00:07:31 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric
[00:07:31] S0: Yeah. [00:07:31] S1: You know, and it's not a function of wealth or culture or whatever. Like my dad, for example, was a refugee from Poland to Australia after the Second World War. And even though he was just trying to scrape a living, you know, start he arrived with nothing, he was thinking about the future, about you know, trying to make a life for his children and grandchildren and that kind of thing. Um, even though he was sort of also caught in the moment of just trying to make ends meet and pay his rent and that kind of thing. [00:07:59] S0: Yeah. So I think we've all got this capacity. I had a visitor in my visualization, which was uh a man called Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's former uh press secretary. So uh the mooch is actually quite profound, I find, on lots of topics, and he's quite good at um telling you how to be successful in the short term. But he also says something quite interesting about legacy the other day, which made me think. He he said, uh, can you try to name all four of your great-grandparents, their first names? And I was able to get one out of four only. And he used it to make make the point that there is no point worrying about legacy, certainly selfish legacy, because if you can't remember your own great grandparents' name, it will be the same for you and we'll just be forgotten. [00:08:41] S1: And was that an argument for just doing whatever you like in the present moment and not trying to make the world a better place?
00:08:41 · Roman Krznaric, Tommy Stadlen
[00:08:41] S1: And was that an argument for just doing whatever you like in the present moment and not trying to make the world a better place? [00:08:46] S0: I don't think it was that, to be fair, Tim. I think it was more about trying to avoid kind of uh you know, caring so much about what the world thinks about you and doing things for status and trying to kind of advance yourself in in terms of perception of you. [00:08:59] S1: I mean, I think there's a cultural thing there because you ask people, for example, from some place, you go to ask someone from Mexico, for example. You know, I found like in Mexico, people know their grandparents, great-grandparents, they'll they'll they'll be able to name second cousins and third uncles and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. And maybe it's also because it's partly a kind of like a Western cultural thing. But I I think there is something really important there about trying to get away from the idea of a legacy is about me being remembered personally for my greatness. Like Alexander the Great wanted to have statues of himself built all over his empire because he wanted to be remembered as a god. And I think that's a pretty pathetic way of leaving a legacy. [00:09:38] S0: Yes.
00:09:38 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric
[00:09:38] S0: Yes. [00:09:38] S1: And I think about it quite a lot because I'm a writer. And I think, well, I actually I want my books to be read, you know, in a hundred years' time still. That would be nice. But actually, what I think, if I'm I hope I'm being truthful, what cares, what I care about more is that the ideas that I've tried to bring to the world are out there floating in people's people's minds. It doesn't have to be my name that is remembered, but I hope that the ideas still resonate. [00:10:07] S0: Yeah. So let's try to bring some some practical examples to life. You you mentioned your daughter, I believe you've got two daughters. You actually gave them your vote, is that right? [00:10:15] S1: Daughter and son, actually. So twins, boy go twins. So yeah, that was something practical. Um, me and my partner did at the time, first did at the time, the UK election in 2019, when they were my our kids were turning 11, we decided to give them our votes in the election of that year. [00:10:30] S0: Amazing.
00:10:30 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric
[00:10:30] S0: Amazing. [00:10:30] S1: So we, you know, we sat around the kitchen table and we debated the party manifestos, we told them how the electoral system worked, and they then told us where to put the X on the ballot sheet. And in case you're wondering, they didn't exactly vote how their parents were. But the reason we did that, of course, is because we knew we were making decisions as adults that would affect their lives, and they were having no say in that. Yeah. And they should have the right to have, you know, a say in things. And it's a bit like the idea of you know putting uh a seat for future generations in your or in your in your board meetings. Yeah. It's that same kind of idea of trying to give a voice. Or I got an uh a message not long ago from the um mayor of Quebec, sorry, the the chief of staff of the mayor of Quebec in Canada, who said that in nearly 200 municipalities and cities across Quebec now, they they put an empty chair in the council meetings to represent future generations. And look, any company, any person, any family could do that, right? When you're having any kind of discussion of strategy of futures or whatever. Just put down an empty chair, you know, and and bring at least the idea of the future into the room in a way that you can literally visualize. [00:11:40] S0: Do you have any other rituals that you have in your life, your family's life to try to help you be a long-term thinker?
00:11:40 · Tommy Stadlen, Roman Krznaric, Cameron McLain
[00:11:40] S0: Do you have any other rituals that you have in your life, your family's life to try to help you be a long-term thinker? [00:11:45] S1: I mean, I think there's basic things that we do, you know, as a as a family, um, is that we try and live by certain basic rules um of how we impact on the world, which is basically the obvious stuff of trying to find ways of living lightly. Okay. So we don't have a car. Uh we used to have a car. We now use a local car club, which you can hire a car by the hour to get around. It's a social enterprise and we go around mostly on bicycles, but occasionally we need a car. Great. [00:12:15] S3: Um you tried to make a make a wider point though as well, am I right? You did you did you paint your your driveway?
00:12:20 · Roman Krznaric
[00:12:20] S1: Uh we did actually. Yeah, it's funny how you remember that. Uh yeah, we did actually paint, try to paint our driveway um so that, well actually with with chalk on the ground so that people wouldn't part their cars there. In fact, I wanted to put a big skip there and and plant, you know, uh grow vegetables in it or in a kind of trailer, but I knew the council would kill me for that. Um so I mean, these are just small things, um, you know, and you know, trying to live within a carbon budget, you know, trying to, you know, the average phone is thrown away after less than three years and uses half the elements in the periodic table. So try and buy secondhand, you know, electrical equipment, all that kind of stuff and digital devices. I mean, that's all obvious stuff. I mean, and that's only beginning. I think it's also fundamental to change the system. So that's why, you know, I've gone with my kids on demonstrations, whether it's Extinction Rebellion or other things. But that kind of like, you know, protesting on the streets is not for everybody. Everyone has to find their own route. Some people want to write poetry about a future river. You know, some people might sort of think, right, I'm I want to create a company that creates some amazing cancer cure, you know. Um, great. Find your way. Yeah. But I think, you know, I once heard the great American environmental campaigner Bill McKibben asked, someone asked him in the audience, you know, what should I do as an individual? And his reply was this be less of an individual. And I think there's something really important there about, in a sense, it doesn't matter what you do, but do it with others. Right. You know, this is teamwork, yeah, right? Whether it's putting solar panels on the roof of your kid's school, whether it's, you know, saying we're going to turn our company into a steward-owned company and be a bit like Patagonia and put some of the shares in a kind of trust, you know, for the earth rather than just for our um short-term shareholders, you know. What can you do with others?