🌀 TIME, LOVE, AND REVOLUTION: Our Conversation with Catherine Mayer.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Writing Community chat show this week.
My name is Chris or CJ, and I'm sat here
with Chris just to make things a bit easier or
more awkward, depends on the way you look at it.
And we're here for a brand new show with a
brand new guest, and we've got a fantastic guest for
you tonight, and it's going to be really interesting. And yeah,
it's been it's been a long week, Chris. How's your
week been.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, it's been relatively quiet on the old Twitter and yeah,
just get getting my head down doing a bit of
writing and stuff this week. So yeah, happy days.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Oh wow you yeah, yes, I know you've been getting
your writing done. We've got a few things we're working
on in the background, and you know, we're working hard
behind the scenes. Our new business is there's emails flying
around and that's kind of the progress we've made so far.
One directional emails at the moment. That's not entirely true,
but you know, nothing major came back yet. We are

(00:56):
working on a few things behind the scenes, which on
substack as a page of scriber you will see those
or get to know that news pretty early on before
anybody else, and we'll be announcing a few things very
soon which are quite interesting. Yeah, Chris, it's been it's
been a week of hectic work, quite a stressful week,

(01:16):
quite a head in the shed kind of week. But
I've come through it. I've got back in the ice bath,
I got back out for her yesterday, and productivity is
returning to me. So yeah, it's been a dip this week,
but I've looked forward to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's what you want when you've got that dip, getting
the ice bath, getting the cold showers. I've been doing
exactly the same. I thought, I need to bring some
life back into the machine, so to speak, as body
being the machine, which by the way, I was looking
at the video beforehand, and oh it makes me cringe
every time. Yes, I need to do a new one.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
We'll have to do a more in person type one
at Harrogate this time, you know, And yeah, try and
work it out somehow. But yes, it's definitely right. And
we talked about mental health a lot in this show,
and we're there to support people with that and it's
a natural process for a lot of people, and I've
openly admitted that I go through it quite often, as

(02:13):
Chris has it goes up and down. I've got no
sort of real reason as to the way that happens
that I'm aware of, but we are there for each
other and we help each other through it. So again,
if you're in that category and you need support with us,
then just reach out and chat to us. We're very approachable.
But yes, how is your writing going, Chris?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, that's one of the things that keeps coming out
in all the books I'm reading and everything that I'm
looking at. It's all about that human connection. And I
think with the way that AI is going and people's
reliance on that, it's only going to get stronger in
the future for that need for connection with people. I

(02:53):
was listening to the Stephen Bartler podcast this week and
he had Simon Sinecon there and they were talking about
AI and how perfect it is and how people are
like you. It was really funny, actually, because you're talking
about how people he's known for years and then suddenly
using words in their emails that they don't use and
the grammars perfect and things like that, And he was

(03:14):
saying that the reliance on AI is taking the humanity
out of what it is to be human basically, So
this type of thing, this type of connection is going
to be really important. And Tonight's guest is obviously coming
from the other side of this, I would say spectrum,
but male and female. Obviously, she's got a lot of

(03:35):
experience and knowledge in her field, and I'm really looking
forward to hearing what she has to say about women's
mental health and women's thoughts and feelings, because we do
explore men's thoughts and feelings quite a lot on the show,
so it's good to get the other side and see
where the common ground lies and what we're struggling with
and what we're facing in the future.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well absolutely, and with time like new book presented Above
your Head that is also touches on grief and of
course futuristic technology, so you know it should link in perfectly.
So with that in mind, let me introduce Tonight's guest
and then we'll get her on and have a great chat.
So Tonight's guest is a powerhouse of words, ideas, and action.

(04:20):
She is an award winning journalist, best selling author, speaker, activist,
and the co founder of the Women's Equity Party Equality Party.
Her nonfiction work has tackled everything from monarchy to morality,
gender equality, to personal grief, and now with a new novel,
Time Life, she takes on an emotional time bending journey

(04:40):
that explores love, loss, and the untainted consequences of technology.
Critics have called it heartbreaking, brilliant, and genre defying. She
wrote the Sunday Times best selling book Charles The Heart
of a King, which Times called breathtaking. Her career is
also breathtaking. So please help me in a welcome, I mean,

(05:00):
Katherine Mayer to the show. Hello, Catherine Hither, how are
you doing? And thank you for joining us.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
I'm doing fine, Slightly overwhelmed by how breathtaking I'm supposed
to be, but I will do my best.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh. Absolutely, your career is incredible and the things you've
done and just been involved with, the awards you've won,
there's so much that you've kind of ticked off, and
you know, as Chris mentioned, there's a lot we can
tap into and we're excited to learn about. And the
advice you've got, I'm sure it can go along way
a long way for a lot of people. So again,

(05:36):
thank you for joining us, and how have you been?
How's your week been?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
My week has been incredibly busy now, mostly in good ways,
but also I'm trying to finish a book, so it
is a little bit of a tool order to promote
one book while being on dead line on another. And

(06:01):
for the first time in my life, I'm actually running
late on delivery of a book. It's all right. I
can say this publicly because my publisher knows, and she's
very happy with what I have written and have sent
over to her. But I have a habit of actually
delivering a head of deadline, which I know is not

(06:22):
a very writerly thing to do, but it's because my
roots are in news journalism, and also it's a pleasure principle.
I love writing, but I love writing when I'm not
worrying about getting it done, and I want to be
able to enjoy the process and not do it because

(06:42):
somebody's sitting on my shoulder, going where is it? Where
is it? Where is it? So normally I managed to
do that by being actually ahead of my timetable, but
I've had lots of very good reasons for why that
hasn't happened this time. And I and you know that
moment when you're on a big project like that and

(07:05):
you can see the light at the end of the tunnel,
and it is not a train coming to flatten you.
Now I am now at that point, I've only got
sort of two and a half more chapters to write
of a very long book.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
So the question being for me at the moment, then
you've written a lot of fiction books and nonfiction. Now
which is this in.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
This is nonfiction, but actually Time Life is one of
the reasons I'm so passionate about it is I have
written a lot of fiction, but I haven't published a
lot of fiction. I write fiction for myself and then
I put it in draws and never show it to anyone.
And Time Life is the only one I've ever published. Wow,

(07:49):
I've done other sorts of things that are sort of
in more in the creative sphere. If you like people
think of non I mean I treat them the same way.
So for me, it's incredibly important that a nonfiction book
is as beautifully written as any piece of fiction. But

(08:10):
I have also written performance pieces, and I've written quite
a lot of song lyrics and that kind of thing.
So this isn't my first foray out of non fiction,
but it is my first full length novel. Yeah, but
it's a nonfiction that I'm supposed to deliver, and that

(08:34):
is already has a notional publication date of March next year,
which makes it a bit scary.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
When you said it was a very long book, how
long are we looking at?

Speaker 3 (08:46):
Well, it covers a very broad historical sweep because it's
the first time I've returned to the Royals, but I'm
doing it from a very different perspective. It's I guess
you'd say it's a feminist book. I'm very interested in
the portrayal of women and also the absence of women

(09:08):
in much of history and actually in much of fiction.
To you know, the absence of women is very nice
when you start noticing what isn't there, it's a really
interesting thing. And for me, royal women, a lot of
a lot of my friends would sort of say, oh,
I'm not interested in the royals, not my thing, and

(09:31):
I am saying to them, if they're feminists, will actually
you really need to be, because the thing about royal
women is that the only women who are reliably not
going to be disappeared from history. You know, Henry the
Eighth tried quite hard to erase some of his wives,
but he didn't succeed. And in fact their mythologies then

(09:52):
grew as a result. But the stories we tell about
royal women are therefore disproportionately important in terms of the
portrayal of women in history. So I'm doing a book
that starts with Anne Berlin and goes all the way
through to Meghan. So when I say it's long, it's

(10:14):
also been an awful lot of work. I've finished all
the sort of historical stuff. But I'm not a historian,
and I'm a very deep you know, if I'm on
a subject that I don't know, I'm an immersive researcher.
So my god, have I learnt a.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Lot well with you with your book, Charles. That was
you know, use a lot of interviews and references for
that creation of the book. So is going from the
timeline of going back to Amberlin all the way through
to Megan. How different was that sort of researching process
for you?

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Well, it's quite hard to find eye witnesses for Anne
Berlin's time, obviously, but no, I mean it really is difficult.
It's because, for example, Ane Berlin is one of the
first or probably the first royal woman about whom they

(11:13):
were dueling biographies written, who was caught in a culture war,
and so what you actually see is there's this through
line right the way from Amberlin to Megan. But it
means that all of your sources are suspect because they
are all fighting on one side of the culture war
or the other. In Anne Berlin's case, of course, it's

(11:34):
all around the Reformation and Catholics versus Protestants, as well
as you know, the typical thing of women being pitted
against each other. So you know, you can like Catherine
of Argon or Amberlin, but not both of them. So
you have to and every source is going to have

(11:55):
some kind of reason for why it's written the way
that it is, and so it for me, this is
also a history of media, and which is again a
subject very close to my heart, and as you may
have realized, is a lot of time life also has
that that whole dimension of how we how we know,

(12:17):
what we think we know, and what happens when systems
for truth fall apart.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Wow, that sounds, like Anya said in the comments, this
book sounds very interesting, and I agree it must be.
To see that I assume a lot of similarities between
these women as time progresses, but also a lot of
the hardships they might face are very similar, but the
whole world and the economy and everything changes around them,

(12:46):
you know.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
So you you do get like the parallels with the
development of media. So and Berlin, as I say, first,
first queen who's the subject of these dueling biographies, but
also she there in the very early days of printing
and increasing literacy. Queen Elizabeth is I mean the first

(13:08):
is there, the really the first one who really got
the control of image. So she's she's the sort of
master pr if you like. And then you go through
to you know, somebody like Victoria, whose reign spans the
development of the press as we know it now very much,

(13:31):
but also right the way through still photography and film.
She's actually caught on film, she's which is kind of
astonishing anyway, and so and so you see, there are
certain commonalities, including that pretty much a huge amount of

(13:53):
what we think we know about these women is not true.
It's it's myth making, and it's myth making often for
a purpose, and it's often mysmaking that does not do
any favors to women. So so for me, it's you know,
I think people look at what I've written and they

(14:13):
can't work out why one person would write on all
these apparently very disparate subjects. But for me, I'm always
interested in the same things. Is the gap between what
we think we know and what we do know, and
that's with time life was very much you know, put
a bit as well.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
So with a lot of myth making in the histories
of these women, how would you decide, because I'm assuming
there's quite a few different types of myths and stories
out there, how do you say, decide which kind of
stories to work on in.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
That novel, in the sorry in the novel or the
new book.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
In the when you're working it, currently working on currently
and the nonfiction.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
I deliberately I knew I couldn't do every royal woman
from Anne Berlin to Meghan, so I chose all the
ones about where there is the biggest gap between what
we think we know and who they are, but also
where it did track with the rise of different kinds

(15:15):
of media and backdrops that were particularly interesting and relevant
for today. So for example, Queen Charlotte, who of course
features in Bridgeton and people now think they know about
Queen Charlotte, but she's a really interesting one who she's

(15:37):
the first one to describe the kind of arc, or
not the first one, but she describes the kind of
arc that is very familiar to us with modern royal women,
where she's very popular when she's first married and doing
what she's supposed to do and being very quiet and
producing tons of children. But the moment that her husband,

(16:02):
you know, that's the madness of King George, the moment
that he begins to lose control and she gets closer
to power. The whole public attitudes to a woman close
to power shift and she becomes the target of caricaturists
very famously, all these different cartoons where she's where she's

(16:24):
rendered a hag. But there's also then when Megan came
on the scene, there was this idea which is actually
not well founded at all, but this idea that Charlotte
was somehow mixed race, and that whole myth gets revived
and you see it then in Bridgeton and in the

(16:46):
spin off Queen Charlotte series. So one of that's one
of the other things about myths is that they keep
cycling through, you know, and you find them right the
way through to today.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, that's fascinating. So if you if we go back
then that's obviously a lot of inspiration behind or in
or information. Oh my goodness, an inspiration from your journalism
days and that sort of sense of research and writing.
So if we go back, you know, to before that started,

(17:23):
what was the inspiration to get into journalism, because I
guess that's where your writing journey kind of started, was it?

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Actually? I think my writing journey started when I was tiny.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, I what.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
I come from a family that was we traveled a lot.
I was born in America, which is why I have
a weird accent. And well, I have a weird accent
because I was born in America, and I lived in
quite a lot of different places. So I just picked
up what I heard, and it meant we had quite
we kept moving schools. But also both of my parents

(18:00):
loved books, and my father used to read us stories,
which I then looked back on and I think it's
incredible what he was reading us. He read us things
like he read his Greek mythology and or he'd read
us Jane Austen or whatever when we were tiny kids.
And he would do it in episodes to make it

(18:20):
exciting and leave you on cliffhangers. And so then I
got sent to a school here when we first came here,
to a primary school and it was at the stage
or maybe a nursery even because it was it was
at the stage where kids were just learning to write.
And they gave me and gave everyone a notepad and said,

(18:44):
you know, can you write a story, a story about
you know, I don't know, you write us a nice
little story. And I filled the whole book and then
asked for another one, and I wrote, I wrote a
story about a mermaid. I still remember the story. And
it was about a mermaid wanting to break through, break

(19:07):
free from being a mermaid. And I wrote like two
whole exercise books full. And I did that all the
way through childhood and then at school and I was
really bad at maths and I used to trade doing
doing English homework for people in return for them helping
me with my maths nice and I just love I

(19:31):
don't know, I mean, do you do you actually love
the love writing? Because I mean, for me, it's the
luckiest thing in the world to have discovered something I
love this much.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
We both self published authors, and it's just something we
do for passions. And that's entirely why this show exists,
So yeah, we're on you with that one. This interview
is going to be difficult to navigate because you've done
so much and you've won award for doing so much.
So the question I want to ask is, having been
a journalist, a novelist, an activist, you know, and all

(20:04):
of those different things, when someone asks you, maybe if
you meet them for the first time and say, and
they ask you, what do you do? How do you
respond to that?

Speaker 3 (20:14):
I have two responses. I either say I am a
recovering journalist. I say that I that writing is my
day job, because that's true.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
That you can do all those hyphenite things, you know,
if I say if I, if I hyphenate, it's not
exactly like actress, model, whatever. So I'm not going to it.
I mostly I mostly just don't. I'm not as forthcoming
as I probably should be because I don't know how

(20:51):
to The real truth is I don't know how to answer.
So my tend to it was. But one of the
funny things about the world is I also find people
are weirdly and curious. So I went last year. I
have a friend who's who this is one of these things.

(21:15):
By chance, we knew each other before either of us
became sort of well known writers. And he's he's like
a mega best selling right, he's much more successful than
I am. And we went to we were for a
time represented by the same agents, and we went to
their Christmas party together, and a man came sort of

(21:39):
barreling up to this friend of mine and just automatically
assumed I was the wife, and as the wife, didn't
ask me one question about me, and I was. I
was just standing there thinking how fun, how kind of
sad and funny and predictable that all was. But it

(22:00):
does it's actually quite RESTful as well, because that in
curiosity that takes one look at you and assumes that
you don't have anything interesting to say. It's the perfect
thing when you're collecting material. I think where I will
always be a journalist or always a novelist, whichever way

(22:23):
you look at it is. I'm always scanning. You know,
this is a weird format because I'm supposed to talk,
but and I can't do the thing I love best
besides writing, which is actually not saying very much at all,
and looking around and listening and taking in what people
are doing, and being intense curious or possibly nosy.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, so Catherine, I'm really interested. Obviously you said about
writing fiction from a young age, primary skill fill and notebooks. Well,
why did it take you so long for Time Life
to come out as your first piece of fit and
especially if you're writing for so long, what was it
that made you think this is the book that I
want to take out the drawer and put into the world.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Well, I almost didn't publish this one. So the story
about this book I should tell you because it's so weird,
quite apart from anything else. But I think, like one
thing is that life got in the way. I mean,
even though I've now lost ridiculous numbers of people that

(23:31):
I love, I'm lucky to have had ridiculous numbers of
people that I love. And I had a very very
fun existence, you know, married to a musician who I love.
But it also meant that because we were married, I
would do things like golf on tour with him and

(23:51):
whatever while doing this incredibly busy job. So I was
always finding the finding the time to do things on
top of the intensive work and social life was always
a bit tricky, and I always thought I will do it.
But the thing about nonfiction is you get commissioned for it,

(24:14):
whereas novels, unless you're already an established novelist, as you
will know, they don't tend to They want to see
what you've written. So I kept being commissioned to write
nonfiction books and I love doing that. And I would
always think, oh, well, I'll get round to writing a novel,
and then somebody would come and you know, they come

(24:35):
to me with the nonfiction. I've never actually pitched. This
is awful to admit, but I've never pitched. It's always
people asking me to do it. And so Time Life
was completely the other way around. I just finally was
so overwhelmed with the need to write this story. And
I was on the tour, but I was on my

(24:56):
husband's tour bus. They were touring the States. And although
I said that that was a kind of exciting life,
actually it's really quite boring touring with a rock band
unless you really love checks. You know, it's I would
love the gigs, but there's an awful lot of sitting about,

(25:18):
so I would always be doing something else. And I
had my computer and I just started writing Time Life
in the back of the tour bus, and that was
February twenty nineteen. By the way, I'd written the year before,
I'd gone on tour with them, and I'd written a
one woman show, So I mean I had formed for

(25:40):
using the time in the back of the tour bus,
and in fact, I wrote part of Unlikely though it
sounds I wrote quite a lot of the now King
Charles biography on the side of the stage and in
the back of the tour bus, which I don't think
people would expect. But anyway, so I started writing this

(26:03):
story and it was I had been obsessed with HG.
Wells as the time Machine for most of my life,
but I was also obsessed with the absence of women
in that story. So HG. Wells is so interesting because
so much that he, like a lot of speculative fiction
or sci fi writers, he was very good at anticipating

(26:26):
the future, a lot better than a lot of journalists.
But he also had he was very dismissive of people
who were other as far as he was concerned, and
that included women. So in the time Machine, there's a
housekeeper who's known as the Housekeeper, whose main function is

(26:47):
to walk backwards, So you know that's he's going the
opposite direction in time. And there's also this very shrinking
violet woman of the future called and I wanted to
sort of redo the story but with center to center
female characters in it. But I also I was One

(27:12):
of the other things I've done is I ran a
think tank about emerging technology. So I've been thinking about
things like artificial like generative AI. I've been thinking and
researching it, thinking about it, researching it for way longer
than lots of people. And so I was very aware

(27:33):
of people like Elon Musk and Sam Altman and you know,
all of those people who are changing our world. And
I had this idea, well, what would one of them
do with a time machine? And I thought, well, what
would I do with the time machine? And I had
not at that stage lost my had lost some of

(27:55):
the key people I'd lost, but I'd lost I'd lost
my best friend and my steps and several other people
close to me in really short space of time. And
I was hurting. And so I thought, well, I'd probably
use it to try and save them, or try and
visit them, or something was the idea. And I thought,
but you know, one of those technologists, he'd just exploit,

(28:16):
he'd use it to exploit the resources of the future.
So that was the starting point. So I wrote this
on the back of the tour bus started it. By
the end of twenty nineteen, i'd written about fifty thousand
words of it, and in I needed in my plot.

(28:39):
I needed a reason why the time traveler who wasn't
a technologist called Eloohalvern, why he and the narrator who
like as in the original Time Machine, the narrator is
a journalist, but in this case is a former Time
magazine journalist as I am, though it's very much not me,

(29:01):
but it's a female narrator who used to work at Time.
And I needed a device for how when they got
to the future, they would not know she would not
necessarily believe she was in the future, and would be
held in a place that was a kind of holding zone.
And I started thinking, oh, well, it's some kind of quarantine.

(29:23):
And I was thinking about ideas being dangerous, so I
invented a pandemic and I was writing, So this is
twenty nineteen. I'm writing a novel about a technologist getting
way too close to the leavers of power. I'm writing

(29:43):
about someone who is not me but does the same job.
That I used to do using a time machine to
try and save the love of her life who is
dying because of a pandemic. And I'm writing about pandemic.
And then in the early twenty twenty my husband died
of COVID and I put the book away and I

(30:04):
could not look at it until I didn't get it
out again, and I may well never have looked at
it again. But then one morning I woke up and
Elon Musk was in the process of buying Twitter, and
I went, oh, my god, didn't I write that as well?
And I went back and looked and I had Elo

(30:27):
o'healv and buying a social media company called Fleet. And
I'd written all of this in twenty nineteen. So then
at that point I thought this book wants to be written,
and so I finished it, and I actually scaled back. Weirdly.
I had described the pandemic with such bizarre precision in

(30:49):
so many different ways, but I scaled it back because
I didn't want this to be a pandemic novel, you know,
I wanted it's in there, but it's not. It's not
a response to it. But what it is about is
it's about love and grief. But it's also about technology.
It's about technologists and technology and the idea that technology

(31:14):
can that what you need to fix the problems caused
by technology is more technology.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, you don't secretly unknowingly travel in a time machine
when you're asleep.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
To you.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
There's do you know what? There's so many weird things
that there's I haven't even told you half of what
I've predicted that's in the book, including you know, I
mentioned that Wiena is the name of the character in
the in the original time Machine, So I called this
very important character in the book, who's a woman in
the future, Rowina, who is anything but her shrinking violet.

(31:54):
But she's called Rowena anyway. But that's why I called
her Rowena is because of Weena. And then I was
listening to a podcast about Elon Musk an a legal
battle that he'd got involved in. And you know, Elo
Halvan is not Elon musk but clearly I was drawing
on some of them I was observing with him. Anyway.

(32:15):
He got involved in an argument with online with somebody
who had helped rescue those boys who were trapped in
a cave in Thailand, and there there was a process
where at one point there were investigators set to looking
at this man and finding out what they could find

(32:36):
out on behalf of Elon Musk. And they called it
for the reasons that I still haven't been able to
determine Project Rowena, and I have because my character is
called Rowena. Elohalvan sets up something called Project Rowina in
my book, and you just kind of go, that is
so random, I mean utterly, I have no idea how

(33:04):
how some of this stuff happens. So yes, my time
travel in my sleep.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
I think you should look into that. Maybe you've got
a talent there as well. Another talent, hey wright, is
what if it, in published could earn you a massive
twenty pounds Well imagine.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Well you don't need to imagine, because that's exactly what's
on offer with Amazon's Kindle Storyteller Award twenty twenty five.
This amazingly dreary prize is back for its ninth year,
and it's open to anyone who self publishes a book
like Kindle direct publishing in any genre.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Any genre. Yeah, whether you've written your first or your
tenth novel, it doesn't matter. If it's unpublished and written
in English, then you can enter that award with the
chance of winning.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, and it's really easy to enter. So just publish
a book through Kindle Direct Publishing between the first of
May and the thirty first of August and make sure
enrolled in KDP Select yep.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
I think you'd be absolutely mad not to, as a
twenty thousand pound prize would help any author boost their
career massively. And our previous guest and last year's winner, JD.
Kirk said that is took his career to the next
level after winning that award and taking it home.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, and it did.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
These books are everywhere, so in order to enter, head
to Amazon dot co dot uk forward slash Storyteller to
find out more. The Kindles Storyteller Award is open now,
so publish enter okay, story out there.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, we'll support you all the way, you know we
will do that. So we'll leave you with this good luck.
The WCCs together as one, we get it done.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Brilliant, Wow, fascinating. So you mentioned that you were born
in America and then you moved to the UK where
you are in the UK right now. Do you engage
much with writers in the real world or is it
kind of an online platform for you or is it
to have a social and virtual kind of connection.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
No.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
I engage with writers a lot, but also I co
founded a festival for writers, Prima Donna, which again that
came out of my direct experience of being you know,
I was lucky enough to have I've had several best sellers,
and when you have best sellers, you the experience. I

(35:26):
realize it's this really privileged experience, but it's also shows
you how limited it is and what a closed shop
it is, because what would happen is I'd be invited
to all the festivals and whatever, and I'd go around
on this circuit and it would be the same few
people on the circuit, and it's like, you know, you
may as well, I don't know, you may as well

(35:48):
be taking London with you, and not just London, but
this tiny, tiny slice of London. And it's basically there
aren't that many women, so they would put me on
loads of things, but it's nearly all posh white men
of a third age. Is that is the kind of

(36:10):
key thing I mean, yeah, I mean the lack of
the lack. It's also that it's the big publishers, so
Indie publishers aren't getting anything like the same, you know,
and yet they're producing some of the most interesting work
and whatever. So in twenty nineteen, which was busy year,

(36:34):
as you gather, I co founded a festival called Prima Donna,
which the whole idea was to bring in voices from
the margins. And generally we have managed to put about
eighty percent of the people on stage are women, but

(36:56):
also there's a really high proportion of writers from different
backgrounds who are writing for indies and whatever. But the
most exciting thing for me was that the audiences, many
of them that really high proportion, were first time festival goers,
because the other thing you would realize on that circuit

(37:17):
is that it's all the same people. I don't think
that's good for publishing at all, and what people like
me who have been lucky who have got that access.
I think it's incumbent on us to try and open
it up for other people. So one of the things
that we did, for example, was we would put really
big name authors on stage with new writers. So I

(37:43):
remember Elif Shaffek, for example, coming to our first festival,
and of course she's a very big best selling author,
and we had her on stage with two other writers
who probably on their own they would have certainly generated interest,

(38:03):
but nothing like the crowd. And therefore it's such a
good platform. And yeah, I mean, it's what I feel
we should do. I mean, this year, for the first time,
I went to both the London I spoke at both
the London Book Fair, which is of course a huge
corporate thing. You know, it's a trade fair and it's

(38:26):
completely commercial that I mean, that's what it's meant to be,
this great, big commercial event. But I also spoke at
the alternative London Book Fair, which is the indie book Fair,
and the difference was so stark because there were the
Alternative Book Fair is of course full of writers, and
it's full of writers who want to talk about their

(38:48):
work and want to talk about the process and want
to talk about getting published. And the London Book Fair
is full about is full of books as commodities, which
of course are and I'm a beneficiary of that. But
it's even so, I don't think it's healthy. And I
think we're also seeing a retrenchment in the same way

(39:12):
that in the wider world, things like you know, DEI
are becoming dirty words and whatever you're seeing this kind
of flight back to a much more conservative model of
doing things and much less interest in opening up things.
Everyone shutting down again. So yeah, I think we all

(39:34):
need to stand I mean, that's why what you're doing
is so great. It's really important to stand against these
things and to create platforms.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Absolutely, yeah, Kapin, obviously that's hugely inspiring, and obviously Hala
mentioned about it being a beautiful mission. I think my
question from that is, with all the grief and everything
that you've experienced, how have you managed to navigate that
grief and continue to have a positive impact in the
world when you've had so many problems in your life

(40:07):
In terms of the losses that you've had and things
like that.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
It's an interesting one. Everybody grieves differently. All I can
say is that I found that grief made me aware.
As I said, it made me aware of my luck
as well in terms of you know, my husband and
I loved each other for thirty years, so when he

(40:38):
died and of course I was locked down as well,
and my stepfather died only a few weeks before, very
probably of COVID too, but it was so early on
that people didn't kind of realize what was happening at
that point. And so what happened was that I found

(41:03):
that I was in my impulse was actually to turn
my energies outwards. So one of the very first things
I did is do you remember in lockdown there was
a particular name for these things, but they're basically community
groups sprang up in which people were organizing to make

(41:24):
deliveries to other people and whatever. And I started a
hashtag how can I help, And within about twenty four hours,
this is like literally weeks after being widowed, Within about
twenty four hours, I was organizing thousands of volunteers to
deliver things. It only lasted a short while because then

(41:46):
there were much more organized forms of this and I
just passed on passed it on to one of those.
But I recognized that as a sort of impulse to
turn out words. But that may also be related to writing,
because writing, of course, is a process of digging inwards.

(42:08):
And you know, time life is very obviously I think,
quite grief soaked, though hopefully not not entirely. You know,
it's not meant to be sad, but I think you,
I think you feel the loss in it, and so
I suppose the answer is that I balance that that

(42:29):
I sort of find some weird balance. I also joined
COVID Brief Families for Justice. I got involved in creating,
you know, helping with the COVID Memorial Wall to get
some kind of status for that, and campaigning to get
the COVID inquiry and all of that. So I don't know,

(42:51):
I just think it's my impulse. I'm I'm one of
those people who if I can see something that needs
to be done, my first impulse to figure out whether
I can do it or just leap in.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
I was trying to find one of the awards you've
won on my notes Life but Down, but I can't
find it. You were one of the most influential women
in was it the UK? In the top fifty?

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Oh god, I mean I've been put on lots of
these lists, but they're not as they're not as they're
not as distinguished as they sound, because like, there was
definitely one of those kind of most influential people lists
I was on and I went to a party where
we were all supposed to be being influential together and

(43:45):
they got a picture of me sort of shrinking away
from Nigel from so you know, there's influence, and there's influence,
isn't there?

Speaker 1 (43:55):
I agree, But the way I'm listening to you tell
your story, it is in your nature be influential and
to be helpful in communities, which is absolutely something, as
you mentioned, we agree on and we wish more people
will like. So, you know, if someone was kind of
like yourself in that moment, shying away from everything, because

(44:15):
a lot of writers kind of do that, but they
wanted to become more influential and help people in the
community and things like that, what advice have you got
for them if they've never taken that step.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
I think writing writing is a solitary profession, I mean,
particularly book writing, and so I think even if people
aren't trying to influence, they should be aware of the
dangers of introversion. It is always good to build community

(44:50):
one way or the other. I've been really I've really enjoyed.
You know, people do their own book clubs and those
sorts of things, and I think those are really fun
when there are actual writers involved in them, more people
who are interested in the process of writing. We did

(45:11):
another thing that happened during lockdown of some friends and
people I didn't know but are now friends started a
Monday night poetry group, and it's like, I don't I
don't know when about you, but I couldn't remember when
I last sat down and read poetry. But there we

(45:33):
were all kind of sitting having these you know, the
kind of supposed zoom parties that were desperately grip whatever.
And the poetry group was really fun because every week
somebody took people took it in turns to choose a
poet that we were going to look at. And mostly

(45:55):
the work was short enough that you that you could
actually just read the workout and then discuss the work
and then of course you'd end up talking about all
sorts of other stuff, but it would be it would
end up being something really important. In those days, it
was a discussion of ideas rather than a discussion of COVID,
which everyone was doing the doing there, you know what

(46:18):
I mean. I think building your own is a good
thing to do, eat on a small scale. I'm not
trying to suggest other people, you know, disrupt their lives
as successfully as I tend to do. I co founded

(46:43):
the Women's Equality Party with Sandy Toksvig and her wife
makes us promise that we're not going to found anything
else because we're very we're also best friends, and whenever
we whenever we kind of get together, we're always going,
We've got to do this, and her wife comes in
and goes no, but yeah, sorry, go on, I'm rambling.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Sorry, I was going to say, you strink me as
somebody obviously who when they see wrongs in the world,
wants to try and right them. What what would your
theory I suppose for women in the future, with all
the rises in technology that we've had, with the way
that women have been suppressed throughout history, what what are

(47:34):
you concerned with and how do you think they could
rectify those potential issues.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Actually, I'm really glad you asked that, and I'm going
to go deadly series for a moment. I think we
are living. I'm really old now, I'm sixty four, and
the you know, so, I would be heading towards pensionable age,
if not already in pension in a previous world. And

(48:05):
it means that I have lived long enough that I
have seen myself a huge amount of social and technological
change and political change. And I remember very well, for example,
the nineteen seventies and what that felt like here and
the rise of the far right. Then that is nothing

(48:28):
to where we are now. That the other reason that
I wrote Time Life is it's a warning. It's a
warning about the intersections of you know, mainstream media is failing.
It will cease to exist in the forms that we
know it or many of the forms that we know
it very very soon. And such mainstream media is that

(48:50):
is has lost trust. People believe everything and nothing. People
who believe everything and nothing are remarkably vulnerable to populism,
and popularism is very very good at harnessing the turbulence

(49:12):
of technological change. And then technology is there with these
things like generative AI that could in fact create this
whole podcast from scratch and do it so well that
we wouldn't even know that we hadn't said those things.
So you are in this very dangerous place. And of

(49:34):
course across the world, it's not just Trump, and you
know Poland and you know what's going to happen in Holland,
and what's going to happen here. You know Marie lepen
getting ready in France, that that has huge implications for
all of us. But for women, you're already seeing reproductive

(49:56):
rights being rolled back. You're already seeing. One of the
things out of that kind of populist right playbook is
to romanticize a world that never was. And in that
world that never was, women were at home, being homemakers,
being the happy housewives, waiting for the husband to come home,

(50:18):
and being great mothers and carers. And what happens is this,
This is returning this notion of women, and it is
returning with a loss, a loss of rights with with
with you know, as I say, the honor reproductive rights.

(50:42):
It's terrifying, and I just want people to understand this
is not business as usual. We are we are heading
into a very scary world. So it's not just that
I think on personal levels and as writers, it's good
to build community. I think it's the only sensible thing
to do for survival, and that community also becomes our

(51:07):
survival network, our refuge, and potentially where we organize from
because God knows what's going to happen. So I'm sorry
to be a bit bleak there, but I really do
believe that.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
The answers we're looking for, I mean, the truth is
what we want to talk about on this show, and
that includes hard things to hear. So thank you for
sharing that.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, I mean, obviously you're talking about the rise in
technology and social media and platforms like that, and just
over the past five years ago, and I've seen the
sort of Obviously we talk a lot about men and
the way the direction that men seem to be being
pushed towards. But equally, when I see that direction and

(51:50):
the rise in like in cell culture and young men
and things like that, obviously I automatically think, well, what's
what's the other side of the coin and how how
are people going to face there and what do we
do to sort of come back? Have you got sort
of any ideas? Obviously building a community in a strong
community is a good starting point, but what else can
people do in order to navigate those potential problems? And

(52:15):
how can we add men on the other side of
the crin help educate young men in that space as well.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Interestingly, I think we're already doing it because I think
storytelling is a big part of the answer. So that's
also why I went to fiction, which was the bit
of the question I didn't answer before because having started
a political party and worked, you know for ten years
as the president of the political party, I was very

(52:46):
aware of politics being you know, as they say, not
just about policies, but about how people feel. And storytelling
is the thing that gets most directly to what people feel,
so their kind of gut responses to things. And part
of what's going on is a kind of dehumanization process.

(53:07):
So with the young men, they are being encouraged to
see women as meet again, you know, something that we
thought that we were moving away from. There are many
is not just in cell culture. There are many cultures
that encourage that sort of dehumanization. Racism is based in dehumanization.
It's the idea that people of one set of people

(53:30):
being less than another and in some ways being animals
rather than human full humans. And so one of the
best ways to counter that is with stories that make
people see from see through other eyes. And I mean

(53:50):
funnily enough, I haven't seen that program called Adolescence that
attracted so much attention. I will watch it. At some point.
I I died my set of friends between people who
thought it was very good and people who thought it
was funny enough to narrow in its view in terms

(54:12):
of being told from the male viewpoint. But if it's effective,
I think, you know, that's important. That's for me the
key thing. And so with time life, I wanted I
wanted to tell a story that was that would really
be an exciting story that would grip you emotionally and

(54:33):
you'd want to know what happens next and whatever, but
that at the end of it you would come out
thinking differently about what's happening in the world. With technology,
I think you know which is it could be a
very dry subject. So again, if you talk to people
about why it matters to pay for care properly, for example,

(54:58):
that can be an incredibly dry subject. Whereas if you
tell a story of somebody who is caring, then it's
a completely different thing within cells or with the sort
of the idea of the relationships between men and women
being broken down. Again, if you tell that in story form,

(55:22):
I'm sure you're doing a lot more. You're going to
reach a lot more people on a deeper level than
you will if you just try and lecture them about it.
And my only other bit of advice there is never
ever try and change people's minds on social media, because
you entrench people's minds rather than changing them, and you

(55:43):
amplify exactly the messages that you're trying to combat.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Do you find, as somebody who does go back and
look at how a narrative is created around a certain person,
do you find any particular elements they are terrifying because
if they've managed to sell that narrative that then becomes
everyone's conscious sort of thoughts around that person. Does it

(56:10):
show how easy it is to construct that type of
narrative around an individual? And is that quite scary thing
to discover and go Actually, they've missed this bit, They've
not explored this.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
But well, I mean that's one of the reasons, as
I said, Ilohlvren is not Elon Musk, but Elon Musk.
One of the reasons I was watching him with interest
and alarm was because there is a kind of cult
of believers around him. And one of my former colleagues

(56:42):
at time, Walter Isaacson, wrote this biography and everything is
wrong with that biography, even that he had an extraordinary access.
He's a great writer, Walter Isaacson. He's a perceptive man,
but he's gone for an archetype. And the archetype is
the flow genius archetype. And I don't actually think that

(57:03):
Musk is that bright, and I think the moment you
actually you know, he has a particular narrow form of intelligence,
but he does understand the world, nor does he care
to because he's trying to bend it to his will
rather than the other way around.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
And so.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
So for me, it's very scary. But it relates to
stereotypes and archetypes that people. People will will more easily
believe in men as flawed geniuses, and they will more easily.
I mean, they're all sorts of interesting things going on.
You get women leading some of the far right parties,

(57:48):
and that's women giving a kind of apparently smiling and
friendly face to the far right, and you have to
kind of start deconstructing what's going on in the world
and looking out why it is. But a lot of
it is to do with myth making and using pressing

(58:09):
buttons that already exist. So again, we as writers, we
can do the opposite. We can we can unpress the buttons,
so we can, like in the Wizard of Oz, we
can pull back the green curtain. Brilliant.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Yeah, Okay, this is so fascinating that we can keep
going down this route. And you know, some of the
comments coming in a fantastic and I'm sure we are
all very interested in this, But we've nearly run out
of time, and we haven't asked any of our staple questions,
and there was one from a you're earlier, so I
want to ask that and then we'll ask our staple questions.

(58:46):
If you guys have any more questions for our guests,
please do send them in now, and are trying and
squeeze them in very quickly. Anya says, out of all
of Henry the Eights wives, did Anne of Cleaves play
her cards punintended? The most intelligent? Intelligently see that intelligent
words whatsoever?

Speaker 3 (59:03):
She says, I think, so it's it's that's mostly true,
but the notion of her being a survivor as sadly
not as true as it should be, because she just
died really young. So she managed to get she managed
to get kind of reasonably well paid off and installed.
But there are two things that I would say slightly

(59:25):
mitigate against her being the happy survivor that she's sometimes
depicted as. One is that she died almost immediately afterwards,
and the other is that she really seems to have
thought she had a chance of remarrying Henry and to
have tried to do that. So I'm not. I didn't

(59:48):
research her as deeply as some of the others, but
that's one of the people. I Actually it's so interesting
you asked that, because I think she's such an interesting
character and I want to do separate but come here.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Thank you for the question. Halo's got a great question here,
and it's probably one that's very overlooked and it shouldn't be.
But it says, what is the simplest kindness one person
can give another that is easy to incorporate into busy life,
to see and hear them two.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
You know, people when I when I've been struggling with grief,
it's not the people who put the head on one
side and go and how are you. It's the people
who understand that you don't necessarily want to discuss how
you are, but who work out what it is you
might need and do it for you anyway. People you
know that you might need taking it, just just be

(01:00:49):
as perceptive as you can be. It's not always easy,
but look look at people properly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
That is it's a great, great sort of answer. And
one thing it reminded of is how we also busy
and caught up in social media and things like that
is where you're sat and with people you see every day.
It could be a partner, your brother, your sister, your mother,
anybody you sit with quite regularly and they tell you something,
and nine times out of ten people these days are
on their phone and they're not really paying attention to

(01:01:18):
what that person's saying. And just practice for the next
few days putting that down and turning and facing them
and actually listening to that conversation. It changes everything. We've
just become so caught up in that technology. As we're
talking about that that's happening too often.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
If you if you go on any of my social media,
you'll find I've posted a couple of videos in the
last couple of weeks from Sandy who's running to be
Chancellor of Cambridge, and she actually starts the news of
the video. She starts with the story about people being
on their phones and not noticing somebody there. You go,
let me recommend that video to you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Yeah, please do that. Okay, Well, squeeze in. We're just
going to overtime a UK to carry on for a
couple Yeah, brilliant, Chris, Let's start our stable questions and
we'll wrap this up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
So Catherine, Yeah, if you could take one character from
fiction and make that character on which character would you
choose and why.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
That's a funny one for me because of course I've
kind of done it with the time Traveler in Time Life.
But I also when I was growing up, Little Women
was one of those books that had quite an impact
on me as a as a child, and I identified

(01:02:36):
with Joe Marsh, but I didn't like that, I didn't
like what happened with her in the plot development. So
I'd take her, I'd take her over, but then I'd
do different things with her. M hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
It's kind of similar to the next question, which is,
and it's open to TV, film and books, if you
could change the ending to anything, what ending would you
change your way?

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Mm hmm, it is, Yeah, I guess you're right that
in some ways, I've I've answered that one because yes,
I'd probably not have her running the school with Professor
Bair with all the children running around. I'd have her
actually be a bloody writer, that's what she wants to be.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
But then how would how would that like just happily
ever after story? Then just writing books?

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
I don't I don't really believe in happily ever after
My other problem with fiction is is, like, you know,
the thing that's interesting about life is no, you don't
understand the meaning of the life until it's ended, and
even then that meaning can keep changing. So Happily ever

(01:03:48):
After is a cop out, but I think you know,
there are lots of me rewriting. The time machine is
also part of a kind of literally trend at the
moment of well, it's been going on for ages women
rewriting or writing new versions of existing stories. So like,

(01:04:12):
I mean, I love the White Silgas SoC the Genris
novel that is what happened before Jane Eyre, And there's
lots of rewritings of Greek mythology and whatever, and I
think there is almost none. There are almost no stories

(01:04:35):
that you couldn't really have fun changing the end. But
if we go back to little Women, I mean, maybe
they could all go off and form of former writers
commune together.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
A terrible answer, So, Katherine, the last question that we
have is quite a morbid one, but ties in quite
nicely with the things that you've talked about in terms
of life and appreciation for life. But you're on your deathbed,
you look back at your writing career, what would you
be happy with what is success to you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
It's funny when I read one of the other reasons
I think I didn't want to publish Time Life is
because I've spent my whole life saying the one thing
I haven't done yet is publish a novel. And now
I've taken away the one thing that I haven't done.
But now of course that I've published it, I want
everyone to read it, and I want it to do well,
which it probably won't because you know, this isn't false modesty.

(01:05:29):
I think I personally think it's a wonderful book, or
I wouldn't have put it out there because I won't
put things out I'm a perfectionist. But it's with Although
Halper Collins has done the audio book, the main publisher
is an indie publisher, and I am up against all
the problems that I wouldn't normally have with my nonfiction.

(01:05:52):
So I guess I will be happy on my deathbed
if I can look back and not only see that
a significant number of people have read it, but that
it actually maybe changed them a little bit, or changed,
you know, I don't know, change their lives a little bit.

(01:06:13):
I mean, shouldn't we all just want to be able
to look back and think we made the world a
bit of a better place.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Absolutely great.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Before.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Where can people find everything about you in terms of
social media and your internet.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
And all that sort of things.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
I wish I had it all nicely centralized. I do
have a website which is Katherinemayer dot co dot uk,
I think, and I am on Instagram as Mayor of London,
which and I'm on most things either as Mayor of

(01:06:51):
London or just my own name. And Mayor of London
is really funny because I've been Mayor of London for
a really long time and these days people pick fights
with me and they think I'm Sudek Calm. I'm really
really not, And of course I'm spelt Mayor of London,
not Mayor of London. When I saw that, but literally

(01:07:16):
people stop going on at me about the congestion charge.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Brilliant. Well, Catherine, thank you so much for joining us
and telling us, I say, a big part of your
story because I know there's so much more to dig
into there, you know, the Child's book and everything like that.
There's so much more we could talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
And I've got one other thing too. I don't know
if I can't give you a link, can I. I
was going to say. The other thing is, you know
I wrote a single that that's on the audio book.
I don't even know if you know this. There's a
band called Rear Window that have a wonderful album called

(01:07:57):
Happiness by Design, and the single, a single off that
album is called rocket Men, and it is actually I
co wrote it with the band, and it is the
theme tune to Time Life, but it's much more obviously
kind of taking a pop at the elon musks and
Jeff Bezos's and whatever, because it's about people saying my

(01:08:21):
rocket is bigger than your rocket, and it's that's that's
on all the music streaming things. So rocket rocket Men
by Rear Window, just just for fun, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Pass that link onto us. And when we hear the
show around with all the description, the link to your
website and all that stuff we're put in there, we'll
put that link in there as well so they can
check it out. Because that sounds fantastic, brilliant. Yes, there's
still so much we're going to talk talked about, and
but and I really would have enjoyed that and told
Chris and everybody watching. But I just want to say
thank you for me. It's been wonderful to hear your story.

(01:08:55):
And you know, this book sound fantastic. People in the
audience said they're going to look into it it because
they're really interested. So thank you so much, and I
hope you have a great weekend, and I'll pass you
with a Chris to finish yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
No again, I would just really rate everything that Chris
has said. I think your knowledge is invaluable and I
think obviously people who watch or listen back to this
show will find it extremely helpful. So thank you very
much for spending.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
Some time with us. Oh it was really fun.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Thank you, Thank you everybody, look after yourselves, have an
amazing weekend and a great week and we'll see you
next week for another show. Bye bye,

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