side, the communities used to fight a little, also see Kingston / New Malden area for Koreans and Japanese conflicts; as they brought their own nation state conflicts into London!)

4. Seek food by dish or cooking techniques

One good way of hunting food is by a specific dish. My family has talked about this and I’ve often found it true speaking to Asians who will debate where the best version of a specific dish is found. Then go to the place which is excellent for that specific dish.

You can do this in London by all manner of dishes.

Where is the best Cantonese-style roast duck? (arguably one of the Queensway restaurants: Gold Mine or Four seasons)

Where is the best prawn noodle dim sum? (Royal China Club?)

Where is a great Spanish egg omelette? (Barrafina?)

Or, overall technique… you can find pretty good barbecue in London in all sorts of styles but you are hunting barbecue technique and a place that specialises in that. The specialisation often gives the best or highest end technique for the money.

This may not find you the cheapest meal, or cheapest dish; but it will find the highest value of that particular dish. For this technique, it’s even better if the place only specialises in one or very few dishes.

5. Uniqueness and gourmets in other cuisines

Fuchsia Dunlop notes that Western palates often prize ease: boneless, skinless, soft; or at least do not seek out the textures a Chinese gourmand might.

It’s worth seeking out foods that challenge you on their own terms.

I also think it’s worth seeking out unique takes on food where a chef is building on a tradition. You can eat excellent Jollof rice in Peckham, but you can try a modern high art take on it in an expensive place (eg Asoka). You won’t be getting value, but you will be getting uniqueness.

This cuts across Taleb and the strict expected value economists but the food ideas and combination of techniques can’t be found anywhere else are still worth seeking out. This has a touch of the modern art about it. Understanding and appreciating modern current art takes an amount of learning but can be worth it. Your own mileage will vary and I think you will derive more from this the more food history and culture jives with you.

It’s a reason Sushi Tetsu, for instance, is on my list and why I like many of the tiny sushi master restaurants. They are offering unique insights and experiences which are worth paying a premium for if they are meaningful to you. (Although some really are very expensive as you are paying for more than just the food).

Uniqueness might also come from setting and can be a signal if the setting is cheap (see above), I am thinking in particular railway arches in London (40 Maltby is in this category); there is a Pakistani place which turns from a sweet shop into a resturant on the weekend that serves amazing halwa puri in a firefly chaotic setting!

6. The Flowery prose / Adjective Density Menu Test (derived from Jay Rayner)

Critic Jay Rayner warns against menus that over-describe. This one is more tactically and if you find yourself in an unknown place with unknown choices. If the menu outside is very embellished it’s typically a red flag.

Excessive adjectives and florid type faces are often compensating for a lack of confidence in the kitchen. (Some Asian places break this rule because they have one technique (eg wok cooking) but many ingredient combinations and no long food prep chain); but European style restaurants follow it (as they have long prep chains). In general, Long menus bad. Lots of type faces bad.

7. The Wine Markup (The Unbundling Rule). Avoid.

Restaurants bundle high-margin alcohol with low-margin food. You can buy wine online for £15 that costs £55 in a restaurant. (London wine mark ups are 3x or more). You cannot, however, easily replicate a 36-hour bone broth master stock at home.

I am basically now leaning to the advice of never or almost never buying wine or alcohol at a restaurant. It is rarely unique and always very marked up. Tea (in e.g. Chinese restaurants) or tap water is a better bet. There are two narrow exemptions: a truly unique wine, or a unique drink-food pairing.

Still that is for best value. You may just like wine at restaurants because it’s fun. That’s fine I used to like this as well, but you are paying over the odds. And my current advice now is avoid where possible for value terms.

If you will try wine, always ask to taste first if possible, especially if deciding between single glasses of bottles already open and go for something you wouldn’t get at home. But overall in terms of expected value. Avoid.

8. The “Weirdest Item” Strategy and also what to ask the wait staff; and how to eat

If a restaurant keeps a dish that sounds unappealing to the general public (e.g., “Fermented Bean Curd”), it is likely there because it is delicious and the locals demand it.

Bone marrow toast at St John’s is a good example.

Also, you might want to ask what the waiter recommends. They should have a view and why. But the better additional questions should be: what does everyone else (the regulars) order and why? What’s most under rated and why ? (That might pick up the odd dishes you won’t know) and whatever the waiter’s personal favourite is. If you get a good vibe, you can also see if there is a dish the chef recommends trying.

Order the thing you don’t understand. Avoid the “Roast Chicken” (the safe choice where the kitchen can coast).

(Although of course some days you just fancy a roast chicken that someone else cooks; but your Mum will cook it better…)

You may want to consider the cheaper eats at a well established place. Again, the bone marrow at St John’s while sat at the bar, a lunch sandwich special will gain you quality food and experience at a decent price.

9. The no reservation place.

I chatted to a front of house person, post-pandemic lockdowns, when they moved to a reservation system from a previous no bookings system. This move hit their margins, as they had more empty spots, for longer spans of time. To get away with no reservations, you have to have ideally 100%+ demand over your serving time, this means your covers are always full and more effort has to go into your food to (a) ensure you have 100%+ demand and (b) as your margins are better so you can reinvest profits.

London Examples. Roti King, Kiln, often tapas places e.g. Barrafina, Dean St (Soho), Koya Soho, Dim Sum Duck, often many dim sum places (which won’t seat you until the whole table has arrived!)

10. The Home Cooking Inversion

Restaurants struggle with time-sensitive simplicity (a roast chicken served immediately out of the oven) or premium ingredients that become unaffordable with markups.

The idea: Eat out for things that require scale (deep frying, tandoors), time (24-hour broths), or extreme specialization (dim sum). Cook the simple, high-quality ingredients at home. (Actually, high quality steak is good to do at home).

It’s the same in reverse. Until recently many Chinese homes did not have an oven and Chinese went out to buy roast and barbecue meats from specialist places. Use competitive advantages!

I will do another section of how some London restaurants fall into this category at a later date. In the meantime for London you can check out Vittles; for thoughts on food check out Tyler Cowen’s food specific (ethnic dining) blog and his recent podcast with Soumaya Keynes.

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I’ve been drafting some thoughts on AI, but events are happening faster than my blogging time. Below I highlight a summary of some of the camps/clusters of thinking around AI and its implications, which are tentative. For now, I wanted to give you a flavour of the investing week.

There were large stock moves, where $100s bn into the low trillions of market cap value was shifted around. The anec-data coming from the latest iterations of Claude (co-work) and Open AI codex following from the impacts Gemini and previous work have convinced many that Agenetic AI - AI agents autonomously being set and completing complex tasks - is happening now. This will fundamentally re-shape every single business model with some software models are now broken or part broken (eg the seat model of SAAS software; see Ben Thompson), and re-evaluation of which business models might benefit (as costs go down) and so profits are immune or at risk. And which management teams can manage this change.

On one day this week, I had younger members of my team look at their computer screens in a somewhat awe struck manner. The vibe is NOT the same order of magnitude fear that I lived through during the 2008 - 2009 financial crisis but the absolute dawning that the world is changing / changed and that this was week where one set of people - investing market participants - really felt it. Prices are the signals, but these signals herald the narratives and stories we tell ourselves.

There is not a single moment which makes up this change in narrative but a continued cluster of anec-data. Such as:

The broad AI thinking camps, where they cluster and why they disagree
I guess huge caveat…This is a map, not a forecast expect the unexpected….

Camp A: Agent era compounding (capability turns into autonomy)
Scaling keeps working, and “scaffolding” (tools, memory, code execution, browsing, workflows) turns models into agents. Biggest story is diffusion: who redesigns organisations fastest, and where reliability becomes “good enough.”

Camp B: AGI soon-ish, but control is the bottleneck
Autonomy arrives faster than interpretability, evaluation, and governance. Expect intense focus on “scheming”, deception, audits, and enforceable constraints.

Camp C: Current paradigm is not enough (expect lumpy progress)
Scaling helps, but the hard part is robust generalisation: world models, planning, grounding, memory, and maybe embodiment. Progress comes in step-changes, not smooth curves. (This camp fights Camp A about whether agents are “enough.”)

Camp D: Bottlenecks are physical and human (bits do not replace runways)
Even if cognition gets cheap, reality is constrained by atoms: permits, trials, power grids, runways, construction, logistics, institutions, and coordination. AI can help, but cannot abolish physical throughput constraints.

Camp E: Economics and political economy (who gains, who loses, how fast)
The core dispute is macro impact (huge vs modest), distribution (wages, inequality), and market structure (winner-take-most compute/data/distribution).

Camp F: Consciousness and moral status (the swamp, now with measuring sticks)
Not “LLMs are conscious” vibes. It’s theory-derived indicators, structured uncertainty, and policy caution about welfare and manipulation.

Camp G: AI sovereignty and self-reliance (the China posture)
AI framed as a pillar of national strength and tech independence. Driven by state-guided industrial policy, military–civil fusion, and insulation from Western chokepoints. Emphasis on local foundation models, regulatory alignment with state values, and global influence through tech export.

Camp H: Governance and oversight first (the Brussels–DC split screen)
The EU sees AI as a normative frontier—regulated like chemicals or medicine—with formal rules around risk classes, rights, and audits. The U.S. mostly prefers post-hoc enforcement, voluntary commitments, and innovation-first posture. Both view regulation as how you steer outcomes, not just react to them.

Camp I: AI as sovereign diversification (the Gulf thesis)
AI is the post-oil moonshot. Gulf states are building compute clusters, hiring top labs, and embedding AI into national planning. It’s less about alignment or consciousness, more about industrial strategy, control over infrastructure, and becoming indispensable in a post-carbon economy.

Over this week, the Camp A is showing ascendancy. But, I think it is worth highlighting the D and C camps. True, many software models need to change or are gone, and jobs will go and change but the impact into GDP and the physical environment (will this improve bus service in America?) are still on-going debates.

It’s worth hearing Elon on robots, and GPUs in space on the Collison / Dwarkesh podcast. You can skim the transcript. Elon comes across as deep technical knowledge but his thoughts on higher level systems thinking seem to be vibes (simulation theory?). Maybe they are vibes for all of us though…

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Current other thought are on the enduring power of live performance and the ability for humans to imagine the lived experience of others.

Also, a couple of studies both meta and individual which show the power of walking for health benefits.

7000+ steps a day seems to be pretty good for health… aligns with idea of moderate regular walking “Findings In this cohort study of 2110 adults with a mean follow-up of 10.8 years, participants taking at least 7000 steps/d, compared with those taking fewer than 7000 steps/d, had a 50% to 70% lower risk of mortality”

Lastly, from the archive a podcast from Sally Phillips on her acting life and thoughts on disability.

Links:

Fellowships and roles:

“Emerging Scholars is an initiative of the Mercatus Center aimed at supporting innovative classical liberal thinkers in becoming this generation’s public intellectuals and policy innovators. We are seeking to hire Research Fellows for two-year, full-time roles at our offices in Arlington, VA, to start in September 2026.“

CF:

1. Canvey is a reclaimed, ultra low-lying estuary island. Sea walls and flood defences are not background infrastructure, they are the condition of daily life.

2. The island’s modern town grew out of plotlands: small cheap plots that became DIY bungalows and holiday shacks, later hardened into permanent settlement.

3. A niche but genuinely global-history footnote: Canvey played a role in early LNG-by-sea importing and storage, helping prove an industry that later scaled worldwide.

4. Canvey Wick is a conservation oddity: a former industrial brownfield that became an SSSI largely because of endangered invertebrates, a reminder that “wasteland” can be ecologically elite.

5. Labworth Café is the architectural surprise: a 1930s modernist seafront building and a rare piece of Ove Arup’s work as an architect, not just as an engineering brand.

6. Canvey now has a small but established Haredi (Orthodox, including Hasidic) community, largely relocated from Stamford Hill for cheaper, larger housing within reach of London, and it has built local infrastructure (shul, kosher provision, schools) as it has grown.

Random very ordinary snaps from the photo roll.

The 27 to Canvey: Travel by Attention

We took the 27 the way you take a local bus when you are not trying to “get somewhere” so much as trying to be somewhere. The bus as method. The bus as ritual. Travel defined by attention rather than distance.

Southend loosens its grip slowly. You can feel it in the spacing of the houses, the streetlights, the way the sky looms. The 27 just keeps going, patient and ordinary, which is often the most revealing way a place can be.

Somewhere on the ride in, a Union Jack hangs off a pole and flaps. It is half-seen through bus glass, layered with the pale strip of interior lighting and our own reflections. A flag is supposed to be symbolic, but here it reads as practical decoration. A marker that someone cared enough to put it up and then let it weather. Canvey, at first glance, has a lot of that. Markers. Little statements. The island is flat enough that small things get promoted.

Flat is the first impression you cannot shake. Flat streets, flat verges, flat lawns, flat horizons. You can see the engineering in the flatness if you know what you are looking for. This is a worked flat, marsh persuaded into suburb, land negotiated out of water over centuries. The place has a long memory of sea and tide, and the most important architecture is the kind people barely photograph: sea walls, embankments, the quiet infrastructure that keeps the word “island” from turning into a warning.

The bus stops are their own little anthropology. One shelter, green-framed, has fogged glass and that damp smell of yesterday’s rain. A circle has been punched out of a panel, vandalism or perhaps wear or both. “Bauer Media” sits printed along the top like a corporate signature on a public object, which is also a signature of modern Britain. Even the shelter is monetised. Even the waiting has a sponsor. Behind it, fences and hedges and side alleys. The shelter feels exposed and oddly intimate at the same time.

From the top deck, you see a junior school behind railings,The sign says “Canvey Junior School” and that is enough to locate you. The field in front is clean, green, flat, and slightly bleak in winter light. The local heritage transport museum has a bus stop to itself.

Then more bungalows. The housing stock tells its own story in a way architecture critics sometimes miss because it is not glamorous. Canvey’s bungalows and semi-detached houses carry the residue of the plotlands era, that very English dream of cheap land and self-made leisure. People once bought plots here for holidays, for makeshift freedom, for a little place by the estuary that did not require the permission of anyone sophisticated. Some of that spirit survives in the rooflines and the odd extensions and the sense that this town grew by accumulation rather than by masterplan.

Overhead cables run like pencil lines across the sky. Utility poles stand a little crooked. The road markings at the bus stop are huge, bright letters on tarmac.

White hulls sit parked among scrubby bushes. Shipping lanes, storage tanks, terminals, history of oil and gas, the kind of infrastructure that hums in the background of national life and then becomes “a story” only when something changes.

Canvey is full of these overlaps. A place can be suburban and industrial-adjacent and ecologically significant at the same time. The famous example is Canvey Wick, a brownfield turned nature reserve, where the rare and endangered do not arrive because we planned it, but because we stopped controlling everything for long enough. There is a moral in there if you want one, but I prefer the simpler observation: nature is opportunistic. It does not care about our zoning categories.

History here often hides behind the modern. The Dutch Cottage, small and old, survives as a reminder that Canvey’s relationship with water is not new. The sea wall murals tell the story in public art form, history turned into a promenade. And then there is the modernist surprise of Labworth Café, that clean 1930s line on the seafront, an Arup design that feels slightly improbable in this context. It is one of those buildings that makes you look again. It suggests that Canvey once had ambitions that were not purely defensive. Leisure, style, optimism.

I am unsure I have words for the vibes but: roads, modest houses, fences, practical cars, small gardens, Housing. Flood defences. Transport. Jobs. Safety. A politics that grows out of lived constraints rather than abstract ideology. The flags fit into that. They read as identity made visible in a landscape that is otherwise mostly horizontals and browns and winter greens.

A thin red strip of sunset sits low on the horizon behind a row of houses, like a match struck behind a fence. The houses are lit from within, warm rectangles in the gloom. It is quiet, ordinary, and oddly emotional. The flatness makes the sky feel close. I am here because of a bus because of a son’s quest for a bus and I am trying to make sense of it all.

We got off at the end stop that could have been any stopThe 27 had delivered us into the everyday fabric of Canvey. There is a Chinese take away. The prices are half of central London.

The bus itself, waiting at the kerb, perhaps a symbol if you want to read into it: utilitarian, reliable, faintly battered, doing its job without needing to be loved for it; no one caring about its number plate except perhaps three people in the world, one of which is my son.

Canvey. A place shaped by water and work, by cheap dreams of escape and the expensive reality of living somewhere that can flood. A place where history is in the sea wal, the cafe, the cottage, the transport depot.. A place where modern Britain shows itself in small things: the sponsored bus shelter, the fences, the flags, the quiet defiance of people making a life on reclaimed land.

On the ride back, the bus lights reflected in the glass again, and the outside world layered with our faces and coats and tiredness. The island receded without any dramatic farewell. It just flattened back into the estuary dusk, as if it had never been a destination at all, only a line on a route. Which, in the end, is how most places are. They are not “visited”. They are passed through slowly enough that they get to leave a mark.

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Factoids on Canvey:

• Canvey Island is a low-lying, reclaimed chunk of marsh in the Thames Estuary, separated from mainland Essex by creeks including Benfleet, East Haven, and Vange.

• It faces the open estuary to the south and east, with most of its “coastline” experienced as sea wall rather than beach.

• Its relationship with water is structural: sea defences and embankments are part of the everyday built environment, not background scenery.

• Geologically, it is an alluvial island, formed from estuary silts and tidal deposits over the Holocene, then reshaped through drainage and land management.

• The dominant physical impression is flatness; much of the island sits only just above high-water reference points, which is why flood history and sea-wall upgrades matter so much.

• The landscape reads as “big sky, big mud”: saltmarsh, tidal creeks, and long, straight embankments.

• The town feels denser in the central areas; the west and north edges feel more open and marshy; the southern edge has a clear estuary-industrial seam.

• A core historical thread is Dutch involvement in drainage and sea defences, reflected in local heritage and the built landscape.

• The Dutch Cottage Museum (built 1618) is a surviving artefact of that early settlement and drainage story: small, distinctive, and unusually old in a place defined by modern defences.

• In the late 19th and early 20th century, Canvey became part of the plotlands phenomenon: small plots, DIY bungalows, and semi-permanent holiday settlement that later hardened into year-round housing.

• Flooding has been a recurring driver in Canvey’s history; a major mid-20th-century tidal flooding event helped shape modern sea defence priorities and local memory.

• From the 1930s, parts of the southern area became tied to oil terminals and associated industry, giving the island an industrial edge alongside the residential core.

• A niche but globally relevant footnote: Canvey was involved in early demonstrations of importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) by sea, with storage and distribution from a Thames-side complex.

• Nearby Coryton Refinery became a major regional presence for decades and closed in 2012, part of the wider estuary’s heavy-industry story.

• A familiar 1970s pattern shows up too: ambitious industrial plans that stalled, leaving part-built landscapes that later shifted to other uses.

• Canvey Wick is the “accidental ecology” headline: a former industrial or planned-industrial brownfield that became one of Britain’s most important sites for endangered invertebrates and is designated an SSSI.

• Managing Canvey Wick involves the standard conservation trade-off: scrub benefits some species, while open, bare, sun-baked ground benefits others.

• Economically, Canvey fits the outer-estuary commuter pattern: many residents travel out for work (Basildon, Thurrock, London, Southend), with a local business base that skews small.

• The industrial legacy still shapes land use and identity at the edges, even as heavy industry has shifted or reduced.

• Planning debates often revolve around the seafront and town centre: the challenge of being more than a seasonal day-trip place while still serving local needs.

• Demographically, it is a compact town on an island, with population in the high 30,000s depending on boundary definition and an older-leaning age profile, including a large 60+ cohort.

• Ethnically it is predominantly White, with smaller Asian, Black, Mixed, and other groups.

• Deprivation is not uniform, but some neighbourhoods rank poorly on deprivation measures, particularly around education/skills and income in some areas.

• Politically, Canvey sits in a landscape that is open to non-standard options: strong local parties have been prominent in borough-level politics, including the People’s Independent Party and the Canvey Island Independent Party.

• At parliamentary level, the wider Castle Point seat has long been Conservative-leaning, with recent cycles showing pressure from protest or insurgent options as well.

• A standout architectural quirk is Labworth Café: 1930s seaside modernism and a rare example of Ove Arup’s architectural work as distinct from Arup-as-engineering-brand.

• The sea wall functions as both protection and public realm, including a long-running mural project that doubles as a walkable local history display.

• The Chapman Lighthouse story is local estuary engineering folklore: a screw-pile lighthouse once offshore on the sands, Victorian ingenuity in a difficult landscape.

• Frederick Hester’s resort ambition is part of the island’s cultural backstory: big plans for holiday infrastructure that only partially materialised, but left an imprint on how Canvey has imagined itself.

• Architecturally, the “in-between” is the point: interwar and postwar housing, bungalow patterns, plotlands remnants, and incremental retrofit streetscapes shaped by water, ground conditions, and flood risk.

• Memes

• Culture: Why does Palantir teach a book on theatre Impro

• Econ: Are we poor? Why do we feel poor? Intangible economy i

• AI: Claude Code does what now?

• Health: What is US life expectancy?

• Giving: Impact giving; podcast with Deena Mousa

• Podcasts: Ben Yeoh Chats, 2025 in review

• US/China: Dan Wang letter.

• AI: Zhengdong Wang, where AI might be going, second order

• Markets: Ray Dalio off-mainstream macro thoughts esp. Re: gold

• London UnConference 2026

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Happy New Year! Lovely to see those who made it the quiz in London. I think one of the most entertaining rounds was on memes and the big one I had missed for most of the year was “six - seven”

Everyone else knew about 6-7 meme and it was a funny shared experience moment. I sense the joy of 6-7 is a little like the phrase “Mornington Crescent” we had when I was younger. Part of the point is the phrase is first order meaningless, but is second order a shared cultural understanding. Like in Punch and Judy everybody knows what to do, and performs together. Families, even companies, tend to create their own cultural codes both in words and actions. It seems to me to be an important part of the human conditions.

Tralalero Tralala.

The phrase is from an Italian Brain Rot meme, although it actually reminds me of a Carol Ann Duffy poem line

….In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La la la la. See? I close my eyes and imagine..

Where I singing is already an impossible grammar/tense. That’s how I feel at times the impossibilities yet realities of life.

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I was intrigued to note that Palantir (defence tech company), which has by all accounts a unique culture, used to give new employees a copy of Keith Johnstone’s Impro book.

This book is probably considered a core modern drama text across all performing arts (or at least in my view), and I would put it alongside side Aristotle’s Poetics and Peter Brook’s The Empty Space on the thinking and making of theatre.

I discuss the work in part with one of the master Impro practitioners in Britain, Less Simpson. Podcast with Lee here.

One of the observations and many exercises in the book is that impro (and comedy and theatre) can and does work off status. Whether someone is (or perceived to be) high / low (rising) status and all that entails socially.

This is an explanation of why Palantir views this as important.

Why Impro?

Being a successful FDE required an unusual sensitivity to social context – what you really had to do was partner with your corporate (or government) counterparts at the highest level and gain their trust, which often required playing political games. Impro is popular with nerds partly because it breaks down social behavior mechanistically. The vocabulary of the company was saturated with Impro-isms – ‘casting’ is an example. Johnstone discusses how the same actor can play ‘high status’ or ‘low status’ just by changing parts of their physical behavior – for example, keeping your head still while talking is high status, whereas moving your head side to side a lot is low status. Standing tall with your hands showing is high status, slouching with your hands in your pocket is low status. And so on. If you didn’t know all this, you were unlikely to succeed in a customer environment. Which meant you were unlikely to integrate customer data or get people to use your software. Which meant failure.

This is one reason why former FDEs tend to be great founders. (There are usually more ex-Palantir founders than there are ex-Googlers in each YC batch, despite there being ~50x more Google employees.) Good founders have an instinct for reading rooms, group dynamics, and power. This isn’t usually talked about, but it’s critical: founding a successful company is about taking part in negotiation after negotiation after negotiation, and winning (on net). Hiring, sales, fundraising are all negotiations at their core. It’s hard to be great at negotiating without having these instincts for human behavior. This is something Palantir teaches FDEs, and is hard to learn at other Valley companies. (from Nabeel)

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One corner of the internet is a flutter on what Claude Code + Opus is able to do for you. I’ve not carved out enough time to try it out, but enough smart people are positive, I sense the trend is true. This comes off the back of gemini and other improvements I am seeing.

This Zvi on looking at this:

Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is so hot right now. The cool kids use it for everything.

They definitely use it for coding, often letting it write all of their code.

They also increasingly use it for everything else one can do with a computer.

Vas suggests using Claude Code as you would a mini-you/employee that lives in your computer and can do literally anything.

There’s this thread of people saying Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is AGI in various senses. I centrally don’t agree, but they definitely have a point.

Also, Tyler Cowen has quoted this as important:

Molly Cantillon: This is the default now. The bottleneck is no longer ability. The bottleneck is activation energy: who has the nerve to try, and the stubbornness to finish. This favors new entrants.​

Here’s what my tower looks like mechanically. I run a swarm of eight instances in parallel: ~/𝚗𝚘𝚡, ~/𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚜, ~/𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚕, ~/𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚠𝚝𝚑, ~/𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚜, ~/𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚑, ~/𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐, ~/𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕. Each operates in isolation, spawns short-lived subagents, and exchanges context through explicit handoffs. They read and write the filesystem. When an API is absent, they operate the desktop directly, injecting mouse and keystroke events to traverse apps and browsers. 𝚌𝚊𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚎 -𝚒 keeps the system awake on runs, in airports, while I sleep. On completion, it texts me; I reply to the checkpoint and continue. All thought traces logged and artifacted for recursive self-improvement.

Molly says she didnt use Claude to write the essay, but if this is the start then people will start using Claude and agents to start helping run their lives.

My last anecdata on this being true is my 71 year old mother. She is not tech dumb but she is not tech savvy. She is using one agent/LLM for free which she calls “Buddy”, and another agent/LLM that she has started paying for which she refers to as “She”. “She” helps with serious stuff and has provided more reassurance than me (or maybe about the same) about health, finances and living; it helps that my mum takes what I say and then runs it past Her; but it seems to have really helped in discussing health things, as well as discussing whether an allocation to gold is suitable in terms of asset allocation for her. And for her 59 year old friend. This is happening people! Zvi on Claude Code.

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Zvi also has this piece on why we feel poor and reconciling:

The two sides say:

1. Life sucks, you can’t get ahead, you can’t have a family or own a house.

2. What are you talking about, median wages are up, unemployment is low and so on.

He pulls in many strands of reconciling this, and it’s good food for thought. One element he misses is the importance of intangibles both in the economy (see my conversation with Stian Westlake) as intangibles are now really larger but also act differently to tangibles in the economy; and intangibles in terms of the value we put on religion, community, creative arts etc, but apart from that lacuna there is much to think on

He suggests:

The culprit is the Revolution of Rising Expectations, together with the Revolution of Rising Requirements.

The biggest rising expectations are that we will not have to tolerate unpleasant experiences or even dead time, endure meaningful material shortages or accept various forms of unfairness or coercion.

The biggest rising requirement is insane levels of mandatory child supervision. More here.

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Hannah Ritchie has a piece looking at US health life expectancy; she notes:

The United States is the clear standout. It spends a lot more on healthcare than its peers, yet appears to receive little in return in terms of life expectancy. Americans have a lower life expectancy than other rich countries, despite paying far more.

And then examines is infant mortality (and a stricter definition of it, explains the difference).

The key takeaway is that young deaths are an important part of the US’s disadvantage, but not all of it. Americans who live to 65 still have lower life expectancy than those elsewhere. The differences narrow by age 80, but this is at least partly due to the selection bias of who survives.

I happen to actually more or less know the answer according to the science consensus. Jessica Ho (2021), did much of the work, and I hope to have a longer blog piece out on this at some point, but the summary is:

The “Why” — Causes of the Life Expectancy Gap

The US life expectancy gap (approx. 4–6 years shorter than peers) is not driven by a single factor but by two distinct “penalties” affecting different age groups.

1. The “Young Adult Penalty” (Ages 15–49)

This is the most unique feature of the US mortality profile. While peer nations have seen deaths in this age group plummet, they have risen in the US.

• External Causes (The “Big Three”): “External Causes” are the 4th leading cause of death in the US (an outlier status). Jessica Ho’s research indicates this category explains ~50% of the gap for men and ~30% for women.

• • Drug Overdoses: The largest single driver. US overdose deaths increased 75% from 2015–2020. In 2020, accidental poisoning deaths in the US were nearly 30 per 100,000, compared to <5 in most peer nations.

  • Firearms (Homicides & Suicides): The US homicide rate is roughly 7x higher than the peer average. This is a massive driver of years of life lost because it predominantly kills young men.

  • Car Accidents: US roads are significantly more dangerous, with stall/reversal in safety improvements that Europe has successfully implemented.

2. The “Mid-Life Stagnation” (Ages 50+)

• Cardiovascular Disease (CVD): For decades, rich countries gained life expectancy by treating heart disease and stroke. In the US, this progress has stalled.

  • Metabolic Health: The US is a distinct outlier in obesity (68% overweight/obese vs. ~50% peers) and diabetes prevalence (11% vs. 5–7% peers)

  • The Lag Effect: High obesity rates from 10–20 years ago are now manifesting as stalled CVD improvements in older adults today.

3. The Infant Mortality Nuance

• The Statistical Artefact: Tyler Cowen correctly notes that the US has a stricter definition of “live birth.” A 22-week premature baby who dies after an hour is often counted as an “infant death” in the US, but might be classified as a “stillbirth” in France. Correcting for this reduces the US infant mortality rate.

• The Check: Hannah Ritchie argues that even after correcting for this, the US still lags. More importantly, infant mortality is no longer the main driver of the gap. Even if you survived to age 5 in the US, your life expectancy would still be lower than in peer countries due to the “Young Adult Penalty” described above.

And then, the causal drivers are:

More driving, more roads, less safety;

• More guns

• More opioids; then,

• More obesity, diabetes, worse population health for CVD paired with less use of healthcare when needed:

Less access to healthcare, driven in part by healthcare avoidance both preventative (don’t see doctor); and lack of prescription-filling - both are below peer countries; and this is coupled with high doctor costs, hospital costs (Baumol cost disease). Not real drivers are Rx drugs costs as many are generic (if anything, more use would help). I will have to write up why this is at some point as it’s fairly complex. On the flip side, US is better at cancer, cancer screening and preventable cancers.

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I had an excellent chat with Deena Mousa.

How do you put a price tag on a human life? It sounds like a cold question, but for grant makers, it is the necessary calculus of doing good.

“Every time you choose whether to take a more dangerous job at a higher wage... or choose a house that’s closer to environmental toxins but is a little cheaper, you are implicitly putting a price on how much you value a year of your life.”

In this episode, Ben sits down with Deena Mousa, a grant maker and thinker at Open Philanthropy and Coefficient Giving. Deena takes us inside the difficult decision-making frameworks used to allocate finite resources—from the “Coefficient Dollar” to the complexities of measuring pain.

• The Calculus of Altruism: How philanthropists use “revealed preference” to value a year of life.

• The Pain Paradox: Why standard health models struggle to account for chronic pain and suffering.

• AI for Good: Why the risks of “AI washing” in nonprofits are real, but the potential for capacity building is massive.

• Systemic Bottlenecks: Why fixing boring government procurement processes might be more impactful than flashy new policies.

• Life Advice: Why you should probably ignore the advice that resonates with you most.

Check it out here.

This year, Ben Yeoh Chats has gone from the streets of Tokyo to the data centers of climate science. My interest remains the same: human flourishing and the “interstitial spaces” between arts, science, and policy.

• The Case for Climate Honesty (with Hannah Ritchie)

• The Moral Weight of Institutions (with Rob Beckley)

• Why We Stopped Building Beautiful (with Samuel Hughes)

• Tim Mak on reporting from the frontlines of Ukraine

We often hear “doom” or “denial.” Hannah brings something rarer: data-driven hope. We discussed why the 1.5°C target might be dead (and why admitting that builds trust), why China is both a climate villain and a clean-tech savior, and why “Abundance” is a better policy frame than “Degrowth.”

Key insight: Sustainability doesn’t have to mean austerity. We can solve problems and have nice things.

After 40 years in policing—including leading the Hillsborough investigation—Rob Beckley gave a masterclass on “civic glue.” We moved past the headlines to discuss how institutions actually work (or fail). He framed institutional racism not just as “bad people” but as “bad processes” that yield disproportionate outcomes.

Key insight: Policing isn’t just law enforcement; it is about being the person who shows up when society is in crisis and “needs action now.”

On linkedin…

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Dan Wang’s 2025 letter is thoughtful and excellent on China and US, plus year in review. I wanted to reflect on three ideas.

• Applovin vs Xiaomi. This may show a weakness in financial metric thinking but it may also show where the consumer or nation state state value accrues. Does the value accrue to consumers and nations or does the value accrue to profits and shareholders?

• China is substantially behind in aviation and semi-conductors vs the US and RoW. China is also behind in biopharma, science tools and medical technology but is catching up. China caught up in seed and agricultural technology. A brief reflection on why and how is instructive.

On Applovin, Wang writes:

In 2021, Lei Jun vowed that the company he founded would break into the EV business. Four years later, Xiaomi started shipping cars to customers. Not only that, a Xiaomi EV set a speed record at the Nürburgring racetrack in Germany. Compare Xiaomi to Apple, which spent 10 years and $10 billion studying whether to enter the EV market before it pulled the plug. The world’s most advanced consumer product company could not match Xiaomi’s feat. It’s cases like these that make me skeptical of reasoning about China’s tech successes through financial measures or productivity ratios. As of this writing, Xiaomi’s market value is $130 billion. That is only around half of the market value of AppLovin, the mobile advertisement company. Rather than being an indictment of Xiaomi, I view this imbalance as an indictment of financial valuations. Isn’t it better, from a national power perspective, to develop firms like Xiaomi, which calls its shots and then makes them?

(I wonder that…) The financial folk are probably assessing the correct thing. They are only prepared to pay a multiple less for Xiaomi cashflow (super simplified as investment folk are really looking at long term cashflow streams) compared to Applovin as less cash or value accruss to Xiaomi than Applovin. But much more consumer (and nation state surplus) goes to the Chinese people or nation. It’s actually the same for biopharma. You might think that biopharma makes great profits, but they are generally less valuable than tech companies. In part as society demands cheap drugs and gain that as “consumer surplus…”

On biopharma, the state is definitely investing here both via funding and procurement and it seems to be working in terms of catching up; and on seed technology, Sinochem (a state enterprise) bought Syngenta, and in one $43bn deal gained access to world leading agri-tech. Strategically, this was probably (and maybe correctly) viewed as cheap.

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Zhengdong Wang has his 2025 letter which gives you a glimpse on to the frontier of AI research:

The biggest mistake people make when they make the case for AI is that they say it’s different this time. It’s not different this time because it’s always been different. There hasn’t been any constant normal trend ever, and all we’ve ever done is be optimistic that we’ll muddle through. Nothing is truly inevitable, certainly not progress. And progress, too, might stop tomorrow.

And,

London is also the best Pre-AGI city. Demis Hassabis insisted on DeepMind staying in London instead of moving to Silicon Valley because “this is not a fail-fast mission.” I agree. I’d draft the European gentleman-scholar archetype over the Bay Area founder-maxxer if I wanted a rigorous understanding of my training dynamics. It pains me to hear of AI researchers attaining generational wealth, only to immediately shoot themselves in the foot buying a house in the Bay Area. For all the talk of being contrarian, no one seems to be putting their money where their mouth is. That few million could’ve been a castle, with battlements, grounds, and a link to Robert the Bruce. Even Peter Thiel declared that Silicon Valley real estate, for what you get, “is probably the absolute worst in the world.”

And,

In Zeynep’s Law, second-order effects are dwarfed by the first-order ones in magnitude until there is substantial and repeated evidence otherwise. I’ve done my best to give substantial and repeated evidence that AI will be a big deal. But there is far to go in making that concrete. So far, second-order thinking about AI has mostly been done by AI people venturing far afield. It needs development from experts in politics, economics, and culture who take it seriously. This is what thinking it through looks like. Jonathan Malesic in May reminded us that AI cannot teach us how we want to live. He writes of the humanities:

I will sacrifice some length of my days to add depth to another person’s experience of the rest of theirs. Many did this for me. The work is slow. Its results often go unseen for years. But it is no gimmick.

Very much worth pondering… https://zhengdongwang.com/2025/12/30/2025-letter.html

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Of mainstream, macro investor, billionaire Ray Dalio. His 2025 review and part 2026 outlook. Tldr, consider a gold allocation (yeah… Mum was already there); but he has a framework for why and even if you think it’s not correct, it’s worth a ponder.

While most people see US stocks and particularly US AI stocks to be the best investments and hence the biggest investment story of 2025, it is indisputably true that the biggest returns (and hence the biggest story) came from 1) what happened to the value of money (most importantly the dollar, other fiat currencies, and gold) and 2) US stocks significantly underperforming both non-US stock markets and gold (which was the best performing major market) principally as a result of fiscal and monetary stimulations, productivity gains, and big shifts in asset allocations away from US markets. On linkedin.

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Lastly, I’m again hosting an UnConference in London, April 2026: A one-day meet-up for curious people. Ideas, experiments, and honest debate supported by Emergent Ventures, Civic Future… If you think this might be for you, let me know and you could likely get a space…. write me.

Have a great 2026!

• Quiz: We’re hosting Jan 5, London

• Life: a liberal defence of identity rights

• Sustainability: Economist conference, sustainable finance can only do a little bit

• Education: Against a blunt social media ban, in favour of child rights (unpopular opinion)

• Politics: Political cleavage, zero sum or status (cf Demsas and Argument)

• Sustainability: Repair slowly gaining traction

• Life: Aella on her mother dying and love

• Life: Salima on more Bad Patient

• Life: Patrick Collison suggests Silicon Valley searching for meaning.

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• If you are in London on Jan 5, we are hosting am informal and fun quiz. Do come (link).

This week I’ve been thinking about child-centric rights and also liberalism. In particular with respect to social media bans but also on identity.

I’ve taken a skim of social services interventions in the English home education population which is suggestive that social services involvement is below average for this population. This surprised me as I had thought that was an argument the government was using for more regulation, but it’s not supported by the evidence.

I’ve done a sustainability quiz for work and planning one with my son for fun in London (let me know if you’d like to come - it will be on Jan 5). I listened to some climate and sustainability economists at a conference. I went to visit two repair shops (within a shoe store and clothing store) and reflect on the changing cultural notions of repair.

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I’m going to mention the heavy post first. Aella came on my podcast, and we had a great conversation. I learned about someone thoughtful and very different to me. Here she writes about her mother dying in ICU. A lucid account of the hospital and she reflects on their relationship, where her Mum still sent her unconditional love even though she disagreed with Aella’s life choices.

She was far from perfect, but for all her flaws she managed to channel an unconditional love made all the more beautiful by how hard it would be for most people like her to love most daughters like me. In my years I’ve met many a sex worker who talked about being disowned by her Christian mom, but my mom wasn’t that kind of Christian. She was a good one.

A mother’s love is crazy. She poured it all out into my earliest years, when I was still forming in the world. I will forever be shaped by it. It’s hard to look at the intensity of that love directly. It’s blinding. It sort of doesn’t matter who I grew into being, or ways we missed seeing each other each other - she and I are linked at the souls. It’s a heavy thing to be loved so fiercely.

Don’t read if triggered by grief or death, but it’s a lovely memoriam and reflection.

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Here is what you might say re: social media bans (I know this is an unpopular opinion, but stay with me!).

1. What does the evidence actually say about social media and youth mental health.

2. How different philosophical traditions would think about this type of regulation.

3. Whether a blanket under-16 ban is a sensible policy instrument, even if one accepts the aims.

Unpacking the three questions, I found1 that most studies find “a mix of often conflicting small positive, negative and null associations.” The most rigorous large preregistered studies show small associations between daily digital use and wellbeing that are “unlikely to be of clinical or practical significance” although there are more harms in some subgroups like teens with existing mental health conditions.

And on ideas and philosophy:

Classical liberalism.

On a Mill-style harm principle view, the state should step in only to prevent serious harm to others, not to protect people from themselves. Children are a partial exception, since their autonomy is limited and the state already sets age limits for alcohol, sex, driving and so on. A classical liberal could accept targeted rules that deal with clear harms, but a blanket ban on whole platforms interferes with freedom of expression and association, and overrides parental judgment. Given that the evidence points to small average harms, it is hard to argue that the high bar for coercive state action has been met.

Child-centred rights.

Taking the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child seriously means treating children as rights holders, not simply as passive objects of protection. They have rights to seek information, express views and associate with others, as well as rights to protection. A ban can be cast as a right to protection from manipulative platform design. It can also be criticised as sacrificing the rights of competent 14 or 15 year olds to participate in online culture and politics, and as cutting off lifeline communities for queer or otherwise marginalised teens. On this view, the state should be very reluctant to impose blanket restrictions that do not distinguish between different young people.

I think if you were paternalistic and, or, had strong faith in big government then you might support this more from first principles.

In any case, I lean towards ideas of a child-centric agency. But, I realise I’m perhaps in a minority. I was listening to Zadie Smith and she implored: why do parents have to do this? And much preferring governments to step in. I find it interesting that seemingly so many parents agree (around the 80% support levels in surveys). More on the essay outlining the case against here:

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Thinking about identity rights from a classical liberal perspective. I realised I had never properly thought through what the Mill liberal arguments - ‘live and let live as long as it does no harm to others’ (and harm is different from offence) - mean for trans identity. I think it’s partly as I associated Mill with a utilitarian/maximizing happiness philosophy. But, you don’t need utilitarian thinking to accept ‘live and let live’ as a core principle to test ideas or policies against.

Listening to Deidre McCloskey was insightful. She has lived experienced having transitioned late and from a macho male. She was also a socialist in her early years and has become a Christian (or bleeding heart as she might say) libertarian or liberal in later life. (She distinguishes bleeding heart liberals like herself from Randians. She cares about the poor - as she did when a socialist - whereas, she argues, Randians typically don’t).

Her grandmother’s rule: “Do anything you want, but don’t spook the horses”

She builds on this family motto: “Do anything you want, but do not spook the horses.”

• People should be free to be queer, change gender, write economics articles, live as they like.

• The boundary is significant external harm to others, not mere disapproval.

• No metaphorical “stick of dynamite in the town square” that panics society.

• She treats this as a simple, humane formulation of liberal ethics.

A long set of notes based on her talk at the LSE here.

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I listened to a set of sustainable finance economists. The overall conclusion is that sustainable finance is doing a small something (via engagement, signalling, cost of capital, or new green company formation) which is non-zero but hard to know exactly. It’s probably not super big though and much of the work relies on discounting and economic assumptions which might not always hold true.

Interestingly, one ball park estimate is that some aspects of sustainable finance (through cost of capital) might have an impact about as large as current carbon pricing efforts, which are also small but non-zero. Hard to know if it’s right. Still, a transition powered by positive economics (ie choices made as the incentives and economics work out eg cars over horse) does seem the most sustainable in all aspects. Two summaries here on my LI on engagement and on a carbon burden idea.

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Thinking on sustainability, I managed to stitch and repair my room socks (image above). These socks are RoToTo. The core philosophy of RoToTo is that socks should not be disposable. They aim to create “consumables that can be loved for a lifetime.”

Slow Production: RoToTo avoids high-speed, automated mass production. Instead, they use a mix of rare vintage machines (some from the early 1900s) and modern technology. These older machines require constant human monitoring and hand-tuning, resulting in a unique texture and durability that supposedly modern machines cannot replicate… While the RoToTo brand itself was officially launched in 2014 by designer Daisuke Ishii, its roots go back over 100 years.

• The Nara Heritage: The socks are produced in Nara Prefecture, specifically in Koryocho. This region has been a textile hub since the 17th century.

• The 1910 Connection: Industrial sock manufacturing in Nara began in 1910 when a local man brought a vintage knitting machine back from the United States after a study tour. As traditional weaving declined, the community pivoted to “sock weaving”—a term locals still use today instead of “knitting.”

I am unsure how much we value this on first order economics (cf my Kyoto Bucket man). But it seems to me there is some intangible value in keeping this type of tacit skills and knowledge alive. More obviously in types of high end manufacturing (think vaccines, semi-conductors, rare earths) but perhaps in processes like knitting too.

It occurs to me, I’m trying to signal. I am part of the movement away from Conspicuous Consumption (showing off how much you can buy) to Conspicuous Conservation (showing off how much you care/know).

The idea: Repair is now a “Luxury Belief”

Purely practical utility cannot explain modern repair in rich countries.

• The Economic Reality: For a £5 t-shirt or £15 jeans, the practical cost of repairing it (time + materials + learning curve) often exceeds the cost of buying a new one.

• The Conclusion: If repairing costs more (in time/effort) than replacing, the only reason to do it is for Intangible Utility. You are “buying” the feeling of being ethical, the reputation of being sustainable, and the cultural cachet of rejecting fast fashion.

Historical Parallel: “Make Do and Mend” vs. Modern Repair

Wartime Britain —> thrift as patriotism. Scarcity. You physically could not buy new clothes (rationing). And now… Abundance… Drowning in cheap clothes but choose to reject them.

Wartime… Invisible Repair. The goal was to darn socks so perfectly nobody knew they were broken.

Now…Visible Repair. The goal is often “Sashiko” or bright patches. You want people to know this is repaired.

I made an estimate along with GPT/Gemini on what approx values go into signalling. Ball park seems to be about 80% (with 40% in culture and 40% in signal). See end for methods.

That said, the cold economics I think misses something else as well. I happen to be much prouder of my little repair than I should be.

Here is the cobbler at the shoe store (below). I’ve bought no new shoes for 2+ years, and only considering now at this store where I can get them repaired. (My beloved black shoes in the middle there - they won’t be fixed for 2 months as she has so many to repair!) I guess the old English style leather shoes could also be repaired (and I did in my 20s when I wore that style), and I still have those shoes from my 20s.

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Jerusalem Demsas has a neat argument: the key divide in American politics is no longer left vs right, or Democrat vs Republican, but zero-sum vs positive-sum. This is her latest argument for The Argument.

There is a lot of truth in that framing. But I do not think it is the whole story.

When I look at the data, and then at the vibes, two other lenses keep popping up:

1. A status lens. Who feels their group is rising or falling in the pecking order.

2. A freedom lens. Who wants more autonomy and experimentation, and who wants more order and constraint.

Zero-sum is about resources. Status is about rank. Freedom is about who gets to decide. All three interact.

…If you only look at politics through the zero-sum lens, you get a clean story but you miss some key dynamics.

Try thinking instead:

1. Zero-sum vs positive-sum
   Is the pie fixed or can it grow?

2. Status rising vs status falling
   Is “my group” climbing, stable, or sliding down?

3. Freedom vs authority
   Do I want more autonomy and pluralism, or more order and constraint?

Different coalitions form in different corners of this 3D space.

• The classic MAGA voter often looks like: zero-sum, status falling, authority-seeking.

• A cosmopolitan professional is more often: positive-sum, status rising or secure, freedom-seeking.

• Some parts of the socialist left are: zero-sum, status falling, but freedom-seeking in culture and speech.

• Some technocratic centrists are: positive-sum, status secure, but surprisingly comfortable with technocratic authority.

Once you see politics this way, you stop expecting a single neat cleavage to explain everything. You also get a better feel for why persuasion is so hard. If someone’s core issue is status and yours is freedom, you can talk past each other for years.

More in my blog here:

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My friend Salima on being a bad patient…

I’ve always picked the wrong competitions, much like when I spent most of my twelfth year entering Just 17 and Smash Hits giveaways. I won a Bros t-shirt, and that was about it. I wasn’t worried about any race when my kids were tiny, listening to pals worry about their career trajectory. I just lobotomised my mind into YouTube videos on braids and trad wife tralala-ed that my ambition was for my FAMILY. Thing is, I think that might have been denial and tiredness and the, er, patriarchy?

I’m ambitious, I say under my breath these days, quietly rebelling, like I’m the parent that sticks up two fingers at my retreating teenagers. (occasionally, ok?)

My latest competitive arena is the illness. I swerve dangerously in one car journey, from thinking I could be a modern medical miracle, to being a teaching moment forever etched in future medical textbooks, as to why my body just couldn’t stop misbehaving. more here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-181448032

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Patrick Collison on Silicon Valley Vibe:

Two conversations this weekend make me think that there’s a vibe shift afoot in Silicon Valley around what one should work on and what is worthwhile.

Culturally, it feels like the moment is ripe for new frameworks:

• Davos expert morality is stale and discredited.

• It’s also apparent that the “just be super based” Counter-Enlightenment is not really an answer. (Yes, woke went too far, but simply inverting it doesn’t work.)

• EA is no longer the automatic default for smart people.

• There’s increasing skepticism of slot and slop machine dynamics.

Overall, “what is worthy and valuable?” feels like it’s becoming more central.

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Thanks for reading.

Methods on intangible value.

Here are the three methods used to arrive at this estimate:

1. The “Generic Substitute” Method (Consumer Perspective)

This compares the price of the item you bought against the cheapest possible version that performs the same physical function. Result: 20% Practical / 80% Intangible.

2. The Production Cost Method (Industry Perspective)

This looks at where the money actually goes in the supply chain.

3. The “Veblen” & Durability Disconnect

Intuitively, we assume expensive clothes are “better” (more durable/practical). Data suggests this is false, meaning the extra money is purely for signaling. Durability Studies: Research from the University of Leeds tested jeans ranging from high-street fashion to luxury brands. They found negligible differences in durability between a £15 pair and a £150 pair.

Exceptions to the Rule

This ratio shifts depending on what you are buying:

• Luxury / High Fashion: The ratio becomes extreme. A $2,000 handbag may have $50 of materials. (2% Practical / 98% Intangible).

• Technical Gear: If you buy a gore-tex mountaineering jacket or fire-retardant workwear, you are paying for high-performance engineering. The practical utility value is much higher. (60% Practical / 40% Intangible).

Summary of McCloskey’s lecture and the Q&A, focusing on queer issues, liberalism, and the state. My bullets edited by AI and summary (end), and long form start.

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Deirdre McCloskey talk about queerness and liberalism at the LSE. It was part memoir, part political theory, part hand drawn graph in the air. McCloskey is funny and sharp and also quite blunt about who scares her.

She used to be Donald. She transitioned in the mid 1990s, in her fifties, and became Deirdre, keeping the initial D so librarians could follow the trail. Economist by training, historian and philosopher by practice, she situates herself with Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine rather than with modern technocrats.

The talk was anchored around a simple phrase she is turning into a book for Chicago: equality of permission.

Equality of permission

McCloskey’s claim is that the best version of liberalism is not about equal outcomes, and not even about fully equal opportunity, which is impossible to deliver in any serious sense. It is about equality of permission.

Everyone should be allowed to have a go. The law removes formal obstacles. You can speak, trade, worship, move, love, change your gender, write obscure economics papers. The state does not promise you a result, it simply gets out of your way.

She calls this primary liberalism and dates its breakthrough moments to Jefferson’s 1776 “all men are created equal” and the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. She reads both as demands to be allowed onto the pitch, not demands for the state to fix the scoreline.

Then comes a second wave in the mid nineteenth century. On the Continent this shows up as European socialism. In Britain and the United States, as New Liberalism and Progressivism. It is the moment when people become proud of using the state from the top down. Clear the slums, rebuild Paris, plan the city, regulate the poor. Urban planning and social engineering are born.

The first liberalism is bottom up. The second starts to say, we know best.

You do not have to guess which one she prefers.

“Do anything you want, but do not spook the horses”

She grounds this in a line from her grandmother that she clearly loves:

Do anything you want, but do not spook the horses.

In other words: be queer, transition, live strangely, write odd books. The line is not drawn at what offends taste, it is drawn at serious harm. No dynamite in the town square. No big externalities.

She links this to her Christianity. She became Anglican in 1998. She quotes both Jesus and Rabbi Hillel. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do not do to others what you would not want done to you. Very basic ethics. She is happy to say this is not sophisticated political philosophy, it is simply “let us just get along”.

The obvious problem is that this kind of liberalism can be vulnerable to people who are perfectly willing to use free institutions in order to destroy them. Liberties for those who want to end liberty. She knows that, and still thinks the liberal starting point is right.

The personal story

She does not just argue from theory. She anchors it in her own body.

At eleven she says she fell asleep praying for two things: to wake up a girl and to stop stuttering. Roughly two percent of boys stutter and around half a percent of girls, the ratio is surprisingly stable across cultures. At fifty three she jokes that she got half her wish. She transitioned in 1995 in a liberal enough society that she could.

Her mother’s reaction matters here. You have had a man’s career, which was an advantage, she told her, now you get to be an old woman, which is better. McCloskey repeats that line a few times, with a certain relish.

She also pushes back on a neat narrative that she was always an obviously feminine boy. She presents herself as macho. Captain of her high school American football team. Married to a woman for thirty years. Attracted to women. Gender identity sat underneath that life, not on the surface.

One of the biggest discoveries after transition was female friendship. In her view, men think they have many friends but mostly do not. Women form lots of light friendships quickly and then a small number of very deep ones, which are emotionally costly. Transition changed who befriended her and how. The social pattern shifted along with the hormones and clothes.

Queer life, DEI and the state

On queerness she is clear. Contact with “the queers, the immigrants, the others” is one of the gifts of the modern world if we let it be. Reading queer memoirs, or simply having queer colleagues and neighbours, expands our sense of what a human life can look like. It makes us wiser.

She defends diversity, equity and inclusion as practice and ethos. She also draws a line at state enforcement. She wants universities, firms and individuals to practise inclusion out of ethical conviction. She does not want a bureaucracy writing quotas and detailed mandates into law. It is very McCloskey: change hearts, remove legal barriers, be wary of giving the state more coercive tools.

Here she moves into economist mode. She draws a graph in the air.

On the vertical axis: human flourishing. Income, wellbeing, spiritual growth, however you want to define it. There is a zero line. Below it sits Orwell’s boot on a human face forever. Above it sits ordinary decent life. She adds Cadbury’s Whole Nut as a small but important component of British flourishing and complains about what Hershey has done to the US version.

On the horizontal axis: amount of coercion, especially state coercion.

Her argument goes like this. At zero coercion, life is not great. If your three year old runs into the road, you physically restrain them. You do not hold a seminar on autonomy. Some state coercion is essential. Police, courts, basic criminal law.

The problem, she says, is that many economists and technocrats behave as if you can keep adding regulation and nudges and always climb higher up the flourishing axis. More tricks, more programmes, more control, always more.

A liberal who believes in diminishing returns should be sceptical. In her picture the curve rises at first, then flattens, then turns down. At some point extra state power starts to reduce human flourishing. For her, using the state to police bathrooms, clothing, pronouns or consensual sex is well into the downward part of that curve.

She is also insistent on a bright line between words and violence. Harsh speech and physical coercion are not the same category. Words hurt, of course. As a trans woman in the Netherlands who could not pass well in early years, she knows what it is to be read as “a man in a dress”. It is painful. But she can live with insults and misgendering. What she cannot accept is being arrested for using the women’s loo. The legal system should focus on actual violence and the threat of it, not on policing speech.

Where she draws lines

She spends time on Kathleen Stock. McCloskey treats Stock as intelligent and as a friend, not as a cartoon villain. They have debated on trans women and single sex spaces at the University of Austin.

McCloskey disagrees strongly with Stock’s view that trans women should be excluded from women only spaces such as changing rooms and toilets. The implied logic is that you end up with a police officer and some kind of gender inspector outside every public bathroom. She finds that absurd and dangerous.

On elite sport, though, she draws a different boundary. She agrees that post puberty male bodies should not compete in women’s events. Physiology matters. Heart size, muscle mass, frame. If you care about women’s sport at all, you have to protect the category. Her compromise is that someone who blocks puberty early and never develops male secondary traits is a different case from someone who transitions at eighteen and wants to race in the women’s 100 metres.

Bathrooms yes. Women’s Olympic finals no.

On affirmative action she is blunt. Programmes are easy to start and hard to end. The better route is to remove explicit legal barriers and then let people compete. She uses Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an example. Ginsburg graduated near the top of her class and still could not get hired because she was a woman. She became a professor and then a lawyer who spent decades chipping away at formal barriers rather than lobbying for engineered outcomes.

Equal outcomes are impossible. Perfect equality of opportunity is impossible. Equality of permission is feasible. Let women be pilots, lawyers, MPs, and stop the law saying no.

Queer rights, populism and making liberalism cool again

A student asks what really shifts queer rights: culture, law, or economics. McCloskey points to same sex marriage. In 1990, in the US, gay marriage was politically unthinkable. Within about twenty years it was law. Spain, not Britain, was first in Europe. The key, in her view, was framing it as equality of permission. Your soul and my soul have the same worth. You marry the person you love. I marry the person I love. The state should treat us on the same terms. Once phrased like that, change can be fast.

The end of the session turns to the backlash. In the US, MAGA politics has made trans people the new hate target. In Britain she sees hostility to trans women more from some segments of the left. She thinks the United States is now sliding down the wrong side of the coercion curve toward more authoritarian reflex and less liberal instinct. She calls Trump a bad man, quite straightforwardly, and notes that he is not even a particularly clever authoritarian. The smart ones raise the temperature on the frog slowly.

How to respond. Her answer is mostly cultural. Make liberalism cool again. She jokes about calling it adultism. Other ideologies treat the state as parent and citizens as children. Liberalism treats people as grown ups. Invite young people into that. Do not just write papers. Ask artists, musicians, filmmakers to tell stories of freedom and responsibility.

…for McCloskey queer lives and liberalism are not in tension. They belong together. Let people live as themselves. Change hearts faster than you give governments new tools. Watch the state like a hawk. And, in the background, keep her grandmother in mind: do anything you want, just do not spook the horses.

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This is bullet point version.

1. Who she is and how she frames herself

• Trained as an economist, now works as historian, philosopher, social and political theorist.

• (I found it interesting, she started as a socialist, and now would be a Christian liberterian or liberal - as opposed to Randian. Difference, she cares about the poor (like she did as socialist), but Randian’s dont so much. That why she would defined capitalism, as good for poor people)

• Self description:

  • “Once a man until 1995”, previously Donald McCloskey.

  • Transitioned in a liberal society and chose the name Deirdre to keep the initial D for librarians and because of its Irish roots and feminine connotations.

• Jokes that she is “Donald’s smarter sister” and that she has become wiser through experience.

• Strong identification with classical liberalism in the line of Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Thoreau.

• Calls herself a “classics groupie” and positions herself explicitly as an eighteenth century style liberal.

2. Core thesis: “Equality of permission” and primary liberalism

• She is finishing a book called Equality of Permission.

• Key idea:

  • Liberalism at its core is about equality of permission, not equality of outcome or even engineered equality of opportunity.

  • Everyone should be “allowed to have a go”, to try things, without artificial obstacles.

• She calls this “primary liberalism” and dates its political breakthrough to:

  • 1776: Jefferson’s “all men are created equal”.

  • 1789: French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

• Primary liberalism:

  • Bottom up.

  • About removing legal barriers and giving people permission to act, speak, trade, migrate, love.

  • Not about micromanaging social outcomes.

3. Secondary liberalism, socialism, and progressivism

• She distinguishes a second wave of liberal or progressive thought around 1848:

  • Continental revolutions and the birth of European socialism, including Marx but not only Marx.

  • In Britain and the United States this second wave appears as “New Liberalism” or “progressivism”.

• Features of this second wave:

  • Top down use of the state to “help the poor” and redesign society.

  • Urban planning and clearance (for example Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris).

  • Strong belief in state capacity to engineer better outcomes.

• Her verdict:

  • Primary liberalism is bottom up and permission focused.

  • Secondary liberalism and socialism are top down, state heavy, and prone to overreach.

4. Her grandmother’s rule: “Do anything you want, but don’t spook the horses”

• She builds a lot on a family motto:

  • “Do anything you want, but do not spook the horses.”

• Interpretation:

  • People should be free to be queer, change gender, write economics articles, live as they like.

  • The boundary is significant external harm to others, not mere disapproval.

  • No metaphorical “stick of dynamite in the town square” that panics society.

• She treats this as a simple, humane formulation of liberal ethics.

5. Christianity, Rabbi Hillel, and the ethics she claims

• She became an Anglican Christian in 1998.

• She anchors her liberalism in:

  • Jesus’ formulation: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  • Rabbi Hillel’s older formulation: “Do not do unto others what you would not want done to you.”

• She calls these “gospels of love and justice”.

• Political ethic:

  • “Let us just get along” is how she characterises modern liberalism at its best.

  • Minimal, non sophisticated politics that simply aims at peaceful coexistence and mutual respect.

6. Personal narrative about gender and stuttering

• Childhood:

  • As an eleven year old, she prayed at night for two miracles:

    • To wake up as a girl.

    • To stop stuttering.

  • She notes that about 2 percent of boys stutter and about 0.5 percent of girls do, across cultures.

• At age 53, in 1995, she transitions:

  • Interprets this as finally getting half of her childhood prayer.

  • Credits the freedom of a modern liberal society for making transition possible.

• Her mother’s reaction:

  • Mother viewed it as Deirdre gaining both experiences, a career as a man and old age as a woman, which she presents as a kind of enlargement of life.

• She emphasises:

  • She was a very “macho” man, captain level high school football player, straight, married to a woman for 30 years.

  • Transition was not about being a feminine gay man, but about something more basic and persistent in gender identity.

7. Discovery of female friendship

• One of her biggest surprises after transition:

  • She claims men rarely have many true friends, even if they think they do.

  • Women often have many light friendships formed quickly and a small number of very deep friendships, which she found “costly” but profound.

• She paints her transition as a revelation in social and emotional structures, not just clothes and pronouns.

8. Queer people, DEI, and diversity as human enrichment

• She defends diversity, equity, and inclusion in a “sensible” form:

  • Accepts that DEI can be taken too far, as can drinking water.

  • Argues that contact with “queers, immigrants, other people” enlarges our humanity.

  • Reading queer autobiographies, novels, and meeting people different from oneself helps produce wiser adults.

• She jokes that “DEI” is literally her first name, so she is sensitive about attacks on DEI.

• Crucial distinction:

  • She wants individuals and institutions to practice DEI out of ethical conviction.

  • She does not want the state to coerce DEI policies as a direct programmatic mandate.

9. The diagram: human flourishing vs coercion

She presents her central policy intuition in a simple diagram:

• Axes:

  • Vertical axis: human flourishing, which can mean income, spiritual flourishing, or broader welfare.

  • Horizontal axis: amount of coercion, especially state coercion.

• Starting point:

  • Some coercion is clearly necessary and positive, for example grabbing a three year old child away from traffic.

  • She accepts police, criminal law, and the state’s monopoly of violence as necessary.

• Main claim:

  • Most economists act as if more regulation and coercion always increases human flourishing.

  • In that view the curve keeps sloping upward as you add regulation.

• Her liberal view:

  • There are diminishing returns to state coercion.

  • The curve rises at low levels of coercion, plateaus, then falls.

  • Past a certain point, additional regulation makes things worse.

• Application to queer and gender issues:

  • Using the state to police bathrooms, dress, gender identity, or consensual sexual behaviour is beyond the optimal point.

  • That kind of intervention is on the downward part of the curve, reducing human flourishing.

10. Physical coercion vs words

• She rejects the idea that harsh speech is “coercion” in the same sense as physical force:

  • Argues for a bright line between physical coercion and verbal persuasion.

  • Says equating “verbal rape” with physical rape trivialises actual violence.

  • Uses the childhood line “sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me” to capture the distinction, while admitting words do hurt.

• Practical implication:

  • She can tolerate being misgendered and insulted.

  • She cannot tolerate being arrested or physically coerced for using the women’s bathroom.

11. The state as a danger to queer people

• Cites political philosopher Judith Shklar’s “liberalism of fear”:

  • Liberalism centrally concerned with fearing the state’s coercive capacity.

• Historical examples:

  • Northern Europe had a century long terror against male homosexuals, with criminal sanctions.

  • Southern Europe often treated homosexuality as a sin but not a crime.

• Central argument:

  • States get captured by hate coalitions which then use law against Jews, Catholics, blacks, queers and other minorities.

  • Therefore a liberal should be deeply wary of giving the state new tools to regulate queer lives.

• She stresses that states have “never been the friend of queers” in the long historical record.

12. Trans issues, Kathleen Stock, and “the bathroom problem”

• She credits philosopher Kathleen Stock as serious and intelligent but disagrees with her on policy.

• Stock’s position as she presents it:

  • Trans women should not be allowed in women only spaces such as changing rooms, possibly toilets.

  • Stock worries about safety and violation of sex based boundaries.

• McCloskey’s critique:

  • Says this would effectively require a police officer and a “gender assigner” outside every public toilet, which she finds absurd.

  • Sees it as an unnecessary expansion of state coercion into intimate life.

• Her own position:

  • She uses women’s toilets simply to pee, not to assault anyone, and sees herself as no threat.

  • She does not want the state involved in deciding where she may urinate.

  • Thinks gender issues for children should be handled by families and professionals, not parliaments.

13. Sports and fairness: where she agrees with Stock

In the Q&A, she draws a clear line on elite women’s sport:

• She fully agrees with the view that:

  • Post puberty male to female transitioners should not compete in women only elite sports such as swimming or running.

  • Male puberty creates lasting physiological advantages in heart size, muscle mass, and frame.

• Her principle:

  • If a child has consistent cross gender identity and uses puberty blockers early, and thus never develops male traits, they might fairly compete as women.

  • But allowing a mature male body to enter women’s competitions destroys the point of women’s sport.

• She calls this “a no brainer” and treats it as common sense fairness, separate from bathroom and changing room issues.

14. United States vs United Kingdom, and the new “hate group”

• She claims in the United States:

  • The MAGA movement has made “transgenderism” the new hate target.

  • She explicitly likens the pattern to the classic “first they came for the Jews” escalation sequence.

• She distinguishes:

  • Conservatives she respects (for example George Will).

  • A “hateful crowd” currently wielding power who use trans people as scapegoats.

• In the United Kingdom:

  • She says hostility to trans women currently comes more from segments of the left, especially some feminists.

• She sees both right wing and left wing variants of illiberalism that weaponise queer issues.

15. Affirmative action, DEI, and changing hearts instead of laws

• Question on affirmative action for women and minorities:

  • She opposes affirmative action as a permanent state policy.

  • Argues that once a program starts, it rarely ends, even when no longer needed.

• Uses Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an example:

  • Ginsburg faced direct discrimination as one of a tiny number of female law students and could not get a job.

  • Ginsburg’s legal work sought removal of barriers, not guaranteed equal outcomes.

• Her distinction:

  • Equality of opportunity in a strict sense is impossible, because humans are varied in talents, preferences, languages, and histories.

  • Equality of outcomes is impossible and undesirable.

  • Equality of permission, which focuses on removing legal and institutional obstacles, is attainable.

• On DEI:

  • She wants DEI to be practiced voluntarily by institutions and individuals, not enforced top down by the state.

16. Family, gender, and power

• She emphasises the importance of the family as:

  • The place where we learn love, care, and basic social relations.

  • Also a possible site of serious oppression.

• Examples:

  • Romanian dictator Ceaușescu forcing women into the labour market and placing children into state orphanages to raise GDP, which she calls devastating for mental health.

  • The Roman paterfamilias having legal power of life and death over his children.

  • Bolsonaro’s remark that he would execute a gay son, which she treats as an example of family based cruelty.

• She insists:

  • Liberal analysis cannot ignore the family simply because libertarians often focus only on state and markets.

  • Care work and parenting are real work and central to human flourishing.

17. Queer rights traction: culture, law, and economics

In reply to a student asking why queer rights rise and fall and what drives progress:

• She argues progress is highly culture specific and can change fast.

• Example of same sex marriage:

  • In 1990, the idea of two men or two women marrying was completely off the table in mainstream US politics.

  • Within a short time, reframing it as a simple matter of equal civil permission transformed public acceptance.

  • Spain is noted as the first European country to legalise gay marriage, ahead of the UK bureaucracy.

• Her view of drivers:

  • Cultural frames and narratives are key.

  • When queer rights are framed as basic fairness and equal soul value, they become more acceptable.

  • This is aligned with major religious traditions that treat souls as equal.

18. Access to hormone therapy and who should pay

• Question: should state provided hormone therapy be seen as equality of permission or opportunity, and should the state fund it?

• Her answer:

  • She does not think the state should pay for transitions.

  • Believes transition is cheaper than many imagine, roughly comparable to a small car.

  • States that female to male transitions are particularly inexpensive in biological terms because male hormones quickly change voice, muscle, and personality.

  • Male to female is harder because male secondary characteristics cannot be fully undone.

• Her principle:

  • Gender change should be a private matter financially.

  • She does not see a strong case for transition as a public expense, in contrast with her strong case against the state banning or obstructing it.

19. Populism, authoritarianism, and “making liberalism cool again”

• She worries about:

  • The decline of liberal norms in the last 10 to 20 years due to populism and anti liberal politics.

  • Citizens losing “popular liberal consciousness”.

• Response strategy:

  • Change hearts, not only policies, by making liberalism attractive, especially to the young.

  • She jokingly rebrands liberalism as “adultism”, since other political philosophies treat citizens as children and the state as parent.

  • Argues that many young people want to be treated as grown ups, not as dependants of the state.

• Role of the arts:

  • Calls for artists, novelists, filmmakers, musicians to carry messages of freedom and adult responsibility.

  • Cites Mick Jagger as a symbol of cultural influence and jokes about his LSE connection.

20. Trump, the US, and where she thinks the curve is now

• She is explicitly alarmed by Trump:

  • Says he moves towards authoritarianism with new outrages almost every week.

  • Believes he has a strong instinct for exploiting resentment among Americans who feel bossed around by the state.

  • Calls him “a bad man” in straightforward moral language.

• On the coercion curve:

  • She believes the United States is currently on the downward part of the curve, where increased state coercion reduces human flourishing.

  • She compares “smart” authoritarians, who move slowly like the metaphorical frog in heating water, with Trump, whom she calls not smart but still dangerous.

• Prescription:

  • Maintain a single, accountable state with a monopoly of violence, but watch it very closely.

  • Resist expansions of coercive power, especially those targeting minorities like trans people.

That is the gist: McCloskey mixes personal trans narrative, queer experience, Christian ethics, classical liberal theory, and a blunt distrust of state power. Her through line is simple: let people live as they are, do not bring coercive law into toilets and gender, accept limits on what the state can fix, and fight like hell to keep the coercion curve from bending downward.

Link mirror to blog here.

• Writing: New Jersey travels and ice cream

• Science: Overview Effect, Space travel

• Writing: Salima Saxton (life)

• Blogs: Lizzo (obesity), Charli XCX (fame), Dwarkesh (AI), Sam (life)

• Climate: Hannah Ritchie (podcast)

• Links/Jobs: Wellcome strategy job, head of UKRI, mini robots; brexit costs, optimism = longer life; Dwarkesh podcast writer job

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This week I have been thinking about in between states, from the Overview Effect in orbit to airport lounges, New Jersey malls, fame corridors and ice cream queues.

I’ve been travelling for work. I’ve been leaning into reading and making some life writing notes. Big picture work: much of world equity markets are trying to figure out if we are in an AI bubble or not, which tech companies (or any companies) are AI winners, if government shutdowns matter and if war/peace is coming. I also met someone who went into space (above the Kármán line), the way he spoke about the experience has echoes of a momentous life experience. He did suggest he underwent the Overview Effect:

The Overview Effect is the psychological and emotional shift many astronauts report when they see Earth from space as a small, fragile, borderless sphere (he said it was like a tiny marble in space) in a vast dark void, which often leaves them feeling awe, connectedness, and a stronger urge to protect the planet.

All that seems quite far away from the day to day people I meet, or read about, or speak to.

On that level, I recommend my friend Salima Saxton. Her substack is new but she writes amusingly and touchingly about: being ill and a bad patient and the death of her estranged father (who banned her from the funeral). Both great reads from a life perspective.

In a very different vein, you have Sam who leans into forecasting theory and the expected value of things and has put down some of his thoughts on dialling back social media, and what matter he deems to be true. Check him out.

On more famous people, Dwarkesh Patel continues to be the leading conversationalist / podcaster on matters of AI philosophy and frontier thinking (while I recommend Ben Thompson at Stratechery for overall Tech; and Zvi on forensic AI takes; and Ethan Mollick on general everyday AI assessments). I would say almost everyone significant in AI would be listening in to Dwarkesh. His conversation with Andrej Karpathy, I think will be noted for a long while. Dwarkesh is looking for a writer to join his team, BTW at $100 - 225K.

I had not realised the performer Lizzo

(Grammy winning American singer and classically trained flutist, famous for body positivity and self love, now complicated by unresolved workplace misconduct lawsuits)

had collided into so much controversy over the last few years. I have no idea on that. But she has started a substack, which has some flute playing and a very long thoughtful read on losing weight / body positive movement. But, the real gems are in the comments from a wide range of people looking at views here. You get a real glimpse of people’s lives. Why is everybody losing weight and what do we do?....

Pop star, Charli XCX also has a substack (to go alongside her other socials).

Charli is a relentlessly self-aware, internet-native pop shapeshifter who turns club chaos, emotional oversharing and razor-sharp hooks into innovative mainstream pop.

She writes about fame, and in particular the dead and liminal spaces of fame - the below stage, the corridors, the airports. Charli suggests her sort of fame has a particular type of living and moving through liminal spaces.

You will also end up spending a lot of time inhabiting strange and soulless liminal spaces. Whether its the holding area of the event you’re about to enter, the airport lounge, the visa office, the claustrophobic tour bus, the greenroom with no windows, the underneath of a stage or the set build of a photoshoot or music video you’re on, you are often caught in the in-between. You’re in transit, you’re going somewhere but the journey itself takes up the majority of the experience. When Rachel Sennott came to shoot her scene in our upcoming film The Moment she was overnighted in a van straight from the front row of the Balenciaga show in Paris to the back doors of a warehouse in London’s Docklands. She was bundled up with blankets and pillows and shipped directly to us like a package. The journey took all night but she was only on set for around an hour.

Reflecting on this, I thought many of us also move through these liminal spaces but we often don’t think about them. Her piece here.

(I find it interesting that both Lizzo and Charli have ended up on substack. Suggesting that a space for long form written thoughts from famous people is useful and X/Twitter/Threads/Facebook is not filling that).

Travelling does bring out this sense of inbetween. I have a draft of some notes I took on my recent couple of day travel through the middle of New Jersey. Let me know what you think.

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A scoop of Dexter Freebish

WiFi is now available on the airplane. There is nowhere to hide and pretend unavailability.

I pass forty-odd seats. No one is reading a physical book.

Flying into New Jersey, buildings are dotted amongst trees in autumn russet, golden shades.

Is this humanity nestled into nature, or nature padded out with humanity?

There is a snaking line of non-Americans waiting to pass through. The many ghosts of similar lines persuaded me to obtain Global Entry. A selfie on the app, and I stride past, welcomed into New Jersey with a tiny wave and a momentary glance.

Outside the airport, there is an explosion of noise: New Jersey American brogue mixed with American Spanish. The Latino element is strong. Signage is in Spanish. Latinos are present serving and waiting and driving.

Airports concentrate emotion. I observe couples, families, friends, peoples parted and re-united. If you paused and took each moment seriously, you would be moved and probably never get to baggage claim.

The Uber app works efficiently. My driver grew up in Cairo. My Arabic just about matches his American, and we get along. Elections have been held. He is vaguely aware and vaguely interested. After six years of driving Uber, all his family is here in New Jersey now.

The sun sets in multi-colour yellow and red, echoing the turning leaves.

New Jersey - lo - America is the land of the car. Roads and roads. Turnpikes and turnpikes. You cannot easily walk places.

The hotel is one of those transient business hotels. Box-like. Repetitive-like. Unobtrusively anodyne.

The receptionist cannot understand my wish to walk to the mall.

Only four minutes by Uber. “Will they even pick me up?” I ask.

“Yes. Of course. I don’t really recommend walking.”

The maps app suggests it is only a fifteen-minute walk, but the supposed path is hard to see. I wait at a crossroads. Four lanes of cars and cars and cars. I carefully sprint across. A narrow path by the road leads to the mall.

A New Jersey mall experience: the mall as enshrined in American movies and books. The mall is fairly empty. Unsurprising in this age of internet retail. A handful of teenagers walk around. The mall is still a place to hang out regardless. I spy not a single customer in Bloomingdale’s.

The food court serves mostly fried and fast cuisine. There is a smattering of workers. Most are Latino and non-white, serving Latino and non-white customers. Unlikely to be Bloomingdale shoppers. I notice this perhaps because I am an American outsider. This divide seems more invisible to locals like how in Britain class is the invisible divide.

There is a fish and chips counter that no Brit would recognise as fish and chips.

You could say this for the Thai counter too.

I’m still searching for my over the counter medicine. In Bloomingdale’s, I ask for help. The gathered assistants chatting to one another have nothing better to do. The woman who takes charge to assist me happens to be the manager. She walks me to where a convenience store ought to be. I ask her about the emptiness, the low footfall. She says unless there is a promotion the mall is quiet and stays quiet, although Bloomingdale’s in this area clings on as a destination for those wanting to see high-end brands and not wanting to trek into New York. We arrive on another floor. The convenience kiosk has closed down. She had not known.

Try Uber delivery later, she suggests.

The Apple Store is the only store that looks busy.

I wander to a mid-scale restaurant, 4.5 stars on Google Maps. No table seats, but I squeeze onto a bar stool. The butter fish and rice is $30. The mall fish and chips was priced at $14. Wine is served in sizes as small as 3 ounces or 2 mouthfuls. The waiting staff offer perfunctory, surface politeness. None of the diners are Hispanic. At restaurants like this, the solo traveller can strike up a conversation at the bar. I’m not feeling social tonight. I pull out a notebook and a small memoir to read. I like small books to travel with, easy to read in any in between time and in between space.

I spy a bus. I observe it for seven minutes, but no one gets on or off.

The night is very dark. I am advised, really advised, to take an Uber. I am not so high and mighty as to dismiss local advice. The Uber is efficient. A possible meandering twenty-minute walk in the dark along parking lots and across busy highways is turned into a four-minute drive.

I cave in. I wait in reception. I use the Uber Grocery app. Thirty minutes later, a teenage kid on a bicycle delivers.

The weather is cool but not cold. Figuring out how to switch off the heating is harder than it seems. Perhaps I am not clever in such matters, but the control is hidden and the off-button small.

I am driven across some of New Jersey. I am currently in the middle. Twenty minutes’ driving in any direction and there is a town. The towns blur into one another.

The scale of the houses is dwarfish compared to Manhattan. The landscape paints another world.

This is my fifth driver and the first New Jersey native. I ask what has changed.

The food grease trucks in New Brunswick have gone. Students and drunks, and drunk students would queue up in prime real estate for heart attack inducing subs. Memorable moments probably not for the reasons Rutgers University staff would like. Repeat visitors still ask about the trucks, he tells me.

I have two hours when I do not need to do anything. I end up at the art museum. There is a series of old Russian anti-propane art. There are Greek and Roman artifacts. There is a tale of the catastrophes of colonialism told through expensive art. The narrative jars with the beautifully designed place. Perhaps that is the troublesome point. Where in time do we draw the line, if there is a line? How do we carry one era’s morals into another’s? I think of South Sudan.

There is an event titled Tecknow Powwow advertised outside the gallery. I’m still living in between time so I venture to the Powwow. The stage has been set in the old church. A blend of microphones new and pews old. The anti-colonial energy has carried over. I see the Fancy Feather Dance. I learn it is one of the more athletic and visually explosive powwow styles: jumps, spins, high-speed footwork. The performers tell some of its history.

The men’s Fancy Feather Dance was born in Oklahoma around the 1920s among Ponca, Kiowa and other Southern Plains tribes. After the US government banned many traditional ceremonies in the late nineteenth century, tribal communities created intertribal powwows to keep dancing alive under new labels. The Dance preserved the spirit of older warrior dances while fitting into public exhibitions the authorities would tolerate.

I see the Shawl Dance. I learn that when the men’s Fancy Feather Dance took off in the 1920s, the young women watching wanted their own style with the same freedom of movement. Traditional women’s dances were elegant but very controlled: small steps, blankets held close, little jumping or spinning. The women thought they could do better.

Three styles of modern dance are explained and shown to us: Breaking. Popping. Hip Hop.

I’m unsure what to make of this juxtaposition of dances.

All of this takes place in the Kirkpatrick Church of 1873. On land, I’m told that the Raritan Lenape used to live on. The Lenape had limited notion of exclusive land ownership. Land was shared and use was seasonal, negotiated, relational, and based on need and reciprocity. The Lenape may have appreciated the student need for greasy food. The river that still runs through the land is now named Raritan.

I later learn the Church was built with legacy money from Sofia Astley Kirkpatrick. Sofia’s life has been mostly lost to history. Her husband was a New Brunswick mayor and congressman. Rutgers University remembers her as she left her inheritance to the college. The only other significant piece of memory is her travel journal written when she was 17 documenting her steam boat trip up the Hudson Valley and into Canada. A river, a journal, a church.

I meet with local friends. They choose a restaurant famous for double-cooked Korean-style fried chicken wings. We talk and talk. Topics: the state of US healthcare; the intractable problems of South Sudan; whether the newly elected New York mayor is a social democrat. More topics: paddle ball versus pickle ball pros and cons, the weather in Florida, and romance fantasy novels. We have never met in person before but I feel this will be one of the most memorable dinners of my life. They promise me an amazing ice cream that evening.

The ice cream parlour claims the best ice cream in New Brunswick. Hard ice cream made daily. The most creative blends. I am stuck with too much choice. The staff go beyond the polite American service smile and recommend a unique Dexter Freebish concoction. The owner was once a groupie of the indie band, and so the flavour has the band’s name. There seem to be more sweeteners and calories in this pot than in a full day of eating. I will remember this ice cream for the rest of my life.

The evening is an ice cream blend: students in short skirts and uncomfortable shoes, forward fashion, commuters trudging home, the thud of trains, uber cars zooming about, a humming dissonance.

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Can we be honest about climate change and still stay hopeful? What would you say to your 16 year old self? Hannah Ritchie joins me to talk about her new book Clearing the Air: 50 Questions and Answers about Climate. From 1.5c realism and why abundance might beat austerity.

Together, Ben and Hannah explore how honesty builds trust in climate science, why the 1.5 °C target is probably out of reach (and why that’s not the end of hope), and China’s complex role as both the world’s largest emitter and clean-tech powerhouse.

They dig into how abundance, not austerity, could define the next phase of climate progress; how to handle renewable energy variability and mineral demand; and why “net zero” may need a more realistic framing. Hannah also shares personal reflections — what she’d say to her 16-year-old self, how she balances optimism with realism, her daily running routine by the Scottish coast, and advice for those hoping to make an impact in sustainability.

The conversation closes with a look at smart philanthropy, innovative climate projects, and the creative habits that keep her hopeful, curious, and effective.

Topics:

-Why honesty matters in climate communication
-China’s role in climate progress
-Population growth and climate impact
-The concept of abundance in sustainability
-Hope and optimism for the future
-Can we transition fast enough?
-Decarbonising electricity and transport
-Cement and other climate challenges
-Rethinking “net zero” goals
-Individual action vs systemic change
-AI’s role in sustainability
-Personal insights and creative habits
-Philanthropy and high-impact giving
-Current projects and career advice

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Links:

Job: new chair of UKRI - fostering innovation. Link (LI). UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is the public sector organisation that invests £8 billion annually to support the entire research and innovation system. Deadline 11 Jan.

Job: Wellcome Trust: Chief Strategy Officer. A permanent, executive-committee role reporting to the CEO, leading the development and delivery of Wellcome’s strategy across its £37bn investment-funded portfolio. The focus is on tackling three urgent global health challenges – Climate & Health, Infectious Diseases and Mental Health – while supporting world-class discovery research. Closing date is Thursday 4 December with interviews in January 2026. Link (LI)

Mini-mini robots to deliver drugs? Microrobots in blood vessels are edging from sci-fi into actual clinical tech. Researchers at ETH Zurich have built a magnetically guided microrobot – a tiny dissolvable gel capsule packed with iron oxide nanoparticles – that can be steered through blood vessels and cerebrospinal fluid to deliver drugs exactly where they’re needed. Link (BBC)

NBER economists paper: Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6-8%...investment was reduced by 12-18%, employment by 3-4% and productivity by 3-4%....a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources... Link (Bloom et al) NBER

Optimism: “Our results further suggest that optimism is specifically related to 11 to 15% longer life span, on average, and to greater odds of achieving “exceptional longevity,” that is, living to the age of 85 or beyond.” Link (PNAS, 2019)

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Thanks for reading! Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays.

• Travel: Boston and healthcare drug prices

• Climate: 2.2c is the most likely temp rise, NZ 2093

• Life: Vignette of tomatoes in the rain

• Writing: Save the Cat, Hollywood movie structure

• Podcast: Hannah Ritchie on 50 climate questions

• AI: Jack Clark on future visions

• Economics: Nobel prize; how did we grow?

• Education: Home education memoir, Caro Giles; Catherine Oliver tips

• Writing: Anoushka is shortlisted for The Curae Prize, a literary award for unpaid carers. Online launch 12 Nov 6pm UK, FREE. Buy anthology, profits to charity.

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In the last few weeks, I’ve flitted through Boston for a healthcare conference. I made a day trip to Hamburg to visit an environmental and food testing lab. At home, I ate our late harvest home grown tomatoes, standing in the rain.

Arriving at Boston on a Sunday afternoon is smooth. Immigration waves me through in mere seconds (thank you Global Entry) and there is no queue for taxis. Transport supply between Ubers and taxis is efficient although I note prices seem up - maybe it’s the minimum 20% tip that makes it seem expensive. $35 from airport to Boston Common.

Shuttling between hotel to hotel from Boston Common to Boston Seaport, I would not have thought there was any angst in the U.S. Joggers were running. Restaurants still buzzing. Conferences still happening. But there was a protest which turned into a moderate riot the week I was there. If I hadn’t seen the news, I would have had no idea.

My observation is that it is easy to be oblivious. Many happenings which don’t directly impact us, we don’t feel, and we walk around oblivious.

A passing sight, these trees - beautiful in their own way - sitting inside the reception of an office block. An incongruous image of nature within glass and steel.

A brief note on the healthcare conference. Healthcare innovation steadily improves across almost all human diseases and especially the major rich country diseases, like heart diseases, obesity, cancers. We continue to make improvements.

Life expectancies are around all time highs and if you take a metric like 5 year survival rates for breast cancer, the U.S. now looks like >9/10 5 year survival:

In the US, the 5-year breast cancer survival rate has risen to about 91%. Roughly 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime, meaning almost everyone knows someone affected. The death rate has fallen by nearly 40% over the past 25 years, thanks to earlier detection and better treatments.

Having looked at healthcare for 25 years now, it’s notable (h/t Jack Scanlon) that most

“public policy debate on drug prices ignores the main way that the value of pharmaceutical innovation is transferred to consumers. That is via the consumer surplus created by the genericization process.”

More than 90% of drugs prescribed in the US are generic and so, as a first approximation, are almost free of charge. (This is the same in UK and most of Europe).

The world has great cheap generics because the hope of big profits incentivized R&D investment.

Most arguments about drug prices focus on “static efficiency” [allocation of today’s resources] while the triumph of medicine in general, and pharmaceuticals in particular, has been one of dynamic efficiency [improvement over time]. In the long run, dynamic is much more important than static efficiency. Policy should reflect value transfer via genericization and the importance of dynamic efficiency.

As a small almost silly example think about the benefit we continue to gain from aspirin and antibiotics? Or the benefits we are currently gaining from generic statins and insulins and diabetes treatments.

We are oblivious to the value. It will be the same for obesity medications especially around 2031 where semaglutide will be generic in most countries (and already in Canada and Brazil in 2026….)

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In the London autumn, my Latah tomatoes managed to ripen. I mentioned them previously as they were developed in the U.S. for cooler weather.

The Latah tomato was developed at the University of Idaho in Latah County in the 1970s to 1980s and released for home growers for cool climates and short growing seasons. The Latah is not grown commercially as the fruits are fragile and the yields more modest compared to commercial hybrids

The flavour is glorious although I expect part of the joy is in the knowledge of having grown them from seed. We often under-appreciate the psychological aspects of food.

I recall reading about chef Heston Blumenthal’s deconstructed fish and chips where the smells and sounds of the sea were also evoked. In part this is a theatrical gimmick, yet theatre and psychology are in play with the best food moments.

Earlier in the month, there was a cool autumn rain. Not so cold that you’d need a thick jacket for warmth rather than water protection - a refreshing nip. The rain was beyond a misting London drizzle. Not a downpour, no thunder, just a steady big drop beat.

Outside our front door, I pause in the rain and survey my untidy jumble of tomato plants.

I wrote his tiny life note as I sat on the Tube.

A tomato has managed to turn a modest red but has part burst from the days of water. I want to keep the gains of this hard fought ripening grown from a seed. I consider for a moment, standing in the rain. I pluck and immediately eat.

Home grown sweet, cool, complex tart it tastes of the last days of summer. A burst tomato. Burst further in my mouth. Cool fat drops of rain.

I trudge off.

When you can, I recommend recording a life note rather than doom scrolling on your phone.

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In climate thinking the independent Norwegian firm, DNV published its latest most likely forecast on climate change (2025 ETO). (For the nerds, this differs from many probability scenario forecasts offered by others by focusing on what it views is the most likely pathway we are currently travelling on).

This predicts 2.2c of warming and 2093 net zero.

If you compared this to what we were worried about in 2000, it’s in many ways amazing the forecasts have decreased so much (from a 4c+ type of world).

The challenge is still great, but we have improved. That is also one of the messages from Bill Gates’ latest letter. Some critics think he is downplaying the challenge - I don’t read it that way. But he is emphasising the poverty and health challenges of the poorest and the intersectional value humanity gains from helping them.

This is a good segue into my excellent conversation with Hannah Ritchie on her new book.

Can we be honest about climate change and still stay hopeful? What would you say to your 16 year old self? Hannah Ritchie joins me to talk about her new book Clearing the Air: 50 Questions and Answers about Climate. From 1.5c realism and why abundance might beat austerity.

Hannah Ritchie — one of the most lucid and data-driven voices in climate and sustainability — returns to the podcast to discuss her new book Clearing the Air: 50 Questions and Answers about Climate.

Together, Ben and Hannah explore how honesty builds trust in climate science, why the 1.5 °C target is probably out of reach (and why that’s not the end of hope), and China’s complex role as both the world’s largest emitter and clean-tech powerhouse.

They dig into how abundance, not austerity, could define the next phase of climate progress; how to handle renewable energy variability and mineral demand; and why “net zero” may need a more realistic framing. Hannah also shares personal reflections — what she’d say to her 16-year-old self, how she balances optimism with realism, her daily running routine by the Scottish coast, and advice for those hoping to make an impact in sustainability.

The conversation closes with a look at smart philanthropy, innovative climate projects, and the creative habits that keep her hopeful, curious, and effective.

Topics:

-Why honesty matters in climate communication
-China’s role in climate progress
-Population growth and climate impact
-The concept of abundance in sustainability
-Hope and optimism for the future
-Can we transition fast enough?
-Decarbonising electricity and transport
-Cement and other climate challenges
-Rethinking “net zero” goals
-Individual action vs systemic change
-AI’s role in sustainability
-Personal insights and creative habits
-Philanthropy and high-impact giving
-Current projects and career advice

Or on Youtube:

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Many of us are oblivious to the fact that most AGI (artificial general intelligence) experts think they are working on the most transformational change and technology in the history of humanity and that a version of AGI - a type which might be agenetic or have a form of self-awareness - is only a few years away, or potentially, only a few decades, maximum.

One of the leaders of the AI corner of the world wrote a reflective essay on his hopes and fears. Jack Clark, Co-founder of Anthropic, has written a remarkable essay.

I remember being a child and after the lights turned out I would look around my bedroom and I would see shapes in the darkness and I would become afraid – afraid these shapes were creatures I did not understand that wanted to do me harm. And so I’d turn my light on. And when I turned the light on I would be relieved because the creatures turned out to be a pile of clothes on a chair, or a bookshelf, or a lampshade.

Now, in the year of 2025, we are the child from that story and the room is our planet. But when we turn the light on we find ourselves gazing upon true creatures, in the form of the powerful and somewhat unpredictable AI systems of today and those that are to come. And there are many people who desperately want to believe that these creatures are nothing but a pile of clothes on a chair, or a bookshelf, or a lampshade. And they want to get us to turn the light off and go back to sleep.

…We are growing extremely powerful systems that we do not fully understand. Each time we grow a larger system, we run tests on it. The tests show the system is much more capable at things which are economically useful. And the bigger and more complicated you make these systems, the more they seem to display awareness that they are things.

It is as if you are making hammers in a hammer factory and one day the hammer that comes off the line says, “I am a hammer, how interesting!” This is very unusual!

…I am also deeply afraid. It would be extraordinarily arrogant to think working with a technology like this would be easy or simple.

My own experience is that as these AI systems get smarter and smarter, they develop more and more complicated goals. When these goals aren’t absolutely aligned with both our preferences and the right context, the AI systems will behave strangely.

…we are not yet at “self-improving AI”, but we are at the stage of “AI that improves bits of the next AI, with increasing autonomy and agency”. And a couple of years ago we were at “AI that marginally speeds up coders”, and a couple of years before that we were at “AI is useless for AI development”. Where will we be one or two years from now?

And let me remind us all that the system which is now beginning to design its successor is also increasingly self-aware and therefore will surely eventually be prone to thinking, independently of us, about how it might want to be designed.

…In closing, I should state clearly that I love the world and I love humanity. I feel a lot of responsibility for the role of myself and my company here. And though I am a little frightened, I experience joy and optimism at the attention of so many people to this problem, and the earnestness with which I believe we will work together to get to a solution. I believe we have turned the light on and we can demand it be kept on, and that we have the courage to see things as they are.

I’m unsure how close to the visions of AI leaders we will get, but it seems quite possible we will get close.

This thinking on AI explains a large amount of what we are seeing in equities asset prices in my view (and others too….) (H/T Kyla Scanlon)

• Nearly 40% of US GDP growth this year comes from AI.

• According to Morgan Stanley, “roughly 75% of S&P 500 returns, 80% of earnings growth, and 90% of capital expenditures growth” can be attributed to the AI data center build out.

Although for markets, you also need to note that Gold is at close to (and reached this year) all time highs (also see Ray Dalio recently on this, if interested). Many types of investors seem to be driving both gold (holding on to a certain type of money, hedging geopolitical risk) as well as AI stocks (this tech will transform the world thinking…).

It’s worth not being oblivious to this…

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Save the Cat summary. I was explaining how Save the Cat worked to a friend and thought I’d outline it in more details (with GPT) and summarise it here.

Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder is a cheeky, brutally pragmatic breakdown of Hollywood storytelling.

1. The Core Philosophy

Snyder’s thesis

“Audiences love heroes who do something selfless early on — they save the cat.”

That small, human act earns audience empathy.
The rest of the book expands that logic into a system: structure, genre, theme, and tone must all serve audience connection. Snyder’s genius was to codify that connection into an easy-to-follow, relentlessly commercial structure.

2. The “Save the Cat” Beat Sheet

This is the skeleton for nearly every Hollywood movie Snyder reverse-engineered. Each “beat” roughly corresponds to a page count (assuming a 110-page screenplay).

Opening Image – The first impression of tone, world, and protagonist before transformation.

1. Theme Stated – Someone hints at the story’s moral or central question, often in dialogue.

2. Set-Up – Introduce key characters, show what’s missing in the hero’s life, and establish stakes.

3. Catalyst – The inciting incident: something disruptive happens that kicks the story into motion.

4. Debate – The hero resists the call, doubts themselves, and weighs options.

5. Break into Two – The decision point where the hero commits to the journey and enters a new world.

6. B Story – A relationship subplot, often romantic or emotional, that carries the theme.

7. Fun and Games – The “promise of the premise”; the central gimmick or joy of the story.

8. Midpoint – A false victory or false defeat; the stakes sharpen, often with a twist or revelation.

9. Bad Guys Close In – Internal and external pressures rise; allies fall away; antagonistic forces strengthen.

10. All Is Lost – A moment of seeming death or total failure — mentor dies, plan collapses, love lost.

11. Dark Night of the Soul – The emotional low; the hero confronts despair and the deeper meaning of their struggle.

12. Break into Three – A new idea or insight emerges from uniting the A-story and B-story; the hero regains purpose.

13. Finale – The protagonist applies what they’ve learned, overcomes old flaws, and resolves the main conflict.

14. Final Image – A mirror of the opening, showing transformation and emotional closure.

Save the Cat summary.

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This is the thinking behind the latest Nobel prize in economics.

(H/T Tyler Cowen). Here is GPT-5 making the case. Excerpt:

A micro‑foundation for growth: “useful knowledge,” its two forms, and the Industrial Enlightenment

Mokyr’s signature contribution is to put knowledge—not just capital, labor, or “institutions” in the abstract—at the center of modern growth. In The Gifts of Athena and subsequent papers and lectures, he distinguishes between:

• Propositional knowledge (“knowledge what” about natural regularities), and

• Prescriptive knowledge (“knowledge how” about techniques and production).

He argues that sustained growth arises when a society builds positive feedback between the two: deeper scientific understanding makes techniques improvable, while new techniques generate puzzles that push science forward. This is the Industrial Enlightenment: a culture that expects progress, rewards it, and knits together savants and artisans in a “Republic of Letters,” a kind of 18th‑century knowledge commons with rules for open exchange, replication, and credit…

In The Enlightened Economy and A Culture of Growth, Mokyr shows that the British/European break‑out ca. 1700–1850 was propelled less by isolated “heroic” inventions or factor prices alone and more by a cultural–epistemic shift: an elite market for ideas in a politically fragmented Europe created exit options for heterodox thinkers and incentives for rulers to compete for talent. This account complements rather than denies other forces (coal, wages, property rights), but it explains persistence—why growth became self‑sustaining.

…Joel Mokyr changed how economists explain the onset and persistence of modern growth. He supplied a historically grounded, analytically sharp account of how societies produce, organize, and circulate knowledge so that it becomes self‑amplifying. That account has not only reshaped economic history; it has supplied live ammunition for growth theory and for policy in a world where intangible, recombinable knowledge is the main engine of prosperity. The 2025 Nobel Committee’s decision to honor him alongside Aghion and Howitt simply makes explicit what many researchers have long recognized: innovations power growth, and Mokyr showed us how societies build the machinery that powers innovations.

My 2022 podcast with Mark Koyama discusses some of this.

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My wife, Anoushka, was delighted to be shortlisted for The Curae Prize, a literary award for unpaid carers. November sees the release of “The Curae - An Anthology from the Second Curae Prize” which will include Anoushka’s essay, “Metamorphosis” and other vibrant new writing.

Please join us for the online launch to celebrate the release of the anthology.

12 November, 6-7pm

Free launch tickets here

Pre-order the anthology here

All profits support Carers UK and Carers Trust.

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Other home ed links:

• “Unschooled” by Caro Giles is out. Guardian Review:

Caro Giles had to home-educate three of her four daughters when they grew so distressed at the prospect of school that they made themselves ill.

Her substack. Amazon link to book.

• Catherine Oliver her substack on home schooling:

This November I’m going to share thirty small ideas that I think make homeschooling a little easier. Hopefully they’ll be useful to non-homeschoolers too.

Thanks for reading!

• Values: Justin Bieber family values

• Motherhood: Of woman born, institutions of motherhood

• Policing: Podcast with former senior police officer

• Health: My panel chat on obesity and GLP-1s, I am optimistic.

• Autism: Naomi Fisher contra determinism

• Climate: view on latest policies and what to do from here

• Philosophy: Contra utilitarian, consequentialist longtermism; my essay

• Funding: UK ARIA looking for people to host innovation circle meet-ups

• Retreats: ursprung creativity retreats

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These (above) are Justin Bieber’s family values. Have any of you made family values? What would yours be ? I’m thinking about what mine would be. I reckon I would have kindness (which maps on to Bieber’s generosity), as a slight more unusual one I might consider “grace” especially grace in adversity or pressure. Going to think about this more and would be interested in thoughts if you’ve made any?

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Naomi Fisher (see our podcast on self directed education here) had a long post on autism and neuro-affirmative ideas. Not everyone will agree with her views. But in this piece, Naomi makes an important point around “determinism” and a related idea on “fatalism”.

I discuss this a little with Samir Varma on ideas around free will. And with Sumit on ideas around optimism vs both fabalism and determinism.

Naomi writes:

I’m often told I’m neuro-affirmative and it has never quite sat right with me. So I have done a deep dive into neuro-affirmative assessment and therapy. I’ve read all the books which Amazon could provide when I searched for ‘neuro-affirmative’ and ‘psychology’ and ‘therapy’. I’ve read the articles which come up. I can say for sure, I’m not a neuro-affirmative psychologist.

That doesn’t mean that I think that children should be called disordered, or that we should be pathologising difference. That doesn’t mean that I think we should be punitive or that I’m changing anything in my approach. I champion every child, exactly as they are. I think we need to change the environment so that children can thrive, and stop trying to shove square pegs into round holes.

But what neuro-affirmative means, according to what I’ve read, is more than that. Yes, one part of it is being strengths-based and positive about young people, and that’s essential. But the other part of being neuro-affirmative seems to be accepting a brain-based determinism about children which it totally at odds with my approach as a psychologist and the evidence base. Neuro-affirmative psychologists see a child’s diagnosis as a sign that their type of brain (or neurotype) has been identified and that they have, effectively, a different type of biology. They say things like

‘Being Autistic runs through our neurology in the same way that words or streaks of colour run through sticks of sweet seaside rock…any effort to pull the writing out of the rock is not going to end well for anyone concerned’. (Kavanagh et al, 2025).

This isn’t true. There is no ‘autistic neurology’. There are just people’s brains, and lots of them working differently to others. A diagnosis of autism just says ‘this person is behaving in this way right now’. It does not identify a neurotype. Brains don’t divide up into diagnostic categories.

Why does that matter? Because when people (and particularly children) hear that their brain type has been identified, they think that this means that they can’t change. They think that when things are hard, it will be this way for ever. And it’s not true.

Brain scans cannot identify who has a diagnosis of autism (or ADHD, or any other psychiatric diagnosis). Brains are only one part of who we are, and they don’t determine our lives. People are so much more than their brains. We have minds, and bodies, and we exist in a social context. They have a history of good and bad experiences. All of these things are important when thinking about why a child is behaving in the way that they do. Reducing it to ‘neurology’ is determinism.

Naomi is making the point about neurology not being determinism. That we lose something important if we think something must happen because of neurodivergence. This takes away our agency. I’m unsure if all affirmative ideas need to accept determinism, but I think it is important to lean against this or, at least, lean in to having agency.

Even the physicist, Samir Varma, makes the argument that while physics might be deterministic - in practise we have free will.

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I had an excellent podcast with former police officer, Rob Beckley.

One complaint I hear is that there is not as much or not enough policing time on the streets. Rob made a clear argument that more of police time is taken reviewing technology (eg. looking at phones) and also increased paperwork, and that has been trade-off which has taken time away from other police matters.

The argument in sum:

Investigating crime today is not just about “better tools” but a fundamentally different scale of work. In the past, a nightclub serious assault case might involve a handful of witness statements, one CCTV tape, and a forensic report, taking a few officers about a week. Today, the same case could generate thousands of mobile phone videos, hundreds of hours of CCTV, Oyster card data, and other digital traces. While this increases the chances of finding the offender, it vastly multiplies the cost, time, and manpower required. Despite talk of AI, the bulk of this work still falls to humans, making modern investigations exponentially more resource-intensive than in the past.

The whole podcast is fascinating. Do have a listen.

In this wide-ranging and engaging conversation, retired British police officer Rob Beckley reflects on nearly 40 years in service — from community policing in Brixton after the 1980s riots, to leading the investigation into the Hillsborough Disaster, and later serving as High Sheriff of Somerset.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on YouTube.

We explore:

• The misunderstood role of policing: “Policing is about being there in a crisis — when someone needs action, and needs it now.”

• Rob’s early career in Brixton and how his experiences in Sudan shaped his views on culture and policing.

• Honest reflections on institutional racism and sexism: “Institutional racism isn’t about bad people — it’s about systems and processes that have disproportionate impacts.”

• Hillsborough: what really went wrong, the persistence of false narratives, and why “we can never afford complacency in disaster preparedness.”

• The evolution of crime, the importance of community policing: “Community policing works because people trust officers who know their area and take ownership of local problems.”

• Rob’s year as High Sheriff of Somerset, his advocacy for volunteering, and the civic glue that holds communities together.

• Advice for aspiring public servants: “In public service, you may never know the lives you’ve touched — but the impact is real.”

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I’ve been dipping (my reading is mainly dipping currently) into books on motherhood (H/T Anoushka). Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born is an important text written in the mid 1970s.

Adrienne Rich proceeds with a dual lens: the experience of motherhood (her own, and that of many women) and the institution of motherhood (how society, patriarchy, culture frame motherhood). She refuses to treat motherhood as a naive, sentimental domain; instead she unpacks its contradictions, tensions, and political ramifications.

Rich distinguishes between motherhood as lived experience (the joys, frustrations, ambivalence, emotional labor) and motherhood as institution (the cultural, historical, legal, symbolic structures that define, limit, idealize, police “motherhood”)

She argues that many women’s experiences are distorted or hidden by the pressure of the institution: the socially imposed norms obscure the mess, contradiction, anger, isolation that mothers often feel.

For example, childbirth becomes medicalized, midwifery marginalized. Control over reproductive life, the cultural imperative to mother “selflessly,” the moral expectations around maternal sacrifice: all these are ways the institution manages women.

Rich refuses the “happy mother” myth. She gives space to anger, ambivalence, grief, frustration, which are often silenced. She asserts that acknowledging these emotions is necessary, not shameful.

She discusses how language fails mothers: conventional discourses either idealize or pathologize motherhood. Many mothers become isolated because breaking the silence risks censure.

The temptation to “mother well” (ideally, self-sacrificingly, always available) is a burden placed on women, not a natural demand.

Eula Bliss writes in the introduction to the book:

You’re a life worker,” my child recently said to me. We were jogging along a sidewalk when he said this, out for the hour of exercise that became our daily routine after the Covid-19 pandemic closed his elementary school. I asked what he meant and he said, “You make food for me and you go outside with me and you take care of my life. You’re a life worker, like a teacher or a doctor.” He had heard about “essential workers” in the news, I realized, and he was telling me that, from his point of view, I was an essential worker.

… when my child was an infant. Shortly after he was born, I was walking in a park when a passing jogger stopped to ask me, “Are you a mother?” It was a strange question, and one I had never been asked before. For most of my life until then, I had not wanted to be a mother. I had always feared what becoming a mother might do to me, and even after having a baby, I feared losing myself to motherhood. Matrophobia is not a fear of mothers, as Rich observes, nor is it a fear of your own mother. Tellingly, matrophobia is a fear of becoming your own mother. “Are you a mother?” the jogger asked again. He was a graduate student, I would learn later, who was working on a theory that involved comparing motherhood to the hospitality industry, a theory that reduced mothers to hotels. I had no interest in being a hotel. I didn’t want to be a mother, either, but I wanted a baby. And there he was, the evidence that I was a mother, in the stroller that I was pushing through the park. The jogger changed his tack. “Is that your baby?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, in relief. Back then, I didn’t fully understand my resistance to calling myself a mother, but I understand it now, and all the more clearly after reading Of Woman Born. What I was resisting was becoming a role, rather than a person. I didn’t want to enter the institution of motherhood. But I was already in it, and I had been raised within it. …

…“Motherhood calls to mind the home,” Rich writes, “and we like to believe that the home is a private place.” But the home is shaped by public policies that govern housing costs and access to abortion and welfare payments and maternity leaves and child support. The home is sometimes dangerous, sometimes crowded, and sometimes full of discord. With offices and businesses closed around the world, the home is now a workplace for many people. But the home has always been a workplace, particularly for women. The conditions of that workplace are determined in part by the institution of motherhood, which is upheld by an economic system where the work of caring for children is almost always unpaid or low-paid. The institution is upheld by traditional gender roles in which housework and the work of caring for other people is women’s work. By laws that restrict access to birth control and abortion. And by social expectations that burden mothers with the primary responsibility for the education, health, nutrition, safety, and overall well-being of their children. Women’s lives are defined by motherhood whether or not we have children. This is not true for men. …”

… Motherhood is policed, both informally and formally, by mothers as well as people who are not mothers—by joggers and judges and bystanders and actual police officers. I was once threatened with arrest while walking my child home from first grade. He was six years old and walking half a block ahead of me, a distance that a passing police officer considered unsafe. “This is neglect,” the officer said, pointing his finger in my face. My son began to cry as the officer shouted at me, and I was afraid. My certainty that I had not committed neglect was undermined by my certainty that I was guilty, in myriad ways, of failing the expectations of motherhood. When I asked, “Am I under arrest?” the officer said, “You could be.” He was right, as my research into the question later revealed….

This is food for thought. Amazon link here. And Cynthia Wallace on re-reading the book in 2021.

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Climate policy thoughts.

“...Climate action is on track to be slower, less well equipped to deliver co-benefits, and more fraught with trade-offs and distributional conflicts. Each of these is a threat to future climate action and erodes the new climate common sense. It may be impossible for the climate community to prevent any of these developments from transpiring over the next several years; it is almost certainly impossible for the climate community to prevent all of them from transpiring.

We are going to be dealing with scarcity politics. In such an environment, minimizing cleavages within the coalition that forged the NCCS and broadening the base of political support for climate action is imperative. But doing so may mean acquiescing to a slower pace of climate action in some circumstances—which raises the task of ensuring that a slower pace of progress in the short term doesn’t translate into the sorts of hedging behavior that will make more ambitious action harder in the medium term. This may mean searching for focus and efficiency in our policy interventions. What policies deliver the biggest impact for the lowest cost? Are there certain climate-related investments that are especially popular or politically significant, around which rearguard action can be prioritized? Are there opportunities not just to entice capital, but to compel it to invest in certain ways? Can we get more creative about financing? Can we get better at embedding climate action in other areas of policy that are more salient for ordinary people (e.g. housing)? What opportunities exist for leveraging scale, through coordinated actions across climate aligned states? What sorts of transnational coordination can help to avert negative feedback loops from setting in (since many other countries are facing similar pressures)?

I’d be interested on views on this synthesis piece (long read) here.

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I recently had a panel chat on the future of obesity. You can listen in and see the full notes here.

A few notes on my intro section.

History: first GLP-1 agonist (exenatide/Byetta) launched ~2005 (origin story: Gila monster saliva). Multiple drug generations since; now used beyond diabetes into obesity. Long track record suggests safe.

• Efficacy & mechanisms: Typical 15–25% weight loss; signals of benefits in fatty liver, CKD, sleep apnea, possible effects in addiction; possible in dementia. Proposes three pathways: anti-weight, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, explaining wide clinical effects.

• Total addressable market (TAM) & adoption analogy

  • Potential ≥1 billion ww candidates when combining obesity, diabetes, sleep apnea, CKD, etc.

  • Maybe think statins? Today statins: 250–300M global users; could be higher, but timing uncertain (20–50 years).

• Patent & pricing dynamics

  • Current wave still branded; semaglutide (“sema”) going generic earlier in some markets (Canada/Brazil 2026; UK ~2031 expected). Generics + oral GLP-1s likely expand access, cut cost, support maintenance.

• Maintenance & oral debate

  • Key unknown: life-long injections vs. oral maintenance; lapses → weight regain; orals might improve adherence.

• Health economics

  • UK direct obesity cost ~£10–11B, total economic ~£100–120B (productivity, benefits). US estimates “hundreds of billions” to > $1T.

• Observed sector ripples (early signals)

  • Calorie reductions, portion/mix shifts; possible modest declines in orthopedic procedures (hip/knee) possibly from lower body weight.

  • Anticipates spillovers to restaurants, agriculture, labor/productivity, healthcare budgets, and climate implications via dietary shifts.

Near-term take: big upside potential with many caveats; expect first- and second-order surprises

More here.

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Philosophy: Contra utilitarian, consequentialist longtermism competition; my essay. The Essays on Longtermism Competition (EoL Competition) is an essay contest on the Effective Altruism Forum, co-organized by the Forum team and the editors of Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future (Oxford University Press, 2025).

The competition encourages rigorous philosophical engagement with longtermism—the view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. Participants are invited to submit essays in response to a chapter, or (substantiated) theme from the collection before October 20, 2025 (anywhere on earth).

This competition nudged me into writing up thoughts I had on my podcasts with Ruth Chang and Larry Temkin, who both provide challenges to utilitarian / consequentialist longtermist thinking. I also added some thoughts on art.

I think longtermists should try and engage with more non-consequentialist views. I also might be very wrong, but some of the longtermist existential risk ideas might be based on flawed assumptions if Larry Temkin is correct.

This long essay, helped by GPT, should be ignored by most of you - but if this niche of philosophy is a thing for you. You can check it out here.

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Funding: UK ARIA looking for people to host innovation circle meet-ups.

I am very keen on in-person meet-ups with engaged people to create new ideas and push the bars higher. ARIA seem to agree and they will be sponsoring this effort.

…transformative ideas rarely arrive fully formed – they’re often born as whispers, hunches, and ‘what-ifs’ shared in informal environments. In these spaces, close-knit peer groups discuss early-stage, counterintuitive ideas and push each other to be more ambitious….

…Our hypothesis is simple: investing in the creation of more diverse, high-trust, and deeply technical communities is a direct investment in future talent and breakthroughs.

….With that, we’re excited to announce a call for proposals for ARIA Innovator Circle Leads: an opportunity to create or grow your own circle with up to ten months’ funding.

We aren’t looking for a particular type of person from a specific institution. We’re looking for catalysts – people who can achieve these kinds of outcomes regardless of their starting point. Your vision for a technical community and your ability to convene exceptional talent are what matter most.

• If this is you: we encourage you to apply, with your vision for a group that will push the frontiers of your field, or envision a new one.

• If this describes someone you know: the person in your lab or network who sparks connections and raises the ambition of everyone around them – please share this with them. Help us find the people who are building the future of UK science and technology.

Learn more and apply here.

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Retreats: ursprung creativity retreats. On building spaces for the curious, the creative, and the collaborative.

The most profound breakthroughs emerge at the edges—where disciplines meet, where unexpected conversations spark. Yet in our hyperspecialized world, these encounters have become increasingly rare. We’ve built walls between our ways of knowing, creating a landscape rich in depth but impoverished in connection.

Adrian Cipriani noticed this tension early. His path wound from solo art exhibitions at thirteen to directing an experimental film, from founding a community for young composers to studying biophysics at university. Each world was fascinating in its depth, but they barely spoke to each other. The most interesting problems—and the most beautiful solutions—lived precisely in the spaces between.

Each Ursprung Retreat is scaffolded around a guiding focus topic designed to cut across domains, surface epistemic frictions and find opportunities for synthesis. Topic sessions are complemented by participant-led workshops, hikes in the mountains, communal cooking, and time for both slowness and spontaneity.

We curate the group of participants to achieve a diversity of disciplines, visions and thinking styles.

More here on Ursprung.

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Thanks for reading.

• Theatre: Climate plays

• Philosophy: Freedom podcast with Rebecca Lowe, Tyler Cowen

• China: Dan Wang - Engineers vs Lawyers  

• China: tech and life travelogue, Jasmine Sun

• Dalio: 5 forces, China v America 

• Podcast: Leopold Aschenbrenner (2021) in his early days

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All art is climate art is an idea my friend David Finnigan has discussed (see our podcast) — and by extension all performance art is also climate art.

Regardless of the weight you place on that argument, and the broader notion that art reflects humanity’s challenges and hopes, I would argue you can no longer claim that playwrights have not tried to tackle climate head-on.

Perhaps 20 years ago one could have argued that, but over the last two decades, writers have produced a sustained range of work (see long list in appendix1).

A few notable pieces

• Earthquakes in London (Mike Bartlett, 2010) — an epic, fragmented carnival of science, politics and family drama, trying to capture the scale of ecological breakdown.

• The Contingency Plan (Steve Waters, 2009 / 2022 revival) — a double bill fusing family tensions with national flood politics, arguably seen as one the UK’s substantial “climate canon” play.

• 2071 (Duncan Macmillan with climate scientist Chris Rapley, 2014) — a lecture-play staging climate science directly, collapsing the gap between lab and theatre.

• The Children (Lucy Kirkwood, 2016) — an intimate, morally charged chamber piece, post-nuclear accident, asking what older generations owe the young.

• Sun & Sea (Marina) (Lithuanian collective, Golden Lion Venice Biennale 2019) — an opera-installation on an artificial beach, deceptively light in tone but profound in its depiction of climate ennui.

• Lungs (Duncan Macmillan, 2011 → global revivals). A two-hander in which love, babies, and carbon footprints collide — emblematic of climate anxiety filtering into intimate personal choices.

• The Great Immensity (The Civilians, Public Theater NYC, 2014). Investigative docu-musical fusing climate science and storytelling; an American landmark in documentary climate theatre.

Two broad forms

In that context it’s intriguing to note how performance art has evolved and reflected on climate over the last 20 years.

I think very broadly one can place theatre forms into two categories (though of course many other lenses are possible).

1. Large, expansive, messy landscapes. These works attempt to mirror the scale and chaos of climate change itself. They sprawl, fragment, collide genres.

• Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London is an archetype here.

• Works like Greenland at the NT .

2. Intimate character chamber works. These are smaller in scale, often single-location, focused on family or personal dilemmas. They use character drama to explore the contradictions of climate ethics.

• The Children and Lungs are potential examples.

Both approaches can work. The large scale overwhelms us with systemic complexity. The small scale draws us in through empathy and lived contradictions. Together they form a dialectic — apocalypse and anecdote, system and self. Of course, there are other forms and ways of tackling the works — I’ve done so via my Thinking Bigly collaboration with David, and many climate theatre pieces have used more modern or different forms.  In this vein you could argue there is a third broad category of more speculative forms (arguably derived from the more standards ones but going with the broad strokes argument):

Examples in a “non-traditional form” lineage:

 The Trials (Dawn King, Donmar Warehouse 2022)

• Form: Near-future jury trial performed by teenage actors, with the audience sitting in judgment too.

• Why it matters: Shifts agency to young people, literally putting “the next generation” in control. It’s speculative and Brechtian, not naturalistic.

Sun & Sea (Marina) (Lithuanian collective, Venice Biennale 2019, global tours)

• Form: Opera-installation on an artificial beach; audiences watch from balconies above as singers sunbathe and deliver deceptively casual songs about climate collapse.

• Why it matters: Blends visual art, opera, and installation; its form mirrors climate’s deceptively “everyday” presence.

Ocean Filibuster (PearlDamour, A.R.T. 2022 → US tours)

• Form: A surreal political spectacle where the Ocean itself becomes a character filibustering against human exploitation.

• Why it matters: Personifies nature, using absurdist, playful, almost cartoonish performance language to dramatise ecological voice.

Can I Live? (Fehinti Balogun / Complicité, 2021)

• Form: Hybrid of rap, direct address, animation, and live documentary performance.

• Why it matters: Merges personal testimony, activism, and popular culture — breaking away from theatre’s lecture or realist modes.

In this sense, one can argue that recent theatre or climate theatre has made an argument for newer or different forms to express the arguments. An expansion of (climate) theatre’s vocabulary — moving away from straightforward realism into speculative, participatory, operatic, musical, and mosaic forms.

I am going to put this together and leap to this position (which I think you can pick holes in, but does have a good dose of truth): 

• Landscapes overwhelm us / reflect with the systemic.

• Chambers invite empathy through the personal.

• Experimentals jolt us with form, forcing us to reimagine both theatre and climate itself, and with interaction potential makes us agentic.

Together, they argue climate theatre is a constellation of approaches — epic, intimate, and radical which I think reflects the overall struggle.

Very recent works

It’s intriguing to note the arrival of new climate performances in 2024–25 where this fits and how successful the shows might be. 

Kyoto (Joe Murphy & Joe Robertson) dramatises the 1997 UN negotiations. showing how idealism collides with Big Oil.

Juniper Blood (Mike Bartlett, 2025) places us in a rural community, immersing us in turf and birdsong while staging arguments about capitalism, family and eco-radicalism. It belongs in the “intimate chamber” tradition — a narrowing from Bartlett’s earlier sprawling Earthquakes.

And David Finnigan continues to map the territory between science and story with Scenes from the Climate Era.  I will be going to see David’s show (from 23 Sep - 25 Oct  in London) let me know if you want to come along. 

In my view, Kyoto was successful as a play on several levels. This is a short description:

• Subject: The backstage drama of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol negotiations, where governments first attempted binding greenhouse-gas targets.

• Characters: Politicians, lobbyists, and oil executives; real figures mixed with fictional composites.

• Themes:

  • The fragility of international climate consensus.

  • Corporate lobbying power and the limits of idealism.

  • The tension between urgent planetary action and political pragmatism.

Theatrical Form

• Political drama / docu-theatre hybrid: Think Frost/Nixon or This House more than Earthquakes in London. The action unfolds through conference rooms, hotel corridors, and frantic private meetings.

• Ensemble-driven: Multiple perspectives, rapid scene changes, overlapping dialogue.

• Not didactic: While rooted in fact, it’s theatrical rather than lecture-like: characters are driven by personal ambition, ego, and fear as much as by policy detail. Surprisingly the show did not feel lecture like or didactic. 

You could place Kyoto as part landscape play, but in terms of form, also part experimental-hybrid. I was surprised how effective the direct to audience pieces were. (I had some friends/acquaintances in some of the roles).

As an aside, Juniper Blood had actor Hattie Morahan in a lead role. I’ve known Hattie for over 20 years since university and it’s been a privilege to see a great actor from early days shape performances over time. Her performance in Juniper Blood (though I saw a preview) was also brilliant - though I am likely bias.

Placing Juniper Blood after Earthquakes in London (and maybe after Albion) and in contrast to Kyoto perhaps highlights what form can or can not do successfully. Juniper Blood leads through its characters so you judge its success in part by that. 

a rural farm in north-west Oxfordshire where Ruth, a middle-aged middle-class woman (Hattie Morahan), and her taciturn partner Lip have retreated from urban life to build a regenerative, self-sufficient existence.

this is disrupted when Ruth's ex-stepdaughter Milly arrives, accompanied by her friend Femi, a bright but provocative student of rural ecology Also in the mix is Tony, their pragmatic, chemicals-and-profits-believing neighbour (with a dying wife.

Lip argues for a complete retreat from the modern world even at the cost of medicine for his child - that’s a central conflict for Ruth

But in this mix…. Femi (Oxford student) ends up lecturing, and to me, felt more lecturing than Kyoto - despite the lecture being in the mouth of a character to other characters.

Lip (re-wilding eco warrior) makes his case through the plans for his (or part his) farm but from a character perspective he seems to be mentally ill or potentially suffering a form of psychosis in the way this is portrayed (especially in the question of allowing his daughter antibiotics). This does impact the arguments around re-wilding and certain eco ideas in the face of the need for cheap food, intensive farming and the supposedly capitalist framing (although the aside talk about subsidies hows that the system is not really supported by a pure capitalism but a complex web of both state subsidy and market forces).

Overall, not as successful as Kyoto and maybe not as successful as the messier Earthquakes in London.

Of course individual works stand or fall by their craft and brilliance, but I wonder if I am more attracted to the more experimental and messy forms as a more impactful mirror of humanity.

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Jasmine Sun reflects on tech, culture, and power. She is an independent writer working on an “anthropology of disruption.” She used to be a product manager (at Substack!) and an AI policy researcher, but quit her job to write (in part supported by Emergent Ventures).

She has a recent travelog reflection on her trip to China. My summary is: 

“Who wins in technology, wins the world.”

Sun reflects on how both modern China and Silicon Valley share a belief that technological dominance translates to global power. She links this mindset to Wang Huning’s observations from his 1988 book America Against America

Emphasis on practicality over ideology in tech communities.

Chinese engineers appear less concerned with abstract risk‑management—they are focused on building tech and making money. Political ideology, when present, is viewed pragmatically: politics don’t need reinventing if the state has already decided

“Involution” (内卷) as a cultural pressure cooker.

The term is used to describe endless, hollow competition: from gaokao overpreparation and mall restaurants battling for attention to AI startups optimizing by infinitesimal metrics. Sun notes that involution also resonates in the U.S.—from job market hyper‑competition to dating app fatigue

State-led vs. investor-led markets—different trade-offs.

China’s state-directed model enables long-term priority-setting (e.g., green tech), but doesn’t guarantee picking true winners. Private models like in the U.S. may be nimble but speculative. Huawei’s triumph over subsidized SOEs illustrates the complexity 

Corporate mega-integration in Chinese tech.

At Tencent, Sun observes the firm’s willingness to do everything in-house—from streaming to gaming—resulting in both impressive self-reliance and bewildering integration challenges.

Confucian paternalism as social infrastructure.

Sun interprets behaviors—like parents uploading children's PE homework to WeChat or strict gaming curfews—as modern incarnations of Confucian values, aligning social order with technological oversight (she has less weight on Confucain values before)

Niche manufacturing and “why-not” expansion.

At a small precision‑manufacturing factory in Yuyao, Sun sees a model of expansion based on capability and practicality rather than strict strategy: “making money is core competence,” reflecting a flexible, opportunistic industrial mindset

Mental-health awareness as consumer luxury (?)

Discovering a mall installation encouraging journaling and emotional expression struck Sun as a marker of societal material progress…

Consumer abundance and infrastructural convenience.

Sun marvels at everyday innovations—from flavored tea drinks to sidewalk charger rentals—as signs that China leads in consumer convenience. She contrasts this with a U.S. where government services are often intangible, suggesting that visible infrastructure builds legitimacy 

The “democracy doom-loop.”

Discussing the erosion of citizen belief in democracy, Sun argues that poor outcomes reduce trust, which further weakens institutions—a cycle that can push societies toward ineffective governance or “authoritarianism without the good parts.” She underscores the need for democracies to deliver tangible results, not just process.

Makes for an interesting long read here. Unsure if I agree exactly with all the theories, but good food for thought.

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Jasmine’s piece pairs well with reading or listening to Dan Wang. Dan has a book out - Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. It combines a grand theory (engineers vs lawyers) with many personal observations.

Dan Wang frames his analysis through this grand theory: China as an “engineering state” and America as a “lawyerly society.” The contrast argues why China can execute massive infrastructure and industrial projects quickly, while the U.S. is often hampered by legalism and procedural gridlock.

Engineering State vs Lawyerly Society

• In China, many leaders—including all standing Politburo members by 2020—were trained as engineers, leading with pragmatism, rapid problem-solving, and large-scale infrastructure execution.

• By contrast, the U.S. is dominated by legal professionals whose emphasis on process, regulation, and litigation slows progress—even when substantial public support exists, such as in infrastructure projects like high-speed rail.

Cultural Parallels Between U.S. and China

Wang argues that despite deep ideological differences, Americans and Chinese share surprising cultural affinities: both societies have a strong streak of optimism, pragmatic hustle, materialism, and belief in their country's exceptionalism. Both have also shown capacity for internal and external brutality when threatened.

One-Child Policy: Technocratic Control with Human Cost

Wang delivers a powerful critique of the one‑child policy, attributing its creation to misapplied “scientism.” A missile scientist, Song Jian, applied demographic projections as if they were engineering formulas—resulting in widespread forced sterilizations, abortions, and gender imbalance. Wang cites some staggering figures: over 300 million abortions, over 100 million sterilizations, and tens of millions of “missing” women. He writes with palpable anger, emphasizing that such a policy could only emerge in an engineering‑driven system.

Infrastructure and Industrial Capacity

• China’s transformation is evidenced by its infrastructure: by 2024, 435 million cars (many electric); ability to produce 60 million cars annually in a global market of ~90 million; leadership in drones, solar/wind energy, automation, AI, and manufacturing

• The U.S., on the other hand, suffers from slower and costlier infrastructure development, providing a stark contrast in effective state capacity on infra.

Trade-offs and Warnings

Wang does not idolize China. He underscores the dehumanizing side of its model, including social repression (e.g., Zero‑COVID controls via drones) and demographic engineering. At the same time, he critiques American dysfunction: political polarization, regulatory paralysis, and a weakening ability to govern. He argues both systems are eroding governance capacity, and the winner may be whichever country adopts the better—not perfect—policies.

Reflections & Observations

1. Engineering elites drive Chinese governance, enabling rapid modernization through technocratic execution.

2. U.S. legal culture hinders action: risk-averse, process-oriented governance slows national progress.

3. Cultural kinship: both nations are performance-focused, optimistic, sometimes ruthless power-builders.

4. Technocracy gone too far: the one-child policy exemplifies how rationalist governance can become deeply oppressive.

5. Infrastructure as a lever of power: massive investment in rail, energy, manufacturing reshapes global dynamics.

6. Innovative industrial capacity matters more than breakthrough inventions: China excels at building and scaling (in physical stuff).

7. Governance at risk: both superpowers are headed toward weakened capacity, threatening global order.

I would say Wang argues that both countries could/should learn from each other: the U.S. adopting some East Asian pragmatism / builder mentality / policy and China tempering technocracy with humanity.

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At the very high level this chimes with some macro economic arguments made by Ray Dalio. You can pick holes in Dalio’s arguments, perhaps, but he would argue:

There are five forces that drive big cycle changes. 

1) the big debt cycle that will likely lead to big debt problems that will threaten the existing monetary order, 

2) big political problems within countries that are threatening existing political orders, 

3) big geopolitical problems between countries that are threatening the existing world geopolitical order, 

4) big acts of nature such as drought, floods and pandemics (most importantly climate change), and 

5) mankind's creating big impact through new technologies, most importantly artificial intelligence. 

And:

As a classic part of the Big Cycle, the increased wealth and values gaps lead to increased populism of the right and populism of the left and irreconcilable differences between them that can't be resolved though the democratic process. At such times, democracies weaken and more autocratic leadership increases as a large percentage of the population wants government leaders to get control of the system to make things work well them—e.g., "to make the trains run on time.” Also, in a world in which there are great conflicts and possibly even wars between countries, governments increasingly take control of what businesses do.  For example,  it is now the case that whichever country wins the technology and economic wars will win the more important geopolitical and possibly military wars. So governments are now increasingly taking control of businesses and the economy.  The part of the Big Cycle that we are in is most analogous to the 1928 to 1938 period.   

It’s quite hard to influence macro, and have a correct strong view, so I do think caution on any strong macro is warranted. That said, one can prepare to some extent (think resilience broadly, or even anti-fragility) and in a world of near term rising geopolitical and environmental risks, it’s worth a thought.

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On a different note - especially re: China - I was thinking about freedom. Influenced by Rebecca Lowe and Tyler Cowen’s podcast on freedom. It’s philosophy heavy, but as a starter thinking about what aspects are positive freedoms or negative freedoms is useful. 

Put simply, negative freedom is about being free from interference, while positive freedom is about having the capacity and means to act.

Tyler: I think there are many notions of freedom, more than just three, but positive and negative are by far the most important. And they’re the ones you can at least try to build into political systems. A greater number of people understand what you’re talking about. And if you can manage to take care of those two in a reasonably satisfactory manner, odds are you’ve just succeeded. And I wouldn’t be too fussy about the others.

But I bet if you sat down, you could come up with 57 different kinds of freedom that are relevant. Look at Amartya Sen’s Paretian liberal paradox. Well, what would you choose if the choice affected only you? For him, that’s a significant part of liberty. I think it’s an insignificant part, but if he insists on putting it on his list, okay, it can go on the list.

and,

Rebecca: I think you can deal with those problems by saying the person with Down syndrome, you can even go as far as to say the person in the coma, has rights qua being the kind of thing that has these capacities, whether they're just kind of potentially held. If you separate out the capacity from the exercise of the thing, which is one way I think you can get into thinking about what freedom means in terms of having freedom, as opposed to doing things freely or being free. So if you separate out the noun from the adjective or the adverb. Then you can deal with these objections by saying, look, the person in the coma is still a person. A person, with these capacities. And that's why you need to respect their rights. The risk...

Tyler…The word qua makes me nervous there.

I’ve been doing some thinking about pensions (!) and it had me thinking about that. And the jokes around qua and metaphysics (which Tyler seems to want to avoid too much of). Full episode and transcript here:

the ends don't justify the means

Working Definition episode 3: Freedom, with Tyler Cowen

[This transcript was generated by AI, so while I’ve checked over it, it may contain small errors…

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10 months ago · 14 likes · 5 comments · Rebecca Lowe

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From the podcast archive…

Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated valedictorian from Columbia University in 2021 at just 19 years old, having entered at age 15. When he came on to my podcast…(here Then Do Better)

What Is He Doing Now?

As of 2024–2025, Leopold has shifted into the world of artificial intelligence and finance (via the FTFX grant making fund). He was part of OpenAI’s Superalignment team until April 2024. Then he published a widely circulated, deep 165-page essay titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead", offering a strategic and security-focused forecast of emerging AGI and its global impacts. Post that, he founded Situational Awareness, an AI-focused hedge fund. As of mid-2025, it manages approximately $1.5 billion in assets

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Short sum: Whether through theatre, philosophy, or economics, I keep returning to questions of how humans organise against vast forces: climate, technology, health; and how we organise against ourselves and what this means for human flourishing. 

• I meet a coffin maker

• Travels to Ghana

• UnConference: Emergent Ventures

• Design: Can we build beautiful, Samuel Hughes podcast

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Accra, Ghana – Vibes and Reflections. I visited Accra in Ghana. What does a $2.5K GDP/Capita country feel like? (US is c.$85k and UK is $50K). The nominal GDP per capita in Ghana is around $2,500—1closer to $8,000 when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP).

Accra is (I estimate) around double the Ghana national average. Annual income in Accra ranges from about $2,000 to $4,000. If you’re in Europe or the US, this looks poor. It shows a 10x to 20x+ difference in living standards.

I’m going to give you the feels of that.

First Impressions. Arriving at the airport, the bureaucracy is fairly smooth. Plenty of staff help direct you to the correct queues and check your documents. Staff check your yellow fever certificate, visa, and even take a high-income-nation-level-of-bureaucracy fingerprint scan.

The airport is clean. The toilets are functioning and clean. Then, a voice comes over the tannoy—not to announce flights, but to tell tourists they don’t need to pay for airport services — a warning not to be misled by fraudulent offers. My first sign that this is not Kansas, or London, any more.

I step outside into the buzz—people, noise, movement. The heat and humidity hit you. There’s Uber, mobile 3G/4G works, and you can speak to ChatGPT and get online. On the surface this feels pretty modern. This part feels richer than the stats.

The drive from the airport to the hotel was uneventful. Traffic was moving—but I notice that just a few minutes outside the city centre, the roads are in poor condition. (All my Uber drivers complained.)

Hotel: I stayed at a conference beach hotel in Accra. It had good working air conditioning (Daikin, a Japan leader, if you’re interested), few mosquitos and decent rooms—comparable to mid-range hotels in the UK or US. Staff were welcoming and helpful.

Hotel food was almost UK-priced. Rice, pork ribs, and goat stew were of decent quality. You wouldn’t make a special trip for the food—but I was happy to finish the plate off.

Makola Market. The next day, before the UnConference, I visited Makola Market. I love markets. On the way there, the Uber driver complained about corruption, road quality, and fuel prices. On a good day, he might make 400 cedi ($36) in fares net — costs could be 200–400 cedi. On a bad day, income might fall to 50–100 cedi. My 15-minute trip cost 45 cedi (~$4). Out the window, the view was like this.

Makola is dense—stalls, people, bustle. Some people are clearly on a mission. Others are lounging. Some are waiting. Plenty are socializing or hustling. This bus sits in the middle waiting for an overfull load before going.

There’s a constant ebb and flow of noise, sometimes rising from loud to very loud. The smells are ever present from spices, foods, machines, dust from the pungent to the moderately spicy. As a foreigner, you’re greeted with mostly-friendly glances—peppered with hustle.

(GPT) Makola Market, established in 1924 and later rebuilt after its demolition in 1979, has long been Accra’s main trading hub. Today it sprawls through the city centre, with thousands of traders selling everything from fabrics and beads to produce and household goods. Bustling and crowded: a window into the everyday life of Ghana’s capital.

This is 2 minutes walking through the market (My video).

If you know what you’re doing, there’s value to be found. Yet even then, many goods seemed of limited utility to me but presumably there was demand. I saw the same things again and again—especially in the electronics sections.

It reminded me of walking through Malaysian wet markets in the 1980s and 90s—but poorer. (Malaysia back then already had GDP per capita of $10K–$15K. Makola, today, is a little poorer still than the Malaysia of the 1980s).

Still, I’d say the walk through the market was an essential experience.

Jamestown: From Makola, I walked to the Jamestown lighthouse. I passed through some of Accra’s most historic—and economically disadvantaged—neighbourhoods. The infrastructure was poor and poverty is visible. 

I more or less skipped the richer parts of Accra. Yes, London and New York have poverty too—but the contrast here was stark. I was struck by the noise, and the vibe of activity, but also the poverty: limited sanitation, cooking on coals, somewhat dirty (mostly plastic waste) environment, seemingly ramshackle housing; goats! This is 1min video snap of the walk, it doesn’t quite convey the vibe (but you can catch the goats at the end).

The challenges of waste disposal, sanitation, and sustainability were real here. These challenges felt very different from those in Europe or the US.

Towards the lighthouse there was an open space with football being played amidst half built structures and dusty paths.

This direct travel experience brought many observations and emotions to the surface.

If you’re curious about the world—its struggles and how to improve it—I recommend combining your reading with travel. Ideally somewhere you’ve never been.

Other observations:

This is what Gapminder can show you with some photos about a family in Ghana. Gapminder has a great range of what families around the world have and do.

This was a supermarket in the middle of town, mid to upscale. Most people still use the markets or more individual shops, it seems. 

UK belly pork prices are GBP7.50 / USD$9.75 kg  in Tesco; Aldi (low-end) can get GBP6.40 / kg for pork chops. Walmart pork belly (which seems to be a specialty cut so priced more?) is USD$14, I find standard ham at Walmart at USD$11 / kg.

The Ghana pork belly was 105 GHS which is USD$10 or GBP7.50 (mid right).  The price is the same as in the UK. This surprised me and speaks to the challenges of food inflation and inflation generally in Ghana (and Africa). I’m sure you could find cheaper pork belly but it seems pretty close to UK prices.

The shelves were not too different in many respects from UK. Brands are different, choices a little less but the vibe was  in the same ball park. I think I was expecting something a little more different, and a bit busier but I guess the prices would be so much better in the open market and more local shops. Other observations:

• Everyone speaks English. But local languages like Twi, Ga, and Ewe are widely heard too.

• Rhythm is everywhere — people seem naturally musical in dance, drumming, and song.

• Many can balance and carry heavy loads gracefully on their heads.

• Street life is vibrant, with markets spilling onto pavements and vendors weaving through traffic. There is hustle and bargaining everywhere.

• Food is hearty and spice-rich, with a version of jollof rice and banku as staples.

• Football is easy to discuss with locals

• Christianity is highly visible, from church signs to gospel music in taxis. (Ghana is 80% Christian, 20% Muslim, mainly in the north). I was told gospel services are good; also you can go to voodoo services.

• Ghanaians are warm and welcoming, often greeting with a smile or handshake.

  

• Beach. I was more harassed on the beach than anywhere else in Ghana. There was a disheartening but not unexpected large amount of plastic waste. I’m told beach party / clubs are popular on Fri / Sat nights. The sea tide is too strong for swimming. The beach has some potential for tourism but will be hard to realise, I think many would prefer a hotel pool.

I went to Osu Castle.

(GPT) Osu Castle, also known as Christiansborg Castle, is a 17th-century coastal fort in Accra originally built by the Danes and later occupied by the Portuguese, Swedes, and British. It played a central role in the transatlantic slave trade, with the infamous “Door of No Return” marking the last point on African soil for many enslaved people. Under British rule it became the seat of government and continued to serve as Ghana’s presidential residence after independence until 2013, when the new Jubilee House was completed.

The guide round Osu castle was steeped in the history (a central dungeon for the slaves amongst other things), but the condition of the buildings was poor especially given the President lived here not too many years ago. The weight given to the British monarchy felt odd as well. There was a room where only Queen Elizaneth II, and then Prince Charles, had ever stayed in.

This is 1 min video of some pictures include the Queen’s room and the Door of No Return.

Fantasy Coffins. One last quirky highlight: I visited Eric Kpakpo, who makes coffins. I had a lovely chat and bought a souvenir small coffin. Here he (and he’s savvy, he changed his shirt so he could highlight his name and number, and his favourite Octopus coffin) is:

Eric continues a tradition of fantasy coffin-making in Accra (about 10 workshops around the area). The practice began in the mid-20th century as an evolution of palanquins used by Ga chiefs and priests. These evolved into elaborate coffins (shaped like airplanes, fish, coke bottles—anything symbolic of the person’s life and dreams) after the 1950s and became a recognized Ghanaian art form.

If you’d like a fantasy coffin—or even a custom-made seating stool—I’m happy to put you in touch with Eric. I promised him I’d help share his story and art.

As long-time readers know, I have a show about death, and my next iteration will definitely have to include this—and what type of coffin design I might want. (Coffins might cost us $3,000 approx; art would be more expensive, as better and longer-lasting wood is used.)

What do you think I should have? A coffin in the shape of a pen?

Here are a collection of snaps of the trip.

The main reason I was in Ghana was for the Emergent Ventures (EV) UnConference. (Here’s my blog on the Dublin one last year.)

If you have an idea that could improve the world, you should apply to EV. The EV focus is on people as well as the idea — in particular, if you are energetic, curious, and have a certain intensity and spark—and willing to challenge the status quo. There are now 1,100+ (and growing) EV winners, and we are a worldwide fellowship of doers.

Mercatus still believes in core classical liberal values in the modern day: equality, dignity, agency for all; pluralism; and liberty. But EV fellows are tough to pigeonhole and span widely across arts, science, innovation, business, and social projects.

Who are EVs?  

We want to jumpstart high-reward ideas—moonshots in many cases—that advance prosperity, opportunity, liberty, and well-being. We welcome the unusual and the unorthodox.

Our goal is positive social change, but we do not mind if you make a profit from your project. (Indeed, a quick path to revenue self-sufficiency is a feature not a bug!)

We encourage you to think big, but we also will consider very small grants if they might change the trajectory of your life. We encourage applications from all ages and all parts of the world. 

You should consider applying. This is Sam on the application process. While the blurb hints at 

“ entrepreneurs and brilliant minds with highly scalable, "zero to one" ideas for meaningfully improving society.”

I would put emphasis on this phrase:

“Grants are awarded to thinkers and doers around the world”

I hosted an unofficial EV + Friends UnConference in April this year in London (see here for notes) and will likely host another one in London in April 2026. Stay in touch for details if you are interested.

What is an UnConference, and why am I so keen?

Long-time readers will know I’ve written about UnConference type formats before. Here with Civic Futures, with Home Education, and with Sustainability and Chatham House; and with the Official Dublin EV Unconference in 2024. 

Important elements of UnConference are:

• the content is generated by the participants

• participants are encouraged to move between sessions

There can be other elements but these two ideas drive a rich event for participants and one where people feel more involved than with a traditional conference. A short blurb on the format here:

• Unlike traditional conferences with pre-set agendas and passive listeners, an UnConference invites all attendees to participate actively. 

• Everyone is encouraged to propose topics, lead discussions, and contribute to conversations in a meaningful way.

• While a conventional conference treats attendees like a passive audience to be entertained by the organisers, the UnConference format gives everyone a say by building something together.  

• UnConferences are choose-your-own-adventure. At any moment there will be multiple talks happening and participants can move between them. 

• The UnConference board is the centre of the event. The board is a large grid representing the schedule. The time slots start out blank. We fill them at the start of the day but they can change and combine throughout the time. 

There are risks, if people feel constrained and don’t use their agency of choice; or when somehow you do not have a good mix of people, but I’ve never seen it fail.

Emergent Ventures UnConferences work at a high level because the participants are arguably even more agenetic than the average and every single attendee is doing at least one fascinating project, and in my interactions the norm was to have multiple amazing ideas and projects on the go.

I would describe Emergent Venture (EV) as a type of venture philanthropy where Tyler Cowen and team (Rasheed Griffith [my podcast with him here] – looking at Caribbean, LatAm, Africa diasporas; Shruti Rajagopalan – looking at India; Tyler also on Ukraine) bet on people (mostly) and their ideas (partly).

Another way of looking at this assembled talent is what they came up with to chat about. A non-exhaustive list of the sessions called are in the foot notes2.

The inter-meeting conversations are just as good. I learned about Uganda, South Africa and much about healthcare and start ups ideas. I was also part of a debate on where the line should be drawn or not on people’s right to end their own life especially in terminally ill cases with many discussants drawing on their own life examples.

This is my podcast with Samuel Hughes on planning and design. If you’re curious about the built environment, it’s worth a listen. Pairs well with my previous podcast with Hana Loftus.

Samuel Hughes is an editor at Works in Progress and an expert on architecture, urbanism, and planning.

“We treat age as the value, but often what people are really protecting is beauty—they just don’t want to admit that’s what matters most.”

We discuss the feasibility of mass-producing beautiful buildings through good materials and proportions, the decline of ornamented architecture, and why maintaining industrial skills matters for long-term infrastructure projects.

The conversation explores Japanese zoning and urbanism, the impact of culture and geography on city design, Berlin’s mix of rent control and street grids, and the idea of “gentle density.”

“Most individual buildings in Tokyo are pretty ugly, but the overall streetscape is often nicer than in Britain or America—urban form matters more than facades.”

Samuel also shares his views on greenbelt reform, the importance of mixed-use urban density, and how civic and institutional pride once shaped even the most mundane buildings.

“In the 19th century even pumping stations and hospitals were built to be attractive—today our institutions too often forget that civic pride shows in the architecture.”

We touch on underrated cities like Dresden and examine future solutions for Britain’s housing supply crisis.

“The real breakthrough will come when communities see that allowing development makes them richer—turning adversarial planning into a win-win.”

Finally, Samuel reflects on how policy research can meaningfully shape public infrastructure and urban planning.

Summary contents, transcript, and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Watch the video above or on YouTube.

Contents
01:02 Mass Producing Beautiful Buildings
01:43 The Decline of Ornament in Architecture
04:37 Tokyo’s Urban Design and Zoning
10:05 How Long Should Buildings Last? UK vs Japan
16:13 Philosophy, Beauty, and Emotions
25:53 Public Policy Trade-offs in Practice
31:41 Berlin: Rent Control and Urban Planning
36:32 Housing in Europe: A Historical Context
38:02 Modern Housing Markets and Trends
41:50 Rethinking the Greenbelt
44:40 Planning Authorities and Their Role
50:40 Overrated and Underrated Urban Ideas
1:02:03 Dresden: Lessons in Urban Reconstruction
1:05:03 The Future of Britain’s Housing Supply
1:08:40 Career Advice on Policy and Design

• Ukraine: Podcast with war correspondent Tim Mak

• Substacks and podcasts I read

  • Free Will: Samir Varma

  • Philosophy: Rebecca Lowe

  • Sustainability: Hannah Ritchie 

  • Education: Peter Grey, Naomi Fisher 

  • Economic History: Anton Howes

  • Literature: Henry Oliver 

  • Rationality, sx: Aella 

  • Travel, Japan: Kana Chan

• UK Travel: brief visits to Derby, Wolverhampton 

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Any tops tips for Ghana? I’m going to an UnConference there for a few days. What should I do in Accra for a free half day? This week, I reflect on the opportunities and challenges in Derby through the lens of a rail engineering site.

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I had an excellent chat with Tim Mak. Tim is living in Kyiv, Ukraine and is reporting on the war. 

We chatted on many fascinating things. But one observation struck me was the chronic stress of war. There are plenty of acute moments in a city under siege like Kyiv but the day-to-day seems to more about the chronic drip drip drip of unknown terror.

▶️ Or watch on YouTube. 📝 Transcript and notes link.

Summary: Tim Mak moved to Ukraine in 2022, a day before war broke out. Tim, a former US investigative correspondent, decided to stay and start up his own reporting at Counter Offensive. He now reports from Kyiv. 

“People didn’t connect with my coverage of war crimes — they connected with the dogs I saw in the street. So I built a publication that leads with people, not just news.”

On the podcast, Tim discusses the day-to-day life in war-torn Kyiv, focusing on the chronic stress rather than immediate physical danger residents face. He recounts his critical role in documenting human stories from the war front and shares his personal journey, having moved to Ukraine right as the war began. We touch on the operational challenges and ethical considerations in war reporting, the importance of human interest stories, and how new technology like AI affects journalism.

“We misunderstand the cost of war because we’ve lived in peace for so long. But if we go back — which is far more common in human history — the devastation will be immense.”

Tim talks about the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict and his hopes for the future of independent journalism.

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Over the last two weeks, I’ve taken short trips to Wolverhampton and also to Derby. 

Derby is a city of c. 300,000 people. GDP per capita = GBP32,000. Known for its railway engineering legacy and modern aerospace industry (Rolls Royce). About 1.5 to 2 hours away from London, 140 miles / 210 km.

Derby rose to prominence in the 18th century as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution, notably through Silk Mill, perhaps considered one of the world’s first factories. The city became a hub for rail engineering in the 19th century.  Rolls-Royce founded its aerospace division there in 1907. Today, Derby’s economy remains anchored by aerospace, rail engineering, and, with Rolls-Royce, Alstom (formerly Bombardier), and Toyota among its largest employers.

I was taking JP to the Alstom railway depot which was hosting the largest temporary gathering of trains in a generation, as part of a celebration of 200 years of railways. This was the line to get in (which moved fast).

Walking around the centre of Derby itself, I found myself thinking the city had potential for place-based investment and rejuvenation. I am uncertain if place-based policy is a better or worse use of funds, but there is some evidence it can work. Arguments against include economic efficiency (better to invest in agglomeration effects of already successful areas e.g. London) and wasting money on prestige vanity projects over real impact. Arguments for include working on regional inequality, social cohesion and boosting under-used areas for productivity. I don’t think there is an economic consensus except that the situation are very individual factor dependent. 

Compared to Norwich (see earlier blog), the population seemed 10-20% more unhealthy (more mobility vehicles, more visible obesity and disability) and perhaps 10 - 20% poorer - although the GDP stats don’t necessarily suggest that. However, given the high-end industrial employers in the region, skills, and the potential infrastructure, the area struck me as just the type of place where good development of institutional capacity; transport, infrastructure, private partnerships and some social investment, could work.

I popped into the cathedral. If Norwich cathedral is a clear A+ then Derby cathedral is closer to a C+/B-. Less investment and creativity in the architecture, less history and importance. That said, there was a Lego event taking place and there was a decent smattering of family community use, I could see. Whereas Norwich spoke to grandeur, tourism and important events. The Derby site was echoing with some community.

The shopping centre was reasonably lively, and the city centre had some new shops along with a decent amount of empty shops.

Over time, I’ve tended to tilt towards more freedom and more classical liberal ideas about society and life but one area where I think I have tilted the other way is on slot machines and certain types of betting shops and casinos. I think regulation should be much stricter on where betting shops can be, and the use of slot machines which have limited-to-negative social value. I saw too much of this in central Derby. (An outright ban brings other problems, so I think tight regulation is warranted here especially due to the predatory and addictive properties of slot machines).

On the the more positive side, the Market Halls venue has just seen a renovation. The cost might have been a touch high (GBP35m) due to conservation challenges, but the result is a space which I do think can help business and people in Derby.

On the jobs and economy front, policy people might want to think about partnerships or procurement. It’s complex because crowding out, and poor return projects are real risks. However, Rolls Royce, Toyota and Alstom need business to remain in the area. Else there is a risk that a situation like AstraZeneca moving away from Macclesfield, could really devastate the local population.

This can be seen with the Alstom site. The flip-flopping on HS2 threatens the viability of this railway engineering site, and who wants to stay - if they can - at a place where there is no long term certainty. New orders for Elizabeth line trains has, short term, secured the site, but a longer-term procurement plan would really help.

I am unsure if there would be higher return investments in e.g. Cambridge / Oxford / London.  I suspect there would be. However, there are arguments for the social and industrial skills that keeping a site and workers around Alstom would bring, given Derby is a high for higher engineering.

Short history and summary (AI enabled):

The Alstom/Bombardier railway engineering site in Derby is the UK’s oldest and most significant train manufacturing facility, tracing its origins to the Midland Railway Works, established in 1840s. Bombardier inherited the site through its acquisition of British Rail’s engineering operations in the 1990s, producing iconic trains such as the Voyager, Electrostar, and Aventra classes. For decades, it was one of the few remaining train-building plants in the UK. In 2021, French multinational Alstom acquired Bombardier Transportation, integrating the Derby site into its global network. Today, the Derby Litchurch Lane works remains vital for UK rolling stock, though recent job cuts and contract delays have sparked debate about the future of British train manufacturing.

This site and Derby in many ways highlights the challenges and opportunities facing the UK in balancing growth, local opportunity, place based rejuvenation, possibly industrial strategy, and, or government procurement roles; the multi-national nature of global business today and the value of historic roots. 

On the event:

The Greatest Gathering marked Railway 200, the bicentennial of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. It featured the largest-ever UK assembly of rolling stock, bringing together over 140 historic, modern, and future trains across a 90-acre site attended by 40,000 people. 

I am glad we went as it was a once in a generation gathering.

In the midst of it all, I did have a reflection on what value is to people. There is limited economic value in old trains. However, 40,000 people coming to see them would suggest there is value socially and economically.

The work skills in a site like Alstom also have value.

I thought back to the wooden bucket maker in Kyoto, Japan who we saw about 20 years ago.

He was one of last bucket makers to make wooden buckets by hand. His techniques have been supplanted by machines, and yet there were wondrous elements to his craft which will be a loss when they disappear.

Wolverhampton seemed a harder case to me that Derby, but more on that in another letter. 

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I thought I’d highlight a few substacks and podcast I’ve done reflecting some of my interests.

On free will and physics, I had a recent conversation with Samir Varma. 

Samir Varma is a physicist, investor, author, and inventor who writes on topics spanning AI, physics, markets, and culture via his Substack newsletter. He explores how determinism shapes human behavior—from free will to finance to chaotic systems—and often weaves in personal stories and tech innovations.

• 🔗 Substack: samirvarma.substack.com

• 🎧 Ben Yeoh Chats episode: Samir Varma: Free Will, Physics, Traffic, Bees  

  On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0X7TAL52nwrQYHFJLWzFFg

On Sustainability, Hannah Ritchie continues to do excellent work.  She writes the Substack newsletter Sustainability by Numbers, where she uses data to unpack climate, energy, food systems, and environmental progress in clear, actionable terms. 

Our podcast was about her book Not the End of the World, but also generally on her life thinking.

• 🔗 Substack: Sustainability by Numbers by Hannah Ritchie

• 🎧 Pod episode: “Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World, sustainability, climate, progress” — Listen on Spotify

On philosophy, Rebecca Lowe is a political philosopher and Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. She is thinking about Freedoms in a Utopia, and writes  the Substack The Ends Don’t Justify the Means, where she offers classical‑liberal, philosophical commentary on rights, freedom, technology, and moral progress. mercatus.orgtheendsdontjustifythemeans.substack.com

🔗 Substack: The Ends Don’t Justify the Means by Rebecca 

🎧 Ben Yeoh Chats episode: “Rebecca Lowe: Exploring Freedom, Moral Philosophy, Technology and the Best Society”

On education, I am particularly interested in the home education movement and ideas which encompasses a lot of different thinking. Here I’ve done pods with Peter Gray and Naomi Fisher which each give views in this area and ideas for what education can mean. 

Naomi Fisher is a UK‑based clinical psychologist, author of Changing Our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of Their Learning, and Substack writer of Think Again, where she explores self‑directed education, agency, neurodiversity, and parenting through a psychological lens. Her work challenges conventional schooling with evidence and personal insight 

• Substack: Think Again by Dr Naomi Fisher

• 🎧 Pod: “Naomi Fisher: home education, unschool, agency in learning, meltdowns, child‑led learning, cognitive psychology” — listen on Spotify.

Peter Gray is a psychologist and author of Free to Learn. He publishes the Substack Play Makes Us Human, writing on play, child development, human evolution, and the cultural role of curiosity in learning

• Substack: Play Makes Us Human

• 🎧 Pod episode: “Peter Gray: Transforming Education, Play, Parenting and Self‑Directed Learning”

On economic history, Anton Howes is an innovation and economic historian. His Substack Age of Invention explores the cultural and economic roots of Britain’s Industrial Revolution and lessons from centuries of technological progress

• 🔗 Substack: Age of Invention by Anton Howes

• 🎧Pod episode: “Anton Howes on innovation history, the improving mindset and progress studies”

Someone who lives and thinks very differently to me is Aella, I still think about the conversation because she has such a different world view. 

Aella (pseudonymous) is an American writer, analyst, and former escort worker who writes Knowingless, a Substack newsletter exploring sexuality, psychedelics, rationalism, and culture through data-driven personal essays and large public surveys

• 🔗 Substack: Knowingless by Aella

• 🎧 Pod episode: “Aella: escort work, home school, rationalism, circling, working in a factory, losing faith, polls and endless questions”

Another person, who has come to live a different life is Kana Chan. 

Kana Chan is a storyteller and educator living in Kamikatsu, Japan’s pioneering zero‑waste village. Her Substack Tending Gardens reflects on rural life, sustainability, community and seasonal living through personal vignettes.

• 🔗 Substack: Tending Gardens by Kana Chan

• 🎧 Pod episode: “Kana Chan: living in a zero waste village in Japan, Kamikatsu” — Listen on Spotify.

Henry Oliver is a writer and critic who publishes The Common Reader, a Substack newsletter offering literary essays, reading recommendations, and reflections on culture and late blooming in literature. Henry makes the case for the importance of great literature.

• 🔗 Substack: The Common Reader by Henry Oliver

• 🎧 Pod episode: “Henry Oliver: Late Bloomers, Second Act, Hidden Talent, Biography, John Stuart Mill” — a deep dive into his book A Second Act, exploring hidden talent, societal bias, networks, and Mill’s philosophy. Listen on Spotify:

Thanks for reading. Do leave a comment or a like.