TRIGGERnometry - "We Need to Move Beyond Race" - Iona Italia

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Writer, podcaster and sub-editor of Areo Magazine, Iona Italia joins us in the studio. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a writer, editor and podcaster. She's a sub-editor of Ario magazine. Iona Natalia, welcome to Triginometry. Thank you. It's great to have you here. Before we get into the conversation, which we really look forward to, tell us a little bit about who are you, how are you where you are. What has been the journey through life that brings you here? So I grew up in Pakistan in the Parsi community. My father was an Indian-born Parsi who moved to Pakistan in the 60s. My mother was Scottish. And then I moved here to the UK in my early teens, and I went to school here and university. I did a PhD in English

literature, and I was an academic, until 2006, when for some unknown reason, I decided to leave academia and go and live in Buen-Sires and teach tango. And for about 11 years, I danced tango, I taught tango, and I had a very popular Tango blog. So I would also tour and give readings and advice and things. And I've since made that blog into two books on Tango. And then I went to India for two years, 2017 to 2019. And I've begun work on a new book, which is memoirs and little. biographies of mixed race Indians. And in the meantime, I switched, when I went to India,

I knew that I wouldn't be able to just to teach tango for a living full time anymore. So I switched over to becoming an editor. I met Helen Pluckrose online and I got involved with Ario. And then later I got involved with a company called Letcher Wiki, who do public lecture exchanges between people. And I recently also joined the team at Yashem Monk's new publication, which is called Persuasion. So I reinvented myself a few years ago, about three and a half years ago, as a writer, editor. And then I moved to London in March of this year. Good timing. Well done. On purpose, actually. I was planning to move in the summer. Yeah.

But I suddenly realized that if I didn't leave right then, I was unlikely to be able to go. I found it interesting. You talked about your journey from Buenos Aires to Bombay to London. And in that time, I've moved from South London to North London to East London. So there we go. It's a slightly different journey. But it's interesting you talk about the book you're working on now, which is about mixed-raced Indians. is the whole conversation about race that we're certainly having in the Western world,

I don't know whether it's happening in the same way in India, but you can tell us. But it seems to have gone in some sort of interesting direction, to put it very mildly. What are your sort of thoughts on it? I have a few thoughts. I mean, one thing I think is that there has been this absolute obsession with racism and detecting racism everywhere. And I don't want to imply that racism doesn't. occur and isn't important.

But... It occurs on this set all the time, mainly against me. Yeah. We don't like Russians. Well, you know, who can blame you? And you said you weren't funny. There we go. There we go. Yeah, we don't let him make the tea.

Anyway, sorry. I nearly brought a jar of marmite. Did you? That is hate speech. Right there. Hate actions. This is literal violence. I don't want to be actually.

thrown off the set. So I refrained. But yes, we are obsessed with racism everywhere. And you're not saying it doesn't exist. I think that this this continual focus on the race elements of things. We're continually asking not,

is this particular phenomenon affecting people badly? Are there people in need we should help? but we always ask, well, which people of which race does it affect in what proportions? There's this kind of racial bean counting that goes on all the time, which I think is extremely unhelpful. And I think that might be one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders wasn't successful in the U.S. elections, in the U.S. primaries, is that he was talking about things that were, he was largely talking about measures that would benefit

everybody who was in need. So, for example, universal health care, but that weren't framed in terms of specifically and primarily benefiting black Americans. And that seems, some people seem to have seen that in itself as racist,

that it wasn't focused, to be not focused on race seems to be considered in itself racist. now, which I think is insane. Have you seen it grown worse over the years, this sort of focus on race? I think so. I feel as though it's been since about 2009, 2010, there's been this shift in focus

from a kind of liberal way of looking at things, from concern with poverty, hardship, etc., to this much more identity-based identity-conscious way of analyzing and looking at the world. And I find it mostly extremely unhelpful. I mean, I think it can be positive and fun to celebrate your ethnic identity or your race, quote, unquote,

quote, if you enjoy that. But I don't find it helpful to be constantly asking, well, what do I think of this person's opinion? First, I need to know what race they are, and then I can decide whether it's worth listening to them on this topic or not. Before I know whether this particular policy is a good idea, I need to know what are the skin colors of people that affect, most effects. And I saw that with things like the Grenfell Tower disaster. That was such an obvious tragedy. And to me, the important things were the shoddy building, the poor housing, the poverty. But everybody started focusing on how many people of brown and black skin are living in the tower,

as opposed to white people. And I just feel that that is extremely unimportant. And why do you feel it's happening? important. So if, let's say, Bangladeshis who as a community, I think, are overrepresented in prison, underrepresented in high-paying jobs, etc. So let's say if we can help people who are poor and who live in food deserts, who have poor housing, who have poor access to education, that will disproportionately help this group because they are disproportionately represented there.

We don't need to target it at them specifically. And I think it is divisive. So I hear all of this rhetoric from both right and left about the white working class, but brown and black people are disproportionately represented in the working class. And to me, what is important is the working class issues, not this kind of racial division. I couldn't agree with you more.

I think the reason people talk about the white working class is that while there's been a focus recently on sort of black and brown people and making sure that they're getting the support that they need, not the nonsense. I'm not saying they're getting it, but there's certainly been a focus on it. There seems to be that group of people who are somewhat ignored. And I think that's where you start to get this disparity. And as you say, that's the reason for that is that it's divisive. This way of looking at things is divisive.

And then it forces everybody to go, well, what about me? What about my race? What about this? Instead of just all of us going, we need to support people who are low income or who have a poor education or who live in terrible housing that can combusts in flames and kill hundreds of people. But you mentioned Bernie Sanders, which I thought was interesting, because what you're really saying there, And it's a very good observation is that his message would have appealed to the broader American public, but he couldn't get through the primaries because within his party, an agenda that appeals to everybody is considered insufficiently woke, you might say.

Yes. Which seems to be a sort of contradiction in terms because the objective of political party, by definition, is to win power. And yet what they're really doing is they've ended up with a candidate who were the best, respect him and we don't like to make fun of him. You know, he's not in his best years, let's say. He's not in the prime of his health or whatever. So they've ended up with a candidate that's certainly inferior in many ways, simply because of a sort of ideological obsession.

Would you agree with that? Yes, yes. And I do think that this, I think that this constant focus on race makes people very self-conscious and awkward. And it is actually damaging to people's interactions. And it is, if anything, it's going to make people more racist because people are fixating on this aspect of identity. And I think that is very dangerous. It's an interesting thing because there's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy about it.

Because if you say, well, there's so much racism and therefore we need to focus on race, and then you create the racism, then you go, look, I told you there was racism. I think James Lindsay, Helen's colleague, made this point when we had him on the show the first time, is that it never stops. When if Trump, let's say, gets reelected, that will only be used as evidence that more wokeness is needed

because people will go, look how much racism there is as opposed to recognizing their role in it. So what do you think would be a healthy solution? What do you advise people to do in terms of having this conversation? Well, we need to get beyond race as much as we possibly can. So I think that if ever you're tempted to say this white person said X and Y or this black person said X and Y, just try removing the word white or black from that. Try to deal with people as individuals, try to focus on their opinions as individuals.

try to look at it with as little focus on races as possible. I mean, I understand that you're saying that, but is that going to be possible in our society now? Don't you think we've gone so far down the path that it's going to be so tricky to row back from that? I hope we can row back from that. I think that, I mean, I feel that the helpful things are a civic conception of nationalism.

I hope that this topic might become moot in the West because there has been so much racial mixing, quote, unquote, because to talk about people's mixed race implies that there are some pure, there are some people who are pure, which obviously doesn't really, it doesn't make sense. But in a kind of colloquial sense, there are so many more mixed race people now and when I interviewed Eric Kaufman, who's recently written a book called White Shift, if Eric's demographic projections are correct, by 2100, the West will be 90% mixed race.

But of course, many of those people will no longer think of themselves as mixed race, but many of them will think of themselves as white. This is Eric's argument. just like Hispanics and Latino immigrants to the U.S., the first and second generation usually think of themselves as Latino, and they tick that box on the census, but by the third generation onwards, they think of themselves as white American,

and they tick that box. Look at Francis, he's so progressive. He's second generation. He thinks he's white. Yeah, absolutely. He pretends to be white. And there's a question that I wanted to ask you, is that you obviously

half, so you're half Indian, half Scottish. Yes. And there's something that I discuss with people who have come from a mixed background in that, and I'd be interesting to see what you think of that, in that you never truly feel that you belong anywhere in a way because you are always other.

You're never truly, so half English, half Venezuelan. I was raised by my mother. My mother raised me, my father was always, is working. So she raised me very much in the traditional Latino sense, which means that I view the world differently. I have different values in a way from a lot of my English friends. He's a great lover. Yeah, exactly. You would know. Now, that means that I feel a sort of detachment almost from I'm never truly English. I'm never truly Venezuelan. Do you feel that? And do you feel that there is an issue around that? I think that there's, there's kind of two ways that it can go.

I feel that being mixed race can be a kind of opportunity to build bridges and defy labels and and show how kind of superficial and silly such labels are. And it can also, it can also give this kind of sense of disorientation. And I certainly, being Parsi in particular, being Parsi is like identity politics on steroids. So Parsi identity is patrilineal. If your mother was Parsi, you are not Parsi. If you married a Parsi person, you were not Parsi.

and if you are the adopted child of a Parsi father, you're not Parsi. It's absolutely strict in this extremely inhumane way. So there was recently a court case where the two daughters of a Parsi mother wanted to go to the funerary ceremonies, the sky burials which we famously have, where you were eaten by vultures. which is my dream for after death. If anybody is... We've all got to have dreams. Wouldn't be mine, but sorry enough.

Not top of the list. But they were not allowed to go to their mother's funeral because only Parsis can enter the Dungalwaji, which is the funerary gardens and grounds in Bombay. It doesn't sound very inclusive. It's not inclusive at all. Where's the progressive? It's not very woke.

No, not very woke. It's absolutely not inclusive at all. And you can't, so there are many Parsi, you can't go to the fire temples. And we also have these holy wells in Bombay. And you cannot enter unless you are a Parsi. And I did get questioned sometimes because I don't look, especially part, I don't look very Indian. Although Parsis are also paler skin than most other Indians and more Western looking. But occasionally I was questioned, but as soon as I said, my father's name, I was allowed in because my father was Parsi.

So when you're a Parsi, I feel as though you're constantly having, I was like, I was. constantly having to prove my identity. And I always felt a bit, because my father died when I was quite young, and my Gujarati, Parsis, or speak Gujarati, is very, very rusty, almost non-existent. And because I grew up largely in the UK, so there are a lot of prayers you're supposed to be able to say by heart and I can't, most of them I can't say I can't remember by heart. There's all kinds of ritual actions you're supposed to do and you're supposed to know what date it is in the Zoroastrian calendar and is it a fire day, a water day or whatever. So I always feel a bit nervous about proving who I am. And in interesting, in

India, it's vital. I lived in the Parsi bargain for that. You have to be a Parsi. Only Parsi's can stay there. Whams if you identify as Parsi? Well, I think that you should, I feel as though everybody should be able to do what they want. I'm completely in favor of both transgender people and I think transracialism should be fine. If you feel like you really identify with Japanese culture and you just want to be Japanese. I think you should be able to be. Really?

Yes, I do. Hold on. Let's zero in on that. Because this suddenly got interesting for me. So if I identify as Japanese, if you want, I mean, Japanese people should have to pretend that I'm Japanese. Should have to pretend, no.

Okay. But I think that authenticity is really a myth. I think it's a beautiful myth. to imagine on the father's side my ancestors going back, landing on the coast of Gujarat in the 8th century and before that being part of the Sassanid Empire and Persian, etc. There's something very moving and beautiful about that, but it's also, it really is myth. It's not, there isn't some kind of part of. infusion in my DNA somewhere.

So I feel that if you want to convert to Zoroastrianism, you should be able to. And if you want to go to and do the Parcy ceremonies and become a Parcy, you should be able to. See, I don't know much about the Parcy identity, which is why I'm a slightly disadvantage here, but you gave the Japanese example. So being Japanese is not a religious thing. It's not, right, you can convert to Judaism or to Christianity or to. And you can then be part of that identity.

But I don't think me being interested in Japanese call. My sister, for example, is massively into Japanese culture, speaks very good Japanese, but she'll never be Japanese. Well, I probably, I'm really thinking of could you be a kind of master of some traditional Japanese art form? Like Kintu Soroy, the one where they do the... the cracked put gold into the cracks in the pottery or um could you be a shinto priest or something like that i i would say that you should be able to be oh sure does that make you japanese i guess is what i'm getting at because you see you said transracial right right maybe not so that's more what i'm

thinking of when i'm thinking of a kind of transracial identity so there is your actual parentage yeah um which you can't change yeah unfortunately. Yeah, you should picture parents more carefully. Exactly. But there's also the kind of ethnic connection to a culture, which I think should be able to choose. In the same way, you can't change your sex,

but you should be able to change your gender if you want to live as the opposite gender in society. You should be able to do that. So I feel similarly about both those things. There is the actual, your actual ancestry and your biology, which it doesn't make sense to lie about. And if you are trying to pretend that you are someone, you're not, that is obviously a very brittle, fragile situation. but then there is the culture that you identify with, the behaviour that you identify with,

the way that you want to be seen, and I think that those things you should be able to choose as widely as possible. Language is obviously part of it, and we've touched on it now, but you wrote a very, very interesting article where you talked about Boris Johnson and his use of language, and you've also discussed widely, you know, know, the effect language has on us. You've used examples like Jordan Peterson. Can you just delve

a little bit into why you think language is important and our use of language, particularly when it comes to people of influence, like your Boris Johnson's, your Donald Trumps or, in fact, you're Jordan Peterson's? Maybe I can start with this. This isn't so much about Trump and Johnson, but one thing that I've noticed in the kind of shift from this sort of more liberal politics to more woke identity politics style approach, which I was talking about, which I feel happened at the end of the odds in around kind of 2008, 9, 10. That's a totally subjective evaluation, but that's when I feel it began to really shift over. And I think that one thing that happened is that wokeness encourages, at its worse, it encourages this kind of paranoia.

Everything must be re-examined to see what it really means. And as a result, I've noticed that people's writing and speech has just gotten much worse because, of course, I'm generalizing wildly here. but people have begun hedging absolutely everything. So their writing has become more and more paraphrastic, and it's really hard for any academics have always written badly, but it's got worse and worse. It's really hard for them to say anything in a simple, clear way. And I've noticed also that there's been a lot of,

kind of sloganeering and we are expected to know the thing that is being said is what is actually meant so I think the most

egregious example of this was a couple of years ago with Sarah Jong who wrote all these tweets about how much she hated white people one of them said I really love to see old white men suffer. Something like that. And there was a huge scandal about this,

and her employers at the New York Times and other people on the social justice left defended her tweets on the grounds that when she said things like that, it was actually code for, I would like to see a less racist, more racial-egalitarian society. So there's this kind of extraordinary, on the one hand, hyper-examination of language,

which just seems to have disabled some people from being able to say anything comprehensible. And on the other hand, there are all these kind of codes. and there's also this kind of this concept of trolling, which is something you see on the Trump right as well as on the left. I see this happening on both sides of the spectrum where, oh, well, I said this thing, but it was, I'm kind of wait. I will say the thing, like, I want old white men to suffer. And I'm going to wait to see how it's received.

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So you're trying to gauge the reaction. And if the reaction is not good, then you probably don't want to say that thing again. But it's interesting to talk about academia because it seems to me that some academia and your colleague and boss at Ario, Helen Pluckrose. My captain. Your captain. See, words are important. with Peter Bogosian and James Lindsay, they kind of established that a lot of modern academia, particularly in the social sciences, is actually not just, it's not hedging, it's obscurantism.

It's where you're deliberately not saying anything, but you're saying it in a way that no one else can tell that you're not saying anything. And so there's been a lot of that as well, hasn't there? Absolutely. I think it's really telling that there's been at the same time as the so-called squared hoax, the hoax that Helen, James and Peter did came to light. There's also been a replication crisis in psychology in particular, but in science more generally. And for people who don't, who are not academic, let's just explain.

Replication crisis essentially means that, you. You pretend that something is true, but no one else can reproduce the, quote, unquote, experiment that got you the quote-unquote results. Because really, most of it is bullshit. Let's just call it what it is, right? A lot of, so in psych there are a lot of classic experiments, which supposedly prove certain things about character. So one famous one is the marshmallow experiment where they gave children two marshmallows. Or they gave them a marshmallow, I think. Yes, they gave them a marshmallow, and they were told, you can either eat the marshmallow now,

or if you wait 10 minutes, you can get a second marshmallow. And then you eat them together, but the point is you can't eat the first one until 10 minutes have elapsed. Exactly. And then they followed the kids in later life, and they claimed there was a correlation between the children who were able to resist eating the first marshmallow, and they had video of them. It was very cute. Some of them were like looking away like trying not to see. And a couple of them picked up, sniffed it, licked it, and it back down.

It was adorable. But apparently there was a correlation between being able to resist eating the second marshmallow for 10 minutes and being successful in later life. And this is one of the psych experiments that was cited a lot. And a lot of other work was based on it. Yeah. And it hasn't replicated. You're breaking my heart here. I've been quoting that experiment all the time about the importance of being able to wait.

Really? It hasn't replicated. See, this is why we need the fake science so people like me can feel good. Yeah. So this experiment has been essentially debunked or at least can't be reproduced. It can't be reproduced, which means that they haven't proved. anything. So we don't know whether it worked or not. And that's now true with a huge number of experiments in psych and some that are really well known. But there's also replication crisis more broadly in science. And I've been reading Stuart Ritchie's book about that. You should have him on

this podcast. He is also here in London. But with a replication crisis in science, When the whistleblowers showed that things were not replicating, the people in psych are all expressing concern, making changes, doing reforms. And the so-called square hoax, which showed that if you have a kind of woke political slant, on your paper, you can publish all kinds of absolute bullshit. Well, in their case, they published a chapter from Mind Camp, rewrote it with some intersectional language, and they were able to get it into magazine that published it. There's a reason it's a best seller, mate. And when this came out, you know, what's happened is that all of the academics are circling the wagons. They're all very angry. I mean, not all. But everybody who's almost everyone who's

responding to it, is responding to it in this angry way with personal attacks on them and complete denial. It's just the contrast between how people in Psyche are reacting to the much worse crisis in their field and how people are responding to the publication of these hoax papers is just extraordinary. And why do you say it's extraordinary? Because there should really be a wake-up call. It should be a wake-up call for the fact that number of publications has nothing about the quality of your work, especially in arts and humanities academia, that your work in social sciences shouldn't be, whether or not the work is publishable, shouldn't be dependent on your political stance. It's also worrying that almost everybody in social sciences and humanities is almost all of the faculty are left wing.

And I say that as a left-wing person myself. I would expect most people to be left-wing in academia, but not 80 to one. And I think that there are so many. any concerns there that have been highlighted by the success of the hoax. And there are things that we already knew, in fact, but the hoax has just made it more undeniable. And it should be a reason for people to be re-examining how they are doing things. But is it no? Surprised, people don't like to change the mind. I'm still going to believe in the marshmallow experiments. But you talk about being left wing and maybe we've got a little bit of time left so i want to perhaps finish on

that um it's interesting isn't it because there's a small portion i would argue of the left that's gone sort of crazy uh and i think a lot of the other people on the left are sort of tarnished by association uh even if they are reasonable and sensible and sane as you are so why are you left wing um i well i'm kind of old-fashioned from each according to their ability and to each according to their need. I seem to remember that slogan from Russian history. Sounds familiar. I mean, I'm obviously, I'm not a Marxist. Communism is a failed system, incompatible with human nature.

We need capitalism for wealth generation. But I think that we could do. a lot more to prevent the people who are most struggling in society from living in real hardship. And whether that is through social security or through UBI, I think that we have the means to do that. And it would create a more peaceful and harmonious society for everybody, including those who are better off. Of course, the devil is in the details, but I think that we are not, we're not going far enough in that direction. You know, on that thing, something that Francis and I often talk about is that do you think that one of the challenges for the same left is that there is a sort of trend on the left, and this is again a broad generalization, which we're trying to stay away from, to ignore the human nature, as you referenced when you talked about communism. So, for example, when we talk about people who are currently not very privileged, let's say,

they don't have access to a lot, right? Part of the reason for that might be is that by nature of their sort of genetic and other background. So part of it's genetic, part of is their education, part of it's their family background. Maybe they come from a home where they didn't get a lot of attention when they were a kid. it will be difficult for them always through life to have a comfortable life. That will always be a challenge for them, right? But if you think that any bad outcomes are the product of structural inequality,

then you'll never actually look at that and you'll never accept that some group of people will always need help by virtue of the fact that that's just the way they are, you know. Is that, do you think, am I right to point at that as a sort of gap? in people's thinking? I think so. I mean, I definitely don't think human beings are infinitely malleable. I think we're a lot less malleable than most people on the left usually say. I'm actually a non-believer in free will, so I think it's all luck all the way down.

And so, yes, I think that we will never achieve kind of. of equality of outcome. What we can do is try to give a quality of opportunity as far as possible and provide a safety net so that people, no one is really, or as few people as possible are living in misery. So, and I think that safety net can actually raise a bit. So I, yeah, I'm not really, I think that looking at outcomes is also the wrong way to go by things, trying to tinker with outcomes to say, oh, we don't have enough, I don't know, we don't have enough people of Pakistani origin playing in our orchestra. I don't find that a useful way of looking at things at all. You give opportunities and then you have to live with the fact that people will

people will end up even when opportunities are completely equal with differences in outcome and they're liable to be differences between groups there is I mean life is complicated there are a lot of steps between opportunity and achievement

but isn't the problem as well especially in the UK that we have this class system so we talk about equality of opportunity but the reality is that you come from a working class background you're simply not going to get the range of opportunity that you would do if you went to a highly exclusive public school and grew up in a wonderful area of London, etc., etc. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, many of my friends bought their first houses or flats with help from their parents,

and that made a huge difference to them. And that difference has continued to the present day when we're now in our 50s. So yeah, I don't think we're ever going to have equality, but we can make it easier for people who haven't come from an affluent background. Well, I went to boarding school. Me too. And here I am on a set working with someone who didn't go to boarding school for a long time. He was from a sort of working class background. Exactly.

And look at what a better person you've become as a result of this. He's now kind, he's compassionate. Where's my privilege? This is my, why's my privilege? Did you enjoy your boarding school? Because my boarding school was like a cross between prison and the army. Yeah. Well, the thing is with, I agree with that description.

But the thing is, the army can be good for some people as well. So it depends on the sort of person that you are. I found it more difficult from a sort of adapting because when I came, I didn't speak any English. So I found it quite difficult to fit in initially. But then I found the great thing about boarding. is it gives you the opportunity to find things that you're good at and do a lot of them. And so I got the opportunity to try my hand at lots of things and be bad at lots of them, but then find some things that I was good at, you know.

And then once that happened, I really started to enjoy it a lot. But anyway, I want my privilege. I want my privilege. Give it back to me. Anyway, I know, it's been great chatting with you. As always at the very end, we ask one final question. which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be. Okay, I think we should institute UBI, universal basic income.

So I know some people are talking about that, but not enough. Andrew Yang was talking about it, and look what that got him. I know. But I was a fan of Andrea. So let's talk about that more. Is there any evidence that it's a good idea in terms of practical experiments? I think that there have been, there was an experiment in Finland. Yes.

And it was, I think it was too small to be conclusive, but it went well. Well, I think what that one showed is people are not more likely to go back to work if they're unemployed because the people were unemployed. But they're a bit happier. Yeah, they're happier. And in the capitalist system, we don't give a shit about that too. Yeah, we should. So maybe that's the thing we should be talking about more. Yeah.

I mean, I think that we think of success in terms of making money. Yes. Being well-known. And we don't value things like looking after your aged parents. We don't value looking after people who are ill. We don't value family life. We don't value time with your friends. We don't value people's creative pursuits unless.

unless they're unusually successful in them. But we are, we value finances, and it's supposedly a successful life to be CEO of a company working, God knows how what ours. And I think that what is actually valuable in life is what, how we affect each other, how we make each other's lives better. So it may be a more valuable life to just be somebody who brightens up your friends' lives and your family's life than someone who is making a lot of money. And obviously we do need money. This is the system that we live in.

But I think that if we could institute UBI, if we had better safety nets, some people would be able to pursue things that they can't currently pursue. but which are very worthwhile. Because we only have one go-ride on this planet. That's a lovely way of putting it. So, Iona, thank you very much for coming on the show. If people want to follow you, where would that be? Or see your work or read your work? They can follow me on Twitter at Iona Italia.

You can find my work at Ario A-R-E-O magazine. And I have a website, Iona-I-I-O-Talia.com. And also check out my podcast, which is called Jew for Tea. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. And thank you for watching. We will see you very soon with another live stream or episode.

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