Oh What A Time... - #167 Utopias (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re discussing the various attempts through history to create a Utopia right here on earth. We have for you The Diggers of the 1600s, Brook Farm in 1850s America and the story of John Hughes; the man who attempted to make utopia in Yuzovka, Ukraine.Elsewhere, what on earth did people do before the creation of to-do lists? Just wander around aimlessly?! If you know please loop us in: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh, what a time. Hello, this is part two of Utopias. Let's get on with the show. Okay, in 1869, a letter arrived in London addressed to Mr John Hughes. I really hope that there was a proper address

because there must have been an awful lot of Mr. John Hughes is. But he was the engineer and the manager of the Millwall Iron Works Company. Oh dear. That sounds like a tough place to work. Yes, absolutely. As his name suggests, Mr John Hughes, was a Welshman, born in Murtha Tidville in 1814. Wales, Wales. His father was the chief engineer, the Cavath Ironworks in Murtha,

and John had cited his own career there as a young man. Now, he was dealing with orders for the metalwork to be used in the construction of the Kronstadt Naval Basin, St. Petersburg. So that is the same Kronstadt, if any of our listeners have ever studied the Russian Revolution, maybe at school or at university or just read about it. That was the Kronstadt that were featured so heavily in the Russian Revolution half a century later, right? But the letter had quite a different offer. It informed Mr. Hugh was that land was available to develop an industrial concession in Ukraine. Hughes jumped at the chance.

So he was clearly a really go-getting kind of guy, formed the new Russia company and set off of the Black Sea with iron workers poached from South Wales. So they settled near a town called Alexandrovka, which had been established a century earlier by Catherine the Great, but the new community came to be known as Yuzovka or Hughes Town, which was very similar to names in the South Wales Coalfield at the time because all in the South Wales Coalfields you had old existing towns and villages. But the new ones where all these different mining communities

were just springing up so quickly, they often carried names like Tyler's Town or Watts Town or Lewis Town or Hopkins Town. Right. So the Nicky Wire, for instance, from the Manix Street Preachers, lived in Watts Town. So the sheer novelty of the place, Ukraine in the 1840s,

in the 1860s, I should say, I mean, it can't really be, it can't be underestimated. So as one writer put it at the time, on the spot, we're now stunned the immense works employing from 20 to 25,000 men. Wow. with a township of over 50,000 inhabitants,

there was once only a shepherd's hut with flocks of sheep grazing on the open step. So this happened in... That's incredible. This happened in Britain, in particular in Wales, where there might be a couple of farms at most, two, two, three families. And then suddenly, 20 or 30 years later,

you've got thousands of people living there because they'd found, you know, coal or iron ore or whatever it was. So this was to be the model, industrial community laid out on the very latest British principles with new churches and schools, workers' housing, hospitals, shops and other infrastructure such as the Great Britain Hotel and a fire brigade. So it really was meant to be a kind of utopia for the workers. So one visitor writing in the 1880s remarked,

this has no resemblance to a provincial town. It's regularly laid out, I suppose like Milton Keynes. Its houses are solidly built and neatly kept Indeed many of them are luxurious There's a whole street of capital shops A cooperative store, public garden A branch of the Imperial Bank And there's a Cossack barrack,

And the streets are numbered on the American plan And they're called lines Right So if you need work This must have been a fantastic place to go and work Yeah Because a lot of these times They sprang up very, very quickly

so they didn't have the infrastructure needed to house all of those people. So they were often really, you know, they were often dirty and dangerous places to live. So next door was the Russian quarter, so home to various civil servants and merchants, which came to be known as the New World, Novi Svet. So the name Uzovka,

lasted until 1924, when the city was renamed Stalino or Steele town, not after Stalin, that's just a coincidence. Yeah. So nearly 40 years later, Stalino was renamed once more, and it became Donetsk. Ah!

So, yeah, yeah. So obviously everyone knows where Donets is now. So to support many of the British institutions in Yousovka, or, you know, Hughes Town, Hugh Zofka, the town was added to the vast swir the territory which made up the Anglican Diocese of Gibraltar. So the bishop was ultimately responsible for churches in Constantinople, in Kiev, Odessa, Maripal and Yuzovka.

And he'd have to travel back, you know, he'd have to travel there from Gibraltar on lengthy tours of inspection or he might send one of his chaplains as representative. And it wasn't a journey you'd look forward to. So William Collins, one bishop, he wrote this in 1906. We've just arrived after two nights and a day in the train from Odessa and a 14-mile drive across the step. Troubles occurred almost daily at Odessa and yet people go on living their lives bravely and quietly. Now the troubles he's referencing there.

He's being incredibly euphemistic, right, because there's a wave of pogroms. and urban violence which shook the Russian Empire in advance and in the wake of the 1905 revolution. And this caused a large wave of emigration to Britain and the US, particularly from Jewish communities in places like Odessa, so that it was such a big wave of Jewish emigration, that governments in those Western countries began to implement legislation to restrict entry. Right.

So it's all happening, right? So in Britain, this was to be known as the Aliens Act of 1905, passed by the then conservative government. And it marked the end of what had traditionally been a very open immigration system, although registration had been required since the early 19th century. So at the heart of every subsequent policy about borders lies this piece of legislation and the moral panic which led to it, which led to its implementation. So we're still...

Interesting. Yeah, so obviously there are still pieces of legislation being passed to do with, you know, immigration and borders and what have you. Now, in the reverse, it was the case that the new Russia company were able to draw in specialists from Britain and the wider British Empire, turning Yuzovka, which again, you know, I find it amazing that it was named after a Welshman. Yeah. I called Mr. John Hughes. It just, I just, I actually did know about this because when the war in Ukraine happened, BBC Wales sort of someone in the office must have known about Hughes Offka because they did a big piece on it. Would you like a place called Ellis Town or would you find that too much pressure?

Let's make it even more on the nose, so it's Ellis James Town. It just really everyone knows it's you. As long as Ellis James Town was the best, most fantastic place to live on earth, yes. Well, you've got no control over that. If it was a shittal, absolutely not. How would you feel if genuinely a housing development emerged in Wales called Ellis James Town? I'd tell you one thing. I'd feel morally compelled to fund the Youth Centre.

I'd be buying them a pool table. Now in the reverse, it was the case that the new Russia company was able to draw in specialists from Britain and the wider British Empire, turning Yousovka into something of a hub for British industry. So one such manager was Charles Martin, who'd worked for a time in Murthy Tidville before being called to work in Uzovka. And from there, you went to Cape Breton Island in Canada, where he was employed at a senior level in the Dominion Coal and Steel Company. It's going to be something of a stretch to describe Uzovka as Utopian, is working in a massive steelworks in the 1860s and 1870s in 1880s utopian. You've got quite an odd idea of utopia if you think it does. And especially if your idea of utopia is getting away from industrial and urban life. But in many respects, it was the start of what would be a 20th century phenomenon,

that of the model industrial socialist communities. A lot of them were constructed in the Soviet Union. And that's interesting. European communist countries such as East Germany and Czechosabakia. So in other words, Heuzovka, to translate Uzovka into a more English spelling, partly served to inspire places such as the, the magnetogosk, the city of the magnetic mountain, or Stalingstadt, or Ayshenhaestadt, ironwork city.

So Magnetogosk itself was developed under Stalin in the 30s, becoming a one industry town like those in the United States, like Gary in Indiana, for instance. But just like Hewzofka, the Magnetic Mountain Project was led by a foreigner, in this case, a German engineer called Ernst May. So a lot's been forgotten about Hewzovka, or it would have been, were it not for regular visits

by trade unionists after the Second World War, particularly representatives from the National Union of Mineworkers, the NUM. So these visits kept the memory alive long after the British colony had been abandoned during the Bolshevik revolution. So there was a link between Britain, in particular Wales and He was Oshovka in Ukraine. But there's also this quirk of history meant that Stalin's successor, Krushchev, he'd grown up and then worked in the town as a young man.

So in his memoirs, he called what he knew. of the history of the place and of the strange connection he felt between Britain and the Stalin of his boyhood. My first and lasting impression of England is the long stretches of little red brick houses. They stuck in my memory because they reminded me so much of houses I'd seen during my boyhood in the Donbass. My father worked in a mine near the Uzovka metal factory

which once belonged to the Welshman John Hughes. And that was in April 1950s, almost 70 years ago. And there's a bit in... We did an episode on Gwynarth Williams, the Welsh-Marxist historian, the Welsh Marxist historian. and he was talking about the influence of Welsh industry across the world. And there's a bit in that where I'm paraphrasing, but he says if Anna Karenina on the train had looked down,

on the railway tracks, you might have seen Made in Dalai's on the rail because a lot of Welsh steel ended up in places like Russia. When I read lots of those articles when the war in Ukraine began four years ago, because of my main interest, which is football, it just reminds me of Mark who was the ex-Money, United in Wales. Striker.

I'm thinking, wow, I can't believe. I mean, he was a good player, but I can't believe they need the whole town after Mark Hughes. Yeah. I mean, maybe they just love volleys. And, you know, some really strong strikers who are great at holding the ball up. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. They love 14 goals a season or thereabouts. Don't you dare criticise Mark Hughes.

He's a very good player. He's a very good player. He loved him. John Hughes, founding the city of Dunette, is a bit like a kind of 90s footballer who goes to Italy and does really well. I feel like they've gone overseas. David Platt. John Hughes is David Platt.

Good on him. Well, to wrap up today's episode on Utopias, I'm going to tell you about a group of 17th century radicals with a bold dream. One that we have discussed is what would your utopian paradise be If you were to form a utopia, what are you grounding it in? What is, what's, or what are you drawn to? No work would start until at least 11 a.m. So I'm not very good in the morning.

And how long's the shift? An hour. An hour, okay. I mean, very impossible because I'd have to be God to do this. It would be constant British summertime. Okay, nice. I really cannot stand to winter. It drives me mad.

So you're moving, it's your thinking Middle Easter, Somewhere perennial sunshine, Australia maybe. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Working a hour a day. Podcasts for one hour a day in the sunshine. Okay, what might you still?

I mean, how can you top that? Yeah, what are you going with? He's nailed it. Yeah, I quite like the heat. I'd call, you know, I think, maybe smelly south of France so you do, you're a little bit seasonal. Yeah. But I quite like the also quite like the idea of podcasting for one hour a day.

The tricky thing with Utopia. What a smug podcast that would be. Yeah, it would be unlistable. Yeah, absolutely. One hour a day pod. Yeah, exactly. Bliss pod. Let me tell you about my perfect life in the south of France.

Today I've eaten the freshest tomatoes you've ever seen. I find the difficulty with the utopia is you've got to have purpose, but you don't want to work too hard. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to go to a commune, you want to have some free time. But also you want to be a luxury, don't you? You know, I don't know? I don't know.

Removal of purpose is horrible. Yeah, I agree. Having absolutely nothing is the worst, but you don't know work your fingers to the bone. Also, in my utopia, there'd be a really, really strong, powerful shower. Yeah, fair enough. I'm going to need to be able to watch

every West Ham game home and away in the South of France. Yeah, yeah. That is a non-negotiable. Yeah. Mine would probably be me doing hours of back-breaking work and, you know, drudgery and toil, so that everyone else can have a nice life.

But that's just kind of how I am. It's just the kind of person you are. Just kind of person I am. Preferably in the mid-1800s, preferably at nascent ironworks, preferably in Eastern Europe. As long as everyone else is happy, then that's fine. Then it is a utopia to me. So first, a little bit of background to these 17th century radicals.

In 1894, a Victorian group of antiquarians called the Camden Society, which I think sounds like a sort of an indie band from the early 90s. That's what I'm thinking. You know, very skinny gene. Oh yeah, yeah. Maybe. Front cover enemy had a track at maybe like number three.

Do you think the Camden Society? No, no, no, no. They were front cover of the enemy but there's only enemy journalists who liked them. They sold about 13 records. It was pigeon detectives, Arctic Monkeys, the Camden Society, and then the Arctic Monkeys just pulled away, didn't it at some point?

Yeah. And one of them had quite a tough time, or never mind the buzzcocks at a point. Oh, yes, absolutely. And Amsterdam was really harsh of him. And said some things he really regret. Yeah. Exactly.

So the Canada Society, okay, they are this group who dedicate themselves to publishing hidden gems from the archives of the past. It's quite a nice job, isn't it? Releasing a remarkable song sheet from the time of the English Civil War, okay? And this song sheet has lyrics that spoke of a quality and freedom of the nobility of working the land and of the inalienable rights to the earth. And it goes like this, okay? This is what the song, how the song goes.

You noble diggers all, stand up now, stand. up. You noble diggers all stand up now. The wast land to maintain, seeing cavaliers by name, your digging does maintain, and persons all defame, stand up now, stand up now. And these days, we now know of that song as the diggers song, which is one of a number of 17th century ballads telling the story of grassroots revolution and rebellion against aristocratic tyranny. So this song is rooted up. You mentioned there. It was the diggers song. The diggers, of course, themselves. Headlined Glassonbury in what, 95? They did, yeah.

Biggest crowd ever, wasn't it? Well, it was because someone dropped out, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. The biggest because the cure dropped out with like an hour to go. But I think it's considering they did okay. And that was what you just described there was the diggers' biggest hit. It was. It was now on Spotify. They opened with it, they closed with it. It was clear there was a porcity of material. As I say, we know this song is a digger's song.

It tells this story of sort of revolution. But the question is, who were the diggers? Who were this group? And why was this such an important piece that was discovered? And why do they matter? And what have they got to do with the utopia? Well, the diggers formed in 1649, they were a radical group dedicated to agrarian socialism.

It's always agrarian, isn't it? It seems to be the way a lot of the earth, you know, sharing out your veg. That's basically the root of a lot of these things, isn't it? I'm just trying to figure out what the diggers look like. Definitely a man who looks like Jeff Lynn is the lead singer. Noddy holder on bass Yeah, yeah Huge sides

Mutton Chop sides Yeah Muntop, yeah, yeah Yeah The point of this group The actual diggers Is that It was this

The actual diggers Were the tribute band Was that once again This agrarian point was coming through It was a socialism rooted in the idea Of cultivating the land together And once again

Equally sharing the spoils I'd be thinking about that and as someone who has killed every plant I have ever owned I do not think I'd be a welcome member of one of these groups I have also killed every single plant

every single one without fail within the week even ones that in the garden centre they said these are basically immortal they say when they give it to me they say it's impossible to kill this thing they'll give it to me and they'll say don't worry about you won't mess

this one up. Yeah, absolutely. Consider it done. Let me give you a little scene that I, as I've thought about this experience of joining one of these agrarian utopias, which is all well and good that we're all working the land and sharing out the crops. Imagine the pressure of chucking your rubbish potato crop into the collective when the guy next to you has got 17 bags full of potatoes and you've managed to grow one in a year.

And then they say, what happened here, Tom? And you go, I forgot to water it for six months. Sorry, sir. And I'm saying, but it is a really good potato. Yeah, sorry, man. Yeah. Sorry. Is that okay?

Are you then feeling bad about going into the collective store when you've brought so little to the table, literally? Unless you're an absolute monster, yes. Yeah. So this group was led by Gerard Win Stanley and William Everard, great names from the past, two figures who emerged during the Civil War as idealists for different ways of doing things when Stanley, the main guy really, was from Wiggin, came to London in 1630, age 21, as an apprentice to a merchant tailor. That's what he was doing when the Civil War broke out. In 1642, he was tailoring, and he was propelled towards new ideas because of the new forms of dissenting religious observance and the bloody character of the conflict itself.

Now, this stat about the Civil War blew me away. Did you know, the Civil War in the 17th century, it killed more of the population around 4% in England and Wales and 6% in Scotland than the First World War. Wow. As a percentage. Yeah. So the First World War killed about 2% of the population.

The Civil War, 4% in England and Wales and 6% in Scotland. So markedly higher, especially in Scotland, percentage of deaths from the Civil War than the First World. World War. I couldn't believe that. Isn't that incredible? That is astonishing because I don't really think about people dying in the civil. No. As stupid as that sounds. I think we should go on about it more. Yeah. I think it gets quite a bad press, the English Civil War. I know more about other civil wars than I do about the English Civil War. I know way more about the American Civil War than the English Civil War.

You're basically not told anything about it at school, despite the fact 4% of the country died in it. That's a great point, Tom. We don't, do we? In America I feel like the American Civil War is like the number one thing that's being taught But in England I don't remember a single lesson

On the English Civil War As the parents of kids Who were going to school in London So much Great Fire of London content Yeah Get this Civil War ram that down their throats Great Fire London was one fire Come on

My son knows that Samuel Pepys Buried a large cheese in his garden He does not know that 4% of England died in a civil war. Only last week my six-year-old said to me, did you know Samuel Peep's buried a large cheese in this garden? I was astonished by that detail. And obviously this is what's getting to. Is this on the curriculum?

How has this happened to both our kids? In 1648, when Stanley, he wrote of the way the common people have been crushed by accumulated wealth of a narrow band of elites, selfish imaginations, he said, had taken possession of... of that which is not theirs. But luckily, guys, I think we can agree, that's all been sorted now.

It's no longer a case of the elite crushing everyone else, of course not. And on the 1st of April, 1649, when Stanley decided to do something about it, okay? He makes his move into the world of utopia, as he and 14 others set about creating a brand new utopian society at St George's Hill in Surrey.

What makes me laugh about that, the idea is of someone asking you what you're up to at the moment, And your response be, I'm just current, I'm building a brand new utopian society. Just a really funny thing to reply. Having a pint with someone you haven't seen in a while. If you're sat next to someone at a dinner party and they offer that,

it could go one or two ways, isn't it? Well, obviously we're going to be talking about that all evening. Yeah. There were also to be similar projects in Iva in Buckinghamshire, near Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, Little Heath, near Cobham in Surrey, Cox Hall in Kent, Barnet in Hertfordshire, Enfield and Middlesex, a lot of this, loads of these things. Dunstable in Bedfordshire, Bosworth and Leicestershire.

It's also been some speculation as to whether there was a digger settlement at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire and another one somewhere in Nottinghamshire. And in each case, amazing how many there were, the aim of these utopias was to cultivate the land to remove signs of enclosure. So that's fences and hedges and stuff like that. And to distribute what was grown freely amongst those who participate. in the project, which sounds quite gentle and benign, I think we can agree. Well, landowners took a very different view and they used armed force in the form of

organised gangs to preserve and protect their rights to private property. I can't think of a gang that sounds harder than a 17th century gang of agricultural workers. They're just going to hit you to death with a lot of agricultural improvements, isn't it? It's got an awful way to die, getting murdered with a rake. they genuinely, they were brutal. Diggers were regularly beaten, communal structures were set alight in an arson campaign,

all of it designed to intimidate the dreamers and to drive them off, age-old battle between the owner and the squatter. One historian, Sir Keith Thomas, once pointed out that the whole digger movement can be plausibly regard as the culmination of a century of unauthorised encroachment

upon the forests and wastes by squatters and local commoners, pushed on by land shortage and the pressure of the population. In this sense, the diggers organised gave structure to what had been an ad hoc process through previous years. But when Stanley was not merely an organiser, he was also a thinker, and he fused radical passages from the Bible with contemporary, political and economic thought, particularly those ideas which stress a participation of common people in their self-administration, their rights

to liberty, essentially. After all, what have the civil war been for, if not that? As Winstonly put it, if thou consent to freedom for the rich in the city and giveest freedom to the freeholders in the country and to priests and lawyers and lords of manners and yet you allow the poor no freedom thou are a declared hypocrite. And the argument here is one that has echoed through the ages. In effect, how can someone truly be free if they are subject to the economic power and the privilege of someone else? Sure, okay, they can be given political liberty through a vote or whatever, but what good is a vote? if they have no rights to land, no rights to property of their own, can anyone really be a freeborn Englishman in such a world?

And in the end, unsurprisingly, the diggers did not last that long, only a short while, which I think is fair enough if you're constantly being beaten up by gangs of really hard agriculture workers and they're burning everything you build. I get it that maybe you'd think I might let this idea go. By the end of 1652, all of the communities have been extinguished. tragic, 49 to 52. That's how close, how short a window this was. They'd all been extinguished through pressure from landlords and the state. But the idea of the diggers did not dissipate, and this is the lasting value of utopian dreams. When Stanley's writings, for example, they survived.

He was read in the 18th century by various figures from the novelist Henry Fielding to a group of Welsh clerics in the Swansea Valley who were otherwise inspired by the French Revolution. and his thoughts were then revived in the late 19th and early 20th century and then again from the 1960s onwards. These ideas still were getting heard as historians looked once more at how to write history not merely as the acts of powerful people but as a mirror to the whole of society itself. And it was also the case that sort of alternatives to free market capitalism were in demand. How could poor workers escape overcrowded, squalid, rented accommodation?

How could we overcome the environmental damage done by industrialisation? How could we remake society so the ordinary people had a voice? And in 1907, an article about Witt Stanley by the Edwardian literary critic Julia Wedgwood, who's a niece of Charles Darwin, fact fans, argued that the digger was no less than a 17th century Leo Tolstoy. In many ways, she said he seemed a son of a 19th century. And we, modern day, people looking back, can add that in his faith, in the natural world and his profound interest in ecology. In many ways, he seems a figure for our times today too.

So it's kind of interesting. It's quite progressive thoughts. It's a very short-lived campaign, but they tried to create something, but then were, I'm afraid, beaten back by the very elites that he had voiced concern about in his writings. I'm going to become a digger. This is downstairs, and I'm going to tell her right now.

I'm going to say, Tom's convinced me. And if I need to beat up a lot of people with all of the sort of big spades I'm about to buy, well, then so be it. But yeah, you've convinced me. I think that's the future for me. Then my work here is done. The miss has been worthwhile. I'm expecting a tetramisi about half an hour going, what have you done? What have you done to our family?

It's quite heartbreaking in a way, isn't it? But it's also kind of inspiring that these people put them out themselves out there. I find it really interesting that so much of it is drawn routinely, although not so much your example, L, in Ukraine, but it's drawn back to this relationship with the land. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is this routine theme that comes from this idea of utopia. Yeah, being back on nature.

Which shows at some level we're aware of this, yeah, exactly, that we feel on some level there is something wrong about urbanisation and, you know, smoke and busy cities and factories and all this sort of stuff. And maybe there is that natural want. to get to something cleaner and quieter. There are, yeah, they're quite common. I can think of other utopias where it's a case of leaving industry

or sort of urban living behind and living on the land. Exactly. There's something very innate about us that likes the idea of it. Elle, you've read Sapiens, haven't you? Yeah. So, like, there is a sense

in some of these utopias that we want to go back to like an agricultural way of life living off the land. But that was only really a small part of human history, right? Because for the vast majority, we're hunter-gatherers with no possessions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wandering around trying to kill a leopard.

Yeah, the agriculture. Revolution was about 10,000 years ago, wasn't it? So actually, the people... So it's a blink of an eye in terms of evolution. Yeah. So people going, oh, we need to get back to that. Well, that was only a, you know, the internet's been around. It's like going, oh, we need to go back to 56K dial-up modem.

That specific window was the best That's what we need to do Yeah Go back to the age of tell it We need to go back to teletext Although I did quite enjoy teletext To be fair Very very hard

To bypass agriculture And go back to hunter gathering Yeah It's funny that no one wants that That's tricky that Yeah yeah We need to go back to nature What running around

Trying to kill Wildebeest No no no no If I told Izzy, right, we're going to be looking for berries today. And if we don't find it, we're just going to keep walking. How many berries do we need? Oh, I don't know, enough to feed this whole family for this week. Yeah, loads. Kids, fancy squirrel again?

Isn't the literal... This is late in the episode to be dropping this factoid, but isn't the literal interpretation of the word utopian means it's impossible? Isn't that the translation? Oh, is it? What do you mean? So I'm never going to live in Australia and podcasts for an hour a day?

Utopia literally translates from ancient Greek as no place. That's probably a fine note to end on, isn't it? Well, maybe you should have told us out at the beginning, saved us all this time. It doesn't exist. That's the thing about Utopia. So thank you for listening. If you would like more of this and you would like all our episodes together in one part

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