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Our guest this week is Guy Standing, who is a British labour economist. He is professor of Development Studies at SOAS and co-founder of BIEN, the Basic Income Earth Network.

He is best known as a long-standing and prominent advocate of Basic Income, but he is also responsible for redefining and revitalizing the term ‘precariat’.

Guy has written extensively about capitalism and labour market policy. Among his many books are Basic income: and how we can make it happen, A plunder of the commons, a manifesto for sharing public wealth, The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay, The Blue Commons: Rescuing the Economy of the Sea.

We talk about:

• A brief history of capitalism
• Rentier capitalism
• The emergence of a precariat
• Plutocracy and Trump
• Will AI liberate us after all
• The dignity of a basic income for everyone
• Realisation and execution of basic income pilots

Let’s debate!

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Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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Our guest this week is David Whyte. David is a philosopher poet who, is the author of eight volumes of poetry and four books of prose, as well as a collection of audio recordings. He travels and lectures throughout the world, bringing his own and others' poetry to large audiences. He also works with corporations to teach them about conversational techniques.

He holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has worked as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands. David also holds honorary degrees from Neumann University in Pennsylvania and Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, and is an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford.

In our conversation we will focus on his recent books Consolations 1 and 2, which are about the nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words.

We talk about:

• Words as the magnifying glass of the human condition
• A reading of Alone
• Not avoiding the difficult questions
• A reading of Injury
• The interplay between the poet and the listener
• A reading of Horizon
• The Hawk of the Galapagos
• Conversations we should stop having
• The difference between Oven and Love
• Death only happens to other people

Let’s listen.

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Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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Our guest this week is William Sargent. He co-founded Framestore in 1986 and led its rise from an award winning commercials production house to world renowned film and digital studio. During three decades the company has worked on all the Harry Potter films (and the JK Rowling 'Fantastic Beasts') , Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Paul King’s Paddington, Dr Strange, Christopher Robin, Blade Runner 2049 and Marvel’s Avengers Series.

William and his team have won all the major creative awards including 3 Oscars, British Academy, Primetime Emmys, D&AD, Royal Television Society and most recently over 100 global awards for the newest format Virtual Reality.

Equally at home in Hollywood and government, he was Permanent Secretary, Regulatory Reform, at the Cabinet Office, and Board Director of HM Treasury. He is currently a governor at Europe's largest arts complex Southbank Center, the U.K. governments innovation agency, Trinity College Dublin's Provost Council and the London Mayor's Business Council. William is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, member of BAFTA and the Academy. He received a CBE in 2004 and was knighted by the Queen in 2008.

We talk about:

• Rear Projection
• Stop motion animation
• Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity
• How music videos started the UK film industry
• George Lucas’ vision of multi-platform story telling
• How car manufacturing robots help in filmmaking
• Tennis balls and florescent tape
• How to create dinosaurs
• The next decade of filmmaking

Let’s roll.

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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Our guest today is Janine Benyus, who is the Co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8. She is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Since the book’s 1997 release, Janine’s work as a global thought leader has evolved the practice of biomimicry from a meme to a movement, inspiring clients and innovators around the world to learn from the genius of nature.

She has personally introduced millions to biomimicry through two TED talks, hundreds of conference keynote presentations, and a dozen documentaries such as Biomimicry, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Tree Media, 11th Hour, Harmony, and The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, which aired in 71 countries.

In 1998, Janine co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Dr. Dayna Baumeister. That consultancy morphed into Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise providing biomimicry consulting services to clients like Nike, General Electric, Herman Miller, Procter and Gamble, and Levi’s.

In 2006, Janine co-founded The Biomimicry Institute, a non-profit institute to embed biomimicry in formal education and informal spaces such as museums and nature centers. Over 11,000 members are now part of the Biomimicry Global Network, working to practice, teach, and spread biomimicry in their region. In 2008, the institute launched AskNature.org, an award-winning bio-inspiration site for inventors.

Janine believes that the more people learn from nature’s mentors, the more they’ll want to protect them. This is why she writes, speaks, and communicates so prolifically about biomimicry.

We talk about:

• Learning from biological systems
• Waging war against nature rather than allying
• How profitable emulating nature can be
• Fitting form to function
• How ant colonies inspire mobile phone networks
• The dependence of the agricultural system on oil
• Photosynthetic Reaction Centre
• Nature is the best chemist
• AI helping the detective work of biologists

Let's get inspired by nature!

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We are talking about Ancestry today. Our guest is Maya Jasanoff who is the Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University’s History Department.

Maya’s teaching and research extend from the history of the British Empire to global history. She is the author of three prize-winning books. The Dawn Watch examines the dynamics of modern globalization through the life and times of the novelist Joseph Conrad. Her other books are Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World and her first book, Edge of Empire explores British expansion in India and Egypt through the lives of art collectors. She is currently working on a book about the human preoccupation with ancestry.

In addition to classes on imperial history, she teaches a multidisciplinary Gen Ed course on the topic of "Ancestry: Where Do We Come From and Why Do We Care?". In 2015 Jasanoff was named a Harvard College Professor for excellence in undergraduate teaching. From 2019 to 2022, she is a part-time Visiting Professor at Ahmedabad University in India, where she has been helping launch new curricula in the liberal arts.

Jasanoff has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2013), a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, a Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. She has participated in several BBC documentaries, and her essays and reviews regularly appear in publications including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The New Yorker and The New York Times.

We will be talking about:

• The history of ancestry
• Caste systems in India
• Herder and the Idea of a Nation
• Immigrant nations
• Bards as knowledge keepers
• Race as a factor for resource allocation
• Affirmative Action university admission
• Generational privilege and dispossession
• Transatlantic slave trade

Let’s go back to our roots!

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Today we managed to catch Tim Minchin on his book tour between Brighton and Piccadilly London. He is an Australian actor, writer, musician, poet, composer, and songwriter. Tim is also a piano playing comedian extraordinaire. His recent book “You Don't Have To Have A Dream: Advice for the Incrementally Ambitious” became an instant Sunday Times bestseller.

He has released several albums, comedy specials, and live comedy shows that he has performed internationally. He is the composer and lyricist of the Olivier Award-winning, Tony Award-winning and Grammy Award-nominated show Matilda the Musical and the Olivier Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated show Groundhog Day The Musical. In 2013, he played rock star Atticus Fetch on Californication and in 2019 he co-wrote and starred as Lucky Flynn in the TV series Upright.

Tim has been awarded several honorary Doctorates for his contribution to the arts. His “9 life lessons” acceptance speech went viral and has been viewed 10s of millions of times. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2020 Australia Day Honours "for significant service to the performing arts, and to the community".

We will talk about:

• Self-censoring and policing opinion
• Free speech absolutism
• Life without social media
• Assertion of tribal identity
• People just wanting a hug
• Decontextualising of text messages
• The sloganisation of the worlds information
• Ginger haired people
• Being consumers versus creators
• Bothsidesism
• Male Homo Sapiens are dangerous things

Let's get into it!

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Our guest today is Tessa Clarke. She the is Co-Founder & CEO of Olio, the anti-waste app tackling the climate crisis by solving the problem of waste in our homes & local communities. Olio does this by connecting people with their neighbours so they can give away rather than throw away their spare food and other household items. It is powered by volunteers who collect unsold food from local businesses such as Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Holland & Barrett, and redistribute it to the community via the Olio app. Its impact has been widely recognised, most notably by the United Nations who highlighted Olio as a "beacon” for the world, and by Vivatech who awarded Olio "Next European Unicorn". Olio is also a proud B Corp, and Tessa is an Ambassador of the Better Business Act.

Prior to Olio, Tessa had a 15 year corporate career as a digital Managing Director in the media, retail and financial services sectors, and she met her co-founder Saasha whilst they were studying for their MBAs at Stanford University. Tessa is passionate about the sharing economy as a solution for a sustainable world, and about ‘profit with purpose’ as the next business paradigm. Tessa’s TED talk about the power of sharing has been watched over 1 million times, and in 2023 she was awarded the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award, the longest running award for female business leaders.

We will talk about:

• That we throw away 30% of our food
• And that the majority of this is in our homes
• The truth about plastic bottles
• Reframing charity as sharing
• Ugly apples
• Earth Overshoot Day
• Connecting with your neighbours
• The truth about use by and sell by dates
• The Circular Economy

Let’s get wasted.

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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Our guest today is Maria Popova, who thinks and writes about our search for meaning — sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian (born in 2006 under the name Brain Pickings), an online publication, which she has fought to keep free and advertisement free. It features her writing on books, art, science, philosophy and poetry. It is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She’s also the author of Figuring, and maker of the live show “The Universe in Verse” — a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry, which is now also a book.

In addition to her writing and related speaking engagements, she has served as an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, as the editorial director at the higher education social network Lore, and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired UK, and other publications.

We will talk about:

• Dissatisfaction as propulsive force
• Productivity as a band aid
• Performative Identity versus Soul
• Instagram Wisdom
• Everyone is a living question - the question is what is the question
• Poetry as a side door to consciousness
• Writing as a clarifying force
• Resisting Dinner Parties
• The Price of consciousness is awareness of mortality
• ”The Republic of Letters”

Now let’s search for meaning.

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet