To mark our 200th episode of FuturePod we have assembled the whole FuturePod team, who are interviewed by a special guest host, Dr Stuart Candy.
Interviewed by: Stuart Candy
Transcript
Peter Hayward: What is FuturePod?
Stuart Candy: I think the field having a conversation with itself about which applies at many different sort of scales from the reflections that we might find ourselves having privately late at night to the kind of conversations, but with among friends or among new colleagues, which you've referred to the ad hoc aggregates of a gathering at a conference or in a classroom.
This is part of a collective learning process and I think you've really offered a sort of incalculable gift to the collective identity of futurists and of this work and people who care about it.
Peter Hayward: Welcome to the 200th episode of FuturePod. And it's going to be a special issue. We did one on our 100th episode and here we are again. And just for a change, we've called the whole band together. So with me is original FuturePodder, Rebecca Mijat. Bec?
Rebecca Mijat: Very well. Thank you, Peter.
Peter Hayward: And two who joined us and have been active in the pod. Reanna Brown,
welcome to the pod as a threesome.
And Amanda Reeves making up the band part of the fab four. So welcome to the band, Amanda.
Amanda Reeves: Thanks Peter. Excited to be here.
Peter Hayward: Yes. And we have a special guest who is going to run this podcast and we, are his subjects, and I'd like to welcome back to the pod, the Skeptical Futurist, Stuart Candy himself. Welcome back into the pod.
Stuart Candy: Thanks very much, Peter. Glad to be here. It's good to see the whole crew in one place.
Peter Hayward: Yes, we don't. We do socialize as a group, but yeah, mass recordings is not something we do. So we're in your capable. Experiential futures hands, I fully expect that you're going to take us on a few on a a bit of history and maybe a bit of futures as well, but yeah, over to you.
Stuart Candy: Great. Thank you. Yeah. Look so Peter, you didn't really share the backstory to this particular episode and this approach. So I might. I might do that if you don't mind I think the story is that when you all invited me on the first time which is again we were just talking about this before that the mics went live.
I don't have a month and year in mind, but I know it was pre pandemic. So ancient history effectively. At the end, when you asked if I had any questions for you, I asked you, I don't know how many dozens of episodes you were in at that point, but I asked what you'd learned from doing it because I thought it was a really interesting continue to think it's a really interesting experiment that you collectively have undertaken and you said, Something along the lines of, yeah, that's a great question.
Maybe we should devote that, devote an episode to it for a special occasion. And so that special occasion has now lo these many years and many episodes later finally arrived. And so the tables have turned and I'm. You described me as a special guest, but I think it's probably more accurate to say that I'm a guest host.
So we haven't really coordinated too much in advance. I think the listeners should know that this is going to be, a collective discovery process. But the question that I began with, or that sort of sparked this whole thing is really the same one I still have. So I'll probably ask it in a number of different ways as we go along, which is really about what you individually and severally have learned from this from this multi year experiment and service that you've rendered.
To the futures community in starting and pursuing future pod for through so many episodes and throw so many facets of our global community. But so I thought what I might do is ask you and tell me if this is redundant, but you always ask your guests to share their future stories. And I don't know if you all have had a chance to share yours.
I know that can take a while, so maybe we should preface this by saying, it's the pod, it's the potted version that I'm asking about, but it'd be great to hear from each of you and we'll just go in the same order that you introduced yourselves in what your future's story is and yeah, how you came to be in this curious line of work.
that you're in. Peter, you're on first.
Peter Hayward: Okay. I have told my story in episode two, Stuart. So I'll give the potted version, basically finding as all of our guests. So many of our guests have said, I found futures and futures found me purely serendipitous. Jan Wonderful colleagues in Australia pointed me to a new course that was opening up at a local university being run by Richard Slaughter, whose book I was reading.
I got into class one, day one with Joe Voros and two other people and Richard, and there's a nice intimidating process. Your first day in class, you're sitting on a table and you are literally within touching distance of the professor. It started me out. Somehow turned into a PhD
Stuart Candy: And Peter, just for context, what was the book, the Richard Slaughter book that you were reading at the time and what was the unique program that you found yourself in at the outset?
Futures for the Third Millennium was the book I was reading and the program was the Masters of Strategic Foresight, which was a handful. and a mouthful. So I started that. I don't think I actually finished that master's because I think midway through it, Richard switched me over and managed to get me through the University Gatekeepers into a PhD, and I think that was part of Richard's plan to go back to Laurie in Brisbane.
Peter Hayward: So yeah, and I, and so with Joe Voros, we ran the master of the master's course for 15 years. My fellow podders were all in the classroom at various times. And then when I left the university Rebecca and Mendy and we started it I just wanted to start to talk to the people I admired. This will probably morph into the episodes, but yeah, I wanted to talk to the people while I was still above ground about futures, who they were.
And that's enough about me.
Stuart Candy: No that's great, Peter. Thank you. And the genuine curiosity is always, I think, the best starting point for it for the, for a learning journey. But let me just ask one more follow up question. So in terms of context for your, Point of entry to this whole thing, what kind of disciplinary identity or what kind of a thinker were you before futures got its claws into you?
How did you identify? And I'm going to ask the same question of the others as well, because I think that's relevant to how and why you've all kind of tackled this in the ways that you have.
Peter Hayward: Economics was my major discipline. Then I added systems to that not as a formal qualification, but studied systems had a chance to spend time with practitioners.
I met Richard Haynes through that systems work and then Found foresight and then blended that out into a more critical with Richard's significant help a more integrative with the help of Ken Wilber and a psychological cultural linguistic take with my PhD with people like Susan Cook Reuter, Jane Lovinger, Jean Piaget, that kind of thing.
Stuart Candy: Yeah, excellent. Thank you. There's always more to say, but we're going to hold off there. So that's a great start. Thank you, Peter. Bec over to you. What's your potted future story? Yeah. Yeah. So just starting with my field, what I studied at university, bachelor's commerce, finance and business law.
Rebecca Mijat: I started my career in banking and finance, but soon, even just within that first year was more attracted to projects and change overall. So that was my natural navigation through for a period of time. I worked at universities as well. At the point in time that I discovered the strategic foresight course and just this concept and field of futures was when I was working at Swinburne University in the professional capacity on a large project there.
I was lucky enough within that project, because it was multi year, we had a few of us attend an executive three day program around strategy and that was where I came across Peter Rowena Morrow, and Joe Boris, so that was the intro into The world of futures and foresight and at that very time I was poking and prodding around wanting to do some additional study and was going towards an MBA, but didn't necessarily want to do an MBA.
So I was thinking about. Other things and then it was, yeah, it was just that lucky connection of being exposed to the course and it was just so thought provoking and I didn't understand it and I wanted to know more and yeah, so then I started. Started the course. And I can't believe I just quickly looked it up.
That was 11 years ago. So that was, so when I started the education side and then probably just connecting in with future pod as well. One of the last subjects within The course is thinking about how to make an impact through what we've learnt and taught. How do we actually make an impact in the world?
And so my project at that time was thinking about and I'm not going to do his justice because it was probably about nine years ago. Now I'm trying to think about exactly what I covered, but it was around the concept of bringing together the voices and having interviews with people from across the field.
And at that point in time podcasts were an earlier medium to test that out. And so a few of us at that time it was Mendy Urie Peter Hayward Anna Tiqua. We, we came together to brainstorm and kick off doing something, which was the.
First batch of episodes, which was about 10, 11 in studio recordings where we learned from scratch how to actually record and yeah. DIYA podcast. Yeah. And what year was that first batch Bec? Just for to place it on a timeline. It's a good question. I think it would have been about 20. Oh, how long has it been?
Probably. I think we launched probably 2016.
Peter Hayward: We launched December, 2017.
Rebecca Mijat: Oh, there you go. Thank you. Yeah. Great. Thanks Bec
Stuart Candy: Excellent. Reanna I think you're next.
Reanna Brown: Thanks. As I was listening to Peter and Bec then I thought, I think I became a futurist because I couldn't help it.
Like all vocations, I think I, it has a sense of inevitability, even though I didn't even know it existed. So the other thing I think, which is a random thing to share, but a true thing is that I think I have a nervous system that's very hardwired for futures. So a therapist once said to me, you're constantly scanning your environment.
And I said, that's exactly what I do as a profession. And she goes, of course, that's what we do as a profession. But if I really think back to how I ended up with the pod or just in futures in general, I think there's a couple of key questions that have just permeated all of my practice and the work I've been doing.
And I think that's constantly asking questions of, Says who? So I grew up in a remote part of Queensland and your future was very closed. If you were a woman, it was, three or four kind of options that you had from raising children to being a hairdresser, to being a teacher or a nurse. So there wasn't many other options.
So early on, I had a sense of questioning of says who and why and it didn't, Really manifest, or maybe it has had the thread through all of my career to date, which is three waves. So I actually have a background, an early background in elite sport both working and as an athlete. But part of my exit of elite sport was constantly the questioning of says who and why playing women's sport.
It was the constant questioning of. Will says, who says that? What, why do we need to borrow a future from men's sport? Asking all the very annoying questions, then move into a professional space. And it was really centered around maybe planning policy, particularly around workforce, but the same kind of questions was like, says who and why, and also all of these changes emerging, but we're not doing anything about it.
Why not? And that was the question that really led me to Studying futures. So originally at the university of the sunshine coast. So with Jose and Marcus it's a hail. And for me, it was the question of, there must be more methodical way to explore what's changing and how that might inform action in the present.
Then I eventually connected, moved to Melbourne with work, eventually connected with because I realized there was a masters at Swinburne and I rang Peter. It was such a it was such a Peter conversation at the time. I think. Peter was running the program and I said, I don't know whether I should do the masters.
And he said it's about to, there's one last cohort or something, and you're about to miss it. So do you either do it or you don't, it was clink hung up the phone. And I just shared like a 10 minute dialogue of, the tensions of, should I do this or not? And he shared that.
And then he said, you need a network. You need other people around you. And doing that program through Swinburne was very critical from a career and just a personal kind of perspective. But the entry to the pod, and then going back to your early Question sorry, Stuart around, I almost see my own career archetype is partially the rebel and the jester.
So how are we illuminating the conversations that we aren't having? And for me, like all futurists, we work in different spaces, but I'm really deeply curiously interested about the future of work and workers and particularly playing those two archetypal roles in my work. And going back to those questions of says who and.
There must be better ways. So ended up joining the pod quite late in part as just a ritual excuse to connect with the three people and that in and of itself is just a lovely, great thing in a busy society. In part because it has fundamentally helped shape my practice. I've been in this space for now about 12 years, but really listening to Not only just the dilemmas and the way that different practitioners are thinking about it, but seeing how other practitioners have really Embraced their own Mutancy and how that comes through their practice and whether that's for Amanda with an arts background or someone's got a policy Background or whatever it may be.
Stuart Candy: So Reanna let me just Make sure that we all got that word. You said embrace their own mutancy.
Reanna Brown: That is a phrase that Came squarely from Jose Ramos early in my career and for me, it was such a good way of not disowning. So I have a background, a weird background, which I think is usual useful including times working in HR and organizational design and development, but embracing that has meant that I'm.
My own practice is deeply curious about the before and after futures work, how we think about change and then how we actually act come Monday. But yeah, and then last thing I'd say is. I'm also just have an audio obsession because I think from a future's perspective, the one thing that is absent in audio is its own power of it.
It lacks the visual. So you have to fill in the blanks, your imagination. And I just love that about audio and audio storytelling and hearing this.
Stuart Candy: Fantastic. Thanks, Reanna all right, Amanda, you knew this was coming. You're on.
Amanda Reeves: I did. I did. And I've been so busy enjoying everyone else's stories that I've gotten distracted on thinking about my own, which feels a very true thing.
So I've had, how did I find my way to futures? I would, and I guess in addressing that as well as addressing sort of career identity, I think that a lot of what has happened has been, earlier in my life I would have called, Described it as being quite chaotic and unpredictable. But the more I lean into this sort of space, the more I'm seeing that there's a lot of emergence and there's a lot of synchronicity that comes through as well.
And sometimes we do things and we're not entirely sure why we're drawn to it, but it's only through the doing that we get the, that moment of Oh, this is home and this is where I belong. So for me, I had my previously chaotic now emergent story is that I, after school, I went to art school.
I decided not to go to university. I just wanted to make art and I just wanted to be in that process of creating and experiencing and not talking about it, but just doing it. Which was wonderful but it doesn't, didn't particularly pay the bills. So I ended up doing, getting a day job. I was working in the health, in healthcare.
That was one of the major employees where I grew up. And I very quickly got a reputation for being that person who keeps asking, why are we doing things the way that we're doing things. And rather than have to deal with me constantly in that role, when there's other things they wanted me to be doing, I eventually wiggled my way into doing change work.
Had the great fortune of being able to help redesign some services that were really close to my heart. I also then got a really exciting opportunity to do a secondment or in organizational redesign and development. And that was just fabulous. And that was when I moved down to Melbourne after that.
And I had a tricky decision to make because the level of health care I was working in New South Wales doesn't actually exist in Victoria. It's, I won't tell you the whole governance story, but basically there wasn't a clear path for where do I fit down here? Do I either go down and work in particular hospitals or do I go up and work at the state level government stuff?
So I went up and I spent a few years working in government, which was an experience. And it was while I was there and I was. doing workforce workforce planning work. And we were talking about what kind of, what's emerging and what kind of things do we need to put in place to make sure we've got the right workforce coming through in 10 years time?
Who do we need to get to start studying next year so that we've got the right number of? All the different professions. And I, this would have been around 2015 and I, it was a very exciting time. I don't know if you remember that we were very excited about technology at that time. We had self driving cars coming through.
We had CRISPR emerging. We had all, like all of this really cool, like 3d printing, getting into healthcare. And so I'm seeing all of this stuff happening while we're having very Narrow conversations about what we thought the future would be. We were talking about the big trends that we were already feeling the impacts of, but I'm sitting there looking and going, there's all of this stuff happening out here that could have a really big impact.
And I don't know how to bracket that in. And then I had a very serendipitous emergent date. I went on a first date with someone who was currently studying the masters. And he hates it when I tell this story, so I'll do it in a very abstract way. We went on a date and I was talking about a book I was reading.
I was reading Black Swan at the time. And I was talking about how I was reading that and trying to think about these things. And he goes, Oh, that's a book that we're talking about. In my program. I'm like, what program is this? I need to be there. And so after spending a good 10 years just refusing to go into university, I signed up essentially on a whim.
Peter was in the first cohort that went through that program. Reanna and I were in the last cohort taken through that program. And it was such an extraordinary thing because by the time I finished studying, I was far less interested in this whole idea of what kind of technologies are coming and what could be shaping us in that way.
And I was far more interested in how do we make sense of the future and what is the future that we're projecting and what are we seeing and what are our blind spots and really bringing looking at that subjective experience. So where I'm at now in this kind of weird emergencies, I'm looking at. I've gone back to school.
I'm in my second year of studying art therapy, where I'm also doing a lot of art based research and really looking at how can we do more embodied ways? How can we use more of our sense making and our meaning making to really tap into what is happening and what are we putting forward and how are we What is it that we're feeling?
Stuart Candy: And just to put the icing on that cake, Amanda how did you find your way to the, to FuturePod?
Amanda Reeves: Funnily enough after, before FuturePod existed, I had coffee with Peter one day and I said, Hey Peter, I really missed the conversations we'd have. Around class, not necessarily in class, we do some sparring around it.
I said, I really miss those. You should do a podcast so I can still listen to you talking. He said, okay, you organize it. I laughed and said, I will not. And so then two years later, once he had it up and running, he's do you actually want to get involved? I'm like yeah, actually I do.
Stuart Candy: Yeah, that's great. What a. What a fascinating collection of people you've got. Yeah. Embracing your mutancy and making it safe for the rest of us to embrace ours in public, which is which is a lovely service. So I probably should have said at the start in terms of, Of my approach to this or how I was thinking about having the conversation that I'd like it to be as now that we're, halfway through, but I have this notion that this conversation we're having can and should be of as much interest to people who Coming to future pub for the first time through the doorway of the 200th episode, as well as, the many listeners that you've earned over the years and the 2, the 199 prior episodes.
But with that kind of in mind, we will eventually get to questions about what your favorite. Episodes are, or what your most highly recommended points of entry for people who are new to this would be, but I don't want to start there. I'd rather end there. And I think, yeah, as I said earlier, this question of what you've learned in the process
Reanna you mentioned the the kind of.
The craft and the properties of audio as a medium. And so I'm going to take it as read that you've all learned quite a lot about podcasting by the hard way by just doing it over the years. But and I suppose there is a question related to that which is what have you learned about podcasting in relation to futures people specifically.
So this lives in a landscape. Of many options that many things that people can point their ears towards out there. What have you learned about conversations with futurists by having a couple of hundred of them and maybe I'll we'll go in reverse order. Amanda, do you want to take a first bite at that?
Amanda Reeves: I sure do. I think the first thing that comes to mind is just how many ways there are to talk about our work, to make sense of this work and to explain what it is. I know that one of the, one of the standard questions that we'll discuss with people is how do you explain what it is you do to people who don't necessarily understand it?
Yeah. And I never get tired of hearing people's answers of that. And I don't think I've come across anyone who is rehashing or repeating what someone else says. I remember when we were studying really early on, we were asked the question to how do you explain that to other people? And how, what it's I'm nine years in now and I still feel stumped by it some days.
So that's absolutely one of my favorite things about just the breadth and diversity. Yeah, that's terrific. The idea that there are as many ways of being a futurist as there are futurists puts that firmly in, in my mind anyway in the category of the voice of the artist or the writer, or, even the stand up comic, although our skill set may be different, but the idea of it being highly dependent on the person really rings true.
Stuart Candy: Reanna how about you? What have you learned about? About futurists and podcasting with futurists from doing this over and over.
Reanna Brown: I think probably on the back of what Amanda was saying, just this, general the fact that there is no, there's probably a pattern, but there is no kind of clear cut sense on what the work is, what its boundaries are, which I secretly love, to be honest is also indicative of the characters that tend to do the work, I think.
And I go back to this notion of the mutancy because part of what I love about A lot of Futurists is that we've just come from such random backgrounds and I love listening in real time to someone talk about their story and then as they're doing that, realize their practice and how the practice has always been there.
I think that's a really cool thing of listening to the work of a Futurist almost makes sense. We only know the patterns about our practice when you start looking back at it. Yeah. It's usually backwards facing. I think that sense of to have given the mutancy all of the different archetypes that we tend to play.
So there's the rebels and then there's some of the sages and they all hold very different spaces, which again, I absolutely love the diversity of that. One small thing that did come to mind when you asked that question was, I always noticed that When you ask a futurist about the what of change, we sometimes initially freeze, even though it's the nature of the work to be constantly engrossed in change.
So I tend to ask a slightly different question of what are you paying attention to and why? But even futurists under those that intense question of trying to get the future precisely right, not that's the work, almost freeze. And I almost listened to that moment in every conversation. But yeah, interesting kind of characters making sense of their practice as they're talking through their practice, I think is really cool.
Stuart Candy: Just a quick follow up on that, Reanna because you've been doing this through a period you collectively have been doing this through a period during which interest in futures has really been growing. And one of the, there are several facets to that, but a number of them include the processes of institutionalizing and taming futures and of it becoming, more, there are more.
Credentials to be found out there. There's more kind of push towards I don't want to bias your answer too much here but really what I'm wondering about is whether that profile, the sort of the outsider profile, I'm paraphrasing, tell me if I'm off base, but the kind of the trickster and the sage and the jester, these are fringe characters by definition and the diversity that diversity of response that.
Amanda referred to is also a function of people kind of making of themselves a different kind of futurist. That's, unique to them in each case. And I wonder if, as you're plotting the evolution of the field, which I think is what you're incidentally doing through this project, whether that was intended or not, is that Changing it.
Reanna Brown: If I think about my own practice, very pragmatically, I didn't refer to myself as a futurist before the pandemic. And that wasn't just because the tension of who's a futurist and I'm a foresight practitioner or not. It was also that the market didn't really recognize that work outside of pop futures and trend conversations.
So I was a a workforce strategy, business strategy person that just happened to have this stealth kind of entire background and education as a side benefit. And then since the pandemic, it's become like you're saying, it's the institutionalization of this has meant. That the term futurist has a different understanding.
I still rejected it. And then it was actually a good friend, Anna Takia. So one of the original potters who said a provocation of you should be reclaiming it, reclaim the term. And what does it actually mean? And show your practice as a version of what it could be what a futurist could be. Yeah, I think we're capturing that.
Story, even if you just literally looked at the metadata of that question of how do people describe themselves and watching how that evolves in the language and the terms and the titles, I think would be an interesting evolution.
Stuart Candy: Thank you. Bec how about you? How do you see it?
Rebecca Mijat: Yeah, so my mind went to more the practical side and just some of those personality and character traits that have come through as we've interviewed and overall Most of our guests have been not hesitant, but just not self promoting.
They don't realize how good they actually are, how smart, how much they value they actually offer what they're saying, their thoughts, their contribution overall. So there's always this hesitation to Really? Like you want to interview me? What would, what would I say? It's probably that's one of the things that's probably people being interviewed for the very first time is a really high percentage overall.
Yeah, that's yeah, questioning what would they contribute? And yeah, just overall, I think in terms of the field We're not that great at self promoting, we're just not self promoters overall. Yeah, and I think one other thing that, that came to mind too was the funny thing, I think it's often with podcasts too, and potentially it comes back to people not having been interviewed before, but no one likes to listen to their voice back again.
So in terms of offers to do some edits or have a listen back and let us know the response back is it'll be fine. No, that's good. Yeah. There's edits of the text rather than listening to themselves again. And the horror that brings onto the the person, the individual to actually listen to themselves.
Yeah, the point about a reticence around self promotion, I think is interesting and might be surprising to some listeners who are unfamiliar with futures, if they have encountered it primarily through, labels that people give themselves on Twitter or whatever that's called now or on LinkedIn or something, because there is a sort of.
Hanging out the shingle with or without, whatever basis behind it, but can you just say a bit more about that, about the kind of, not so much about the self promotion site, but about the character of. The field as revealed by the people who you've spoken to about it.
That's really tricky question. I think it's interesting, because it is international now too. So when we first started, we had the physical studio. We were down in Carlton and Melbourne in a physical studio. So if we had any non Melbourne futurists around, they were coming in for a visit. So we grabbed them. And then once coronavirus hit, the pandemic hit, we were able to pivot to have worldwide.
guests. And we went online with the recordings. And there's little nuances of course in different where different futurists come from where they've been educated. So there's, it's a real melting, it's a real melting pot. And then there's people like your yourself, Stuart, who have a really broad mix of studying in Hawaii, spending time in Canada or in the U S that's really hard to connect any cultural aspects of a futurist to yeah, to, to how they're practicing and how they've taught as well.
I think overall what I can say as a thread is. Huge generosity. So no matter who we've interviewed huge generosity in giving to students or peers or just connecting, giving time, giving really considerate thought to conversations is something that is just absolutely consistent throughout the not 199 guests.
That we actually have had on as well. And probably some common things like curiosity drive to, to help others. So it's beyond themselves as well. And just That desire and the appetite to, to learn and consistently learn and actually never be satiated by that learning process as well.
So that sort of, I think comes with that curiosity and that yeah, openness to know that you don't know, a little drop in the ocean. So much to learn from so many people around.
Stuart Candy: Yeah, thanks Bec. And Peter, how about, what's your perspective on all this?
Peter Hayward: I'd echo a lot of what others have said.
I'll be outrageous just for once. One thing I have detected and it's, it is this point that the delight and the fear that guests have to tell their story and to hear themselves. And, If I was to play sociologist, it would seem, if I place futurists within a time epoch of their practice, it strikes me that a lot of the 70s, 80s, particularly 80s, 90s, the 80s, 90s generation of practitioner worked very hard to fit into that world, to be methodologically solid, pragmatic.
Useful, integrative of the way that strategy leadership policy was done. And because we know from the stories they tell and how difficult it often was to get taken seriously. There wasn't. Enough disruption for people to start to lose confidence in the status quo. And then of course, we move into that period, the period starting with the noughties, so to speak, where the hammer blows on the status quo.
Just made it to the point that people now didn't have to justify why we needed foresight, why we needed futures. And the lovely thing for me is the sort of realization that the generations coming through now, back to Rhianna's point, can embrace their uniqueness, their hybridity, their mutancy. And it's actually not a disadvantage, it's a positive advantage.
And I think, yeah, I think that's the broad sweep and people that I think to some extent it's if I pump up future pods tires, it's that people now come on to future pod. If they know anything about FuturePod, they know they're going to have an answer to the first question. And, rather, in the early days, I'm sure I had people who'd never heard their story, or they'd never thought to tell their story.
Let alone have to tell it to some person at the end of a microphone, but then to listen to their story back. It's this thing of, we obviously have a biography that we tell ourself. We, the notion that we have a stable biography is one of those things that we can debate probably after the podcast.
And then this sort of self authoring, self legitimizing, self deprecating And yet, I suspect now that the generations coming through now and in the future, they're into all this, they're into the plasticity of who I want to be, how do I want to tell my story, gee I'm going to tell it different today and I see a much more readiness to be honest and to be themselves, clearly in an environment where they feel safe.
It's okay to do this. It's okay to call myself a futurist. I'm not gonna call myself a future. It's okay to be commercial or not commercial. It's okay for me to use experiential dance or use methodological scenario.
Stuart Candy: Yeah. It's, it strikes me, Peter that and maybe this is something, a note that you have struck in some of your.
Previous couple of hundred episodes, but I think we owe a debt of gratitude to those generations of futurists who preceded us before it was cool or before it was self evidently a worthwhile, as I think of it, windmill to tilt at, and so the fact that people can embrace their mutancy because there's a, because there's something to stand on.
There, there are some generations of shoulders that we inherit, I think is worth bearing in mind. Things really have shifted. Even as recently as the pandemic as a number of you have pointed out Peter, just staying with you for a moment. I wonder if. If I could draw you out a little bit on how this experiment or this enterprise of future pod compares and contrasts with other kind of profiles of futurists that have come before.
And I'm thinking here of the published ones, like Alvin Toffler's, collection, the futurists in 1972 and the Coates and Jarrett one from, I think, 1989. I'm what futurists. Believe and the Sohail and Ayatollah's edited collection from futures journal in 1996, what futurists think. And there might be others that aren't coming to mind, but those are all those come from an earlier media escape for one thing, all pre podcast but how does future pod sit alongside those other kind of collections of snapshots of the field and of people's Biographies or autobiographies.
Peter Hayward: Great question, Stuart. You should get into podcast.
I think it's a radical discontinuity the way I describe it. I think as I look at where FuturePod and It's rich across 200 episodes from an initial list of people that I thought we should target to who we're now talking to. As a field, we are getting younger to the people we're speaking to. We're becoming much more diverse.
There are people that are, almost don't even need to, they just use future's ideas. They use, they're now, futures tools, futures concepts are raw material for creative acts. They can be creative acts, they can be innovative acts. But there's a, there's almost a new, there's almost a new generation of people that simply appropriate ideas, concepts frameworks, because it's what they can do with it.
They can find useful ways to do it. I think back to the things you spoke about, and again, back to my earlier point, Weep They, they emphasize methodological soundness, and I suspect with, I suspect while that's still very important, I think it's very important for a narrow part of what the community does.
And I think other things like
I suppose you'd say equity as to, the equity question, the fairness questions the, I actually think the philosophical is coming back big time. To the core of what we do, not to say we won't have methodological and it's not, of course it is, and it continues to be, and a lot of people are going to pay well for it, but I think the hermeneutic and the soteriological and the emancipatory are in some ways becoming for many people who I loosefully refer we loosely refer to as the community.
Those are far more important than. Issues of, methodological soundness and that kind of thing.
Stuart Candy: Yeah. Speaking of the community, I'm struck by the fact that there's, we have four people five in a way, if I can be an honorary Melburnian, because that's what I call home when I come back to Australia.
Five Melbourne people. And this initiative happens to cut to to come from there within Australia, but you have listeners all over the place and interlocutors all over the place. And I wonder, this is a I suppose a chance to. Map in just a shade more detail than we have in the last 10 or 20 minutes of conversation who's been in the conversation so far, and also where you sense the gaps are, either that you aspire to filling in or that you realize you can't and therefore other people to do.
But, so this is a kind of question. That I'm putting to all of you in panel style. So if someone has something to say, please just, and I'll throw it to you, but I'm curious about that, about the kind of how you would characterize the map of the 200 where it's strongest and to what extent that, reflects a kind of.
Some sort of reality about the futures field or whether that's about just who your closest colleagues happen to be situate us future pod in a wider world.
Amanda Reeves: I can start the conversation. So I think in listening to Peter's response to that last question, I was thinking a lot about the materiality of doing podcasting and how that also, I think, really impacts that experience of When you're writing a book, you have, there, there's a clear and finite sense to it, and there's a product that gets delivered.
And what gets in the book is what gets in the book. What I'm loving about the podcast is that because it's an open ended project, we do have that opportunity to keep stretching the limits and redefining what that is and what's happening and noticing who has a voice, who has a seat at the table, who has a voice and who hasn't been included.
And I think that's been an evolving conversation for us. And one of the things that I really have found interesting and particularly enjoyable. I don't podcast nearly as much as Peter does, but I always love thinking about who are some of the people at the edges. So some of the people that I think have a lot to share with the futures community that might not necessarily identify themselves as futurists first and foremost, but have a collegial sensibility, I think that means that they would be of interest and value to talk to.
And so I really enjoy looking at who is at the edges, who are the people that don't necessarily identify as futurists, but I'm interested in their work, or I'm hearing about their work from other people in the space and trying to Open up the tent a bit broader to invite in other thinkers.
Stuart Candy: Thank you. Yeah. On that topic, how do you decide whether someone's an interviewee or not?
Peter Hayward: It's a very rigorous methodological process. That's proprietary. Highly. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. So it's idiosyncratic, some mystery. Idio, I suppose it's iio. Obviously, put seriously if Somebo turn it back the other way. If somebody wants to speak to us, then reach out to us. Yeah. Great. I find it I find it lovely that people think. That we've gone past the point of people being embarrassed to say something to simply saying, look, FuturePod's a platform, it's a platform community. If you think you want to use the platform, then get in touch with us and we'll see if we can. I'll have a go at the gaps and the gaps are pretty clear to me, Stuart.
The largest population centers of the world the least represented in FuturePod once again, we know that the history of futures, while the future is open and democratic, the field of futures in the community is not representative for most of the people on the planet. And we shouldn't be surprised that when you, when we recognize the publishers the academics They are generally male, generally white, generally based in Europe, America, Australia.
Handful, very exciting, emerging futurists in Africa. India is one of those that we're still on the lookout and still open to anybody who would come in and talk about, Subcontinent futures from any perspective. And that's one of the reasons we, yes, we are an English speaking podcast, but one of the reasons we encourage our guests to let us put a transcript of their podcast on their webpage is so people can translate the things.
And of course, China. China, South, as I say, Asia, again, very, in terms of where the bulk of the people are on the planet, only a sprinkling of voices in the community. Yeah. Yeah.
Reanna Brown: An adjacent thought I think to that is a curiosity of also whether the context is shaping the who, the how, and the why of the pod.
I Peter mentioned that the OGs in the field very method focused and that was very appropriate given the context at the time and trying to build legitimacy in the space and in very corporate heavy space, totally appropriate. Now I think it's a question of what are the issues or challenges for which futures may be an answer or a response to?
And are those challenges about change? Are they about radical imagination? Is it about a somatic understanding of how we change? And then thereafter there is like a natural kind of, Convergence of people that are anchoring around that. So we do have conversations about somatic futures. We do have conversations about art as a key practice in this space.
I think the context is an interesting thing that is shaping the breadth of who, what, and why. And a really tiny, hilarious example of, I'm doing a piece of work with futurist soon to be on the pod, James Allen. And there's been wild winds at the moment and really destructive weather in Victoria. And we were online and he, and we were talking about some scanning stuff about, literally about an Excel spreadsheet and some scanning insights.
And he said, can you hold on because I have to go and put fuel in the generator because the power's gone out because of all of the extreme weather that's going on. So we joke about What does futures work look like, at work in the ruins? Like literally what are we doing? And we're talking about the very things that we're experiencing at the same time.
So I'm really interested in how the context is generating a whole community and practice.
Stuart Candy: I don't want to be too navel gazing here, but I do want to just ask the question about whether there's some, is there any significance or anything to any comment to make about. About this project coming out of Australia of all places.
Peter Hayward: I'll jump in. There have been podcasts about the future coming out of America and North America for quite a while. I don't think podcasts about the future are unusual. There aren't lots of them. I think a lot of it, I think a lot of the initial impetus was that by its nature, Australia, we tend to be good networking type people because we are so far from everyone.
And I unabashedly lent on people that I already knew through. My infrequent travels, but, Federation, APF, Richard Slaughter, a lot of snowballing when I, we'd interview someone and then I'd ask them to chase someone up. I can remember when I can tell you a kind of a story. What I mean was I got to Clem Bezold who I didn't I, sorry, I.
I met Clem once, and so that was enough of motivation to say to Clem, I want to talk to you. Do you remember me? He was far too polite to say no. And then I realized that Clem knew Hazel Henderson. And so I said would you mind introducing me to Hazel Henderson? Cause I want to talk to Hazel.
And generosity, as has already been said, of course he asked. And so I suppose there's that, I'm not going to say Australians are up front and just get on with it. And then we basically get in people's faces, but to some extent we do. We just, I didn't, I just, we just bowl up to people and say, I want to talk to you.
Yeah. And the generosity, kindness, just, they're so polite that people say almost no one says no.
Rebecca Mijat: I think, building on what Peter was just saying, I think that, look, it's not necessarily why it started here, but one of the features that I'm discovering as I do more work with people from non Australian backgrounds is that we do have a very casual and informal culture and in a way of relating that can be a little abrupt or a footing for some cultures, but there is like a real sense of, being able to, just connect with other people and have a fairly casual and comfortable conversation without worrying too much about hierarchy, without worrying too much about formalities.
Like you can, I think we do have a strength culturally in being able to create. Comfortable, cosy spaces where you can talk about things pretty openly. And I think that's lended itself to the pod. Yeah. And just to add to that as well, where my mind was going the practicality of actually pulling together a podcast, it takes a lot of time and effort more than what you originally think when you get started.
So I think overall as a team as well, we just had the ability to roll up our sleeves. leaves and all give things a go and that lack of hierarchy to be able to navigate and test and learn all together. Maybe that's more of a Melbourne culture compared to some other locations around the world, but it's hard to segregate ourselves from that because we are in it and more used to doing that.
And it's supposed to, just enjoying each other's company and time in doing that too. So it's I think that sort of entrepreneurial bent is often in the Melbourne culture as well. Can I just add something else which just struck me, which is to give the call out to Richard Slaughter, because Richard, in creating the Master of Foresight at Swinburne, it landed like a bucket of water in a desert with people that were thirsty for something.
And. So when Futures in Foresight landed at Swinburne, it wasn't the only thing like that, but there's it brought everybody together. And the way that Richard started the teaching, which was basically built around dialogue and inquiry. And which is the way we taught the thing. Really, I think the reason the pods kept going, and this is I'm going to speak on behalf of everyone else.
We had such a good time in the classroom together. This was this project that Bec says, we had, we found time for it because it was important. We also found time just because it was good to hang around with. Everybody in the course, everybody in the pod did the course. I don't think, I don't think that's a coincidence.
Reanna Brown: And our favorite one of our favorite experiences of the course was the the kind of adjacent conversation of Peter would just. Maybe you've had enough for the day and he just said, here's an open board, ask your questions and write, discuss underneath. And then it would just be off the top of his head.
And I feel like this is an extension of our favorite sessions where we could just ask those questions and have an excuse to just have a really interesting dialogue.
Stuart Candy: Okay, I think I've got 2 more questions for you all. You know what the last 1 is. So the 2nd last 1 is there anything else that has surprised you or that you've learned in this process that you want to share,
Peter Hayward: Can I give you a small disappointment?
Stuart Candy: Yeah,
Peter Hayward: one of the things that in the two, one of the, one of the products, one of the forms of future pod that I am still very enthusiastic about is the conversation. There's, there is nothing wrong with the guest interview where we get to meet a person and find out who they are and how they work and everything else.
But then to go to the next stage of saying, okay, let's now just get a couple of people together who might know one another or not know one another. And let's have a generative emergent bootstrapped conversation amongst futurists. Cause I actually think, I keep saying this, the content of what we say I think is of interest, but I think the way that we get to those things, the way we hold conversational spaces is, I think, one of our most unique attributes that we can talk around complexity without closing it down.
We can, we have to hold hybridity and weirdness to not lose, the gold. And yet, when I put that to guests at the end of an interview, they say, yeah, great, it would be fantastic. But it's difficult to get them to jump on cold and just Have a conversation that is based on what the other person says.
And yet I know them, they have these conversations, you go to conferences and you have those fascinating conversations. We didn't got 15 minutes for coffee and you start talking to someone and 15 minutes has gone and the next session starting. And sometimes you miss the next session because you're having such a good conversation.
And I want to capture those. I think they are unique. There's not a great enthusiasm. And that is an interesting question in itself.
Stuart Candy: Yeah. A hot mic is a, is also a bucket of water, Peter , but not in the desert. More like a bucket of water on the enthusiasm that someone might have for for a more freewheeling exploration. But perhaps there's a seed in that for future iterations of future pod, future pad if you like. In the sense of springboard into the unknown conversational territory.
Peter Hayward: Of course, Stuart the mic is never hot in future pod. We always edit and nothing ever gets in a podcast that the guest is not happy about.
Stuart Candy: What about others of you? What have you, I don't know, learned or come to, or what's what's this brought to you as a, as an experiment that you've devoted so much to?
Rebecca Mijat: Interesting. One element. So we all volunteer and our time effort energy. We have a few patrons, a few really long term community patrons who donate two, 3 a month to ensure that we've got to have enough money to make sure our website's able to be published and up and running and the different tools that we need to use to create the actual episodes as well that we have enough money to subscribe to them.
But we have always found that's flat lined at a certain amount. I think it might be 38 or 40 patrons that, that we have. So It's an interesting thing. We know that over time, we've grown our audience. It's potentially plateaued but and we are interested in thinking about how do we break out into a different audience or just grow that audience in general to people who potentially not even come across Futures and Foresight before But the mechanics of an organization and needing to fund and wanting to grow and the finance side of that is an interesting learning, I think, in itself.
So we're self sufficient, but we just don't necessarily have the ability to grow and test and learn and do some really cool things because of that funding aspect that I think We hoped would be there because we know, and we get, Peter gets lovely messages. We get lovely messages about how much people enjoy the actual episodes.
But yeah, I think it's just interesting that listening versus committing to contributing in some way so that the project can continue.
Stuart Candy: Yeah, no, I think that's a point well taken back. And I also love the fact that you're performing one of the, one of the important meta lessons of this whole process, which is that as much as we mutate as futurists, we also carry with us.
Our original training. You're flying the flag for banking and finance, and it continues to be an important lens on the whole endeavor as high minded as other kinds of lenses might be in the mix here. Reanna Amanda, thoughts about what you've learned.
Reanna Brown: I was probably just on the back of that.
A thought that literally just came to mind of just a personal thought of. Every time I'm involved in, or listening to, or having conversations with the pod it is a very life affirming reminder that this type of stuff does feel like the right work and the useful work to do. And yet, you get entangled in the everyday whatever, you know this, the entrapment of modern day work.
And for me, it's what I've learned is that it is a meta lesson on thinking about how I move through the future of work and how the future work through moves through me is this constant tension between. I know it feels like such good work and such important work, and yet here I am entangled in scheduling calendar apps for whatever, or whatever the kind of day to day work is.
Just the thought that kind of came to me, it was such a good, perfect bit of lesson for me and thinking about, What feels like the right work to do in these times. And then Bec raises a very fundamental questions of you have to do some of the work that keeps you paid and keeps the lights on.
So it's just a key tension of our time. How do we keep the lights on and do the stuff that feels like the right work? Or how can that be not a false binary? That's our perpetual question as a group. Yeah. No, important reality check for those people who might be listening to this as new to futurist practice and and putting it on a pedestal of some sort of, like you're just having sublime thoughts all day, every day.
And that's it. Yeah, no there's plenty of unglamorous stuff to keep us grounded.
Stuart Candy: Amanda.
Amanda Reeves: Yeah. I think for me, the biggest thing that I've learned from FuturePod, it's, is, it's really helped me to grow into my own capacity. I do a lot of work in facilitation and in having conversations with people in a professional setting.
And It's been a really wonderful experience to think about, okay, how can we take the same sort of, we've got some key marks that we try and touch into in each conversation, but each conversation has a life of its own. And for me, it's been a really it's opened up opportunities for me to talk to people that I otherwise might never have, which is a real privilege and a real blessing.
But it's also. really helped, done a huge amount for me for being able to tune my ear and to listen to what's happening, what's here, what's interesting, what wants to be cracked into a little further. And I feel like the benefit of that is really reverberated throughout all the work that I do. And it was really unexpected.
The one that I'm so glad to have had and building on what we talked about before about some of our guests being really nervous and being like, Oh, I don't know, should I, I had massive imposter syndrome when I joined the pod, I was like, who am I to be in this seat and having these conversations.
And I remember the first few conversations I had, I shook terribly. And you can hear my voice quavering. I was so nervous about having that opportunity. Yeah, it's such a wonderful thing to be able to do that and yeah, get to a place of being more comfortable in your voice and how you stand.
Stuart Candy: Okay so there is a last question, as you're all in this reflective mode looking back on, On the first 200 episodes of FuturePod, I want to invite each of you to share it might be a favorite or it might be a starting point that you recommend, because, that's quite an intimidating catalog for, especially for a new listener to contemplate.
But but if you can each kind of provide an entry point and a reason why you recommend it to listeners. Who wants to go first? Yeah, Bec please.
Rebecca Mijat: Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy to go first. One that comes to mind is episode number nine. And I think it actually might be our first international episode that we recorded.
It's with Peter Bishop. And he covers off his 30 years of teaching futures and foresight over in Houston. It was in Houston, correct? That's yeah. And teaching the program, starting that program, teaching It overall. So there's lots of great summary information in there around the education side and the tooling side of futures and foresight.
There's so many different episodes, but that's the one that comes to mind. It's a nice little crunchy, crunchy one to start with. Fantastic.
Peter Hayward: I'll jump in. Look, if you want to start and we can add these to the show notes, I don't feel you've got to have the numbers, but the, not surprisingly the great futures educators often give you the best grounding in the field.
So I played a Bishop, Mandy Hines, Oliver Markley, Jay Gary, Wendy Schultz, Richard slaughter. So hail and Tula. Marcus posse. Jim Dator was just so generous in his ideas and where they came from and when he gave materials. And as we have show notes attached to each speaker and often we get them going to tremendous trouble.
To give us more information than they covered my special episode that I do want to talk about because again, the legacy aspect of FuturePod was really important to me. Again, I'm the oldest person here, so I'm allowed I'm allowed to be interested in the legacy and if you want to hear what legacy is about, then the 134th podcast was, Sohail Inayatullah and Robert Burke call the Masterclass in the executive education and the back story was Rob was dying and we all knew Rob was dying and Rob and Sohail spent quarter of a century working together teaching the next generation of leaders in Australia.
And they love one another, and they love their work. And in that podcast, you hear masters, and you hear love and care. And it was such an honor to be sitting in that conversation, just listening to these. Because that's the thing, the work here is heart work more than head work. And it's great to hear heart.
Reanna Brown: Yeah, thank you, Peter. That was a beautiful episode. I know both Sahel and Robert. So yeah, beautiful episode. I think I do this weird thing where I never listen to anything in order and it's usually based on what I'm curious about at the time. So I'll go back and find the pod because I'm interested in complexity or whatever it may be.
So part of what I would say, trust your senses based on what you're interested in at the time. If you're looking to get into foresight, then you might. have a, an assemblage that has Wendy Schultz and Marie Conway and Andrew Currie. If you're looking to think about design and Stuart, it might be your conversations, Anna Takia.
Sometimes it's starting with that curiosity because then you tend to both grok what they're saying, but really retain it more because it has such a high need. Probably two conversations that specifically come to mind for me one wasn't Peter touched on this early, it was episode 16. It was a future pod conversation with Raoul and Miller and John Sweeney.
And there was a lot of challenging questions about the practice, should the field abandon preferred futures? What's the efficacy of alternative futures? And for me, what I found really powerful is I love listening to. Audio, because it's one of my key methods for learning. And I also get to steal time is when I feel like I'm just the third person dropping into a conversation, but not quite talking and listening to those two grapple in relation to each other with practice questions for me.
is a way where we actually show almost a way through practice and societal dilemmas in which it is a dialogue and not a talking over or a knowing over someone else. So how do we have conversations that are interrelated? In reflective dialogue, not just kind of power over and needing to be a knower. And I just thought that was just such a good, almost like the content was great, but also the actual practice and the way they went about it.
The other one that I really love was episode 32 and it was Zia Sardar's episode. I love listening to Zia, but he spoke about his ideas of familiar futures and the unspoken future. But the thing I loved about what he did was he spoke about and almost provoked us as a profession that we need to make a contribution to ensure that the future stays open.
And that it's not colonized by those holding power and privilege. And for me, that was a very useful. Powerful provocation professionally, because I think we tend to see, we do this, not just futurists, but generally we tend to see ourselves outside of the system, which is a very colonial view. We are of course in the system.
And one of my provocations has always been, if we're taught to stay outside the system, how's that turning out for us? I'm not sure that well, to be quite honest. So part of it is the provocation, what does it mean to do? Future's work, like the at work in the ruins kind of conversation. And I just love those provocations of the field to really rethink the impact of what we're doing.
Super honorable mention. I think of future pod in a time of crisis, because that had such like live utility of going, Oh my gosh, how do we navigate and make sense of more of what's going on. I really love Paul Higgins talking about, he, he's a he was a vet. Yeah. Paul's a good friend of mine and he was talking, he gave such great insight in his mutancy as a vet and as a futurist at the time.
And last one, I'm this notorious steward of having a 25 page appendix in my, in all of my writings. So this is a very honorable mention to A conversation I had with my dear friend, Anna Takia, because it was one of those conversations that goes where it goes, because that's where it goes.
And it went for three hours, but we had to cut it down. Big honorable mention. And I think that's one thing that's common with futurists. If you can get us to get the courage to get on the mic, it could just go anywhere. And that's the cool part about it.
Stuart Candy: No, that's great. Thank you for all the bonus. Answers there, Reanna. And also I think you answered a better question than the one I asked, which is like how do you recommend that people use FuturePod? I think that's actually a great, that's a great question. So if any of you have a further thought to add on through that lens before we wrap, please do.
But Amanda, I think it's, I think it's down to your choice now.
Amanda Reeves: , so I, I made the hard choice and just chose one because I feel if I start adding in more, I'll never do it. I never did. I read the brief. So I look and thinking about which one to recommend, like for me, I wanted to tap into that idea of, it goes where it goes and that sense of emergence that I think is so wonderful.
And one of the things I find so rewarding about the field. And so for me. The first conversation that came to mind was episode 142. And I had this wonderful chat with Claire Marshall, who's based in New South Wales about her practice. She also has a, as an arts background, we talked about her history and how she's brought these things in.
And then the conversation took a life of its own and it ended up starting to be about this idea of how do you get capitalism out of your brain? And. It's been such a pleasure to watch Claire's work since then. It's become this whole piece of work that she's been exploring and building out.
And yeah, it's just, if you want to know what is, if you're interested in futures and you're trying to figure out what actually is so magnetic and exciting about this kind of work, that's an episode that I get excited about thinking every time. That was rad. Love it. Look, You've all been tremendously generous really proving your own theory here.
Generous in your offerings today and your reflections and looking back with a sort of hint of looking forward to how this project might evolve any final thoughts that any of you would like to. Offer before we close out,
Peter Hayward: I'm just going to ask you if I can ask you one question, Stuart.
What's future pod? What's future pods value and contribution from your perspective?
Stuart Candy: My, my mind goes to the. To the part of the earlier part of this conversation, where you were talking about the the variety of people who you've invited onto the record and the and I think several of you mentioned in different ways that people have not. That in many cases, people hadn't actually answered these questions before, even for themselves, let alone for a public and for future generations.
And I think that, that that's that's the answer. It's this twofold thing. It's about the the value of highlighting
the worthwhileness of having these conversations and just getting, and getting them on the record. And the fact that once they are on the record, they become something that we can all learn from. And I asked you, Not just for the benefit of, of listeners to our words now, which ones you recommend, but for my own benefit, I'm going to go back and check out, check some of these out.
And the fact that we can do that is it's a fortunate. Side effect of a media environment and a technological sort of set of affordances that none of us are directly responsible for, but that you for and your other collaborators as well as, the litany of guests have have made possible.
For us to continue to learn from. Yeah I think the field having a conversation with itself about which applies at many different sort of scales from the, The reflections that we might find ourselves having privately late at night to the kind of conversations, but with among friends or among new colleagues, which you've referred to the kind of to the ad hoc aggregates of a gathering at a conference or in a classroom.
This is part of the, it's part of a collective learning process and I think you, you've really offered a sort of incalculable gift to the collective identity of futurists and of this work and people who care about it. And it doesn't need to necessarily spread wildly beyond that.
I think as a. As an exercise in inscribing our own evolving thinking for ourselves, that's reason enough, but the beauty of it being in this format in this accessible format, with, as Reanna says, the intimacy of audio and the kind of. The learning in public quality about it, I think is really interesting. And that's actually not something that, that's not something we have a direct precedent for because that's not what a journal does exactly.
That's, it's much more considered and polished and presentational. And yes, there's an element, of course, to how we present ourselves in a context like this, but there's fewer veils between the, between the underlying self. And what we're able to share in a context like this and get a little bit closer to recognizing the simultaneity that again, you've each touched on in different ways of the kind of, the high minded, how we theorize what we're doing and why we think we're doing it.
And the sort of the mark of. Living our lives as human beings and trying to grope our way through the challenges of this being our chosen way of making a living. So I want to thank you all for that gift that you have and others who aren't present, but but present in spirit that you've, given us as an evolving field.
It's really appreciated.
Peter Hayward: And can I thank you too, Stuart? It would have, we couldn't have done this with just the four of us sitting around talking to one another. It would have, it would never have happened for a whole lot of reasons. But if you hadn't have made that offer all those years ago and I hadn't reminded you about it, this wouldn't have happened.
And can I just take the time to thank each of my fellow podders for their effort, their love, their care, their work. Yeah, just wonderful, joyous experience.
Reanna Brown: Right back at you, Peter. I think the fact, Stuart, that the pod has become a space of intellectual and kind of ontological humility and a continuation of learning in public and an openness and a curiousness.
of discussion is very indicative, I think, of how Peter taught and that spirit has continued through the pod. And I think that is just both a beautiful practice to be part of and an artifact that will remain. So for me, again, it was, partially an excuse and ritual to just constantly keep in touch with the potters and keep conversations going with Peter.
So being able to share that beyond the potters is a really cool and special thing. And I think Peter, you're so central and critical and holding that space and giving us a reason to come together curiously and safely in exploration. So thank you.
Stuart Candy: Look I think that's a beautiful place to end. Amanda Reeves, Reanna Brown Bec Mijat and Peter Hayward. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service, . Thank you. Thanks. See you for for Future POD 400 in the diary
Peter Hayward: On behalf of the team at future pod. Thank you. If you have listened to this podcast or the whole 200. And thanks to Stuart for helping us mark the occasion. And a special thanks to our patrons who have supported us financially they have played a huge role in allowing us to get to 200 podcasts and hopefully a few more. If you want to support the pod, then you'll find a patron link on our website. This is Peter Hayward saying goodbye for now.