Adulting - #98 Confidence, Music & The British Empire with Nikesh Shukla

Episode Date: April 11, 2021

Hey Podulters, I hope you’re well! In this week’s episode I speak to writer Nikesh Shukla, about what three things he wishes he was taught in school, namely confidence and self worth, an instrument and The British Empire. Nikesh’s latest book, Brown Baby is a memoir about race, family and home and we reference it a bit throughout, and he also has a podcast of the same name which you can check out too, I hope you enjoy, as always please do rate, review and subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Properly. Nikesh's latest book, Brown Baby, is a memoir about race, family, and home, and we reference it a bit throughout, but you can also check out his podcast of the same name. I hope you enjoy, and as always, please do rate, review, and subscribe. Bye! hello and welcome to adulting today i'm joined by nikesh shukla hi how's it going hi good thank you how are you doing i'm all right i'm all right i i took myself off for a bike ride today because i could just feel that the walls were closing in on me a bit and it's amazing what a difference fresh and a bit of exercise and a change of scenery has made to my energy levels oh my god it's so true but it's been so cold that it's difficult at the minute to like get out to like actually push yourself out the door when it's minus two it's quite difficult to do that

yeah I'm in Bristol so we don't really get snow here yeah Bristol is in this valley where the it rains so much that it never gets the ground's always too wet for the snow to settle god this is weather chat I know oh my god even in lockdown you can't escape the combo, can you? So how have you actually found these lockdowns? Are you feeling better in number three or is it kind of worse? How are you finding it all? Well, I've got two young kids. So lockdown one was an adventure. Lockdown two was trying to rein in optimism and lockdown three feels hard it feels

bleak it feels i i don't know how you feel but i wake up most mornings and go well this is just the rest of our lives and i'm trying to be okay with that and um it's hard how about you how have your lockdowns been I feel the exact same as you I think the first one was kind of easier and a funny way to brace yourself and be ready for impact and kind of be on high alert and I think this one it's gone on for so long that you start to feel it in your bones a bit but you know that you've got to carry on because as you said, it's this inverted commas new normal. And that's really draining. I can't really explain it. It almost, it feels like it should be easier, but in a funny way, I'm just, I think is I really am desperate to see my dad and have him irritate me

within five minutes of me visiting like he usually does because that would be normal but also I just really need a hug from my dad I think oh I felt the exact same I actually started crying the other day just thinking about my mum and how much I miss her it's just so it's so difficult and so hard I just I mean fingers crossed that we're actually on the final stretch now and that this spring maybe we'll get a little taste of freedom um but I better actually before we get too into having this morose sad chat about lockdown could you introduce yourself and your work I'm sure that people are familiar with you but maybe people who don't know could you give us an introduction to Nikesh? I am a writer of fiction

and um god yeah I write fiction uh for adults and for teenagers and i edited a couple of collections of essays about race and immigration uh called the good immigrant and the good immigrant usa and i have just put out my first non-fiction book which is a memoir about parenting and trying to find joy in bleak times called Brown Baby. Interestingly, I know you're such a famous writer, but I found you because when I first heard of you, I think it was on the Griefcast podcast. I think you're famous.

Do you not think you're famous? I'm definitely not famous. You're not happy with that? Yeah, Griefcast grief cost is no definitely not okay well redact famous is redacted now um and then obviously with the good immigrant and your other work you've become well known not famous at all mustn't use that um but with brown baby i was listening to you talk about brown baby and it's interesting in relation to this podcast in this series which is all about what things we wish we'd been taught in school

because the premise for your book is obviously a memoir but it's also written to your daughters about things you wish you could teach them about how to navigate this really difficult world in a somehow joyful way is that a bit of a shitty summary no no it's perfect it's exactly it's exactly that um so uh you know after putting out the good immigrant and being a fiction writer who was suddenly having to do lots and lots of panels about racism and race issues and immigration and feeling like a fraud because there are much better amazing experts who can talk about this stuff who are better at the meat but realizing that being the editor of this collection they wanted people would want the editor and i could bring other contributors who are much smarter than me along with me um and after that i just really wanted to write about joy because i was just in a really weird headspace constantly talking about race issues

and so i was briefly a columnist for the observer uh right writing about how to raise my daughters uh how to raise my daughters to be joyful in bleak times that i felt so sad and angry about and so when i was sitting down to write the memoir um a lot of me was like well part of well part of me was like you're 38 dude who writes a memoir at 38 but then i thought well i i could write this as a letter to my daughters kind of in that epistolary tradition of like James Baldwin or Ta-Nehisi Coates or Ali Wong and it just came out as a letter to my daughters and because it was they were the intended audience of the book I had to kind of write about all of the stuff that really kept me up at night like my biggest fears my deepest darkest things that i really worried about and that's what the book ended up being so you know it is a hopeful

book but it's also a book that it's kind of like you know at the end of the short shank redemption when he climbs he sort of crawls through two football fields worth of sewage in order to get to freedom you kind of have to get the call through two football fields worth of sewage to get to the optimistic bit of the book so when you were writing obviously did you these things that you wish you'd learned at what age did you come to have a fundamental understanding because i know you talk a lot in the book about feminism and understanding really complex social issues within society and I think your daughters are still quite young now but at what age I guess did you start to learn about these things and do you wish that there had been this kind of information laid out for you as a young boy do you feel like that was

really missing when you were growing up what what kind of how does it make you feel when you think about yourself as a child into in relation to what you wish the wisdom you could impart on your daughters yeah god I wish this is a book that I've been around for my parents and around for me and um you know my parents never talked about any of this stuff and also when I was thinking about um you know my parents never talked about any of this stuff and also when i was thinking about um you know when we we knew we were having a kid and you're thinking about all this stuff and you're thinking about how to be how to be a father how to be a parent um so much of the stuff i was reading about how to be a parent set the default as the white middle class parent and i wanted to kind of offer an alternative view

as a way of decentralizing that case like i'm obviously like i'm not saying i'm like i know i you know i'm saying this as a middle-class person who um but centering a different lens through which we can have these conversations around parenting and i just didn't have that and it was a real comfort to write knowing that um this book will be out there for parents who kind of need it or because I sort of think that um sometimes having the conversation is enough or showing that a conversation is worth having like I don't think that what I've written is the be all and end all it's only my perspective it's only my experience it's only my my silly brain thoughts but hopefully by showing

that these conversations are worth having they will other people will have them and have them and taking into account their own their own particular lens through which they view the world the the kind of the mad thing about it is that i like i'm not an expert in any way i'm just like i really wanted to also attack the myth of the infallible parent because i grew up with two infallible parents that i wasn't ever allowed to question and i'm incredibly fallible and also so much of our online discourses is around like people being so scared of being uncomfortable about getting things wrong you know I honestly think that like so many of the people who are the loudest criers of cancel culture just people who don't want to ever admit that they've got something wrong because to get something wrong is to be

vulnerable and to be vulnerable is to force yourself to do better next time. And I'm, you know, I'm incredibly fallible. I'm incredibly vulnerable. And I want to force myself to be uncomfortable when having these conversations and get them wrong, because I can. That's the only way I'm going to get better as a person, as a human being or as a parent, you know. And that's kind of what I'm positing in the book as a way forward. I love that and I think you're so right especially what you said about having difficult conversations even just trying to approach them because certainly like I don't have children

but when I was growing up the kind of idea was we just don't talk about certain things my mum was brought up really Catholic so her approach was very much sort of like hush hush let's just not talk about anything ever and now that I'm older I kind of I'm always worrying and panicking oh my god when I have kids how am I going to talk to them about sex am I going to talk to them about it so much that they then like never want to have sex because I've like drilled it into their heads and they can't but not think of me and it's such a funny um I think there's been a real swing in the way that we parent or the way that people parent now in that it's a really conscious decision, not that it wasn't before. But as you said, the idea of parents before was a very absolute authority figure who couldn't be wrong, a bit like the dad in Matilda, even if they were cruel or mean. And there's been a real, like, I I guess humbling of the parent in recent years

yeah I think so um just to offer two things that you definitely sound like the type of person who's going to be like hey kids uh if you ever want to do drugs we'll just put them together man and and I like I remember someone telling me that they'd be like that and i was like i don't really think that i don't really think that that's that's the way to do it but we've just we've just read matilda me and my kids and i never read it as a kid i'm reading it as an adult I was like oh my god Miss Trunchbull is horrific and Miss Trunchbull is now the like my daughters are obsessed with how evil she is and so one of them is always Miss Trunchbull and the other one is always like the poor poor person trying to get away from her but oh my god that book has made such an impression on my kids literally in the

last seven days oh it's one of my favorite it's just such a good book that was always my favorite and the film is obviously amazing as well I used to love that so much but Danny DeVito such a classic um but so this is really on topic probably one of the most on topics we've had this season so I'm asking everyone what three things they wish that they have been taught in school. And it's interesting because before I pick your three things, I wonder, as you said, like you wish this book had been around when you were younger. But do you think that perhaps some of these conversations need to be facilitated more in school than they are?

And how much do you think it should be weighted to parents versus school education or is it too difficult to kind of give a blanket statement on that yeah I don't know I think what I've learned is when you're talking because the book is basically set up as a series of conversations with my daughters where they you know where I'm talking to them about their skin color about um about sexism and being very conscious of the fact that I'm I'm a male having this conversation what space I'm then therefore taking up where I'm talking to them about grief and mental health I'm talking to them about climate catastrophe and one of the things that happened was, that kind of sparked this whole thing off,

was my daughter, I write about it in the book, my daughter was really upset when I went to pick her up from nursery one day. And the reason she was upset was that the only doll that was left to play with was a brown doll and she refused to play with it because she said brown was dirty and she didn't want to play with the dirty doll. And that really bothered me that my daughter was two and she'd already internalized this thing about um these sort of associations with brown like the color brown and

like brown skin color and that's kind of what then propelled me to set to want to center center her or center that as the mode of the book. It's interesting because I think what's taught in school should be reinforced at home, but also values that are at home should be reinforced at school. But obviously that makes it incredibly hard for teachers. And we have governments who are making how certain things are taught in schools incredibly partisan and incredibly political.

And that to me then worries me that at home you can have a poster up in the window that says Black Lives Matter. But then you go to school and teachers have to, well, some teachers might feel like they have to offer balance. I'm not saying like that all teachers, but it's just, it's just a worry that I have about how politics is now kind of invading that space. Well, by politics, I mean like political parties and stuff, but it just feels like it's incredibly hard.

It's incredibly hard because teachers under so much pressure to teach the curriculum to teach our kids to like so many things like teach them stuff that they'll need for the world whether it's social or like knowledge based or like how to solve complex problems and all the rest of it and then they come home and we've kind of got to carry on that interest and that curiosity and also instill like what we import view as important values in our kids but it's it just because it's a minefield is what I'm trying to say like I'm just sort of skirting around talking around this because I have no clue no I agree it's difficult to because also every individual child will have such specific needs about where they've come from and what their family experience is and maybe they need to

you know need a dental helping have understanding something specific so it is a lot to imagine that schools and teachers can cater to such a vast amount of education I just wonder if it's that maybe the core curriculum could be changed or disbanded in some way that would include lessons that apparently but that are probably a bit more relevant and useful today than some of the stuff that I learned in school which we've spoken about in previous podcasts but some of the history that I learned it just wasn't really crucial learning compared to some of the things I could have been taught. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I used to run a youth project in Bristol and in that youth project,

we used to work with teenagers to make documentaries and write articles for this magazine. And a kid had an idea once where he wanted to do an investigation into why we learn algebra. And he was like, algebra is so pointless. It doesn't have any application in the world. Like, what is the point of algebra? And they went on this investigation where they interviewed lots of teachers, lots of other students. And they came to the conclusion that actually learning algebra is quite important because it teaches you complex problem solving you know it's about it's about critical thinking and analysis and patterns and formulas it's not about applying algebra to the real world it's about applying the real world solving real world problems using

algebra solutions which made me think yeah that you know there is some value in like how certain things are taught but then the thing that constantly came up in that youth project was just how irrelevant um a lot of things that kids were learning in like history geography english um felt to to those kids and how they just didn't they didn't give them a wide enough appreciation of what the world could be or who existed in the world or whose voices mattered in the world which I thought was really interesting I I think that that comes up time and time again as well even from like adults when I'm doing this podcast about what things you wish you'd been taught in school

and it generally was all of those just kind of more recent history or even books that kind of encapsulated whether it's the uk that they know or like just some part that they could relate to but i think that is really interesting about algebra because that's such a flippant thing that i think i've even thrown around like oh what's the point in learning it we've all got calculators now but actually that's a really good point about learning how to problem solve basically which is obviously fundamentally so useful um in day-to-day life um but i mean there are many there are many different ways to teach problem solving though right so you know it's just it's fun it's funny that that kid was so outraged that like quadratic equations was the way to do it i mean well fair They are. I personally find it quite boring, but I know some people love

maths, so I shouldn't discriminate. So moving on to your three things that you wish that you'd been taught about in school, your number one thing was you wish that you'd learned more about confidence and self-worth. I wonder if you could tell me a bit more about growing up as a young boy and how your attitude towards yourself has changed and how you've learned to become confident if you feel like you've arrived there yet or if there's still bits and bobs you feel like you need to learn yeah this is an interesting one because like you know I have to acknowledge that I went to a private school for a for a time in my life and um I always I always have feel like I have to a private school for a time in my life. And I always feel like I have to caveat it because of like,

I don't necessarily, now I'm an adult, or even at the time think that private school is like a good thing. But, you know, that's what my parents wanted. And it's what they worked really, really hard for. And so I kind of grew up with this feeling that I needed to be their return on investment kid you know there wasn't enough money to send everyone in our family to uh to this to this school but I kind of drew the I got the golden ticket as it were because I was the oldest and because I was a boy and so I went to this school and everyone at that school was so confident and that confidence

was just sort of innate in them and I was so the opposite of it and I know you know I know that obviously these these kids had stuff going on of their own but I recently read a memoir that my friend Musa Okwonga has got coming out in a couple of months called One of Them and it read a memoir that my friend Musa Okwonga has got coming out in a couple of months called One of Them. And it's a memoir about his time at Eton. And in it, he describes his time playing on the football field. And I read it just before you asked me for my three things. And there was something in it that I read that really kind of triggered me that

there's this one line in it where he, you know, Musa is from Ugandan background and in it, he writes in my culture, we celebrate everything. And then he goes on to describe how every time he celebrated a goal, every time he celebrated doing well at school, that was really brow, like don't beat like literally physically beaten out of him but it was sort of like

emotionally beaten out of him because it was seen as untrustworthy arrogant not humble which is you know interesting in such elite spaces but it kind of culturally went up against how we had grown up. And I read it and I was like, Oh my God, that's so interesting because that's how I felt growing up. Like I felt like I couldn't celebrate anything, whether I was at home, because to celebrate stuff at home meant that I was resting on my laurels.

And actually the thing to do was to keep, keep striving for better, keep striving for better. I remember when I was at school, there was a couple of years where they would rank us in the class, which feels like such an old-fashioned thing to do. And I came second in the class. And my mum and dad took, we celebrated, but the message was very much, you can be first. And then the next time the class ranking came down, I'd slipped down to fifth, and I was so humiliated by it. But it was very much because, like,

I hadn't had the opportunity to sort of celebrate this thing. And just when I read what Musa wrote, it just really reminded me that, because when I was growing up, I didn't celebrate anything. I guess I just grew up never feeling much self-worth other than a return on investment for the money that my parents were putting into sending me to this school, a great sacrifice to themselves, which I was constantly reminded of and then I'd go to the school and I'd see all these rich kids just sort of have this innate confidence and I never really

knew where it came from and part of me was always like isn't the point of these bloody elitist schools to sort of teach me to be like that and I just it just I just never felt that way you know I always felt like I was on the outside and that kind of just plagued my school years for a really long time I just felt constantly on on my toes I didn't really feel like I understood who I was or who I wanted to be as a person you know not not so much like as as a career or anything but like as a person until my early 20s when I left university and I was finally like able to start shaping my own narrative about who I wanted to be. Is there something which I mean I'm actually the same boat as you I got sent to private school and it was very much like my dad kind of worked to the bone to send us there and

sadly as I've got older I also kind of feel like it's not something I would maybe send. I'd rather send my children to a local comprehensive. So I think in terms of systems, I don't necessarily agree with private schools. Then I feel this guilt for my parents because that probably sounds so ungrateful to me to be like, thanks, but I'm not going to do that. But have you had the conversation with your parents about, or I know that you've lost your mum sadly, but have you ever spoken to your dad about that feeling of pressure? Or is that not a conversation you could have a really broach with him? Do you know what I mean?

I mean, look at us, two people who went to private school and were like, complaining about it. I know. I know. It's's awful isn't it like i i get you know i'm i'm sort of wary of doing the kind of the sob story about it because i know that that is probably worse than people are like oh yeah like i went there because seven generations of men in my family went there. But no, I didn't mostly because I knew, I knew what it cost him for me to go. And so I just never felt like I could.

But you know, what, what I often think is I had that privilege and it is, you know, in ways that I probably don't consciously understand, like giving me access and opportunity to certain things. And I am in the position I am. And the only thing I can do is make that position available for other people. And like, you know, what is the point of having privilege if you're not

doing something good with it or something valuable with it and like i have you know to to not acknowledge that i have that privilege would be a lie but the fact that i'm really trying to use that privilege to like bring other writers through support writers mentor writers give writers time and space that you know i possibly probably did oh i definitely didn't have and i didn't give myself um and also give them access to to things that i've kind of had access to it's the only way for me to be really and i think it's the only way to kind of sort of deal with this and there's yeah like it's you know otherwise you just end up being like oh daddy sent me to private school i didn't want to go and i knew that it cost money and it's you know otherwise you just end up being like oh daddy sent me to private school i didn't

want to go and i knew that it cost money and it's like it's kind of not what people need to hear you know no i agree and it's it is a delicate thing to talk about in a way that like you're being yeah it's difficult um but i i want to go back to the bit about your self-confidence and self-worth because it's interesting now where you were talking about you know using your privilege and helping it to leverage other people to get to where you are and I wonder if a way that you could have found your self-worth would have been or like helped you with your confidence if you didn't hadn't felt so outcast at school and perhaps if you'd had a peer like doing what you're doing for the people do you think that it's it's that kind of kinship and

um the ability to see yourself in other people or what what is it that helped you gain that sense of self and was it just growing up or was it that you managed to surround yourself with people who you know engendered a bit more happiness in you than I guess your private school peers who maybe just all had nice coats or whatever no well yeah what it was was um in my mid-20s I submitted a short I mean I did a lot of volunteer work in different charities and like on different campaigns and like doing bits of activism here and there in my 20s and then I was also doing a bunch of spoken word poetry stuff at the time and through that I got a short story accepted into an anthology that was really really amazing for me because it was being edited by two heroes of mine um by courtier newland and and rajiv by the super monument it was a project started by courtier and nia yikoi parks and it was the first time that i

was treated as someone with something valuable to say and it was the first time i was edited properly and it was the first time my writing was nurtured rather than either rejected or ignored and it was a really important experience for me and it really framed what I wanted to be as a writer like beyond the actual writing just how to be as a writer like making space for other people and then after that I started you know doing lots of stuff with people like Selena Godden and Nivin Govindan. And they were both incredibly generous in their mentoring of me. And so I just found mentors in my mid twenties who gave me time and space and a shoulder to cry on and celebration when celebration was warranted and permission to like talk to them about craft and try out new ideas and basically just respected that I had

something to say. I wanted to nurture that and bring it on. And I'm so thankful to all of them because they are the people that I wish I'd had as a teenager or in my like early twenties. And instead, you know what, I found them when I did and they were so invaluable in my life and just gave me a feeling of worth that, mean it was still external it still hadn't like I still it's still debatable whether I feel any actual self-worth within me but you know that debate that worth that they instilled in me was so was external validation and that was so powerful for me at that time it kind of allowed me it gave me permission. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your

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19 plus and physically located in Ontario gambling problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly it's it's interesting because everything you're saying is kind of making me think about parenting parenting again and how like old school ideas of parenting was sort of always about maybe not necessarily punishment, but sort of like telling off a child in order to hopefully encourage them to do what you want them to do. And actually, like we talk about when you talk about like training a puppy or a dog, everyone's always like you don't tell it off. You literally just give it a treat for doing something right and for some reason that never didn't translate necessarily into the common rhetoric around how to raise children or how to encourage them to do something good and what you're talking about there with your mentorship and things it

sounds like we forget that it's such a basic human want just for people around us to be like you're doing really well keep going that's absolutely great and how much that can give you inspire you on to actually do incredible things. Whereas if you've got people kind of, like you said, not letting you celebrate or like your friend's memoir that they wrote, it sounds like, again, it's just it's really basic human nature that for some reason for so long, it maybe it's like a stiff upper lip British thing where we just don't want to show our emotions. I don't know what it is is but everything seems to fit very neatly together in terms of just showing a bit more compassion to each other I guess is kind of

the fundamental baseline yeah totally I totally agree with that um and no it you know like I started therapy last year to kind of help me through a period of extreme low confidence and low self-worth and depression. And it was interesting how much of that tracked back to when I was younger or when I was a teenager or when I was like early teens and how, how certain things made me react the way I do when I'm under stress or react the way I do whenever I feel criticized in some way. And it kind of, you know, like it's, it's interesting to think well

i i do wish that i'd i'd learn that at school i think when a school curriculum is as academic as it academically focused as it currently is we don't spend a huge amount of time thinking about who people can be or what people can be you know kids kids in year seven learn about british values and that's sort of the extent of um you know the sort of the pastoral side that they have maybe i don't i don't know um i'm talking on my bottom there i don't know but certainly when i was at school um or certainly when i was at school there was nothing there about like the self or looking within and actually when you're at a critical time in your your your life

when you're making decisions about who you want to be it kind of goes back to your question earlier about how much of this stuff um should we how much of school should be we be reinforcing at home and how and vice versa like i didn't have it at home and i didn't have it at school and i just wonder if there is if there you know i'm just sort of positing if there was a way of kind of doing something with kids around confidence. Because at the same time, like I've seen this as a youth worker as well, there aren't like youth funding, funding for youth services in most councils is like one of the first things to go because it's sort of seen as a luxury and you know I saw that the impact that the youth services in Bristol were making on young people and it would just be great if that was something that was supplemented elsewhere because you have to actively go and seek out those youth services you know. Yeah I think you're right about the focus on the academic

and I guess really the focus on the capitalist end of making sure or hoping I mean it doesn't obviously work that everyone is able to get some kind of means of becoming part of the system and making money and there's actually no emphasis on as you said who you are as a person what your relationships are like and obviously so many children struggle at school because I mean I was always quite smart at school but even then I would find exams really difficult because I didn't I couldn't understand the pressure and the just like remembering things from a textbook it wasn't kind of how I naturally probably would have learned and now I'm much better at learning things I do at my own time

in a very different way and so I think so many people fall behind thinking that they aren't fitting this metric of like you said getting a lower scorecard and feeling really gutted because you felt like you should have done better and if only there was kind of like a metric for how sweet you'd been to your friends that week or how you know you've done something really lovely for the teacher I don't know just things that measure you in a way that's sort of achievable for anyone rather than people who have a natural proclivity towards the system which is very rigid and old fashioned and designed for you know specific minds and brains yeah what i will say because you know you know what i will say because my partner is a teacher and so many of these conversations about what we what we we get taught in schools and what we don't get taught in schools i think sometimes they do miss out what it is actually like on the ground

for teachers and also like just seeing what my daughter who's in a you know she's in her first she's in primary school at the moment she's in her first few years there i see how different it is for kids now compared to what i had and actually it fills me with joy like my daughter is gonna sound so earnest and sincere and i apologize but sod it um my my daughter's class they have a thing where each kid will get a certificate at some point during the term where the class is asked to say a thing that they like about that person. And they come home with this little record of all of the nice things that people think about them in their class. class and it's really wonderful to then for them to then share that with their parents and like we get an insight into how they are seen at school in a space where we sort of we we have reported back to us through them or through their teacher but we don't actually have much first-hand experience of but also like to see their growth as a person through the eyes of their peers is

like it's fascinating and also like so wonderful that the teachers are like, you know what, you know, let's, let's all celebrate. Oh, sorry. I'm just adjusting my seat. Let's all celebrate a member of our class this week. I love that. I think that's really wonderful. I wish I had that at school. I think that would have made me feel much better

about myself I just felt quite alone and isolated which is which is you know yeah yeah that's that feeling of isolation is really tough especially in school because you're literally surrounded by people all the time and you're watching other people in peer groups and friendships I think it's even like thrown into sharper relief if you do feel like you're the odd one out or in some way and I agree that sounds really life-affirming um doing those little exercises I have to say I think teachers are amazing and I've got lots of family members who are teachers I guess it's it's more that I don't think that they're our issue if anything like our teachers are incredible it's I think it's the systems with which they have to work within

that are what cause issue and underfunding and all those other kind of structural things. I know that so many teachers do do things above and beyond the kind of curriculum and what's designed for them to work within, but it's just difficult, I guess. There's not always that much elasticity depending on where you teach and what area you're in and things like that um yeah but I'm gonna 100% agree with that yeah it's I mean it's hard and I never I've made me really worried things I absolutely love teachers

and I didn't want to sound like I like it's it's so easy to kind of conflate how I was taught which was a very specific environment and and also my perspective my perception decades later of a very specific environment with what is actually happening on the ground now so yeah I'm glad we both took a moment to go yay teachers yeah definitely especially right now I feel like oh my god it's just it's too much um but we're going to go into a second thing which I love because again no one else has said this and your second thing is that you wish that you'd learn an instrument um have you have you learned anything since I've learned bad uh student Brit pop guitar love that um yeah I mean I spent a lot of

my 20s trying to make it in the music industry and failing because I wasn't very good um you know my wife is classically trained pianist and I think she gets she get whenever I would do music stuff she would get incredibly frustrated with me because I just didn't have the meticulousness I didn't have the attention to detail and also I didn't know what she was talking about half the time I just thought it was vibes man and like you can't you can't make brilliant music on vibes alone like not everyone is as gifted as like I don't know uh no no rogers or something but um certainly not me um but it just wasn't valued by my parents it was seen as a waste of time it was seen as a hobby but

actually you know it goes back to what we were saying about algebra like it teaches you a new way of being it teaches you something about persistence and practice and rehearsal and um what what my kid's teacher refers to as marvelous mistakes uh which which is something else that my kid has which i really love um but mostly it it teaches you a way of thinking that is like it marries something very technical with something very instinctual and obviously that is writing that is so much of the arts uh and you know certainly under this conservative government there's been a real war on the arts and the importance of the arts and who gets to learn the arts and who gets to have access to making art uh be it playing

an instrument painting a painting or doing an installation or writing or filmmaking or like dance or any of these things they're all seen as like a luxury and i think that there's something so much more fundamental and beautiful and human about music that i feel like um and also like there's a privilege in like the fact that instruments are really expensive but and while i was lucky enough to go to a school that had like a fully kitted out like music array i'm i you know i can't speak for schools now and like and all the rest of it but I really wished I'd learnt an instrument but it just wasn't something that my parents took seriously and it cost extra money

as well and that was money that they didn't have so yeah I wish I'd learnt an instrument I think especially now I mean I keep talking about this book and I sound like I'm doing promo for it but have you read Utopia for Realists by Rook Bregman I said his name right no oh it's a so

it's a really good book about um like how we could create a utopia and why you know how capitalism functions and it but a lot of the book is all about how we spend too much time working and not enough time in kind of like active leisure when we should have so much more leisure time because of technology etc and it was making me think about how now like we obviously don't have as much time filled in the same way that we would to whether that's commuting or like you can't go to the pub and I've suddenly found this really big longing to want to start creating stuff like I want to start knitting and making jewelry and playing the piano and suddenly all of these things that as a child would have seemed really fun now that I've got this these

like extra pockets of time I suddenly found those things coming back and it's interesting because as you say like they're so good for your mental health they're so good for your dexterity and your brain and all those kind of things and it's it's really sad that they're not given you know it's kind of like very superfluous as you said like the arts is kind of on the fringes of what we need for society when we know that isn't true and that we really need as humans creativity and entertainment and they've been around forever and it's a shame that um definitely we see it more and more especially with this government it's just not prioritized or seen as something that we should be attempting to encourage people to get engaged with I mean I think people are in

general but I think it's the government more so than anything that is sort of like we can get rid of you know ballet and whatever else it might be yeah completely um and also it might have made me more popular with the girls. Like it was at the height of the Oasis blurb beef. I'm joking. No, I taught myself guitar from like the age of 17, but in a way that was not very technical. And so I learned lots of bad mistakes and then, you know, it was hard to improve. It was hard to improve because I just sort of learned with those bad habits

and bad techniques. And I just didn't have much opportunity to play with other people. And I think that's where you kind of really develop. And so, yeah, while I was always trying, you know, while I spent like a good six, seven years of my 20s trying to forge a music career, I just wasn't technically good enough or meticulous enough to get better or to kind of, you know, I'd put something down and I'd go, like, I'd do one take and I'd be like, oh, that's done.

And I just would never work at it. And it was only really when I, you know, when I was edited by Rajiv and Courtier for the Telltale's anthology that I was talking about earlier, that I understood what it was like to have your work rigorously worked upon and it not be worked upon in a way

that is about you it's not because you're a terrible writer it's because they are going to help you be the best you and i just found myself much more willing to put that work in when it came to music. And, but now I'm just like, God, I really want to ensure my kids learn instruments because there's just something really important about it. Like they, I really want them to ride bikes and swim and play instruments and do all of the things that my parents just didn't put any value in because it wasn't doing well academically which is what was important to them do you think that we'll see

nikesh shukla in like 10 years on the oboe are you gonna have a musical resurgence do you think or have you kind of signed that one off and you're leaving it to the kids now? Every year, I think, because I used to rap, not very well. Every year, I think, this is the year I'm going to get back on the mic. And then last year, I did a couple of recordings for a couple of quite big bands. Just like me, doing some spoken word stuff over music.

It didn't require me to be particularly musical. But it did make me think, God, if I actually knew what I was doing, this would be so much better. And luckily, I was working with some people who knew how to work with a voice like mine. So that was good. But yeah, what would I learn? I always really wanted to learn tabla.

I don't know what tabla is. They're like percussive drums that you sort of sit on the floor and play, often found in Indian music. Amazing. I know what you mean now. Yeah, that would be incredible. I feel like you can start a party just with that kind of drum. You just need the rhythm and it's like you almost don't need anything else. Yeah.

And then suddenly there's a party at your house. Yeah. I mean, not right now, obviously. That would be a bit sketchy um so I'm going to move on to the last thing that you wish that you've been taught in school which um interestingly so I've been doing these three questions I did 10 episodes before the same questions and almost everyone has some semblance of this one which is wishing you'd learn about the British Empire properly and I think all of us are kind of at different stages different ages having this kind of revelation that we just were

not taught about the true history of Britain growing up and there's still so many things that I'm constantly learning no matter how many books I read and things interviews that I listen to and conversations there is just a whole literally a whole lifetime's worth of history that we just weren't taught. And I wondered when, when did you start to learn about the British Empire or was it taught at home or did you learn about it in school? Like when, how is your education around that now? And how are you, I guess, teaching your daughters if you are, if that's a conversation that you've started to have already yeah sure again a lot of it was sort of self-taught um I was always fascinated with India um because that's where my mum always wanted to move back to and you know is where my family's from and um you don't have to search too hard when you're learning about india to kind of learn about indian independence in 1947 and partition

and then you start to i think the full horror of partition i don't think i really learned about until um i was a teenager and then it was really it was then enforced again a couple of years ago when i read a book i reviewed a book for the observer called partition voices by gavita puri which is a series of oral accounts of people who were there who experienced partition in some way. And it just made me think, oh my God, there's that recent history that there are people who still live among us who remember it. And that made me think,

God, how little I know, even though I thought I was relatively well read on this stuff. And, but then I circle back and think, oh my God, like certain things in our school were named after by like a house in our school was named after fucking robert clive who is a monster um in india and that you know it's interesting to talk to you about this today because you know we're having this

sort of ongoing conversation about how history is taught and how we view history and that you know the government is definitely of the mindset that britain is glorious and great and we should only be taught about how great and glorious britain was and you know historians are like well can we just talk about it honestly you know two things can exist at the same time britain can have had a british empire that it was great and glorious for that certain people at the time but now we must look back on it and think about what it actually was and um you know it's only in the last three four five years that i think writing on this sort of stuff has sort of moved into the

mainstream like i think it's always been there but it just hasn't been platformed in a mainstream way in the same way but like you've you know you've got books by akala and kindy andrews and satnam sanghera and priyam vada gopal and shashi dharur like all these books are coming out and you know they're pitched at you know idiots like me like general readership rather than like academic circles or historian circles which change how the books are presented and how they are written and it just makes all of that stuff much more accessible to everyday people like me and and and you know I'm learning stuff and thinking well I thought I already kind of was aware of a lot of this stuff and um and it does influence how like conversations we're

having with my kids like you know it plays exactly to the themes of brown baby and how I'm having conversations with them like we're having conversations with my kids about black lives matter we're having conversations with my kids about Edward Colston because we live in Bristol and it's a conversation that is happening in their school and it's happening at home and um they want to know about the british empire they don't understand the british empire they think you know they they just can't believe that it was a thing um they have a book about different african nations and when we go through them, and and you know they're learning all of this stuff and it's being presented to them in a way that you know it's interesting

because i think i've had to realize that you know because i'm a part of this conversation i've like done the good immigrant i've done done certain types of writing like there is a part of me that is cynical and jaded and world weary and that is not how to talk to my kids about all of this stuff I have to talk to them about it in a way that they understand rather than project onto them the way I understand it. I think that's an incredible thing to be able to learn and obviously as you said like you had to be able to do it with the book and I feel that right now actually it just feels even more prescient I can't remember what I watched you talking about Brown Baby on but the way you said it was just so interesting to hear you saying it because it was

kind of relevant to what's happening right now it's like how do we pick out those little pockets of things that could turn into really positive incredible futures whatever it might be in a moment of such despair and awfulness and so um i'm really i'm so excited to read the books um i'm hopefully going to get it soon i'm trying to read a book a week which is i don't know why i've done that to myself because that's quite a lot it's going to be 230 pages or less exactly i know what I just actually randomly bought. What's it called? The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Because I wanted something really fantasy based, like witches and dragons to like really escape. And it's like 700 pages long. And I was like, oh God. So I don't think I'll get that in a week. Yeah, I've not read it, but Samantha Shannon is a brilliant, brilliant okay that makes me really excited okay I'm really excited to read that um but yeah sorry that was a really good answer just completely went off tangent and I think you're right I mean you're definitely in terms of the areas that you

write in and the things that you speak about more well versed than I am and to hear you say god I'm still constantly picking up things and realizing I don't know I think it could just feel like a bit of a gut punch and almost a bit of like a disservice to be living in a place where you haven't been given the full facts it kind of kind of feels like you've been lied to and in a in an odd way the fact that it's just not taught in schools and I think that that has to be changed well what I think is fascinating about the way it's talked about, and this is definitely not how history teachers are in schools, the way it's talked about in like the media and the way the government talks about it is,

it's almost like to think critically about a thing is to not love it. I't know if that if i phrase that right but like i love radiohead and i will critically evaluate everything that they do and some of it i love and and obsessed with and some of it i think it's not for me like pablo honey not a great album um the the last the king of ling limbs kind of forgettable doesn't mean i don't love radiohead you know and i know that's a facile example but it's the same with the uk like to think to to think critically about a place i think is to be truer to patriotic or nationalistic or whatever those words even mean than just blindly accepting the narrative that the government wants you to to have about it you know i think it's my duty

as a citizen if i want to be a good active citizen to push back and think critically and criticize and show my displeasure as as well as celebrate the stuff that I think is good otherwise what is the point yeah I think that's a really balanced approach to take on it and I guess you can just tell that there's just this huge fear almost that if they're honest that people will revolt or as if the information isn't available and people don't know it is a it's a very odd stance that but what do you know what that tells me is that there's a lot more negative than people are willing to allow to like yes it's a floodgate right and that's the thing like we can't rebuild what it means to be british what it means to live in britain now without an honest conversation about the good stuff and the bad

stuff and there's a lot of bad stuff because we haven't talked about a lot of that bad stuff properly honestly critically for a long time out you know certainly in the in like mainstream um and it's incredibly important like you know this constant narrative of like post-brexit we're going to kind of like have our sovereignty back and decide what it is you know re-evaluate what it is to to be a citizen in this country and like what it is to be british and all the rest of. But you can't do that if you're dishonest about yourself from the get-go. It doesn't make any sense to me. It just feels like an exercise in telling people lies,

half-truths and dishonest accounts and for them to say, yes, sir, please can I have some more of those lies and mistruths and dishonest accounts. Yeah, and I guess it also just comes down to the fact that a lot of the time the people at the top are white, privately educated middle class men who have a lot to gain from upholding this idea that we live in a fair society, that celebrates hard work and that if anyone works hard enough they can get to work you know it's it's just all part of upholding that system isn't it i guess yeah the i think yeah it's a sort of a myth in

meritocracy the myth of how a meritocracy should work i think to me a meritocracy doesn't really exist if um people the people who are in power were are in power because of who their families were totally i completely agree and unfortunately that is the state of the affairs that we're living in right now um but hopefully maybe soon change will come yes please please soon so on that hopeful note um i'm going to say thank you so much for joining me and talking about all the things you wish you've been taught in school it's been such a informative and actually very hopeful conversation even though some of it was obviously about the less liked things in life thanks for having me yeah thank you for coming on if if we want to

find you online or buy your books your book brown baby's just come out hasn't it yeah it came out early feb um if you want to find me online find me in the bookshop under the books that I wrote please buy them because bookshops are shut and I really want people to read this one I'm also on Twitter and Instagram and I have a podcast called Brown Baby which kind of continues on the conversations I start in the book where I interview parents about parenting to have had like Jay Sean and Nadia Hussain and Himesh Patel and people like that one so far and it's great incredible I'm definitely I'm really excited to listen to that as well um but yeah thank you so much and thank you everyone for listening I will see you next week bye When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation.

He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.