Peter Samuelson (Finding Happy) - Dolphin costumes, taking risks, and the secrets of happiness

Speaker A: Welcome to A Little Bit Radical, a, ah, business podcast from Standing on Giants. I'm Rob, your host. Join me as I meet people and organizations who are doing things differently, challenging the status quo and yes, might just be a little bit radical. A moment worth celebrating today on A Little Bit Radical as I'm interviewing our first BAFTA award nominee. We're about to meet film producer Peter Samuelsson. But as you listen, I'm sure you'll agree with me that there's a lot more to be celebrated about Peter's work than his accolades in the world of film. Peter is the founder of multiple non profits, including the Starlight Children's foundation, which has raised over a billion dollars around the world for seriously ill children. We're speaking to Peter today as he publishes his first book, Finding Happy. Finding Happy is both a, uh, memoir and a practical guidebook and aimed at helping young adults craft meaningful, purpose driven lives. Peter, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Happy to be with you.

Speaker A: So, Peter, if you are a Little bit radical and you're on our podcast, so we know that you are, what in your early life set you up for that?

Speaker B: Well, I think what I did get from my parents, cause I was lucky to have fantastic parents, is they thought I could do anything, therefore I thought I could do anything, therefore I became a film producer, which is damn near an impossible job. You, uh, are constantly doing new stuff, but you develop a kind of pattern recognition where at a certain point after you've made several films, when a new challenge comes along, you think, oh, this is a little bit like that one I had two, three years ago. Uh, and you kind of carry the toolkit into those new challenges. And indeed, what I discovered is that I could take the film producer, uh, toolkit and take it sideways and entrepreneur in areas where pretty much nobody else was doing entrepreneurship in identifying some massive great social challenge and then being either brave or foolhardy enough to actually believe that I could do something about it when nobody else had. I think what busts us out of the envelope that we're already inhabiting can well be a mentor. And in my case, in year 10, I had an English teacher called Mr. Lund. I'm sure Mr. Lund had a first name, or actually maybe his first name was Mr. Anyway, he was my English teacher. He said, see me after school, which is rarely a good thing. And I did. And he said, now look here, if you work about twice as hard and if I help you, you could go to a really good university. And I said, Mr. Lund, I don't think so. I actually Laughed at him. He uh, said why are you laughing? And I said, well no one in my whole family has ever been to uni. And in fact my dad left school at 14 and he said, oh well, be even better then because you'll be the first one. And the interesting thing is I was the first one. But since then, and that's decades ago, everyone in the family goes to university. So by that door opening through a mentor, it may have been slightly radical a little bit in the first place, but it became less and less radical. And as we empower people to raise their glass ceiling, because a glass ceiling can be imposed by external people or external forces, but mostly it's of our own making or our parents did it to us or circumstances or poverty or whatever it may be, whether it's one of the great glories of a mentorship, is the mentor says no, actually aim higher. You don't have to sweep the floor in McDonald's for the rest of your life. Why don't you be an architect? You're interested in that? What about an engineer? Oh, you want to play the violin? You know, we must get you lessons. So I think in terms of, you know, what is radical? Radical is busting out of the envelope. When I teach the looked after children in the first star academies in the uk, in the United States, I say think of it this way. Your life is like being in an envelope and it's kind of dark in there and you're sitting cross legged in the middle and that's the envelope of your possibilities as you feel them. But you don't really know where the edges of the envelope are, uh, because it's dark but you have a pencil and you can poke in whatever direction you want. And, and sure if you poke you might go through and you will pull the pencil back and you'll say whoops. So I guess I will never be a concert pianist. But that's terrific as a young adult because now you can poke in a different direction until you find you're happy.

Speaker A: Feeling a lot of solidarity with you, Peter, in regards to your parents. Firstly, just wanting you to be happy. That's exactly what my parents said to me. And it's kind of funny because I feel like I stretched that definition for them. And I decided I wanted to be an actor. And I don't think they ever dreamed that I would do something as foolish as try and be an actor when they said we just want you to be happy. But it's interesting that you decided to be a, ah, film producer as well, you went towards the arts as well. But what do you think when you had this dream of entering the film business, what did you think happy was?

Speaker B: Well, the book divides up happiness into short term, medium term, and long term. Not entirely facetiously. Short term happiness, I think, is a tub of chocolate ice cream. Medium term happiness is regular tubs of chocolate ice cream. But long term happiness is rather more complicated. And the book has three chapters that are called the Meaning of Life Part One, the Meaning of Life Part Two, and the Meaning of Life Part Three. And they are scattered through the book in the end, and this is the wisdom, if you like, that took me an awful long time to work out. Finding happy in large measure comes, uh, from helping other people. Not only because it's a good thing to do, because ripples on the pond, but also because you can help yourself in so many different ways by volunteering, by lifting someone up, by contributing to the life force. And I do believe there are many things you can do to help you be happy. I mean, it's good to earn money, you know, have a house and a family and all those good things. But I think when you put yourself out, and I know it's the case even with kids in foster care, looked after children, that they stand taller, uh, when we help them to be little mini philanthropists, which is a class that I teach, random acts of kindness and pay it forwards, it's very counterintuitive. These are kids, you know, with their toes sticking out the front of their shoes. And yet we encourage them to work out to whom or to what they wish a little sum of money to go. And one of our donors provides the little sum of money, and they write the most extraordinary things. My name's Jose. I'm adding $10 to the $200 because that's 210, which is three times 70. And it takes $70 down at the Humane Society for them not to euthanize a dog. And I'm going to save three puppies because the last time I was down there, I looked into the eyes of a puppy that had been very badly beaten. And I saw my own eyes because I was very badly beaten also. Love, Jose. My mom is in prison. She did some bad stuff. And she's going to be there another two years, three months and seven days. But I know she hates the shampoo, so I'm putting the money in her prison, uh, account so she can buy better toiletries. I mean, uh, it's like watching flowers grow. The kids stand taller. And I think that that Is a life truth. It's not just, uh, kids in care. It's not just kids. I think it's us, too. And I know in my own life, my greatest joys, many of them at least, come from when I've put myself out. Uh, and sometimes it worked. And I did help someone, and I think I was taller as a result.

Speaker A: I think this is so great, Peter. And, uh, I think it's hard to pull out just one of the strongest insights from the book. But I would back this one because I think this is the one that gets so lost in a lot of the, uh, call it advice for young adults. Actually, there's a lot around, you know, discipline and careers and the money part of it and the security part of it. But I think this bit. You're the first person that I have seen really make this point that actually doing things for other people is such an important part of happiness.

Speaker B: It's not. Instead of building a career, earning money, sure. Being able to put food on the table, raising a family, those are all fantastically important things. It's an adjunct. It's in parallel to that. And I believe someone who is focusing on their career, that may be the appropriate thing to do with three quarters of their brain cells, but I think with the other quarter, and it might be the other 10%, do something worthwhile for society. And there's actually a chapter in the book, selflessness can be selfish, and that's fine.

Speaker A: Tell us more about that.

Speaker B: Well, I say to young people, volunteer to a charity. Why should you do that? Well, number one, because you agree with the purposes of the charity, whatever they may be. But also, you'll meet fantastic people. How are you finding someone to fall in love and be loved by? You know, seriously, you're, uh, going to a bar or you're flipping left and right on an app. Why don't you go meet people and volunteer next to them? Wonderful things can come out of that. Every so often, I have to go to someone's wedding because they met through one of my nonprofit charities. Uh, it's a joyous thing. You have so much in common. You're doing something purposeful. And listen bluntly, it's how I met my wife.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, Tell us more about that, because when we first met, you told me this story, and it's lovely.

Speaker B: Well, so at the beginning, uh, of Starlight, my cousin actually introduced me to a little boy who was terminally ill in London in hospital, and his great wish was to see Disneyland, visit Disneyland in Los Angeles. And we flew him and his mom out. Everybody, including the cousin, moved into my apartment. And we did two weeks that you probably shouldn't be doing with a terribly ill little boy. And he had a fantastic time and things that we hadn't thought of. His mum had a great time. And when they went home and he did pass away, we felt we had done something that wasn't even that difficult. Uh, and, you know, his mum had memories of her son enjoying himself on their trip, and not only of her son, most recently in a hospital bed with a horrible tube up his nose. So I called a meeting and I stood at the end of the table and I said, this is what we've done. And, you know, one of the things that film producers do well is call meetings. You have to cast a meeting. Who do I need? Okay, this might be a new charity. How do I do that? I don't really know. I've never done it before. However, I think you definitely would need a lawyer, an accountant, a, uh, publicist, someone who understands the politics of hospitals, an organizing person, and this, that and the other. So that's who I invited to the meeting. And I'd had one date with a really gorgeously beautiful, beautiful young woman. And I remembered she had told me she was an accountant. And I phoned her and I said, remember me? I'm so sorry I haven't phoned you. I just have been so busy. Just ridiculous.

Speaker A: It could have ended very differently, couldn't it be? Yeah, it could.

Speaker B: Well, she could have told me to shove it. Um, but she didn't. I said, I'm having a meeting for this potential new charity. Would you like to come? She said, yeah, okay. So when the lawyer said, what do you want to call it? She said, you know that children's rhyme? Starlight, Starbright. First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish. I wish tonight. We all said, oh, yeah, so what would we call it exactly? How about the Starlight Children's Foundation? And so all those years ago, that was the first meeting of Starlight. So then that Christmas, and we had had some more dates and done volunteering together in Starlight, the rather beautiful accountant and I were getting along famously and we had a Christmas party, uh, in the children's ward at County USC Medical Center. And we had a live band and some of the kids were so ill that they had to be wheeled in in their beds by Child Life staff. And there was one little girl who was dancing in her bed, and we had these life sized adult animal costumes that had Been donated to us by Sea World. And the accounting lady was inside the dolphin with her face looking out of the grill in the chest of the dolphin. And I saw the little girl dancing horizontally in bed, very ill. And I looked into the grill over here and there was the accounting lady with all her mascara run down her cheeks because she was crying her eyes out in the privacy of the dolphin. And I thought, oh, uh, I think I love this person. Anyway, so we had more dates and then eventually we got married and we had children and you know, that's my wife.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Spotted in the dolphin costume. I particularly loved that one because I'm, um, one of the exclusive group of people to have played Pudsey Bear, uh, for Children in Need. Live on, live on tv. So I'm always doing it for these life size characters. Believe in the power of that. Well, Peter, we've covered a lot of ground already. Let's move on to the work section of our, uh, interview today. And the place I wanted to start was Risk, actually, because you write in the book about risk and one of the chapters has the title, I'd like you to expand on this if you can. Is Failure A Matter of Opinion? Can you tell us about the story in that chapter and what that taught you about failure and about risk?

Speaker B: Well, it's really interesting. You know, they teach failure in the MBA course at universities. Really in Silicon Valley, if a young entrepreneur or entrepreneur of any age with a fantastic new idea goes out to raise venture capital, the wizened, uh, old venture capitalists who are trying to decide whether to take a punt and give them money, um, they may ask about, you know, have you had any successes? But what they mostly focus on because it's more fruitful in the interview is tell me about when you failed and what did you learn from it? And I actually think failure, if you handle it right and don't get all demoralized. If you see your career as a continuum which will have ups and downs, it's not a straight line from nothing to something, it'll zigzag. And in failure we learn, you know, it's sitting in the dark in the envelope and poking with the pencil. If you do that, sometimes you'll go through and you'll realize, oh, I can't do that. But then you have the opportunity to poke in another direction. But if you just sit cross legged in the dark in the middle of the envelope, what good is that? Then you'll only ever have an entry level kind of a job and you'll not amount to anything. And most importantly, how will you be happy? I do think most people in some degree or other would like to create something. They would like to have something to be proud of. They would like to have a job that isn't just a chore. And, you know, someone who wants to be an actor. Uh, I deal with that in the book. If what you think you want your career to be has long odds against you, you know, it's very unlikely that you will ever be a film star. Cause there are so few of them, and there's so many people who are trying to get to the acting profession. It doesn't mean don't do it. It means you have to have a plan B. Or possibly what you should do is amateur theatricals at your local, you know, amateur theatrical place that meets in the church hall and puts on a, uh, pantomime at Christmas. Uh, that, too, is acting. And it can be done in parallel with something that pays you enough money that you can run your life properly. So you don't have to put all your eggs in one basket. And risk can be mitigated and attenuated. And that's what a young person should do. But they definitely shouldn't. If they want to be an actor, Stop wanting to be an actor and trying to be an actor. Try to be an actor. Be an actor. Furthermore, if you go and do amateur theatricals, it's easier to get into. You don't have to be a film star. You. You pitch up and they'll say, yeah, we're doing Macbeth. M. And you're, uh, you know, playing the king.

Speaker A: Uh, can you tell us the story about Revenge of the Nerds in that, uh, chapter about failure being a matter of opinion?

Speaker B: Uh, comedy is the most tricky genre as far as I'm concerned. Because there is simply no way while you're making the film, or even while you're sitting in the editing suite finalizing it, editing it together, there's no way to know whether it's funny or not. I mean, I've had scenes in films that were supposed to be hilarious. And that we were all laughing like drains on the set. And nobody, uh, laughed. One of the things I've learned about comedy is that at an important screening, like the National Research Group screening, Where the studio is judging how much to spend on advertising by how people, ordinary public people, how they rate the film. If it's a comedy, you have to have someone there with a raucous, spontaneous, ridiculous, crazy laugh. Because if they do that in the first five minutes of the film, it gives the audience permission to also do crazy laughing, which people enjoy, but they tend not to want to be the first one. So in my case, it's my wife, the lady in the dolphin suit. She has a really stupid, ridiculous laugh and it winds people up and makes them laugh. So when I am doing a test screening of a comedy, I try and have my wife Saral sitting there in the middle and she gets them going.

Speaker A: And then suddenly your films get larger advertising budgets, but rightly so. Right, because in this example that you gave, the film didn't test well with that test audience because you didn't have the rental off, as I call them. But then once people actually started seeing it out in the wild, there was this word of mouth thing going. And actually it was a very successful film. I think there's a lesson for a lot of people in there around being too cautious and relying too much on research and trying to answer the question before you've really done the working out almost. So I enjoyed that story for sure.

Speaker B: Well, so the test screening for Revenge of the Nerds was in Phoenix. And we all flew in with the sort of C suite of 20th Century Fox as it was then, on their little jet. And we pitched up at a multiplex and we showed the film. And it was very early in my career. And I, when we got the scores back, which you get right there, within a few moments of people filling in their cards, I didn't really have a frame of reference. So I said to the head of marketing of the studio, Tom Rothman, I said, um, I don't know if this is good. Is this good? What is this? What is this result? And he said, how do I put this? I don't mean to be awful to you. This is the single worst result I have ever seen in all my years at Fox. Oh my gosh, I'm like a deer in the headlights. I said, tom, how long have you been at Fox? He said, oh, 12 years. So, uh, we flew back to LA. We were sure we had a catastrophe. And I'm thinking, okay, I'll have to not be a film producer. I'm sure this is the end of my career. I'll have to go do something else. The film opened on the Friday they had cut the advertising back and we were expecting like nothing. And, uh, they phone you from the studio, if it's a good studio, the following morning. So the chap phoned me on Saturday morning and he said it actually did better than we thought. And there were two screenings. Cause there was the matinee and then there was the evening. And the evening was many multiples, more than one would expect from the matinee.

Speaker A: Oh, okay.

Speaker B: Oh, that's good. And he said, I'll phone you tomorrow, Sunday and tell you how Saturday was. And he phoned on the Sunday and said Saturday was staggeringly good. It was many multiples of Friday, like a lot beyond what one would expect statistically based on past films. He said, I'll phone you on Monday and tell you how Sunday was. He. He then phoned on the Monday and said Sunday was bigger than Saturday, which it never is. And it was. And we said, oh, what happens now? He says, well, I can tell you they're talking about, you know, adding to the number of screenings and adding more advertising. Word of mouth seems to be doing it. It was the top rated comedy of

Speaker A: that year, despite being the worst, statistically the worst film they'd ever seen. It was the most successful comedy of that year.

Speaker B: Well, and, um, I think mostly if you look at what sort of defines entrepreneurs, it's that they do take risks and they go with their gut quite often and sometimes they fail and sometimes they succeed. But I think a lot of outside the box thinking, by definition, if someone is entrenched, sitting in the box, it looks kind of absurd. Maybe it's not. And if you don't dare to do, how will you find out?

Speaker A: I'd like to take things back to your philanthropic work. Now, you've got so many projects, you've started multiple non profits, you've produced multiple films, so you don't seem satisfied to kind of stay in your lane, as it were, even within your sector. You seem to like to jump around. Why is that?

Speaker B: I think, uh, because I've had enough success to be foolhardy enough to think that I can do more. I also think it's very helpful, pragmatically, to sleep very little. I've never slept very much. And I wrote the book, I thought, I'm never gonna get this damn thing done unless I discipline myself. So for a year, five days a week, I got up at five o' clock in the morning and made myself write for an hour. And I got it done. And I think, what film producers, I mean, let's be honest, no one in their right mind would become a film producer. It's too difficult. There are much easier ways to earn a living. It's glorious. I mean, to stand at the back of a theater and hear an audience laughing in the right places or, or screaming in the right places, as the case may be. Is a great gift. Uh, it's glorious. You made something and people appreciate it. But I think nonprofit work has honestly, a joy every few minutes in big ways and little ways. And I think what you do develop in your toolkit as a film producer is a willingness to take risks. And I started writing the book, Rob as a self help guide. Kind of what I now know that I wish I had known when I was 18. And then as I was writing it, within my mind's eye, sort of young adults, Gen Z, the lower end of millennials, maybe the upper end of the alphas. Um, and based on mentoring hundreds of young adults, what I realized is I can punch it up. I can use things I've got right. Personally, things I got terribly wrong. What is a good risk? What is a bad risk? How can you tell the difference? Uh, easier said than done. And I thought, oh, well. So I've got examples in all four directions. Risks I took where I nearly killed myself, I. Those were stupid risks. Risks I took, thank God I took that. But also risks I didn't take, I should have taken. And risks I did take that worked out rather well. It's very important in the book. I've tried really hard to get it right. Because one needs to help, especially young men, not to kill themselves. No, don't do Parkour if it's 30ft down to the concrete, because you might end up spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair or be dead. That would be a bad risk to take. And I've done some of those. You know, I was the stupid young man who heard a cat meowing, went into the hotel bathroom. This was in Marrakesh, on a film, in the middle of the night. And I was pulling an all nighter to do the accounting. I. On a film, the Pink Panther film. And I heard this cat meowing. So I go in the bathroom. Cause I think that's where the cat is. There's no cat in the bathroom. But it seems to be coming from this kind of double door cupboard thing in the wall. And I open that, and it's not a cupboard, it's a pipe duct. And I look in and down, and sure enough, six floors below, there are the two little red eyes of a kitten. And I thought, well, I'm not going down there. It's smelly and disgusting and greasy and awful. So I went back and I tried to carry on doing the accounting. And, uh, the cat carried on meowing. And eventually I thought, okay, sod it, I'll just have to go down and rescue It. And, uh, I did. I went in the bathroom, I took off all my clothes because I thought, I'm not going to get them dirty. I climbed down the pipes and when I got to the bottom, way down at the bottom of this shaft, there was the cat and there was me. And when I reached out for the cat, it ran away. And I never saw or heard of it ever again. And I now realized, ah, uh, I have made a big mistake here, possibly life threatening, because I don't think I can climb back up. And indeed, I tried to climb back up. And every 10ft I went up, I was slipping back eight feet. So I went back to the bottom and I had to think. And I thought, all right, this is not the time for pride. I will call for help. And I shouted and shouted and shouted. Nobody came. And it's now, I don't know, 4, 4:30 in the morning. And I thought, oh, well, this is interesting. I guess I was in my early 20s and I thought, this is where I'm going to die. I am going to die entombed in the labyrinth of the pipe duct of the Hotel Mammunia in Marrakesh.

Speaker A: I'm laughing. I'm sure it wasn't very funny at the time for you.

Speaker B: No, it wasn't. It was scary as shit at the time. So then I thought, all right, let's get serious. I will very carefully. And wedging myself in. The key here, I thought, is not to slip back or even if I only move upwards one foot, I mustn't fall back at all. And I did it. And it took me like two more hours. And sometime around 6:00 clock in the morning, I fell into the bathroom and completely winded and sweaty and disgusting and covered in muck. And I got in the shower and I got clean and I got dressed and I went and sat at my desk thinking, God, I nearly died just now. And there was a knock on the door and it was one of our electricians. And he came in and said, oh, good morning, Governor. I'm so glad you're here so early. Would it be all right to go over my petty cash with you? I'm sitting there while he explains his petty cash and I'm thinking, he doesn't realize I just nearly died under the hotel. I use that in the book. That would be a bad risk. First, ask yourself, young man. Uh, I would say young woman, except, you know, the brain development of young people is different by sex. Young women are significantly more prudent earlier. But young men, why is it the young men that we send off into the battle. Well. Cause they're willing to go. Why are they willing to go? Because the prefrontal lobe hasn't developed yet, which is the chess game of life, you know. But if I do that and, uh, then this happens, but what would I do about that? It's, you know, trying to play the chess game. 3, 4, 5, 10 moves ahead until your late 20s. If you're a young man, it hasn't developed properly yet. So you are operating in your life on the amygdala, the back bit, the reptilian, fight or flight. Oh God, the tiger is going to eat me. Do I run or do I fight? And it doesn't think. I actually don't have to run faster than the tiger. I only have to run faster than Harry here in running away. So that changes the calculus.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Going back to your prefrontal cortex point, I heard Scott Calloway say this great line, which is, as a parent, he sees himself as an outsourced prefrontal cortex for his teenagers, which I thought was great.

Speaker B: Absolutely love that it's an outsourced prefrontal cortex. That's what parenting. And I would extend it and say that's what mentorship is, you know, for kids who don't have good parents or don't have any parents. And it could also be a teacher in a classroom.

Speaker A: Like it was for you.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, because, uh, obviously an advantage for a young man not to be dead.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think it's an absolute bloody miracle that I'm still alive because I inadvertently had so many goes at killing myself by mistake while I was sort of in my teens and early twenties. I'm the guy who came back to my parents home at like 2 o' clock in the morning on a Sunday morning and realized I hadn't taken my keys with me and I couldn't get in. So I thought, oh, uh, well, I'm not going to ring the bell. I'll get into trouble. So I looked up and I could see that there was a sloping wall that went up to the wall of the house at a right angle and I could get up to maybe 15ft off the ground. And then there was a drain pipe that went up to the second floor, actually the third floor. And I didn't really think it through, but I, you know, climbed up and I got myself up to the third floor and I could see that actually that was where my bedroom was and it was only three windows away, sideways, so I actually went sideways standing on A half a brick kind of ornamental ledge hanging on by my fingertips, sort of where the grout is on each side of an upper brick. And I inched my way past two windows, and when I got to the third, uh, window that was open, I climbed in and I put my pajamas on. I went to bed. In the morning, I was down in the back garden and I looked up at what I had actually done and I looked down at the flagstones that were underneath, and I was so scared shitless that I threw up in the bushes because I thought, no way. God almighty. I almost killed myself.

Speaker A: Just the full hardiness of youth. Yeah, there we go. Let's move on to our last section of our conversation. Uh, Peter, which is little bit radical world. And we've talked about lots of things that you're involved with that are, uh, little bit radical changes for the world. But what would be one that you would choose for listeners to get behind? A little bit of a radical change for the world. What would that one thing be, do you think?

Speaker B: Well, let me impertinently make it two. And I would say it should start by coming up to macro and working out what's going to do us down if there is an existential threat to human life as we know it, which would include all of us and our children's children's children. What are those things? I would say it's two things. I would say it is climate change because if indeed suddenly in places where people were barely hanging on in the hot areas because it was, you know, often 100 degrees, 105, 110 degrees, if the temperatures rise to 135, 140 degrees, no one would be able to live there. And that level of migration will annihilate human society. And there will never be walls tall enough to keep those people out there. Never have been in the 200,000 year history. Why did people migrate? It was all to do with trying to find potable water, food to eat crops, the place to grow them, somewhere you could raise your kids and they wouldn't die. So I would say climate change is one. The other thing I think that's going to do us down is this terrible othering of other people, which is a trend that's going on where we emphasize how we are different than other subgroups of humanity by religion, by nationality, by skin color, all the stupid things that you shouldn't use to define your relationship with others. I honestly think it's now in the DNA and it can be triggered by despots and authoritarian leaders who realize that they can say to their people, their base, stick with me and I'll, uh, protect you from these scary, terrible, awful people who dress different and pray different and look different. You know, they want your women, they want your money, they want your jobs, they want your food. And they thrive. The authoritarian leaders by saying that we actually went as a family to Perigord in France a few years ago. That's where they have the Neanderthal and the Homo sapiens cave systems. And I was shocked because you go in and first of all, the ceiling is unbelievably low. You have to sort of crouch and walk. It's also dark and it's very cold. Whatever the temperature outside frees your ass off inside the cave system. And I thought, this is scary as anything. And the guide is saying, you know, look at the pictograms on the walls and this and that. And I'm m thinking this is scary as hell. And I'm thinking, so you would tend to stick with your own little mini tribe because they would be safe and you would be scared of everything outside your own cave. Like the people on the other side of the valley, who the hell knows what they want? Maybe they'll steal our food. And you would be scared of wild animals and that it's cold out there or it's too hot out there, whatever. And I think that tribalism has stuck in the DNA of human beings. And I think to a great degree what civilization is built on is fighting that and gifted leaders saying, actually, you know, the people on the other side of the valley, their goals are the same as your goals. They would like to raise their children, they would like to put food on the table. And sure, they worship differently, they look a bit different, they wear different clothes. But, but what is in common with them is so much bigger, uh, and more prevalent than the differences. And I think we're at an inflection point. You look around the world and there are, uh, authoritarian leaders thriving by saying to their base, don't call it fear. You don't have to be scared of these other people. Hate them. I'll help you. Everything is their fault. Everything that's a challenge for you is the responsibility of those other people. Follow me and we'll do them down and we'll protect you. So I think those are the two underpinning, um, huge macro challenges. So then the question is, and what are you going to do about it? You don't have to be Mahatma Gandhi and do it all on your own. You don't have to be Greta Thunberg, although she was absolutely nobody when she went on weekends, sat outside the Swedish Parliament on the ground with a sign about climate change. That's how she started. What you can do is join one of the helpfully many excellent organizations that are trying to deal with climate change, that are trying to build bridges instead of walls with other ethnic groups, other religions, people who look. And I think by doing that, you greatly diminish other fear because you actually have lunch with them. And I think when you have a lot of lunches with a lot of people who are different than you, you realize, oh, just like me. So I think the gift to me in my life is daring to do things that do build bridges and creating opportunities for other people to do the same thing. And by doing all of the above, kind of making myself very, very happy. So that is, I believe, how you find happy.

Speaker A: That's a great note to end it on. Peter, thank you so much for, uh, talking to us today and I hope to speak to you again soon. Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please follow us on your podcast podcast platform. If you'd like to appear on A Little Bit Radical or have an idea of someone we should speak to, please email podcast@, uh, standingongiants.com or get in touch with me on LinkedIn. You can search Rob Faulks or search Standing on Giants and you'll find me there. Thank you very much and speak to you next time.