Welcome back. This is one of my very final episodes before I go to vacation. I told you in my previous episode that we are going to wind Slow Mo down a little bit of time because I have other important priorities.
I feel that in the time I have available to me with the ambitions I have, I need to be a little more focused and as much as I love this thing. There are things that deliver more impact for the next year. So my closing mini series is a passion of mine during 2024, which is really to find the truth, to understand the reality of the world around us and what to believe and what not to.
It's this mini series, hopefully will be five episodes that we call It's Not What They Told You. And there is no one that can help us understand that the world around us is not what they told us. core of how the media works, at least how the media was designed to work, if you want, than my guest today.
Andy Coulson is very well known in the British society for some very interesting stories and some very, very, very serious contributions. He was the editor of the News of the World between 2003-2007. He was the...
Head of Communication, Director of Communication for the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, between 2007 and 2011. And he now runs his own consultancy firm around crisis management, and is the host of a very podcast that I personally like called Crisis, What Crisis? Andy's story hit the headlines, if you want, because his organization back in News of the World hacked phones to get to a story, which may have been important to the public, but then eventually, many, many years later, the blame fell on Andy, if you want. And he had to pay for it.
He served a period in jail and turned from a journalist that really did whatever he could to get the story to a... I don't know, a stoic teacher, if you want, in a way that basically helps people realize how to deal with such a crisis. Thank you very much to start.
Thanks for having me. I want to talk about it all, honestly. I don't know if time will allow, but I really, since I wanted to meet you and I've been following your conversations and work for a while, I wanted to learn from you firsthand. Sort of what motivates an editor, a reporter, a journalist? Why does the media do what it does?
And in an interesting way, why is it that I no longer believe any of what they say? I'm not sure I can provide an answer to the second question. Let's see where we go.
On the first question, it's, you know, it's born out of, as most things are, You know, as an individual editor, you know, who you are and what your motivation is, what your past is, perhaps where you come from. And so perhaps in explaining the kind of editor that I, or the kind of journalist I was, you know, that is, that was informed by my upbringing. I was a Sun reader, right?
I grew up in a household of Sun readers. I loved the Sun showbiz column. And so I became a showbiz journalist.
You know, I wasn't a political journalist at the start of my career. I was a showbiz journalist. And so what I was motivated by was breaking stories and being involved in and being a part of, you know, showbiz, frankly.
You know, and my skill as I then developed as a journalist and ended up at The Sun actually really was as a dealmaker. That was what was my main motive. I was a dealmaker.
I was my skill as a young journalist, you know, making my career on The Sun. was the ability to work with very famous people, produce a piece of content that would keep everybody happy, keep my editor happy. Keep the reader happy.
Keep the reader happy. The topic happy. And keep the celebrity and their agents and PRs and whatever around them, the machinery around them happy. That's what I was quite good at.
And my timing was good because it was a period of time. When the business of show business was really beginning to motor. It's always been there of course, you know, we talk about posh and becks in this country, you know, Taylor and Burton were the posh and becks of the 60s, 70s. So it wasn't entirely new but it was suddenly being powered in a different way and so...
you know, groups like the Spice Girls and Take That here were really commercial enterprises. And I got the joke of that particular universe better, perhaps, than a number of other journalists operating at the time. And so I was able to get very close to those kind of operations and the individuals involved.
So that actually was my reputation as a young journalist. That was my motivation as well as a young journalist. But underlying all that, You know, I was a trained journalist. I did go through my apprenticeship, my indentures, and I, you know, the principles of what it is to be a journalist were set for me in my mind, you know, and that is about accuracy.
That is about making sure that what you're publishing is accurate and that you operate as a professional journalist. Now, as I'm sure we'll get on somewhere along the line, you know, obviously, you know, I can say that I lost sight of that as an editor because I did. And, you know, as you mentioned in the intro, paid a price.
The one thing I would say, if you don't mind, about your very generous intro, for which thank you, is that I would do anything to get a story bit. Because I don't think I would and didn't do anything to get a story. I think that there were plenty of moments. And of course, it's so difficult to evidence because how do you evidence something that you didn't publish? It's quite a difficult thing to...
demonstrate. But believe me, there was a lot I didn't publish. And I'm not asking for a round of applause at that moment, by the way.
It's just the reality of the job is that you are making judgments about what works and what doesn't work, what's right and what's wrong. And I'm not saying I got it right. I think it's a fair amount of evidence that I got it wrong on a number of occasions, but I got it right as well. And I think when you're analyzing, I think this is true of the media. And I think it's true of my own individual experience.
The temptation is that you've got to put it all in one box, right? It's good or it's bad, right? Newspapers are good or they're bad. The media is good or it's bad. Me as an individual, I'm good or, you know, or I'm bad.
And obviously I've gone through a long period of my life where the classification was very much, you know, bad. Yeah. Yeah.
And I'm not that. I've made loads of mistakes. I've failed miserably.
Everyone does. Miserably. But it's not.
It's not me entirely, and I am, I think, you know, more than my mistakes. And I think also the media is more than its mistakes. And we've got to be careful about what we mean by the media as well, but maybe we'll get into that. Well, I want to get into this, but I think what you're saying is really quite eye-opening, because the idea is, you know, in an engineer's mind, if you want, if you want to put the definition of the truth in a...
you know, in an algorithm, it would be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But that's impossible for a journalist to bring, right? Because, you know, in mathematics, the whole truth is all of the locations of all particles in the universe at the same time, right? So it's impossible to contain on one page or on an article or now in the new media in a one minute reel, right? But you say that you make choices to leave things out.
So there are things that you don't publish. There are things that you publish, but they have to be some sort of a deal that allows you to sort of break more news in the future without being marked as the enemy or whatever. What would be the motivation that gets you to say, this is enough of the truth? Or, you know, this bit I don't want to include in this article. It's so difficult, this conversation in a way, Mo, because it is...
It can only really be explained and evidenced by a specific. And that's, as ever, once you get to a particular example, that is also quite a dangerous thing to do. It is very dangerous, yeah.
That in itself can distort. Yeah, let's use a hypothetical example. And so I, you know, in a world where I'd grown up doing those deals, right, let's look at David and Victoria Beckham, for example.
I had a relationship with the Spice Girls. I had, at one point, I almost had a business relationship with Victoria Beckham after she left the Spice Girls. She's a very skilled, very commercial, very ambitious woman and was in those early days as well. We were actually looking from the company that I was working for, setting up a business with her. That's a little bit later.
But before then, when she gets engaged to David, they decide they're going to get engaged and I get a phone call. from them to say, look, this is going to happen. It hasn't happened yet, but it is going to happen. And we'd like you to be a part of it.
Which is quite an interesting proposition. Of course. We'd like you to come along to the hotel. We'd like you to, you can take a picture of the ring.
We'll give you some quotes. You'll get your own pictures, but then we're going to step outside of the hotel and then we're going to announce our engagement to the world. This is actually, Mo, the last piece of journalism that I did as a reporter before I then became an executive. And we paid them a pretty significant amount of money for that. Oh, wow.
Right. So, you know, in that circumstance, when I've grown up in that world of deal making, this is not excuse making. This is just the explanation of how it worked.
That when I then get a story that perhaps they're less inclined to see published. And there were stories, including later in my career with the Beckhams in particular, where they absolutely didn't want to see those stories. I did not make a decision, I'm not going to run those stories because there's no deal to be done. I'm going to run that story if it's true.
And it needs to be true. And that's the major consideration. And then you've also got to ask yourself, as a human being and as an editor, is this the right thing to do?
That is also obviously an interesting area to discuss, because that changes. I'd be a hopeless editor now. Because I'm changed.
Now, that doesn't mean, of course, you get changed by what happens to you in life. And that's the purpose of being a human being, I think. And I, you know, and I'm a different person.
I'll be a hopeless editor. So what was the quality that made you a good editor? The hunger to break a story? I think I enjoy breaking stories. I enjoyed the environment.
You know, people now, I think, look back at tabloid newspapers at that time and just think it was some kind of, you know, evil death star. It wasn't. I was there.
It wasn't. Loads of mistakes, right? Plenty of mistakes, plenty of misjudgments, too much arrogance, too much belief that the world, something called editoritis, I think, Mo, right?
It's a little known condition. I definitely suffered from editoritis, right? And the primary symptom of editoritis is that you think the world revolves around you or whatever it is you're doing, actually, let's say yourself. And I definitely suffered from that. So too much of that, for sure.
But there was also a... bag load of fun, there was a bag load of camaraderie, there was a lot of adrenaline, but I'll tell you what else there was, there was good work, right, and campaigning journalism. Some of the proudest moments I've had have been around some properly meaningful campaigns, getting policy change driven through in this country, the ability to be able to kind of convene proper change in this country, you know, tabloid newspapers have played a big part in that.
And also at the other end, politics, where later I've, you know, I moved and spent a lot of time, I think still, you know, popular newspapers play a very important part in the political landscape, right, in terms of, you know, prodding a politician, keeping them, you know, honest as much as you can, poking fun occasionally. I don't know if you're aware of, you know, the Liz Truss and the Lettuce here, right, where... The Daily Star newspaper, not famed for its political coverage, actually in that joke delivered something, in my view, very significant and reflective, by the way, of where the public were on Liz Truss, a short-lived prime minister who almost brought down the country.
So it's a proper mix. So I want to go into the political side of this because I think this is really... where our world is breaking down a little bit as we speak.
But it seems quite interesting for me. I mean, I normally try to sum what I understand so far so that our listeners can, who are probably like me, not experts in the topic. I have to say, you know, I grew up in Egypt. So we had two news outlets on TV, two news outlets in print. You know, on TV, for example, we had Channel One.
which said exactly what the government told it to say verbatim, and Channel 2, which basically said exactly what Channel 1 said. And you could see like a tiny phase shift between them. Channel 1 would say it and then Channel 2 would say it. But they'll say it slightly differently in a more fun way so that we believe, ah, they both agree it's the truth, right? Reality is, as I look back at my childhood in a country that was highly censored in terms of telling stories, ah...
I had never had access to the truth, but believe it or not, I knew that I didn't have access to the truth. That was very different in my Western upbringing. So one of the things I celebrated as I started to be exposed to the West as a student and then as a professional businessman and so on is like, hey, I can get to learn things here.
Like I'm being told stuff. As I look back now, I'm being told filtered stuff. You know, I'm being told, as you rightly said, Part of the stuff that helps your, you know, that helps the newspapers, the, you know, the editor has to make choices to make sure that the business is successful, even if they're not motivated by any malicious objective or personalized agendas or, you know, corruption or whatever, they still have to run a business. And so they may choose to do certain things and report other things and so on and so forth.
Within accuracy, that's still not the whole truth. And I think That to me became very eye-opening. Believe it or not, I had a tiny, tiny, tiny part of my career.
Most people don't know that. Why am I saying this? I worked in British American, will they kill me if I say it? British American tobacco for a year and a few months.
At the time, I had just finished my MBA. And my MBA was about how computer systems are becoming a consumer commodity. Believe it or not, at the time, they were not. At the time, most computers were mini computers and mainframes and so on.
And the personal computer was still on the rise. And so I decided maybe I should have a career in consumer goods and understand. And British American Tobacco convinced me that smoking is an adult choice. And, you know, as an adult choice, they, you know, they said adults also can buy Porsches and Porsches are fast cars and that gives them joy. But.
you know, it's dangerous, but it's an adult choice. Okay. And so I believed in that. I even rallied behind it. And I quickly arose in my career in those 16 months or whatever.
And we had a person in the, in the, in the team that was called the CORA director, which was corporate and regulatory affairs or something like that. And basically he had, I don't know if we're allowed to say that. You know, he had quite a few influences over journalists, over editors, over government, you know, officials and decision makers. He had quite a large budget and there were quite a few Range Rovers purchased, you know, in our budget. And I was like, what is all of this?
Like, you know, where is this coming from? And he basically said. Well, you know, if you need to write an article in the top newspaper tomorrow that basically says that smoking is good for you, that's what this budget is about. That's shocking for me because most... And that was editorial.
That wasn't even advertorial. 100%. That was like a new discovery by a scientist somewhere in Portugal that, you know, smoking is the best thing for your health. That shakes your confidence in everything.
And I think... It shakes your confidence mostly in the journalist and the government official and the people behind this. So how does it really work? I mean...
Well, again, I can only speak from my own experience. And to follow that path, you know, my entire newspaper career, so this is not something that shifted later in my career, being part of News International as it was then. The idea of what you just described, which is corruption, right, was, there was no doubt that that was totally, no, unacceptable. Not in your organization, but it was present in the media in general.
In other organizations. Other organizations. I can't speak, in the UK I'm talking about here, I can't speak to that.
The idea, though, of, you know, because then... You take one step back from that and you go to lobbying. You know, there's been lobbying in this country, obviously, for many years.
I still think lobbying is a scandal that hasn't quite reached its end, for what it's worth. But certainly lobbying. You know, I now work as a consultant. I don't lobby. That's not what we do at all.
I don't do public affairs. I'm not interested in any of that. But that's a profession, for sure. But, you know, I think, again, several, several steps back from what you've...
from what you've described. The idea of those kind of deals being done, in fact, I would say that there was a culture of absolute pushback against that. But remember, I was a reporter at this stage, certainly as an editor, not for a second. The arguments that I would have between commercial and editorial, I would spend a large part of my working day Particularly as we got closer to publication on a Saturday, arguing with the commercial end of the newspaper who wanted to drive revenue for the product saying, no, this space is for my editorial genius.
Thank you very much. You're not going to ruin it with your adverts. And so the push and pull and the integrity, if you like, of the editorial space and how we chose to put that to work was built in. You know, that was built in. And you know, the interesting thing is I didn't get a day of training.
to be an editor. I was trained as a journalist on my local newspaper and then I went up to the Sun thereafter I never I never I never had a day of training So it was you are developing your own operating system and your own value system and your own editorial judgment on the go So again, I can only speak from personal experience the idea of anything close to that And I would and I think I'm pretty safe in saying for British newspapers That's just not what it's about at all. But if it's not for monetary gains Is it not also, is it not possible that it's for ideological gains? Like, if a reporter believes in one side or the other, or leans a little bit to one side or the other?
Well, news is a human business. Correct. So any human business is going to have, you know, some bias one way or the other.
To be utterly, completely, totally. Look at the BBC, which is, you know, which is built to be unbiased. It's a very difficult thing to do.
Right. And listen, I'm a net fan of the BBC. I think it's an organisation with problems. It's an organisation that has done things wrong. But I think its mission is a positive one.
And it aims to be unbiased. It aims to deliver news in a way that is unfiltered. But it's never going to succeed fully. How can it?
It's so interesting that you say that, because growing up, the BBC World Service, was actually perceived by the world as the unbiased news source, right? Especially if you grow up in a place where you have Channel 1 and Channel 2, right? But, oh my God, it is so biased to a Western agenda, if you don't mind me saying. Like, by nature, maybe by information, by what they have access to, maybe by policy.
I mean, it's still a British organization. But, I mean, if you don't mind me saying... The BBC would never report anything positive about the truth of the conflict between NATO and Russia that drove the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. And since I've been working as a consultant, I've had an even clearer view that gets much closer to what you've just described than what I had previously.
I'm not saying that it is an unbiased organisation that produces unbiased news. I think it's aim. And I think it's a positive aim. Yeah, I've had, you know, I've also lost days of my life arguing with people at the BBC about the political bias within this country.
Within the country. That's part of my job. When I worked for David Cameron was when I saw the six o'clock news and I thought that's just fundamentally unfair. They've completely bypassed us. You know, when we're in opposition at that point, it's very difficult to get heard when you're in opposition.
So I'd end up having, you know, a conversation with the editor of the 10 o'clock news saying that there needs to be some balance here. Yeah. But at least there was a conversation. At least there was a routine. And I think, and what I don't believe, I'm about to compare the news of the world with the BBC, which they won't appreciate at all, is that both are human businesses with individuals making judgments with a, you know, aiming for, you know, with a particular purpose in mind.
And I, just as I don't believe the news of the world was a death star in the way that I've described it, I don't think the BBC is either. at all and BBC's having a very tough time at the moment you know it's getting it's getting a lot of criticism from a lot of different angles yeah and has made mistakes yeah but is the idea of the BBC uh uh uh fatally flawed I don't think I don't think it is I can't quite believe, Mo, that I'm sat on a podcast defending the BBC, but I'm happy. I don't know why you're doing that.
I don't know why. We can edit you back in and crash on them if you want. No problem at all. I mean, isn't that what media is all about? But it is an interesting side.
I mean, again, my objective with this final miniseries, if you want, is not to actually entice, divide at all or make people distrust anyone. I'm just saying, you know. I'm trying to get the world to see somehow that as a human organization, as a human journalist, as the limits of access to knowledge, as the need for certain deals exist, you're not always going to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
You're not. But again, what are we defining here? How are we defining media?
Because what I'm much more concerned about is social media. I'm just concerned about the unregulated content that is pouring into our children's brains on an hourly basis through these mini computers that we carry in our pockets. That has no human filter, really. It is just driven by something that you know considerably more about than I do.
An algorithmic purpose that has no judgment applied to it. Now, would I rather have... you know, a bunch of people in a room with imperfect values even, or an imperfect worldview, or an imperfect kind of standard of professionalism, at least some kind of grip on this content, or do we just keep funneling it out in the way that we are at the moment into impressionable minds? I'd quite like the former rather than the latter. Yeah, I don't think, I sadly don't think...
And a lot of that unregulated, you know, kind of stuff that's being churned out is considered, you know, it falls into the new definition of media. 100%. It is the big majority of media.
I think the most worrying of all of them, believe it or not, is that it's not either or. There are parts of that world that are run by highly professional, highly capable... people who understand journalism, who know how to write the headline, who are also now quite capable of, they really know how to use the tool for distribution.
There is a darker and even darker side to it, for sure. And so, you know, I don't want to, I feel like I'm defending. I feel that too.
Not just the BBC. But I know what you're... Journalism.
And I don't, you know, it's really important, Mo, that this is all of this, because I know what sits in the background of this. From me and my personal experience and my own, what I've, you know, the jobs that I've done. Please, you know, explanation, not excuse, right?
It's so important, I think, when you're having a conversation like this. I like that. I like that.
Explanation is not an excuse. So what happens inside a government communications director position? You know, now the objective is clear.
You are supposed to keep this government popular. You're supposed to keep this government out of trouble and you're supposed to get the government reelected. Isn't that the, you know, the OKR, if you want, if this was a business, this is your objective. It was for me because I was obviously I was.
I was a special advisor, so my job was across both, if you like. And obviously the civil services role, they shouldn't be thinking about the next election, but of course, human beings. People are all kind of working together towards one aim.
When I arrived in government, having done a few years in opposition, I found myself in... You know, in a relatively unique position because of course it was a coalition government, you know, we'd got over the line into number 10 But we were in coalition with the Lib Dems Yeah, and so the team of people that I'd been in opposition against along with Labour Of course, I was I was working. I was working with my number two You know was the was the guy who was running the Lib Dem comms operation during the During the election campaign Johnny Oates who's now in the House of Lords And Lena Peach, who now works for Nick Clegg at Facebook.
Great people. And we had a press conference. It all came to sharp focus for me.
We had a press conference here that's quite well known in the UK, in the Rose Garden, glorious sunny day, Nick Clegg and David Cameron together. It's kind of like a civil partnership. It was just the perfect day.
Journalists sat in chairs. It was, it was, everything went well. They were finishing each other's sentences.
It was kind of, this is a new beginning. This thing is going to be, this thing is going to be fantastic. And they, it couldn't have gone any better.
And as they left to go back into Downing Street, the two teams of advisors went into different corners of the garden and started briefing against each other. No way. So, and I'm stood back from this as now the guy in charge of the entire sort of comms operation. And I thought, well, this is untenable.
And so I took everyone back into my office and said, look, guys, we're in government now. And we've got to work together. And there are going to be moments when you can take your own path and make your own case.
And that's during conference season. Otherwise, we're working for the government here. This is a single purpose.
we had to make sure this government stays on track and by the way this is going to be a difficult task this is a coalition government this is not easy and to everyone's great credit we pulled that off for quite a while and I hesitate to say it Mo but I think it was a golden period of British politics somewhat of an overstatement but no it was great it worked really well so it's fascinating so I had a slightly different purpose perhaps it was slightly less tribal Slightly less kind of party led because of that coalition construct. But then by definition, that means that, again, there is a strategy. There are so many opinions. There are so many views.
There are so many angles to the truth. And then the government has to present. a coherent part of this, which doesn't include everything, doesn't exclude everything. And basically, again, in my definition, it's just a very well polished version.
Hasn't been particularly well polished for about a decade, is what I would say. That's, you know, that's when you get it even worse. Well, this is where, you know, the aim of government and the reality of government kind of, you know, start to become disjointed. And why has that happened?
You know, I mean, I joke about the coalition being a relatively calm period of politics. I think it was a relatively calm period. I'm hoping, by the way, we're now going into, in this country, a relatively calm period of politics. It feels like we might.
Good luck. Good luck with that. In terms of the management of government, do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
The sort of machinery inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this government's got a whole stack of problems coming down the track. But it feels like the temperature is being slightly lowered after 10 years.
of chaos and of politics in this country becoming increasingly extreme. And why is that? I think there's a bunch of different reasons.
inequality, a bit of kind of incumbency. We've been there for, the Tories have been there for too long. The longer you stay in power, generally, the less popular you become. I think that immigration, you know, which is seen as a subject only in sort of right-left terms, I think actually it's a lot more complicated and nuanced than that.
But I think it's a subject that raises temperatures. And when you have that coupled with inequality, which raises temperatures, then that attracts... tracks a certain type of politician and the politicians who thrive in that kind of environment are politicians who like to operate on the edge not politicians that operate in the center and they become politicians who raise the temperature and of course the media plays a part in that as well because they want the temperature of course because the media because there's a that's everyone reads then everyone listens what happens right the anger and the fury and the and the uh and the heat just slowly increases and so what you then create is an environment that's very difficult to attract and grow a quality of leadership that, in my view, we need, right?
Which is, you know, sensible, able, and not a gold-plated narcissist. That's all I want. I don't think we need much more than that and the environment that we've had over the last 10 years, obviously not just in this country, hasn't lent itself to that kind of leadership. And I think that's the kind of mess that's been created and trying therefore... as someone in my job to find a calm way through that in terms of the communication and the storytelling and the narrative is obviously it's become it's become all but impossible because most of the time you know most of the political conversation around this country has been on the edges And I think this is probably if you ask me, like to list the top 10 of challenges the world is facing.
It's that hit. It's the idea that, you know, you'd tend to believe, or at least the headline stories that the media is interested in conflict, in arguments that social media, you know, thrives on. negative comments and the rudeness and the arguments and so on and so forth, but also that the government themselves, as you rightly said, you know, they will attract the kind of leader that thrives in this environment. so that will motivate more of this environment. I think, you know, listen once to Donald Trump and you easily can see in the debates that he's just trying to take the debate to a place that is very heated and very acquisitive.
Like, you know, this is a comfort zone for him. Did it this week with the debates, right? Exactly, right. He's in cats and dogs. That's what he's trying to do.
Exactly. And so accordingly, this kind of environment that... draws in more divide, more separation, more anger, more rudeness, more fights really in the public, magnified by social media or the, you know, the modern media, if you want, is leading us to a place that is very, very, very challenging for a lot of people. There is almost an overwhelmed information. There is a lot of misinformation, as you rightly said, because none of those comments is true.
And at the same time, it's just, it completely hides the truth. Yeah. And there's a lack of reasonableness.
Yeah. That's the other thing that I've come to be more and more attracted to, personally and professionally. You're such a bad editor now.
Honestly, I'd be a shocking editor. Because as an editor, you know, and I don't want to chuck all editors under the bus here. This is just my perspective on it. But as an editor, you do tend to live in one of two places, right?
It's amazing. Yeah. It's outrageous.
Yeah. Not a lot of room in there. Nobody would read a headline that says it's nice. Particularly as a tabloid editor, right? And as I've got older and as a result of the experiences I've had, I, you know, I much prefer to spend my time on that sort of spectrum that swings in between.
Yeah. And I, you know, an unreasonableness. Yeah. I think is not just, you know, it's just, it's a better way to live your life. I think it is also strategically.
undervalued, reasonableness is, I think, very valuable. And also in the political context, I think what we need a bit of is the sort of removal of the isms. And we need the simple idea that it's not, you know, if you're sat in a room with a prime minister to be able to say to him, it's not about you.
That conversation doesn't seem to have happened, I don't think, very often, certainly in politics in this country. You very kindly referenced Stoicism earlier in terms of the way that I now see the world. So you'll know this because I know that you are also a fan of the Stoics. Very big one. Stoicism created by Zeno of Citium.
And when it was first born, it was called Zenoism. When he was sitting around with his advisors, his special advisors, someone struggling for a brand for this thing, someone who's obviously very good at managing up, said to Zeno, you should call it Zenoism. And they did to start with. And then not far down the road, Zeno decided this is completely wrong.
Yeah. Right? It can't be Zenoism.
And that's how Stoicism was born, as you know, off the Stoa, the colonnade in Athens. Because it doesn't... They didn't want it, he didn't want it to be about him. It was bigger than him. And my God, we need a bit of that in our lives right now.
And, you know, there is a tendency, media, but actually much wider than media, that when we see something, a movement, a kind of, some kind of purpose gathering, there's got to have that ism on the end of it. It's got to be attached to the individual. The individuals I am attracted to now are people who rise above that.
It's not about me and who are reasonable. You know, reasonable is one side of it. I want to come back to this, but I think the isms as well is probably one of the biggest shocks in my understanding of the world.
So, you know, part of this mini series, I repeatedly say I am a recovering capitalist in reform, right? I have... believed in capitalism for a big chunk of my life. And I still actually believe it or not, believe in the method of, you know, if we actually apply a free market approach to many objectives, such as my 1 billion happy mission, you know, there is efficiencies in that. But the truth is none of what we're told about capitalism is true.
It's not a free market. It is, you know, a cartel if you really think about it. And, you know, so is democracy.
It's not actually representative at all. I mean, if you don't mind me saying, I don't have the right to speak about the UK, but, you know, neither the UK nor the US, the big democracy advocates, have had democracy for a very long time. These are not elected leaders in many ways.
They are somehow, to start with, elected parties, if you want. And it's a very... You know, it's a big topic if we want to talk about it, but I get surprised when people tell me, oh, we're a democratic society.
No, you're being told you're a democratic society. You're being sold the idea of democracy. You're being sold the value of capitalism, but you're not actually living this.
And so those slogans that keep being thrown at us, you know, that, for example, the US is killing millions around the world in the name of freedom we're out there to liberate them and and the fact that the u.s society doesn't get to see any other than that because of the way the media works and so on this is truly where i think the show business of of it all starts to begin is that am i exaggerating this am i i don't think you're exaggerating it i think the debate around this though if we're to shift opinions it's that black and white thing again and i believe because i'm a journalists by trade and I work with words as you do, that the words we use are so important. And I think if we're going to shift this and if we're going to get people to look at this in a different way, we've got to try and resist the temptation from going to nought to 60, right? Capitalism.
we thought was good, it's not, it's bad. The truth is capitalism is flawed in many ways. And any ism is. Democracy is flawed pretty significantly.
And when that, in fact, is something else that's playing out around the world right now, actually our model is imperfect, let's put it that way. But in trying to move people to that understanding of the flaws and the difficulties and the limitations and some of the darker stuff too, Well, I think we've got to take slightly gentler steps towards it, because otherwise what we're going to end up with is being in one camp or the other. And then we're on the edges.
And then you've got extremism. And then there's no environment for reasonableness. The way through this for me, and this could sound hopelessly naive, is reasonableness. We've got to have discussion.
And we've got to be able to get it out in the air. And we've got to get it out in the air much earlier than we are at the moment. These kind of conversations need to be happening in schools, right? This has got to be.
And I think they... I'm sure they are in some form. But that needs to be celebrated a bit more and encouraged a bit more.
At the moment, what we're doing with these things, particularly with, you know, sort of societal agendas, is that everyone's angry. Everyone's driving themselves into a corner of the rose garden and clunky connection. But you get my point, right? And where's that going to take us? I love this, Andy.
I mean, I have to say I fully support that idea. I really believe. That if you say this is bad, so I'm going to go to the opposite of it, the opposite of it is going to be bad as well, right?
It's basically somewhere a reasonable medium is probably what we're looking for. What do you think would be the way for that reasonable medium to rise? Like, you know, again, as a person who is informed by the external world about the external events. Yeah. do you ever i don't know how we do i don't know how we do it you'll have a better idea than mimo as a master of scale you know how you scale this idea of reasonableness but um i've got you know my little podcast is my little reasonable arrow into the world right because this is why i love podcasting because i get to have a conversation like we're having now which i think is reasonable and the people that i've had on my podcast who have all been through crises uh foreign uh far in excess of anything that I've experienced.
We sit and we pick apart their story in a very reasonable way. Some of those people, by the way, I had one guest on who I was in prison with. And we discussed how we both dealt with that. Other people have found themselves in crisis through no fault of their own whatsoever.
It was just something out of the blue sky. And those conversations, I think are valuable and how you scale that idea, how you scale the idea of reasonableness and try and encourage people into that grey space, into that understanding that we're all flawed, we will all make mistakes and that talking about failure and I talk about my failure happily would be an overstatement but I think it's important that I do. Because I believe in the value of failure. And if you're prepared to sit and listen to someone who properly mucked it up in the way that I did, well, then maybe that's going to be helpful in some way, shape or form.
I love how you speak about this. But I'm not looking for a round of applause. The important thing is, and this is one of the difficulties of it, is that when you do it, people are, oh, he's looking for a round of applause. Or it's, oh, he's building a platform. I'm not building a platform and I'm not looking for a round of applause.
I'm just trying to have a reasonable conversation and tell you how I feel about what I went through, because I think that. might be, and it's for others to judge, but it might be useful. I couldn't agree more, believe it or not.
You know, I keep this year, one of the big themes of scale for me, believe it or not, is to go back to barter economies. It's, you know, the idea of how, you know, capitalism as a promise, democracy as a promise is really to give the power to the people. You know, it's not just the royalty and the landlords that have all the wealth. You know, capitalism was sort of promising everyone who does the work can actually get the wealth as well or some of it. Right.
You know, democracy was saying everyone who participates can have an opinion, can have a view that determines their life at the very core level, if you want. And I think what ended up happening is that those systems, especially specifically capitalism, if you ask me, started moving everything to the bigger scales and the bigger scales and the bigger scales. A small grocery shop is not good enough.
You need to have a chain of supermarkets that then become a group around the world and so on. And that concentration of power still gives free market benefits, but they give it to very few while all of the others are just becoming cogs in the machine and feeling very lost if you think about it. And so if you take media, it probably followed the same approach. It followed, you know, the idea of...
Media at the beginning was one guy telling his neighbor, and then it became massive conglomerates. And now we're going back to that idea of, no, no, hold on, there could be a million of us podcasters that are communicating in ways that are not as big as the, you know, the sun or the guardian or whatever. But then the responsibility, I think, falls on the listener.
you know the listener needs to start to cleanse their palate and allow let in only reasonable conversations and i think it's probably a call for everyone to say if it doesn't sound reasonable to you if it's in on the fringes if it's polarized then it's probably not the truth you're looking for yeah yeah but it's connected to so many other things as well isn't it you know it really is connected to just the just the kind of impact of again these many computers on people's minds to be able to kind of even steer them towards a position where they see the value of reasonableness yeah when all they've digested is the immediate not even necessarily negative yeah and that's another thing as well right the other danger here is that you could put social media right into a box that's just wholly negative i've had guests on my pod who said that social media saved their lives a woman called paisey mamoud who went through the most i won't rehearse it here, a truly horrific set of circumstances. Building a community on Instagram is what saved her life, right? Without any shadow of a doubt.
And so there's so much positive that can come with these technologies. So much that's positive that can come with these technologies. So we've got to be careful not to put all that in the wrong box as well.
Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm half of the knowledge I have in my older years come from YouTube. you know, as much as people think I'm a bookworm, and I am, I read quite extensively, but definitely I get a lot more knowledge from highly targeted searches on YouTube than I get from books now. I want to talk about the podcast specifically, Crisis What Crisis, and I want to talk if, you know, I don't know if I want to visit the story of how you ended up where you ended up.
Prison is not an easy place to be. I think you did. quite a few amazing interviews. And I ask our listeners to go in and listen to some of them about your experience and how you describe it and how you sort of keep it.
I love that part of you, Andy, where you keep it to yourself. You say, I've made mistakes. You never mentioned that others made mistakes.
You never mentioned that the other mistakes affected your path. You just simply say, I made mistakes. I ended up in a place I didn't want to be. I dealt with it. And I think that's...
fabulous in your approach and i really encourage people to listen to that that's partly because i think there's very little we've been talking about trying to find the truth this i think is a truth there is nothing more useless either emotionally yeah strategically tactically than a self-appointed victim and that's that's a guiding light for me yeah i i think the truth however is that our world today if again, not to see the negative side of it, but there are so many reasons for people to feel that they're in crisis. There's so much powerlessness that makes people appoint themselves as victims. Okay. So I don't wanna generalize, but perhaps I wanna say, I wanna start from a personal experience. The transformation you went through in those years, It creates a person that is not reasonable from a point of view of being forced to be.
It's a person that is trying to be reasonable because he has seen both sides. He has seen sort of almost the ultimate power working for the prime minister of the country, you know, feeling the rush of the ability to inform an entire nation, if you want, all the way to a person that's in a... prison cell unable to even say but that's not my prison you know this is very high security this is not what i need to be in can i be categorized so that i can move to a prison that fits my needs that complete hopelessness if you want powerlessness yeah i i find in your story is probably the ultimate teacher so so so how Do you think our world today, which really is a world of a lot of powerlessness, you know, what have you learned that can help us navigate what's happening in our world today? Well, from a personal point of view, you know, from an individual point of view, you know, I went from sitting on Marine One, Barack Obama's helicopter with Barack Obama sat on one side and David Cameron sat on the other, two sitting on a plastic mattress in a cell in the space of 24 months. Hmm, and it was sitting on that plastic mattress that because I didn't cope very well at all in the first year of my difficulties I was unraveling pretty quickly everything in my life was just sort of falling apart all the things I cared about The things I built my responsibilities it all we know when it goes wrong It goes wrong really quickly Yeah And I really struggled with it for the first year and I can date actually the you know The moment when I when I kind of got a grip And it was sat on that blue plastic mattress.
That was May the 30th, 2012. I was in a prison cell in a police cell in Scotland. And it was the second time I'd been arrested. I'd been driven up that day from London, six and a half hours in a van, police motorbike outriders as I went over the border into Scotland. And I'm sat there in that cell. And I... I... And I sort of sat on the mattress, opposite me was one-way glass, it was like a cell for terrorists.
And I just thought, this is completely absurd. I have now lost control of my life. I've totally lost control of my life.
And I, in that moment, was also able to say to myself, you know, you're breathing. It's going in, it's going out. This is a room, it's a horrible room, but it's just a room.
And although you've lost complete control of your life, I now have total control of how I'm going to react to all this and how I feel about it. Wow. And I laid down on the mattress and that started the process for me. Just breathe in, breathe out, get through this day. This is before I've been interviewed.
And then move on to the next room. And who knows what rooms you'll end up in. As it turns out, I ended up in an even worse room, you know, with a door slamming shut for a period of time.
But even when I was in prison, I was still able to say to myself, look, just breathe in, breathe out. This is just a place. And actually prison, you know, desperately depressing environment, cold, stark, miserable. But I tell you what, I'm full of emotion.
And for a journalist. Fascinating. Fascinating. Fascinating, right?
Yeah. Walking around a yard. It's like gold.
Walking around a yard. Talking to every walk of life. Walking around a prison yard, anti-clockwise, as every prisoner does in the world, interestingly, with a bunch of lads who are going to be serving sentences considerably longer than mine, and talking to them about how are you going to approach this, how are you going to cope with this, was fascinating.
I would rather not have had that experience, obviously, because it wasn't just about me. It was also the impact. While I'm walking around that yard, my wife's at home with our sons, wondering what on earth is going to happen next.
I would not wish it on anybody. But I was able to say to myself, Andy, you've got control of how you feel about all this. So keep control of that. And that has been, again, along with dodging the bitterness bullet, has been a self-appointed victim bit, which is related. Those have been the sort of guiding lights for me.
And I think it's the guiding light for anyone who's in crisis, right? That's the first thing you've got to try and do is accept what's happening to you as being real and then work out what it is you've got control of and what you don't have control of and focus on that. And as you've correctly alighted on, Mo, and I know that you're interested in this subject as well, there's nothing new about this. The Stoics worked this out a couple of thousand years ago. They are the ultimate crisis managers in my view, and not much has changed.
It's all about control. So when we zoom out of my story and think about it from a bigger picture point of view, that is what needs, in my view, to be taught. I think that is an important lesson to learn. Again, I go back to education. I go back to our schools.
It doesn't have to be framed as stoicism. It doesn't need a label. It doesn't need to be because of Stoics.
For example, you put stoicism in Google. Right. And you'll see a whole load of stuff aligning stoicism with toxic masculinity.
Yeah. Utter nonsense. We've got to be super careful about what box we decide even to put stoicism in.
But the idea, simple lesson to build resilience, it starts with understanding what you have control of and what you don't have control of. That is a lesson that you can't teach early enough, in my view. This isn't. intense amount of wisdom in a very short few sentences as a matter of fact.
You're being very kind. No, no, no, hold on. The copyright unfortunately doesn't sit with me. It's a couple of thousand years old. It's out of copyright, funnily enough.
You'll be amazed. So I disagree with you on that. I have to say, and I don't say this with vanity at all, that after I wrote Soul for Happy and I was talking, you know, speaking about it publicly quite often, that people would walk to me after I finish my talk and say, that's stoicism, right? And I would go like, yeah, yeah. And I smile.
I didn't know what stoicism is. And then I started to read about stoicism as a result of people telling me that what I'm talking about sounds like stoicism. And I think what you went through seems to be exactly the same.
You figured this out yourself, which probably means it's human nature. And then you realize that this has been educated and taught for 2000 years. Yeah, I found it as a result of what happened for sure.
But there's a lot of, this is another positive, you know, there's a lot of difficult content out there that is sending us in the wrong direction that we've been discussing. There's also a lot of amazing content. And I found some fantastic stuff.
And I'm going to throw a compliment back at you, including your book, which I read, and some of the podcast content that you've produced and the other work that you've done. And you're not alone. There is a real...
movement of people out there who are exploring what it is to be resilient uh what it is to be a human being in this bonkers age of ours um and there's there's a lot of good stuff out there and i've i've i've lent on it um pretty heavily yeah so uh i did but i have felt oh wow why didn't i find this before and what it's quite interesting how is that has that not crossed my path previously you But the truth is my mind wasn't open to it. Because you were focused and running in another direction, I think. It's that moment. So I never shared this before, but, you know, I do a 40 days silent retreat every year.
This year, I managed to only do around 32 and halfway through, I also had to spend a bit of time with my wonderful wife because... 42 days is 40 days of silence is good for a single man, but not good for a married man. I would say that openly. But anyway, this year was a very, probably my most difficult silent retreat ever, ever.
Like I went through massive emotional peaks and troughs. I lost my sister, my brother, and my mom with two months apart this year. And I love them all. And I think they're incredible beings that are definitely in a wonderful place. But I think the realization of the slippage of time just hit me so hard.
And my wonderful friend, Alex, sat in front of me afterwards and I was sort of talking to her about the idea of how everything's so fleeting and life is so short and so on. And she said in a very interesting way, it's not about when we die, it's about how much more time do you have for what you set yourself out to achieve. Because in her words, you may live to be 80, but you're not going to be able to travel the world like you travel now when you're 70. And you may live to be 75, but you're not going to be writing books as... sophisticated and complex in their analysis as you're doing right now when you're 75. And so you might as well start asking yourself, if you have, you know, if you have, let's say, three books to write, and if you have four objectives that are big enough to have impact left for you to achieve, which ones will those be? And I could almost picture myself sitting on that plastic blue, you know, thing that you were sitting on, because that was a moment of realization of like, okay, you know what, you now need to understand that the fleeting time is not within your control.
It's painful that the loss that comes through life is not within your control, but what is within your control, right? And this is why I say this is an intense amount of wisdom that you shared in literally two sentences. Stop being the victim, look at the reality, take as much as, you know, it may pain you to be in that reality, realize that you're alive, you're taking another breath in and another breath out, start thinking about what you can control.
That's, if you ask me about the world we're going in with geopolitical crisis, with economic crisis, with massive confusion around misinformation and disinformation, and So much, it's difficult. It's difficult for a lot of people and we are fortunate compared to most. I think the answer is exactly the same. Realize that you're breathing in, breathing out. Stop being the victim.
Acknowledge the truth. Think about what you can control. Isn't that it? There's one other, on the face of it, sort of slightly more superficial thing that I'd add.
And that is the fundamental sort of strategic power of a sense of humor. I love that. Which has got me through some dark days.
I can tell you. The irony of life. The irony of life. Trying to keep a grip on the joke of the universe.
When I was in Belmarsh, it was my second night in prison, and it's the first time that I'm taken to the servery. to get my food and it is it is like a scene in a terrible film right you're lined up i'm in this ridiculous purple tracksuit that you're in prison yeah i'm standing on a prison landing in a high security prison not knowing who's in front of me or who's behind me and i'm taken down to the servery and it's kind of you know like a piece of overcooked chicken you get your peas and then at the end of it there's a prisoner stood behind the servery and he's he's in charge of the potatoes and he looks at me and he says oh it's you oh god here we go He says, you're the news of the world guy, aren't you? Oh, wow.
And I think, oh, God, you know, what's going to happen here? And then he, big smile, he says, I love that paper. Have another potato. No way. And so a cold, overcooked Belmarsh potato, literally the first positive that I'd had as a result of being the editor of the biggest selling Sunday newspaper in the world for about seven years.
And I couldn't help but find that very funny. Yes. And, you know, you've got to be careful about laughing about these things, I suppose, but I found it funny. And I tell you, it helped me. in the walk back to the cell and the door was slammed and and i mean i mean that cell for the next 23 hours or whatever it was it got me through right it's a it's a just it's it's such an important thing and so when i when i look for opportunities to uh to laugh I try and grab them. I love this.
And of course, there's a whole chemical thing about that. And there's a kind of, you know, we all know what the value of humor is. But to actually try and seek those moments out, I've done that.
They're all around you, honestly. They are, yeah. They're all around you.
around you. I have to admit to you, I, I am, I haven't figured it out. But I've been really deeply thinking about this and actually watching one of your interviews.
I don't remember with Jane something. Jane Moore. Yeah, Jane Moore.
He's a good friend. listening to it, not watching it. It just hit me really, really hard because you speak so beautifully about your relationship with your wife, Eleanor, and with your kids. During that time, you speak eventually about how some people really rose to the position of being really good friends while others disappeared. And that bit got me to really reflect deeply about what actually matters.
Because believe it or not, in prison, a potato and a favorable guy, a supportive guy. Big moment. Is a massive.
treasure, right? It's quite interesting, really. And I've been thinking deeply about that during my retreat, the idea of what actually matters, okay? And within what matters, what is actually within my control. So it's quite interesting.
It's quite interesting that... You know, being ex-chief business officer of Google X, speaking about artificial intelligence at the time that we're speaking, you know, that we're going through now, makes me reasonably popular for corporates to do talks and so on. And so there is money coming in and, you know, I'm reasonably comfortable in any way because my T-shirts are not very expensive and so on.
And, you know, but the idea is... There is so much that you can get sucked into in that world, being positioned as the expert of AI, which I really don't understand. I mean, I actually get some of my teachers really positioning me as an expert on the topic.
I have no idea why, okay? And so much blessing. But at the same time, it doesn't matter.
Truly, honestly and truly. So where have you got to on that? I think what matters is to have someone you love and to have your needs met.
And in a very interesting way, I say that because when I was listening to you with Jane... Somehow, I know this sounds ridiculous, so please don't punch me, but having your wife and feeling safe in prison, I somehow told myself after my last retreat, I was like, yeah, he had the whole world. I did. Yeah. That's exactly right.
He had the whole world. And my sons, that's what I need. And, you know, and I can tell you that was...
because you'll know this, I haven't just made professional mistakes in my life, I've made some personal mistakes. Oh, I think we all have. So that was imperiled, right? And the fact that Eloise stood by me, the fact that we stayed together, the fact that on the night that I arrive in prison, I get news that actually what's going to happen is I'm going to come out of that prison and I'm going to go straight into another trial in Scotland, which is what happened, potentially with even worse consequences. Most people know where the door is.
Not everybody. Most people know where the door is when they go into prison. I knew where the door was.
It was straight into another trial. And I speak to my wife and she said words to me were, it's a long life darling, you'll be fine, we're going to be fine, just get through it. What an amazing woman. She's an amazing woman and she's considerably more evolved than me. Asking her to marry me.
Lucky bastard. I am. I'm very lucky as well by the way. I'm incredibly lucky.
Asking her to marry me was the greatest decision I ever made. And her saying yes was the greatest piece of luck that I've ever had. So, yeah, I am, you know, that was everything.
It's incredible. Along with, as well, that was the single most important thing. But also, you know, you touched on it earlier, when you find yourself in those circumstances, you know, I was cancelled would be the word that we would use now. Yeah.
But I was properly toxic, right, for a number of years. Unemployable, completely out of it. And in prison, of course, it just only sort of exacerbates that.
And it becomes, therefore, a real audit on your life. And my situation was also a scandal. And scandal is an interesting thing because that twists relationships.
It twists individuals. It twists history. It twists all sorts of things out of shape.
And so all of that was kind of bent and broken for a while. And so you look at what you have and you certainly find out the old cliche, cliches for a good reason, who your friends are. And, you know, there were some people who sort of slightly fell by the wayside. That's for them. Important thing is not to be bitter or angry.
about that but honestly Mo there's a group of people who owed me nothing nothing and who ran into the gunfire for me and who have absolutely sustained me and helped me and supported me to get through Eloise is without doubt the most important along with our three sons but I'm a very very lucky man I think it's remarkable that you can say that with what you've gone through. I'm lucky that it all happened to me. I'm a better man for it. My failures are...
I would never say, I'm so glad it all happened. That would be ridiculous. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. But am I a better person for it without... a shadow of a doubt.
Am I a better husband? Yes. Am I a better father? Yes. Am I a better friend?
Yes. I am for sure a better advisor as a result of it. You guys are right.
To be in a room with someone who's going through difficult things which is... is what I do professionally without any shadow of a doubt you know that so you were waiting for your sentence on July 4th 2014 yeah so I was in prison exactly 10 years ago yeah that that was the day where I came back after burying my son goodness me and so Ali left July 2nd we buried him joy I second but you can you can You can imagine listening to your story. I was like, oh, interesting. That's interesting.
Well, what I want to say first and foremost is I'm sorry for your loss. But, you know, I would never go back and say, oh, I, you know, I'm glad it happened. But exactly like you, you know, it happened.
But my circumstances are nothing in comparison. Oh, you'd be amazed. You know, I buried the love of my life. My real teacher, if you want. You buried your old self that day.
No, no. I'm afraid I'm going to have to argue with you. You know, I had a broken reputation.
That's what I had. And that is nothing in comparison. Nothing in comparison. So I'm nothing but admiring of the work that you've done in your son's memory. It's nothing short of remarkable.
I think we should end on this. This. I mean, did you see me trying to make this podcast about news and media? Yeah, but I can't. This is not what slow-mo is about.
Anyway, I am so grateful. And you are a, if you'd let me, I'd like to call us friends. I'd definitely like us to stay in touch.
It's a privilege. What an incredible human being. a wonderful story. Thank you, mate.
Thank you for having me. Thanks for the conversation. And for all of you listening, yeah, I promise I wanted to give you a that's not what they tell you episode. I think there is a bit of that in our conversation. Please, please, please realize, I think what Andy taught us at the beginning that, you know, journalists are humans.
Politicians are machines that have objectives and targets and You know, sometimes deals need to be made. Social media is completely uninformed. And so I think my objective of this entire mini series is to tell you debate, you know, question when they tell you democracy is amazing, nod and say, is it really? And is what I'm living a democracy at all? If they tell you capitalism is freedom, question that whose freedom maybe it is, but not yours.
And I think The, you know, the idea that we can get to the truth if we're a little more reasonable. I love that part, that we can actually be a bit more reasonable. We don't have to be on the extreme fringes of everything.
Having said that, it seems to me that life eventually boils down to what you need and love and connection. And if you have those, breathe in and breathe out. Identify what you can control. And start working on it.
I cannot thank you enough until my last five episodes to give me the opportunity to speak to such amazing, amazing human beings with amazing stories and so much wisdom. It's all because of you. And I'm very, very grateful for your time and that you're listening to this. As I always tell you, I love you all for listening. And I will see you next time.