ANTHROPY25: Andy Middleton - Why We Need to Embrace Uncertainty

Quick word from our sponsor, 51tocarbonzero.com. If you're a CFO or board member staring down CSRD or Scope 3 and thinking, where do we even start? We at Sustainability Solved would point you to 51tocarbonzero.com. They turn complex, fragmented emissions data into something simple and give boards clear, audit-ready visibility on exactly where the reduction opportunities are. It's not another reporting tool that adds work. It's built so the data holds up when your auditor asks the hard questions. If that's a conversation worth having, get in touch with 51tocarbonzero.com, or just drop me a message and I'll point you in the right direction. Right, back to the episode.

So for me, there's this opportunity for massive, quick shifts when the right people who've just been for whatever reason, never been properly in the same room, start to go, huh, we could do that.

Welcome to a special Anthropy miniseries of Sustainability Solved, recorded live at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

We went to Cornwall. We got on the road and we went to Cornwall. I picked up Will in Bristol in an electric car and we drove down to Cornwall.

What electric car is it?

No, we're not going into that. That comes up later.

Anyway, and we went to Anthropy.

Anthropy is a really interesting event. It's really why we wanted to go there. itself as the UK's largest gathering of future makers. So it's about bringing together responsible leaders and organisations and getting people to talk and look at how to make the UK a better place.

I've heard it being described as the Davos of the UK.

Have you?

Yeah.

Sort of good Davos though, really, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought that was quite cool. We were at Davos.

But good Davos. Like there weren't many private jets or lobsters that I saw.

No.

So what we, what we did is we went down and we've interviewed a whole, a whole bunch of people, but we're actually going to bring you 5 conversations that we had with really wide-ranging and fascinating people and a little special, little special, uh, that we—

A soupçon.

Yeah, soupçon of specialness that we, we managed to, uh, winkle out of the event. What were you expecting to find at Anthropy and, and What was your overall sense of it?

I was hoping to get what I got, actually. I was hoping to be able to talk to people that understood our space and understood what we needed to do and how to get there. And I think so many of the people we spoke to and asked questions to all knew what to do and they were doing it as well. I felt that It was less of a talking shop and more of a doing, 'cause I've heard criticism, and actually that criticism has generally been from people that weren't there, to be honest with you.

So the criticism being that it's just a load of people spouting more hot air and not actually getting anything done? Yeah, no, I wanted to be inspired and meet people from different sectors and get my mind slightly blown, all of which happened.

It happened in literally the first 2, didn't it?

Yeah. I mean, fantastic conversations ranging from people trying to get 90% of the energy intensity out of large data processing with computers, which was mind-blowing, all the way through to people just giving money to local communities and finding out how— allowing them to do what they— to find out the best way to spend money to improve their placemaking. And I thought that was extraordinary. So, you know, these very wide-ranging conversations. What I really enjoyed about the whole thing, Will, was sitting in a rainforest for 3 days. That was really nice, wasn't it?

Listening to the birds. Yeah, those lovely birds that used to come and say hello all the time.

Yeah, the ones that run around on the floor.

Yeah, and the robin, and the robin that always came back to say hello.

I think he was actually telling us to get stuffed because robins are quite aggro, but— Are they? Yeah, male robins notoriously so.

Oh, I saw him as a nice robin.

Your mate Andy, tell us about Andy. What's his story and why are we going to listen to him?

So Andy's a really interesting guy. I met him, he was one of the first B Corps. I incidentally met him at a B Corp festival conference very early on, and he taught me how to take wine out of a bottle with his shoe, which was interesting at a conference. But he's actually come from a kayaking background. And then set up TYF, which is going to be in the show notes. But yeah, he's really forward-thinking with the way that he looks at business. He's definitely an intellectual, definitely a thinker, but has that rare skill that he has aptitude and pragmatism with that intellectual curiosity, I think, is amazing. a good way to describe him.

Yeah, he talks a lot about embracing uncertainty, didn't he? And understanding that we couldn't possibly know it all in the kind of just transition or transition of any sense. And actually taking some risk and really embracing that journey was critical. Now it makes it sound a bit woolly, but it was far from that actually. I thought it was incredibly clear-eyed. I think one of the things I really liked about him, he just said, you know, at the moment all of the sustainability stuff is sort of— it's fine, it's getting somewhere, but it's just all the cool stuff that we haven't really got into yet, this, the sustainable transition and how that's really going to make our lives better. And, and he was talking a lot about hyperlocality stuff, he was talking about breakthrough businesses, he was talking— I, in fact, at that point, should we just listen to what Andy said? Because He was great. I really liked Andy. I thought he was such a breath of fresh air and super insightful.

Welcome, Andy.

Great to be here.

Now, we've known each other for ages and ages. You taught me how to take wine out of a bottle with my shoe.

That's something everybody should learn how to do that.

At a business conference. It was brilliant.

I'm not going to ask how, although I'm just going to imagine it for the next half hour. So if I'm not very kind of engaged in this interview, I'm just thinking it sounds So improbable.

I can kind of visualize the wall that we did it on. I think the biggest risk is putting a hole in the wall.

It was awesome. It was absolutely amazing. And that was my— I think that was my foray into sustainability and the business world and B Corp.

This might kind of bring us towards the endpoint of the conversation too, because I have this theory that it is the people who hold the best parties who are most likely to change the world. If a party gets to a stage where you're trying to work out how to take the cork out of a wine bottle with a shoe, You know that you're in the right space.

Stuff's going to go down.

Exactly.

So, Andy, you're here at Anthropy. Why are you here?

I'm here because I don't think there's any other gathering in the UK where so many good people meet for lots of different reasons. But just, it's the meeting in between spaces that are so amazing. So I was walking from my Airbnb this morning to my car, and a mate's waving from a next-door Airbnb window and introduced me to a whole bunch of people. I have 4 conversations in the queue before I get in. And I think there's, you know, 3 people I park next to, so that doesn't happen anywhere else. So for me, it's the connections and acceleration of conversations with people that are more important for me than the talks. But if it's the talks and the speaking that bring people here, then bring it on.

And what would you say is the biggest sustainability problem that businesses face today?

I think there's a really big challenge still around acknowledging the truth. So, I'm not sure how many people yet are comfortable talking about the scale of collapse that's likely to come our way. And the recognition that in that kind of hospicing of modernity, as Vanessa talks about, is the possibility of a much richer society on the other side of it.

By hospicing of modernity, you mean the breakdown of modern society?

I guess the—

Or the systems behind modern society?

Recognition that recognition that, as Daniel Schmattenberger talks about, you know, this idea of unlimited progress being a good thing. And of course, progress only often works for some people.

Yeah.

And, and I think so the promise of modernity, just, Charlie, just work a bit harder, you'll be able to get the next car and the next phone, is broken. And I think we're recognizing that the growth of the far right sits in that.

Yeah.

Um, and I think at the other side of that, though, is potentially a much wealthier society where we value different things. Value relationships rather more than things, places, and so on. So it's, it's a scary conversation because it leads people into uncertainty.

And so you think that people are not actually sort of picking that scab, for want of a better phrase, and they're not actually going into that dark place to have that conversation?

That's, that, that's my take, because I think, you know, if you're, if you're a politician—

That's not an easy sell.

It's not an easy sell because all of the— nearly all of the answers at this stage are, I don't know. And when we valued knowledge so highly that, you know, professorships and grants and, and, and are based on knowing, you know, I was just talking to Julie Cleverdon on the way in, um, I've known for, you know, for years, and, and she's chairing the, you know, the National Lottery.

Right.

And you can imagine what lottery applications are like. So we're not sure how this is going to work out. You know, all of the funding is based on promises of knowing what to do.

Yeah.

And until we step into that space of uncertainty, and acknowledge its value in creativity, in conversation, in relationships, I think it's really hard to move forwards.

Yeah.

So if you had to bet on one of the kind of sustainability solutions that's going to scale up successfully in the next 5 years, what would that be? Where do you think that the change is going to come? And you said very clearly set out a problem. Where do you think the solution is going to come from?

I think there's kind of two angles for me on this, I think, Charlie, one of which is One of which is in scaled-up place-based change. So—

And by that you mean?

So focusing on physical places that people live. So I was talking with a bunch of colleagues last week and we were saying, what would it look like if we tried to change a city or help a city change, have that conversation about the future? And this was a bank director I was talking to. He said, well, we bank the university and half the businesses and most of the schools and the council. We could help to bring them to the table.

Right.

And someone from a big oil company who was a VP of investment said, we can bring people to the table. And I was talking to Zoe Metcalfe who's from here from Atkins Real Estate and said, well, we could help. So I think there's something around how do you build a powerful enough magnet and put it under the table in the community and align the iron filings around a different story. so that the purpose-based businesses, the B Corps, the charities working in that space can all find a different song. So I think part of it is around connecting the dots where, again, back to funding, funding is designed to stop people collaborating and to think small and think short-term, and there's no recipe for success.

And why do you say that? Why do you think funding is designed to do that?

Because our governance models are not designed— again, back to the uncertainty piece— to value not knowing the answer.

Yeah.

And so 75% of environmental funding in the UK is 1-year funding or less. And yet— and so the people giving the money give away— in the Environmental Funders Network, give 200— their members give away £200 million a year, and £150 million of it is 1-year funding. If you've got 1-year funding, you've got 8 months at best of runway before— by the time you recruit and deploy. Whereas actually, if you could flip that around and say, well, 75% of our funding is 3 years or more, imagine the time you'd give back to organizations and the permission to be more expansive in their thinking.

And you think they limit it and it tends to come to become that way, i.e., a 1-year funding model, is because you can get rid of the uncertainty.

It's like—

And therefore somebody can bet on it. Correct.

It's like a death spiral so that you train the organizations— I mean, brilliant people in these organizations, but trained to think small and certain and short-term. And then— so they don't get good at developing the governance to think longer and more uncertainly. And of course, then the funders get used to that framing too, so it means a different conversation. And the other bit I think that gives me— so there's something around place and the governance of how we make decisions in those places, particularly bringing uncertainty into the room. The other bit that really excites me is the role of breakthrough businesses, high potential high-impact growth-stage businesses. So I'm privileged to be part of a network called Unreasonable, who are an impact accelerator, bring together businesses that often have Series A, like $25 or $50 million, doing important work. One I met last week is a company called Wongo, who are based in, I think, Belgium or Denmark, I can't remember, are making a powdered egg replacement out of a fermented fungi product.

Right.

The total available market for their product would eliminate 300 million tons a year of chicken feed.

Wow.

And you can— oh, and the rainforest that that came from.

Yes, which is increasingly coming from rainforest.

And, and, and. And you kind of go, oh wow, that's quite a lot.

Yeah.

And I think—

Is it good?

Yeah.

I like an egg.

So they're saying we are not in any— and she made this very clear— we are not in any way coming after your sunny-side-up eggs.

But it's all the other stuff that you're doing.

We can replace the other stuff. And I guess In a world where we hear so much, so many stories about what's broken, it's quite hard to hold on to hope because you cannot see it.

Yep.

And I think sometimes you can kind of go— now, growing a $50 million business into one that's big enough to disrupt the entire industry clearly takes some time. But I think everybody needs to know that those possibilities exist right now and are ready to grow and can make that scale of difference.

But I think that It— There's that tipping point, and I don't think we talk about it enough. There's so many people doing so many things. I'm an eternal optimist, and I'm an eternal positive, and I do really think that there are so many people out there like the egg person and the people that are turning— like, they're making coffee. There's lots of people now starting to make coffee not out of coffee beans, and they're— and So there's a tipping point, and I genuinely think we're almost there. And I think in the next few years, we are going to see such a scale of change going through. What do you think about that?

Well, I mean, I think that for me, that endorses that sense about, you know, some of these businesses I'm meeting, you know, one of them was taking— is going to take a gigaton out of cement production. Okay, that's quite cool. You know, another one, similar kind of scale in terms of, like, in terms of turning waste heat in industrial processes into electricity.

Which is a big one, isn't it? You can scavenge that low-grade heat. I mean, there's huge amounts of it.

Huge stuff with easy fits, you know, and 2-year paybacks. So I think there's, there's all of this. And I think the other bit I think that is both a problem and an opportunity is that, um, the cool shit hasn't been tried yet.

Yes.

So I have this I have this idea that if you had a 10,000-kilometer line, it would stretch roughly from the equator to the North Pole. And if you— every meter on that line would be enough space for every species on Earth, providing that little ones nudged up a bit to make room for the elephants. There'd be one species on that line that hasn't yet figured out it's connected to the rest of nature. And can you guess what its name is?

Yeah.

Dogs.

Dogs?

They're getting there. And, and so I think for me that, you know, there's this crazy thing is the fact that the cool stuff hasn't been tried yet.

But this is really interesting because it feels to me like when you say that, right, I've got an electric car. Like if I said to you 10 years ago, you're going to drive— we're going to drive down last night to Cornwall to Eden in an electric car powered by PVs and a battery on my office. You'd be like, nah, and we're doing it. So the cool stuff does happen, but very quickly you forget the cool stuff's happening. So I think one thing, cool stuff is happening. I think there's clearly a massive amount of cool stuff about to happen because the acceleration of technology is definitely happening. The question is, it's a, it's a time issue, isn't it now? Like, can we get the cool stuff before we lose faith in the sustainability solution, especially with the learning and what is going on in America and what is starting to unwind in this country with the right?

No, that, that's, I think, a really— that's a It's a great point to acknowledge. I mean, there's a bunch of cool stuff we wouldn't have imagined. And I guess part of the bit in my reference point was that, you know, I came across the other day in Wales an organization called the Wales Obesity Alliance.

The what?

Wales Obesity Alliance.

Yes.

Got it. Obesity, big, big issue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And how many food companies are on that to help solve the problem?

None.

Incorrect. And that's what I mean by the cool stuff hasn't happened. You know, we were working with health boards in Wales. and said, how many conversations have you had with farmers? And they go, what? So the farming community literally has never sat in the same room in health and kind of— is there a connection? You know, I've been wondering, well, that thing about— is there a connection between food and health, do you think?

I'm not convinced.

I know we're not convinced on this one. But you'd believe it wasn't true from the level of conversations that happen. So for me, there's this opportunity for massive quick shifts when the right people who've just been, for whatever reason, never been properly in the same room, start to go, huh, we could do that.

Quick word from our sponsor, 51tocarbonzero.com. If you're a CFO or board member staring down CSRD or Scope 3 and thinking, where do we even start? We at Sustainability Solved would point you to 51toCarbonZero.com. They turn complex, fragmented emissions data into something simple and give boards clear, audit-ready visibility on exactly where the reduction opportunities are. It's not another reporting tool that adds work. It's built so the data holds up when your auditor asks the hard questions. If that's a conversation worth having, get in touch with 51toCarbonZero.com. Or just drop me a message and I'll point you in the right direction. Right, back to the episode.

And that— the farming issue is the crux of, I think, a lot of the gripe that's going on at the moment with the farmers. The farmers have literally not been talked to for years. Like sustainability, they're literally told what to do by sustainability people. And you hear farmers talking about the fact that, oh, we're just being told what to do, told what to do. They're never brought in. They are literally at the bottom of the tree, aren't they?

Well, they are. And I think there's a— there's been a bunch of mischief caused by some of the unions who are not telling them how quickly the rest of the market is changing and how quick— and, you know, I used to run a windsurfing school which is really successful, and then people stopped windsurfing.

No one told you? Yeah, you get a new sail, you know, I have to thump the table. You can't— you can thump the table, that's okay.

Nobody told me. Yeah, nobody told me what to do. Yeah, I just had to figure out there's no customers anymore.

I mean, to be honest with you, with all farmers, it's really complicated. But what I would say is I actually think the inheritance tax thing is no bad thing because you'll stimulate dynamism in the farming industry, which has been lacking. If you take a business, just because you're the son or the daughter of someone who's owned a business doesn't mean you should be the person that runs that business. So, so you think of any other industry where the one pre— you know, the most common thing that links the person who runs the business is the fact you were born—

Do you know what, Charlie, as, as, as some— as one of them, I'll probably get—

I'll probably get eggs thrown at me for saying that, and powder, but—

No, no, but as Charmaine says, not many people said, you know what, we're 5th generation accountants. And so I think one interesting thing, coming back to the farming bit and the wider food system just for a minute, is that, you know, as we sit here today, you know, today Rachel Reeves will be making her announcement and talking about, you know, these £2 billion of cuts to this, you know, to investment and stuff. Every year in the UK, the externalities of the food system And again, for people who are not familiar with it, you know, an externality is an unpaid-for cost or benefit associated with it, with the system.

Degradation of the wider system.

So it can be positive, but in this case, talking about negatives. In the UK, in relation to the food system, the externalities run to £268 billion a year, 130 times the amount of money that Rachel Reeves is trying to cut. So I want to say, where the fuck is the imagination? about saying, let's work out how much are our communities paying—

Yes.

—for a broken system that you could fix like that—

Yes.

—and not need to cut the services—

Yes.

—by £2 billion. Now, doing that means bringing health, farming, retailers, corner shops, and, and, and into a room for a different conversation. But basically, take— so when we talk about growth, for me, the most exciting growth is in the bits that are broken. Let's get rid of all of those as a start point. That's £4,500 per citizen per year is picking up at a wider level because of— we screwed the food system.

So it's going to be a very dynamic decade, right?

Good things are alive. Fingers crossed.

It's going to be dynamic. So what skills or expertise do you think are going to be most valuable for businesses in that coming turbulent time?

That's interesting. That's about it. So I think the first one—

In the Chinese sense of may you live in interesting times.

But in some ways, like the ability to go, that's interesting, is going to be one of the most valuable skills.

Right.

Trying to be a bit cryptic there, but yeah, I get it. But there's something around— so I think it's—

Yes, I get it. I see what you're saying.

So it's like, so being curious.

Curiosity.

Curiosity. Curiosity. The ability to lean into that uncertainty.

Not flying away from it.

How would that— how might that work? For me, it's like one of the most valuable things we can do because it—

Teaching our children that as well.

Creates that space to go. Flexible mindset.

Yeah.

And how do we— how do we go? That's interesting. And then at a wider level, I think there's this— in this kind of post-growth, as we ready ourselves for a post-growth world, I think, you know, recognition that actually our relationships are worth more than the upgraded phone or whatever else it is, I think will start to become material. And it's hard to imagine that we're still going to be relying on things like Facebook and some of the kind of the broken social platforms in 10 years' time. But I think curiosity and the ability to stand and be in the shoes of other people, whether they are millionaires or people with no money, and feel their lives is gonna be one of the most important things that we can do to bring people together around that kind of common bonfire, if you will.

And what mistakes do you think have been made within the sustainability movement so far to not allow us to get to that?

I mean, this is apart from not figuring out the bottle wine trick sooner. So I think, I think we've been, you know, we've been doing a bit too much chicken licking. Skies falling on your head type stuff, you know, like talking about the problem rather than the opportunity, the solution. And the solution that has been talked about is more economic growth rather than a really compelling future that you kind of go, huh, that's interesting.

Yes.

So I think we've been really good at that, good at doing the wrong thing there. I think a lot of the environmental groups have been pretty crap at talking to business.

Yes.

And in many communities, community groups— how many businesses are in the room?

Yeah. Well, that we—

Yeah, it's a bit dirty that.

We don't really want to hear that. We don't talk to business.

Yes.

And I think, you know, as we know with the growth of B Corp in the UK, there are So many businesses that want to do the right thing but are not allowed into that room because the notice is just for charities.

Yeah.

So I think we've made a mistake about not being encouraging enough. And also, in the world of kind of— often in the world of kind of accelerated growth and innovation and startups, there are not enough people talking to public sector about where it hurts. And unless we figure this stuff out together around health and social services, Housing, you know, which many people here are doing, but I think there needs to be a much wider take on that.

Yeah, I think the issue is that it's been siloed in its sort of solution going as well, and actually I think it's complexity that will give us the answers, the complexities of the systems that we're sort of degrading and the complexity of systems that we can create to replicate nature and regrow. So tell me, what 3 things are you and your organization doing that you think are most impactful at the moment?

Okay. So 3 things. So number one, I've got a money tree.

How's it going?

Being in a biome like this is a pretty cool place to have a money tree. So my money tree is run through one of my organizations I work with called Do Good Faster. And we run a forensic accounting process that helps organizations find money that they didn't know they'd lost and give them the option to repurpose it To do things they didn't know were possible.

So give me an example.

So I got paid twice for a gig years ago. We did some work with Sony and they paid me twice, like 2 $50 grand checks I received in the space of a week. And—

Did you tell them?

I did.

Well done.

I did tell them. And I didn't want to have to give it back at an inconvenient moment. I phoned up Sony and said, hey, look, I've got 2 checks. And they said, no, you haven't.

Right.

We don't— do you know who we are? We don't make mistakes like that.

Right.

And when companies are so certain, sometimes they don't make mistakes, they don't look for them.

Yes.

So on average, we can find around $1.5 million for every billion of spend.

Right.

So that's 0.1%, right? But if you've got a big turnover, it becomes—

it becomes a lot.

So if you're running at 5% profitability, then that's significant.

It's a massive amount. And if you then put that money into sustainability solutions that'll give you a 10x return, it's gonna be a load better than putting it into Treasury. So we're talking to some multi-billion-pound businesses right now about the idea that they may choose to put some of the money we find into things that can protect their future.

Right.

So that feels quite exciting. You take that at a big level.

That's a great diagram.

That feels pretty exciting.

That's one.

That's one. The other 2 are is I'm working with Alan Bolden and Matt Golding to work on a platform to say, how do we create the absolute minimum knowledge that's needed for people to be furious or curious or both about what's happening around them? So, not everybody knows that we're putting plastic into our brains. And if you don't— if you can't see the dot, you can't rearrange it. So, what's the absolute minimum knowledge we need so that organizations can go, we know that we are ready to adapt. Because in the same way we've got our fire teams ready, we've got our first aid teams ready, we know that everybody in our organization has got a functional level of ecological knowledge. So when this stuff is talked about on the news, they can go, huh, that would be bad for XYZ.

Yes. And what's getting that nervous system up and running? Exactly, exactly. A great business nervous system.

Great way of describing it, because if it's switched off, yeah, you cannot respond. You don't feel the pain or notice the opportunity.

And what's the difference between that? And there are, there are quite a few organizations that do say they do that. What's the difference between what you're doing and what others are doing?

So I think it's connecting people peer-to-peer outside their organizations and, um, and then not trying to create any new content, right? So our job is not to— is not absolutely not to replace the stuff that Carbon Literacy Project are doing. Yeah, but you— we might do a half hour on climate, right, and let people know that Climate Fresk or Climate Literacy is the other side of that.

Yeah.

But at the minute, organizations do not consider— generally do not consider functional— your nervous system point, Charlie— they don't consider that a risk factor, which is weird. So whether or not your staff can notice what's happening isn't considered a risk for most organizations, which bearing in mind the times we're at is pretty odd. So one of the pieces is that, and then the second bit is saying— is applying that in the world of education, which I'm working on with colleagues in the US and Asia. Asking what is the tipping point of young people worldwide, you would want to have an unshakable confidence that they can ask those questions and curiosity. And we reckon that's 20%. That number adds up at being about 500 million young people, 10 to 25.

That need to be cognizant, aware—

To be able to hold the space with their communities to go, yeah, it's tough, isn't it? Sit down.

Yeah.

So they can hold some of the emotion and physical space with their peers. to have conversations about that different future. Now, if you add up the total ambition of all the organizations working with young people—

You can get there quite easily.

Well, you could get there because the Scouts alone have 57 million members. If you took in sports clubs and, and, and said, well, are you with us to protect young people? They could between them get aligned those conversations. So, but not trying— we're not trying to build a new organization but create a network of networks and share the storytelling and the learning so that kids can build the observatory that in effect becomes the Guinness Book of Cool Shit for the world so that you can go, is it possible? Yes, it's already been done here.

It's actually giving the Scouts— it's so funny you mentioned Scouts because I had to do a talk to the Cubs. My daughter's in Cubs and I literally was there to help out. It was an environmental thing. And they went, oh, actually, could you do a talk on renewable sources and energy sources? And I didn't— and I literally was off the cuff and I did it. But what would have been really helpful is, A, I would have been told beforehand because I would have actually done a tiny bit of research. But actually, what would have been even more useful is getting your stuff and you say, right, pass this out to all the voluntary people out there. And they just literally have a card that they can— use, and that would be really, really useful because— It's like a starter pack. Yeah.

Starter pack, you know, you don't need to know much. If you're going to the beach, you don't need to know everything about what makes sand, but it's good to understand what a rip current looks like type stuff.

Yes.

If you know that, that might save your life.

But also, I think to help people not fall into the same mistakes that the wider environmental movement has fallen into, which is to give them a bad story and say sustainability is about no and you can't when it isn't. It can be about better and fairer.

Yeah, and to understand, you know, what is the actual stories about impact of nature. on mental health.

Yeah.

Oh, wow. I didn't realize that. And I think that the stories of what's possible are the things that lift our spirits.

Yeah. Yeah. I talked to the Cubs about, right, so what are the fossil fuels out there? And we went through 3 of them or whatever. And then I went, and how many renewable sources are out there? And one of them went 100,000. One of them went infinity. And I went, you're probably closer with the infinity. And they were like, what? And I went, it's so exciting that we've got so many sources of energy. think about what we can do with that. And I just went through— we went through rocks and we went through, I don't know, loads of different stuff. And actually that— and it feeds back into— and that's why you've got to be positive, because the future is awesome if we lean in.

And I think there is something around that, around, you know, having those conversations. What does it mean to be human in this, in this mixed-up world, you know? And, you know, my nails are painted as a little relationship.

Well, I wanted to ask you What the colors— is there significance in the colors?

These colors are ocean and earth.

Okay.

And they're painted by— they're painted by my grandchildren as part of a project that launched a couple of weeks ago called Hard as Nails.

Right.

Which was, um, which is asking men to paint their nails and have conversations with others about what it means to be a man, to try and deal with some of the toxic masculinity that is so, you know, catalyzed by that, you know, catalyzed by the adolescence film. So for me, I think there is— I think it's— I guess some of the points you've made, there are so many cool things happening. Let's make them visible. Let's show what happens when they're scaled up and find out where are the missing conversations that if they did happen could be transformative. Yeah, because some of them could be really quick.

So you're doing some, obviously, some great stuff. This is going to turn this question around. What are some of the most harmful things that you do in your business? And what are your blind spots?

So the most harmful thing I've ever done, and I don't think many people can compete with this.

Brilliant. I'm on the edge of my seat.

Your other guests are going to be really gutted by this. I had a job in my 20s in the Great Sandy Desert in Australia. And my job was to find gold mines.

That's quite a cool job.

And I was really good at it. And I discovered a gold mine.

And then they dug and dug and dug.

And then they mixed this gold in tiny quantities with 2 of your favorite chemicals, mercury and cyanide, right, to extract the gold, and then leave the mercury and cyanide in big pools in the desert. That was me.

Was that part of—

He's Australian.

Was this— was there a moment in that where you thought, I don't know about this?

Yeah.

I think it's the pools of mercury and cyanide that are giving me a bad vibe.

It was, it was a really profound learning journey. And, and, and outside, you know, we were 250 miles to the nearest house. So outside the mine, there was, there was land that had never been walked on by white people.

Yeah.

Which is, which is like sacred beyond.

Yeah.

Um, and, and just walking on land that I knew for certain no one other native, you know, that native Aboriginals would have walked on was just, was incredible. And then the juxtaposition of the mine and the dust and the explosions Uh, yeah, made that really clear that that wasn't—

Do you think that's what drives you?

That guilt?

Yeah.

No, but it was, it was a big, it was a big, big lesson, you know, that and then, you know, and traveling through Asia and stuff. But that was a big impact at the time because it was so evident the damage we were doing for 3, for 3 grams of gold in a ton of rock.

And what are your blind spots?

I think my blind spots sometimes are slowing down and listening. You know, I think that I'm working with a bunch of mates at the moment who've developed a new app, and we're trying to work out what's the balance between the ego and the eco and the need to get stuff done and the need to consider and listen. And I know that I'm action-oriented and I get a buzz from big ideas. And I think the blind spot is the risk of not bringing people with me.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of— I think the problem is if you're out there as a pathfinder, Sometimes you just wander off and you don't bring people with you.

Yeah, for sure. No, yeah, yeah. And my wife is— my wife Sarah is brilliant at bringing me back to ground on that. But it's— but I think it's really important that, you know, just for me to be around, to have people around me who can, who can fill in those gaps as well as me trying to be more aware of that.

And if you were to— if we, if we are, and I hope we are, going to significantly reduce climate emissions as a nation and globally, what is the number one thing You would prioritize? That's a pretty tough question, but we're going to go there.

The number one thing would be my would be would be my list. Right. Your list. Well, it's not one thing, but it's a list of things. Okay. I'm not sure. I have to check with the producers.

No, come on in. If you go.

So so we you know we we know that you know that the biggest single thing that people can do right now is switch their pensions. Yep. Because it makes it makes It makes so much more difference if a few hundred grand of investment is switched towards good. You know, my— I invest with an organization called The Path. I get an annual report, and the difference that my pension has made, which isn't huge, being 100% ethical versus not, is enormous.

Yes.

And like way beyond what you'd imagine planting trees on weekends type stuff.

Yes.

So that has to be the number one. And, and for me, the, the second and third things on the list would be start talking to people about what the changes that you love to see happening. So building that space for possibility.

And positivity.

Yeah, and positivity. And I think, and then build your tribe.

Yeah.

We can't do this alone.

Yeah.

You know, bringing people around you from different spaces, I think, would be the— it is only one point, but just in a short list.

It's a pretty good one. I'm, I'm, I think we're fine. That's okay.

That's brilliant.

Yeah. 3 is fine. 3 is fine because they link and you've been so eloquent and it's been amazing for you joining us. We've really— I love this conversation.

I also want to just say, Hospiting Modernity is a brilliant book. And highly recommend. Yeah, we will link that. Say it again. Hospicing Modernity.

Hospicing Modernity. Absolutely superb book by Vanessa, um, Andriotti. I'm glad you said Andriotti. Yeah.

All right, that will be somewhere in the brilliant techno world of this podcast.

And I would love to invite you guys to both join me in, in doing Hard as Nails. I'm, I'm down with this because I've got, I've got the nail varnish in my bag, so we can do that straight after this.

Excellent. I'm in for this.

Thank you so much.

All right, brilliant. Thanks, Andy.