How Did The Modern World Get So Ugly? - Sheehan Quirke

What is beauty? It's one hell of a question. Um, I think the word is overused, misunderstood. The best way to think about beauty, the most helpful way is to think of it as synonymous with the word love. Once you do that, all the complications kind of fade away. I think beauty is basically love manifest in the physical world. But anyway, so so that that's how I think of beauty because I think >> because you're a hopeless romantic. >> Oh, I am hopeless romantic. Well, I'm a hopeful romantic, let's say. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But I think the problem is once you start talking about beauty, what is beauty? It's kind of like asking what is art, right? It's a very very interesting question, but you can end up talking we could spend the whole, you know, two hours or however long we're going to be here just talking about, well, maybe beauty is this, maybe beauty is that, but what about this? Same with art. I think it's very helpful to agree on a pretty simple definition and then move on to the more important stuff. So, so taking beauty, I think people obsess too much over the idea of, you know, beauty, like is the modern world beautiful? Is architecture beautiful? Is design beautiful? Is this room beautiful? I don't think it's helpful. I think more helpful words are interesting, charming, and meaningful. They're the words I prefer to use. >> Delineate those for me. >> So, well, I think interesting is the opposite of of boring. And I think you know a lot of what I write about online um and what generates an awful lot of interest is when you talk about the ugliness of the modern world but I think boringness is a much more important and powerful word because again ugly and and and beautiful they're they're very they feel very subjective but when you say boring it's a lot easier to agree on what is boring. And I think something being boring is a bigger problem. I've often said to my friends, the one thing human beings cannot stand is being bored. Like, we can put up with a lot of stuff. We can put up with suffering and misery and ugliness >> and ugliness. We could put it, but being bored is is is is the worst thing. And I think actually being bored has driven a lot of uh events and movements in in human history. I often think a lot of revolutionaries end up being revolutionaries just because they're bored. And a revolution is exciting. It's a chance to be part of something. And uh anyway, yeah. >> Okay. So, we've got interesting, which is the opposite of boring, presumably sort of engaging, captures attention, maybe memorable. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, charming. Now, I love the word charming. It's probably my favorite word. That's my word of the year. You know, charm when you see it. And charm, I think, is is a kind of playfulness. It's not too serious. And it also respects the person looking at something or or viewing something. When you make it charming, right, there's no obvious use to charm. You know that there's not really a profit margin there. For sure. >> Yeah. Exactly. But when it's charming, it's like, "Oh, wow. The person who made this thing has thought about has thought about me. They wanted to give me, you know, something to look at, something to to make me smile." >> I think that's charm. Charmingness is kind of like playfulness, I guess. >> Whimsy in the experience. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be like, you know, Wes Anderson level of of whimsy, but it just has to show that there's something about this object um that isn't just interesting in in the straight sense of like having something to it other than what is basically necessary, but also um yeah, makes you smile and kind of reminds you in a way in a way charm. What it does, it gets you out of your your thoughts. You know, we're walking around and you know, miserable thinking about got to email this. I think this all the time. I hate email. So, I've got to email this person. got I got to read Chris Williamson's text or whatever and then you know then I see something charming and and I smile >> also Chris Williamson's text [laughter] >> indeed and then you think the world isn't so bad and then finally meaningful which I guess I mean this conversation is more about the the physical world than anything else and meaningful basically uh can mean a few different things but uh a good example is when you walk around a town and and you find that the way things have been designed reflects something about that town, its people and and its history. I think that's what meaning is and it kind of brings you out of this generic standardized convenient hyperoptimized online modern world and it brings you back into the reality we're living in. The one that we have been since the dawn of civilization. So meaningful, charming and interesting are much more useful words than than beauty. And I think also they're much less inflammatory. Like if you know if I put out on on X or something about you know the modern world is is so ugly or or look at this um you know palace of Asai is so beautiful people start you know getting angry about it but you say it's interesting it's charming or you take a sort of a modern building and say well this is boring people say yeah actually you know what you have a point it is boring is this funny how quickly you can um take these the charge out of these conversations by using better words. >> I wonder whether some of this is because beauty and ugliness feels like a moral judgment. Yes. It feels like a value. So I I I got a speech coach who you met at the Leicester Square, sorry, London last year >> backstage miles. And um when I started working with him, some of my friends said working with a speech coach is going to sort of neutralize your identity. What what if you lose your speaking cadence? What if you lose who you are? And I found it really fascinating cuz I realized that there were uh preferable and less preferable more optimal and less optimal ways to speak in the same way there are to write and in the same ways that there are to sing or play the piano. And nobody would say to you learning to play the piano, well why are you going to that piano teacher? What about the lovely natural way that you play the piano? And you say, well yeah, but it sucks or it can be refined. Even if I'm great, it can be refined. Um, [clears throat] so what it taught me was that there are certain things that people attach closely to our sense of self, like the way that we speak. And there are other things that people don't attach so closely to our sense of self, like the way that we play the piano. And it feels to me like beauty is this word that's imbued with moral weight, with judgment. Oh, it's it's it's the sense of the building or the piece of art or the poem itself as opposed to a simple comment on the way that it presents. >> Yeah. Exactly. Right. So, imagine like, you know, before you'd seen this this this um vocal coach, I said, you know, Chris, the way you talk is ugly, man. That that feels quite offensive. >> But if I said to you, you know, the way you talk, you can >> Yeah. It's boring. Suddenly like, oh, wow. Really? Like that? Yeah. Exactly. >> I should work on my ugliness. doesn't feel quite the same level of what are you getting at? I want to see you bought you bought props. I bought props. So, I went to snappy snaps a couple of hours ago. Two hours in there cuz I I'm not very good at emailing and I sent all the wrong files and there were Google Workspace. >> If you spent more time on your emails, you would be better at sending emails when you got a snappy. >> Well, we can get into that. The good news is so in terms to illustrate because what I find is that when you talk about these things, having visual illustrations helps so much. You know the old saying a paint a picture paints a thousand words. It's so true. And all you I found in order to make points effectively, all you have to do is contrast two things. Put two images next to each other and and it says everything. So when we talk about things being beautiful versus ugly, interesting versus boring. >> I have some pictures of drain pipes. >> Now I love drain pipes and gutters and air conditioning units and like I love all the stuff that the world is filled with. It's amazing. you sort of don't really pay attention to it, but it once you start noticing how much freaking stuff there is in the world, like you know, go outside on the street. Any anybody here, you know, listening or or watching? Um when you finish watching, which is hopefully not just yet, >> um go outside and just look at how many things there are on the street outside. There's literally like the cars, the signs, the windows, the the drains, everything. And all of that has been designed, right? This stuff didn't just appear. Like all everything in this room, it's all man-made. Someone had to decide how all this stuff looked. And I guess my big gripe and the thing that bothers a lot of people is that all these things around us feel increasingly boring and standardized and generic regardless of beauty. So I have some pictures of drain pipes and I will show them. I mean I can maybe I don't know if you can put them. >> Yeah. So these are some 19th century drain pipes. >> Wow. >> And like I'm not going to sit here and tell you these are beautiful. Like I think that would be crazy for me to say, "Oh, Chris, isn't isn't this beautiful, isn't it?" But what it is, it's charming, it's interesting, it's fun, and it's meaningful, >> and it's it's basically it shouldn't be revolution revolutionary idea, but it is. That drain pipes can actually improve the appearance of a town or city or home, right? You think of it as something that has to be functional and you want to get it out of the way, but you still have to see it and it's like, well, you know, it's kind of ruining this wall. No. Our drain pipes can make our towns and cities more beautiful. They can make our lives better. >> Make drain pipes beautiful again. >> Exactly. Yeah. And so here's another one comparing some of the same to some modern uh more modern drain pipes. >> Uhhuh. How would you categorize the difference between the two in terms of what's what they are if you were trying to describe them to someone? >> What do you mean? >> So you have this list on the right and this list on the left. >> What is the difference between those two? Because they do the same thing. >> Well, that's I don't think they do do the same thing. >> Functionally, they do the same thing. >> This is the point. So, so you know this famous line and form follows function, right? Everyone knows that line and everyone sort of thinks what that means is that the function is what matters and appearance is, you know, doesn't matter. That's kind of how people interpret it that we shouldn't care about appearances. We should just care about how it works. But the guy who said that, Louis Sullivan, the great American architect who kind of solved the big skyscraper problem in the late 19th century. So skyscrapers, they appeared in America uh in Chicago first in the late 19th century and like no one had ever seen a skyscraper before. So no one knew how to make them look and the first skyscrapers. So if you look, you can go and see them all look at photos. The first skyscrapers in America were basically just like stacks of smaller buildings, you know, sort of take what would normally be a three-story building and just replicate that for another 10 stories. >> Command C, command V. >> Yeah, exactly. And Sullivan realized this is this is nonsense. It's not working. And he identified the chief characteristic of skyscrapers as what he called loftiness. You know, their height. And when he said form follows function, he was the guy who said it. What he meant is that its innermost purpose, the appearance must um be be suited to that. So what he did was he got rid of this weird multiplication thing and basically just made all the stories the same from the top to the bottom with all these horizontal lines and kind of um in short, he figured out how to make them make them look good. Mhm. >> I've done an architectural boat tour of Chicago. >> Oh wow. >> This I mean so many people do this tour. It's musically at least mine was musically accompanied. The guy maybe it was a harmonica but I went on my own. I was there on tour and uh I went on my own. It's [ __ ] freezing. I wore shorts cuz I'm an idiot. And I was enthralled. It was brilliant. It was so cool. You go and you see the fire. This is where the fire was. It goes down. It does a U-turn. You see everything of one side. You see everything of the other. I think it's got the tallest skyscraper in the world. that was uh designed by a woman there. Uh it's got the tuning fork building with this sort of unbelievably thin base and the way that they had to structure that in order for it to go. The most hilarious thing is you're pulling in the very beginning you go underneath the bridge from the harbor. You pull through >> and they're showing you all of the different buildings and he's going sort of from right to left all the way around. Right at the end, right in the middle, huge big thing, big letters, Trump Tower, Chicago. And this guy's going the tallest building in the world that was built by a woman and this is using the granite that was imported from East Germany and [gasps] moving over to the left and he just completely leapfrogs the Trump thing. I'm like it's probably safe. It's probably safe. Some people are going to haray you for doing it. Some are going to be not so happy and they just made the executive decision that we'll forget that building. Uh I thought I thought it was quite funny. >> No, it is. By the way, we we may need to mention that name again later in this in this conversation cuz Trump is weirdly and maybe unfortunately important in this conversation. You know, he he he in both his terms has done these executive orders to say that all federal buildings need to be in traditional architectural styles >> which is uh I think in some ways good and in some ways bad. But actually I will put a bookmark there and we'll come back to it because on this point about form and function. Yes, Sullivan decorated his buildings right like his skyscrapers have this beautiful sort of ornate terra cotta paneling and all these fal wreaths and stuff. His point was just that the decoration should be suited to what the building is. The problem he felt in the 19th century why he said that is because people decorated everything the same. And he was saying no no we need to decorate and design things according to their purpose not that they shouldn't be decorated. And in my view with those two different um sets of drain pipes, you said, you know, they're both functionally the same. But I don't I disagree. I think any object we design, not in all cases, you know, I don't need the inside of my laptop >> to look beautiful, right? It's just got to freaking work, which it still does, by the way, all these years later. Um, but I think anything that's in the built environment in our homes, in our offices, and our streets, if it's not making that environment more humane, if it's not making the lives of people there better, it is not fulfilling its its entire function. So those drain pipes on the right hand side, I I don't want to don't seem like I'm picking on them. You know, they do their job, which is great. But my point is very simple. >> It's just like if we can also make drain pipes that do their job and like make the world a more interesting place to live in. M >> shouldn't we be doing that? And now why things have changed and how to achieve it? We may get into that, but I think that's the first point to establish. And um yeah, it sounds kind of shocking to people, but drain pipes can be not beautiful, but charming, you know, like all those weird creatures or whatever. Like imagine, you know, you're walking down the street and you see those. It it it does something which doesn't occur when it's just a plain metal or plastic pipe. >> Well, it's interesting when you say um form followers function, but you ask what is the function? >> Mhm. is the function to add charm to your day. There's no reason that the job of a drain pipe needs to begin and end with water. >> Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. >> I saw a photo you uh are the leader and traffic in the world of viral exp posts about uh beautiful things in interesting, meaningful, charming. And um I saw one I think it was the the inside of the latch on a door. So when you look at a door and there was all this engraving if you imagine that this is a common uh currency that you traffic in >> um and yeah another thing you do kind of see it you do it's you don't see it much right but doors are left open especially if it's an internal like kitchen door or something like that so why not make the edge of a door >> Mhm. >> a a opportunity to add charm. You go well what's the door for? Well, it's to uh create a a boundary line, a territory line between the kitchen and the hallway. >> Mhm. >> Well, Mhm. But what if it could be >> even more than that? >> A source of charm. >> Yeah. I mean, the analogy here is like is life itself. Like I'm not going to ask you what is what is the point of life right now, but like universally people agree the most important things in life are love and friends and fun and adventure and achieving stuff. like all all of that like that is beyond the function of life. Like if I said to you Chris, what is the meaning of life? And you said, well, it's to not die and reproduce. Some people do believe that to be fair, but most people don't think that about life. And most people think a good life is one that has love in it and friendship >> more than raw functionality. >> So that the way we view life is that view of life is reflected in drain pipes like those. >> What a take. Drain pipes are life. >> Yeah. But it's funny you mentioned the the virality of these things is so interesting to me like because this is kind of how I got started on X or Twitter as it was then. >> Why don't you tell the story? Tell us the regal us with how you began how you became a cultural tutor. >> So how did I become the cultural tutor? So uh my name is Sheen Quirk. I was born in in Scunorp of all places actually. Anyway, that's not really relevant. Well, it is maybe relevant but I won't go into that just yet. So I went to university and then when university finished this weird thing happened where all my friends had plans and they went and did their mast's degrees. They went and got jobs in the city of London as lawyers and accountants and and all that and I and I and it kind of took me by surprise cuz I I just I just did not have a plan at all. So I'd always wanted to be a writer. I've always been writing and reading you know since I was a child. My head has been I've just you know my my bedroom as a child was filled with nothing but books. And I always wanted to write and I've been writing since I was, you know, since I could first hold a pen basically. And I'd always thought it would happen. And then this then after I left university without a plan, I sort of got into this state of complacency where I was expecting life to just hand it to me on a plate. I sort of thought one day someone would knock on the door and say, "She, we've heard you're a great writer. Here's a book deal." Obviously, that's not how the world works. So I got a job as a uh security guard, sort of more or less. This was four years ago. Um, doing the night shifts, you know, which I loved. I love the night shift, the 12-hour night shift at at my old university, actually. So, it was when CO came. CO came. Um, and then they ran out of of of night watchmen or porters as they're called cuz guys were off sick. They didn't want to work and all the students had gone. And I was still living there just in like a small house with with my girlfriend at the time. And I needed a job. So, they rang me, said, "Chin, we don't have any uh porters left. Do you want to be one?" Normally there are sort of guys who in the 50s 60s semi-retired retired. I said sure like I need a job. So I did that and I spent a year and a half um unblocking toilets and like fixing door handles and uh sitting sitting through the whole night and doing rounds and making sure no one was trying to break in or seal anything. And in those night shifts I would write and stuff and watch films. Um but in terms of the big picture where I wanted to be in life wasn't happening. I wasn't unhappy but um things weren't heading in any particular direction. I left that job and then I realized I didn't have any money. Um I didn't have a job for about 3 months. Uh ran out of money and I needed to pay the rent on this house I was living in. I borrowed money from my friends and my family and I just needed a job as quick as I could. So I just went on Indeed, applied to everything. Um Pizza Hut rejected me but McDonald's said yes. And so on the 2nd of January 2022, I went for my interview. And then two days later, I was there. And I wasn't a burger flipper. I was a maintenance person. So my job was to take in the stock. You know, I get in at sort of 6:00 in the morning. The truck would arrive, bring in all the fries and all the sausages, which were packed in scumop as it happens. And the chicken came from Cambodia, which surprised me. You know, I'd get into the freezer, stock it all up, and then I'd have to get out the jet washer and go and clean my car park. You know, there's McFlurries everywhere. and tomato ketchup. The the McDonald's tomato ketchup um when it solidifies is like rock is like rock solid. You have to freaking get like boiling hot water to get that stuff off the walls. So that's what I was doing and there was just no sign of this ending and I wasn't earning enough money to actually pay back all my friends and I guess it was a bit of a spiral. And then I have a very good friend Harry Dry who you may know of course he's he is a genius and uh and also a fiercely loyal brilliant friend who who tells it how it is and and I was one day I was with him and I was giving him all these ideas. Oh hurry yeah I'm going to I'm going to write this this novel about this and you know I think I'm going to make a film and he's like all you're doing is telling me you're going to do all these things not doing anything. And uh he said this great line. He said what you lack is deadlines not ideas. You lack deadlines, not ideas. And it was like one maybe one of the most important things anybody said to me. And I had this what I call my Mulan moment. Have you seen Mulan? The Disney film Mulan. Not the most recent one. The the animated >> long time ago. You might need to >> Anyway, so there's this wonderful scene in the film where Mulan um her father gets called to war, but he's very old, very sick. He doesn't have any sons and and the eldest male member of the family has to go off to war. Mulan, she loves her father, doesn't want him to go off and die fighting. So, she goes in his place, which obviously they don't want want her to do, but she has to pretend to be a man. So, there's this wonderful scene in the film where the synths kick in. It's the middle of the night, and she goes and gets out her father's armor, gets out his sword, and she cuts off her hair. >> She cuts off her hair so she can ride off to war as a man. And I kind of had that moment. There was this one day when I I thought, you know what? I'm just going to quit my job at McDonald's and going to just give everything I've got to to to getting to where I think I should be. And I took off my my McDonald's beanie for the last time and my big yellow jacket and it felt like that moment in Mulan. It was like a point of no return. I did a few things. I applied to film school. They rejected me. I applied to the army and went through the whole process. They actually offered me a place at Sandhurst which I said no to because by then something else had taken off which was this Twitter account I made. My plan had been to make some money. How can you make some money? Well, by tutoring. Online tutoring is quite a good way to make money. You people sometimes pay like freaking £50 an hour for a good online tutor. And I thought, well, I'm going to tutor people not in maths or or I'm terrible at maths or or or law. I did law university. I don't want to tutor law. I thought I wanted to do cultural tutoring. I thought some parents might want their kids to be more rounded. So, I thought maybe they'll pay me to to tutor their kids um in poetry and architecture and art, which I've always loved, you know. Um, and so I made a I made this little website offering tutoring lessons. And then how do you get eyes on the website? I made a Twitter account hoping to drive traffic towards this website so people would book in tutoring sessions and I could finally make some money. What did I call the Twitter account? Well, the cultural tutor because that's what I thought I was. And uh, and I put this little statue of Plato as a profile picture. And within 6 weeks, it became pretty clear that no one wanted me to tutor them, but they did like what I was writing about. And after 6 weeks, I had 100,000 followers on on on Twitter as it was then. And kind of from there to here, it's been um a dream. But what I did, I I said when I made the Twitter account, I was going to post a a thread every single day for a month and just see where where it gets me. Obviously, the first 10 threads, you don't get a single like. So I would stay up all night like going on Twitter, searching for other people who'd posted about church windows, seeing who'd liked it, then message those people, say, "Hey, I saw you like this post about church windows. I've just written one, too. You might be interested." And sort of, you know, after a week, you're getting two likes on a post. >> Really bootstrapping your way. >> Yeah. Yeah. I was I was obsessed. It was like I had this clear-mindedness, which is a very rare thing in life. It's very rare to to be able to have that level of of of focus and determination. >> And what started out as a month ended up being 2 and a half years. So for 2 and 1/2 years I posted every single day online. >> What was the first day that you didn't post like >> um it was uh when I was writing my book was after I got the book deal and there was this one day when I thought like I have a choice today. I can either make this particular chapter of the book better or I can post on X. And at that point I thought, you know what, it's very hard to let go of something like that. Like it's really hard to let go of a ritual cuz that was my life. Like I would just I was obsess like I would, you know, I said no to all my if there's, you know, friends going out. I say no, I've got to write on Twitter. Why the hell you want to tweet instead of hanging out with your friends? Like I can remember sometimes I would go out and then I'd get home at 5:00 a.m. and stay up till 8:00 a.m. putting something out on Twitter. and eventually got to a point where I was where I needed to be. I had my dream which was to have a book deal and then that became the focus. Um, and a key part of the story is Mr. David Pill, who you know, of course, uh, he saw I was going viral online. And he reached out to me and he just in this fantastically American way just said, "Let's get on FaceTime." messaged me on a FaceTime and he said, "Look, Shen, I really like your work and and I'm guessing you need to make some money from this, but rather than you monetizing your audience and trying to, you know, maybe start a Substack, and then you turning your focus from the wider public to your audience, I'm going to support you. I'll be your patron. I'm going to pay you a living wage, a good wage, and all you have to do is write every single day." And thanks to David and in his his his patronage of me, um, I was able to write every single day and then get to where I am now with like, you know, nearly 2 million followers or whatever and a book deal and some other exciting projects on the way. So that's how happened and it kind of bring bring us back to where we started. I mean, maybe I don't know if you want any sort of you have any comments on that or any reflections. It was one hell of a journey. Um, but the post that that went viral, the post that took me from I I sort of grand my way after five and a half weeks to 15,000 followers, which is pretty good. But then I did a couple of posts and they got like, you know, less than 100 likes and I was thinking maybe this is it. I'm washed. I don't know if you ever have. I mean, you you've been, you know, you're an old hand now >> and anyone who works online will know the sort of the dread and anxiety that hangs on your back, right? Cuz you live by those numbers >> and as soon as they dip even by a half percent, you're like, "This is it. This is my, you know, my 50 minutes of fame is done." And I was I was really mad. Really mad. And I I was staying with my mom at the time. And I thought, you know, I'm and I decided to write about something which had always bothered me. This one I used to moan to my friends about it all the time, which was this thing we're talking about because ever since I was a kid, I'd also like, why is stuff so boring? Like, and yeah, I would look at older things and think, well, they're so pretty so interesting. Why is modern stuff so boring? So, I wrote about that online and I I did bring a screenshot actually of this post [laughter and gasps] to just kind of show the point. This was the post. It's called the death the the the >> the danger and the danger of minimalist design and the death of detail. A short thread. >> Yeah. So, it got 440,000 likes. >> Yeah. That'll that that'll build a 15K account. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And it got me a 90 90,000 followers overnight. And what's so funny about this is what's so funny about it is so interesting. And look at the lead image. It's just two bolards, right? It's like a typical old bard. It's not even that interesting, >> but then it's a typical new bolard. And what it turned out is that people all over the world had been feeling exactly the same way. That things are boring and generic these days. And that people are crying out for the world to be a more interesting, charming, and meaningful place. A quick aside, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for years. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And it just got even better. AG1 NextGen keeps the same simplicity, one scoop once per day, but now comes with four clinical trials backing it. In those trials, AG1 NextGen was clinically shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels within 3 months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times even in healthy adults. Basically, they've upgraded the formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients, and clinical validation. And it's still NSF certified for sport, which means that, you know, the quality is legit. I actually got to meet the team that runs AG1, all of the top bods at a offsite a couple of months ago here in Austin and I was really impressed. They took my feedback on board. They were very receptive. Uh and I actually think that they put some of my ideas uh into the product and the new marketing. So uh any success that you see going forward from now can be exclusively attributed uh to me. So hooray for me. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 90-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it and use it every single day for 3 months. And if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. Right now, you can get a year's free supply vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs, plus that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkagg.com/modernwisdom. >> Dude, what a great story. You know, I'd heard this from David's side, >> but it's really wonderful to hear it from you. What a It's really inspired me even hearing what David did with you. Uh I had I've had a bunch of conversations with the um people who look after my accounts and um in America you can start a nonprofit and do these things. It's a [ __ ] nightmare because what I would love to do is start a kind of scholarship thing where maybe once every 12 months I find somebody or maybe a small group of people who are in your position and liberate them. >> Yeah. >> To be able to go and do the thing. And it's so difficult. It's so difficult to be able to do that because if they're an employee then it means this and if it's a nonprofit then you can't be the person that chooses because the opportunity for nepotism is you know obviously through the roof. It's basically a way for you to tax-free funnel money from your business to other people that you like. Well, obviously I like them if I want to support them because I think they're good, but oh, you're not allowed to like. So you can be the director but then you need to have a a symposium or a board of people and they would choose and you can't have in I just want to give someone I just want to enliven one or a few people that I think are making good work to go and do it and it turns out to be really difficult. So that's a work in progress. >> You got to because honestly like patronage is like a very oldfashioned way to make things happen. In the modern sort of throughout the 20th century, you had establishments, you know, you had the publishers and the media broadcasting organizations. That's where you went to get stuff done. Now, we have the online creator economy as it's called. You become an influencer, you know, like us, I guess, you know, you get sponsorships or or or you know, you have a substack. >> The oldfashioned way is a guy who has some spam money finds people who are talented and gives them that money, right? And then that's how so many of the world's most famous and beloved works of art appeared. pretty much all of them. Like, you know, Michelangelo didn't paint the ceiling of the Systeine Chapel based on, you know, Substack subscriptions. He didn't have a sponsor. Pope Julius II said, "Michael Angelo, you're the best artist um in Italy right now. I'm going to pay you 400,000 duckets or whatever it was to paint the ceiling of my chapel." And he did it. Same as the Mona Lisa, right? The Mona Lisa, >> which is a pretty boring and overrated painting. But anyway, it was commissioned by a guy um Leonardo was back back in um Florence after being in Milan for a while. And this guy, he just got married and he's moving into his new house. Said, "Lono, I want you to paint a portrait of my wife. So, here's a lot of money. Paint a portrait of my wife." Like, this is how great art throughout history and many books as well and poems and stuff. That's how they appeared. Somebody with the funds directs it directly to the person who needs it and then it gets created. Patronage. It's an old fashioned system, but I think maybe it has a future in in our modern world. Tell me more about your opinion on the Mona Lisa. >> Well, look, I I think I mean there a few facts about it. First of all, here's a question. Who is the Mona Lisa? What is she called? >> It's not after Mona Lisa. >> Well, no, her name is Lisa. But I think there's something interesting about the fact that the most the most famous painting in the world, the the most in some sense the the mo the woman with the most famous face in history, no one knows what she's called. Her name was Lisa Gerardini or or Lisa Del Jakondo when she got married. Um, and also the crazy thing is she she never actually saw the painting finished. Leonardo was a famous procrastinator. He would just freaking take forever to do anything. And uh he actually left Italy with the painting. He went off to to live in France cuz the king of France uh asked him to come and work >> in high demand. >> Yeah, he hired him and he took the painting. So Lisa Gerardini never saw the finished portrait which is kind of crazy I think. And also >> he died before it was done. >> No, no, sorry. He took it. So, so Leonardo took it took the portrait with him to to France >> um before it was finished and then he finished it in France and then gave it to the king of the king of France, Francis the first he was called. Anyway, >> here's a painting of someone else's wife. >> Well, you know, yeah, I guess I guess. But yeah, it's Leonardo. So, even then the guy was a even then like his reputation now. It hasn't changed at all. Like people then worship the guy. But I just think it's a shame that the most famous painting in the world is a is is a relatively boring portrait. >> Why is it boring? Well, if you look at other paintings and the things that might get people interested in art, like you imagine, because like I'm passionate about art, you know, it's my lifeblood. But the way our culture works, like if you want to get someone interested in art and they kind of start looking into it and they see the most famous product of the entire history of art is just is is like a woman smiling. Um, it's I don't think it's going to excite them. What do you wish was the replacement? If you were to say, "Hey, the world is gifted. I can hot swap the Mona Lisa for something else." >> This would be a good front end of the funnel for people into art. >> Sure. I think there's a few >> contenders. Yes. Some of which are already quite wellnown. Look, it depends on the person cuz I think when someone's, for example, like like young when they're a teenager, I think you need something a bit more brash and exciting. If you look at the the paintings of a guy like John Martin, he was a 19th century English painter from County Durham actually. Okay. >> And um he painted these kind of crazy biblical catastrophic landscapes, you know, and there's lightning and there's thunder and there's like cities blowing up and there's gigantic waves and and it's epic, you know, it's like sort of watching Lord of the Rings but in a single painting. Like that kind of thing is exciting. Also, you know, another painting which is very very famous, you know, the garden of earthly delights by Heronomous Bosch. That one is pretty famous. Um, and I think paintings more like that are more likely to get people excited about art. Um, >> a little bit more interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. They're basically more cuz I I don't hate them at least. So, if you like it, then you like it. But I think people should be free to call it boring if they want. This is another problem like art. The problem with art like it's in this space where people feel very intimidated. You know, they feel ignorant. >> Yes, I certainly do. >> Sure. And then then then suddenly they feel like they're not allowed to say the Mona Lisa is boring because >> it feels unrefined like I don't get the joke that everybody else gets or I don't get the the subtext. I'm not sufficiently sophisticated. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Whereas my view is the only thing you need to get into art uh you only need two things. Your eyes and your heart. That's all you need. And you got to fall in love with it. And that's a lot of my work has has been that just trying to put art out there, not in the context of art, but in the context of just something that's not that different to cinema. Pipe. >> Yeah, exactly. Or a nice freaking train. Yeah, man. Exactly. >> Um anyway, so that's how did how did the Mona Lisa come up? >> Uh uh you were explaining I think you were going through a bunch of Oh, it was uh Da Vinci Michelangelo. He's laid on the ceiling. >> So this this thing you're thinking of doing, man. Like good luck with that. Good luck with that because it it who knows what it might lead to. >> What else have you got by way of uh example? I'm excited for what comes next. >> I've got some really some really good stuff there. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some deep cuts from the world of architecture and art. >> So, the reason I brought these is again just to illustrate the points I'm making. Um I could say, oh, just Google it, but it's much easier if I show it myself here. Now, a big part of my work online, a big part of the book, but not only the book, and a big part of this documentary, this short film, which is being released tomorrow as we speak. Um, made it with David Prel. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you very much. It's a 15-minute short film, and we're treating it as a standalone piece and as a pilot for a future series we want to make about art and architecture [clears throat] >> with and learning from art and architecture about life in the 21st century. is called the modern world actually because I think we can learn a lot about life now and how to improve it by looking at art and architecture and things like that in the past and people are crying out I for a sort of a high quality art documentary series anyway now what I think is really important by my life's work in a way is to establish first of all that there is a problem with the way the world looks today in the way we design it and then secondly this is the crucial part to establish a consensus around this issue a problem I ran into pretty early on which I hadn't anticipated is that as soon as I started writing about this you know this this like just like people have very strong views about it um most people are inclined to agree and like the polls show very clearly studies and polls show very clearly that people are dissatisfied with how things look and that they generally prefer traditional to modern architecture >> but I found that as soon as I started writing about it people have all these connotations based on whether they think they're leftwing or rightwing there's this idea for example. [laughter] >> No, it's a big issue because people think if you're to criticize modernism, right? So like modern architecture, >> to criticize that must mean that you're somehow like a a traditionalist conservative, even a fascist. And also if you want to revive traditional architecture, you must therefore be a conservative or or a fascist. Um and and then people also think if you defend modern architecture, the conservatives think you're like a radical socialist or a communist. And all of this is is is is it's complete nonsense. It's just not true. Now, so that's the second part. I want to demolish these misguided political associations around around the issue and establish a consensus, which is why I've brought some little graphics. So, the first thing I'll do is I just This should be quite good fun. Um I just want to show you these and and and ask you what you think they are. M >> it's sort of sort of it's sort of a trick question and I'm I'm hoping you get it wrong. >> They look like towers. Towers of castles in some ways. >> Yeah, exactly. Let's have a look. These are water towers. These are 19th century water towers. >> Wow. >> So all they do is you know and for people who don't know what water tower is like in a town or city in order to have water pressure you need to lift all the water up high to the pipe. Right. So that's what these are. Unbelievably these somehow are just bits of like the most boring infrastructure you can imagine. water management infrastructure and [laughter] yet they look like they just they're so much fun. Right. >> Imagine North Umbrean Water created one of those. >> Exactly. Exactly. And what's most interesting perhaps is that these have all been decommissioned now. Right. Cuz obviously, you know, we've got more advanced technologies and yet they still stand because people love them. They've been converted variously into houses. Some of them are like gallery spaces or viewing platforms. And again, just like the drone pipes, it's crazy to think that in the past, people believed that even something as simple and and ostensibly boring and functional as a water tower could make a town or city more interesting. But this isn't about past versus present, which is what people assume. All I'm interested in is improving the present by learning um from the past. Now, >> it's difficult to learn from the future. >> Inde [laughter] indeed. Uh, we'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. Sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex posting their Euro road trip, and now lemonade and salt. Huh? Element just dropped their brand new lemonade salt flavor, and it's everything that you want on a hot day. Tart, salty, and stupidly refreshing. It's like a grown-up lemonade stand in a stick with actual function behind the flavor. 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That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. >> Now, so the first to establish each other is I mean, look at this. This is another screenshot of of a tweet I did. >> So, this is like um what I can't read. What does it say? Uh why are cities all around the world starting to look the same? You got the USA, Japan, Russia, Colombia, Germany, Ethiopia, Brazil, Taiwan, Poland, Australia, Spain, China. These are high-rise skyscrapers. >> Yeah. They just more like it all looks the same, right? And and what's so I did this >> glass steel vent lines >> and it's got like 174,000 likes, you know? So like people really care about this issue. like people feel very very like the easiest way to get traction online is just to post two images. One of like a nice old thing, one of a crappy new thing and everyone loves it because everyone feels it to be true. >> Cru like a global issue >> as well. So like with those water towers, with those drain pipes, the reason I wanted to show them to you is just to to to kind of give an example of two things. First of all, the fact that things have changed, that we don't design things how we used to. And secondly to show that it's possible to make boring things to make infrastructure interesting, meaningful, charming. So that is the the problem. Now uh at this point people start getting very angry and if I can sort of address the two sides um one after the other, this is what I would say. So so I think it's very important to defend modern architecture, right? But it's not popular with the public. Even though um a certain sort of group of architects and planners love it, the general public do not like modern architecture. Look at any study, any poll. Look at, you know, look where people go. Look at where tourists take photos. Right? When tourists come to London, where do they want to go and take photos? In front of the pretty old buildings. Where do people want to go on holiday? They go to Paris. They go to Rome. They go to Venice. They go to Kyoto. They want to see beautiful old buildings, right? what the public want is very clear. That being said, I think it's very important to defend modern architecture. There's this idea, I think, maybe among conservatives um and what you might call more right-wing or or traditionalist people, which are all such unhelpful terms anyway, that modern architecture, these big sort of boring concrete tower blocks, skyscrapers, that they replaced these Barack palaces and these charming cottages. But the truth is that you this this is the kind of this is the kind of thing they replaced. So, this photo was taken in the Netherlands in the 1930s. >> Okay. This is a mud hut. >> It's a family of three, two adults and an infant. Uh, I'm not doing this for the visually impaired. I'm doing it cuz some people are just listening. Uh, black and white photo of what looks like farmland in the middle of a field essentially. I think there's a wheel. Is that a wheel? >> Yeah. >> On the top of the house, >> yeah. So, it's very low. It's basically the height of maybe even slightly lower than the height of people. It's an A-frame sort of seems to be a bigger bit at the back, but I mean it's halfway between a mound of dirt and a a tent made out of wood. >> Yeah. A chimney. >> Would you want to live there? >> No, >> probably not. Now, most people throughout history were living in conditions not totally dissimilar to this. Like throughout most of history until the last century, people were living in conditions of absolute squalor and material misery. And all these modern buildings which are very easy to criticize aesthetically, they look pretty nice when you compare them to that sort of thing. >> Modern architecture using concrete and steel and glass and plastic building quickly and cheaply and efficiently basically gave the world a roof over its head. It lifted humanity out of material squalor and into a world where they could have, you know, they weren't living in in in in places like that where you're warm and you're dry and there's no danger of imminent collapse. So, it's really important, I think, that more conservative or traditionalist people recognize that modern architecture has actually been a blessing for humankind in so far as quality of life is is concerned. I also think a lot of modernist buildings are very beautiful, but but that's kind of a separate point. I think they can be lovely and I think like like I like the shard, you know, and I like the girkin. These buildings are so much fun and I wouldn't want to see a world where we didn't build those. >> So >> definitely not boring though. >> Exactly. They're not boring. Exactly. That's also >> And they're charming. >> And they're charming. Yeah. >> Meaningful. >> But here the mean what I love about these buildings is like London has this fantastic um practice of giving buildings nicknames, right? So the gerkin, the shard, the freaking walkie-talkie, the cheese grater, that I think is meaning emerging basically when we give them those names. Um, you know, the Gerkin feels like part of London. You can't imagine London without the Gerkin now, even though 20 years ago a lot of people didn't like it. >> So that's my sort of piece aimed at the traditionalists who are, I think, too overly critical of um, modern architecture. But now the problem is that maybe the slightly bigger problem is that as soon as you start talking about this issue a lot of more progressive people generally conservative progressive maybe socialist left-leaning liberal people think that to call for traditionalism is some kind of like retrogressive conservative fascistic worldview which I think is clearly not the case. like asking for the world to be more beautiful. Especially the streets where ordinary people live and work. Like the rich can freaking afford whatever paintings they want. They can afford lovely houses. The people suffering most right now are ordinary people all over the world whose streets and homes and offices are literally making them depressed. Like studies have shown, I mean, you don't even need studies to prove it, but you you know I suppose it's helpful. Like we are more stressed, more anxious, less productive, less happy when we're in boring environments. Like why do prisons look the way they look? Like why do solo confinement have nothing in it and harsh lighting? But there's this crazy situation where we literally design buildings these days in the same way that we design prisons. I mean it's kind of sad to think about but you know there's this game that some people play which is is it a prison or is it a school? And if you look at prisons and schools built in the UK over the last 50 or 60 years and I show you a photo of each, you can't tell which is which. They look pretty >> similar. Anyway, and more to the point about why I think liberal people should embrace and progressive people should embrace this this some traditional architecture. Bunch of reasons. One, it's more sustainable. Like look at those water towers, right? You build something that's beautiful that people like, you don't have to demolish it. It lasts decades or hundreds of years, which is way more sustainable than building things like we do now, which can be demolished in 20, 30 years um cuz they're crappy and no one likes them. It's also more environmentally friendly. traditional architecture is way more um interested in using local materials. It's also more suited to local climate. Like why do all houses or buildings in Northern Europe have very steep roofs, steep gables? Because it snows, right? And you don't want snow to build up on the roof. Now we have flat roofs. So we spend a like a crap ton, you know, having to, you know, we have to clear it or we have to heat it so it melts. It's a mess. Anyway, so it's more environmentally sustainable. And also the final thing, I'm I realize I'm going go on a bit, but this is this is so important. Um like when you have beautiful stuff like this beautiful hinges you talk about, you know, the beautiful latches in the doors. >> William Morris, the great great William Morris, 19th century poet and designer and uh campaigner, also a massive communist and Marxist as well. The reason he loved beautiful medieval old-fashioned design is because he felt it made people's lives more interesting when they have to use stuff, but it also made people's lives better when they had to make stuff. Like right now, we're forcing people all around the world on other sides of of the world to be fair in other countries paying them like crappy wages to make crappy boring stuff. As soon as your job involves making something interesting and beautiful and you've got some creative say in it, like imagine if you know people the brick layers in this country, you know, we just make them we ask them to make plain brick walls. So the middle ages brick layers what they did they would make patterns in the walls. You know the you can you can do wonderful things with bricks. They sound boring but bricks can be so charming, so much fun. And um now you know we don't do that but in a world where we embrace beautiful design >> everyone benefits the people who have to make stuff and the people who have to use stuff anyway that is I think most of what um is needed to be said that I want to establish a consensus that the world can be so much more interesting that we will all benefit from it and that it's not a political issue. Anyway, I didn't I didn't get through all my >> I want to see more of your examples. Go do the presentation. >> Here's here's here's one. So, here are some here are some Do you know what they are? >> Water fountains. >> Yeah. >> So, there's a a variety sort of a green. The classic green's okay. It's a little >> a little sterile and minimalist, but it's not bad. And then there's one that's sort of a a real aqua blue and it looks a little bit like a like a cartoon. >> Yeah. So, these are some water fountains that have been installed around London in the past sort of 10 to to to 20 years. around the UK actually and like they're fine like they do their job. Um but uh on on the whole I wouldn't say that they necessarily make the place where they are prettier or more interesting. So now here are some Victorian water fountains >> which uh >> they look like mini chapels. >> They do. Yeah, they do. They do. Um they're beautiful and they're really >> foursided. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that that almost looks like a a fountain that you would go to. >> Yes. >> Where ducks would swim and >> Yeah, exactly. And and uh there's a few points on this, but I I'll I'll keep it relatively brief. I mean, the main one to me is that when you see something like this, when this much care and thought has been put into designing water fountains, which are one of the most important kinds of public um architecture you can have, right? Like water is a sacred thing. It is it is it is the source of life. um when you treat the public and treat water in this way um I think everyone is is is much happier. And now the the other the other slides I can probably kind of speed through them. >> There's no speed or anything. We can indulge as much as you want. >> We can we can but there's just so much exciting stuff to talk about here. So this one is um kind of fun. So you remember I showed you the screenshot of how all modern architecture >> looks the same. All these skyscrapers. Well, it turns out in the past things weren't actually necessarily so different. Like here here's one of >> wow. Ireland, Mexico, Greece, India, Russia, Cuba, USA, Philippines, Argentina. And these are all quite sort of Barack style pillars with the classic Aframe Gree Greek. What is that? What's >> called? >> Yeah. Yeah. And they all look the same basically all over the world. And it's the same here. >> Difference being I think people don't mind when they think it's pretty. >> No, they they don't mind. Exactly. But I think it's important to recognize that we we shouldn't romanticize the past. Even though I'm prone to doing that. I think I've got better in recent years >> of being much more realistic about what things were like. But it's interesting first of all, yeah, that people don't mind homogeneous architecture when it's pretty. But also that things in the past were also, you know, it's not like there was necessarily more variety. And these ones are kind of more to the point again. It's just like freaking loads of buildings that look the same. >> Wow, look at that. Sort of Gothic style cathedrals. Uh UK, Norway, Slovakia, Germany, Cetchia. >> Oh, Czecha. I guess that's the Czech Republic. >> Czecha. Uh Italy. That one in Italy is insane. >> Yeah, that's in Milan. >> Uh Hungary, Portugal, and Belgium. All >> again, they're all very very similar, right? Cuz they're all part of the same. And that was kind of And then sorry there is one more of these which is a now Byzantine style architecture. >> Okay. So this is with domes. >> Yeah. >> Uh a little bit lighter color. A lot of white some some yellows in there as well. Um and again they all look very similar. So I kind of like making that point just because again perhaps um more some people who are more traditionally aligned tend to forget that there were phases in the past when buildings look the same all around the world. But then the the equal point that you made straight away is that people don't mind architecture. They don't mind when it's homogeneous if it's pretty. Then the final thing it's a bit came out a bit blurry unfortunately but anyway what do you think this building is? What do you think that is? >> I think it's a church. >> Sure. That's what anyone would think. >> Okay. You tell me it's uh >> showers or something. >> So, this is this is a still from a documentary. Actually, I was it was it's been my dream for years to visit this place and to film there. >> Where is it? >> So, this is it's called Cross Nest Pumping Station. This is a sewage uh facility. [laughter] When London's new sew was built in the 19th century, um they needed a pumping station. um a few mile like about 20 miles east closer to the the mouth of the tempames and the Victorians thought this was how you should design a a sewage facility um yeah and it's just absolutely gorgeous and this in a way sums up the change and I think we've lost the belief the conviction that even sewers can be beautiful can be charming, interesting, meaningful. People working sewers and >> what's the excuse other than convenience and cost? >> Yeah. Well, so this is where it gets really interesting. The cost point is frequently raised that we can't afford to build like that or design like that anymore. But this kind of isn't true. Now, there are two things to say about it. First of all, one point, it is a bit more expensive, but like anything is too expensive if you don't want it. And then the question is, is the extra investment worth making? Well, if it's going to cost 1% more, which is usually what it's like to decorate, like decoration is so much cheaper than every other part of a building, right? Just got to stick some pretty stuff on the front of it. Now, that's that's all cast iron. It's mass manufactured. This isn't made by some artist slaving away for years. You literally melt the iron, stick it in a mold, pull it out, paint it a bit, looks beautiful. Like, is an extra percent worth an increase in human happiness and joy? Worth increasing, you know, the the the lifespan of the building will be expanded by, you know, decades. Um, I dare say that that's a wise uh investment. And also in purely speaking purely commercially think of what it does for tourism like cities especially like in Europe um you know in Europe people don't make stuff anymore don't manufacture stuff where does all the money come from comes from tourism like you put up beautiful buildings and people from around the world will come flocking spending all the hardearned money just to spend one night in this one freaking pretty street in your city. So, like it's one of the best investments you can make is in decoration. Um, that's the one people usually raises cost. It's kind of kind of the biggest one. And it really is that simple. I I think there's also other things we could get into that probably aren't worth addressing um right now. But it's so the point I want to make is that it is a choice. We act like it isn't a choice. And the problem with with that, however, is that we live in a consumerrist society. And again, this is why I think traditionalists and liberals, conservatives and progressives should be united. The problem, the biggest problem with modern design isn't any um is isn't people who want to return to the past. It's not socialism. It's not communism. The biggest problem is consumerism. Like we live in a society where we have a culture of obsolescence. Nothing is built to last cuz you can make more money obviously if you don't build things to last. where the cheapest, most convenient, quickest route is the one that we always take with everything. We do like everyone stands to benefit from that kind of meaningful, beautiful design, apart from uh if you're the if you're a property developer or or a planner, whatever it is, and and you want to spend as little money as possible and get back as much as possible in a short time span, you make it boring, you make it ugly, you don't care about how it looks. Mhm. >> That's that consumerism, [clears throat] I think, is the biggest problem. >> In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentus. If your sleep's not dialed, taking ages to not off, you're waking up at random times, and feeling groggy in the morning, Momentus' sleep packs. How did I miss both of those? Are here to help. They're not your typical knock you out supplement overloaded with melatonin. just the most evidence-based ingredients at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, and wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning. Which is why I take these things every single night, and why I trust Momentous with my life, or at least with my sleep, because they make the highest quality supplements on the planet. What you read on the label, it's what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it completely risk-f free. Use it and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemus.com/modern wisdom using the code modernwisdom a checkout. That's lie mous.com/modern wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout. Where do you think on the planet has got a good balance of beauty of charm, meaning interestingness? I imagine some unsophisticated idiot like me is immediately going to say Rome because it's so obvious and in my face. I went to Vienna for the first time this year. >> Oh yeah. What do you make of it? I I again I that kind of very um I've just read my first philosophybook.com unnecessarily Barack architecture thing for me is very it's easy to enjoy. I find it I I find the detail uh very pleasant. Um the fact that every street that you turn down is really wonderful. I thought that was lovely. I really really enjoyed Venice. Mhm. >> I thought Venice was fantastic and um small quaint streets and higgledy piggledy buildings leaning almost leaning up against each other and they're being supported by bits of wood and the wood supported by iron and the iron brackets are on the side of the house and nothing no two streets look the same and all of the pavements are cracked and that was that felt quaint to me which was charming. I think that would be very very charming. Um where else has got it right that I like. Uh, I'm a fan of Harriut. >> Nice. >> I think Harriut in the UK. Edinburgh. >> Yeah. Ed Edinburgh is >> phenomenal. >> Just Yeah. Just when your spirits lift when you go to, you're excited every corner. >> But these are maybe not for Americans, but these are maybe more obvious examples. >> No, but they're good examples, man. Like you you made such a like a good point like >> when you said about Vienna, like it's easy to enjoy, >> you know? I've got like I'm deep into this stuff and I I don't like Barack architecture. I'm I'm I'm much more of a Gothicist. I much prefer the Gothic for but and I could sit here and talk for 12 hours about why that is. But it kind of doesn't matter what I think like it like it makes you smile. You think and you get out your phone, you start taking photos, you know, and and that is what matters here. So Edinburgh, Rome, Vienna, >> other cities in the world as well, all over the world. >> Where else? Give it give us some uh maybe less obvious beautiful locations that people could >> that you wouldn't think of. >> Yeah. >> So, um I love uh Sophia in Bulgaria. >> Okay. >> Um that's got a wonderful mix. It's got a mix of architecture which is why I like it because for a long time it was under the Ottoman Empire. And the same is true all around Bulgaria. You've got a lot of Ottoman era kind of Turkish influenced buildings, but then you've also got after his independent you've got all these 19th century neo-yzantine all big domed cathedrals and you've got art nuvo all spiraling and flowery and pastel colors and then the the communists came and started building their massive brutalist monuments and I adore brutalism and so you go to to any city in the Balkans really and they've got this just amazing mix over 500 years you've got several different chapters of of of world and cultural and architectural history crammed in on this on the same on on the same street. And I love variet I think variety is key. Again, I'll say I'll say it once more. >> I wouldn't want to see a world where we just get rid of modernism in design. Like some modern buildings just wonderful. We mentioned the Gerkin >> earlier and I think the world benefits from variety. Look, it's a law of nature. One of the big points to make is like okay, but why why do human beings like variety? Why do we need variety? Why is decoration charming to us? Like why is a door handle with a little spiral on it nicer than a door handle that's just a bar? Because it reflects nature. You go outside and look at a tree. John Constable the painter has this great line >> that no two leaves in the history of the universe have ever been identical. >> And it's true. Look at a tree. Every single leaf is different. Every single tree is different. Nature is constantly changing and it's varied and it's detailed. Um, and those principles of natural beauty, I think, which is the uh which is the environment that we were not not raised in, that we evolved in, and that we've been [clears throat] in since the dawn of the human species, is the one we feel most at home in. And go ahead. Go ahead. >> Yeah, I I'm just >> I I totally get it that the uh the straight lines uh don't necessarily appear in nature. So trying to replicate uh some more complexity and some more uniqueness in design is good idea. You mentioned brutalism there. I can see how brutalism might not be boring. >> Mhm. >> I would absolutely say it is not charming though. >> True. True. >> Make the procase for brutalist architecture. >> Yeah. Oh god. >> You might need to do a tiny briefer on what brutalist architecture is as well. >> Sure. So brutalism is a word that conjures a lot of images in people's heads. Like it emerged after the Second World War in in the late 50s, well early 50s and then kind of really took off in the '60s in the West and then it took off in the Soviet Union and and the Eastern block a little bit later in the 70s and ' 80s. Now when people say brutalism, they usually mean any building that is concrete and square. That's not what brutalism is. That that that that's basically just that's the most basic form of modernism. I suppose brutalism uh properly told is about these big bold shapes. It's so you know um you know the National Theater or the South Bank Center just on the other side of Waterl Bridge. >> Okay, >> that's like a great example of brutalism. I probably I should have probably should have added to my presentation, but what you've got is these great big cubes and pyramids and weird angles and big open spaces and it's all concrete. It's all unpainted raw concrete, which is very honest. It's truthful. That's the idea. Anyway, the reason I love brutalism is because it's bold and it's exciting and it presents a vision for the world. It's like brutalism. You look at all this old like fancy, pretty, detailed, delicate stuff. Brutalism is the opposite of that. It is massive. >> It is pure geometry on a huge scale. Like the pyramids of ancient Giza or Stonehenge are kind of brutalist. >> Like imagine those things but made of concrete. Suddenly they're brutalism. And that's brutalism has this like ancient monument monumentality to it. And I think that's way more I agree it's not charming, but not every not everything needs to be charming. Some things should be imposing or impressive. >> And I think brutalism is impressive, but you what you said was so true. You said it you don't think of it as as boring, right? Because it's not boring. It it's maybe ugly, but maybe ugliness is a good thing sometimes. But what did I say? The one thing we cannot bear is boredom. Ugly is fine. Boring is not fine. And brutalism, I grant that some people find it ugly. And I wouldn't want a world of brutalism, but I think it's something inspired and to me very optimistic. It emerged after second world war. You know, the whole world has been devastated by the greatest cataclysm in civil in the history of civilization and from the ashes emerges this new style of architecture. It it is it is like if you if you pick a brutalist building and look at a photo of it from when it was first built in the 50s or 60s it looks so futuristic and I can imagine people like imagine you're surrounded by all these like you know delicate Victorian buildings are all the the plaster is peeling the iron is rusty and then you see this like concrete spaceship it's like this is going to be a better fairer more prosperous world >> only in comparison with a much more delicate >> Yeah. um uh refined >> glass, steel, chrome building. >> Yeah. >> Does this begin to actually look kind of raw and primal and threatening? >> Mhm. Yeah. Threatening is a good word. It can be pretty threatening. And the problem now, which Yeah. is that the world has been filled with so much boring design, plain squares and cubes. That brutalism has lost its charm because it worked by virtue of its contrast with that older environment. Now you have these brutalist buildings surrounded by just freaking glass boxes. Doesn't look that interesting. >> Right. >> You mentioned earlier on uh you're a hopeful romantic. >> I think I put myself in the same category actually. Um, how do you come to think about romance in the modern world? We've spoken about beauty something that I think people wistful for struggling to find perhaps interestingness and where is it this sort of increasing sterilization as they feel of >> the environments that they have to spend time in whether inside or outside. How do you come to conceive of romance in the modern world? So you mentioned um yeah sterilization a really really good word. I think romance romance is the least convenient thing. >> You say the word romance twice and things start falling out of the wall. That's the way it works. >> That's how it should be. That's how it should be. >> We live as I said I think we're okay. >> Someone agrees. We we live in a world of convenience and of hyper commercialized optimization >> and in this world um in amongst it romance screams out as the opposite like I said it to a friend of mine I think I said it to David actually I said uh we were talking we talk about dating and um now he's getting on and I said look man it's not love if it's convenient like love is anything apart from convenient like when you're in love And when you're taken by these passions, right, you you you stop doing things you should be doing. You think, well, I've got to work today, but I just I just want to be with this person. You stay up all night. You know, you arrive at work, you're tired, you're sleepless. That is not um convenient and it's not beneficial to a world where your focus would be on on on on kind of optimizing according to those material conditions. And yet it's worth it, you know. And I think that's how I think of romance and why we're struggling to find it because it runs contrary to all the instincts that are being um taught to us by the world. like I don't think you can schedule romance, you know, and I think online dating culture. It it has transformed the way maybe we think about love into something that that that fits into a broader scheme of of a scheduled and organized life. And I think it narrows the scope of possibility for passion to sweep you away, you know, and and and that is why I that that yeah that's how I think of romance. Does that answer the question or not? >> To a degree it does. I think the inconvenience makes an awful lot of sense. Uh you know to go from your slightly more artistic whimsical approach to my remote area of expertise of evolutionary psychology and mating dynamics. Humans have two attachment systems. We have the passionate and the companionate. And the passionate is uh highly irrational. It's the honeymoon phase. It's obsession. A lot of anxiety. Uh it's very painful. >> Anyways, it's very beautiful. It's the rush. It's the spark. >> Uh you're unable to focus on anything. >> It wouldn't make for a particularly good society. It certainly wouldn't really even make for a particularly good family life. There's a lot of articles online. I can go and find this couple kept their honeymoon phase going for 20 years and here's how you can do it too. >> And there's a bit of me that thinks, well, that sounds nice in some ways because there's the rush and there's the novelty and there's the uncertainty and oh, isn't it exciting? I would not want to be the child of parents who at 10 I'm 10 years old or 5 years old and they're still in the honeymoon phase. I don't think that your executive functioning that's why you stay up late, >> right? You should go to bed. You should go to bed. It's a good idea to go to bed. Something I imagine you tell yourself all the time knowing your sleeping pattern. Um, >> so and then you move into companion love. Companionate love is friendship. It's categorized much less by sort of this obsession, but a deeper kind of connection. closer to friendship uh but with the the romantic interest in there too. And um I think we I don't know how much of a place there is in the modern world for romance. Certainly not given some of the the challenges of roles that men and women have to try and contend with now that women can be their own provider. uh and that men don't need to be the provider at all, especially if the woman is. Neither need to be procreator uh which would have been very novel uh ancestrally. You know, if you have two people that are together in a relationship and there's no child that's come out of it, it's pretty likely that we're probably going to part ways. I don't know whether the fertility issues me or whether it's you, but if we both split up, then you know, there's a 50% chance that we might this might work with somebody else. Maybe it is you or maybe it's me and it'll be another another whiff. But I wonder given these sort of changing modalities in order for you to be romanced, in order for you to apply, and this is a Joe Folly idea. I [ __ ] become obsessed with this idea. It's so good. Spoken about it twice today already. Joe makes this great point that the modern world is defined in many ways categorized by ironic speech. >> Yes. Yes, man. Hell yeah. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start. Which is why I partnered with Function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function, and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands. But with Function, it is only $500. And right now, the first thousand people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only 400 bucks to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. Earnestness, beautiful word, the courage to take your emotions seriously, right? Sincerity. You're planting a position in the ground that you truly believe in. Okay, this is me. Here I am. This is what I want. This is what I believe in. Uh as opposed to this is what I don't agree with or I don't believe in or I don't want. Anybody can define themselves. There are far more things in the world that we don't want than we do want. And it doesn't define who we are to say what we don't want. But it also means that you don't risk the fear of rejection. You can't be rejected for not liking something. You can in some ways, but it doesn't feel existential. You can be rejected for saying I like this thing. Or that feels like a comment on yourself. We were saying earlier on your ability to speak versus your ability to play the piano. Uh that feels like a real that's, you know, close to the core of who you are as a person. Oh, I really showed you a bit of I showed you a bit of myself. I opened up. I cracked my heart open and there it is. Here's a thing that I like. Sometimes that's a person and sometimes it's how you feel about a person. And for that to be rejected, it's painful. So I think a culture of ironic speech uh of of sardonic distanced second and third order aloofness uh is a a prophylactic against being hurt but uh results in romance which by definition is sincere and earnest. The courage to take your emotions seriously. uh it doesn't leave much room for that. >> Yeah. Every word that was very eloquently and beautifully put and yeah I think in response to all of that two things. First of all, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. When the word romance I think can mean a couple of things and I certainly don't believe that pure romance is enough for a sustainable relationship and and and a longlasting >> oh you're so utilitarian, you need compatibility. >> That being said, I think the romantic life is one you can like we there's two sides. The romance is that the sweeping passion you stay up all night. You leave your job. You run down the street with no shoes on and whatever the hell it is. I don't know. But I think romance can also be a a way of life and a way of understanding the world. And what that way is is exactly what you said. This ability to express those sincere, earnest feelings. And the possibility of doing that is less available to us than ever. We all have, every human has this deep well of passion and love and light inside them. And I think the modern world in many ways is wonderful and even modern dating culture does a lot of things right. But that particular part of us, we can't get it out there. And I wanted to read you a few lines from uh it's the obvious place to go to, but from Romeo and Juliet. It sounds like the obvious play to choose and and I don't want to get into what the play necessarily means and how it's been misunderstood, but it is in many parts a wonderful evocation of how to express oneself so far as love is concerned. So here here's here's a little scene um Romeo and Juliet speaking from the balcony scene. Romeo says, "Oh, willil thou leave me so unsatisfied?" Juliet, what satisfaction thou have tonight? Romeo, the exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine. Juliet, I gave thee mine before thou did request it, and yet I would it were to give again. Romeo, would thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love? And then Juliet says, but to be frank, and give it thee again, and yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have for both are infinite. Now that's a kind of expression which we doesn't really dovetail with this age of irony. >> And I think it would be >> if she'd said all of that and then put lol at the end. >> Mhm. Mhm. >> It would have hit slightly less. >> Indeed. Yeah, >> indeed. I think we would be wrong to assume that all expressions of love are equal. And the language is obviously very oldfashioned. I'm not saying we should all start talking like that again. But those lines as powerful and sincere and they're also not generic, right? It's not it's not just, oh, roses are red, violets are blue kind of thing. That is like a really profound thought. She she's providing in explaining her like at this point in the play, she's like way ahead of Romeo in terms of emotional maturity. like he's freaking playing catch-up there. He does catch up by the end of the play, but at this point, he's just a guy who's he thinks she's very good-looking and he'd like to kiss her, let's say. Um, I think he's still in that stage, but Julia at that stage of the play is already well beyond that into the realms of actual enduring life affirming, spirit expanding love, which is what I think when I say romance, I think that's why it's so important because it allows us to access that side of it. Romance and love are good for your freaking soul. You know, they make the world brighter and and being able to talk not in those words precisely, but to express oneself. >> The sentiment the sentiment that I've loved you since before you knew it and I love you so much that I'd withdraw it just so I could have the pleasure of giving it to you again. >> Mh. >> And it's boundless and reciprocal and circular and regardless of how you say it, it's sort of cosmic and it's bigger than you and it's real. And for that, for you to say something like that to somebody, for you to give them that much of yourself, uh, which is actually giving you more than them, right? You're giving more than yourself, um, which is what love feels like. Love feels, you know, uh, greater. For instance, uh one of the wildest things that I've done uh when uh flying into London, uh I had a a big day scheduled. I had all of this stuff planned and and uh I decided I was going to torpedo these plans. Um land in London. By the time I've landed in London at Heathrow, I've got an Uber booked to go to Gatwick. I go an hour Uber to Gatwick. completely annihilate all of the plans I had for the day. Trip to the dentist, hairdresser, two dinners that had been organized, meetings, all the rest of the stuff. Go to Gatwick, fly to Edinburgh to meet a girl. To meet the girl, >> the girl. Hell yeah. >> Hell yeah. >> Yeah. And then I spend 20 hours in Edinburgh to then fly back to Gatwick to then go and do the and destroyed the start of the week. Awful, horrible idea. >> Mhm. >> Romance. Edinburgh is a great city as well to be walking around hand in hand down those little alleyways. >> Very much so. Yeah, >> that exact. Yeah, that's a beautiful story and it's um actually I was so into that story I've completely lost. >> Romeo and Juliet earnestness. >> Yeah. Um well, I was going to say something absolutely life-changing, but I can't recall it is. But I think there is >> this touches on a broader point and and the poetry stuff might seem like like like it's kind of a trick or or a gimmick and you know, but but it really isn't. And like I'm not saying that like you know 6:00 a.m. in the morning you wake up and um you know I I wake up and I make my girlfriend breakfast every morning before work. You know she starts work at 7:00. I wake up at 6:00 make breakfast if you can believe it. I do sometimes get up. >> You've been texting me at 8:00 a.m. awake as opposed to going to bed. >> Yeah. For the first time in a long time I am now. Actually >> you were nocturnal for a while. >> I was. Yeah. I was I was fully nocturnal. The whole >> your diet was largely red wine and cigarettes. >> Not red wine actually. I didn't drink I can't work drunk. I I don't think you can work drunk. It's Alex, isn't it? Alex, I do not. But it was it was one meal a day. Far too many cigarettes. Um, and >> I think I asked you one one day what your plan for the evening was and you said, "I'm just going to smoke and walk around." >> Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's romance. Romance. That's But it's it's >> it's actually a bloody good way to live. Not the smoking. It's bad for you. It's good fun, but it's bad for you and then you shouldn't do it. But the walking around part, doing nothing in particular is so much good for you. Um, but I will probably get back to that. Although on this point, I'm not saying we should be giving these kind of speeches to to our loved ones, you know, 6:00 a.m. in the morning just woken up face is a bit shiny and soft or whatever it is. >> Um, but there is a place for it. And I think to speak practically like how like why this age of irony, why do we struggle so much with romance, you know, this particular side of of of love, modern love, I think, and this [snorts] is a broader issue, it comes down to education. And when I say that, I don't mean what you're learning in school. I mean the kinds of media and content you're consuming like what you watch and what you read and listen to shapes you even more than what you eat shapes your body right >> like you know this kind of thing you talk about all the time >> just is a really lovely Hold the point keep it >> don't worry I'm not I'm not going to lose myself in your in your >> just this is a lovely little uh someone put this in the comments forever ago. Um, which was, uh, your body is made up of everything that you put into your mouth and your mind is made up of everything you put into your eyes and ears. Prioritize appropriately. And, uh, I think, oh, lovely. And you want a you want a a mental diet that is spirulina for the soul, not fast food for the amydala. >> I'm not sure what three of those words meant, but I think I probably agree. >> We've had spirulina at some point. I'm sure they put it in cigarettes. I think that the new menthol uh cigarettes that you've been smoking has probably got spilling in. >> I don't know whether I I don't like menthol. So, but I don't smoke anymore anyway. So, that's >> because your girlfriend's listening. That's why you've said >> yeah. Anyway, um the point I was going to make was Yes, that's also a like beautiful way to put it. Prioritize it properly. I love that. And in the same way that I think our souls and our minds and our hearts are better when the things we consume with our eyes are charming and interesting versus boring. It occurred to me a little while ago. It sounds obvious, but I I think you know I I sort of if I if I have a talent for anything, it's realizing that obvious things are true. Um and one thing I realized I was speaking at at an event about the manosphere. I was telling you about it. This weird event about the manosphere >> where nobody was on the side of the manosphere. >> Yeah. I said, "Put your hands up if you're in the manosphere." No one. Put your hands away if you know anyone who's in the manosphere. No one. So just it was a bit of an >> We're not even two degrees of separation from a manosphere. >> Exactly. >> But it it was a good well-meaning. I just it was just a really weird thing about it. But anyway, at that event and one thing I realized as as suddenly as I was talking like one thing that we've done really well in the past decade, you know, you've been a big part of this as well is like I think a lot of parts of our lives are better now because we're focusing so much more on the kind of habits we have and and and and register things we eat or the way we even the way we schedule and journal stuff. the the mass the the past 10 15 year boom in self-optimization has been like a blessing for human well-being I think primarily in a material sense >> and maybe what we're lacking is the equivalent boom in an >> what I would call an artistic or cultural or emotional spiritual >> I was trying to work out what the word was >> yeah I need I need to find a word that I will then use forever more but it's something along those lines >> and I realized I was like what is look look at all these people imagine everyone's they're eating well and they've all the habit like they're living great lives in a lot of ways, but what is the best piece of art they've ever been exposed to? What is the best show they've watched? What is the best film they've watched? What is the best book they've read? What is the best poem they've read? And like these days, notwithstanding the the freaking infinite spew of Instagram reels, many of which are very funny, of course, but anyway, not notwithstanding that spew, which is obviously negative effects for how we think and feel and like I don't we we don't need to go into that, but the so because you know, we always focus on the bad stuff like people are spending too much time on Instagram and reals, YouTube reels, brain rot, but we never look at the other side, which is okay, what is the best stuff we're putting into our to our brains and minds. And in the past 1015 years, I was looking at these these people all about my age and I'm thinking maybe the the greatest piece of art they've ever ever witnessed and be be, you know, scene is Game of Thrones or White Lotus. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. >> And like they're I've not watched them. I know they're very popular and they're they're obviously well made and like they're clearly extremely good. Otherwise, it wouldn't be that popular. But I suspect across the scope of human history that they they're not I think there are other forms of art by which I mean poetry, films, books, paintings, music which access and exhibit an even higher, profound, deeper, broader and ultimately more meaningful side of of of of humanity. And the great value of art is that it lets you into those secrets. It lets you see the world in a new way. Like what is the point of looking at a painting or reading a poem or reading a book? Okay, maybe you want to be entertained, but more than being entertained, it changes you. It either reveals things about the world that that that you didn't know or reveals things about yourself that you didn't know. And like the difference between a whole life spent watching nothing but um sitcoms and one where you watch sitcoms half the time, but the other half of the time you deal with slightly more challenging, more complicated, more difficult but profounder forms of art. I think that second case, that person is going to be happier. >> It's going to be more at peace. >> And this is why I think poetry is so important. the bit I read from Romeo and Juliet. I think the world stands to benefit from when I say education, this is what I mean like a more enriching cultural a more culturally enriched environment where people do the hard work of like reading difficult books, reading these great poems, looking at these great paintings, listening to this great music. It's not just for fun and it's not just to show off. Like this whole thing about being cultured can so quickly become like, oh well, you know, I'm I'm the cultural tutor. like, oh you you're a Beethoven's third symphony. Well, you're you know a tro likeite. >> Look how refined I am. >> Yeah, that is not what it's about. And some people think it is that they couldn't be more wrong. Like those people are idiots. What it's about is is what it does to you. In the same way that eating a freaking Big Mac or a spirulina ball, which one is better for you? Same thing. And I think we need more poetry for that reason. And there is another poem I wanted to read. >> Bring it on. Indeed. >> I'm ready. This is uh Shen Quirk's poetry hour. >> So this I >> that is a a dogeared copy of >> it's called verse and pros in peace and war by William null Hodson. Now William Null Hodgson he >> was a soldier in the first world war. He actually went to school in um in County Durham anyway and he uh he wrote poetry while he was in the trenches and he sent it back to England. And there's one particular poem which was published on the 29th of June 1916 which I wanted to to read. I think you'll like it. >> Let me just take a prepare yourself. >> This is William Null Hodgson writing on the 29th of June 1916. It's called Before Action. So this is him in the trenches before he wrote this. you know, just probably went off to fight. By all the glories of the day, and the cool evening's benison, by that last sunset touch that lay upon the hills when day was done, by beauty lavishly outpoured, and blessings carelessly received, by all the days that I have lived, make me a soldier, Lord. By all of all man's hopes and fears, and all the wonders poets sing, the laughter of unclouded years, and every sad and lovely thing, by the romantic ages stored with high endeavor that was his, by all his mad catastrophes, make me a man, O Lord, and I that on my familiar hill saw with uncomprehending eyes a hundred of thy sunsets spill their fresh and sanguin sacrifice. either the sun swings his noonday sword must say goodbye to all of this by all delights that I shall miss. Help me to die, oh Lord. Two days later, William Hodgson died in the Battle of the Psalm. So, it's a very powerful thing to read regardless of the fact that he obviously wrote this poem and had those thoughts in his mind before he went off to die in war. It is nonetheless, I think, you know, you struggle to find a more impactful poem, one that expresses a a more shocking worldview in a way. I mean, you imagine a soldier in the First World War in the trenches in those miserable conditions, far worse than anything we could possibly imagine, far from home in this in this war unlike anything seen before with mustard gas and tanks and and and in in the mud and the gang and the rats and just it's just it's just awful. M >> but he has the wherewithal the composure the the sort of spiritual depth to look within himself at his darkest of moments and write a poem which you know make me a man oh lord make me a soldier lord help me to die oh lord it's just you know um almost beyond words now why do I read it well because I think someone is better off I think people these days in in the modern world will gain immensely their health, their their emotional um not which their emotional texture, their spiritual well-being. It can only benefit from being exposed for one of a better word to to that sort of thing versus, you know, I'm not punching down when I say versus Game of Thrones or White Lotus, but my point is there's more >> Mhm. >> than that. And I think in art we can find it. And that's just one example of one poem written by one guy. And I wonder if these days if people found the time and effort to dedicate 5% less time to those other forms of media and more to this kind of thing, I would do all so much good. >> So I think the problem that I've always had, and I told you this before we started, the problem I've always had with poetry is I I find it somewhat inaccessible. I I I don't know whether I'm supposed to how I'm supposed to like it, what I'm supposed to take from it. The holes that the um unspoken words that are the vacuum that allow you to suck yourself in are um you you're spoonfed Game of Thrones. >> You know, two or three times something is repeated to remind you of exactly who this person is. And you know the bad guy is disfigured and the hero has broad shoulders and you know >> um there is a there's a difficulty setting on on poetry and I mentioned to you that I'd read some Tim Burton uh the melancholy death of Oyster Boy which is really great and fun um but it's fun not because of its depth. It's fun because of its wit. >> And wit has a kind of depth to it, but it's immediately apparent what's going on. Another one about um poor little mummy boy, and it's a a pharaoh's curse that causes this woman to give birth to a a a bundle of gauze. And uh then a dog comes over one day and sort of pulls him apart. And then there's some uh Mexican kids at a birthday party and they mistake him for a piñata and they'd beat him to death. Um it's very Tim Burton. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It doesn't have the spiritual or emotional explanatory depth of a guy that is waiting at the battle of the song. >> Um but yeah, I think I I get it. I get that there is more to be gleaned and it gives you the the opportunity to reflect on yourself and what this means in life and oh isn't that interesting word play or to think about you know what a boy bobbing in the middle of the ocean going nowhere but being on a journey or something like that right like it allows you to suck yourself into the story the difference between reading a book and watching a movie of the same even of the same book, right? Um, but the inaccessibility that at least I find I'm not maybe I'm a little bit ashamed. I feel like I should be more sophisticated, should be more refined, capable. Uh, the insecure overachiever inside of me wants to win at being able to understand poetry. Uh, but the advantage that you have of something like Game of Thrones or White Lotus or whatever is that the barrier to entry is essentially the floor. Mhm. Mhm. >> Very few people will struggle to understand what it's about. There are certain movies, Severance, for example, might be a good example of something that's a little bit more. Or if you've ever seen um Oh, [ __ ] Not Looper. There's this time travel movie. >> Oh, yeah. It's called >> where they have the box. >> Yeah. I've not seen it, but I know exactly what it's like a famous indie 2004. >> [ __ ] Primer. >> Primer. Ryan. Ryan. >> Little bit more difficult to follow. Yeah. >> Uh, Tenant. >> Mhm. >> From Christopher Nolan. >> I love it. Tennet is so underrated. Tennis so underrated. >> But people, why did people not like it? Unnecessarily complex. >> Yeah. >> Uh uh. Uh, Momento. >> Mhm. >> Also unnecessarily complex. >> Okay. And Yeah. Sure. >> Somewhat just again the barrier to entry to get into this is a little bit higher. So yeah, you're right. Um, for the right people. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. >> Something deeper is better, but the breadth >> Yeah. >> is not there. >> So I'm excited now. I'm excited. >> Yeah. get in. >> Well, okay. So, three things to say to all that like really well may end up being four. First of all, like Tim Burton, his poem, that's a great place to start. You got to like that's fantastic. Like begin there and see where it takes you. Second thing is yes, it can again poetry like art is dogged by the problem of connotations. That is just refined, sophisticated like teacups and wigs. I go well, you know, I I know I can name every single one of Shakespare's plays. Like that's crap. That that's stupid and irrelevant and and just pointless. The only reason this has any [clears throat] value is not because it makes you more sophisticated or refined in that sense. It's because in this stuff is contained the wisdom and the profoundest thoughts that humankind in a long civilizational history has come up with like that's why these books survive and obviously does generate the this kind of cultural gap and people use it as a shibilith you know which I my work is fighting against that. So, I want to throw that all out the window and present this stuff and I want people to look at it on its own terms. Now, it is more difficult, right? Uh some of it is unnecessarily difficult. A lot of poetry is crap and pointless and you shouldn't read it. Um but a lot of things in life are difficult and the barrier to there is a barrier to entry. Like I don't go to to to the gym and may maybe I should like I in fact I almost certainly believe I should but I've not done that and it's quite scary like just walk in like this like might walk in the gym and start like I don't I assume >> Alex could wear your suit jacket. >> Yes. I assume I should get changed but I like I don't even know how to >> I would [clears throat] love to turn you into a bro. I would absolutely love the opportunity to bro up Sheen quote. >> Well, look, well, let's do a swap. You can start reading poetry and you can put on a >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll get you to do chest and back with me. >> Sure. But this but this is about this. We're joking. This is what I want. I want a synthesis. I don't want to take us back to the middle ages. What I want is for modern world, modern people as they are to have this extra life in, you know, infused the system. Um, but yeah, the gym, like I don't know how to set up gym equipment. >> Like to me that barrier is the same barrier as when I sit down and I read poetry. It doesn't immediately make sense to me. Well, well, sure, but like the only way to do anything, there are two ways to get into stuff. You either just freaking do it and learn on your own or you have someone to help you. And I would like to think something I can do in my book. There's a whole chapter of the book which is a is is trying to convince people to write a poem. You know, it begins with the line, I think you should write a poem and here's why. Um, I'd like to think my work can be to try and help people engage with this stuff without all those stupid connotations for what it is and for what it's worth and show that it has real value. Like we need this stuff more than ever in the 21st century. And then also just get into it. Like you you got to be fearless. You got to be brave. Like you can people it can be a bit elitist, a bit frightening. You read Shakespeare and then you think, "Oh, well, like this is what I think it's about, but like all these critics are saying it's not about >> what I think it's about is wrong." >> Yeah. Well, here's the truth. What you think it's about is absolutely correct. Like, this is my view. Same with art. Like, look at that painting. You tell me what you think of it, what it means to you, and then maybe your view will change. Maybe I'll try and change your mind, but that view is completely legitimate. It's no less legitimate than the view of of whoever. >> I uh do you know Andrew Doyle? Do you know who he is? >> Name rings it. >> Tatania McGrath on Twitter. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Uh he is the creator was the writer behind >> for a long time. He's been on GB News. He was on the show a couple of weeks ago. He's living in Arizona now. >> And um he I didn't realize his masters or maybe his maybe his PhD maybe he's got a might have a doctorate in this um was in Shakespeare. >> Wow. >> And uh he was telling me these stories about him. I didn't know much about Shakespeare law. And um he was giving me all of this really interesting stuff. I didn't know that he said that uh Shakespeare basically made no commentary on his own plays. There isn't much by way of this is what this means. So as you said, well this is what I think this means, but this is what the experts say it means. He goes, well, I mean that's fine, but nobody knows what Shakespeare thought it meant. Maybe there are some small I think there was I think there were a lot of acknowledgements uh that he had in some of the the scripts >> but there was no there wasn't much in the margins. Uh he wasn't writing about his own experience. He was a commoner because plays at the time were the uh entertainment of common folk. >> Um so I'm just I'm [ __ ] chewing this stuff. It was really cool. Exactly. Right. when you present in that way like oh wow this is like nothing's like it's like whatever game of thrones let's say is the same thing as as McBth you know it's just the same thing >> and yeah tearing away that veil >> is is is is so important >> um I was I was about to say how did you that last spiel you gave about Andrew Jordan where what where did that begin >> you had said it doesn't matter what you think this thing is about it doesn't matter what the experts >> yeah David Lynch who's just just so funny Um, you know, he he has this great, he's famous. He doesn't like talking about his films. Yes. Cuz people like, "So, David, what does this thing mean?" He's like, "Well, look, I made the thing. Watch it. You tell him what you think. It doesn't matter what I think. It's made. It exists now in the world, and all that matters is what you make of it." >> Isn't that interesting? Sorry for interrupting again. Isn't it interesting that the the creator of the thing is allowed to tell you what the thing means. >> Mhm. Mhm. That would be like the parents of a child being able to define what the meaning of their life is. >> Yeah. I guess >> as opposed to the child itself. You go, I've created this thing. >> Mhm. >> And it's now in the interaction of that thing in the world that it maybe that's a shy analogy. I don't know. But it's interesting that people look I think this is one of the reasons that that we do that is because we abhore uncertainty so much that we would rather collapse all of the different potential reasons for something's existence down into one even if the one feels constricting >> instead of enabling. >> Yeah. >> I I I can't work out is it is it a love story? Is it a tragedy? Is it a comedy? Is it a comment? Is it Is it a comment on class? Is it because is Julius C? What does he mean by I just want to know because sitting in the uncertainty is uncomfortable and we would rather snap that down. >> Yeah. Hell yeah. I I couldn't could agree more. And I I think the artist perspective is just a part of the picture. But yeah, it's like if if I said Chris, I got this lovely gift today. I I got I got this nice table that you can put in your in in your in your front room. And you say, "Well, she that's >> a mug. It's it's not a table." I say, "Well, I think it's a table." Like, "Well, you know, similar thing basically like whatever you think it is, that's what matters. You think it's a cup, use it as a cup. You think it's a freaking hat, you a hat. I don't care. That's the beauty of of art that that it just it lifts you up and engages you." There is one final thing I want to say about poetry about why I think it's also so important in the modern world along with everything else I said about the wisdom that it teaches us and and and what it allows us to access in ourselves. It's also run like a lot of the problems that we find these days with the internet and social media addiction. Poetry one reason it's so difficult is because it's the exact opposite. Like rather than seeing 30 or 40 reels in a minute, you have to kind of sit on your own in silence for maybe a couple of minutes while you read it and then think about what it think you're alone and like all this world disappears and all our instincts to reach for something to scroll to flick to look for an explanation to ask about it to come like you're just left alone with this with this poem and that sort of little bit of contemplative reflective experience again is like just a little little bit of texture that can help to to lift the ailing human spirit of the modern world. >> I I I I think um it's good training basically. >> Well, yeah. It's the same way it's the same way as going to the gym and lifting a weight where there's no weight on it. >> Wow. Okay. >> Right. The the progressive overload is injecting some of your effort into what it is that you do, putting some of yourself into this thing, asking yourself, what does this mean? It's an opportunity to reflect. Um, yeah, I suddenly I wrote my first poetry this year and uh I really enjoyed it. It was a real challenge to to allow myself to be more whimsical. This is certainly something else that doing this the show, the live show that I'm doing um has allowed me to do because when you're on stage, people kind of forgive a bit more whimsy, >> you know, if you're in a normal I guess if you if you're telling stories as well. I learned this from friends that are great storytellers. Mr. fallen. Uh he has this huge YouTube channel and even when he's just telling a normal story, Keegan Allen, another friend of mine, he just about a drive somewhere and there's so much unnecessary detail in there about, you know, where the sun was at or how hot it was or what he was wearing or the the the coffee that he'd had earlier that day and you realize that all of the unnecessary detail fleshes the story out in the ways that you care about most. Yeah, that's the point of in in the end that is almost the point of the story. It's like in life all the most all the most valuable things about life are are the least >> necessary in a way. But no, but I remember with your show last year, you came you came out on stage and I was thinking, "Okay, here we go. Chris, he's going to freaking >> nail me to the canvas and sort me out." And then you started telling jokes. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just doing what doing what you want, I suppos. >> I love that. >> Um romance. Anything else to say on modern romance? Um, I I I I think most of what I what what I care deeply about has been has been maybe not quite as clearly as I would have liked, but I think I think in terms of my main gripes, it's uh just give me one maybe more than one second, >> of course. >> Like five seconds. Um, yeah, without getting too I have a bunch more slightly narrower thoughts, but I don't think there's need to get into them. Well, one is just about the willingness to die, you know. I think I think >> it's a part of a romance, the willingness to die. >> Yeah. I think um Harold Bloom has this great line where he says the the erotic is where the sex and death overlap, which is kind of an interesting thought. And that the reason I bring up that silly weird quote is because the willingness to die is a interesting phenomenon. And I think love in its highest and purest form, romance love, that's what they are. It's got to be a complete, you've got to cast off your stake in worldly matters in order to give yourself to someone completely. Right? give yourself some you've got to give everything up. >> Yeah, that's how people talk about religious dation. But the weird thing is I think I I wonder in the modern world like Okay, here's a question for you, man. Uh is there anything that you What would you be willing to die for? >> Well, that's interesting. >> Like would you die for me? Would you die for your country? Would you die for your parents? >> Yeah. Wrapped up in that is love, right? Is wrapped up in that is romance. Mhm. And it also touches on this again broader thing I think a weird interesting thing about the modern world is I wonder what people are willing to die for. And it's kind of a morbid thing to ask yourself. >> But think if you want to know who you are, >> if you want to get to grips with with with your life, you've got to ask what would I be willing to lay down my life for? And I'm not saying people in the past had this sorted. They didn't. But it's certainly the case that at one time or another certain groups of people did. in in many ways the the people we admire most in our films and that like why people find medieval knights so interesting or samurai >> many reasons one of them is the fact that what they do is life or or death and the same with many many of the great Romans you know what's one of the things that's so impressive and weird and fascinating about them and and and so compelling is the fact that they are willing to stake their life on on a belief on a conviction on a kind of on a kind of love and you Um it's it's uh Albear Kamu, you know, famously said that the meaning of life is uh whatever is stopping you from killing yourself. You know, is is a very very witty line. And true, my personal version is is, you know, the meaning of life is is whatever you're willing to die for. The meaning of your life is whatever you'd be willing to give up that life for. And if there's one question people should maybe ask, you know, I don't know uh whether this is the time, but you know, often interviews end with what's one piece of advice. >> Um I usually have a few ones that I give, but the one that's on my mind right now is one piece of advice. Ask yourself, what would you be willing to die for >> and a lot of other stuff will fall into place? >> Which is your favorite of the 49 lessons? Not the best, not the most obscure, >> the last one. >> Can you grab your >> Sure. >> Grab your >> Actually, not the last one. I I I said that to to be a to be a Well, maybe it is the last one. So, this is my book. You want a photo taken by the lovely Alexander Griffin in the back. >> Uh yeah, he's he wants more credit. I think he's got a lot of credit, but he just wants more. Very selfish in that way. Wonder if he's here. Is he here? Uh is he good? Yeah, tell him he's selfish. Thank you. >> Maybe it is the last one. So is in do you want me to talk about it or do you want me to read it or >> No, just yeah, just give give me a little explainer of it. Hi Alex, you're selfish in terms of what's most relevant and useful here. This I'm not saying it's just cuz it's at the end to convince people to read the whole book. >> But the second to last chapter is is called the last library on earth. And in it I kind of pose the question this theorical theorical situation which is like imagine in the far future um there's been global catastrophe. Earth is being evacuated and there's this spaceship and um you're this librarian and you're like okay we need to leave Earth. There's only room for 10 books. Like which 10 books would you bring? The only books that survive from all of human history. And my personal answer is that they shouldn't bring any books. Um but anyway, the the reason I bring up this this this this point is because this touches on themes we've been mentioning. Um there's something like 150 million books in the world. 150 million not not total like physical books but 150 million different books you could read. Like even if you read like a thousand books a year, you wouldn't read more than like 0.007%. Which is kind of scary. It brings you face to face with your mortality as soon as you realize that you literally you can read anything but you can't read everything which means you've got to pick and a lot of my work is just about trying to encourage people to pick much more judiciously >> and imaginatively the very few things they'll be able to consume in their life. Um you know I don't think people should read my book to be honest. I think there are thousands of books they should read instead of this one. The problem is uh there are thousands of other crappy books being published every single year. And if the people reading my book come away with one lesson, it's that I don't need to read anything published in the last 50 years. Like everything I need to know about life has probably already been written and written better and has >> a way to make someone regret their purchase at the end of the book. >> Exactly. [gasps] And but like what is the best filter for quality in all of that is time, right? Time. If something is not good, it will not last. to Lindy effect. >> Indeed. So like an Amazon bestseller list, all it tells you is what's popular in any given week. Even book awards, it tell you what's been popular in any given year. But the past 10,000 years of human history, that tells you what people across all ages in all corners of the earth, all backgrounds, all creeds, all religions, all situations, what all of those people, or at least, you know, a lot of them thought was most useful, most interesting, most meaningful. Like we have a list of these books. You can go and read them. like you you can find like and I'm saying not to only do that like I'm not saying you shouldn't read you know Dame Jilly Cooper who died today God rest her soul the you know Jill Cooper she you she wrote these you know um she wrote all these books these sort of racy uh novels about horse riding and and and football and stuff uh real legend Jame Cooper you should read about her anyway like I'm not saying you shouldn't read her books ever but the kind of the earn the burning message of this book is like it's all waiting for you like all this stuff which will just completely transform the way you think about yourself and the world and like is you know for me the whole experience of learning about culture quote unquote >> um which I really got into about 5 years ago I just I I kind of managed to cast off all these preconceived notions of what I should or shouldn't think and just got into art and architecture and poetry and it was like the world went from being in black and white to in full color and I think yeah that to summarize that is But these days, uh, that's what not all we're lacking. And a lot of the stuff we're doing is good, but it is one of the things that that people are missing is joy. Like the words romance and adventure and death. Like [snorts] these are such nobility, nobleness. You know, in in our age of irony, it's very hard to say these words, but that doesn't mean that these things aren't real. and and like if you got every single book printed in 2025 and asked how many times the words adventure and a romance and and and nobility came up, it would be like, you know, no one talked about these things. And my job, if anything, is to inject that back into people's lives. And uh it's uh this this is the place to begin, but it's not the place to end. This is not the place to end. This is not where you get everything. This is intended as a primer. This is where you begin. It's like, hey, I've just discovered this whole new like solar system and I I want to tell you about it. Please, please come and look at this. It'll be better, I promise, than uh some of the things you're doing currently. >> Shin Quirk, ladies and gentlemen, dude, I I think you're great. I really love the work that you're doing. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with everything that's happening and check out >> well on X at the Cultural Tutor. I also do have an Instagram page now, which is >> Do you really on Instagram? It's fascinating. It's going to be like seeing I know your dad do an MMA fight or something. >> [laughter] >> It's been [clears throat] pretty fun uploading stories, you know, >> take a picture of something and say, "Oh, look at this." Ex Instagram, I have a newsletter which uh is called the Aropagus. You can subscribe on Substack. Uh find me at the cultural shooter on Substack. And along with the book, there's also this fantastic documentary which I hope people >> Where will that be uploaded to? >> It'll be on YouTube and on X. >> Whose channel? The Cultural Too YouTube channel, David's one. We're going to know we're going to release it on a brand new channel, which is which is I'm not sure if this is a venture into being a YouTuber, but it's more it's the home of the channel. And I'm sure we can I'm sure we can What do they say? We can link it in the description. >> Join us, Shen. Dude, thank you so much. It's been a long time coming. I can't wait for the next one. >> Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, you will love this one with Mr. Naval Ravakan. It's first episode in six years. Go on, press it.