In this latest podcast John Sweeney and Pete Malvicini are in conversation discussing a new UNSECO Chair in Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policy Making in Uzbekistan
Guests: John Sweeney and Pete Malvicini
Host: Peter Hayward
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Conversation Question
“What is going on in Uzbekistan?“
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Audio Transcript
Peter Hayward: Hello and welcome to Futurepod. I'm Peter Hayward. Futurepod gathers voices from the international field of Futures and Foresight. Through a series of interviews, the founders of the field and the emerging leaders share their stories, tools, and experiences. Please visit Futurepod.org for further information about this podcast series.
Today, we are reconnecting with a previous guest that we haven't heard from for a while. John Sweeney. We last spoke to John in his conversation with Riel Miller and Josh Floyd in podcast 129. Welcome back to Futurepod, John.
John Sweeney: Hey Peter. Thanks for having me back.
Peter Hayward: I think life has been interesting for you recently John. Do you want to maybe fill the listeners in on how things have been for you?
John Sweeney: Yeah, well as we were chatting before it's one thing to talk about post-normal times another thing to live in them. So the last time we chatted I had left Kazakhstan and decided that the best place to navigate the pandemic would be Belarus. As you can imagine that ended up being right.
Foresight yeah exactly. I always tell people professionally I think my foresight's pretty okay. Personally I'd rather not talk about it. So throughout the course of the past few years Belarus has unfortunately been in the news for all the wrong reasons. And it just so happened that last year, we had the opportunity to make a bit of a shift. Of course throughout that time I've continued to work at Westminster International University in Tashkent Uzbekistan. And we'll be talking more about that and I'll get a chance to introduce the special guest for this.
But ultimately the family relocated to Turkey. So we are now living in Kusadasi which is just on the coast, across from the Greek island of Samos. It's been quite lovely. And since actually the last time I've had a few other things happen. I've started to teach in the University of Houston's Master's Foresight program. So that means I have the delight of getting up and teaching from 0130 to 0430 in the morning, but I have to say amazingly rewarding and I I've enjoyed every second of it.
Peter Hayward: Fantastic. And you've already mentioned that you brought along a special guest for us. So who is your guest?
John Sweeney: Well, I'm really excited to have sitting next to me Dr Pete Malvicini. Pete's the Director of the Center for Policy Research and Outreach here at Westminster International University in Tashkent Uzbekistan. And he's essentially the Co-chair and part of this project that we've put forward to UNESCO. And we just received word that our UNESCO chair in Future's Research for Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policy Making was approved. And so we'll be announcing more about that in the coming months, but we're delighted to have this podcast since I was here, I thought, hey let me drag him along.
Peter Hayward: So welcome to Futurepod Pete.
Pete Malvicini: And it's great to be here. It's been great working with John and we put this proposal in well over a year ago, maybe 18 months, and we've been working constantly. Uzbekistan is a place that has a rapid pace of change, but the nature of change is certainly uncertain and hopefully we will be able to draw out from different participants in Uzbekistan different imaginations about what the future here could bring, especially to the young people.
Peter Hayward: Good. So you are based in Tashkent?
Pete Malvicini: I've been in Tashkent for over four years now?
Peter Hayward: So you rode COVID out in Uzbekistan?.
Pete Malvicini: Yes. And it was a pretty good experience as good as COVID could be. The country did not spiral downward and the government did a pretty good job with this and people come here from Western countries and they're amazed that it feels somewhat normal.
Peter Hayward: Wow. We will have you back for a long form interview, Pete. So this is just a little snippet for it. So John, you and Pete, there's really this wonderful mouthful, which is the UNESCO chair in Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policy Making that's a mouthful.
So what do you want to say and talk about with Pete for the community?
John Sweeney: Well I think the one thing that comes up is in my first conversation I had talked about when I had first went to Kazakhstan and was setting up this initial research Institute at the time. It was the first in the country to have futures in a Higher Ed institution. And of course because of COVID it had to change. And I think ultimately we want to have really brought that spirit here. And I think that's a testament to Pete and the university's willingness to see it grow. And as Peter noted it's a really dynamic time. And if anyone's been paying attention to the news, quite recently you can see that there's lots of things that need to be dealt with and lots of challenges from the past. I mean, literally you could do innumerable Future Triangles on all of the Weights to the Past that are the forces that are creating shifts. And of course the Pushes and the Pulls. So it's a dynamic place and it's a really exceedingly dynamic time to be able to doing this kind of work here but we're really focused on because of the sheer amount of change that's happening. And the government of course, is driving a lot of that. That's where we thought the Anticipatory Governance angle and the policy making piece was really critical to the UNESCO chair work that we want to do over the next four.
Peter Hayward: It is mouthful. A chair in Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policy Making, which of course everyone's going to go yes. I want some of that. Can you land that in a more pragmatic, what would it mean if this chair or what is it that this chair is going to set about to deliver that kind of thing?
Pete Malvicini: I think when you look at the ideas of governance and policy making this fits well with the Research Center we have which has been focused on Public Policy here for several years. The opportunities for futures work are vast, but there's a realization here that there's a real demographic boom. And the youth population yeah. Is so large. So that seems if you're going to do anticipatory futures you want to also address the future leaders, the future workers, the future people that make up the society here and it provides some bit of a hope as well. And that comes from getting people together and having these discussions, having these conversations that can be guided a bit. And then hopefully the Futures chair is a place of going back and forth to this in which we support that. And we take advantage of different opportunities.
So we have segments that we're interested in and we can't do everything. But working with youth and working with the greening of investment here, greening of development. The green mindset has a long way to go and people are interested in that and we have some footholds there. Maybe John wants to share a bit about that.
John Sweeney: Yeah. Just really quickly to piggyback one example is a project that I'm currently working on with UNDP around the green transition strategy. And as you might imagine the conversations here are very much about trying to find the means and the medium to be able to actually have a meaningful shift to what we might consider to be green. And of course there's no shortage of entities, whether a government or private sector that are still pushing, what we would consider greenwashing. But lots of really progressive moves as well with regards to civil society and really seeing the opportunity to create some shifts. So it's the classic model of how do we break from these inefficient or even neo-colonial legacies and how do we find ways to, either leapfrog or really create new and and really divergent pathways forward. And as Pete has noted some of those shifts that, or some of those opportunity spaces is looking to leverage this huge youth bulge. I mean, half the country is still under the age of 20.
You've seen massive advancements in movements towards gender equality. Certainly a lot of that has been put forward by aggressive policy. And so it's not just green in the sense of let's try to switch off the oil and gas but how to move more broadly in thinking about the types of changes that are needed across society. And of course that comes at a variety of costs. And so it's trying to do that classical type of balancing. And so I think there has been receptiveness. I mean certainly the government is willing to engage and of course no shortage of things in the present to divert their attention away from. But it's about really trying to, like you said, create that sense of insight that can help make better decisions today. There's really no tolerance for Pie in the Sky Futures here. On the one hand, maybe that's a bit of a legacy of the Soviet era, a bit of a command and control, probably a really strong quantitative bias. But I also think that there's a real sense of yeah this is great and lovely and wonderful but I need to know how this helps me today. And I appreciate that in many ways because as we're even exploring weak signals or emerging issues, we have to find a way to hit home the relevancy and the localization and to have that be part of the conversation always. So it's certainly no shortage of challenges from a practitioner's perspective and a research side of things. But again lots of curiosity, lots of hunger and lots of opportunity. And again it's a really dynamic time to be doing this kind of work.
Peter Hayward: I'm interested in the first two words, Anticipatory Governance. Because I've had a lot of guests on Futurepod that honestly are despairing of the current levels of government and of governance, both. The political systems that around the world are struggling mightily with really wrestling with existential problems here and now and we're also seeing at the same time, we certainly were seeing it pre COVID a youth pushback that they were not going to be living in any future that anyone wanted. And they did not see in the existing governance arrangements, anything that was even appeared to be interested in making any difference.
Pete Malvicini: Well one thing I observe here in Uzbekistan is the government is focused on job programs for young people, skilling up young people through vocational education, et cetera. And these programs are good but they're different than giving young people control over their future. That walking beside them and listening to them in a genuine way, having good conversations, creating long term hope through these conversations and imagining what that would look like on the long term. One example would be with job training, you come up with a program for the next five years, you say, well, let's train welders, let's train carpenters, let's play train plumbers. And it says, oh that's a great idea. By the time a few years later that is beginning to be implemented. People say oh we really need programmers and we need more IT people. And we need people to work in this High Tech sector. So change is happening faster than the government can react to it. And that's what it's been primarily is a reaction versus an anticipation. And as you know, the two were very different and helping to pull that forward is quite useful.
Peter Hayward: Uzbekistan is amazing when you look into the cultural diversity of the place. I'm not sure I've seen such a cultural mix uh, forming in the various historic groups, Persian, all the way back to Uzbek, Mongol. And it's a very young population and this country is also technologically advanced in things like aerospace. It's an amazing mix of youth, cultural diversity and technology alongside some of the greatest environmental catastrophes that happened in the 20th century. The raw material to do a new form of governance seem seemingly is there.
John Sweeney: Yeah and that brings us I think to your question or the framing around Anticipatory Governance, because this conversation has been happening for decades. With Bezold and others. And what we saw happen, even in the late sixties with all the 2000s projects. And I think ultimately that there's so much rich learning from that history. But I think to your point it's how does it become localized here? How does it fit within the cultural context or the cultural contexts plural but also find ways of pushing borders and boundaries where it can and having it be something that's led within the context of local culture. And so that means we are making a conscious effort to put Uzbek language at the front of what we do. Trying to find ways of connecting with people where they're at. And that means of course leveraging best available tech, but also not fully relying on tech. Certainly when we think about connecting with people in rural areas but I think ultimately and this is I think would be something unique to do here. And this is in part I'm going to tow the Dator line on governance. The future doesn't count cause the future doesn't vote. What would it mean for there to be an intergenerational fairness or intergenerational perspective built into governance here?
What would that look like? What would it look like to have something that's rooted in the context of Uzbek cultures and even speak to that synthetic type of product that the current culture really is emerging from? And so I think that's what we'd like to play with now, arguably, that project is probably gonna be more emergent and have theoretical and conceptual components. And I guess the trick for us is, and this is of course where it becomes a dance, is where and how do we bring those elements into the conversations? Making better decisions today because on the one hand, being able to actually recreate governance or reimagine a new governance paradigm, and of course at the same time try to help current system but also play the long game of thinking about at least what that conversation about a new governance paradigm could be for here.
Pete Malvicini: One thing you might think about is in Uzbekistan at least 10 years ago, this conversation really wouldn't be happening. It wouldn't be possible. And part of the post Soviet dynamic is rebuilding the voices of the people. For 70 years essentially there was cultural oppression in many ways, oppression of language, a desire for sameness across these different ethnicities, et cetera, in the country, the artificial borders between countries in central Asia. And as we're working we just see this dynamic coming out and there are senior leadership in the government here that are beginning to capture a vision. They lament on the lack of forward looking civil servants. Now that's not futures per se, but when you go into the bureaucracy, you don't go too many levels down in which you find people that are necessarily not thinking critically, but thinking, "how do I please the levels above me?" So there is this dynamic of a residual fear, perhaps from the Soviet period is still being worked through and the government feels it more than the private sector, who's been able to innovate and has the incentives to innovate more. So engaging this conversation in these different areas is really vital and getting folks to Anticipate, meaning looking over the horizon and beginning to see what is Desirable, what is Preferable, what is Possible and beginning to lay that out in different ways and talk about it I think is very powerful here.
Peter Hayward: Are we trying to avoid colonizing the indigenous approach to futures by overlaying on it something which effectively comes out of the Western futures cannon?
John Sweeney: Yeah. We certainly have this mindfulness as practitioners and researchers and I would say that the one thing that I think is really pointed towards the healthiness of the field has been this conversation around the origin and the aim and the purpose and what comes of certain methods? And I would say the literal explosion of different approaches that leverage specifically non-Western or non Euro American origin types of processes. So I think one of the things that is always critical is not just to feel like well here's John and Pete strolling in with their methods or their approaches toolbox but what can we ultimately enable that could be hybridized or syncretic or make a significant contribution in the field because it can emerge. So we're on the lookout and I've already identified some folks that we think could step in and scale up in the basics but also, bring some richness to the conversation. And there's no shortage I think of participatory futures approaches or other emergent methods that could really speak to that. So methods and emphasized story and narrative methods that are able to not just deal with certain modalities of time that maybe are dominant in certain areas. I think that's what we ultimately want to find our way through but it's I think a lot of way finding. I think it's this emergent type of Action Learning approach to be able to see what might work the best here and how might that be put forward and even not necessarily by us
Pete Malvicini: I agree with you fully the notion of importing simply Western approaches is not going to work. One thing I think needs to be underscored is the importance of starting at the community level, starting with young people, storytelling and using methods that really draw people out and in terms of tools too much I read case studies. It seems like we're knocking on the door of the Elite, the academics, the people who are influential, so to speak, and that's important. But I think learning from the community, learning from the voices and having then the leadership look at that as a model. Too many times you go into government and say, "Oh this is working great. So let's routinize." It let's make a way where we can just do it throughout our systems and, for me, I think that can kill it if you know what I'm saying. When it stops being more spontaneous and more driven by the energy and the emergence of what's going on. So there's a lot of ways I think to approach this here but I think you're right on point when you say avoiding colonizing this and another way as John pointed out is local language, local setting, local cultures, and bringing people together who may not come together in the old system.
Peter Hayward: Another one, seeing you are both patrons of Futurepod, and thank you very much for supporting Futurepod, a couple of initiatives that we've had a chance to feature on in recent podcast has been The New Voices program coming out to Teach the Future, that's also done with the School of International Futures with the next generation series of practitioners. So we're starting to see the field create structures and processes to really support people that don't necessarily require them to run off to a university to necessarily get these skills. Are you thinking of things along those lines with your Chair?
John Sweeney: I think what the UNESCO chair does is it gives us an umbrella to put things under and it gives us a way of walking through the front door. But I think also we want to try to subvert that very normative or standardized approach and practice to quote "stakeholder engagement" and really try to find a way to get into that liminal space with the participatory side of things. And we had actually dabbled with should we bring participatory futures into the title for the Chair? And ultimately we felt like maybe we had a better heading and maybe even more legitimacy if we really leaned into the Anticipatory Governance. And that gives us the credibility on the government side, but it doesn't mean that we've lessened the intent or the desire to be able to think about the more radical types of engagement models we can look at. And here you see an interest in Foresight you see that there's an awareness and of course there's no shortage of projects.
And of course there's been even folks coming over from Russia and doing work for some time but it's really stuck in that strategic foresight space. It's and so moving us more to a transformative foresight where it's reflective about what's my experience as of course a participant and what does that mean for their community? Not just I'm giving an insight so it can find its way into some strategy that's going to be implemented over X number of years, but what does this mean for sense of agency and connectedness to community and identity. And I think that's where we also want to take this and find ways of letting that work feel itself into the process.
Pete Malvicini: One thing I've been thinking about when it comes to Anticipatory Governance is that it seems to be a high level way to title this. But when you look at it's really about democratic participation as John is saying it's getting these stories told let people build this together. And again construct these futures through these conversations. And I think there is a genuine intergenerational concern. The society who Uzbekistan and the families in particular are very closely knit. And there's great desire to sacrifice in order for children, grandchildren, et cetera, to have a better experience here. And I think that's an place where futures tools and futures approaches can really help realize some of these things. It's not a panacea for everything but it can really dig in quite a bit.
Something else we're into seriously at the Research Center is gender based violence. And if you look at the cultures of Central Asia this is something that is a challenge in many countries here. And we had a recent project looking directly at the experience in the workplace. But other people have also looked within government, within families, et cetera, and things permeate, but as people talk about it, as people share their stories, as people become more aware, I think this is beginning to change. So we're aware but what are we going to construct? If the practice of gender based violence is reduced it's not good enough. You have to build something else. So I believe that's where we're moving to in following through on this area.
Peter Hayward: Old cultures with people connected to tradition and wanting to maintain or use their cultures to inform themselves and to inform how they create the future. And at the same time we see around the world, particularly with the younger generations, wanting to transcend categories, wanting to transcend, what's a marriage, what's a gender? And there is a paradox. You might even say a conflict coming up. How might that play out with the stuff you're talking about, Pete, particularly where you talk about violence which again can be located in particular cultural traditions. And then we have this notion that a lot of younger people are saying, why do we think this way? Why do we act this way? Why do we have rules the way we have them?
John Sweeney: Yeah, I think jumping on this one. One of the things that has been a profound learning for me and engaging with youth and having the chance to connect a bit here on the ground with some folks I will say that my sample size have been relegated to the university. So I'm definitely getting access to a privileged group that has pursued at higher education and has had the ability to do so and of course, knowledge and awareness of English. But I've also had some other engagements where we've had to do translation work and of course I've worked in Kazakhstan, Kurkistan and also been to Turkmenistan as well. And the one thing that has really hit me profoundly in Uzbekistan is that adaptability and the sheer speed with which you've seen these new things emerge within the cultural context and get taken up. So you of course see the trend here with the kind of emergence of the Megamall and the fast fashion but you also see a proliferation of hijabi fashion. And so you find this synthesis emerge where at the university you can find young women studying and wearing hijab and it's fully immersed within the context of contemporary globalized culture but you also find that syncretic of local culture and I think this question around identity and the embodiment of that is going to be something that is really the fork in the road. Is Uzbekistan going to find its way to something that is going to be that syncretic amalgamation of all of these legacies and already I think some of the moves the government has made as has pushed in certain directions.
So for example you'd be hard pressed to find a younger person who's pretty decent in Russian because they said look we're doubling down on the Uzbek language. And so the older generations of course, the legacy of the Soviet era, but already I think there's been a pretty dramatic shift, maybe more so than some of its neighbors to be able to really own that and to have that be front and center. And so Uzbek first, English second, Russian a distant third I think for younger generations. And I think that in of itself points towards and it's difficult to say now what this exactly will look like, but a real emergence of something that's uniquely Uzbek with regards to culture and identity and really owning that. And I think that's been interesting to see because it is quite different I think from its neighbours.
Pete Malvicini: I think the dynamic here in terms of the culture, culture isn't static it is dynamic. And I think when it comes to some of these issues, say gender based violence, I think what's been happening is people from the outside have been saying rightfully so, that's bad, that's wrong. Don't do it. Don't do it. But there's not as much cultural self critique which is going on, which I think is the prize. When you get to that level and people are beginning to do that, and that's where the youth I think are leading the way. If I might tell a little anecdote, John was talking about the increase of the wearing of hijabs and that we're experiencing that in our university here too, just over the past four years. So things are changing that way. I was at a summer camp for a retreat about a month ago. And I spoke with a very articulate young woman, and she reminded me of a typical American youth. She had many tattoos all over piercings all over. She was very articulate, very smart and very kind. So I, of course, I didn't think anything of that then I said, well, what are your plans? Are you going to college next year? She was a senior in high school. Oh, she said, yes, of course, I'm going to university. Where will you be going? She said, oh, I'm going to Westminster University. And I didn't say anything per se, but my mind was going wow. You will be a change maker at this. When you walk in the door of this university, you're going to be a beacon of what is to come and I thought it was pretty cool at the same time I was hoping this would be a safe place for her as well, in terms of your own expression, but pretty neat
Peter Hayward: So obviously it's early days for the Chair and as you said, John you are going to be making announcements but particularly from the community's perspective what's maybe some things that people could start paying attention for. And also are there any things coming up that interested people could reach out towards Chair?
John Sweeney: Yeah, absolutely. So I think we are going to start to have some movement coming up soon. So summer's going to dip down a bit but I think ultimately we're looking to leverage some events. So I suppose , we can let the cat outta the back. Now in early October, we are going to plan what will be the first Uzbekistan Futures Summit. We're delighted that actually the impetus for this came from the Ministry of Education. To have amazing partners like Erasmus Plus on and we definitely want this to be something that is, is really a bit of a lightning rod event that can bring people in. We're gonna of course invite some regional partners and colleagues as well, and try to have it be something that can bring people together because at the end of the day, I think, we can leverage a lot of these tools and of course the online spaces has allowed us to do amazing things like even this conversation. But I think sharing air brings a lot of value in identifying these champions and finding these pathways forward. So we really are looking to have these events and we're talking about a Summer School for next year. We of course are looking to engage with faculty as much as possible. We just had a meeting last week with faculty about where we might be able to integrate. But I think on the Public Sector side and Civil Society I think there's some listening that has to be done and think about where we might be able to engage.
And a lot of things here can move through development partners. Of course there are local CSOs NGOs, but I think it's about trying to find these events that can create an invitation to listen. And of course create the space for things to emerge. I think if we find ourselves forcing things too much, it's gonna feel like we're constantly falling flat on our faces and then having to pick ourselves back up, I think it's approaching the work with a sense of humility and of course trying to find a way to engage that brings value to people's lives now but of course also we can leverage that longer term view.
Peter Hayward: I agree completely with the notion of humility, but I'm also going to push you to be outreach and to be the provocateur that Zia would want you to be. Because if you are breaking new ground or you are trying new approaches, then hopefully there'll be a chance for you to not just put these out as information pieces for the community, but actually put them out as provocations to the community that they need to lift their game.
Pete Malvicini: I think you're right there , Peter. One of the back stories on this Uzbekistan Futures Day is in 2019, we brought couple colleagues from Uzbekistan to the Asian Pacific Futures Network meeting in Bangkok. One of those people was our then Rector at the university. Since then he's moved on to become the First Deputy Minister of Higher Education. And he's a sponsor and a champion of this Uzbekistan Futures Day. So beyond the day we have an inroad into more direct impact on the Higher Education system here which again can be huge. And again reaches young people at point when they're still trying to figure out things in their lives and creating their values. This is so rich and so ripe and has so much potential. It's just something to get very excited about especially from the Chair being based at university that can again be a provocateur reach out to universities because we have this sort of space here that a lot of other colleges make more traditional. I would say colleges don't necessarily have.
Peter Hayward: The Federation have just announced and released an accreditation support program for universities around the world that are seeking accreditation. It would be very helpful if somehow the work that you are doing can both feed into that and also possibly even participate.
John Sweeney: Yeah. I think that as we look at building relationships, I think it's this classic adage of no stone unturned. We have some amazing partners who signed on formally to support the Chair and we've got partners from different sectors and of course lots of futures folks on board. But I also think that we are looking to hold a space where it's the credibility of walking in the front door, but also let's meet around back and have a chat around the fire. And I think that's where it is about trying to hold that sort of in between space. And when I think about myself as a practitioner I'm constantly a guest. I'm a guest in another culture. And that gives me a lot of freedom and ability to say things that maybe wouldn't otherwise be said, or maybe couldn't be said. And so I think as we are doing this way finding I think it is about trying to toe those lines and think about where we step over those lines and what lines can be blurred. And of course borders and boundaries can be pushed and nudged but to do it in a way that is always about the creative and the critical coming together.
And just as we were chatting before, this idea of the post normal lens. I can imagine now if that actually this generation has fully lived that world seeing these dynamic changes and filling these changes now, finding even ways of talking about that fruitfully here, I think is critical. And just yesterday I was out in Samerkland, which is this extraordinary, really beautiful historical series of sites. And this is a place where change just isn't talked about, it's real. You feel it and you see it and the history is alive and people are feeling it now in ways that are really dynamic. So I think actually the critical task for us is to find ways of creatively engaging with that, and that is done with a sense of humility, but is also able to be provocative. And so there's again a lot of way finding that we've gotta do as we make our way through this,
Pete Malvicini: I think one of the notions here, right? Is that there's not a playbook here. It's so unpredictable that we don't actually know what this Chair is going to look like in a year or more. And a footnote is we've recruited a very dynamic futurist that if all goes well will join us also in September to have more of a n influence on this. Another thing I thought of, and I'm maybe I'm giving the interview already was a couple years ago our staff at the Research Center just took off on a little retreat and we started talking about what's our preferred future of Policy Research in Uzbekistan knowing that right now we're trapped between the Soviet legacy of really censoring information and a focus on pleasing people rather than significant critique, especially in the social sciences. And the anticipation of the Chair can be brought out somehow.
John Sweeney: I think for us, it's about trying to find ways of really holding this sense of a vision and a pathway. But as Pete is very eloquently noted, also being open to the way finding and the action learning that's gonna have to be critical to make this happen. And that's gonna mean that we have to hold some things quite tightly, but other things have to be held quite loosely.
Peter Hayward: I'm very heartened by the initiative. I think you are both in a tremendously exciting place. We are also living in dangerous times but these are also times that are pregnant with possibility and potentials and enthusiasm. So thanks for finding some time to come and share it with the Futurepod community. And I wish the pair of you nothing but success in the future.
John Sweeney: Thanks so much Peter. Always a pleasure to chat and catch up and so thankful for the work that you and the Futurepod team are doing. Thanks.
Pete Malvicini: This has been great. It's a real privilege. I hope to see you again or hear you again in the future.
Peter Hayward: This has been another production from Futurepod. Futurepod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support Futurepod, go to the Patreon link on our website. Thank you for listening. Remember to follow us on Instagram and Facebook. This is Peter Hayward saying goodbye for now.