Adulting - #32 How To Live Consciously with Alice Aedy

Episode Date: June 2, 2019

YAY Welcome back I have missed you! Episode 1 of Season 4 is finally here! This week I speak to Alice Aedy - photo journalist, documentary film maker and activist. I really hope you enjoy it - please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe.Oenone Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hi guys and welcome to Adulting. How exciting to be back for season four. I'm so grateful that you let me have a little break just to get all of these episodes pre-recorded for you because for this season we're doing have a little break just to get all of these episodes pre-recorded for you, because for this season, we're doing something a little different. Each episode is going to be titled How To, with my guest speaker influencing the topic either through their work, something they're passionate about, or something they've been through. It's not necessarily instructional, but it's going to be nice overall understanding on that topic. And the first episode is with Alice Aidey and I'm so excited for you to listen to her she is incredible she's a photojournalist documentary filmmaker and activist

and I know that I walked away from that conversation feeling so full of vim and vigor and ready to try and get out and make a bit of a difference and live a bit more consciously and I hope that you do too I hope you enjoy the episode and please don't forget to rate review and subscribe. Bye! Hi guys and welcome back to Adulting. Today I'm joined by Alice Aidey. Have I said that right? Yeah, that's it. I've already got the giggles. We'll be fine. We love a bit of giggling. Would you like to tell everyone what it is that you do or who you are or both?

So I am a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker. I guess my focus is around like social impact stuff. So I've done a lot of work the refugee crisis most recently FGM and environmentalism um so yeah kind of combine my activism with visual journalism does that make sense yeah it makes me I am kind of like high-key obsessed with Alice because she is the woman that I would like to be but instead I'm too busy posting selfies on Instagram um and it shouldn't be about how we look but just so so you know, Alice is literally unreal and very impeccably posts pictures of herself.

So I have gone through her whole Instagram to find the pictures of her. But what I think is so fascinating, amazing, well, first of all, you're an incredible photographer. And you actually do real activism, which I think is quite rare in this age of collectivism. A lot of us talk the talk, not many of us walk the walk but you really do throw yourself into situations where you're in and amongst the real shit that's going

on what what's the most recent project that you've been working on where have you been um so well most recently i've actually been normally i'm working abroad but most recently i've been in london doing a lot of environmental activism My boyfriend got arrested a couple of weeks ago. It was always my dream to be with someone who hadn't been in the slammer, had a criminal record. So that's been exciting. But abroad, so I most recently did a trip where I went to visit women who are on the front lines of anti-FGM activism.

I keep saying FGM activism, and it's really anti-FGM activism. Really no laughing FGM activism and it's really anti-FGM activism and really no laughing matter. But it was an unbelievable trip. I went out with a British Somali activist called Nimco Ali, who has herself had FGM. And so we did a two week trip. We went to Kenya, the Gambia and Senegal. And it was really to document the work of the frontline activists who are these incredibly inspiring women. It sort of almost sounds like a cliche to come home from one of these trips and say, well, the people were incredible. But these women are really remarkable. And I guess the reason for that is to become an anti-FGM activist, a tradition that's been going on for, you know, as long as they can remember, you are going against your family, your community, your societal norms.

So the kind of strength of character these women have, you know, I care way too much what people think of me to have that strength of will. So amazing work that they're doing, you know. And when I say frontline activism, they're literally Josephine, the woman we were following in Kenya. She gets five phone calls a day um saying so so in Kenya the way

FGM works it happens it's different in different countries but in Kenya FGM happens the day before the girls are married and that can be early marriage is a huge issue so it can be anything from seven eight nine ten years old so just quickly for those who don't know FGM is female genital mutilation that's okay and it's when they literally cut off your clitoris, is it? So there are three different types. But yeah, it can be anything from just cutting off the clitoris to cutting off the clitoris and sewing up some of the labia and sewing it together. So it's really a horrible, horrible practice.

And actually, before I took on this project, I was a bit nervous about approaching it because even a friend of mine said, well, you're a white woman you shouldn't go you know to Africa and and tell people what to do and tell them to stop FGM and so I was a bit apprehensive but it was awesome being with Nimco who you know I could ask her anything and she really led me and she sort of said no I hate this excuse of oh this, this is a traditional practice, this is a cultural practice because slavery was also a cultural practice. It doesn't make it morally right. And she sort of said to me, no, FGM is child abuse

and it's gender-based violence. And why would you and I not have a right to care about that? Was it Nimco who said, it was someone I listened to that said that they would have done it to their child had they not realised? Was it Nimco? Someone on the Guilty Famous had it. And they were like, basically, it was such a normal tradition in our family that I didn't. And it wasn't until someone kind of showed me why it was so wrong that I would have done it to my daughter. So the other issue is, I guess, especially in the UK, when we see mothers or people doing it to their children and we kind of villainise them.

But actually, they are also under the impression that that's just tradition or it's good for the child or a hundred percent so they they they know nothing else you know it's a traditional um practice and that's also some of the issue in making changes the men um who normally sort of hold all positions of power sort of said this FGM thing has nothing to do with us talk to the women um so that's crazy but Josephine this amazing woman she literally does like education programs where she goes into villages and she asks every the leaders um to say clitoris and all their local dialects and it's just absolutely amazing so she physically will get a call she'll go and rescue these girls and take them to the center and she told me this thing that's just really stuck with me because I found it so funny.

So if she doesn't personally go to rescue the girl, she'll send a colleague of hers from the Samburu Girls Foundation, the foundation she set up. And always once she's rescued a girl, she'll try and go back to the village to explain why they did what they did, why FGM should be stopped. And she says that always people think she's this like old fat woman who's never had any of her own kids. You know, she's like cursed. They don't understand why she would possibly want to stop FGM.

And she walks in and she is just the most beautiful six foot two, you know, Maasai woman. And of course, that was the most important evidence I saw that the funding needs to go to these frontline activists who are from those communities who themselves are going to explain why FGIM should be stopped not the sort of middlemen massive NGOs where foreigners go in um so in that sense it was yeah a remarkable trip and just to document their work was really cool. That is incredible and I guess you are going in as a journalist side as well as the activist so

you're actually documented for other people to see coming off the back of a little bit of what you're saying I guess I'm just interested because this has come up a lot recently but with the terms of like white saviorism and yeah travel and stuff where what's your opinion on kind of the way that we normally see well no I don't I see I don't really say Stacey because I just don't think it's anything to do with her I don't know what do you think um I think I'm very aware that I don't want to come across as like the Stacey Doolie thing is I often look at those photos of people and I say you can go to Africa and not take a selfie with a young um African child like that is possible I do it all the time and I'm very conscious to not take those kind of

images because those perpetuate these um stereotypes right um I'm very sort of conscious of not getting it getting it wrong like I hope I don't get it wrong in this sense with this trip it was great being with Nimco because she really sort of guided me um but certainly in journalism there's like a huge representation issue of like a lot of journalists. Most journalists are not only Oxbridge educated, but most are white. So recently, I'm not sure the exact stats, so please forgive me if I get it wrong, but there's these big photo journalism awards called the World Press Photo. And what was remarkable this year was there were many more women were nominated for the award, which was great.

But out of the six nominees, all the subjects of the photographs were black and brown people, people of colour. So that is still a massive, massive issue in journalism. And I'm really conscious of that in my own work as well. You know, I've photographed the refugee crisis. I often work abroad. I very rarely work at home. So I'm really focused on making sure there's a balance in my own work and you know that's something I can really improve and and others can too like we're definitely not there in terms of um journalism but always it's always on my mind like I did a trip to Somaliland to cover the drought and photojournalism out of East Africa kind of fulfills all these stereotypes of

like poverty porn and you know if the images the photojournalism is always, you know, yeah, poverty or most recently a lot of famine. So I thought, how can I take a different set of images? And so I took out a black backdrop and I used a fashion lighting, so sort of more editorial style of photography to create, hopefully what I hoped were sort of empowering portraits and I like the use of this portable studio because without the backdrop there wasn't actually the context in which these people lived so you as the audience

are completely focused on the subject and I guess the aim with that was and I found this a lot covering the refugee crisis is I think the moment you recognise the context and you're like, wow, that's kind of happening over there, you remove yourself from any responsibility. And so I hoped with these images, this portrait series, that it's really just about the subject and hopefully to build some empathy with that person. It's so fascinating. You're so right as well,

because whenever we see a refugee who has come over to england and been here for a while now and then working everyone gives them so much credence i'm like oh my god it's amazing you're a refugee but you see people in refugee camps and suddenly they become numbers and statistics rather than individuals so i completely agree with like when you strip out the backdrop with the work that you're doing like in your journalism do you are you called out why isn't there much talk about what goes on at home because i did a podcast i need to put out with no white saviors last year and didn't put out one because it sounded good two i was worried that might slightly controversial and they were just like why is it that you feel weep because i've done volunteering when i was 18 i went to south america and there are pictures of me on my facebook

with a load of children of color and i'm there at 18 years old thinking I'm being really helpful I explained to my parents the day they're like but you did help and I'm like not really because I went there for six weeks I might have taught them something but the money that cost me to get that would be better off putting into funding for them to get a teacher from Ecuador rather than me going in and disrupting their um months or whatever um and they were like why do why do we not have more draw to do things at home and it's so true like I could go up to lambeth town council and look to volunteer at home and are the stories not there they absolutely are and that's we all need to improve on that front there's this um there's recently a film i don't know if you saw it about one of my heroes of uh sunday times

journalist called marie colvin she was very famous for having an eye patch because she had some shrapnel caught in her eye and made her blind. Unbelievable woman, unbelievable journalist. But there was a Hollywood, there was a great documentary made about her called Under the Wire, which I really recommend to anyone, which kind of tracks the days leading up to her death. She was bombed, targeted by the Syrian government. And then there's a Hollywood film that's come out called A Private War and I thought it was so disappointing because it sort of brought up all these stereotypes about journalists as sort of heavy drinking sex obsessed all this stuff but it reminded me of these tropes that we have about journalism which I am really

uncomfortable with and seems so outdated now of you know shining a light in the dark and giving people without a voice a voice and I think what's so amazing about the internet and social media is actually we've moved beyond that I mean we can elevate voices sure but everyone has a voice so like in my work I'm sharing stories and and maybe I'm trying to elevate voices but those voices very much already exist and the women I just visited you know the activists if if I can sort of elevate their voices that that's great but yeah let's move beyond this idea of having to be a white person and and go to and and now everyone has a way to share their stories right they all have

access to the internet and that's what's amazing there have been improvements in journalism like it has been a massively democratizing tool um for everyone to be able to tell their own stories they don't need to rely on the traditional gatekeepers of you know a white sunday times journalist going into your country so yeah it's definitely positive how did you get to being one where you are and what drove you to want to be in this particular area of journalism have you always had this desire or was it something that happened upon you um so I've always wanted to be I always wanted to be a war photographer so as long as I can remember I think 11 12 13 years old um I think there was a short stint I wanted to be in the army and um fly

helicopters but I don't think my eyesight was good enough and I surely got over that but yeah I wanted to be a war photographer and sort of massively romanticized it way into my teens um at university I studied politics and history hoped I could come out and sort of do some sort of visual journalism based on my interest in sort of politics and foreign affairs. And I read a book when I was 19 by an American photojournalist called Lindsay Adario called It's What I Do, which I really, really recommend about her life, really. And she's been kidnapped three times. So she's just got this incredibly compelling story. And she was my hero, really.

And I based all my ambitions on that. And then when I came out of university, I headed to Calais, the refugee camp, the jungle. Thought I would volunteer for two days. Stayed for much longer. Went on after that to a camp in Greece on the Macedonian border. I don't know if you remember those incredibly dramatic images of Syrian refugees arriving on Greek shores and then walking up to Germany. So this was sort of just after that, all the Balkan route had sort of closed their doors. And so there was a camp I was in called Idomeni on the recently closed Macedonian border, 15,000 people. And I joined a group of friends. We started a group, well I didn't start it, I joined them soon after they started it

called Hot Food Idomeni. And we cooked 7, 7 000 meals a day these sort of dolls and these huge um I don't even know what you call them massive sort of tubs with almost rowing oars to stir the doll um and I was there for a few months couldn't uh stay away really it was seemed so kind of at that point it was really an emergency situation now the refugee crisis has moved into more sort of long-time refugee camps which has you know a host of issues in that but so I was there and every day this food would arrive for us to cook and I sort of didn't I was just so in the thick of it you know it was two distributions a day we were working so hard I didn't think wait where's this food coming from who's paying for this and one day these three women came and they told me the story of the NGO that they'd set up it was called Help Refugees and they told me this incredible story and I'll never forget it so a few

months prior there was a photo of Alan Kurdi the young Syrian boy who was washed up on Greek shores and they decided they saw this image and they felt compelled to do something about it. So they wanted to raise, I think it was £1,000 or something and drive a van full of donations down to the camp in Calais, in France. Within a week, they raised £50,000, were getting so many donations, they had to open an Amazon wishlist, opened a warehouse in the UK and then shortly after went down to Calais and started to support the warehouse there. And when they arrived in Calais, they were shocked to see, it's kind of an irony, so France never declared the Calais jungle as a humanitarian emergency. So some of the bigger players weren't there that they expected to

see. So they dropped everything. And they fully committed to this. And within a few months, they were the largest grassroots organization in Calais and then shortly across Europe and they had been supporting this group that I was working in this grassroots organization in this camp at a many and I never forgot this story and I stayed in touch with them and over the months of my volunteering I'd been there primarily as a volunteer but I did have a camera around my neck and this was a time where um you know there was very derogatory language being used about refugees David Cameron was talking about swarms of migrants it was a very politicized issue and I you know it was my first time in a situation like this but I was really watching how the journalists were operating I'd had such an interest in journalism and through no fault of their own

necessarily you know journalists can be sent out for two days um and particularly the photographers I'd had such an interest in journalism. And through no fault of their own necessarily, you know, journalists can be sent out for two days. And particularly the photographers, they're keen for action. You know, they want the tear gas, they want a strong image. And I sort of felt really upset about that. And I realized having these,

the luxury of a few months volunteering gave me the opportunity to really get to know people. And so right at the beginning, I had absolutely no confidence to take photos. You know, what right did I have to take photos? These people living in quite terrible conditions. No confidence. Did not feel I had the right. And then slowly over time, as I built personal relationships, it sort of became easier. So I had these images.

They lived on my hard drive for about a year. But then I slowly started to work with the girls from Help Refugees um to publish those images I started an Instagram account where I started to share these stories um and slowly but surely it sort of started to become a professional thing they've started to be published in newspapers and I think a big turning point was a few months following my time in Greece, I met these two Guardian journalists through Help Refugees and they were writing a story about Help Refugees work and how the European Union was mismanaging funds.

And they needed sort of access to families in Greece. By this point, all the informal camps became more formal military-run camps but sort of hidden away in these awful kind of industrial warehouses on the outskirts of cities in Greece and I would take them in see families we'd often have to sort of jump over walls and things secretly get in um and through meeting them uh the following week they put an image that I'd taken of a girl called Yamaha who I'd followed for months um put her on the front cover of the Guardian and that was part of a campaign for supporting child refugees that Christmas and it became the most successful fundraising campaign the Guardian ever done so that was a real turning point where this

very unprofessional thing became a bit more professional and I kind of felt really committed to the power of the image and how that could have really tangible impact sorry no blabbing on that listen to you I'm so inspired by you I think I'm absolutely incredible and I can't imagine first did you know how did you did you do photography how are you so no I didn't sorry you're just one of those people you're amazing no I just I had no idea what I was doing and that was part of my lack of confidence no I just I had no idea what I was doing and that was part of my lack of confidence you know I literally had no idea what I was doing didn't know what aperture was didn't know what shutter speed was but just so committed to to doing it I guess I don't know but I was terrible I mean genuinely I'm embarrassed by my photos at

the start what was it that at 11 11 to 13 that you said that was when you first got I mean I think I was busy trying to cut the hair off my sister's barbie's like what what where did that come have you got a very strong feminist mother have you got something um I think I was really inspired actually by my aunt who worked for the UN and I've just remember stories of that and I was just totally in awe of her and I don't know what what my that moment eureka moment was at 11 or 12 but certainly reading Lindsay's book um when I was about 19 just kind of totally solidified it now I realize having a few years of experience I massively romanticized that whole world um so I've moved away from wanting to do sort of frontline conflict journalism sort of breaking

news images to wanting to do long-term documentary projects where I really can give the subjects the time they deserve maybe do under underreported stories um and that's in part through you know my experience covering the refugee crisis and seeing how journalists operate and how predatory it can be you know it's a really um it's it's i sort of one of my other heroes is a photographer called don mccullen and he's got an exhibition at the tate at the moment and i guess um those those kind of um stereotypes i talked about about shining a light in the dark for him when he went to the front line in vietnam and he was maybe one or two photographers the images he sent back really had a monumental impact in in kind of bringing the end of the Vietnam war for

example um now it's so different you know everyone can take an image yeah um then I had friends who were in Iraq at the most battle of Mosul and you know he sent me a photo that there's five photographers on one roof taking the same image desperate you know there's so many more freelancers now so the industry has totally changed and I think that reminds me of how important it is to do under underreported stories in a really kind of respectful um way and give it the time that it deserves it's a really interesting junction isn't it because I remember I can't remember what story it was but it was a time when actually might be when I was at uni and we were all reading up about how there was something going on on Twitter before it got to the news.

And I can't remember if there was like, I was at uni in Cardiff, and I think there was just like, I think it was the bomb scare or something. We were like, it's so fascinating that people just in the street are telling you, they're reporting it prior to the reporters. And I guess that's what you're talking about. Like you can't break that first story now because there's going to be someone there already with their their iphone totally which i think is ultimately really positive yeah you know it goes back to that thing i've said of the democratization of the news and citizen

journalism like we and that's really great for fact checking and accountability and stuff um so i think that is a really positive thing it's just in terms of what is my personal role yeah in this industry um and I think I also realize that photos are not enough and that's why I'm moving a lot into documentary film because I guess that allows you the time to see the nuance and situations not just the black and white or not just the headline yeah um and how important it is to sort of yeah slow journalism and take your time and tell stories and you you use social media in a very positive way and I I guess it must be like multiple fold but do you think that because you spend so much of your time in really difficult situations with people with such impoverished or bad luck that how does that how does that change your relationship

with our way of living like do you feel that you kind of emancipated yourself a little bit from like I probably got consumed about stupid things about like which pro trainers look cool do you think that's changed your relationship with those kind of things do you know no I still feel those pressures I mean I wish I didn't but I you know I care as much as the next person how I look and and all that stuff it's it's it's almost shocking that it hasn't changed me more. I think that shows how much pressure we're under, especially as girls and women. But it certainly has shaped the way that I view social media.

So I really see my, I became very preoccupied with what we were seeing on our feeds you know just for Instagram is I saw my role as kind of reminding the world you know of some of the real issues that are happening beyond our day-to-day concerns yeah um I also think there's a problem with how we consume the kind of images I take on social media because you know I'm preoccupied by this idea of desensitization if we're consuming a you know I follow CNN let's say the Guardian whatever and sometimes I can be really shocking images but the way that we consume those images imagine I go from like Beyonce to a cat meme to a bombing in Syria does that how does that impact my um my view of that image or how much it affects me and I certainly with the refugee crisis I think

we became so desensitized to these images that's still happening of refugees, you know, crossing the Mediterranean on boats. And that's really worrying. The flip side of that is I think social media is the most amazing tool to share news, to start campaigns, to make impact. And I'm, you know, my own journey and trajectory

has been solely sort of, I have to give great credit to platforms like Instagram because that's where I share stories, that's where I share my images. So it's been really, really powerful, I think. Yeah, I think it definitely is a great way to enact change and to draw, pull away from maybe very, as you say, like it's so interesting I hadn't really thought about that before the way that a journalist goes in takes one photo and that's your whole

story just from a one second image which is not representative exactly um and now you're talking about you're moving starting to do more environmentalist well I don't know did you start as a humanitarian and then it's that's driven you towards environmentalism or how did that come about um so I guess yeah I was mainly focused on sort of uh social justice issues although you know environmentalism is I'm learning more and more is a social justice issue I learned a crazy statistic and I really hope it's hope it's right but I um read it the other day that um 99% of climate change related deaths occur in the least developed nations, which is a category of nations. And yet those same nations have only contributed to 1% of carbon emissions. So environmentalism, I guess, is really tied in with the rest of my work. But

I've really only come to it recently. And that's in part my boyfriend who I actually met in Calais in the jungle two years ago. That was his huge, you know, he makes films online and he really dedicated himself to environmentalism. So I've really learned a lot through him. It wasn't one of my concerns, really. Shockingly, I think I'd engaged with it sort of on an intellectual level. I'd kind of read the statistics. But like a lot of people still, I think I'd engaged with it sort of on an intellectual level I'd kind of read the statistics but like a lot of people still I think I was totally in denial

um and and didn't engage with it on an emotional level like I say to him often you know if I read a piece about like sexual assault that it makes me my whole body feel enraged and I'd never felt that kind of level of fear and anger about environmentalism until really recently um so yeah I don't think that's shocking at all I think for one you take up a lot of emotional labor and space doing the work that you do a lot of people aren't as emotionally involved with their career it tends to be something you can leave at home whereas yours is already taking up a huge portion of what you do so I don't think that it's any slight on you that you hadn't also decided to be like ahead of environmentalism as well because I get this question a lot when it comes to feminism and people like you should be vegan because that

is inherently a feminist issue and I'm getting there and it's interesting but it's also that time of like you've also got to live and survive and and applying yourself so selflessly I mean you seem like you're a very extrinsically motivated person everything you do is very outside of yourself um what well one thing I'd say is like we all have our different I hate calling it a eureka moment but we all have some that moment right my brother was vegan for years I did not even think about it. I mean, it just was not in my consciousness. I did not put two and two together. So people will get there, you know, and I don't think sort of shouting at them is going to make it any different. So, you know, everyone comes and if you have to fight, pick your battles as well. You know,

you can't spread yourself. You know, if your thing is feminism, then there's no shame in that at all. I don't know if I am intrinsically motivated in everything I do. I think if my work has impacted me in any way, it has made me angry, more angry than I sort of have ever been before and more aware of kind of, it sounds so grandiose, but sort of the injustices. And that is motivating. Anger fuels you like nothing else, you know. Anger gets you out of bed. I am really smiling, by the way. It sounds so weird that I'm talking about anger. Anger in a sort of, you know,

in a passionate way, not in a resentful way, but every day I'm like, come on, we can make this far better. I think about this all the time, like purpose gives you so so if you don't have a purpose if you don't have a drive your life really loses meaning and I do find it interesting because I do know that I need to be more environmentally engaged and what I find so fascinating is the cognitive dissonance between like I will watch stuff that you post or that like I remember your your boyfriend actually posted something and it was like he might repost the guardian I can't remember but it was like we're the first people to know the impact that we're making on on the

on the environment and with the last people that can make a difference about it and that actually i had like a visceral reaction to that for the first time and then like about an hour later i'd completely forgotten yeah and what's so interesting is there are people that can be so um politically engaged there and then the other half of the world just have no idea and i think it's you've got to just forget because I think what draws us back in so often especially with veganism and stuff it's like well but they're still buying a steak so and I think I swing back and forth between that oh my god we've got to do something and then like 50% of the people in my life don't even think to buy a reusable cup I sound like if that's like so I can't believe I've got a reusable cup but it is that and it's when you see and and how do you do you think that it's a product of your environment literally that the people around you as well are so um focused on these goals that help

that helps you to be massively I think you know um having Jack and the people we've met through this movement we've been involved with a group called Extinction Rebellion and it you know you said you reacted emotionally to that one sentence and though an hour later you've forgotten it you've remembered it now right and so I think bit by bit it does chip away at you and I've now gone to because I've engaged with it it kind of is a decision it's like I was in denial I totally ignored it and looked away and now that I've kind of engaged with it um and kind of sort of stared the issue in the face it really does scare me and um I've gone to multiple talks and there are all these these things that really emotionally engage you like do you want to be a bystander or do you want to do something about it um but a hundred percent

I'm motivated by the people around me. I really would have continued, I think, to not kind of acknowledge the issue without them. But certainly engaging with it as a sort of social justice issue made a huge difference for me. Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

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but all of us are university educated probably white probably middle class um talking about the world's problems as if we're going to put them to rights and when it comes to things like climate change and stuff in my our little echelon of society that's like got enough time money and energy to be thinking talking and educated about it obviously we can posit these ways of doing stuff but how do we how do we discuss it in a way that it permeates privilege like how can we or is it the responsibility of the privilege to try and create a way that everyone can have a do you know what I'm trying to say it's so hard to so firstly isn't it you're totally right it's an incredibly white middle class movement um and I wish it wasn't right because climate change is is not gonna

i mean it's not going to be exclusive and we always talk about climate change as if it's something happening will that will happen in the future you know there was a recent ic ipcc report which said we have 12 years to say you know to to stop um the sort of temperature rise but climate change and i've seen this through my work is already happening to the most poor in the world like it's this irony that um it's as i've said it's affecting those who have least have done least to cause it um and i've seen that i went i made a film in um an island called kiribati in the south pacific where at its highest point um it's two meters above sea level and it's one of the most uh remote it's actually a

sort of collection of islands most remote nation in the world um and there i mean it's indiscriminate and the sea levels are rising and they that nation will be the first to go underwater um it was really interesting to see this year with the california wildfires sort of suddenly climate change came to really some of the most privileged people in the world and everyone it really shook everyone to their core but um you know climate change is a reality and it's affecting loads of people it's just whether we wake up to it um it's going to affect us all yeah to different um degrees but also the other thing is I you know it always strikes me that right-wing politicians who are super well in general tend to be more anti-immigration are not incredibly concerned

by climate change because the mass migration that is going to be caused by rising temperatures is going to be monumental I mean we've called this um refugee crisis yeah a crisis but it's the numbers are so incredibly small compared to the migration that's happening within africa right now um let alone what's gonna arrive in europe i remember really one of my most clever friends who actually is the reason i started the book club because she used to teach me everything she buggered off to columbia to do something really helpful for the world um and she told me ages ago about this book that she'd read years and years ago about how like um this rise in heat is going to be the biggest problem with um immigration humanity and when are we going to make the decision I remember

like no that's never going to happen she's like well we'll have to make the decision to shut off our borders if we keep increasing climate change because what do you do do you have everyone on one tiny island and I remember like that's never gonna happen and she said this to me a few years ago about a book she'd read five years ago and even I watched a documentary about Prince Charles I'm not remotely a royalist but it was very interesting and it was him in the 70s being like we need to stop using um plastic like one time you use plastic and there's just so much it's been there the whole time and I think it is what you're saying it's there is that idea isn't that I think is that if it's something's

like more than 50 years in the future it's really hard for humans to process any kind of attachment to it because like evolutionary wise we find it really difficult to think that far ahead yeah but I think it's been so intangible not only because some of the issues environmentally have been happening really far away, but also we're talking about a future that we can't really imagine. And I think every argument under the sun has been used. You know, this is your this is our kids future. This is I was a protester last week or two weeks ago was International Petroleum Week,

which is where all those sort of biggest names in the oil and gas industries come for a conference um and you know the science the science tells us that we need to drastically reduce i mean ultimately completely stop but obviously that can't happen overnight removing fossil fuels you know two-thirds of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground and yet um you know exxon mobil and some of the other big corporations are planning multi-trillion dollar investments um i came face to face with the and i love this job title he was the head of exploration at total um and exploration literally means you know going into new countries and finding new oil the fact that we are even looking is unbelievable collectively the biggest corporations in oil and gas are spending only one percent on renewable energy which is shocking it is and of course you know

a lot of the um comments i'll get was well you you drive a car and you fly and i fly more more than most people i know you know for my work um but in a way we need to get beyond this argument of like pointing fingers because and this happens a lot with veganism too and and i really disagree with this approach is you can't have to be a perfect vegan and a perfect environmentalist otherwise no one will be that group will remain incredibly exclusive and we won't get anywhere surely if we want more vegans is make it a more flexible approach you say say, try and eat less meat and, you know, fly less. And the other thing is, we have been told for far too long that we need to switch off our lights, have shorter showers as a resolution to climate change. And though this whole plastic debate has been absolutely crucial, and of course,

single-use plastics, we have to stop using them you know again these massive PR protected companies are convincing individuals that the decision the decisions and responsibility lie with them when actually this has to be government and corporation led I mean we need more government regulation and though there are moves for improvement but it's not happening fast enough but it is it, it's that onus put on the individual to make you feel guilty and then you never do anything about it. And I completely agree about this.

The minute, I think the minute you stand for something, people then can't believe that you are not, as you say, like the perfect bastion of whatever that thing is that you said you're going to do. And I noticed that with my social media, so I'll say something about feminism and someone will be like, but you have fake eyelashes.

And I'm like, but I'm trying to, at least i'm trying like and then someone it's the minute you put your head above the parapet and say i actually might think this is slightly important people were so desperate to put people into binary labels and terms i even think like my guy friends so my boyfriend if i say he's actually so i don't want to vilify him because he's so great he's really feminist like i've got him into like drinking different milks and stuff. But if I say to him, would you ever go vegan? He's just like, no. But he slowly has made so many changes.

But it's just the word is so terrifying, so alienating to so many people that actually it means you kind of, you stop before you even get there. And people won't talk about it publicly because they're scared that a mate will say, oh, well, I saw you have an egg yesterday or something. And that's so unhelpful. And I really passionately believe that this fear of being called a hypocrite in terms of the environmental movement has massively paralyzed it. Because if it wasn't like this, if people weren't so keen to the moment you talk about something

regarding environmentalism to sort of point the finger or drag you down, we would have the people in society that hold the most social currency for better or worse models actors celebrities would have joined this movement um and that is is what i think will make the difference and that this movement requires that energy and those people of influence but so far it's really really difficult but it's because that's putting a name to it. I guess the people that, because I even said, it's funny enough, I was walking around Brockhall Park

with my boyfriend. He was the same thing about oil and all these problems. And I was like, but why would these people want to do it? And he was like, because they're absolutely loaded and for the rest of their lives,

they'll live the best. They couldn't give a shit if the world blows up in 300 years because they'll have lived their best life. And they're nameless. We don't know who these people are. We know the names of the corporations. We have no idea

who the guy sat at the top of that throne is but we do know who the famous actor is or who that person on social media is and we can blame them which is what's so sick about it that's one of the discussions um i have a lot of my friends in this movement is who is climate change you know um that's sort of the biggest baddest bosses as you say these people that we wouldn't recognize in the street that aren't you know we would could probably find out who they are but they're not well-known figures they have been protected as massively benefited them but we don't know them as individuals we don't know where to point the finger at the moment in terms of the movement because who is climate change who are these

climate criminals um and that's why we were protesting specifically at international petroleum week extinct rebellion this um activist group have been criticized for their strategy you know they swarm streets for 10 minute periods and people are saying why are you pissing off east london cabbies who are trying to do their work yeah and whether or not you agree with the strategy um they have brought a lot of energy to this movement and started conversations and that specific action against international petroleum week was targeting literally some of the individuals the climate criminals that we're talking about so i think that was quite effective and powerful and what other because i guess we see the word activism

bounding about a lot i try not to use it in relation to what I do because I don't do activism, even though people who are on the other side of it would be like a very misandrist activist person. But you actually do get in the front line as it were and you are being active. How important and integral is that to your work and how much of an impact do you think that activism has

and should we all be aiming to be a bit more activist because you brought up earlier about the bystander idea how much that shape what you're doing in a minute someone asked me recently um if they thought it was an increasing trend in journalism that journalists and photojournalists will sort of attach themselves to particular campaigns there's been a few photojournalists that I really admire will literally start foundations and movements and online communities around issues that they have come across in their work. And my work has been deeply interlinked with activism. I'm not sure how conventional that is, or what the ethics are. I think normally, as a journalist, you're meant to be objective. Now,

I don't think you can ever be objective in journalism. I think normally as a journalist you're meant to be objective now I don't think you can ever be objective in journalism I think ultimately journalism is a form of activism I think you know if journalists weren't doing frontline activism if they if they were yeah they if they weren't doing journalism they would be doing frontline activism because they are trying to hold people to account sort of it is a type of activism and it's absolutely crucial um I don't know what I'm meant to be doing I don't know if it's wrong or right but I think using my online platform to be able to talk about these issues it just came naturally to me and I think it's incredibly important I don't want to be a bystander um I often think what will my kids think is completely outrageous about my lifetime.

And that can sort of change day to day. But certainly, I think the fact that it's not illegal to do the environmental damage that has been done will seem kind of baffling to our kids. You know, hopefully by that point, if we get our act together, we'll be living on a much cleaner planet. And it will seem really bizarre that it's not illegal, right right it's not illegal right now to do damage to our planet um and obviously the level of sexism and sexual violence against women i hope will be on a much more level playing field but i always remind myself like when i look back at the past i want to be able to say that at least i try to do something about it and that's what drives a lot of the the work that I do that sounds so pretentious no it doesn't I actually got a bit teared up no it doesn't because I completely agree and I think

about it all the time I always think about veganism because I'm like when I do I'm out because I don't really buy stuff but when I go out I will literally go to town on tapas and have like pig's cheek yeah and I will sit there and be like I wonder if I think that all the time I wonder if my kids like you're sick I can't believe that you ate that or something it's fascinating what will they look at us and think how did you I know like homelessness how mum how how did you walk past someone literally lying on the street when it could have not been that way you know I do i have yeah i find homelessness so difficult but we're so desensitized that is a level of desensitization isn't it we're used we're used

to it these are the images we're used to in it and we can totally remove ourselves well i think it's the dehumanizing as well it's kind of going i'm better than you because i'm walking down the street and you're sat on it whereas it's like where have you got that sense of entitlement that you're not going to be on the street next week totally um and the same thing with the way that we view refugees. It's like, well, it's us versus them. It's not. It's just a game of luck and how you got there.

Yeah, it's a total game of lottery. Like whether you're born in... I often think about, we talk a lot about privilege, white privilege, all these conversations. But what about the inherited privilege of your nationality and your passport? I mean, it is a game of luck whether you are born in London uh or in in Sudan yeah and how much does that impact the your deck of cards and the way that your life plays out that is an inherited privilege hugely and I think about it so much

when we're talking about Brexit and immigration and stuff is these need to be framed as inherited privilege you know we tax inherited wealth not enough but you know we talk about um white privilege now again only just starting but i really look forward to a time we talk about our nationality yeah definitely and even the way that we about nationalism as well the idea that we belong to this land and we have it better but especially when you put it into context and as you're saying like the poorest places the place being impacted the hardest and yet we're saying you can't we've fucked you over but you can't come and stay with us yeah like that's awful this happened a lot with the conversations around the refugee crisis is this

distinction between refugees and economic migrants and economic migrants is a really kind of confusing and very derogatory term i think i mean within the europe European Union thus far as long as we don't leave um we move from country to country for economic reasons for economic opportunity for a job you know people a lot of people come to London we go to other countries in the European Union what people are doing moving from sub-Saharan Africa whether or not they fled war they are seeking a better life yeah they fled maybe a poverty or lack of employment um and how can we vilify someone for trying to make the most of their lives will you and i do that on a daily basis yeah if i moved to america nobody would be like

oh my god i can't believe she's done that's awful it would never happen no never happen and even oh i don't know if i should bring up shimmy with the begging but i'm going to get there again what do you like first of all i'm 100% of the opinion that if she was white she would be here but the first of all um I don't know it's difficult because it's not really the same area but like this kind of this kind of there's so many parts of the that the unrest with immigration and that kind of racist ideal or racist trope is playing into these other problems regarding like isis and and then like religious unrest and the way that we're vilifying um islam and with among your works you feel like everything is just playing into showing us that if the more

we segregate people the more problems we cause does that have such a big question i'm actually going to talk about shmima tonight so i feel i feel much more informed it's at the frontline club do you want to come oh my god have you heard about the frontline club it's cool it's got some good talks can i come yeah absolutely oh my god i'm sorry i don't have a ticket but apparently there's um no it's fully booked but everyone always drops out so let's go okay i've always done that so i feel i'll be much more armed to sort of answer your question um i think a lot of people spoke to me about it given my work with refugees i think that a distinction clearly needs to be made between shamima who joined isis and um you know

refugees who are genuinely fleeing do i think her citizenship should have been revoked? Absolutely not. That's completely illegal. We found out yesterday that her baby has passed away. I think the lumping together, you know, the one narrative, the stories painted with one brushstroke around ISIS members and the Muslim people in general is incredibly damaging. And that was the thing that was always on my mind when I'm photographing refugees and working with Help Refugees, this amazing organisation, is everyone has a different story. Let's highlight that. Everyone has their own narrative, they're individuals, they're not just a stack of numbers and statistics.

Yeah, sorry, that was such a tricky one to answer, but it's just so, it just feels like from all angles it's just popping us up and showing us actually how drastically awful some of the decisions that we're making yeah um on a slightly lighter note but still really shitty fast fashion is a really interesting one which I know that you you don't really go there do you at all I I'm ashamed i do literally nothing with um ethical makeup and and fast fashion i'm really uninformed so if you know anything about it i'd like to learn but you don't i feel like you don't um you're not a fast fashion buyer i'm not i hate shopping so i don't do a lot of shopping that's just an actual environmentally friendly attribute so yeah

luckily it's not something that comes to me naturally but yeah, no, I know very little about it and I want to be more informed because it obviously is so important. Yeah, I think that, well, I did one with Venetia Falcon

and she's more like sustained, love Venetia. So now I try to re-wear everything that I own a million times before I let myself buy something. So she never buys

any new stuff, right? No, she only buys either sustainable like ethical brands or buys vintage or doesn't buy. That was her first thing. She's like, I think just the best buys vintage or doesn't buy that's her first thing

she's like the best thing is just don't buy anything which we can all do or re-wear re-use recycle etc and do like

clothes swaps with your friends which is really fun so going forward like with your work at the minute what's your do you have

have you got a documentary that you're working on right now so I just found I did an MA in documentary filmmaking last year alongside all my other stuff it was a bit mad but um it was I sort of hated it at the time and now I look back

at it I thought it's the most wonderful thing um as I learned so much but I made a graduation film for that and I just found out a couple of weeks ago that it is I can't talk about specifics yet but it's got into my favorite film festival so well I'm so mainly relieved actually happy but also just relieved that it got into a festival which is really great in terms of um moving from photography into directing um but so that was about loneliness and young people in the UK I was adamant to do a UK based story incredible do you know what's one of the biggest things people ask me to do a podcast about is loneliness? Oh, really? Massively. So I was really interested in the internet and social media and how we're in theory more kind of connected than ever, but really we're more isolated. And certainly the statistics show we're more lonely than ever.

So one in four young people in 2017 said they were lonely some or all of the time. And I read an article in The Economist and it's sort of the headline was sort of loneliness, the last taboo. You know, in the UK, we never talk about it. I mean, how many times have you actually, we speak about so much now in terms of mental health, but you rarely hear someone just say, I feel desperately lonely. So it's kind of seemed to me this taboo that no one spoke about. So I decided I'd make a film about it. And I remember telling my teachers at UCL where

I did my masters they're like oh god it's not very interesting topic and how are you gonna how are you gonna do it you know and I thought okay I'll see go and visit three characters who are lonely but the problem is there's no change in the state of loneliness so it doesn't necessarily make an interesting film so we had to be a bit more conceptual about it um so Jack and I who I made the film with we set up an answer phone machine where young people could leave anonymous voicemails and talk about their experiences and we had no idea if this would work I mean we shared shared the phone number online so hopefully to a young audience and within three hours we had 50 voicemails and we ended up collecting about six hours of

voicemails and we realized it was about six hours of voicemails and we realized it was incredible format because people were leaving answer phone messages from the privacy of their own bedrooms or wherever they were and so they were incredibly intimate and almost confessional it was like a confessional box in a church um and they would sort of speak and then they'd pause and you'd think they were coming to the end of their message and then they'd just go on and on. And so it was a window into this world and incredibly moving. I mean, I literally cried the first night of listening to the voicemails. But the main message that came up over and over and over again was a lot actually about loneliness at university,

which is interesting because we're told university is meant to be the best years of our lives. And I personally was desperately lonely at university um and the other thing was I feel lonely loneliness when I'm surrounded by people a lot of people said I have great friends I have great family but I am so lonely when I'm in a room full of people which is really interesting so it's absolutely not about physical isolation um it's very much a state of mind. So the audio of these films, these audio testimonies are kind of the basis of the film. And then I used, I shot it on 16 millimeter film and using actors, not in a sort of obviously dramatized way that just sort of placed in the frame. But for me, it was the first time I directed and been fully in control of kind of

the visuals so I've you know gone in photojournalism you arrive somewhere you kind of make try and make the best image that you can but with this it was just incredible to be able to choose the frame and put the actors where I wanted to so I really loved that and that was completely sort of groundbreaking moment for me that I want to do more directing so so incredible yes so that will be out soon that's going well it's going to festivals and then um hopefully it'll be online soon so um don't say if it kind of gives it away but what was the general consensus is that is this is this um an epidemic due to our new way of like the idea that we can never be bored and we always have to fill our time and then if we're not completely stimulated all the time is that where that loneliness is stemming from or was there not

really a kind of a resolution to it there wasn't really much of a resolution from um from the voicemails but i think my own personal opinion now that i look more into it is very basically that you know and i think some theorists think this as well is that we really relied on each other in terms of survival historically and so you were part of a community but you needed to be you totally relied on that community and now as we become so much more self-sufficient and our day-to-day lives are not about survival really um we have our basic basic needs um we're totally losing touch with community and a lot of our interactions are happening in the virtual online space and not in real life so I think that's a big part of it and it's a bit like with Scotty said this on my previous podcast but I brought

up how we had the minister for loneliness who I know I think we don't have now and he was like it's all because when David Cameron got rid of all the youth hostels and all these places and said we'll have big society and just because he called it something hoped that then people would get together but there is like

there's no enforced community but like you say everyone's quite individual that's what in my film actually there's a title card that says in I think it was

God I can't remember the exact date it was January 2017 or 2018 maybe that they brought in the Minister for Loneliness and the Minister for Loneliness is the they brought in the minister for loneliness and the minister for loneliness is the first one in the world and I just think that's almost an Orwellian

like dystopian thing a minister for loneliness um but it does it's necessary now it's the that same article and the economist said um loneliness is as deadly as a smoking habit you know people literally die of loneliness it's so fascinating though and do you, have you heard of Wim Hof? No. It's kind of going on a bit of time. It's really interesting. So he's a Dutch,

I don't know if he's an athlete. He basically, it's so interesting, it's fascinating. He does this stuff where he uses his breathing to manipulate his internal like homeostasis

so he can, he like did, climbed Everest in his boxes because he regulated his temperature through his breathing. But he's done this because for years he swam in lakes and, like, would put his body in extreme temperatures that we would have done, I guess, like, prior to having houses with heating and air conditioning and, like, ways to regulate our stuff. We're constantly in a, we never have to basically adjust.

So he basically, what he's done is he now doesn't have to even use breathing, but he can tap into part of our brain. I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically like our crocodile brain that allows us to deal with like really extreme temperatures a basic reason i bring this up is just because what we're doing is we're creating such a comfortable little hands and my biggest fear in life is that we are going to end up all locked into pods um living through like virtual worlds and basically what he does is they so he's been doing this for years and those people thought that he was kind of like a bit of a trickster it was just like just him doing it and they put him into this like i think it's a freezing cold mri thing i say they as if it's like nasa i don't know who it was but it was someone some science people and they were like

monitoring him to see if it was his breathing or to see if he was doing anything to manipulate this he just didn't get cold his temperature didn't drop his heart rate didn't change and they saw that this one part of his brain that we can never normally turn on anymore he'd just gone into a state of euphoria it basically feels like you're high which is what we would have been able to do prior when we before we were training that yeah because we don't need to survive anymore so much so that we've it's the desensitization of everything like every room is perfect temperature well it's not we know that like the funniest bit about sexism that all you know that all offices are set to be like the perfect temperature for men in a suit no way but not for women so women are it's always seven degrees too cold for women

because it explains so much yeah because they were made years ago when women weren't in offices I literally read that there's so many funny statistics it's not funny but it is that is quite funny which is why they were like in summer you'll see women with blankets and men like walking around in t-shirts because naturally we can't i didn't know that but yeah it's just it's the more we talk about it it's like we're just we're just coming so far away from what it is to be human and to be real and to be natural and i really hope my my if my nightmare is that we're going to sit in a pod my dream is that we're all going to kind of regress into like a very less sexist version of like the 70s and just all have i don't know

do you feel like that that's coming or like what do you see but firstly you've just totally reminded me did you watch free solo yes and you know the part where he gets his brain scanned oh my god surprise surprise his ability to like under get um experience fear is like greatly reduced i was like oh well thank god there's some sort of scientific explanation I sat with my knees and my jumper over my face I'm terrified of heights I get terrified of heights I'm just more offended about how he treats his girlfriend anything else the whole way through also the film just like putting my leg filmmaker hat on is made by her because without for me I think her no no no sorry as in sorry without her as a character oh right yeah. Like the emotion she brings to the film

and their relationship, I thought, was like a fascinating part of the film. And if it had just been him like obsessed with this, you know, it wouldn't have been the same. I thought she was a total hero. Yeah. You know, as well as him, she's like totally a hero. That was an amazing film though.

I'm really excited because Matt really wanted to go and see it and I wasn't sure and I was like, oh my God, I'm on the edge of my seat. It's unbelievable. Anyway, so back to your pod thing, your your pod theory I can't remember what you said um what do you think like what do you so say we come out the other side and everyone starts to be more like the the obviously the goal would be everyone starts to believe in climate change and then Trump goes away and Brexit doesn't happen and after that when you have your children running around.

I think that there are like massive movements to take a few steps back. I think it's funny because you always think about societal progression as like a positive uphill climb. But actually, I think we've kind of, what has gone wrong? I often think about this when I'm in rush hour on the tube and you look around. Do you know what I think? It's like cattle.

It sounds so ridiculous, but everyone's on their phone everyone looks knackered and I'm like we are some of the most privileged people on the planet it's rush hour in central London what has gone what's gone wrong yeah like what have we where have we gone wrong and for this to be like success well it's capitalism isn't it yeah this is something the other day and it was like the only reason that um we don't value sleep is because no one's worked a way worked out a way of making money off of sleeping about like bed companies which isn't that but you made the book why we sleep yes i haven't finished it but amazing literally the best things ever so now i'm so scared if i don't sleep i'm gonna die but it's that weird thing of like margaret that's that whole thing i'm like even my mom's quite stoic like that she's like i don't need sleep i'm like you're

gonna die yeah you need to sleep and that that's a really kind of hyper masculine view of I went to a fascinating talk this weekend for international women's day about um you know inequality and sexism in the workplace and how these markers of like success and like aggressive leadership and like no sleep and you know that these hyper masculine qualities like I think we're moving to I hope we're moving towards a society where these more in inverted commas, feminine, you know, kindness, compassion are valued in the workplace. Why can't you be a kind leader? Of course you can. And what, you know, we want more flexible working hours. I think one of the questions I thought was really interesting, I'd never heard this perspective, was why are women not making,

you know, why are there so few women entering at kind of graduate level and then there are none by the time executives or whatever? And normally the answer to that is they become mothers, they leave the workplace. But another thing that someone said was a lot of women are looking at what it takes to be that super success a successful male executive and they're like do you know what I don't want to be treating people like that I want to sleep I want to have family I want to have a work-life balance and that was really interesting to me

that we don't actually value the same the values that are held to be so important by by men who are so much older this is so interesting because I literally posted this on my story. This is basically what I'm going to read it because I read this and I was like it's so true. So this is in Daisy Buchanan's new book but she says in books and movies it's become fashionable to talk about the importance of strong female

characters. In lots of ways this is admirable. It means that women see women who are three-dimensional, consistent and have authentic voices rather than women who turn up at the end of the day and say together we've saved america from intergalactic aliens with machine guns now save me with your underpants gun the trouble is that the strong woman is becoming a reductive stereotype too a strong woman on screen is a woman in a skirt suit who can earn a billion dollars a minute while taking seven phone calls then lets a single tear roll down her face eliminated by the light of the microwave while she waits for her

I Have No Personal Life lasagna. When we talk about strength, we're using an old-fashioned masculine measure. It doesn't serve anyone. When we praise women for their strength, we're usually congratulating them for not being so darn annoyingly female. The patriarchy loves it

when women don't share their feelings because they usually cause great inconvenience. I so agree with that. And I was like, so right. And I don't know if you've noticed and I hate to put this down and I really this is not a very coherent thought but just I just thought about it the other day there are these amazingly sort of inspiring I guess adverts for Nike and stuff but they're all relying like strong women how many others have you seen recently where there's like a

female boxer and a female tennis player and to me it's still resting it feels very like inauthentic and insincere and it still relies on like oh you're a strong woman because you can like kick a ball as hard as a man and you're still doing a traditionally masculine thing and I guess in some ways that's really positive but in others it's it's to me it's it's getting a bit tired at the moment. Every advert is kind of mimicking another. And I'm like... But this is whether you know it's... When it reaches advertising, I always get quite cynical

because I just think it's there to make money. So it's always going to be anti the cause. Because anything that is there to take from you, your capital or your money, is always going to be in of itself in opposition to what it's trying to do and i think you you are mentioned earlier clicktivism and sort of online activism which i'm really wary to criticize because i think it is so powerful all these derogatory things about

like armchair activism i think online activism is totally remarkable and we have so much evidence of the positive impact it's having but I totally agree that it seems like brands are like jumping on the activism bandwagon international women's day this year was actually I did work with girl beauty because I thought it's quite interesting about the amount of jobs that people who bands who never interested me normally because they kind of knew I've got I talk about this stuff every day not just on international women's day and like you were I was just a bit like oh you are really showing it does feel a bit

insincere yeah but on the other hand maybe we do need brands to get behind things to create genuine change

so these things are so complicated because it's like it's the question of intent and it's like sometimes I think whilst a 16 year old girl

wearing a feminist t-shirt up to make a term probably isn't a feminist act the fact that you can do that is a sign of the times yeah yeah and it still has its merit it's just how pernickety

you want to be about it I guess did you see the Gillette advert I'm now totally contradicting myself but that was really I really liked it I thought it was amazing about toxic masculinity I was so surprised by it

I thought it was so impactful but did you see everyone obviously did you see I always have to end up watching Good Morning Britain and Piers Morgan talk about it did people criticize it oh my god went mad okay tell me because I didn't follow this all the men were just like I can't believe this we can't even enjoy like Piers Morgan was just like masculinity is not toxic and

but Piers Morgan really irritates me because I'm like you're actually quite an intellectual man I think he must just do it because it because it's I don't get him. I really don't understand. I'm just totally baffled by it. I mean, I don't know how he has a job on primetime television. If the media are meant to be like these liberal, progressive, forward-looking... Well, maybe they're not. We have lots of evidence that it's not. But I think he's really disappointing and I don't understand why he has...

Neither do I. But then I also think within my echo chamber, I actually don't know anyone that thinks like that. And interestingly, I think he probably does represent a large portion of what people think he's asking the questions that he thinks the audience want to ask it gives me a window into what the opposite because often all too often I do get caught in my echo chamber and I'm like oh my god every single one of my friends is like flexitarian feminist blah blah and then then I get one comment because I put men need to do better and they go

not all men and suddenly I'm bombarded by men telling me why they're good people I don't know and then there was this cynical argument

that like women people men who have Gillette razors probably are married to a woman who does the shopping

and probably buys their razors so the advert was probably aimed very cleverly at their audience which is really sad so Jack

who got arrested for environmentalism did an interview yesterday and i was in the um studio it was with bbc's victoria darbyshire who's normally amazing but it was really interesting to see and she actually apologized once she was off air to him saying i'm really sorry i had to challenge you but she was really tough on him um to the extent you know saying um what's why did you get arrested why do you think it's worth wasting police time um and then he she sort of accused him of lying that he was saying that the government were lying about climate change oh it all got a little bit what certainly felt heated when we're on the studio watching it back it feels much calmer but jack turned around and

really ballsy and i didn't know how it was going to go down but it's been received quite well but he turned around back to her and said well do you think the government are doing enough about climate change and she was like really kind of vexed and she said well it doesn't matter what i think and jack didn't say this in the interview but we've talked about it at length after i said of course it matters what you think i mean you are one of the leading broadcasters in the UK. How can these journalists not be behind it? How can environmental activism, given the state of affairs that we're in,

still be controversial? And of course it matters what she thinks. You know, when she challenges him and tries to make him look, thank God he comes across really well, he stayed calm, he expressed himself so well. But she really, I mean, it was a really tough interview. And, you you know we'll look back at that and think what why are you doing that because the powers that be because of money and that's so sad it's trickling down and totally and in that in that interview she totally comes across as the establishment and the elite and it's really interesting to watch it back I recommend to check it out I will definitely

have a look at that oh this has been such a great chat have we done how long have we been chatting I don't know it's over an hour that's perfect do you ever like cut them down

cut it down when I'm like rambling oh no oh my god everything is completely in awe I just

I can't what I want to ask you I actually do think you're one of the most inspiring people I've ever met to speak and perhaps

it's sycophant from across the desk what things what tips or advice in terms of maybe like something to do with environmentalism or something to do the way that we can change because I think a really important thing is how do we how do we help people to myself included reframe our understanding of what it means to be a citizen and also like understanding refugee if you know what I mean like reframe what you think you are and your existence in them um I think just my note would be like engage with issues whatever it is whatever you feel passionate about don't look away don't turn a blind eye um commit yourself you don't have to be a perfect environmentalist a perfect feminist whatever

those categories mean you know I really think like whatever you can do however big or small can have an impact whether it's online or in the real world um so nothing yeah no act is is unimportant yeah I love that and if people want to find you online to follow you and listen to you and I guess on Instagram what um Alice Aidy so a Alice written Alice and then my surname is A-E-D-Y is that anything else anywhere else

you want us to go my website I guess but no I would be embarrassed if you went to my website but yeah follow me on Instagram

and comment amazing I'll put you in the description box as well so you can find her thanks so much for listening guys

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