Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 96: Emma Dabiri

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Emma Dabiri is an Irish writer, academic and broadcaster - and an expert on race.  Born to a Nigerian dad and an Irish mum, Emma experienced extremely different environments growing up: first in a predominantly black area of America and then moving to Southern Ireland where she found herself in the opposite - a very white and racist society.  She remembered how a bookshop in Dublin was her sanctuary and saviour as a child. It turned out it was a radical bookshop - and we agreed that books can provide a quiet rebellion when you're growing up.Emma has two little boys and currently lives in Margate where she takes advantage of regular sea swimming.  She has written two books 'Don't Touch My Hair' and 'What White People Should Do Next', with her third book just about to be published when we chatted. Emma's writing looks at the concept of race and how the concept of black and white has been constructed in fairly recent history, plus she sometimes shares her own experiences of racism. We also talked about the Black Lives Matter campaign and assessed how much has changed since the death of George Floyd.Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hey, hey, or should I say bonjour? Parce que je suis en France. Yep, I'm in Cannes, actually, just for the evening.

I've got a little gig here tonight. I was in Mexico on Monday, and then I got home on Tuesday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at home. Today, I flew this morning to Cannes, and back home tomorrow, and then I've got another gig tomorrow afternoon in London,

and I'm going to take the kids to that because it'll be really cute um I'm doing a festival called foodies festival which I do a lot of in the summer so that'd be nice um and this is yeah a little slice of um a slice of glamour it's actually really ridiculous in Cannes I don't know much about the whole festival that goes on here Cannes film Cannes film festival but I know it's been really busy here loads people descended on Cannes and our hotel seems to be sort of in the center of everything so when we got here there was like red carpet and paparazzi and all this not interested in us obviously but it was all like one of those situations me walking you think off this is tiring without even being my scene.

I don't even know what's going on. I'm knackered. But the sky is blue. Just had a nice lunch. Got a little bit of time before I sing later, so I'm going to go for a little walk with Richard. I'm looking out the window as I talk to you, and the sea is twinkling at me. That's so nice. It looks beautiful. It's like kind of slipping into another another world I mean it's not like normal life in Cannes that's for sure um anyway the rest of the week's been really lovely it's been quite

busy I've been a bit jet lagged I wasn't really expecting it I was only in Mexico for three nights but I keep falling asleep at like 1 30 or 2 in the morning last night I went to sleep at three and up again at half six it's's not enough sleep, I tell you. I had an amazing time in Mexico. Such a brilliant trip. I loved Guadalajara and then got back to delivery of my new album, Hannah.

I finally met it in person. I've been signing lots of albums. So if you're one of the people who's ordered a signed one, well, thank you very much. I've done it myself and it's on its way to you and yeah feeling just generally pretty excited about things I've done lots of interviews this week to talk about the record and without sounding too even a blight about the whole thing I'm always very happy to do all of that stuff because I feel

like it's such a lovely thing that people are still interested in what I'm up to you know there's loads of musicians out there no one has to give me time a day so I do appreciate that and it's been nice I'm excited about the record feeling good about the world and uh for today's podcast chat I'm actually taking us back in time because I spoke to Emma Dabury back in March. I visited Margate for the first time to go and see Emma but it wasn't the first time I'd met her. I sat sat next to her at lunch I went to not so long ago and I really liked her. I found her funny and smart and interesting and all the good stuff. She speaks very passionately about race she grew up as a mixed race girl in dublin with the same age so all through the 80s born in 79 i believe

um she now has two little boys lives in margate but she felt very other when she was growing up she really liked she had so she had a childhood partly in Dublin and partly in America. But when she was in Dublin, I feel like that's the place she would call home. And she loves being Irish, but she always felt very other, which is interesting because I've never had to think like that, really. I've never felt outside of I don't know how other people I always saw versions of myself reflected at me as a child and it must be very different if you don't and it's prompted her to to to study and become an academic of the development of race

and the politics that surround it so lots lots of interesting stuff. She's written a couple of really interesting books, Don't Touch My Hair, and What White People Can Do Next. So she really knows her stuff properly, smart woman, and interesting, and we had a great chat. It was the day after Mother's Day. I hope she won't mind me saying she was a little bit high over, in a good way, but she did say that at the time to me. So there was a couple of bits where I think both of us,

I mean, I'm always like this anyway, but both of us kind of trying to find the right word. But she's way more articulate than me, so you don't need to worry about that. And, yeah, it was lovely. And after we finished chatting, we went round an art gallery because one of our friends has an art gallery, and then we wandered around Margate. It was very lovely, and I hope to go back. back all right I'm going to leave you in the safe hands of the chat with Emma and I and I'll see you next time

well it's lovely to come to Margate today and find you here Emma how are you yeah I'm pretty good actually yeah I'm happy that spring seems to be kind of like asserting itself, vaguely-ish. I always remember with March, they say, in like a lion, out like a lamb in terms of the weather. And I think of it every year with March because it always starts and you're like, why am I still needing gloves and a hat? And then by the end, you've've got buds little days will be lighter weather a bit warmer a bit milder I've seen some magnolia beautiful it's on its way yeah do you I've actually already read that you're quite into seasons you like sort of seeing the chair how are

you with the transitional bits um yeah I think I'm I think I'm okay with them um I've actually like I feel like I've just, I've really made my peace with, like, living in this kind of climate. I think I used to be, like, really resistant to being from somewhere that was, because I'm from Ireland, so obviously the climate is similar to here, but it's damper and wetter. And I used to be really, like like resistant to that being my reality, but I've really like made my peace with it.

And it's allowed me to actually like really appreciate the weather in this part of the world. Yeah, I have a completely different relationship with it than I did growing up. There are still like some aberrations though, because I love that phrase that you, that saying that you just said, in like a lionette,ette like a lamb but my birthday is like at the end of March and um I remember about five years ago heavy heavy snow oh yeah my birthday I was just like what is

happening this this is too much I haven't made my peace with it that's taking the mickey really isn't it I know yeah well my birthday's in early April so I share all of that with you and I know that my husband's birthday the 6th of April we once had one of those crazy days where it snowed in the morning then we had a barbecue in the afternoon because the weather just sort of lifted so I think yeah the weather can still throw you but I have a really good friend who moved to Brighton and he said when you live near the sea he said you don't really have like good days and bad days. Every day is just sort of weather. And it made him really enjoy that sort of spectacle.

And now you find yourself by the sea. And I wonder if maybe that helps. Yeah, I don't know if I have that same, if I have that same experience. Because I feel like, like last summer here, here I mean last summer was just really really hot across the board but down here on the beach it was like it was insane like I would you know post a photograph and people would be like and then I'd be like in London the next day and people would be like oh but I thought you were like abroad and I was like no that's like literally just like the Kent coast wow like there were there were some like seriously, seriously hot days.

Yeah, that's true. And are you still swimming in the sea every day? Not every day. Okay. But still regularly. That's good. And still, and I'm quite like, discipline's not the right word because I don't see it as something kind of punitive. because I don't see it as something kind of punitive.

But I realise that if I don't, like, if I don't get in, if because of my schedule, like, I can't get into the sea, like, regularly enough, I will make sure that I have, like, ice cold showers just to, like, keep me, just to keep me, like, kind of used to. Keep that muscle flex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it doesn't, so it doesn't become something that I start to like be fearful you know that's actually pretty smart because I can imagine being warm is always quite

nice don't get too comfortable with that I've had a few experiences like since I've started the cold water immersion where I've been somewhere and I can't access like hot water so this is a freezing cold shower and in the past I would have been like oh man oh but now I'm just like this is grand like I can totally hack this yeah ice cold water bring it on I'm very impressed by it it's so far away from me that ability so I'm very impressed it's so far away from me traditionally and I feel like if I can do it like literally like if I can be in cold water like that anybody can be anyone okay yeah I know every time I hear this I'm like one day one day I'll be inspired to do it I kind of want to see what it's like I'm actually a bit tempted did you see that

program the Wim Hof tv show where he had celebrities and he took it's called freeze the fear he took them and did like ice plunges and things I actually actually was like, I would actually be interested in doing that just because I don't like it, but I could see that there's almost like a barrier with it. And I was like, maybe this would be quite good for me. I think it would be really good for you. I did Wim Hof about, I did a workshop like about a month ago.

Okay. In Cornwall, in this place called Three Mile Beach. And it was, it was like, I did kind of like a condensed workshop it was just in one day because I think usually they're um maybe over a weekend or maybe a longer day um but it was um yeah it was incredible like the breath work stuff isn't um something that I normally like incorporate into like getting into the cold water but I was kind of like introduced to all of that

I think a lot of the breath work is used um in order to like mentally prepare yourself yeah for immersion in the in the icy water um and I think one of the things that I was, I think something that I was doing though, kind of that I just felt, what's the word? I kind of inherently understood was something that I needed to do to be able to get into the cold water was something that the breath work kind of helps you, not shortcut, but helps you get to another way,

was I realised that I had to be like quite calm with it. Like when I first started preparing myself for getting into the sea, I started, it was before we'd moved, and I started just with cold showers. And the first week of those were like really, like really painful. I actually felt like my skin was being like flayed or like burned and I'd be like screaming and I'd be like you know um really tensing my body yeah um but after a week or so I realized that really like that that makes it a lot worse so actually if you don't tense you don't scream you just don't scream, you just like let it happen. You're like, oh, a lot of the discomfort is actually coming from the way I'm like reacting to this. And I have like a lot more mental control over how it feels if I don't, if I don't, if I'm not so reactive.

If I just let it happen and be like, you know, this isn't that bad. Yeah. Actually, it's kind of good. Oh, that's kind of amazing. And, wow, it's kind of amazing. And then, like, I don't know, it's just like a different headspace. There's a lot about that, and that's like a metaphor for a lot of things, isn't it? You know, how you respond to stuff is so much part of your, for want of a better phrase, journey through it.

Mm-hmm, completely. And sometimes you need to remind yourself of those things because turning on your back and just sort of acceptance and letting it happen and acknowledging but also not like tensing and panicking is part of that whole thing so I think there's a lot of really positive stuff in that just across the board generally and before we started recording you were saying you've had a really crazy year. So what else are you up to at the moment? What's happening with you in terms of work at the moment?

Yeah, so I'm working on a book that as of now shall not be named. And this is your third book? This is my third book. Does it get easier, the book writing process? Or is it always the same sort of feeling when you're sitting down to write? I think my circumstances have been really different with each book.

So I don't know that it's easier. I don't know. It's just, it's different though. But I don't know if it's easier. I definitely find writing, people are like, oh, do you find it like a huge relief do you find it like really therapeutic and I'm like no not not in the process in the process I actually find it quite um I find it I feel like quite under quite a lot of pressure and I feel like I'm kind of resting like this stuff from like within me and

then trying to like put a aesthetic or whatever kind of form on it so it actually feels like really labor intensive. I'm surprised anyone would think you would find it like a release because the topics and the way that you're as as you say, structuring what you're talking about is weighty stuff. And so, I mean, obviously I'll talk about it in the introduction, but so your two books, one of which is very close to us, Don't Touch My Hair, and What White People Can Do Next. They're both, they centre on the fact that you've studied black history degree, PhD. What you're talking about is huge, big stuff. And I did think that must be, yeah, I thought that must be a big pressure,

but also it's all pretty serious, pretty deep, pretty huge. And does the things like the cold swimming and all this does that help just give a place for you to go that's just kind of a release from actually the the significance of what you're actually the message you're actually imparting yeah I think so I think definitely um I've been um kind of committed to doing more like embodied practices like more like physical practices because I think um I have historically like had a huge tendency to um be like very like analytical like and very like intellectual like very much in my head and trying, I guess, to process things that I find, that I find, I feel like the word traumatic and trauma is overused, but that are traumatic,

trying to like, you know, approach them analytically and kind of feeling that if I can understand the mechanics of certain things that I have kind of like agency or like power over them um but I feel that it's also it can just be it's also really important that you express things or that you kind of remove or that I remove the pressure from myself to to always be in that really kind of like analytical space and do things that actually move emotions through my body in like more physical, in more physical ways. So this Cold Water Swimming would definitely be part of that.

And then also, I'm also writing a play. Amazing. Which opens, it's with like an Irish theatre company called This Is Pop Baby and it opens in Dublin in October. And then we'll be coming to London to the Soho Theatre in October of next year, October 2024. But where we're at in the process of writing that now is... Well, actually, so this first book, Don't Touch My Hair,

the director of the theatre company is somebody that I grew up with. And she read this book and she was just like, oh, you know, a lot of the biographical material in there could be adapted quite interestingly to the stage, to theatre. And then also because she knows me outside of my writing, she was just saying it was really interesting to know kind of deeper context of a lot of like what I'm saying in the book because she's known me for so long.

So anyway, we're writing, yeah, I'm writing this play that has aspects of this book and the second book as well and various other material in it. But the draft that we're on now, that both the director and the dramaturg that we're working with is like, okay, Emma, like no more theory. So they've given me, so I'm talking about my life, but then I'm like, you know, also like having all of this like theory and like analysis. And so that is going to be in there, but it's going to have to be like communicated in some other way. So like the next exercise they've given me is to just tell like six stories from my life. Right. But to just speak them, not to write them, speak them, record them, not to write them and not to like analyze them and not to give

these kind of like theoretical um kind of like underpinnings that say well this these kind of interpret these kind of interpretations to literally just like tell the fucking story so I find stuff like that yeah like you know quite challenging so that's yeah that's well that's making me think because when you were talking at first I was thinking That's making me think, because when you were talking at first, I was thinking, actually, there'll be a lot of people who've gone very far down an academic path and really know their stuff. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a life they feel they live and it's connected so intrinsically. And maybe sometimes when you've been able to intellectualise and theorise and look back through you know and put things into context maybe that's also been a little bit of armor that you've been able to put on and now you're being asked to actually take that off and just be you and talk more from your own experience that's quite a big deal isn't it yeah to do that

I feel like that is that is what's going But again, that's something that another reason I was kind of resistant to doing that is I think like for women, regardless of kind of like what their expertise is or what their profession is, they are often assumed to reveal like a lot about their personal life and their biography in a way that men it's not that there's not expected of men in the same way that's so true so that also kind of like pissed me off yeah I totally get that you're like well why does it have to have that strand to it why can we not just listen to all this knowledge I have and the facts and what speaks for itself and the system we found you know existing why does it have to come back to me why does it have to have that motivation but I suppose the way to feel better about that is to what I would say is as someone listening and receiving the information is that for me all my

favorite communicators and teachers are people where at the heart of it there's something about them that has that that angle where it comes from another place because actually those that's what actually that human connection in the end ultimately makes that messages and the information so much easier to actually receive and so that that empathy to engage with to engage with to be relatable and for it to be narrative driven and like more compelling as well like I totally get that I feel like I'm just kind of and I do have like a lot of my life in like kind of most of the work that I do but I also feel like I can be like quite a contrary person and so if there's just like an expectation that because I'm xyz I will do this I always want to do like the opposite yeah I know I get that I override that but I'm just saying it's there I think what

you probably need to do is I have it in your head for a bit and then come up the way that you back now it's yours you own it yeah I'm doing it because this is the terms I'm doing it on I get that but that's also like you've obviously always had a questioning mind you inquisitive and questioning and then having to conform to an expectation is just not that wouldn't have led you to where you're at would it yeah I guess yeah that's that's that's a good way of looking at it it's a nice thing so if we talk for a little minute about motherhood, what was happening when you had your first baby in terms of what you're up to with your work?

So I was in the first year of my PhD and I had done the first term of it and then I realised that I was pregnant. So I finished that year year I did the first year um I had like insane insane nausea not for the whole pregnancy actually just for the first three months but it was like completely debilitating like it was just like like I was so I actually I'm somebody that's quite prone to nausea and this was just like exacerbated to like it was like yeah quite debilitating but um I yeah I did the first

year pregnant and then I was like oh I'll take like three months off and then I'll come back to it and then after three months I was just like I breastfed like my son for like two years. So after three months, I was like, God, like he's still like completely like reliant on like breast milk. There's no way I can like go back to like classes and studying. I was like, I'll do six months. And then at six months, I was like, no, there's no way. Like, no. So I did a year.

So I ended up like taking, a year off of the PhD when I'd only done a year of it. But it was at that time that I started, like, blogging. That sounds, like, so archaic now. I started, like, I guess because a lot of my PhD was also, like, based on, I was coming from a place of it not just being scholarship but also trying to like kind of make sense of like the structures that have formed like my actual life

yeah um so it was quite personal I guess there was lots of stuff I was writing that wasn't suitable for the genre of writing that is my that is sociology so I started kind of um writing essays that I would put up like on tumblr um and started kind of building like a readership like through through that I went back to the PhD but kept kind of doing all that which was like how I got a literary agent and like how the books kind of started but yeah that was the kind of landscape of um what was going on when I was yeah pregnant with my with my first son I'm still doing the PhD this is the final year I have to finish by um that's yeah because um I was really I don't know like so many people now kind of like by halfway

through it were like why the hell are you doing this like you're like successful like you don't need you don't need the PhD but I feel like because I committed like so much time and energy into it that it's like important for me to like get the doctorate and also there aren't that many black professors they're not that they're not enough black knowledge creators and like academics in this country um so yeah I just feel I feel like it's an important thing to do. And do you think the process of becoming a mum made you think a lot more about some of the stuff you ended up writing about or were the strands of your books going to happen anyway, do you think? No, of the books?

No, I don't see the books as necessarily related okay actually one thing that I think motherhood did give me which would be relevant to the books was like it actually helped me like focus and have like far more clarity and like what I wanted to and what I wanted to kind of like achieve I guess and and like do with my life. Because I wondered if, you know, you're thinking a little bit about the next generation, really. Because sometimes when you come to have a child, it makes you think a little bit more about legacy, but also about the world that they're growing up in. So if you've got like a little fire in your belly of something to communicate, it can help focus that sometimes. Or give a little bit more of a kick yeah I think I don't know I don't know if I was thinking so much I actually feel like I was kind

of thinking even before I had children I feel like I was thinking about not necessarily legacy but like what I could do to kind of make things different, contribute to making things different to the way that they are, you know. I feel like when I see, when I hear about, I guess, young people who have a similar background to mine specifically like in Ireland and they're having like similar or even like more extreme experiences I feel like very kind of I don't know like I feel like really not protective but I feel like this like compulsion you know to like do all that I can to kind of like contribute to like shifting attitudes.

But it's also not even so specific as this idea of like only being concerned or moved by the experiences of people who have exactly the same identity as you is not really how I feel. I feel like one's own experiences of discrimination or whatever forms of, I guess, oppression or discrimination, those kind of things should also make you more sensitive to groups who are experiencing discrimination or oppression or exploitation, even if they don't share, like, your particular identity.

Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like it should kind of, yeah, make you more open to understanding, yeah, how oppression feels. Yeah, I mean, I think I really love the way you speak about your topics as well, because sometimes you've described talking about race as quite icky. And I think that's such a brilliant word, because I really, I think there's, sometimes it can feel like there's all these like landmines and everybody's got these good intentions. But I think your book your second book and the articles you've written around it for me really I just feel like why is it not more

widely known that race is only such a relatively modern concept 1661 I mean I know it's not like super recent but it's not that long ago it It's pretty recent. I think it is pretty recent. And I think we're pretty much the same age. I'm 1979. Are you 1979? So we're the same age. And I think it's really interesting, all the conversations that have gone. I don't know if you'd agree with me, but I do feel like the Black Lives Matter movement has actually made a shift.

with me but I do feel like the Black Lives Matter movement has actually made a shift I do feel like something is different subsequent to that in how the conversations are going and and just the fact that they're happening so much more frequently but what I found for me a personal sort of tricky thing was that when I was little when we were little I felt like the emphasis was always on trying to not see skin color and not see difference and all be kind of we're all together as one and you can't see difference and don't don't recognize it and then it's subsequently now it's much more important to actually know recognize it recognize that means a different thing different do you feel like things are getting better do you feel like life that the conversations are going in the right direction? It's clunky, isn't it, all this stuff?

Because I suppose there's so much of these things are kind of steps forward and steps back. Yeah. Gosh, there's lots in what you said. I know, sorry, there's so much going on there. Not at all, not at all. I think the first thing of, like, so when I was growing up,

I found that narrative of, of like we don't see colour actually like quite um oppressive because it was explicitly apparent to me that everybody very much did see colour and did see race absolutely then one was kind of not able to if you addressed it there was a kind of a narrative of what we don't see color so there was actually like no scope to really um address there was it was like I felt like it was like this mechanism to actually kind of like shut you down if you try to challenge what you're what you were what you were clearly experiencing. So I've never really been a proponent of that mentality in a context where it's more like lip service. I didn't see it actually manifesting itself

in the way society was structured or in how people treated you or how people behaved today however though one of the things I write about and what white people can do next is when these conversations about race and specifically like about kind of black and white were you know there was so much attention being given to this topic. That seemed to me like a key moment where we would kind of mainstream the knowledge that you kind of hear race as a social construct. Like, I think that kind of phrase was something that became

like popularized on social media but it was kind of a bit like an empty mantra that people would say but they don't really like know what it means and I thought like with so much attention um on race and race being like so kind of high on the agenda it was like a really like uh it was a moment where that invention of the idea of a white race and a black race the kind of context for this phrase race is a social construct could be mainstreamed and rather than people um reaffirming the concept of a white race and a black race as being these immutable categories, understanding that they were categories that were invented during the transatlantic slave trade for really nefarious purposes.

They were like the concept of a black race and a white race was invented in order to justify racism so a concept that is invented to justify racism digging more becoming more entrenched in it as a natural way of just being yeah is highly unlikely to be um a powerful tool of anti-racism because it's it's very invention is to justify racism the necessity of justifying racism was born from the fact that all of these African people were being kidnapped from West and Central Africa and their labour was being exploited on these plantations and the colonies, the English and other European colonies

in the Americas and Caribbean were becoming obscenely wealthy because of this unrenumerated labour. But also, Europe was also becoming incredibly wealthy from all of this. So the economies were becoming increasingly dependent on this labour. But obviously, it was like grotesque in order to justify it, in order to justify the use of people of African descent in this way. This idea of a black race as inferior was introduced and then introduced through various legislation

and then spread throughout culture through various means. Actually, I was just looking at a game from the 1600s, from the 17th century, from the when the French are going to colonise Canada. And the game is, I can't remember the name of it. I only saw it for the first time recently. It's like a board game. So this board game was played in like homes, like it was really popular in France. And it was basically teaching the kind of hierarchy of race.

French men were like the pinnacle. So when you get to the top of hierarchy of race french european french men were like the the pinnacle so when you get to the top of the board yeah you're a french man what a coincidence but the bottom was actually the native people of um of uh of canada um of that part of of north america um at that historical moment and that was of, this was part of normalising, killing them and stealing their lands, but popularised through like a family game. So I guess you look at like media and like all of these different kind of channels

through which ideas about like racial hierarchies are disseminated and yeah and kind of and kind of entrenched but yeah I thought that the moment um with uh the murder of George Floyd and the um huge like uprising and Black Lives Matter was the the moment where we could you know actually talk about these histories um that's one of the reasons that um I wrote what white people could do next I just thought that historical context is so important but was completely absent from most of the discourse that I was seeing yeah I was instead focusing on allyship and it was allyship that I was saying I think is is quite an icky a lot of

the discourse around allyship makes me feel like I think is is quite an icky a lot of the discourse around allyship makes me feel like really uncomfortable and like really patronizing both to me and to like the potential ally no I completely get that and I think I suppose with that with that conversation around racism what people are imagining is about just stopping having any predisposed ideas about someone based on the color of their skin and making sure obviously that there's also representation across the board but what people aren't really thinking about is as you say the historical significance of what racism was what the what its roots were and how it was became intrinsic to the the whole way the economy worked everything across the board its roots were and how it was became intrinsic to the the whole way the economy

worked everything across the board it became like completely how things had to be you had to have that stay in your lane of everything's to stop to stop any um coalitions between people who actually are in similar situations but don't aren't encouraged to see each other as as peers yeah to all of it it goes throughout the whole system. So that's really key. And actually something, yeah, I'm glad that you brought that up because that's something that I'd like to just, I guess, like talk about for a moment.

One of the other things that was happening in, you mentioned like 1661, and that's when these slave codes were drawn up in a the English colony of Barbados um so these slave codes um kind of introduced the idea of you know um black race although the language used at the time wasn't black it was a different word um but basically it kind of legislated um that people who were of african descent would be denied like any access to protection under the law and that europeans people who were becoming racialized as white um would have um essentially like the power of life and death over this this this other race but one of the things that motivated that law was like this series of

uprisings that had happened um where like kidnapped Africans and like indentured Irish who were like working together on the plantations um were also seeing that we're seeing the English landlords as like a common enemy and those two groups combined there were like much more of them than there were of the small kind of elite landlord class and so they were coming together and like attacking the um attacking the English and some Scottish landlords as well. One of the things that I found really fascinating about that period was the Scottish and the Irish and the English that were all in Barbados wouldn't have had any sense of themselves as having a shared identity as white people. They were from very different classes and they were also from very different cultures and they were kind of like they were often like structurally like in you know in opposition

to each other there was no sense of oh we're all white and we have kind of like a shared fate and fortune but one of the things that this slave code introduced was um to start to give these legal rights to europeans people who were racialised as white, and started to kind of cultivate this sense of shared identity. So somebody like, so it kind of, it prevented, and to start to introduce this idea of, you know, this immutable difference between the indentured Irish and the enslaved Africans,

whereas previously they would have seen their conditions as, you know, comparable in ways, it started to reinforce this idea of, no, you're distinctly different. And actually, for the Irish, you've got more in common with these other Europeans, even though they exploit you and they're, like, abusive to you. But you also have the opportunity to move up and to access what they have. And that happened for some of them, but obviously not for all of them. But it's kind of this carrot, like, whiteness is this kind of carrot that is dangled.

And you see that happening with kind of historical regularity. The next place that you see these slave codes introduced is in, like, think it's in a oh gosh where is it in maryland is it maryland virginia sorry it's virginia um and it's again these indentured english indentured english and enslaved africans come together and like fight the colonial elite these rich English lawmakers and plantation owners and then they introduce these slave codes again they kind of see what happened in Barbados how effective and successful that was and again it kind of creates this distinct difference in like the law but also in identity between these indentured English labourers and these enslaved Africans and one of the kind of primary motivations in doing this is preventing those

coalitions from emerging from emerging between them and so in many ways race was the concept of the white race and the black race was introduced to prevent these class allegiances yeah that were emerging that were really threatening yeah to the status quo emerging that were really threatening to the state as well. They're really threatening to, I guess today it would be the 1%. And so you still see the same process happening like time and time again. And kind of immigrants or just marginalized or minoritized identity groups being scapegoated, when the abuse of power is really coming from like, you know, like the 1%. I know.

But people can be distracted from focusing their attention on that. And they can be distracted by thinking about like, yeah, migrants or refugees or black people or muslims or yeah you know whoever it is when actually like the source of um the exploitation and oppression and inequality and poverty is actually coming from all the same yeah i know for the one percent god that's so true and terrifying actually when you think of it and actually on on the way here on the train I was reading an article about wokeness and how that as a term as well stops people wanting to put their head above the parapet to question to because it's become a kind of an ugly term for anything that's trying to look outside of your own lane again isn't it it's like just the idea of kind of just like trying to join dots is like oh careful are you are you actually doing something that's

pretty uncalled uh it's a pretty toxic thing in in total isn't it and it's terrifying that all those things we're talking about the immigration that's all that's all present day that's literally where we're at yeah it's just like head and hands sort of stuff and so I'm picturing um by the way I think you're considering you told me just before we started you've got a lot of tiny bit of hangover you're incredibly eloquent and that's amazing um I'm thinking back to like us as teenagers. So you're in Dublin, I guess, in the early 90s. So what stage were you at there with your quest for information, your sort of your going towards academia? Was that something that was always there as the kernel from the get-go?

Well, I always read. Like I was always like a really like I was always reading a lot from like a really young age is that in your family too your mum and your dad is it same sort of thing um yeah very much with my with my dad um but he my parents separated when I was like eight um so he wasn't necessarily like an immediate influence in that way. But actually, even when he left and went back to Nigeria, all of his books were still in the house. And a lot of them were, he'd studied like English literature.

So there was just a lot of like Faulkner. There was a lot of just like English, actually, like American literature was kind of what his what his preference was but he was also um really interested in like Cuba so like I remember like one of the first books he gave me was like a young person's like manifesto on like on like I don't know manifesto on like on Cuba so it was all like about Fidel Castro but it was like for children and then I remember books like um there's a really classic book called um How Europe Underdeveloped Africa um by Walter Rodney and I wasn't like reading that when I was a small child but it was in my house so I just remember the spy and said how Europe underdeveloped Africa you know so that yeah these ideas are kind of uh being being introduced to me but I feel like um because I um I was born in Ireland and then we moved to the States um where I was in like a very

black environment like with my Nigerian extended family in like a very black part of America as well um and then we moved back to Ireland which couldn't have been like more the anti like as as white as could I kind of went from it being as black as it could be to it being as white as could be um like just really like quite starkly extremely different um and I never thought of I never thought about race in the American and Nigerian extended family context. I only started thinking about race when I came back to Ireland. And I guess I was kind of like looking for answers, I guess, as to try and kind of make sense sense of why like what was happening to me was happening so I think through that I was like just reading like a lot of like black black history books and um when you say what was happening to you what do you mean by that do you mean

yes it was like a lot of like explicit, quite explicit racism. Like in those days, this is like in the 80s, there was like very, very little difference like in Ireland. Like even things like if you had an English surname, like you'd really stand out. Like it was just like 99.9% obviously like white, but like also like Catholic and very, very socially conservative, like anything that was a little bit different was like a big deal and often met with hostility and suspicion. So I was like more than like a little bit different. Like I was, I really, really stood

out and I feel that it was interesting because there was an absence of black people, but there was a presence of very stereotypical notions about black people that had just been, you know, imported from other parts of the world. And we're just really, you know, what's the word, like really prevalent in kind of mainstream and popular culture. like really prevalent in kind of mainstream and popular culture. And also the fact that in Ireland, so I'm really fascinated like by Irish history and the kind of like complexity and the paradox in Ireland whereby it's the country that was colonised by Britain longer than anywhere else, like 800 years. And it had that decimation of tradition

and destruction of language and so much of that, like, just violence and oppression of colonialism. like just violence and oppression of colonialism um and that Ireland shares with other colonized countries and it has like the longest kind of history of it but what distinguishes Ireland in comparison to the other colonized countries is Irish people came to be racialized as white people. So there's this paradox of having access to whiteness, but also coming from a culture that has been like brutally oppressed and a state that has been, you know, like colonized for centuries. But I feel like in that relationship um of Irish people being racialized as white when you go back to the invention of race whiteness and blackness exist or were created as

the mirror um kind of binary polars to each other so if you have a context where people are racialized as white even if there's not many black people in that context there's still this there's still this inherent sense of superiority that is um that that is taught with being racialized yeah as white do you know what i mean so that was that was that was still present so I was just trying to make sense of this um as a young child yeah and I guess I kind of looked for the answers in books so I read a lot of yeah black history um but I also I also feel like and I've read a lot of black fiction as well and I always find it really interesting that um you know people talk about like representation like in books I always was able to access lots of books that had black protagonists for children

I've since found out though that one of the bookshops that I frequented regularly called Books Upstairs was actually like a really radical bookshop which I didn't realize when I was a child so it had all of these books that were from small like kind of like radical presses and it had like a lot of like um like queer literature and like black literature and just all of this um it was just like a super super progressive bookshop but I didn't realize that so I guess that's also how I found like lots of the books and when I was really little my mum had my mum sold like vintage clothes and um she my younger siblings went to like nursery but I because I was older I just um would go with her and she I just sit in the book shop all day waiting for her to finish work so I feel like my education kind of came from there so

that answer was so rambling no I love it because actually I think that um books can be a very quiet but powerful rebellion because it's almost like you read and you read and you read and you build and you build and you build all these other voices all these other spaces you can go in your head and it's like under the radar I think it's yeah books are amazing like that amazing and um I wonder what it was like for your mum though when you're experiencing that and you know the idea of raising a child that you can see is having negativity because of how they look or the fact that they don't look the same as all the other kids at in playground that That must have been heartbreaking. Was she aware maybe? I don't know. Yeah, she was aware. And she would, there was a group that I was part of called Harmony,

which was like, it was like a group for like Irish people that like weren't, I guess that weren't white. And there were some, there were, there were like a handful of like other people that I knew who had like, like, yeah, it was just, it was just so kind of like not diverse. But this group was like, I feel like anyone that had like kind of one not white parent,

like probably like a black parent, I think there were probably maybe I think was there even anybody who had like maybe there was like one person that had like an Asian parent or something there was not many of us you know um we yeah there was this group and I can't really remember I think we'd kind of like do activities and stuff. But yeah, it was still like an environment where if I like saw another, like if I saw another black person, I'd be like, wow. Like, you know, it was like a big deal. It was like an event.

But yeah, she kind of, she made, she had, she was friends with like a few other women who also had like, you know, children whose dads were I think most their dads were like African um and she'd also um she'd like take me to um London to like get my hair done and stuff because in those days there was just not hairdressers there and the way that you can buy um products like online or you could watch like a youtube tutorial or whatever like that was just not the there was not access to stuff like that um it's like we grew up in such a different time it's a lot of different time when i try and explain to people i feel like

like if you unless you had direct access to like knowledge and information and products they just didn't that was it like you know you had four tv channels you watched what was on at the time yeah yeah it's just yes and it's it's another world it is so i remember my mom taking me to like tottenham to get my hair done taking me to like moss side in manchester to like get my hair done i got like a jerry curl um this was like the early 90s um so yeah she would kind of do she would she would like make like an effort you know um but there wasn't really that much she could do we were just in this environment that like was what it was and I feel like I actually felt like quite a lot of anger towards my parents um because I was just

like also because there were like so few non-white or black people there. I was just like, I'm like, how is it me? How have I been the person that's ended up having this experience? Like this is like, it felt like a unique form of punishment. And also we'd come from this environment that was, yeah, that was like a mostly black environment. And with the exception of my mum, kind of my whole like social world had been black and I just hadn't had any of these experiences. And I was like, why didn't we just stay there, you know, where I was like not subject to all the things that I experienced from like at a young age in Ireland. So I felt I actually felt quite angry I think with with

my parents like in hindsight I see that um my mum um we kind of had like we were in America through my dad and he um didn't want to stay there so my mum kind of had to go back to Ireland like I mean there was nowhere else that she that she could that she could go really I mean I guess we could have gone to Nigeria but I don't even know if that was like an option then um but yeah I don't know I used to feel as well like um I wouldn't be able to like raise children in Ireland because um so, like, I love Ireland, like, really, like, a great deal. If you follow me, you probably, like, hear me, like, talking about Ireland, like, quite a lot. And I love Irish culture. I really miss Irish culture, like, living here. And yet, at the same

time, the reality of what I experienced, like, because of racism growing up, I was like, I just wouldn't subject my children to that. Like, I just would just rather, like, not live there. I now feel that, like, the country has changed. The country has actually also changed, like, dramatically. It really has. It's changed to a point where I actually feel like I could live there with them and it would be grand. And I guess I'm saying this maybe not as enthusiastically

as I would have said a few months ago, just because there's been a few incidents recently where people have told me about, basically people who have children who are not white um have told me stories that seem very very similar to the kind of things I experienced growing up and I have been like shocked and appalled to hear that is still happening it's still happening to people um and that has just I have to say like when I go back home with my kids like their presence in the spaces that we're in their presence doesn't provoke any kind of

reaction in the way that mine did no one really gives them a second look so on the basis of that I and there's lots of different types of people, you know, kind of from all over the world. So on the basis of my experiences when I go home, I feel like it would be fine. But I have recently just had parents telling me about things that their children have experienced recently that give me pause, they give me pause for thought. Yeah, I mean, do you feel like your boys are growing up in a very different, their childhood is very different to yours, full stop? Yeah, their childhood is hugely different to mine. But, like, at the same time, like, even though I was, like, quite angry with my parents for us leaving America

and then bringing me to this, like, super, super, super white environment where I was seen as like an aberration um I'm still like I'm really glad that I grew up that I grew up in Ireland like that I'm that I'm Irish like I feel like my Irishness is kind of like um like an anchor or like it's just something that like I get a lot of like um succor is that the word succor I don't know I think it's fascinating as well how quite often the things we really like about when we're young end up becoming really defining yeah and I'm thinking that you know when you find yourself an academic like when again before we start recording and I said about my mum writing books

and you were like I always thought books was something you did when you're older but obviously you've done it you know in your 30s and you know sometimes knowing what it feels like to be the one that's a sense of other actually can be a bit of a superpower if you choose to take that on and like like I was thinking there must be a lot of people if they sit down next to you somewhere and have no idea that you've got all this knowledge all this powerful stuff and I mean have you ever had that where someone's having quite a just a chat with you and then you're actually able to be like well I really do know like let me take you back through time that's amazing like I think that must be like a

yeah like a really cool kind of invisible weapon um that's such a funny question because that actually does happen quite a lot like I'll like sit next to somebody and we'll get like deep into things and they'll be like afterwards they'll be like I just did not expect to have that conversation with you I just did not expect that um that happened yeah that happens that happens frequently well that's cool and you've spoken as well you know I saw recently a post about you know femininity and you know being an intellectual who can still celebrate fashion and the way you look and all that stuff and I think yeah there's just I think all that stuff becomes really powerful. I think it's brilliant.

Why should there be an expected path if you're going to be able to have serious discourse? You can also still appreciate aesthetic. It's all there for the taking. I think it's all good. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think things that are read as feminine are also read as um like silly and superficial and and shallow like

I can be like quite giddy and I can be like quite giggly and those things are often immediately read as like well you're kind of feminine and not like it's not a serious person and I'm like no but I can be those things and also be like a serious person. And also in my books, like I try and use, well, I don't even try. I think this is just like how I express myself in the written word. Like, I might say this, you'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? They're not funny at all. But quite a few people have said to me, oh, I was surprised by like the humor in your books. They were like, there was a few times that I was like laughing and I was just like, shit, am I like meant to be laughing because this is like actually like uh like quite quite

disturbing material but like so I I do feel like he I feel that's that's another thing like um if you're dealing in ideas or like academia there's also kind of sometimes meant to be no personality or like no humor otherwise it's not serious. And I think some of the most powerful ways of actually conveying things that are serious is through utilising humour. 100%. Yeah, I must agree with that. Yeah. So back to your boys.

What are your hopes for them and their future their future and that's a really big question but it's it's something you've clearly you know would have thought about a lot I'm sure yeah um I just um gosh I honestly just want them to like be like to feel secure and to be and to be happy with their lives um obviously happiness is not like a um like a consistent emotion that one you know kind of always like that that one always the one always feels but yeah I would just want them to be like kind of contented and satisfied with their lives and to do like I don't I also don't care like what they do in terms of like their professions like it could be from I don't know like science to acting to sports like it just could be anything like I don't care um just as long as like they are like they enjoy it and

they feel satisfied with what they're doing and then for me to just be as supportive of um supportive of them whatever they do with their lives like as I can be yeah that's that's it that's a wonderful thing that's a good thing well I was thinking because like when you said about the books you would read when you were young and how it turned out as a radical bookshop and I'm thinking now it's lovely that you've written your books that sit in high street shop bookshops. Like things definitely have come on hugely

that it's just not radical to talk about these things anymore, is it? And I think, I mean, do you think about the fact that there might be like a version, like a marginalised the you know a marginalized teenager who finds your book and then that that becomes the thing that makes them feel like uh-huh there's a way to deconstruct and then actually change things oh yeah um I like without not like blowing my own trumpet but I've had I have had countless people like message me

and just be like, there's a part in the book where I talk about reading Frantz Fanon, who's like this like post-colonial theorist who wrote these two kind of like seminal books in the 1960s called Black Skins, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. And I talk about like in my degree,

like doing African studies and reading Black skins white masks and just the sense of like relief I felt encountering like Fanon's work when I was like 19 and then I had people being like oh when I was reading you talking about that and I was thinking well that's what this book is like doing for me and I was like oh yeah so yeah that's like quite uh that's quite yeah like I yeah and I've also had like people in Ireland as well being like oh you know reading So yeah, that's like quite, that's quite, yeah. Like, yeah. And I've also had like people in Ireland as well being like, oh, you know, reading about you saying you didn't really have anyone that was similar to you

that you could kind of look to. And then being like, well, but I have, like I would find that, but I have you. Not that I'm saying, like, also, I just want to say, I'm never telling anybody what they should think like I hate discourse and like there's so much of it in our current moment that doesn't encourage like critical thinking it actually just encourages or demands um it demands that you just kind of parrot a script there are certain certain things you have to think like me

and you have to think like this or you're problematic. And I'm honestly never telling anybody what they should think. I would really just want to encourage like critical thinking so I can like kind of present ideas to people and they can really like give or take them. Do you know what I mean? I'm not like, if you don't think like me or believe what I say then you're um then you're toxic or you're like do you know what I mean yeah I'm not saying I wouldn't see myself as a I guess that's kind of

different being a role model but yeah I'm never telling people what they should think or what they should say I'm just presenting them with maybe like alternative ways of thinking and alternative sets of information that they might not be easily able to access elsewhere. Yeah, and I can see that. And in a personal way, when you said when you were growing up and you experienced racism, is that something that is still part of your life? Is that something that you still experience now? thing that you still experience now um like definitely definitely but I feel like a lot of the narrative around racism how we talk about what is and what isn't racism now is very but so I grew up just you know with like countless countless like microaggressions people would call them now I wouldn't have used that vocabulary at all I still don't really use that

vocabulary but just like for the sake of uh for the sake of a succinct answer let me hear that so I just grew up with that just being the kind of pervasive like kind of background um but then also you know like certain like certain treatment in in school I guess school was like the primary institution that was kind of like um that was uh shaping my life as a child and a teenager um very different treatment in school to my peers um which which stemmed from my teacher's perceptions about black people. But I just feel like so much of the bandwidth of our discourse around racism gets caught up in these very interpersonal exchanges, which can have a profoundly negative effect on one's life and I'm not by any

means saying they're irrelevant they're not at all but I think we also you hear people talk talk about oh structural racism but then we don't really we don't really I think often engage with like what that with kind of like state and institutional racism and a lot of our focus is often on um just those interpersonal exchanges okay so I still have those yes like yeah I still have those to varying degrees in different places like things are different in Ireland to how they are in England to how they are in the US it also really frustrates me when we conflate how racism operates in those different English speaking parts of the world, because I've lived in all of them and it is actually like very, very different. But I think it's really important that we look at the way race and class intersect.

class intersect and um like when when you are okay so i read this interview with um the people who grew up with george floyd um you know whose murder it was that sparked this like current um movement and they were talking about for how black people, so George Floyd grew up in some, I actually can't remember what part of America he's from, but he grew up in like a projects, like in a very, very, you know, underprivileged environment with very, very entrenched intergenerational poverty. very, very entrenched intergenerational poverty. And I think it was one of the people he grew up with saying that, like, for all of this attention and all of this, like, focus, for black people who live in the area where he grew up, like, very little has actually changed. So like our focus, you know, is so much on diversity and like casting diverse models

and all of these things that are just quite like, don't actually transform society in the necessary ways that would um give people um that would give people whose backgrounds are like george floyd um actually access to the opportunities and quality of life exactly that they deserve i feel like so much of the discourse just ends up being around, actually there's this amazing book by a Nigerian-American philosopher, Elite Capture, how the powerful took over identity politics and everything else, something like that. But it's called Elite Capture, it's the main title.

And he's talking about how how the concerns of marginalized groups um what we've kind of seen happen is it is often he's talking about elites but he's not talking about traditional elites he's talking about the elites of marginalized groups so people within marginalized groups who have relative power in their groups and access and how they often make the concerns that are seen as representing that group about things that will be beneficial to them personally as individuals but remember that they're people who while they exist in this marginalized group they are the elite of that group. So the concerns,

what the public sees as being the concerns of that group, often we see this on social media all the time, do not represent that group. They represent the aspirations of the elite in that group. That makes total sense. So the actual really entrenched structural poverty inequality is not ever really being tackled with, but maybe more superficial and shallow concerns are. And it's a very nuanced argument that he's making, but it's so important.

I feel like everybody should read that book, Elite Capture. That sounds, well, I guess as well, that goes back to your ideas of how actually it's a restructuring that's needed, not just because it's all very well and good to say for you know you know a little girl growing up in a black community and she sees on tv um a black actress and that gives her oh that could be me and you know that's that's but actually you're what you're looking for there is for a tiny tiny percentage of people to have sort of somehow superseded where they're at,

gone above and beyond, be amazing at acting, be amazing at sport, go to the next level. Otherwise, you don't be anywhere. You're actually asking them to be superhuman or stay unseen. So actually, if you haven't got the bit where you're actually giving day-to-day difference it's not really going to make any big big changes exactly and i feel those changes like are not are not happening all that's actually happening really is there's like a massive redistribution of wealth that is like increasing the power and wealth of the one of the one of the one percent so i kind

of think things are actually getting worse and then we're also like hurtling towards um the earth overheating to the point where cats sustain life which is all part of the same process of system of um you know extraction and exploitation um and the concerns of um the concerns of like yeah like the ruling class who are just you know like so kind of myopic and short-termist and just about um amassing and hoarding as much wealth as they can in their kind of like immediate future um but through which they perpetuate systems that you know further racism and misogyny but also actually like are destroying the earth itself but it's all about kind of like short-term gain for them it's not making me feel sorry within all of that okay Okay, so this, okay, no, but I have a solution. Okay, I have, there is a solution. Is it alcohol?

That's one of them. But again, that's a short termist. No, the solution I truly believe is the creation of like coalitions. So people often think solidarity is like, actually, or just trying to placate one group or just being like real like fucking like kumbaya let's all hold hands but like i actually think that is fully it's the opposite

of that i think solidarity is more difficult to achieve and it's more subversive and so many structures have been put in place to prevent the emergence of solidarity because solidarity is really really threatening to the one percent to the status quo I just think it's like it's of crucial importance I think the only way that we can create like mass movements that are powerful enough to transform the material conditions of society is through creating like coalitions where most of the world can see that their lives would be improved by transforming things, even if their struggles are slightly different to those of their neighbours.

The importance of like, yeah, cultivating solidarity and working together. Yes. No, that makes total sense. And it does actually leave me with a modicum of optimism after crushing. I was like, let me wheel that back. Sorry. I was like, let me wheel that back.

Okay. That's good to know there's something. I've only got one last question for you and it's just a practical one actually because I was thinking about your, I suppose what you'd call your day job with the, what do you call your day, your main job, the writing?

Yeah. Yes. How do you do that with young children? I have like a room. A soundproof room. No, it's far from soundproof. I have an office at home there. It's got six balls.

It's an underground bunker. No, I have, no, they're like, they're in school and nursery. So I just like work during the day while they're there. Okay, cool. Because I was writing a book once, not a proper book because it was only a book about me, which is a lot easier to write. I recommend that, by the way.

You chose from a sole topic, me. But I would just go upstairs, but I would have the door open. And it's all during lockdown, so they weren't out of the house. It was quite challenging. But if you're able to keep to those hours, I hours I guess you're not someone who suddenly finds you need to write at like 6 p.m through to midnight oh no I totally am and then like I kind of like can't so

I just yeah I might try to but yeah no it is it is it is quite difficult to balance and the second book that I wrote um I wrote in lockdown in like, we lived in Hackney and we had like just an open plan, like space. Like, so I was just there like with my kids because they were there too. And my husband and we were just all there. And it was like, actually, like, I do know how I wrote the book because people are like how did you write it in those circumstances because I can I can have like hyper focus where I'm just like you know like in the thing um but yeah it was definitely it definitely wasn't the ideal like circumstances to be writing it and I hear about people like you know like kind of writing they like go to Bali on their own for

like kind of like two months even just a cafe I just have doesn't have to be a bar. And I'm like no. I picture you like, you know, there's a thing where they speed it up but there's you and a laptop and around you there's like kids and people and things being moved. Were you there? That's what it was like. Chaos. Yeah, well, extra well done then. Extra well done then. It's spicy. It's spicy? Hi, I'm home. I'm joking.

Oh, Jessie just tried a packet of crisps that we brought back from Mexico. Are they spicy or not? No. Okay. Missy, just take that little bit spicy. Okay. No. Okay, sorry. I've started recording this in the middle of, well, it's just family time.

But Richard needs to take his computer to go and get it fixed, so I've got to be quick talking to you. These are the things we think about. I've just got back from Cannes. When I did the intro, I was still there with the twinkling sea. I'm now actually in my very sunny garden. God, it's gorgeous today. We thought we were going to have a really horrible flight home, but it actually turned out all right because...

Sorry, I'm shutting the gate. There you go. Because they had no passport gates working. The e-gates weren't working. But by the time we got to Heathrow, it was probably about half an hour. We'd been looking online and the reports were taking like three hours. Actually, in the end, it was all right. Hello, Jessie, you are going okay perfect um did I tell you on that note about last week when I was flying to Mexico and I ended up sleeping a night in Dallas airport you know I'd always looked at people who

were sleeping in airports and felt a bit sorry for them and then at age 44 found myself uh if you're ever in Dallas Airport, D23, gate D23 has got some lie-down beds. I can't guarantee there won't be any construction work. Do you want me to open these, Mickey? These look spicy as well. We brought back crisps from Mexico, and the kids have just found them in our bag. Churrumais.

Lemoncito. They look good. It's a pretty bag, isn't it? Anyway, how lovely was Emma? Sorry about the distraction. Open it! I will open it. Hold on.

There you go. Not only, I mean, Emma has the most lovely accent, by the way. How nice was that in your ears for a little while? But what I love about her, and I liked it when I said to her, you know, do you ever find you sit next to somebody or you meet somebody and they're a bit wowed by all this information you have in your head and how far you've taken your academia with, you know, she really knows her stuff. And she was like, yes, that does happen to me all the time. I thought, I bet. It's like a secret weapon, isn't it?

Knowledge. Knowledge is power and all that. Anyway, I think I'm going to have to... Oh, these are spicy as well. Sorry, Dan. Do you want some milk? God, the children in Mexico must be able to cope with very spicy crisps. Not so the Jones boys. Anyway, thank you so much for this week. Sorry it's a bit of a hush. I was supposed to be back hours ago.

Everything went a bit wonky. But life is good. I'm back home. Oh, those are nice flowers. Some nice flowers for me on the side. Oh, pretty. And I've got another festival this afternoon. I'm off to sing for Foodies Festival in Scion Park.

And then I actually just booked another podcast guest on the way home. I messaged someone and she said yes. More of that to follow. And we're not far off the 100th episode. That's exciting, isn't it? God, it's so noisy in here. So this must be horribly rizzed. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks to producer Claire editor Richard artwork by Ella May mostly you being so lovely and of course my beautiful guest Emma Dabry

see you next week bye bye Thank you. I'm going to go. when you say so. If you've got five minutes or 50, Peloton Tread has workouts you can work in. Or bring your classes with you for outdoor runs, walks, and hikes led by expert instructors on the Peloton app. Call yourself a runner. Peloton All Access Membership Separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running.