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Tyson Popplestone is a Comedian from Melbourne Australia. Join him for a brand new interview each week.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (00:00.402)
to us then.
Tyson (00:01.223)
Good luck to us, come on. Yeah, officially good luck to us. We're recording. There we go, now we're good to go. Hey, it's exciting having a flick through some of your stuff and reading through your research, getting ready for tonight's chat to be reminded of how much better a lot of the issues in and around the world are going than what so many of us expect or so many of us perceive. What do you think is causing such a massive gap between the reality and our perception of
how we think things are.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (00:31.772)
Well, when we've been looking at how people perceive the world, we see that especially when it comes to human development, it seemed to be totally underestimated the progress that is going on. And we've been thinking about that quite a lot, actually. Why can that be? But I do really think it's sort of a combination of a few different things. I think one thing is that we're driven to be interested in bad things happening and we are looking, whatever new information we get.
tend to be negative information. And if someone is talking about positive things, I think we're less likely to listen in and remember. we get the proportions of the things we have in our minds, I think, are skewed towards bad things. And then I think we also, it's pretty new that we have access to data. And when it comes to human development, there are pretty long time series.
that shows that it has been a steady and pretty slow progress and that never fits for the news. When is the time to report something that is going steadily and slowly, you know, in a positive direction? So that I think is an effect as well. then I think, I mean, for all of us, it's important to keep track of bad things happening. So we know if, you know, if it's going to be a weather catastrophe in the neighborhood.
We really need to know that. While if it's a weather catastrophe, I don't know, 500 miles away, we might still be interested, but we don't have to do anything. So think we're wired towards, is there something we need to act on? And then basic storytelling, the basic storytelling problem that we love Jews' stories, and we tend to remember those. I think that is also part of the case.
Tyson (02:26.454)
Yeah, it's so interesting. heard, I think it was Andrew Huberman on Rich Roll's podcast a few years ago speak about how the favourite headspace that a human can spend their time in or our most enjoyed headspace is not happiness or joy, but mild irritation. It seems to be the place that we tend to go back to most naturally. And I see that's true whenever you turn on the TV. And as you say, like when you're looking at news headlines and
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (02:42.564)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tyson (02:52.376)
From the news perspective, you can understand, because if that is true, that mild irritation is what sort of entertains us, naturally, the bang for the buck of sponsorship dollars would be to post more of those stories. But I guess if you're just simply posting stories, which are getting attention based on a catchy headline, it's very unlikely that we're gonna have a real accurate perception of what's actually going on.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (03:14.864)
Yeah, and also, don't know, I mean, we have been showing people a lot of positive data they haven't seen or haven't thought about or haven't remembered. Not really clear what is the major, the most major problem. But also it's a hard thing actually communicate positive things happening because I think we're from school, we're wired to be critical thinkers. And I think we wrongly confuse thinking critically.
with being critical, being negative, being, saying no to things. So I very often have the feeling when you're trying to say something that has been a positive trend, people assume that you are against, you know, that you don't want to see problems or that you are really, really naive and stupid because you should always come with something
sort of counter the argument with something smart, unusually that is something negative. That's the way to look smart. And I think that also plays in.
Tyson (04:22.146)
That's true. Do you feel like that's a, is that just a human, a human symptom or is that something you notice particularly? Cause when you say that, I automatically think of like a professor at a university and trying to impress him. And I mean, it seems like an easy go-to, just say the negative thing and start to appear more intelligent.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (04:29.522)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (04:37.606)
Yes, exactly. And I think that is the structure of the current school system, sort of an old fashioned pyramid where we, I mean, we used to have the knowledge only at the top and it was inaccessible on lower levels and you had to achieve knowledge stepwise. I do think with the new technology and that data is available online and everyone can Google, especially the young ones are pretty good at that. I think the old hierarchy
for knowledge will disappear. And I don't think the young ones now will accept that lie sort of the old university structure to the same extent as the rest of us. So I think that works great.
Tyson (05:22.508)
Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. was just gonna say it's really interesting to watch it from a broader perspective. I'm not sure how much Australian news makes its way onto Swedish television, but at the moment there's a bill that our government's trying to pass around misinformation and how to monitor that most effectively. And most of my friends, myself included, look at that and go, know, you really haven't proved yourself to be really effective arbiters of what's real and what's not.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (05:26.343)
No worries.
Tyson (05:49.482)
over the last couple of years. so a lot of people are getting upset because they're like, okay, if it did just used to be you that had the reins of, you know, what people could believe based on what it is that you've stamped the approval on all of a sudden them losing grip of that's become a little bit of a tension point between, you know, the Australian public and the Australian government. And it's, I'm not sure if that's something that that's happening all around the world. seems to be, like this idea of censorship and a more authoritarian
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (06:02.95)
Yeah.
Tyson (06:19.239)
government or at least a push towards that seems to be, you know, a real discussion amongst when I say that I'm thinking like America, Australia, Canada, maybe New Zealand.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (06:30.386)
Yeah, no, I think we see the same here as well. Maybe not as much because we're just a tiny, you know, a tiny country with few people. So the extent is not as, you know, massive. But I do...
What we have figured out during the past years, which I think is pretty interesting, it's a lot of talk about, you know, fake news, misinformation and so on. And that gives an idea that all of us are well informed, but then someone comes and sneaks into our minds and tries to manipulate the way we think in a more criminal kind of way. We have tested the general public in several countries.
on basically what they know about the world by asking pretty trivial, but ABC questions about basically everything you can imagine based on the UN SDG, the UN goals. So we've been going through every single indicator and tested just trying to get a map of what people seem to be wrong about. And what is interesting by that is to see that when the sort of trusted official data, people are pretty wrong about that too.
And we tested teachers, tested journalists, politicians, and they are usually as wrong as the general public. And when I say wrong on a question, it's like 10 % of them get it correct. It's those kinds of numbers or 5 % get it correct. If we have a question where people score really, really good, it might be up to a third of the people answering that gets it correct. And we talk about ABC questions. I mean, it's not rocket science in that sense.
I mean, of course, we ask questions to people who don't, they will not know the answers in many cases. We know that, but we can see that when they are guessing, they are usually skewing the guesses the same way. So they skew it very often towards the more negative answer alternative. And I think what is interesting with this is when we think that people are misinforming us and that's what causes the problem.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (08:42.586)
but that we used to know everything by heart from, you know, as a standard, the baseline, then we have a very hard time to solve the problem. Because if we're wrong about almost everything anyways, the ones managing to misinform us will be just a fraction. So maybe we should think about the bigger problem that we tend to be wrong about everything anyways, which is bigger.
Tyson (09:05.496)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (09:09.608)
But it has a completely different solution because there is no criminal trying to do something, but anyways, we still get it wrong, right? So think that is a very interesting and pretty unsolved question.
Tyson (09:20.416)
Yeah.
Tyson (09:27.008)
Yeah, so when you speak about that from like a, just for the sake of example, like a government officials perspective, trying to navigate, all right, how do we solve this, just abundance of information that the public has access to and, you know, what it is they can see or what they can't see or whatever it is, like however you like to phrase it. It always sounds so strange when you say that out loud, but I hope that makes sense. Like, you know what I'm trying to say? It's a problem for them because like the idea is, are you saying that,
that they don't have a clear idea of where the public sits in terms of what they believe anyway. So trying to monitor and, you know, maybe coerce them in a particular direction is like for the sake of trying to have a plan in place, it's going to be difficult to plan for something you're not 100 % sure. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm kind of just waffling, but it's a weird thought to put your head around.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (10:16.925)
Yeah, I think we have a situation where we have basically the ones making the decisions for all of us, the teachers, the journalists, the government people, right? They usually believe that they are right because they are highly educated and smart people and they have a good intent.
So they want to do good and they're doing good, right? But when we test their facts, even within their own field, very often they are wrong about the... I mean, of course they know the nitty-gritty details of something very particular they are working on, but when they get questions that are like close, they usually get those wrong.
So I think we have a situation where we have the experts believing that they are correct and that they not only know what the facts are like, but also that they can understand how people perceive it. And usually I think they perceive that the general public might be wrong. That's okay, because the experts will communicate to them and make decisions for them. Wise decisions.
But what we point out is that even they seem to be wrong very often. So I think.
The problem here is when we use our gut feeling or when we discuss with colleagues and friends trying to make sure that we are on the right track and have the right information, we will confirm each other in a sort of a similar kind of misunderstood society. And of course, I mean, we work with the dullest possible data that no one...
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (12:07.32)
don't assume that people will go to the UN website and just browse around and enjoy. mean, people don't do that. Of course, I get that. But the thing is to see that people are so much more. I mean, it's basically like this. When we ask questions that are ABC questions, if they were just guessing, they should end up on a third correct.
Tyson (12:13.134)
.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (12:32.68)
Because everything, you know, they should by random get every third correct or so. So by not reading the questions, they would end up around three out of nine correct all the time, like 33 % correct. But, but humans don't end up there. Humans usually end up further down and get lower results than random because when we start guessing, there is something going on that is a systematic.
way of reasoning. And I do think, I mean, I don't we can solve anything. We're just a tiny nonprofits, but we can point that it's a very few people can because we are independent. So we can go and point and show this to decision makers in many different fields and hopefully get a few of them to get the sense that this is something that is truly
problematic and they might need to do something with their routines for how they use information when making decisions. I mean, maybe we can achieve something like that. And I know it sounds, when I talk about it, it might even sound a little bit like a conspiracy, like all the experts are wrong. But it seems like on these kinds of questions, a lot of people are, and it's pretty trivial to change, right? Because the data exists nowadays.
Tyson (13:40.567)
Yeah
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (14:01.268)
And the people in decision-making positions are smart people, so they can easily change as soon as they understand that if they use their gut feeling, most likely it will take them wrong. So mean, that's basically the only thing they need to do.
Tyson (14:21.862)
Can you talk a little more to the idea of that systematic, terrible success rate that we have when it comes to multiple choice questions? Like, could you say if you're just picking a number or if you're picking a letter A, B or C, a third of those would be right, but there's something deeper or there's some brainstorming error that's taking place when we're trying to work our way through, like maybe not simple, but simple at least on paper.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (14:42.172)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so I think what I'm trying to say that if I just gave you six questions, all ABC questions, you didn't read them. You were just picking a few A's, a few B's and a few C's. If you did that and we were looking at your results,
you might just hit the correct question on some of them without knowing anything about the question. While if you started to read the questions, you will start to resonate with yourself. What makes sense here? What is the situation? And then you start to think and you start to pick the the alternative that you believe is the most correct one, right? I mean, that's how we do things.
And when we start doing that, then we get worse results than what random would get.
That's basically the problem, right?
Tyson (15:46.102)
Yeah, because it's becoming an emotional thing rather than like a factual thing or...
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (15:49.552)
Yeah, yeah, and we use the fractions of things we might remember at the moment, and we try to make sense of the world, thinking about what we heard in news, what we learned in school. But I mean, what we learned in school is probably totally outdated, even, and most likely it was not a covering picture where we got the overview. I mean, it was usually pretty snippety, right, when we talked about the world in school.
and was long time ago. So the world has changed. We have forgotten most of what we learned. So mean, in that case, we don't have so much to rely on. And when we look at the news, we see all the dramatic stuff that has happened, which might be correct information, but it doesn't give the overview because a lot of things are also going well, but we don't see them.
So we usually, I think we have that skewness in the way we think. Yeah.
Tyson (16:48.278)
Yeah, are there any particular examples that people are most consistently wrong about? Like if they're asked a certain question about a certain issue, one that stands out as being, you're way off.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (16:55.676)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (17:01.033)
I was actually for a lecture, I was testing a group. I will not say which group in this case, but it was like an official organization. I was testing their knowledge and I had picked a number of questions in a little bit different fields. But one of questions that they got scored very wrong on and that the general public usually score wrong on.
is for example a question about how many women have been leaders, like presidents of their countries. And then they get three alternatives. I can see if I can find the question. Do you want to have the real question here now? Yeah, basically I ask you this one. Up to 1990,
Tyson (17:41.122)
Please, this could humble me in front of the audience, for sure. Ask me.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (17:49.448)
22 countries in the world had been led by a female head of state or government. What is the number today? So in 1990 it used to be 22, right? And now comes the alternatives. A, 39, B, 59 or C, 89.
Tyson (18:08.118)
Okay, well basically just to continue the trend of what we've been talking about, I'm locking in C89.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (18:14.492)
And you're correct. But when we asked this, we asked this in 32 countries and the average of those answers in those countries was actually 4%. Got it correct. And in Australia it was 3 % who got it correct.
Let's see if we have Sweden here. Yeah, and Sweden was also 3 % correct. So as you can understand, pretty low. And the group I tested and I was looking at results yesterday night, they scored 4 % correct on that one. So I mean, we usually get those numbers and that is pretty representative when it comes to positive trends for women in general.
whether it's how many girls go to school or female CEOs or presidents or, you know, those kinds of questions, it's super much underestimated the positive trend. And I think very often it's because we confuse if we say the lowest number, it sounds like...
I think we confuse the fact, the number, with an intent. Basically, if I pick the low number for, or the high number, then it seems like I'm overestimating the progress as if I don't care about women rights in a way, right? So I think people are doing those kinds of, they are adding...
like some ideology when they are answering because they don't want to sound like neglecting big problems. So I think that is also playing a part.
Tyson (20:05.814)
Yeah, and that that gender role in especially the corporate structure would be a fairly delicate conversation to have obviously, because I know there's still plenty of debate going on around that. So I'd imagine in that particular sphere, yeah, it'd be really quite
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (20:12.776)
Yeah.
Of course. Yeah. And I mean, they are right in a way because women are still very underrepresented. So mean, that is correct. But when something is underrepresented, it's very hard to see that you have a rapid change going on, even if it is in smaller numbers. But something is happening that will change it pretty dramatically, most likely. So that was one example. But those kinds of...
Tyson (20:41.601)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (20:45.464)
positive trends people tend to underestimate quite a lot.
Tyson (20:49.898)
Yeah, sure. And so when we just to continue with with that conversation a little because it's an interesting one. When we speak about women being underrepresented in certain areas, like are there particular fields that are the real standouts from from your perspective with the numbers that you've seen that that are some of the key areas? Because I feel like whenever we talk about this particular topic, I can see how it gets messy because a lot of the time from obviously, it's like it's a political conversation. It's an emotional conversation.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (21:13.446)
Yes.
Tyson (21:20.344)
it's a yeah, there's there's facts and there's feelings and there's also I often hear people speak about okay. Yeah. Well, you know, there's a there's an under representation of just to use our example of women in this particular area. But then we've got to look at the flip side of that and say yeah, but like in nursing or whatever, I don't know if that's a good example. There's like an over representation. And so even saying that it's that you've got kind of got to be careful because people are like, what are you trying to say? You're trying to say you don't care.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (21:44.263)
Yes.
Tyson (21:46.254)
Not at all, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it, but I see you even asking the question how delicate it can be.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (21:49.19)
Yes. Yes. And yeah, and I think that that sense of I think people, they sort of feel that delicacy in their own heads, and that affects how they answer the questions, in a way, I think. Yes, I think it's something going on, not only between humans, but also inside us that we're regulating in a way. Yeah. So
Definitely.
Tyson (22:20.33)
It's really true. It's really true. mean, it was was as obvious as I'd ever felt just asking that question. Because I can imagine people here you go, toss us an asshole. You know, that's how we felt. I want to get back to something you said about school earlier. And I think feel free to correct my quote, if I'm wrong. But you saying that, for a lot of us, just the way that we're taught in school often leads us towards a negative bias or a negative perspective on on some big issues.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (22:29.244)
Yes.
Tyson (22:46.988)
Like what do you think it is about the, is it the structure of school? Is it the lessons, the, because obviously all of these, I realize you can go a mile deep in each conversation and still have more to say.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (22:47.463)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (22:58.716)
Yeah, no, I mean, I would say once again, it's just speculations from my side, but I do think it does something with us when we're being for so many years. I mean, in, let's say, 12 years at least, we're going every single day to a place where someone is looking at everything we do and put, you know, put marks whenever we are wrong.
So I think we're getting cautious of being wrong and we are very eager to be seen in the hierarchy for doing right because it's important for us to get the grades and behave right and answer correctly. And I think it might have an effect that we're not very good at reasoning or thinking, you know, but we're pretty good at trying to avoid to be
embarrassed by the teacher or our classmates. So I think it creates a mindset that might not necessarily be
very well adopted, at least not now when we can find information easily, or much more easily. It's still cumbersome to go through data of course, but now at least we have access to a lot of it for free online, so it's easy to find, still a bit hard to make sense of. But that is something we will have to solve by becoming more data literate, and maybe the skills for data literacy might not come from
Tyson (24:32.492)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (24:42.79)
from school primarily, but from actually being exposed to a lot of data, most likely, I guess, online in areas we care about. For instance, if you're interested in, let's say soccer, most likely you will look at the scores and visualizations around that and start to get your head around how to read bigger sets of data. And I think school is usually
Tyson (24:53.206)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (25:12.666)
a little bit behind. And that is a new thing because information used to be locked into churches and schools and academia. And now you have information basically everywhere. So the exclusiveness of the way we have structured our learning hierarchies, I'm not sure that is going to be as important when we move forward.
So things will happen, I think, probably too slow and frustratingly slow, but I do think it will change. And I do think a lot of the change will come from young people not accepting the ridiculous ways we have been doing, you know, information, basically how we've been doing teaching for the past, I don't know, let's say 500 years, pretty the same all the time.
Tyson (25:41.56)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (26:11.346)
But now when the kids can find the information outside of school quite often, easily, I think the power of the learning hierarchies are getting lowered in a way.
Tyson (26:28.342)
Yeah, for sure. wonder this, especially in America, like you see the financial situations of some of the college graduates who, you know, they graduate 200, 300, even half a million dollars in debt, depending on their course, how many years they've been there, and like the ability to justify that cost and how much, you know, that's cost you in comparison to what the career that you've just got yourself a degree in is going to pay you back starts to look pretty difficult to
to justify it. Like I guess that's the rescaffolding that has to take place around, okay, well, how does someone become a qualified doctor versus how does someone become a philosopher or an art student or whatever it might be? There's obviously different levels of entry or qualification based on what you're trying to achieve.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (26:55.911)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (27:07.292)
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think there is a frustrating, I mean, I do really understand the reason why we want to have an educated population. That is a good thing, right? And people, many people love to learn. So that is a good thing too. But I do think we will sort of end up in a problem when we downgrade all the occupations that a society actually needs and everyone
I mean, I'm not sure it's a good thing for society that everyone gets a philosophy degree and no one goes into sanitation and plumbing, right? It doesn't really work. So we do need to balance that somehow. I don't think society need as many theoretical thinkers as we might end up with, because it's fun for... It's fun.
And it's meaningful for the person and it's interesting to deep into a subject. But as a society, we need a lot of other skills too, I would say. So, yeah.
Tyson (28:20.31)
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's a good point. Do you feel like that is the direction that things are potentially going at the moment? Like there's a lot of theoretical students without the lack of a better description, like the substance behind, like what a plumber or a farmer or someone else might have. It seems to be a trend that as you can get access to so much of this information online,
Why go to pay for it when you can just, know, you can, every day is like a philosophy conversation or a political conversation here in Australia. You just go down the street for your coffee and you know, the barista has got his opinion. The local baker's got his opinion. I'm in a small town. You can't go too far without hearing the thoughts of everyone on the main street. But yeah, there's definitely a trend towards theory.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (28:54.182)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson (29:07.948)
But here's the thing that often stands out to me as well. I've got theories about things that I'm never going to make practical steps on. Like, and I guess this is the abundance of information that we have access to. can see American news or Canadian news or there's world news. And I can have my opinions like, this is what I will do. This is what I think. This is where they're going wrong. But me filling my head with all my theories and speculations and thoughts does absolutely nothing to see any practical change.
on the ground on these issues. And there seems to be a lot of armchair critics and commentators in comparison to how many people are actually getting anything done.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (29:39.186)
Yeah. Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (29:44.352)
I mean, yes, I think there is. I think, I mean, maybe in one way, maybe it should be, but we need still to solve how we can get the sort of practical things of society to roll meanwhile, because otherwise we will end up in a mess, right? And I think that we have downgraded a lot of the practical occupations far too much. That I actually think.
Tyson (30:02.293)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (30:13.864)
And I think that doesn't really make sense because it is a true art to be able to make, I don't know, build a house or whatever you're going to do. It's a lot of, I mean, in very practical work tasks, there is a lot of fascinating knowledge that, yeah, that is important that people have, right?
Tyson (30:36.098)
Yes.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (30:36.164)
And those comes from actually solving real problems in real life. I mean, I'm a typical example of one of those just sitting, thinking and talking, right? So mean, I'm being a bit self-critical here. And I mean, if the Swedish university system wasn't as well-funded and as generous where I could actually study whatever I like and without getting the...
as big depths as in the US. I could actually decide and do whatever I wanted to do and my parents didn't have a say because I could work on that on my own. I think that is a major reason why I have dared.
Tyson (31:18.029)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (31:26.374)
doing what we have been doing because that was not a clear career path. So I mean, I am one of those taking all that those courses that might on a bigger level not be for society as a whole, it might not be smart. They shouldn't have too many like me, right? That doesn't work in a way. But I am happy because for me, was of course very fun and it will be fun for others as well. So I mean, I, yeah.
Tyson (31:55.68)
I didn't.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (31:55.933)
How can I not do the fun stuff, right? So, yeah.
Tyson (31:59.955)
For sure. I'm glad you're doing the heavy lifting and collating the data. Because for me, that's not the fun part, but sitting on the website and answering the questions, I mean, I find that enjoyable. And it's enjoyable as well because constantly I'm shocked at how wrong I am, but in the right way. I'm wrong in the fact that things are better than I'd anticipated, which is always really nice to see. It is a unique field that you're in though. I love it. My wife asked me, so she's read Factfulness as well.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (32:13.884)
Yeah.
Tyson (32:27.526)
I can't remember the year I read it for the first time. It was a few years ago now. And we both like, this is just so inspiring. Cause I felt like the news headline, social media, everything was, we're going down the drain. Everything's worse. And I've noticed this trend in myself. I'm 37 and I can easily look back to the good old days of when I was 10 years old. And I noticed my grandparents used to look back at the good old days when they were 10 years old. I'm like, it can't all just be the good old days. Like surely, like there's like a crossover point here where we're both living in some pretty high times.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (32:36.359)
Yeah.
Tyson (32:56.642)
But we'd love that. And I was just explaining to my wife that I was going to be talking to you and she's like, what is it she does? And I was like, it's actually a brilliant question. I don't know how exactly to explain it. And so my biggest challenge is getting ready to sit down to talk to you. was trying to figure out like, what is the, what is the title that you give yourself? Cause I know you run a nonprofit and you collect data. But how do you explain that to people? Cause I imagine it's a question that gets thrown out a lot.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (32:56.903)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (33:26.087)
Yeah, and I have to admit that I have changed my answers over the years and I'm still not happy with the answers because I mean, as a starter, think we've been working with this undefined thing for about 25 years. What we've done all those years have been basically trying to make the world easier to understand by using time series data.
I mean, that we have done all the time in different ways. But then, I mean, maybe I should answer the question that when I was a teen, I wanted to become a photographer and I was studying social science at the university. So I was studying photography and social science. So I spent five years at the university and some three years at the university, two before.
to actually become a professional photographer. I was, I'm, you could say could be one of the occupations I got in a way, but I never worked as a photographer because I was studying social science at the same time because I felt it was interesting to combine. And one of the projects we've done, the Dollar Street project is sort of a perfect combination of those, basically trying to explain.
the world, the income differences in the world by using photography from inside of homes on different income levels globally. So that there I managed to combine those two, I would say elegantly. But in all the other projects, I would say my main thing is that I like to
I like to clean out a lot of information. Basically, you can say like this. I work with my husband. I used to work with my father-in-law. My father-in-law, he was a professor, medical doctor and so on. So that was pretty clear. He wanted to teach his students. My husband is a wild brain and he comes up with a trillion ideas. And I like to develop things I haven't seen.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (35:44.592)
Hans's frustrations, my father-in-law, my husband Ola's trillion ideas to actually solve some of Hans's problems that he was explaining and me being like frustrated and irritated and angry trying to... I can see the vision. I love to be visionary and dream up things that doesn't exist. I love that. I part...
innovator, something like that. But I like to clean out the mess from the ideas from all those trillion ideas my husband gets. I like to clean out and remove most of the ideas and the ones we keep. like to continue to dive into and clean and organize and make them, yeah, make them understandable, you could say. So everything that comes comes down to
simplifying, cleaning out on visionary thinking, I would say is my main passion and I've been doing that in many different ways.
Tyson (36:53.184)
Yeah, do you feel like you're like that outside of work as well? Like in your house is what you just explained represented by the clutter he brings in versus the order you try and bring into place or is this unique to work?
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (37:04.314)
I'm, yeah, I think I would love to have, so I think I'm pretty good at that at work. I'm super bad at it in private. I'm very disorganized, clattery, bad at tidying up. I'm good at starting things, not very good at finalizing them.
It's better, I would say, work-wise, because there I... If it's something visual or if it's a thought that is not clear, then I get very irritated and I need to finalize it until I enjoy it, you could say.
Yes, I like to dive into super complex information and make it, see if it's possible to make it as easy, so easy so my kids when they were in middle school can easily understand what it's all about. So basically go that whole distance.
Tyson (38:11.446)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (38:14.95)
That's what I really, really enjoy. And I, I, I'm still trying to figure out how, how I can apply that skill in my private life as well. Haven't, hasn't happened yet, but maybe there will one day.
Tyson (38:26.501)
Yeah. Let me know if you figure it out. Cause I could do with some tips as well. it's interesting to hear you've come from a photography background. Cause, cause one thing that struck me, I was looking at your website earlier and there was a, I can't remember if it was just like a welcome video, but, it was a welcome video and it showed a moving, a moving chart of like where particular issues are.
today in comparison to where they were five, 10, 15 years ago. Some of them were moving forward, some of them were too slow, some of them were moving backward. And I'm like, man, it's such a, from a numbers perspective, you would assume that this is purely like a math geek kind of job. This is somewhere where someone just loves numbers. But watching that, can see it is a very creative process as well. so it, I mean, I guess that's a credit to you guys for combining those two factors because,
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (38:52.092)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (39:15.879)
Yeah.
Tyson (39:19.564)
The fact that you came from a world of photography sort of doesn't surprise me because like to make this information digestible and enjoyable for people to see, it has to have some level of creativity involved to help people like myself who honestly would never have thought I would be interested in this topic, but I am based on those kinds of things. It's a unique blend.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (39:29.159)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (39:41.82)
I'm glad to hear. Yeah. So basically I would say I realized that I was interested in the, in the topics, but I hate tables of data still. So, so I think most of the things we've done is out of hatred, right? Because I get very, very irritated that it's usually presented in a way that makes the, what I think the interesting information totally undigestible.
So I think we shouldn't blame people for not using the data. Of course they won't. Not only they don't see why they should use it, and then if they try and go to the official sources and see the data. I mean, it's still very dull because it comes from that what I was explaining, the academic tradition where I would say where the people high up in the hierarchy, no one has been
No one has forced them to start to make their information a little understandable. That is not something that is going on in the university structure. They can present information, however, because the readers are those who have like unlimited attention and interest. So they sit there. And I guess that's how you sort people that...
Those who can stay at the university are those who can accept very bad presented information, even though the information itself might be very important and interesting, but there is no tradition of making the information accessible. So I think the whole research community is missing out on a lot of smart people because frankly,
they can think of more interesting things to do than reading those horrific papers, right? So I do think that, yeah, I like, and it might also be a little bit of a, I think also I have in me, I never really liked,
Tyson (41:39.863)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (41:54.298)
authority and working and having someone tell me what to do. So I think I'm in a way, I like to go around and poke on prestigious organizations and the, you know, people that are much smarter than myself, but pointing out that, Hey, there is something here that doesn't really make sense because you're scoring as bad as everyone else. There might be a problem here, right?
I think that is part of the case, trying to liberate the information so that people can use and understand it. I think it's important, but also it is a bit fun to poke on the prestigious organizations. Yeah, honestly.
Tyson (42:37.042)
For sure, can imagine that's very true. Actually, now might be the perfect time to ask this question because I was wondering when it comes to collating the data, obviously, there'd be so many different points of data that you can go to or so many different places you can go and get data. obviously, depending on, seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems to me that at the moment, there's like a political arrow which strikes through the heart of so much information. And so some information
it seems that we're offered, it seems more like that information is gonna be tailored to suit like a political agenda or a political mindset. So if you go to CNN in America, for example, you know, it's gonna be far more liberal. If you go to Fox, it's gonna be far more conservative. They're talking about the same stories in very different ways. And I always find that a really difficult thing to navigate because CNN's obviously coming from a like, no, where's your heart? And Fox News is like, no, this is like, we've got to stand up for what we've built.
And it's like, you both seem to be making good points in some level, but the way you're coming at it is just completely different. like, how is it that you assess credible data and what is just like a, what do you call it? Like a tainted data set based on certain political beliefs or whatever else. Does that make sense?
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (43:58.024)
So, yeah, I think definitely. I think most of the data we use comes from the big organizations that collect data from country, from governments basically. And usually it's data from the World Bank or the UN system.
And quite often they are actually about the same data. They might have the same source in many cases. But that is the baseline information that we have always used. And then in some cases we use data from some research institutes. And there are certain data of the very, long time series that we have constructed by combining data sets from different research.
places, right? If you go very far back in time, then it will be people in history that have been doing the time series maybe, and then we have to combine it with the World Bank theory. So we have done some work internally as well, but most of the data comes from the big organizations and that data is supposed to be neutral.
It's supposed to be not only it's like government data from countries, but then it has also gone through a revision process within those big organizations to make sure that the data seems as okay as it can be, right? No data will ever be perfect, but those are pretty much covering. When we've been asking all those fact questions, we have for a big portion of the questions we've asked, or maybe not the biggest, but...
Around 500 of those questions, we have actually, we took, we constructed the questions using already published official statistics from the big organizations. And after we published, or after we got the results, if people were truly wrong about this question, then we reached out to three researchers in the field. And we're trying to find researchers with different political ideology.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (46:04.392)
Asking them would you use this numbers from this data source if you were going to talk about this? Do you think we constructed the question so it makes sense? Do you think the answer alternatives are reasonable? You know, and if any one of those Was objecting saying like no, I would never use that source. Sure. It's the official source But it's a guesswork or whatever then we have removed those questions. So
Out of the 500 we've tested very, seriously that way, 9 % we got shooting down by experts. So we're assuming that of all the questions we've asked, even if we use official data sources, the research community would most likely shoot down somewhere around 10%. But the interesting thing is we use already published official statistics that everyone else uses like
Tyson (46:52.961)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (47:00.824)
without double checking whether those numbers are the best or not. So I do think we have a pretty good idea about the data standards and the data quality. So we have a, you can say that we work with a big network of researchers, but we're trying to work not in close collaboration because they have the academic way of doing things that is a very slow way. And we try to keep our freedom.
and our integrity, so we work on the side, we try to involve them to make sure that we're not doing anything stupid.
Tyson (47:37.836)
That's really cool. That's really cool. Because I mean, like over the years of doing something like this, I can imagine you've become more and more trained to be maybe like politically neutral or whatever you want to say neutral to the subject for the sake of getting the answers. was that like, is that something that you've had to develop? Was that something you were passionate about? Or did you feel coming in originally like your emotions were like, no, this is rubbish. I can't have this.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (47:56.21)
Want to?
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (48:00.614)
No, no, but I would say honestly, that has been the intent all the time because we were very frustrated that people are, we had the sense that people were having very like intense arguments, but without having the facts in the matter, because you have like all this ideology, you know, clashes. So very early on, we had the feeling that we need to make the
Tyson (48:17.793)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (48:27.546)
neutral data, I mean, as neutral as it can get, but what sort of humanity considers being the neutral information? We need to make that available because ideally, of course, people with different political opinions should at least have a look at on the same information. And then, of course, their ideologies will take them in different directions when they think about if there is a problem they are looking at, they will probably
both agree that it might be a problem, but they will have different ways of solving it, right? Should it be, you know, have a smaller state or have a stronger state? That might be two different ways of approaching a system where we can see that, I don't know, kids fall out of school too early. Well, we need to have a stronger state that blah, blah. No, we need to privatize and make sure the competition solves it. I mean, that would be two completely different.
solutions, but when we see that people are wrong about the baseline, don't have the facts and the facts they get, they will get from within their ideology bubbles in a way. Then I think we have a problem because then we're just trying to shoot each other down. But quite often, even if we are in different places in our ideologies, quite often, I mean, we are closer than we assume.
I would say. If there is a problem of poverty, for instance, in the city we live, I bet most people would feel that that is a true problem and it should be solved.
And if we weren't just debating as intensely thinking that we were standing in different corner, I think very often we could actually find ways of doing things together, trying to solve things. mean, it's sort of a lot of problems are more on a common sense kind of level, even though we have our ideologies. And I think we yeah, we should combine.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (50:34.201)
information and facts with ideology. I think that would be cool. Not just having with ideology.
Tyson (50:38.486)
Yeah, it would be cool. It's, it's so hard to do, isn't it? It's so tricky. was talking to my wife about this the other day. It's like your example is perfect. If you get a conservative and a liberal and you say, all right, know, homelessness is a problem. It's not like they get, but one's going to go, yeah, it is. And the other one's going to go, no, it's not. But yeah, just that tribal attitude of, we're in different teams. Like it seems to be a huge obstacle in you navigating how to actually solve a problem like that.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (50:51.686)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (50:55.452)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (51:03.814)
No, and I think the news are actually adding on because that's the way we get tension and interest to things by creating almost the impression that people are standing further away than they actually do. So, yeah.
Tyson (51:20.532)
Yeah, I noticed that throughout the COVID lockdown period here in Australia was fairly wild. And I remember just seeing online during the time people I completely disagreed with, just saying things that I was like, I can't believe you were saying that. And in my head, I'd made this conclusion. I was like, all right, we just disagree about everything. I can't stand this person. And then I went back out to stand up comedy and I went out to some comedy rooms and I started speaking to a few people.
that in my mind, based on the status, I was like, we've just got nothing in common anymore. We start talking and I go, you're actually a lovely person. I was just emotional and angry and I didn't want to hear what your thoughts were about lockdown or whatever. It was kind of like an eye opening moment for me because it sort of highlighted to me how quick I am to make a judgment on an entire person based on one particular view they might have.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (52:06.31)
Yeah, interesting.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (52:14.514)
Yeah, it's very interesting. think we all do that. It's very rapidly. And I think that intensifies as well if we don't meet, if we just stay in our bubbles, because then I think that is key to be... I mean, if we can imagine that even people who are in a political party that we don't agree with...
But realizing that they also have good intents most often. mean, most people have good intents. They want to do good. And if we all want to do good, then maybe we might also be interested in talking to each other and help each other out doing that. I mean, super, super basic. But I do think we need to remind ourselves about that because it's so easy to...
just think that I am part of a small group of good guys and all the others, they are just going out to do evil. I need to, you know, fight them so good wins. While, I mean, I think it's a bit destructive. Yeah.
Tyson (53:10.871)
yet.
Tyson (53:18.593)
Yeah.
Tyson (53:25.838)
Yeah, even just hearing you say that like starting with the intention of most people have good intentions. I feel like a shift inside just hearing you say that like if you approach every conversation like that, it sounds like a way more promising place to get to a like a fruitful outcome than like this guy's a dickhead. I've got to prove him right or wrong or whatever because he's evil. Like where are you going to get with that attitude?
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (53:47.079)
Exactly. And I think for us, on one hand, it's easier, I think, to have that mindset, because we're looking at data that is considered to be neutral. So in one way, think it's an easier way in to think about the ability of talking to people of different political opinions.
But I mean, we are also fighting the same feeling. I think all of us do, that it's a constant battle and we are so fast at judging. I mean, it takes a millisecond and then we're sort of certain that that person can't do anything good. And it's sad, right? So I think we need to combat that. And I think one of the major problems with working with data like this is that it's...
Tyson (54:28.302)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (54:39.034)
It's piece of information that you can hit people with in the head, right? And that doesn't do good either. So the reason why we're testing audiences, even if it sounds a little bit, yeah, I don't know, a little bit evil to test people and make them ashamed by being wrong. But I do think it has proven that that has been the only way to get into the heads of people who think...
that they already know what the world is like. Because otherwise, if you say, most people are wrong, everyone will think, of course, I knew that everyone else are stupid. I'm not one of them. One of them. It's they are dumb. So it sort of increases the image of everyone else being stupid. While if we test the people we talk to and that person also is getting very bad results.
Tyson (55:29.154)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (55:35.559)
then that logic is not as easy anymore. Because I am also part of the group who seem to be wrong on this. I thought I knew what the world was like, seems like I'm also wrong. And then at least for a brief moment I have to sort of reconsider how much I know about the world. And hopefully a grain of humility will sort of start to...
start to grow, that maybe it's worth to double check information, not just trusting the gut feeling. Hopefully, yeah.
Tyson (56:11.404)
Yeah, that's a really good point. What are you guys working on at the moment? What's the next big project or the next big focus?
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (56:19.108)
Yeah, so basically for so many years we have been developing different kinds of data visualization tools where people can browse around in big data sets, so to say. And we have been doing the book and now we feel that we need to make a structured coursework, free of course, but for students on different levels. So it should be a work that
sort of summarizes and take the conclusions out of the tools and make storytelling out of the tools we have developed. And we base it on the results we've gotten when we tested the general public, basically to see in the field of the UN goals, what are people most wrong about? And then we try to use our materials to sort of explain those phenomena.
So moving closer towards something that a regular teacher can use in the classroom easily. Now, everything has been free all the time and we have millions of teachers using our material, but I do know that it still demands a little bit of, they need to be brave and they need to have an explorer mindset. And now we want to make sure that
teachers who might not be as brave should also get something they can use. So we're trying to sort of summarize. We have a set of six courses that we're going to develop for the sort of the coming year. Maybe it will take a little longer. So that is what I would say that is our core work at the moment, trying to do that.
Tyson (57:51.265)
Yeah.
Tyson (58:12.11)
That's cool. before I let you go, when you say brave, what is it about a teacher that would have to be brave to use it?
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (58:20.809)
When you're a teacher, you have very much time constraints and you have the curriculum you have to follow so that you make sure that your students learn what they should. We offer tools where the teacher can go there, they can explore, they can explain things by using our tools, but it's as it's not in the curriculum,
And as it is something that they need to explore and work with themselves, they have to be brave in the way that
If the students ask, but why did you do that? and how did you come up with that conclusion? Or the parents might ask, but that doesn't, you cannot see anything about that in the curriculum and so on. So there, we are a little bit, I mean, on one hand, we, are a super compliment where they can actually find a lot of information that they really would need for their, for their education. But we want to help them and hold their hand if they feel that it's a little
overwhelming still. It's more like that hand holding.
Tyson (59:30.198)
Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. I get the bravery side of things. used to be, my wife and I both used to be teachers. And yeah, the parents wrath is a scary thing from time to time. Like when they come to you and say, Hey, why didn't my son do maths? And you say, cause I took him out for sport again. It's not the right answer. can be quite a scary conversation.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (59:37.704)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (59:44.072)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (59:49.072)
Yeah, and I think at least here in Sweden, the parents, I mean, the parents powers, I have some friends who are teachers and they tell me horrific stories when their kids are, when kids in class are being bad students basically, the parents come and complain and demand, you know, to get better scores, better grades for their kids.
And I mean, it's a weird situation.
Tyson (01:00:20.916)
Sure, we always, feel like everyone uses Sweden as the great example of how things could be. Like I reckon in Australia, whenever someone talks about the schooling system, I can't even give you an exact example, but I feel it so often people go, no, look at what Sweden is doing.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (01:00:35.484)
Yeah, so Sweden used to be a very easy to understand system. We only had public schools and we had the public universities and everything was free for students always, no matter where you were in the hierarchy. And now it's getting more more mixed up. So we get more and more private alternatives, but it's still...
For the end user, the student, it's still free in the same way. But it starts to be a little bit unclear, the system, because we have several parallel competing systems at the moment. And school results go down. And there is a bit of a frustration trying to figure out why our school results not improving so much as they should.
I don't know, but I I bet still we are both in countries that have top education if you look in a global perspective. So even when it starts to shake in Sweden, it's minor, right?
Tyson (01:01:43.566)
Yeah, it's interesting. I was actually shocked. One question I did just before I got on the phone call with you today on your website was how many world-class universities does Australia have? And I got this so wrong. I think the answers were like 8, 21 and 34. And I clicked 8 and I think it was 34. It sort of blew my mind. So yeah, you're right. It is interesting. But hey, I've got my eye on the clock and I told you an hour, so I don't want to eat into too much of your afternoon. But it's so good to finally get a chance to catch up with you. I know we'd had a couple of...
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (01:01:57.479)
Yeah.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (01:02:12.114)
See.
Tyson (01:02:12.792)
crack set it so I'm glad we got the chance to do it.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund (01:02:15.708)
Yeah, same. I'm really happy for the talk. So thanks for a nice conversation. See you.