Bárbara Ávila & David McDonald: Cocaine Turtles and Tardis Brains

E457 Bárbara Ávila and David McDonald met in France. Bárbara grew up in the south of Mexico City and David grew up in Tring, England. Bárbara founded Vavién, which linked young Mexican artisans with French designers. She has also worked in the water and environment sectors for the Worldwide Fund for Nature and UNESCO. She’s […]

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Reap here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey, Human podcast.
This is episode 457,
and my guests
are Barbara
Avila and David McDonald.
I'm recording this preamble from the Cannes Film
Festival.
However, I met Barbara and David and recorded

(00:29):
this episode in Paris.
Barbara grew up in the South Of Mexico
City and moved to France in 02/2003.
She founded VAVIAN, which linked young Mexican artisans
with French designers.
She's also worked in the water and environment
sectors for the Worldwide Fund for Nature
and UNESCO.
She's a specialist in environmental outreach, and she's

(00:52):
also teaching herself to draw.
David is an author and copy editor. He
founded the Intersection Arts Art Festival and a
feminist book community called Lilith.
He currently works with young authors in Paris.
I met these two through my friend, Lynn
Yip, who has been on the show,
and

(01:13):
they are fantastic
and funny and wonderful. And I enjoyed breaking
bread with them a few times and getting
to know them.
And
everywhere David goes, he brings books and says,
have you read this? And pulls out a
book. It's great.
And Barbara is fascinating and creative and beautiful
and wonderful, and
they're lovely people. So I'm excited for you

(01:34):
to hear this episode.
Check out heyhumanpodcast.com
for links and to learn more about my
guests and the show. Check out susanruth.com
to learn more about me and my other
artistic endeavors,
including which film festivals to see my film
the first, including here in Cannes in France
on May 21, if you happen to be

(01:54):
around,
at 7PM in the Palais H.
And
Seattle Film Festival will be on the twenty
third,
which is a I think it's a Friday.
Hold on. This is terrible production,
but I yep. It's a Friday, twenty third,
and that one will be at
09:30PM.

(02:14):
I believe you can get tickets at SIFF,
Seattle International Film Festival.
And
what else? You can find me on
socials under Susan Ruthism.
And my music is at Spotify, Apple Music,
Amazon Music, wherever you get your music, Rate,
review, and subscribe to Hey Human podcast on

(02:34):
Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
And thank you for listening.
Be well,
be kind, be love. Here we go.
Barbara
Avila, David McDonald, welcome to Hey Human. Thank
you for having us. It's an honor. Thank
you, Susan. Been nice to meet you in
Paris. We had an amazing time with you.
We met here in Paris. Very exciting. Friends

(02:56):
of Lynn. I've actually now spent quite a
bit of time with you both and you
lovely people and interesting and
perfect for Hey, Human. So thank you for
being on the show. Thank you. Thank
you. Invitation.
Absolutely.
I want to start
with how you both met.
Do you wanna take this one?
I'm Mexican,

(03:17):
and I actually came to France when I
was, like, 25 years old. I intended to
do a PhD, but then I realized that
I'm a human person. So I really can't
stay, like, inside the libraries and everything. Right?
So after seven years in Toulouse, I moved
to Paris.
And in the middle, we I happened to
work in Spain where I met most close

(03:39):
friend who actually was trying to find a
girlfriend for
her best friend, because it's David. So that's
actually how we connect. And then we both
we were living in parties. We would both
not really wanted to be with anyone else.
We were kind of having fun. We were
kind of,
healing from previous relationships,
and we were like, no. No. No. I

(03:59):
don't think that's gonna work. And suddenly, I
don't know what happened. I think we were
actually What we should wish our friend in
common, well, she probably said that she was
very determined.
And so
every time either of us went to spend
any time with her, the other person would
coincidentally be there. And she was absolutely you
know, this was this was gonna happen. She
saw it in the stars, and she kept
pushing and pushing and pushing. And and then

(04:20):
it it it finally clicked.
And when we started dating, it moved
very fast. Yeah. We we we moved in
together on on our fourth date. Should say
that at that moment, I was working for
a water film festival, and I was organizing
this event in Istanbul.
So I said to David, oh, why don't
you come to visit? And he actually came

(04:41):
to visit it, and then I never came
back to my house in Paris. I moved
with him.
She was she was living in a very
small
space in Paris with a with a friend
of hers, and, it was kind of a
a walk in closet. Yeah. And and she
she used and you you know, in in
in the kind of like the cupboards in

(05:01):
the Harry Potter films under the stairs. It's
kinda it's kinda that sort of size. It
was nice, but it was the cheapest room
on the of the of the flood. You
know? So when you move to Paris and
it's expensive and you're starting your professional life,
that's like paradise.
So I was happy.
Barbara moved into what was my then my
apartment. I've been in,
Montmartre

(05:22):
for already for about,
ten years, and she moved in with me.
And that was in 02/2010.
No. 02/2009, wasn't it? 02/2009.
And then we got married a year later,
and so this year's fifteen years. Yeah.
But, you know, can I say I mean,
mention something super funny that when I actually

(05:43):
went to visit,
David, he invited me, of course, for a
date and everything? Right? And I arrived, and
I say, David, I think I have been
here. Because, of course, I mean, I have
been invited to a party, but I didn't
know who was the owner of the house,
you know, that was hosting the party. So
me in the back is just like, come
on. Wait. I've been here. Yeah. So we
so we we had a lot of friends

(06:04):
in common, but we'd never met each other.
So I'd I'd thrown a party, and she'd
been there. And I'd been the the host
and, like, handing around drinks and taking coats
and everything. We chatted briefly. And I think
you said that you you loved the apartment
because it had lots of books. Exactly. Books
were, like, the thing that really say, oh,
this is really nice. I'm records.
Yeah. Yeah. I've found this to be true
with David now immediately that no matter what,

(06:27):
you can pull about six books out of
your bag at any given time, which Yeah.
What it's good to have, like, a book
and a backup book just in case, you
know, listen. Yeah. But it's quite hard to
live surrounded by books and records. You know?
That's been, I think, our main, discussion because
I prefer, like, minimalist
space. I need to breathe. You know? And

(06:47):
he immediately,
let's build a,
bookshop.
And the bookshop immediately covered the whole wall.
Right? So then suddenly, we are again
Yeah. It's true. It's true. It's true. She
prefers, you know, the digital reading experience, and
I'm very, very analog.
So, yeah, I I like it. I like
the books, the real books, the real records.

(07:09):
Same. I'm a book sniffer. I have to
I have to be able to hold the
book. I have to touch it. The whole
thing, it's very tactile,
very sensory.
I I love kind of, like, haunting secondhand
bookstores and then occasionally finding fun notes in
margins and stuff. And and I inherited books
from my my my father, and it's got
his old notes in that he's got from

(07:29):
his father. So there's, like, three generations of
notes going down the side. It's nice. Yeah.
That's cool. I like it when you find
weird little letters or notes or shopping lists
or things tucked in the old books. It's
fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's But I I
I like it, but I don't like it.
I mean, I don't like the smell of
secondhand books. I don't like the yellow color
on the pages. It's just like I don't

(07:50):
know why. Maybe that's why I can't
really watch these films black and white films.
I don't know. You don't like black and
white film either? No. Oh, interesting. Even if
they are learned, it's kind of a hard.
I don't know why. I mean, it's maybe
I don't know. I grew up with black
and white television, so I didn't have a
choice. I I remember the very first time
I saw Sesame Street in color, and I

(08:10):
was like, Grover is blue?
I had no clue. I thought in my
head you know when you watch black and
white things, and even though you know black
and white, you kind of assign it a
color in your head. So in my head,
Grover was kinda chocolate brown.
And then then I saw I saw a
picture of Grover, someone. I was just like,
no. That's totally wrong. They've got it wrong.
Kermit, I guess, you would assume was green.

(08:31):
But what about Cookie Monster?
Cookie Monster, I think he was maybe greenish,
and he's not in real life. He's he's
in real life, is it? He's blue. He's
a blue
Yeah. He's a blue monster in real life.
Yes. He's real. Don't you go there? A
hundred percent, he's real. I know. I think
it's wild that you went to a party
at David's house and you didn't know him

(08:52):
yet and that you two ended up together,
it is one for the fates, isn't it?
Yeah. And you know the worst. I mean,
I really don't believe in this kind of,
the coffee how do you call this? The
the Turkish coffee reading and that kind of
tarot and that kind of Coffee grams? Yeah.
I was like, no, not really. But when
I was in Istanbul,
the the colleague I was working with, she
said, come on. Let me take you to
the traditional one. So I went to that

(09:14):
coffee place. No one I mean, it was
just Turkish, Turkish. And then I was like,
nah, I don't believe in that. Come on.
And then the woman actually she was really
pissed off. And then she start kind of
for doing all the process and she start
actually telling me, you have met a guy
with a big nose like this and this
and that. Julie in this kind of a
room next to a step. She basically start

(09:34):
giving me a lot of taste of my
my life. And I was like, oh my
god. And she basically kind of, she predicted
our relationship pretty much on the nose and
described me down to a t.
Wow. Coffee. Was it Turkish coffee? Down to
a coffee. Yeah. An espresso. Right. No.
I just was, like, in chalk. And then
she asked me, do you have any more

(09:54):
questions? And I was like, no. Let's go.
Yeah. I I don't like any I I
don't want to know anything about my future.
It's always like it'll the fear that'll somehow
change.
Do you speak Spanish as well? You both
speak French. Did you did you grow up
speaking
French, Barbara? And then did you grow up
speaking French, David? Did you just say, hey.

(10:15):
This is a language we both speak or
we both speak English. How did that go?
Well, the first two years of our lang
of our relationship, we spoke in French.
And,
then we moved to from France to to
Mexico.
And at that time, I mean, French made
less sense when when you're in Mexico. Barbara
was speaking Spanish a lot of time. I
started to pick up and develop an ear

(10:35):
for it,
and you started to learn some English. Yeah.
Well, I I had, like, the basic of
English, but not as fluid as just to
kind of do my life in English. Right?
And then we moved to Rome,
and I was doing actually another master while
David was working. So then I decided that
I was maybe the time to learn English

(10:55):
properly. So I went to the British Council,
and I started studying English in Italy.
Yeah.
Because, of course. Right? And also while watching,
like, multiple seasons of of doctor House. Yeah.
That's So she's got a very good medical
vocabulary.
You know? It's in I think that's the
doctor. No.
Yeah. In English. It's always amylosis.

(11:17):
Yeah. You've got a bit of Italian as
well, haven't you? Italian
and Spanish are very close. Yeah. That's true.
Yeah. No. For French, I just learned when
I moved to France for the university.
Yeah. But, really, I mean, I was, like,
the basic basic. I mean, first three months
of city, I was just like guessing.
But, yeah.
Yes. Of course.
Well, let's go let's start with you, Barbara.

(11:37):
Tell me about childhood growing up in Mexico
and
how that shaped you and your family, how
it shaped you and your decision to then
go to France. Think that well, I grew
up in Mexico City, big, big city, but
I let live in the, outs Jose, the
outside of the Mexico City, like, in the
south of the city. So it was quite
far from the center. But still, I mean,

(12:00):
it was a very nice neighborhood with lots
of friends. We were kids going in and
going out from the different houses.
And my parents were both working, so I
was at home with the nanny, of course,
like in Mexico.
But, they were quite intellectual. My father was
an architect and a painter, and my mother
was a professor, a sociologist. So I think
that they were always kind of pushing me

(12:20):
to to do what I really wanted to
do. I also went to it's a school
called Active System, but it's kind of a
mix of new kind of, methodologies. It's kind
of a Montessori thing. So that also gives
you, like, a different way of thinking. You
are kind of more critical, and you are
less the stress of what you're gonna be
doing. And I think that's
all, I mean, since I start, I maybe

(12:42):
high school, I knew that I wanted to
go abroad. I always wanted to move to
Europe to at least a master's or to
travel around the world. That was always like
what I wanted. And my parents always supported
me. So I think that's how I, You
should explain about your house as well. Yeah.
Well, my house is crazy because I said
my father is an architect. So from outside,

(13:04):
it looks like a rectangle, like a block,
but inside, there is no right angle. So
everything was made out to fit the the
the space. So it was really great to
live there. And, of course, my father was
always testing new technologies. So that has was
never finished, you know. So one day you
have a new ceiling or another day you
have the carpet. So there was being moved,

(13:25):
and then suddenly you have a hole for
the living room. So it was really kind
of a chaotic, I think. So it's always
in movement. Right? If you you know, we
were talking about Doctor Who yesterday, and you
know that bit where every companion goes into
the TARDIS for the first time, freaks out
and comes out and walks around it. That's
what our house is like. Yeah. You you
know, you Yeah. To get You you you
walk in it and you're like, no. This

(13:46):
doesn't make sense. Yeah. But,
like,
two entrance or something. So it's really it's
really it it's weird. And then,
the thing is, like, you know, in Mexico,
you need a scholarship if you don't come
from a wealthy family to actually pursue your
studies abroad. So I got in a scholarship,
but
I wanted to go to Amsterdam to the

(14:06):
university to do some kind of studies on
communication and development, education, that kind of thing.
But that year, the master didn't open. So
I had done a scholarship, and I didn't
know where to go. So the option I
had was to go to was going to
to Spain. So I ended up in Spain
doing kind of a international
media. But, actually, it was really funny because

(14:27):
the level was quite low in comparison to
what I had, and I said this is
a waste of money of time. So I
went and complained with the director and I
said, hey. This is not what I'm paying
for. So they actually say, well, move to
another school, and I moved to another school.
But at that time, my ex was in
studying in in France. So I said, well,
why I not move to France? At least
I will learn French. And that's how I

(14:48):
actually ended up in in France. But in
a program in one what what they call
a big school, how they say, they call
it
This kind of prestigious French schools, which is
called.
So it's kind of a different level. It's
very intellectual. It's very
I don't know. It wasn't at all what
I was expecting with international relations and security.

(15:11):
So I was surrounded by militaries.
It was interesting. It was interesting, but it
was not exactly what I expected.
So I found a lot of film festivals,
the Latin American Film Festival. So I volunteered
there for four years, and it was amazing
because I ended up going to different film
festivals around Europe
picking up films and kind of watching all
these, Mexican films and selecting and collaborating closely

(15:34):
with the programmer of the film festival. So
it was really nice. So that's actually how
I learned French, properly French.
And then I had the opportunity to start
an internship in, in Paris, and I had
a friend living here. So that's how I
moved to to Paris, but I was always,
working with,
environmental fields. Like, this idea of the power

(15:56):
of a storytelling and how you can actually
raise awareness about environmental issues. And at that
moment, it was what?
So I was working in this kind of,
film festivals, like organizing
the World Water Forums or the, these COP
conferences organized by United Nations. But you were
in the Amazon before that with the turtles?

(16:16):
Not in the Amazons, actually. I was just
a volunteer with, with sea turtles in Mexico,
Nineteen. So
How was that? It was amazing. It was
Yeah.
I think the experience is great because you
work with these, scientists and you are walking
the nighttime waiting for to see, like, the
shining kind of a thing moving and it's
a turtle.

(16:37):
But then the problem is that, you know,
security and security,
like, suddenly,
it wasn't a turtle. It was,
a pack of cocaine. So my parents say,
you know, next year, I don't think it's
you are not going next year. Do you
know? And I was just telling this
story about, oh, that wasn't actually a turtle.
And suddenly these guys arrive with these motors

(16:59):
and, you know, like, say, hey.
That's for us, not for you. So that
was dangerous. Right? Oh my god. Turtles know
how to party.
Did you actually have the the, like, the
mating? The or when they had leave the
eggs on the beach? Yeah. That's what you
do normally. And you wait for the turtle
to to actually came out to the to
the beach, and then they start making the

(17:19):
nest. And then you are actually waiting there
with your hands. You are measuring the turtle,
and you keep the eggs. And sometimes you
also had these guys who sell the eggs
in the in the market because they think
they have aphrodisiac
properties.
Aphrodisiac.
Yeah. Sure. Like, the tiger penis, the turtle
egg. Yeah. You don't need to share with
them, but normally, you take all the all

(17:40):
the eggs and you take it to the
special place where they're actually hatched until they
hatch, and they are, protected by the by
the scientist scientist.
Yeah. Yeah. It's always eggs or fetuses. We're
in Bolivia A Few Years ago, and we
went into this witch's market.
And they were selling all of these products
for, you know, aphrodisiacs
or for good luck, and they were all

(18:01):
made out of dried llama fetus. And then
if you look up at the ceiling of
the market, there were all of these dried
llama fetuses hanging down. It was really
gruesome.
But I love that there's a witch's market,
though. That's interesting. Still there. It's it's it's
like.
Say the witches. Yeah.
Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. No. It's a
bit it's it's got even bigger now. Oh,

(18:23):
really? Yeah. That's in that's in the Paz
in in Bolivia.
Barbara, when you're dreaming, what language do you
dream in?
I don't know.
I
at the beginning, I think it was, like,
French,
and now I think it's English.
Interesting.
Yeah. But to to be honest, I now
is really I mean, of course, I know

(18:44):
which language I'm speaking.
But sometimes when I have conversations with friends,
we switch to one language to another, and
we don't even notice. You know? There are
words that actually I don't I I'm I'm
trying to think in Spanish, but the word
comes in French. Mhmm. And it's just like,
oh my god. How is how do I
say this in in in Spanish and or
or or in English? So it's all kind
of,

(19:04):
sometimes it's complicated. Was the Spanish of Mexico
a big difference from the Spanish of Espana?
Espana. No. I mean, here's the accent. Here's
the pronunciation
and some words, you know. But, basically, we
can kind of understand each other. And do
you have siblings?
No. No. No. Lots of cousins. Lots of
cousins and friends, but not single

(19:27):
child. And you're an artist as well. You
draw. I'm trying. You know? As I said,
my father was an artist, and I think
that I always wanted to develop that part
of the creative
side of me, but I felt, like, a
lot of pressure, you know, like, perfection.
So that's why now I decided to to
start again, and I create this thing, like,
I forgot my design. So it's actually

(19:50):
trying, you know, your best, but it doesn't
matter if it's not
really perfection, you know? It's it's just about
trying and learning and enjoying the process. So
I think And that's your Instagram, I fuck
up my design
Yes.
On Instagram, which is great.
Fantastic.
So I'm being a little sarcastic, you know,
like, when I draw and I think about

(20:11):
things and, and then I write little kind
of things just kind of, to how do
you say it? To to to joke about
myself? Or how do you say when you?
Self deprecating.
Yeah. People are so
scared of failure in France. So it's it's
Everywhere. I think in general. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But, you know, perfection's the death of

(20:32):
art, I think. Exactly.
Oh, no more perfection,
I think. But they say, like, it is
a process. Right? But it's interesting and it's
just like having fun would make things more
interesting. Fun is a big part of it,
for sure.
You have to get the things out of
you.
So we are we are of creation. We
must continually create. That's

(20:53):
I think that's a big part of the
human experience.
To deny that would be a real shame.
Yeah. And recently, I read something. They say
something that life start
where your comfort zone ends. Ends. Yeah. Oh,
I love that. So now I'm actually trying
to say, okay. It doesn't matter. You know?
Put yourself out of your comfort zone because

(21:13):
that's when you really start kind of being
creative or being more, like, I don't know,
enjoying. Yeah. Alright, David. What about you? Childhood?
I'm
complete opposite of of Barbara. I grew up
in a small English village,
in the South Of England,
not about forty minutes from London
by train. We're not talking sort of thatched

(21:34):
cottages or anything like that, but it's it
was about eight, nine hundred years old market
town.
And it was a kind of fairly quiet
place to grow up, but as you grow
older, you kind of learn to appreciate it
more because it it it's a place with
a very, very weird history. A lot of
the land in it was owned by the
one of a branch of the Rothschild family,

(21:54):
like big banking family.
And the particular Rothschild who at the time,
I think it was in the, I think,
eighteenth or nineteenth century, was big on on
hunting and safari. So he'd he'd go to
Africa and go on safari and he'd go
to Latin America, and he'd bring back animals.
You know? And so
the grounds in this small English village were
filled with with,

(22:16):
giraffe and
and zebra and,
emus. And it it says that there was
nowhere else like this in in in The
UK. Eventually, of course, they were all, like
they died and they and he was obsessed
with he was obsessed with training,
zebra to pull carts.
So the the zebra ended up being like
the the emblem of the the town. And

(22:36):
but he also because when you import all
these animals, all sorts of other stuff, comes
as well. So,
it's the only village in England that has
African vermin.
It's like this little this little creature called
the gliscus,
and it just gets everywhere. It gets into
the roofs. It gets into the pipes. It's
it's it's so it's it's a local hazard.
And, like, all of the,

(22:57):
the local kind of repairmen know about it,
and then they they swear until they blew
about this this little thing, which just gets
everywhere. Is it an Ermine type creature? Or
Yeah. Yeah. Basically. I see I think it's
close to a Loire in I think they
call it in French, but not very not
very big. But, you know, I yeah. It
makes a mess.
There are a lot of cats there in
that town? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's

(23:18):
there's a lot of birds. There's a big
reservoir, and so a lot of birds. I
grew up there from about the age of
three,
and we had a pond in our garden
and which my mother
diligently stocked with fish. And then once a
year, a giant heron would land and eat
them all.
And and she would be furious.
And so she developed this local network. It

(23:39):
was kind of like a neighborhood watch thing,
except it was a heron watch. So as
soon as the heron was spotted, she'd get
a call. Someone would call and would go
in there. The herons are near herons. So
all of the people had ponds or what,
and then they'd she'd be out there sort
of, like, waving
newspapers and trying to keep the heron away.
Never worked. The heron always got fish.
And That's so funny. So all of these
animals, eventually, the the town, they were they

(24:01):
were all stuffed. They ended up in a
in a museum, this kind of, local annex
of the British Natural History Museum, which has
got everything from a dinosaur skeleton
to these animals
and,
and lots and lots of birds of paradise,
which were collected from, you know, Latin America.
And this this was always kind of, like,
just a local night. And as a kid

(24:22):
growing up there, you don't care about this.
You want to, like, go to the youth
center or the park. You don't care about
the the museums. It's seen as stuffy. But
it kinda hit the headlines about ten years
ago because the museum was burgled by an
American flute player.
And he and he Never heard that dance
before.
Yeah. It's it's strange. He was apparently,

(24:46):
can't remember his name. You can Google it.
But he
was obsessed with you know what I mean
by fly tying?
Yeah. Of course. Yeah. So he found a
book with,
these these kind of the with rankings of
the best fly ties, the flies you could
tie. And a lot of them, become illegal,

(25:06):
because, you know, the birds were either, you
know, endangered
or or close to endangered. And
and the only way you could access these
feathers was,
was to find either sort of,
on vintage clothes.
So we've been hunting through the vintage. And
then and then he's he stumbled across

(25:26):
the, on the web somewhere, the
the name of this, the town I grew
up in, which is called Tring, by the
way. And he found about these birds. So
he he came over with, I think, the
orchestra he was playing in,
scoped out the place, and then broke in
and stole armfuls of
of of of these these precious birds.
And I feel like I heard about this

(25:47):
guy. Yeah. There was a there was an
article written about him and then a book
written about the book's called, I think, the
feather thief.
But yeah. And he was tried, and he
he he wasn't convicted. Even though he had
all the evidence, they found the evidence, but
he wasn't convicted.
And,
and and I think he's still playing a
flute somewhere. Yeah. But, also, your town is
super famous.
Actually, the guy who managed to to broke

(26:08):
into the the bedroom of the Queen Elizabeth
Oh, yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a couple years
and years ago who broke into Buckingham Palace,
and,
he made his way all the way through
the palace. I mean, it wasn't stopped by
security, and he got up to the queen's
bedroom when she was still in bed. I
think it was in the morning and just
kind of sauntered in and sat on the

(26:30):
bottom of her bed. And she kind of
kept him
engaged in conversation while discreetly kind of pulling
a sort of an alarm bell,
silent alarm bell until they came in and
tackled him, and she just kind of kept
him, you know, talking.
And yeah. And he said this guy was
in my hometown. He was in my paper
route as a kid, so I, I knew
him. And it was yesterday.

(26:52):
Did he seem like the kind of guy
that would grow up to do that?
Well, I mean,
I mean, when you're when you're a kid,
you know, and and you I I don't
know how it is in The in in
in The US. But, you know, with with
Christmas,
you get normally bonuses
from the
some of the Paper app. Paper you know,
some of the houses on your paper app.
And it's I I've seen in The US,

(27:12):
you have, like, the mailboxes outside.
But in The UK, you've got the the
the letterboxes in the door. And there's this
kind of law, this sort of like a
Murphy's law of of newspapers that the the
thicker the newspaper,
the smaller the letterbox, and there's inevitably a
giant dog on the other side. I'd be
getting up at 04:30 in the morning, get
this giant sack of newspaper, I was about

(27:33):
10 years old, And, getting up the hill
and then putting the and it'd be freezing
cold and snow and everything.
And I came to this guy's house and
and kind of stuffed
the newspapers, you know, supplement by supplement because
you have to because it takes time and
the dog takes all. And and he hadn't
left any, you know, Christmas bonus or anything.
And so I just kind of, like, turned

(27:53):
around and trudged up the path. He got
halfway down the road,
and he ran out in a pair of
wide fronts,
barefoot. Of what? Wide fronts, underpants.
Tidy whities. Got it. In tidy whities, nothing
else running after me and then screaming, oh,
little boy, you've forgotten your money.

(28:14):
Oh, yeah. Oh. Enjoy your own conclusions.
And check the Royal Ballet School too. Oh,
yeah. There's a there's, it's a performing arts
school in the town as well. So I
think a lot of famous
dancers, actors,
Natalie Portman, for example, have passed through the
school in this town. But there's a real
town and gown thing and,

(28:36):
where never the twain shall meet, but it's,
that's they're they're in the kind of, that's
in this mansion, which is in these these
parks, which were formerly filled with giraffes and
teapro. So it's the same place. You know?
It's
Did you grow up in a big family,
a little family? What developed your love of
books and and put you on your pathway
to that? Oh, okay.

(28:58):
Family of four siblings,
all boys. I was the oldest. My father
was, an English literature teacher. My mother
had a huge love of books from a
very young age.
And so I I started, you know, needing
classes fairly early. I was just like I
was I was one of those kids who
was always
reading the torch under the cover. You know?

(29:19):
And Ah, yes. And and someone told me
recently in France, I think they don't start
teaching
kids to read until they're about six.
And this completely threw me. I was well
on the way to to reading, you know,
long books by the time I was six.
You know? I was I I suppose I
was four. I mean, but I I was
reading I was one of those kids who

(29:40):
was reading often beyond my age.
Didn't always understand. I mean, I think we're
talking
about
the the James Bond books the other day,
yeah, which I I I read when I
was about
nine or 10, and they were
much too sexual. But I, you know, I
I just didn't pick that up because you
don't when you're 10. You know? Sure. My
mother thought it was very important for us

(30:01):
all to have, a religious education
and sent us to to Catholic school. And
she'd had a very
positive,
experience. So she went to
a Catholic school, all girls Catholic school in
Saint Albans, which is an old Roman town,
and loved it. And so she said, packed
us off to the local Catholic school. And
we were we're not Catholic. We were the

(30:22):
only non Catholics there. So it kind of
put a little bit of a target on
our backs. Scarred us for life. They they
were there mass every week, and you're the
only ones who don't go up and, you
know, get the
Oh, the communion. That's a dead giveaway. That's
a dead giveaway. And there was always there
was always, like, this giant statue of Mary
in, in sitting in the corner, which was

(30:43):
kind of awe inspiring when you're very small.
And then I my father I don't for
some reason, I think there'd been some arrangement
to for it to be repaired or something.
And I came home from school one day,
and it was lying on my mother's bed
or my parents' bed. It's just this statue
of Mary just kind of, like, lying. And
I was like, what's Mary doing in my
parents' bedroom? That would be a great scene

(31:05):
in a movie. Yeah. Yeah. It was it
was so that was kinda weird. And we
had a very good the one teacher I
loved, she was a nun,
and she was almost blind.
And she
she taught us all how to draw and
paint,
but insisted we couldn't use the color black.
And
she was the first person I know to
have contact lenses, and she kept losing them.

(31:27):
And so periodically, she'd she'd shout, nobody move.
Nobody move. And we'd all have to freeze,
and she'd get onto her hands and knees
and try and find her compact lenses.
Sister would No coloring in the no painting
black. The devil's color, I assume. Yeah. And
you couldn't and you couldn't use the word
suddenly
because Okay. I I think we'd we'd all
we were all writings you know, she asked

(31:49):
us to write short stories as you do
as a kid, and we all overused the
word suddenly,
you know, because we thought it was dramatic.
So we're all starting every paragraph with suddenly
this happened or suddenly a policeman arrived or
suddenly the aliens opened the door. And she
was like, no more suddenly and no color
black.
That's incredible. What did you study at university?

(32:12):
Literature mostly. I I signed up for three
years, university in in England in in in
Norfolk, which is kind of on the East
Coast. And,
I signed up for three years and then
somehow realized I'd missed in the brochure that
there was a four year
option,
including a a year in The States.
And I thought, I I want I want

(32:32):
that.
So, I swapped and
got to study at a university, a small
liberal arts college in Massachusetts
for a year
and,
studied everything I could from French cinema to
Chinese literature to Latin American gender politics. And
it was amazing. It was the most wonderful
education.

(32:53):
It really was. And I and I think
and I think in many respects, the American
education is superior to The UK version because
you have to decide immediately in The UK
version what you're gonna study. And that's pretty
much study. You can take a minor, but
the The US version, you kind of start
broad, and you you've got these options before
you That is true. You've yeah. You you
would never even have considered,

(33:15):
but it keep changing
up to a certain point.
Although your primary schools excel hours, so I
think it's a switch, perhaps.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about these, primary schools,
I mean, I just watched this TV show,
what is it called? The adolescence?
Adolescence.
I've heard so much about it. I'm I'm
one of these people that watches a show

(33:37):
about eight years after it was popular. So
I was thinking about
that for me was like, oh my god.
Yeah. I'm glad I'm not a kid now.
Yes. It Oh, gosh. I know. Right? Yeah.
Horrifying.
No. It Shout out to all the kids
out there that are listening. I'm sorry.
It is it's tough, but my God, it
must be tougher. But maybe every generation thinks

(33:59):
out of the next few that come up
that how could they possibly manage and yet
the we keep on trucking. So Yeah. Pretty
much. When did you become an editor? How
did that start? Oh, good. Okay. That's a
long story that I'll try and make really
short. But, basically,
I I as as a lot of it
happens with a lot of people who graduate
with literature degrees, you

(34:21):
you're not quite sure what to do when
you come out, and
some people go into to journalism more, you
know, in other fields. And,
and I temp I did temp work for
a few years and
realized I was working for an insurance company.
And I realized that I was getting good
at it, and this scared me, so I
quit.

(34:41):
And,
went to Romania for a month
and,
traveled around, And and it was a wild
trip, and I came back
thinking I
must this is this is a script, or
this is a film or something. So I
started looking around for equipment, and I came
to realize the town where I was living,
but I was still living in the in
the same Norfolk town, Norwich, had lots of

(35:03):
equipment, but no one was talking to each
other because there were all of these old
grudges. They operated like a village, and someone
had slept with someone or someone hated someone.
You know? Vendetta after vendetta after vendetta.
And I thought, well, you could you could
there's there's there's all of this art happening.
There are art schools, and there's there's so
much art, but there isn't an art scene
because everyone has got, you know, bad experiences.

(35:24):
So I said, let's create a festival
and an art festival. So I spent two
years with some people and since and we
did. We created this art festival and got
all the different groups who hated each other
involved.
And
and it kinda created a neutral space.
And in the middle of all of that,
I was working with a young photographer, Dutch
photographer, and she turned up one day

(35:45):
with this
amazing project. She'd,
she's working for a guy whose grandfather had
been the aide de corps, the governor of
New South Wales in New Zealand back in
a hundred years ago. And he traveled all
around the world, and he'd taken all of
these
photographs,
black and white photographs,
and kept a diary.
And the photographs were on silver nitrate film,

(36:07):
and they were still stuck in, you know,
the, like, the what do you call the
pedicule, like, little cans, and they'd never been
developed. So she said, well, why don't I
develop a few roles and you transcribe
and, the and edit his diary, and we'll
do it as an exhibition.
And so we did, and there were the
the the photos were amazing. They were, like,
you know, Hollywood in the nineteen twenties. There

(36:27):
were Balinese dances. There was the Niagara Fort
you know, everything.
And the the and I the diary was
just amazing. It was this insight from this,
like, 25 year old man who was seeing
the world as an aide of comedy of
meeting sultans, kings, queens.
And that was
my first taste of editing. And so I
found a local
editorial service company, and I said, will you

(36:49):
train me, and I'll work for nothing.
And they took me on, and,
then they hired me and gave me basically
an old fashioned apprenticeship.
And,
and I learned everything with them. And they
were and the woman who ran it became
my mentor, and she was
brilliant.
After that, I I didn't stop. That was
in the late nineties, and I've been one
ever since. What is it that draws you

(37:12):
to story certain stories, you think? What is
the thing?
It changes.
You know? I mean, the books you read
when you're a teenager and the books you
read later in life, they're they're not the
same. I mean, you grow and and evolve.
But, I mean, when I was I suppose
like a lot of people, I read, you
know, fantasy and and,

(37:33):
and science fiction when I was a teen
because you want something that's different you want
to escape.
Something clicked when I was about I I
may have read a book by Milankunda or
something like that. You know? And I suddenly
realized that books
written by foreign writers from other cultures were
far more
there was more difference, more diversity

(37:53):
than and than than I could find in
a in a sci fi novel written by
an English writer because, you know, however,
it's hard to escape your own culture, whether
that's in art or
in music or in writing. It's somehow woven
in. You know? Like, Lord of the Rings
is intrinsically English somehow. However much, it's Middle
Earth. It's fundamentally English.
And it's,

(38:14):
and suddenly I was reading foreign literature. I
was reading, you know,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
And so that's that set me off. And
it was just and from then, it's been
what new experiences can I learn? How far
can I go? What can I learn that
I haven't whose story haven't I heard yet?
I mean, it's a good point that especially
for those who who either choose not to
or cannot

(38:35):
leave their hometowns or cities that they grew
up in, that they can
by reading a book from someone from somewhere
else. Mhmm. That they can be
on that adventure somewhere through through someone else's
eyes. But I don't know about you, but
when I read a book, I I'm in
it. I'm in the book. I mean, it's
the greatest teacher of empathy there is. Mhmm.

(38:56):
I mean, I I think if more people
read and read fiction, we'd have
less problems
simply for that reason.
Because you're take you're you're learning to take
yourself and put yourself in the mind of
someone else.
But I think something that is very you
is curiosity.
Mhmm. I mean, he's curious about

(39:17):
everything, and you take the risk of trying
different things, like either with books or with
music. I think that's what really drives you.
Yeah.
Mhmm. But it's it's like, I don't know,
it's it's my cocaine maybe. You know? At
a very You and the turtles, man. What's
up?
I remember going to when I was very
young, going to a friend's house. I mean,

(39:38):
I love music as much as I love
books. And,
going going around to, like, tea at a
friend's place. And the father was playing his
favorite record,
and it was,
Jean Michel Jarre. And I don't know if
you know, like, French electronic composer from the
seventies.
And I and it's something just
exploded in my brain. I've never heard anything

(40:00):
like this before, and it was it was
different. The sounds were new.
Everything
I'd never heard music like it, and and
I think that's that becomes slightly addictive after
a while. It's like it's like, okay. What
haven't I heard before?
What's sonically different? What what new arrangement? I
mean, it's I I love listening to, for
example,
or reading it, but Bjork

(40:21):
because she's someone who's able to take English
and shake it up and polish it and
shine it and create a totally and and
and write English
in a way or sing English in a
way that no English person ever could. Mhmm.
She's like spring cleans the language.
You know? Yeah. When I was a teenager
and before Spotify was available,
and you had just immense amount of music

(40:43):
at your fingertips. What you had at your
fingertips was,
were the the records you owned or the
ones you could access from the local library
or the ones ones that were passed to
you in mixes or mix tapes by friends.
So it was it was limited, and it
was cherished
because and so you became,
very intimately involved with not only this music,

(41:03):
I mean, because people still get intimately involved
with with music, but with the physical object
itself.
So, like, as you say, with, like, the
record, with, like, the the or the tape
or the book or you know? And and
and sort of rereading it and finding every
aspect of it. And it it it's very
personal relationship. You know?
If somebody made you a mixtape or a
mixed CD,

(41:24):
whoo, baby. That was Whoo. That was something.
I just remember. Tell tell them about your
dream. You know, this guy has amazing
dreams. Like, he you know, you thought you
were in a a song in a tape.
No? Yeah. Yeah. I dreamt I was a
song in a mixtape. Yeah. It was You
dreamt you were a song on a mixtape?
Yeah. It was kind of it was it
was kind of a I used to make,

(41:45):
like, lots of people mixtapes. And if you
spend enough time playing with a piece of
technology, it goes into your dream. So, you
know, I've dreamt I was a PDF file
as well. Yeah. And it's an anxiety dream
eventually because I was I was just I
can't remember what song I was. I was
just a happy little song. And I had
two friends, and they were the song in
front of me on the mixtape and the
song behind me on the mixtape.
And we were nice little kinda like trio.

(42:06):
And then one day, like, one of them
disappeared, and then the other one disappeared as
well, and I realized that we were being
erased.
How did how did you anthropomorphize
a song? How did it appear to you?
Were you actual musical notes, or were you
you and you just had an understanding that
you were a song?
I see I don't know. It's weird in
dreams, though, isn't it? It's not logical. You

(42:27):
know, you just you, you know, sometimes you're
you and sometimes
you're some other version of you or maybe
you're something's kind of abstract, you know, or
an animal or a or a or a
or a I or a day or or
an emotion. You know? I just knew I
was a soul. You know? And it's, I
love that so much. That sounds like a

(42:47):
great short story.
Dreams fascinate me. I I had a dream
person on the show
a while back that it was now that
they can record dreams.
Wow.
Truly record them. You put the they have
the electrodes on your head. Wow. They ask
you to visual before you go to sleep,
they ask you to visualize
an item so that the computer starts to

(43:08):
get a grasp of how you visualize. Yeah.
And then while the
people are sleeping, they do it. It's in,
he did it in tandem with Parkinson's studies
because they were already putting wires in people's
brains.
And so he cup, they coupled
the research
and they could get rudimentary
visual
re representation

(43:29):
of people's dreams
and watch them on a computer go by
as they were doing. There was a Vintenders
film like this
years ago until the end of the world.
It's a very long film, and
most of it's just a chase film, and
it's science fiction. But the very end, it's
people
recording
and watching their dreams, but they get stuck.
They get stuck

(43:50):
watching their watching their dreams and then dreaming
so they can basically have more content to
watch.
Oh, interesting. And they they and then it
changes their dreams because their dreams are dictated
by what they're doing in their life, and
all they're doing in their life is watching
their dreams.
And so, basically, there has to be an
intervention to stop them
because otherwise Very black mirror. Black mirror is

(44:10):
just getting too real. Yeah.
Yeah.
Addiction, basically. I mean, we would. We'd be
Yeah. If we could watch our dreams, we'd
get addicted. But we just have a friend.
She's
actually quite simple. She can't control her dreams.
I mean, she can't control when she's going
to fly.
So as soon as she start dreaming and
she see these little kittens, she knows that's
the dream. And she Yeah. She lucid dreams.

(44:32):
Yeah. Lucid dreaming. Yeah. Yeah. That is really
cool. Yeah. And the code is the kitten.
The kitten. Yeah. She sees the kitten. You
can you can learn how to lucid dream
for sure. Yeah. There are lots of books
on it. Have you lucid dreamed? Have you
yes. I have. Uh-huh. I used to have
really bad nightmares as a kid, so it
was a way to help
alleviate that. So I went to library, I
got a bunch of books and learned how

(44:52):
to do it. Mhmm. So I can still
do it here and there. I just don't
have the need for it as much. I
mean, did you remember what your go to
activity was when you were lucid dreaming? Yes.
The hand. I look at the hand. Mhmm.
And,
I look for a watch because
you can't see numbers.
Like, you can't really see writing or numb
it's the wrong part of the brain. Yeah.
So if you can, then you're aware you

(45:14):
have a hyper awareness outside of yourself versus
not being able to see anything. Ah, and
so that Yeah. Point you knew you were
in a dream. Yeah. In a dream or
not in a dream. Okay. Or awake and
experiencing. So I've experienced some really weird things
that
are inexplicable unless you're dreaming, but I was
wide awake. And so I have I have
all these little tests so that I know

(45:34):
what I at what point of my consciousness
I'm in. Yeah. But that I'm a weirdo,
though.
From a long line of weirdos.
And you can't move No. That's that's dream
that's dream paralysis.
Oh, shoot. You have a you have a
Oh, yeah. I haven't had the sleep demon
sitting on me or anything. I think maybe
that's happened once or something, but I do
a lot of the falling. However Oh, that's

(45:54):
Oh, yes. Yes.
I I've had Yeah. I've had the sleep
paralysis once.
And my Yeah. Very often.
My my my,
and stepmother had it. She said that it
was, woke up, you know, screaming. She said
there was a a monkey on her chest
with, its hands around her throat,
and my father got her got her back
to sleep. And And then the next night,

(46:16):
he woke up with the monkey on his
chest and the the hands around it. So
He did. So maybe they did have a
monkey demon or something. Maybe there's maybe an
escape from What's that story that they went
to check on the desk because the person
who has died Oh, no. That was that
was somebody else. Yeah. That was Oh my
god. Yeah. There's yeah. That was a dream.
Or I love ghost stories. If you wanna
tell it, I'm fine. No. No. No. The

(46:37):
the this was one where,
I think it was a lost will, and
someone
in my stepmother had a dream. And,
the relative, it's maybe in her father's, and
they came and showed her how to,
find a secret drawer, secret compartment in a
piece of furniture that she owned that she
didn't know she had and how to get

(46:57):
the will from out the back. And the
next morning, she woke up and opened the
secret compartment and the world was there. These
are why dreams are so important. So it
to watch them, I think you would get
imagine all the information you would get if
you could
watch physically watch your dream after the fact.
And I'm sure a lot of it would
be real gooey, but
there would probably be

(47:19):
so much your brain is trying to tell
you. There's already is trying to do that
with the dream itself. Most people just don't
remember when they wake up
what they've dreamt.
My my dreams are incredibly vivid, so I
usually remember. But do you I mean, I
wonder if, any attempt to kind
of portray that would be sort of imposing
a narrative.
Because often I find in dreams, it's not

(47:40):
as simple as, you know sometimes they are.
You know? You're it it's it's semi realistic,
but sometimes that's very abstract.
I mean, if yours are very I mean,
you if you you have vivid dreams, but
are they
are they, are they kind of more realistic
in terms of yeah.
Incredibly. Sorry. There was a motorcycle going back.

(48:01):
Incredibly realistic. Yeah.
Incredibly realistic. Yeah. I wake up exhausted sometimes
from dreaming. I like David. And then I
think, oh, good. I'm awake. I can relax
now.
For years and years, I've had trouble breathing.
And I'd wake up in the morning, you
know, sort of, you know, you Sleep apnea,
you mean? Well, it wasn't I mean, it's

(48:22):
related. It was it was I was groggy
all the time. It would take me about
half an hour to, like, wake up, and
I finally went and saw a a specialist.
And he said, did you you've broken your
nose? I was like, yes. I I broke
it when I was eight years old. I
actually fell on a bookcase, which I think
is, you know, genetic fatalism or something. I
don't know. But, broke it, and it never
healed properly. And I also, it turned out,
had an allergy, so I had polyps in

(48:44):
my sinuses. So he said, well, you've you've
had sleep
deprivation for about forty years,
and you're not getting enough sleep at night.
You're not gonna get enough oxygen at night.
And I said and he's like, what are
your dreams like? I'm like, I'm constantly anxious
in my dreams. And he says, what are
you like when you wake up? And I
said, I'm croaky. He said, yes. You're not
getting oxygen. So they I had an operation,

(49:04):
and they
corrected the deviated septum. They got rid of
the polyps. And then
for the month after that, it was weird
because I go to sleep,
and I just see these faces
flashing past. And I'd be like, who are
these faces? And and they for for for,
like, decades in my past,
all of these people I've met

(49:26):
would be running through my head really, really,
really fast. Year like, decades of memories that
had never been processed.
Woah. It got stuck. So for one month,
you know,
you know, it just flooded through.
And I and it was it was a
very odd feeling because it was it was
too fast, and I was like, I I
know that person. Who who was that? You
know? Oh, they've gone. You were defragging. Yeah.

(49:48):
Wow. Yeah. My whole brain for a month.
It was weird. And then it and then
it settled down. And now my dreams are
less anxious.
And,
and yeah. And That's kinda badass, actually. Wow.
It was strange. Well, okay. So what are
you both working on now? Barbara, you've got
the website
and working on your art. What else are
you guys working on together or separately?

(50:09):
Well, I'm kind of, starting a new, I
can say, path.
That's an attempt to
make things that have more meaning. Right? So
I want to
continue working with the media, but more like
raising awareness.
So it's really funny because I
in contact again with a friend. It's an
American friend that she create this initiative called

(50:31):
Let's Talk About Water.
So she's been organizing
these meetings,
where she screen films related with water. She
invites filmmakers, scientists, and also, like, stakeholders.
So she just called an event in Paris
with the OECD, for example, and she's organizing
a new one in Nice with this, conference
on oceans and another one with UNESCO. What

(50:52):
the idea is the power of the audio
visual to convey messages and to launch decision,
discussions
to change the thing. That's what let's talk
about what that is. So now I'm involved
in that again, and I'm helping,
Linda Lilianfield,
which is the founder to set up this
kind of, new event. So she's based between
Washington and, New York, but she's a film

(51:12):
researcher.
So she's been, like, she knows everyone, and
she's been doing an amazing,
research on film. So I'm really glad to
be back in
the film. She did. She Yeah. We we
just went to one of these events, and
there was this she'd taken this very
amazing
silent film of the Amazon Mhmm. Made in,

(51:32):
what, the nineteen tens
or earlier even, very, very early cinema, and
which has just been recovered
and,
created a completely new soundtrack for it. And
it was absolutely beautiful to watch.
You know?
Yeah. But the other thing that is quite
interesting is that not she's also organizing competitions.
So for example, right now, there is an

(51:53):
ongoing one, which is Arid Lands, and she's
going to launch another one about glaciers because
it's international Europe glaciers and the cryosphere.
So she
actually, reward, like, young, filmmakers
or scientists.
So it's really interesting. Yeah. Like,
supporting the, you know, production of new films,
but also using film as a kind of,

(52:14):
how say, like a tool to raise awareness
and to launch the the this kind of,
putting everyone in the same place to to
to discuss about this important issue. Right? Which
is like It's smart. I mean, water is
going to be
I mean, it's already being commodified
in America. I'm sure in elsewhere
too, but
where goes water,

(52:35):
there goes humanity.
So it's important. Yeah. And it's basically from
arid lands to the top of the mountain.
It's glaciers. Right? How this is interconnected.
Yeah. So,
like, she was discussing if she's going to
screen, Nanook, the Eskimo,
and this and how it will go. I
mean, not not sure, but, you know, all
these, it's maybe a very old field, but

(52:57):
at the same time, it has a lot
of knowledge, like, local knowledge that maybe we
are losing, that we maybe need to rethink
about what local communities and indigenous people can
actually what how they are how they've been
managing water resources and how we can learn
from them. Right?
It's not it's
it's kind of a what do you say?
Co creating knowledge. You know, science and knowledge.

(53:19):
So that's But, Steven, just keeping it out
there in the zeitgeist is important.
The the the things we take for granted.
Yeah. I'm I get excited because I I
find
that Barbara periodically about every ten years blows
up her professional life and then does something
amazing.
And the last and last time she did
this, she created a,

(53:40):
a company, which she hasn't talked about yet,
where she puts,
essentially,
young designers and creators from small Mexican
villages
in touch with French brands and brought over
all these young,
Mexican sort of, like, mostly women, mostly young
women
to and it was the most amazing thing.
It was a company it was an association
called Viven, and it was

(54:02):
it changed people's Called what? What is it?
Viven.
And there was a it ran family editions,
four editions Oh. And bring it and with
all of these these wonderful sort of young
designers came over. They there was, like, a
contest, and the winners came over. And they're
incredible. Because one of the things I mean,
Barbara know who could say more very, but
especially

(54:23):
with young female,
artisans,
is
I mean, first of all, they they share
any information they get. So any information they
learn,
gets shared with the family and the broader
community
as well. And so I think it was
an incredible
experience for I mean, you know more about
this. But Yeah. But he was really impressed.

(54:44):
I mean, for me, it was yes, but
I I would I don't know. I I
I I think that we could do more,
but we'll
Yeah. But it was a first Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm a I'm a book editor, so
I'm already editing books. I'm there's one it's
like seven volumes on camels, so I'm learning
all of my camels right now. It was
just
That's such a lovely benefit to the job,
I suppose. And you've learned about so many

(55:06):
different things. And this is the thing people
always say is is you must know so
much, but the problem is the brain can
only hold so much. Sure. So you become
an expert in something
very intensely,
for a short amount of time, and then
you have to kind of,
you know, reboot. And the You need a

(55:26):
Tartus brain. Yes. I think so. And the
thing is but, I mean, like a lot
of people, my brain hangs on to to
stories. It's like I can only remember a
joke if it's a story. So all the
jokes I know are really long. But the
very I can remember the very first book
I edited. It was about human rights and
gender in Southeast Asia,
and I learned about,
for example, proxy convicts. Do you know proxy

(55:48):
convicts?
I'm assuming that if you're wealthy, you can
send somebody to prison
instead of your sibling or parent or child
if you have the money. So and there
are people who are so poor that will
take that money Yeah. And send their own.
Yeah. That's my guess. Is that right? You're
you're you're very, very close. But what and
what that means in gender terms is very

(56:09):
often they'd send the woman in the family.
If
a man is convicted because the man is
the
is, you know, the the breadwinner.
And once she's
been in, you know, prison and served her
time,
she's also
tainted and so isn't always invited back into
the family.
So and,
and that really marked me, and it was

(56:31):
and sort of,
I guess, turned me into a feminist. And
I'm working with a a young Russian author
at the moment who doing some wonderful work,
and we may be working on her prison
diaries. So,
fingers crossed. Yeah. Tell people how they might
find you out in the the big world
of webs.
Fuck up my design.
I fuck up my design on Instagram for

(56:53):
you. Yes. I'm I'm I'm gonna old school.
You know? It's,
Yeah. Come find me in a Paris cafe,
and I'll buy you a coffee. Thank you
both so much. Thank you for listening, everybody,
and bye. Bye. Bye.
Cha chao. Bye bye.
Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human podcast
on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

(57:16):
Thanks.