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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free
Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on
their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can
get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling
author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning
Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs
and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
In today's live free Ride free
podcast, we talk to my dear friend
and I could say mentor Tim Smit.
Sir Tim Smit, in fact, who is
the founder of the Eden Project.
Rainforest under a roof in the
west of England and now starting
these all over the world and the
Lost Gardens of Halligan, one of
England's top tourist sites, but also
just a beautifully whimsical place.
This is just a.
A little bit of what Saim does.
He's really at the cutting edge of the
movement to bring our planet and our
societies into a more ecological and
sustainable future without making us feel
guilty about what we do, without making
us feel pessimistic about what we do.
In fact, giving us all sorts
of good reasons for optimism.
One of the reasons I really love talking
to Tim is so often in the environmental
movement we're dealing with doom and
gloom and being shamed for what we do,
or taking airplanes or driving cars.
Really, Tim is not coming
from this place at all.
Tim's giving us really practical ways
forward to build this better world.
So without further ado, Tim.
So Tim, Tell us who you are.
Hi, my name is Tim Smidt.
I am probably the only
palander you've ever heard of.
My name is the same spelled
forwards as backwards.
and I was born in Holland to a Dutch
father and an English mother, Dutch
blue collar and English blue blood.
And , the interesting thing is that
I was brought up in a mixture of a
two up two down in the city of Ana
in East Holland, where my Dutch
grandfather was a mill worker and in a
stately home in the north of Cheshire
in England, called Hartford Hall,
which, was owned by my grandparents.
My grandfather was a mill owner.
. So it was a a, a rather
interesting thing because that
that milling tradition ran heavy.
But the social class thing was massive
in terms of the difference between
the backgrounds of both my parents.
And I have to tell you, I learned
early on that the two up two down in
AUM was a far friendlier loving place
than a cold stately home of an English
aristocrat in the north of England.
and it was always us.
It's been really interesting because
when you are brought up with the
social values, which I know you Haru
and I iha, which is kind of, I dunno
what you call 'em, they're kind of
socialist, communist, capitalist, sort
of all sort of woven together into
a very confusing, you know, dessert.
and the thing is that when
you've been brought up in that.
I can speak about cricket
until the cows come home.
I can put on a very posh accent
if I need to, and I can get on
with people who've been to all
the good schools and universities.
And indeed I've been to a
fairly good school and a
fairly good university myself.
but the thing that it teaches you when
you come from the background, the
have saved my gra my Dutch grandfather,
is you, you get in, in inoculated,
I think, if that's the right word,
all vaccinated with a thought of,
of notions of fairness and equity.
And what words like belonging,
meaning community mean.
, and you develop a kind of, spiritual
with a small s uh, not related to
any religion, but mainly to a way
of being philosophy about the world.
I was very lucky.
I.
Unlucky enough to be sent to an English
prep school at the age of six and a half.
And I say unlucky and unlucky
at the same time, it meant
that I had to leave my life.
Cuz it's quite lonely being a
youngster being sent away like that.
And you have to make what, what, what
it teaches you, the English public
school system is that you learn how to
make acquaintanceships really quickly
because they're defensive things.
Almost like alliances.
Yeah, yeah, they are.
Exactly.
They're like alliances because
you wanna be made safe, you wanna
have people having your back.
And the effect of that is that I think
most, look, this is dated, I'm now
in my late sixties, but when I was
at private school and I, I know it
has changed an awful lot since then.
There was this sense that you were
foraging a class of people who had
a loyalty to their class because
they were all sent away from home
rather than to their neighborhood.
Um, and it would later shape me by not
sending my children to public school
because I wanted them to feel that
they could play for the local village
cricket team and they would be known
in the local pub and bakery and they
would do scouts and learn to go fishing.
You know, all of those things
which give you a sense of
who you are, a sense of self.
So I was very aware, I was an observer
of, of that class distinction.
I was also really aware, having been
left on my own for a long time, that my
imagination was different to most people.
I spent most of my time very happily
on my own imagining whole scenarios.
And it was only when I bec was quite old.
I mean, I'm talking about late thirties
that I realized I was a bit of a.
I, I actually imagine.
I, I imagine, and then I imagine the
delivery of that imagining, and it, a
lot of people say about me that with Eden
and GaN how odd it is to meet somebody
who is a dreamer, stroke visionary, which
is a rather overrated word, um, who not
only can dream these things but dreams,
the process of how to deliver them.
I'm fascinated.
I'm fascinated by the idea of putting one
stone next to another and then another,
and day after day you do this until
there's a wall, and then there's actually
a roof, and then you've got a building.
And I can imagine it all.
I can imagine the whole
process and it thrills me.
Absolutely thrills me.
And it's who I am.
Actually, I've realized that I
am, um, my greatest pleasure in
life is the kissing of frogs.
That's what I realized early on.
I love the idea of making things that
were not whole, complete, making things
that were broken, mended, um, making.
people not unhappy.
That leads to a kind of weird thing as
well where you become almost, uh, directed
by the desire to create happiness,
almost as if your self def definition
is through either removing angst or
creating moments of, of happiness.
Um, which could I think, get
interpreted earlier in your life as
a fear of being disliked or wishing
to fit in in some strange way.
But then later if you mi, if you ride
that kind of instinct, it turns you into
somebody who I think really understands
the nature of what makes communities,
what, what, what a good community is,
which is not a new labor line on a map
with the people contained within it.
It is actually about the relationships.
And the older I've got, the more
I've realized that everything is
to do with relationships and that
the biggest job you've got in life.
If you're a person like you, Ruth, or
me, You don't realize, and it's 80,
it only creeps up on you after years.
You realize that what
you are is an exorcist.
You are an exorcist of the notion
that failure just lives here and is
permanently rooted in this space.
And there are far too many
people who let f for a failure
be like aall on the landscape.
And we come in and we give people
the idea of things could be better.
Things could be if we do things together,
where we can make things better and nicer.
And you don't have to own all the ideas,
you don't have to feel, you own much
of it except the, the good spiritedness
to actually see the talent in others.
And ultimately, I think that is the, the
wicked secret that often, especially in
males, our vanity gets in the way of being
quiet for long enough to listen to things.
and actually realizing the pleasure of
listening and really, really listening and
then understanding and then transforming
things because you've really understood,
as opposed to giving people the benefit
of your genius, and I see that with
middle-aged men, the world over.
They want to give you the benefit of their
genius and insight, and you sometimes
wish they would shut the so-and-so up.
When did, do you have a memory of
the first time you imagined and
then also imagined a delivery?
Where are you?
How old are you?
Are you a boy?
Where is this
like all boys and many girls?
The first dream would've been doing
the simple things like twigs and
leaves and mud and making dams.
That would be followed I think, quite
closely by the desire if you live.
In nature rather more than most have
the benefit of doing now, but of
catching those things which live in
the ponds and whatever, and looking
at them and examining them and
getting this extraordinary thrill.
I mean, I can bring to mind
now the thrill of catching a
stickleback or yeah, water boatman.
And you know, when you then graduate
later on to fishing for, you know, fish
that are bigger than sticklebacks, God,
that, that, that I remember, you know,
getting white bread and putting it in my
mouth and getting enough saliva on it so
that it was pliable, and then turning it
into a ball of bread, and then getting
a fish hook and putting it on some line,
and then throwing it across a pond where
the trees were too low to be able to
have a fishing rod with throwing it.
But you'd actually put a bit of candle wax
on the line so that when it hit the water,
the weight of the bread would take the.
Hooked down to the bottom, but it wouldn't
take all the rest of the line down.
It took it down as far as it would go.
But then you'd had the line just
lying prone on the surface, and then
you'd sit there for ages and suddenly
you'd see the line at the end of it
start to disappear under the water.
And you'd know there'd be
something big underneath there.
It was sucking.
It was sucking that bread of yours
and your head was just so full of
the imagination of what it could be.
Of course, in your brain
it was an enormous eel or a
tench or carp or something.
But just imagine what it was like when
you do strike that tension of deciding,
am I gonna pull it and am I going to
then have the frustration of pulling
it outta the mouth or whatever it was.
Was it gonna catch?
And then it catches and then it,
the line bites into your hand
and you are just excited as you
see a bit of blood on your hand.
Cause you've caught something
that was big enough to do that.
And you're sitting there, you know,
underneath the BR branches and
you're pulling this fish in and.
Chess, fantastic.
Those big lip carp and tench are amazing.
Unlike the eels, which were incredibly
glamorous when you caught them, but
then when you had to get them off
the end of a hook as they arrived
and they put their slime all over
you as you took them out, wow.
That was, that was the
other side of amazing.
But it was just great.
That whole adventure in nature, that whole
sense of the mystery of things that lived
below and the things that lived above
hunting for, you see, I'm 68 now and then.
Then it was okay to go hunting for
bird's, eggs and things like that.
And the excitement of finding a nest,
you know, the little, little nest with
the song thrush eggs in it, and then
learning how to blow the egg and creating
a collection of bird's eggs and just
learning where the, where you'd find them.
And you didn't know you were
learning things, did you?
I mean, I'm sure you were the same.
You, you just suddenly, every day
you just had a bigger picture of
the homeland you were walking in.
as branches started to have their
own history, trees had their own
history of things you'd found there,
things you'd heard there, things
that had disappeared into there.
And I love that sense of a countryside
being made, almost filled in like one of
those coloring books that what was general
essence of tree became particular trees.
And you would be able to describe
them to your close mates.
You know, the tree with the broken, you
know, the broken so-and-so, the one with
the squirrels very at the top, you know?
And I found that absolutely
thrilling, discovering a language
of direction, place and being that
I'd never actually truly had before.
But you felt it like, like learning
a language, but it's not the same
as walking out and it's actually
being in it, it's being in nature.
Yeah.
I w uh, is, is what we're talking about
and what you are talking about here.
The shamanic aspect of the hunting
and gathering life, which is sort
of at the root of every human
being, cuz that's what we are still.
And is it also that if you learn to
order a natural environment first,
does it become then easier to order
non-natural environments that you
might want to thrive in or even build?
I don't know.
I, I think a lot of questions that you
get asked, uh, that one gets asked, you
are naturally inclined to lie about.
You see, I've discovered that Bec you
see, humans don't naturally embrace chaos.
They also don't really
naturally embrace change.
Therefore, they cannot believe that
their lives have genuinely been
as chaotic as they actually have.
Which means that when they describe
their lives backwards, they give it a
linearity or a shape that is preposterous.
That was never like that.
But it, you, you can't believe
that you were quite so unfocused.
I've lived my life pretty much unfocused,
and I can tell you my story now.
When I tell my story, I
sometimes shock myself.
Uh, the order and intent behind that
story and how this internal logic
of this extraordinary fellow who did
all these things comes to the fore.
And it looks like you were blessed
by some kind of secret, um, uh, spell
that you were given, but actually no.
It was about, it was about embracing
chaos and embracing it in a way
that you just went with the flow.
And I decided at the age of 37, Very,
exactly 37 that I was going to embrace
going with the flow as you talk.
Why, why, why did you, why then, and how?
Yeah, why?
I, I had become very
bored with my cleverness.
I realized any fool can use the trappings
of knowing a thing or two to appear as if
you worked hard or you had a deep wisdom
when in fact you were more like a parrot,
but were too vain to admit it, and your
intelligence wasn't particularly striking.
Um, and, and more to the point you
realize something really difficult,
which is that you are clever, so you
don't actually have to work so hard.
So quite a lot of it is about busking.
You know, what were you doing at 37?
What, where are you in life?
What are you doing for a living?
And what's your road to Damascus
moment that says, I'm now sick?
Being clever, Tim, I want
to be go with the float.
No, it, it was, it was
a, a range of things.
It wasn't actually a road to
Damascus moment in, well, there
was one road to Damascus moment.
I was in a limousine, I'm sorry I've told
you this, over a drink together, but, um,
I was in a limousine in Paris and we had
a record with this lady, Louise Tucker,
that had been number one for 15 weeks.
And I was in the back of this
limousine and the radio was
playing and it was our song.
And when it stopped playing,
the next record on that was
going to knock our record off.
A number one spot came on by
a lady called Michelle to,
and we'd written that as well.
And we were big honchos in the music
business, as I say, the biggest
selling record except for later
live eight, um, in French history.
And I felt suddenly bereft.
I felt as sad as I've ever felt in my
life being in the back of this limo
because there's nothing sadder than
achieving what you thought you wanted
and realizing, you know, what was it?
Gude Stein said, um, told, getting
there is, there's no there there.
And it felt incredibly arid,
like dust in your hands.
And I always say to people,
beware of chasing something
that is a theoretical desire.
Imagine it what it feels like.
And actually having all that success
and arriving in places without your
friends, without your family, the
people around you see you as a product.
Um, and the thing that you
really loved was music.
But even that is almost getting stolen
away from you because you've become
addicted suddenly to the commercial
success of the records you had written.
And you end up almost like a
factory producing music three
minutes, 20 seconds long with a.
Sort of kind of weird start and then
two verses a chorus, another verse
two choruses, then a middle eight,
and then chorus is now very formulaic.
And I decided I wanted to leave.
I I'd had enough.
I just knew, it's a really weird
feeling when you have the chance to
have the success you thought you wanted
and you to be able to discover that
before the end of your life is amazing
cuz you suddenly realized that that
is not what you were meant to do.
And the truth was, if I'm honest, that
I could hold a tune and I'd fallen
into being in the music industry.
Cause I had a band at university and we
were skin, so we were just playing covers
and then start to write our own music.
And the truth was we were quite
good, but we weren't very good.
We weren't genius.
We were quite.
So that we could actually have
a hit record here and there, and
once we'd got a hit record, people
would buy our album and whatever.
But we weren't the stuff of legend.
We, we didn't have that.
We had the ability to hold a good tune.
And I guess it's a form
of, of, of, um, vanity.
The desire to find the thing that you
really are good at as our friend, uh,
Ken Robinson, um, of late Ken Robinson,
to say happiness is about finding
your element, being in your element.
And I think that is actually one of the
things that you are about, isn't it?
It's about the freedom riders, the,
the, the riding to be liberated.
And the rest of it is, is about
finding the music of you as a person.
If we're using that analogy of
music further, um, it's very
interesting, anybody who listens to
this, the five people who listening
to this podcast eventually, or
maybe even 10 if we're lucky.
One thing I what?
You never know.
No, you never know.
One thing I would advise you to do as a
moment of incredible insight is to go to
a piano, put your foot on the sustained
pedal, and then bang every note with
your elbows, every note, and then put
your head on the soundboard that would
teach you something close to religion.
As that chaos of all the notes jarring
through each other, they go like,
like the mouth of a trumpet, they
disappear expanding into the distance
of sound, and then suddenly at the
end of that, you see this magnificent
chord, which is harmonic coming out.
And it is a really interesting thing that
chaos is just disor disorganized harmony.
And that's the only way I've ever seen
that you can learn it or understand it in
a way that some people get when they are.
In nature for a long time, and
suddenly the chaos of pattern suddenly
reveals something bigger to them.
It's that sort of thing.
I think I, I'm talking in a musical
equivalence of your experience of, of
shamanic work, but it's, it's, it's
kind of a clarity which comes to you
almost by allowing it to catch you by
surprise from the side of your eye.
You know what I mean?
Not, not as a direct view.
It's, I've got a question then.
How do you, how do you go from a
boy who's, um, ordering nature and
fascinated in love with it, climbing
the trees to find the bird's eggs?
Um, how do you go from
there to be, to music?
What's the link?
Oh, I'd always played music ever
since at the ti each time I was at my
English grandparents' house at Hartford
Hall, they had a huge grand piano.
Um, I'm trying to remember what the
make of it, a Broadwood, I think it was.
And, um, No one in the family played.
And from the age of two, I just played it.
I just, was it in the family?
Was your mom musical?
Was your dad musical?
Was somebody musical?
Uh, my dad, my dad could, um, uh,
play sort of pub piano, three or
four tunes or something like that.
Um, which he'd been taught by my
grandmother, Dutch grandmother.
My mother loved music, but didn't play.
No, I just, I just sat down.
I mean, there were lots of pictures of
me as a two, two and a half year old
right through sitting at the piano with
pair on, um, just picking out notes.
I was absorbed by notes.
I had zero interest.
I was given piano lessons and I
did piano up to grade five, but I
had absolutely zero interest in it.
I did it because I was told to do it.
and that was the only way
I could get at the piano.
When I went up to the public school,
I was only interested in composing,
and it's still the same for me.
I love listening to the
music of other people.
But if you said to me, would you
like to join a Beatles cover band?
Be, I'd prefer to drill my teeth.
It's it not.
And I love The Beatles, but I, I,
that's another point I'm making.
For me, music was a form of therapy and I
could, I, from a really young age, I could
play the piano to the degree where if I
was feeling a bit blue, I could actually
play it in such a way that, you know,
20 minutes later I was in a merry mood.
And I've always loved music for that.
And I've always loved
the repetitive nature.
Sometimes just being on my own, playing
chords with very little variation and.
Almost in a mental trance just
going round and round and round.
And the luxury of being able to do
that for yourself, it's just gorgeous.
And that's one of the good things
about having a bigger house and a
keyboard and occasionally a headphones
if you want to, is that you can just
do that repetitive playing time after
time, which pleases you, even if it
drives everybody else nuts, you know?
Um, and uh, so I've always been like that.
I've always treated piano as
being something which had a sound
of spiritual force for me, but
it was almost medical, you know?
It was like a health thing.
I needed to do it, I needed to play.
And I know what you mean.
I, I have the same thing with horses.
It's a compulsion.
Yeah.
So there you are.
All right.
But, so then, okay,
question number two then.
So you are, you, you, you
discover music very young.
You're also discovering nature.
And then through college
you have this band.
The band becomes successful or
the band morphs into another
band that's successful.
Uh, band.
The band morphed into another, another
band that, uh, we, we came down from
Durham where we, it was the punk boom
and we had a great pa and we rented
it out and make our lot of money
doing that, but we weren't that good.
We went to London thinking we
would make our fortunes in punk.
Sorry.
In punk.
No, we were actually
unbelievably complicated.
We were more on the um, uh, uh, uh,
the Mark Knop end things, the Da Strait
and, but not you pro rockers were
you, Genesis and that, or commercial?
You, you were kind of slightly affected,
um, poets with an attitude with electric,
electric sounds and stuff, but it
wasn't like heavy metal or anything.
It wasn't quite Genesis.
It wasn and it wasn't the Smiths, it was.
To be honest, we weren't
like anything else.
Mm-hmm.
, what was the name of the band?
That band was called The Shake
As in the Shake of Arabic.
Okay.
But anyway, we didn't last very
long, once we reached London,
because London is a brutal place
and it's not a very good place to
build a music career, to be honest.
Because you get there, the
few clubs and pubs that you
can play in, it's pay to play.
You have to know your own audience.
Whereas when you got to Cornor, I mean,
what's amazing, my young son, he formed
a band and in four years, between the age
of 14 and 18, he'd saved bloody nearly
20,000 quid because they'd pay really
well in the pubs and clubs down here.
Um, and so we decided to become
songwriters and I was also a mini
cab driver because the songwriting
wasn't making us any money.
And on Sundays we'd play football,
um, down on Clapham Common.
And one day I kicked a guy in the
opposing team and someone said, Christ,
do you know who you've just kicked?
And I said, no idea mate.
And he said, that's Pat Staple.
He's the lead sound engineer
at Abbey Road Studios.
So I said, hello.
I called him up.
And uh, anyway, we would
become firm friends.
And of course, as you know, if you're
an engineer in a studio, you get the
ability to use what's called dead time
if it's not being booked for money.
Provided you've got an
engineer, you can use it.
And the deal is that you, if
you have the benefit of a bit of
luck, you then pay a percentage
of your luck back to the studio.
And, uh, anyway, we, we did
this and it was terrible because
we were working late at night.
Cause that's when usually
the dead, dead time is.
And I had my first child with my wife and
um, it got to our, the good bit was we'd
got five record deals back to back with
a bit of money, which meant that we were
able to pay the studio bit and all the, as
songwriters or as a band, as songwriters.
Okay.
Um, and we created the bands ourselves.
They were kind of like, um, stock
water make and that sort of thing.
We were finding people to sing
on these songs and, um, anyway,
rather unbelievably, which is
something which happens to me a lot.
The very first night that we felt that
we could get babysitters for me and
the wife to go out, we went out and
we had my sister-in-law babysit and
she asked whether she could bring a
friend called Louise Tucker who was
studying opera at the Guild Hall.
And we came back from a night out
and obviously we were being polite
and having a small talk, and Louise
gave me a card and said, if you
ever need an opera singer, call me.
At that time, I would, it never occurred
to me I'd ever want to work with an opera
opera singer, but completely unbelievably.
The following day we go to Abbey
Road and the singer that we'd booked
to sing on this song we'd already
recorded, um, Phoned in hill, and
this is before mobile phones, right?
So I only had the phone numbers
of three other singers, all
of all of whom were out.
And I still had in my top
pocket the card of this woman
that I'd met the night before.
And I asked her, I
mean, I was dreading it.
I just didn't wanna waste the
studio time by not using it, but I
thought it was gonna be terrible.
So she came and she did a duet
with my music partner, Charlie.
And extraordinarily four weeks to the
day after that studio session, the
record went number one in Belgium, then
Holland, then Scandinavia, then Germany.
What was the name of the record?
It was called Midnight Blue.
And that record in the
album sold 7 million copies.
It was the most extraordinary thing.
Why did it do so good in Europe?
Do we know of it in the uk?
Do we know of it in the West?
What, what, what's the story there?
It got to the top 20, but not the top 10.
Uh, basically it was, um, a record
based around Beethoven ditty, his fifth.
Um, and we wrote a verse
for it and a chorus.
And it was a duet, it was a love
song, and we filmed it in gothic.
The video was gothic in terms
of Louise wearing sort of black
velvet, having black, cold
coal eyes and curly black hair.
So she looked very glamorous, being
filmed with white horses with a
full moon and a dark, dark lake.
You can imagine this sort of thing.
Very, and who financed this?
This is a record company
had already gave a deal.
Arista, Arista, uh, and then
when it went to France, it went
bonkers, absolutely bonkers.
And it was great.
And we had a, a good two years
selling a lot of records.
In the middle of that, I had
the experience of being in the
back of that limousine, which
depressed me beyond endurance.
And I decided to leave.
Um, wasn't instant, but I, I
then bought a house in komo.
Again, completely random.
I was leading my life random already.
And, um, we were on
holiday, it was raining.
I walked into an estate
agent, I saw a house for sale.
I said, let's, I want to see that house.
The estate agent said, sir, won't like it.
We went to see it.
We lived in Brixton, and this
is 280 miles from Brixton.
And we drove there the following day, and
it was p because it was pouring with rain.
And then this tractor moved
across us and I had to stop.
And this guy came out in a waterproof,
and I, I wound down the window and he
said, ear, old buck, what you doing?
Ear?
And I said, um, excuse me.
Sorry.
Okay, say that again.
So I'm probably have to cut that up.
A tractor stops you.
Can you?
I said, look, this is really embarrassing
cause we haven't got an appointment,
but the house is, um, uh, there's
a house at the end of this road, I
believe, and we just wanted to have
a look and see whether we liked it.
And the guy said, well,
happened, it's my house.
Can't have a cup of tea.
So we went and had a cup of tea.
The kids then disappeared into
the hay barns and two and a half
hours later, I shook his hand
and said I was gonna buy it.
So I arrived.
We arrived in Cormo about six weeks later.
It was an incredible quick turnaround.
And I basically gave
up the music industry.
I was gonna record music for films
and things a little bit, but I, I, I,
I actually wanted to have a new life.
And what happened was a, again,
I, by this time, I'm leading
my life by pure serendipity.
I was almost thinking we spent all
the money I'd made in the music
industry on this house and doing it up.
It was a money pit.
and we were at the Verge Candy and I
have, have actually going bankrupt.
We spent everything I, I went to
the dentist, this is how my life is.
I went to the dentist and in the dentist's
waiting room in Triny, in Cormo was
a current copy of the Stage magazine.
You don't expect to have a magazine that's
younger than two years old in a dentist.
And there it was.
And I opened it up and it opened up
really randomly or OB or, I dunno, but it
opened up on a picture of the footballer
Jack Charlton holding a very big salmon.
And it said underneath it, Jack
Charlton is to make a big TV
series for ITV called Go Fishing.
And we're looking for music now
about five or six years before that.
Very drunk in a studio in.
, um, Farham.
I had written a song with my mates, um,
who'd been drinking cider in the studio.
We'd done something serious before, and
one of the guys was, um, a banja player.
So I wrote this song, which was a, it
was a complete set of puns about fishing.
You know, I can't salmon up the energy.
This isn't the time and the place,
you know, all of that sort of stuff.
Um, and it had his chorus which
went, go fishing, go fishing,
you know, and, and, and whatever.
So I sent the cassette of this thing,
which had been a complete joke record
off to the re the, um, uh, film company.
And they got back to me literally by
return and, um, said, we love this music.
We, this is gonna be our
theme tune if you let us.
And by the way, have you
written any more music?
Cause we've got no backing music for any
of the other parts of the sixth series.
So it bailed me out of
potential bankruptcy in one go.
Isn't that weird?
I'd written this joke record.
The father even kept a cassette.
That was all I had left
was a cassette of it.
Um, and, but you had
loved fishing as a boy.
I'd love you had you had spent hours there
touching whatever spirits of the river.
Um, I know we were clearly
waiting to, uh, reward you.
All right, brilliant.
So, so that bailed me out.
I was wondering whether I needed to
go back to university and learn a
skill or whatever because I, we now
had enough money to pay to finish the
house, but I didn't have a job and
I wasn't gonna go back into music.
Um, and I couldn't expect to have
lucky breaks like that all the time.
Anyway, I've met this bloke
who drove up in a van, um, and
he had a trailer behind it.
And he said, in the, in
this trailer is a pig.
And I'm either gonna draw it, take it to
the slaughter house to become sausages.
, or you can have it as a pet because I
know that you've got a garage that hasn't
got a car in it, and we could easily
turn it into a place for a pig to stay.
So that's how I was introduced to Horace.
So Horace came to stay and Horace had
a very powerful nose, and he decided
he didn't like the garage, despite
the fact he had plenty of space.
He broke into the farmhouse
and would then warm his butt on
the arga, and I'd talk to him.
And then eventually I realized,
um, that he needed a mate.
So through the local newspapers, I
found another black pig, and we got
hold of Doris and Horis just fell
hopelessly in love, um, with Doris.
And from that moment on,
they just lived in the barn.
He was happy in the barn now,
and it, I'd fill it up with
hay and they were very clean.
They always cracked in the
same place and what have you.
And, um, you say Black
Pigs, is this a local breed?
No, they, it wasn't.
They, they were actually
Vietnamese Pop bellies.
Okay.
Um, and, uh, um, Hideously ugly.
They look as if they've run
at great speed into a war.
Um, and uh, anyway, in the November
of 1989, I think, um, Doris gave
birth to 11 baby piglets under
a heat lamp in thick straw.
Um, and this is two in the morning.
I'm thinking, how am I gonna
educate all these pigs?
I'm going bankrupt.
How am I gonna bring 'em up?
Yeah, exactly.
But I saw it as a sign that I was
meant to start a rare breed park.
Most people don't do that, but I did.
So I went to hunt for a place that could
be a rare breed park and there was some
land and I phoned up the guy where, why
rare breeds from a not rare breed or a
Vietnamese popularly big there, there.
And I thought, I love this.
So a lot of people will love you.
See, one of the things I learned from
the music industry, which anybody who's
looking for a steering in life is if
you're not a freak and you love something,
there will be millions of people like you.
The issue is simply marketing.
You know about it.
That's a really valuable
piece of information.
It's a very valuable piece of information.
Um, anyway, to cut a long story short,
I've got very sensitive lips and I went
to see the guy who owned the land that
I thought could be a rare breed park.
He gave me a very hot cup of
coffee, but told me instantly I
couldn't have the land because he
just rented it to somebody else.
I had to make small talk with him,
and as I made small talk, as I, as the
coffee called down for me to drink it,
I told him that I had studied archeology
at university, and he then said to me
the immortal words, I have need of an
archeologist, which I couldn't believe.
And anyway, the following day we broke
into what was this huge estate that
he'd inherited, but he had no money.
He didn't, his, his, uh, uh, a
distant no, his uncle had died,
childless, leaving this estate.
The house had been tended to
flats long ago, but the garden
had been fenced off because.
The majority of the gardeners, uh,
that had worked there were killed,
uh, in Flounders in 19 15, 16.
And the owner is so sadly fenced
off and went to live in his
Italian house and never returned.
Now, when you say a garden, those
listeners who are knowing you for the
first time, um, particularly perhaps
in America, we're not talking about
a backyard here with a privacy fence.
Um, what describe this garden?
Well, the garden in total is, uh, in
total about 70 acres of gardens with
about a hundred acres of woodland forest
and 200 acres of home farm, and how
you break into this, what does that.
Whereas, well, we, it's not just there
to walk into, how do you break into it?
Yeah.
Well, the hedges that have been planted
all those years ago had now become
trees and you just couldn't get through.
So we had to take machetes and
cut our way in, and then in the
evening, so it's basically like
a Cinderella castle of thorns.
You've just got a wall of
thorns in front of you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's not even, that's not
exaggerate, not exaggerating at all.
And the bloke says, behind this
wall of thorns is an enchanted land.
Do you want to chop your
way into it with me?
Is that basically what he says?
Well, no.
He said, you're an archeologist.
You'll be able to understand what
you're looking at better than I,
um, and I didn't, and what is behind
this, this, this, this wall of thorns.
Yeah.
But quite quickly we discovered what was
behind it because there were enormous
palm trees and rodded engines in there
that were way, I mean, the, the brambles
themselves are about 15 feet high.
Um, but um, I cut my way through
with John and I just fell
hopelessly in love with it.
I, I, I broke into a, a greenhouse
after finding a wall with a, uh, a door
painted green with it, the paint flaking
and the rust was staining the wood,
you know, where the, um, hinges were.
And I put my shoulder to it to go in.
And there was this greenhouse that I cut
my way through very gingerly because all
the wood had rotted out, so the glass
was hanging like guillotines above it.
And, um, in there, the light
broken a very funny way.
And I suddenly saw these
scissors on the wall.
And it's a bit like one of those
1970s paintings, you know, with
dots, where suddenly you see an
elephant in the middle of the dots.
And it was like that.
Suddenly I saw tools everywhere.
I saw terracotta everywhere,
and I fell in love.
And the following day I said to John, who
own it, look, I haven't got the money.
To take this off your hands,
but what I'll do is I'll do a
music business contract with you.
You give me this estate for nothing,
and if I can get it open to the public
inside two years, you'll let me have it.
And, uh, I'll be able to rent
it off you into the future.
Uh, and I will pay you, um,
20% of whatever I charge
Netta v a t to the public.
And that's how it all began.
And I knew that to be famous,
I needed press and I was
always been good with press.
And I got the BBC hooked by telling
them that I had found the finest,
most romantic garden in Britain.
And it was going to be called
the Lost Gardens of Hellan.
And I was gonna give them one
day to make up their mind whether
they were gonna come and film it.
If they weren't, I was
gonna go somewhere else.
How did you, you say you
got what, who did you call?
Why did you have someone who
you could call and why would
that person take your call?
I've always been socially pretty adept.
So I had a pretty decent dress book and
I knew through the music BI, basically.
Yeah, yeah.
But the guy I called was the producer
for Stephan Buchs, who is a bit of
a rock God for garden, um, films.
And he was on, um, gardens World,
and they came in and made it special
and it won the award in 91 for
the best documentary of the year.
And it was very mysterious.
I, you see, gardens had never been
treated the way I treated them.
I wanted it to be very rock and roll.
I wanted to even put dry eyes
down when people were filming.
I wanted to, I knew that if people
came to Halligan looking at it through
my eyes, they would fall in love.
And that's what actually happened.
So the restoration wasn't about
restoring it to a role of a culture
society, your Nat National Trust Act.
I wanted to capture the very spirit
of lostness, which would make people
feel the gentle ebb and flow of
melancholy, because melancholy is
the sexiest thing in the world.
Happy Clappy is nowhere close.
And I wanted he halligan to be a
place which was at its absolute
finest in, its in a gentle drizzle.
Um, and that's how it's become.
The Lost Garden of Halligan are the
most romantic gardens in Britain.
We've won award after award the most, uh,
the nation's favorite garden, the national
treasure, according to Radio four.
But the thing I'm most proud of is
that more than 400 people have chosen
to have their ashes scattered there.
And I think that's a tremendous thing
that's a, a real, uh, a real accolade
to the team that have restored it.
But, you know, the weirdest thing after
all this time is, uh, in my ancient age.
Now I can see, uh, it
doesn't belong to me.
I'm a steward, a complete steward, and
it's such privilege and I go around it Now
as a punter, I got no sense of ownership.
I mean, literally, I don't have a
sense of ownership because I gave
away, uh, the company that runs it
to my children about six months ago.
Um, but I think it was necessary to
put it in younger hands, keep it going,
get them to understand the fact that
it's a privilege to be a steward of it.
It's not a vehicle for making money.
It's a vehicle for creating livelihoods.
We have a hundred people that work
there, and it revolutionized the
whole economy of the local village.
You see, we were the first place in Cornor
that ever asked a very simple question, is
Cornwall empty in winter because nothing
is open, or is nothing open because
people, uh, the, the, the or or do not.
People not come because nothing is open.
. So we decided to open all year round
and until everybody's astonishment,
people came all year round and suddenly
pubs and restaurants opened and things
were got renewed and galleries opened
and all over komo people suddenly woke
up as if, you know, they had a kiss.
You know, the sleeping beauty was
open and the effect of that would
lead fairly shortly in the end of 94,
we opened the public in on, um, good
Friday, 1992, and we were about a third
of the way through the restoration.
And people were coming to watch us do
the restoration and they would come and
we'd give them tools and they'd help us.
They'd pay to come in
and then do the work.
It was brilliant.
And we had a tea room cafeteria
that was an old goat shed.
Um, and our restaurant is still the
skeleton of that old B shed today.
Uh, we built it out a bit,
but that's actually its root.
And we pioneered all sorts of things.
I, I used metal detectors to find the
old plant named nes, which meant that
we could restore many of the productive
ward gardens, uh, by finding the original
plants that were named on these, uh,
copper zinc labels by washing them with
warm water and then putting olive oil in
on it, and the Indian ink would react.
Is it brilliant?
It's absolutely brilliant.
I can't tell you the fun of
doing a project like that.
And we would go, like, we went to a
Methodist chapel and we bought the
chapel in order to take all the floor,
the floorboards, the joists, the
roof, the roof slates and everything.
So when you come to Halligan, A
restoration that would probably
cost 20, 25 million to do.
We did it for about half a million.
We all our volunteers and
everybody, we were just sniffing
about finding things and that is
actually where the joy of life is.
It's actually realizing that
amazing things can be done and
they don't need to cost the earth.
That actually what you need
is the energy to do it.
Um, and then another documentary was
made which followed us for two series.
It was two 10 part documentaries
on channel four, and that kind of
enshrined GaN as being the most
popular garden in Britain and after us.
So I the one, the last thing I ought to
say is that we wanted to tell the whole
story because going back to my childhood
and I told you about my background of
my grandparents who were of different
social classes, what I found amazing was
that Halligan had these walled gardens
and a vegetable garden and some little.
And some little war gardens as well.
And I said, I want to tell the story
of the ordinary men and women who
made these, these gardens great, but
the national trust and um, uh, the rg
they're all society were far too posh.
Posh.
They said the garden visitors,
they're not gonna be interested
in working men and women.
And that's absolutely extraordinary.
At the moment that we opened to the
public, at that day that we opened,
there were no working gardens in
Britain open to the general public.
Vegetable gardens were not one the
great vegetable garden that had
been at Chatsworth in Darbyshire,
um, the devs house, they had
bulldozed their ward gardens because
they were no longer fashionable.
Tatton Park, which was the National
Trust, most famous well garden
that was also completely gutted.
And the national trust
was very slow witted.
And when we, uh, when the public
started to go bonkers, they decided,
Christ, maybe we missed a trick.
And they started to restore some.
But they didn't understand it.
It's kind of like, uh, uh,
it was kind of like class
certainty, devoid of intelligence.
So their first walled garden, they
restored, they found bricks that
had moss on them, so they looked all
romantic, which is crazy cause any had
gardener who was worth his weight or
her weight would never have allowed
moss on a brick or anything like that.
So what they were trying to do was
to do that kind of shabby chic, you
know, to give you some kind of thing.
And it was completely fake.
And they didn't know where to
get the vegetable varieties from.
For us, we were just like pirate kings.
We, we, we, we would travel all over
the country to meet people that had
allotments that had kept seeds going at
their grandparents had had and whatever.
So we started to build up this
body of, um, what we called
heirloom and heritage vegetables.
And slowly but surely we started to get
the whole place properly productive.
And then we had to make it.
So, see, the thing is that when you
look at all the posh magazines, They,
they're just lying to you all the time.
Their lifestyle choice, a bit of
a drizzle of this on your food, do
they not realize the pure genius, the
unadulterated genius of these ward
gardens in an age before refrigeration?
April was called the dying month because
it was too early to have the vegetables
ready for the next year and too late to
have anything left from the previous year.
But the great horticulturists knew how
to create clamps for potatoes and some
of the vegetables to keep them cool
enough so that they didn't go off.
They knew which apples to grow
that perhaps didn't taste the best,
but actually they had the ability
to stay sweet until right the
end of March, beginning of April.
So what you were looking at was an
incredible act of applied science.
Um, and that's always stayed with me.
Uh, the notion that, that, that, how
is it possible that a basically a smug
middle class has allowed the traditions
of great horticulture to die and
pretend that it's the third thickest
child or the third thickest child
that is a gardener or horticulturist?
It's absolutely not true.
And the future we're going to see is
going to see an awful lot of young people.
Your young people, my young people.
Go back to the land, go back
to interest in food production.
Go back to realizing that many of these
old varieties were called heirloom
varieties because, uh, big agriculture
wanted them to sound quaint and not
current so that you bought their types.
The truth is there isn't an apple that
has been bred over the last 50 years.
That's actually very good for you.
That saying an apple a day keeps the
doctor away is absolutely true for the
old varieties that are still around cuz
they're full of what are called phenols,
which are very powerful antioxidants.
And I think, I think the generations
coming through and I meet so many young
people who come to work for us and
who want to do their own allotments or
even small holdings or the, the market
gardening, which used to be popular.
Remember.
And it's really interesting how the
conversations are going about, can
we produce food and drink that's
actually really good for your health?
I mean, really good for your health.
Um, so that, you know, your, your,
your, your internal biome, you know, the
bacteria and your insides are actually
encouraged to really go for it and so on.
So I'm really excited.
I hope you can tell I'm really excited
about all of those discoveries,
all of which were made accidentally
and I think could only have been
made by somebody who knew nothing.
I think the excitement was that
for me, it was like a Sherlock
Homes adventure to try and find
all the ingredients of this story.
It's the narrative arc, if you like.
And then I realized that everybody
was so smugged, they thought it
was known and then it wasn't.
It was all about to get lost.
And so the lost gardens of Hellan became
symbolic, not only of it having been
lost, but also the lost varieties and
techniques and so on that also were going.
And so I've been really
thrilled doing that.
And that would in turn, inspire
me to think, well, we started to
tell stories at Halligan that did
not have lots of Latin, because I
didn't, I wasn't a horticulturist.
So I'd ask people like,
why do leaves coal?
And they get so annoyed when I
asked them to dumb down, dumb
down, dumb down until they were
basically telling me a nursery story.
And I said, wow, that's great.
And I would then tell people at dinner
parties and they go, wow, really?
That's great.
And I suddenly realize, let's
tell stories to everybody that
comes and say, wow, that's.
So we told really simple stories
and people got very excited.
And I thought, what, what?
Imagine what, what happens if
we find the equivalent of, um,
like a creature of a volcano?
You know?
And in that volcano, like in Conan
Doyers Lost World, it's where
you've got this lost civilization.
And we would gather all of the really
important plants in the world together
there to tell people about how
dependent we are in the natural world.
And that's what happened.
I decided to do the Eden Project
and gathered a team around me and
we built, um, Eden with a whole
bunch of volunteers to start with.
And then we raised a lot of
money through the lottery banks.
Overall, it cost about 144 million
pounds, but it's blinking great.
It's designed on principles
that were invented originally by
Buckman Sta Follow Who's my hero?
The Bucky Ball.
The strongest structures on earth
when they're fully built and the
weakest structures on earth until
the last moment of their being built.
And we created 90,000 tons of soil
and we opened to the public on St.
Patrick's Day to celebrate all of the
Irish builders who'd made this possible.
Cause we built it on time, on budget.
And the other thing that's great is
we don't allow advertising on site.
Cause we want people to understand
and read the landscape as why
a wild place, even where it's
nurtured in a, in a husbanded way.
But we wanted people to just have one
place where they weren't being sold to.
Where you didn't have QR codes, where you
didn't have buy such and such a coffee.
So anyway, Eden is a really good place.
We've had, we get about
a million visitors a.
We've put nearly 2 billion pounds worth
into the local economy out of opening
it, and we built it starting in 1994.
The idea we opened, as I say, St.
Patrick's Day 2001, took us
actually two years of building.
But the amazing thing is today
all the things we were championing
then have become fashionable.
And now we're, we are big fromage.
I mean, we've got 17 big projects
around the world, around a billion
quids worth of construction contracts.
I mean, they're not all signed
up and ready and working, but I'm
actually becoming more and more
interested not in the testosterone
lead and signature architecture,
but in the regeneration of places.
So we're working in places like Eastborne
on the so Downs, uh, Darby in the middle
of Darby, which is falling to bits,
uh, in Derry in Ireland on the banks.
Of the river there and so on.
And we've Dundee you will
have seen in the papers.
We recently got, um, a lot of
government funding who are gonna
partner us to do a project in Moham.
But basically all of this
is about storytelling.
Everything is about storytelling.
And these are all old, no longer
fashionable, falling down what people
in England will call crap towns.
Yeah.
And then what they need is an exorcist.
And that's us.
And we come and we tell
'em, you think this is crap?
It's wonderful.
And you know, the, the most amazing
thing about your town is you the people.
Yeah.
And stories.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stories and, and, and, and, and creating
groups of people, a crew, wherever you go.
People are just not expecting
people like us with our background
to actually listen, just listen.
Don't give them the benefit of our
genius to regenerate their town.
Help create a story in which they
regenerate their town and you fit
in some gaps where you can help.
And the biggest task is to make
humans realize what is possible.
And that's why Eden is really powerful,
because we have done big things
that everybody said was impossible.
We've done deep geothermal, we've
dug 5.3 kilometers down, and uh,
we got 187 degrees centigrade
water coming out the ground.
And everybody said we couldn't do it.
The government said we couldn't do it.
Scientists said we wouldn't do it.
We have done it.
And to anybody listening, you know,
probably coming to the end of this,
but everybody listening is do not
believe the establishment that
ama amazing things cannot be done.
Because when you look at our.
I would put to you, we're living
amongst a whole bunch of people
that are ill, but we don't know it.
And that illness is a collective PTs d and
that PTSD is because we aspire to so much.
Whether you are formally religious
or not, we know that we're living in
a country where it's equity, where
it's social values and care are being
honored almost in there being ignored.
We know that.
Say that again.
We ha we ha We know that every
child instinctively should have an
equal opportunity to an education.
We believe this is wrong, to allow
children and adults to be hungry, to not
have a roof over their heads and so on.
There's a whole long litany
of things that we know.
We know that it's cravenly.
To allow companies to poison our water
and think that you are un businesslike
or you're not a proper capitalist if
you complain about it, this is rubbish.
We've created a world of lies.
It should be treason.
Nothing less than treason to poison
the water that we have to drink and
our future children will have to drink.
And onwards the same
with poisoning the air.
The same with making our soil
infertile, and the same with making
the richness a variety of life less.
So.
These are just a few of
the things I believe.
But I think one of the things is to
teach yourself to be unreasonable at
all times and to not allow other people
to write your story is quite possible.
To be a capitalist, but to have a moral
compass, to be fair in all things,
to be kind, to be generous, to be a
capitalist only means that you gather
things and resources together to
enable something bigger to take place.
To be honest.
And if you get to that place,
you're in a very good place.
And I, I have a dream that we can make
a country in which people can dream
of aspiring to achieving these things.
Our dreams are too small, so
our, one of our jobs is to make
dreams bigger, much, much bigger.
And you're looking
beyond the UK now, right?
So Eden, you're doing
Edens in other countries?
Yeah, Dubai.
Okay.
Why, why are you doing Dubai?
And, and is that ecological,
is it ecological to put, uh,
rainforest under a, a roof in Dubai?
Or is it actually taking loads of
resources or what, or what what?
We didn't China you're
doing China as well, right?
I believe y uh, yeah, but we didn't
put a, we didn't put a rainforest
under a, a, a, a roof in Dubai.
We built like a steampunk, um,
a steampunk cartoon ecstasy in.
Environmental science, and it was
the most popular thing at Expo.
It was really, really cool.
And my son, Sam, who's the
creative manager for Eden, he came
up with all these things that,
like the first thing you saw is
you went in, was some questions.
Would you rather kill the last panda?
And nobody knows you did it, or would
you rather not kill the last panda,
but everybody thinks you did it.
And he's done about 30
questions like that.
And to go into a place which is unlike
any science institution you've ever seen
with families just talking and arguing
and berating each other for what they've
said that they believe in and whatever.
Yeah, I think every, every, every
thing that Eden, every Eden that we
do has gotta be a perfect provocation.
What's the point?
We don't, we're not in the
business of doing theme parks.
We're in the business
of, of creating hope.
Entertainment and the
sense of possibilities.
The thing that I really want people
to feel for it from Eden is that the
future still does remain asked to make.
It's not too late.
We can still do amazing things
if we organize ourselves around
various principles and speak truth
to power, speak truth to power.
Look, I've taken up far too much of
your time, but the last thing, what
I'm about to tell you is you probably
have to pay 10,000 pounds just to
hear what I'm about to tell you.
It will be so valuable in your life.
It's worth everything else I've said
up to this moment put together, and
probably a hundred times more than that.
If you really, really want to change
your life and have an exciting life
and taste the unexpected, accept
every third invitation you receive.
That does not mean you don't accept the
first, but it does mean you accept the
third and you don't give yourself a get
outta jail card unless it clashes with
a really important domestic obligation,
like a birthday or anniversary.
The reason for that is that most
people think they are thinking
beings, but most people are sheep.
Most people carry a weight of what they
call thought, which is the clothing of
people like them of their social class
or gleaned from the pages of magazines
they deem to be of their social class,
and they've built up because they're
taught they have to have a view.
It is not possible to have a view on
all the subjects we've all got views on.
Before you wonder, I don't
exonerate myself from this.
I'm just really interested in my own
prejudices and how I come to have them.
How come I'm against nuclear?
How come I'm against this?
And you suddenly realize the shallow
minded waffle brain that you are
because you didn't know enough.
Therefore, it was easy
and comfortable to do.
Some people I admire against nuclear will.
Do you know what I mean?
So you build up this whole picture.
Now when you accept the third
invitation, you are surrounded by
people you did not intend to meet.
You didn't intend to meet them.
And I've learned this incredibly
valuable fact, which is that an awful
lot of middle class people believe
that going to university or anything
else is, or going to a really smart
public school is so that you meet
the people you need to meet people.
The thing I've realized is this is a lie.
Genius is not created by meeting
the people you need to meet.
It's caused by meeting the people
you didn't know you needed to meet
is people who never occurred to you
that you would need to meet so you
wouldn't have searched for them.
And there you are stuck at a social event.
I've had to open old people's homes.
I've judged dog shows, cat shows,
pet shows of every description
I've opened, uh, surgeries.
I've o I've, I've championed
gardens of every description.
Dozens and dozens and
dozens and dozens of events.
And almost every life, life-changing
professional event that I have ever
attended has been the third invitation.
Why that number?
Why not, why not take them all?
Why not do them all and
just be open to everything?
Because I'm also open to loving my family.
Mm-hmm.
And having a life.
I don't wanna be out every night.
Mm-hmm.
I, I, when you do
something public, I, I do.
I could be out every single night,
and I don't wanna be, but I do
want to leave myself open to the
potential for chaos, the potential
for the completely unexpected.
And Eden would not be there today,
were it not for me doing that.
Because one of the things I went to
that I would never have gone to, one
of the people in the audience heard
me talk and later on he happened to be
in a room in the middle of Plymouth.
He had been the chairman of Somerset
County Council and he'd be present in
this Nissen hut in the middle of nowhere,
and Eden was not gonna get its money.
And then he stood up and he
said, gentlemen, ladies, I was
present listening to this man
speaking a Nien hut near Toton.
He so obviously loves the west country,
not just the narrow confines of Cormo.
And we in Somerset will drop one of our
projects so the Eden Project can go ahead
if you all drop one, each collapse of
Stout Party, that one night to 50 people
and a dog was worth 12.7 million pounds.
There you are.
Yeah.
Let's finish the interview there.
That's the most valuable thing
that your listeners can ever hear.
The idea of getting beyond one's
prejudices, which it seems that life
forces upon one, if one's lucky.
Um, but we always go into
it kicking and screaming.
Um, you are now in this exorcism
business of exercising unhappiness,
um, much of which is coming from
people's, uh, divorce from the natural
world, which is where we started with
you, um, by the side of rivers and
climbing trees, um, and then into
music, and then back into nature again.
Ecology, as you said, every, it's
all becoming fashionable now.
We are no longer the hippie margin,
um, with the mainstream what's.
Single.
Biggest thing we all get wrong
about ecology, that's easy.
The biggest thing we get wrong
is believing that people who call
themselves environmentalists to people
who do recycling and all of the things
that actually have a social cache.
The evidence screams at us that there
is a complete disconnect between
people who want to do what they think
is environmentally friendly behavior
and understanding ecology and the
desire to protect biodiversity.
Those that do all that
recycling do not be confused.
It is a desire to conform with society.
I'm a civilized person,
that's why I'm recycling.
I don't wanna be seen as being primitive.
But our connection to Washington
to protect the natural world is the
biggest battleground there is for
humans at the moment because reality
is competing on several different
formats, several different canvases
ranging from say, middle class kids
with, with, um, Tablets and so on.
Their reality of their screen is
every bit as real as the tab, as
the, when you move the tablet.
This way, what they're seeing there
is just another form of this thing.
Um, and there's a lot of complicated
stuff in there about what does nature,
nature inspired education mean?
And an awful lot of people who are
worthy, I think, don't understand
what it takes, what emotional hook
sleeves are necessary to get people
engaged in the natural world.
It's about touching, smelling mud
between your toes, so to speak.
It's not by just walking
outside and seeing the trees.
We've gone for a walk.
I think you can do that for the rest of
your life, and it still won't affect you.
It needs to mean something to you.
It means to mean that you are
understanding you are creaturely.
And bearing in mind, creatureliness,
I have a guest for supper and
at this rate I won't have any
supper cooked for them at all.
One last thing, then.
Can people learn to do what you
do when you imagine not just the
thing but the delivery of the thing.
This seems to have come to you naturally.
Is this a muscle that one
can actually exercise?
Is it part of your formula for
accepting every third invitation?
Is that part of the
exercising of that muscle?
In fact, to find the mechanisms for doing
that, but is this a skill that people
can learn how to dream the dream and
then formulate and deliver the dream?
Yes, you can learn.
The thing is most people find organizing
themselves a complete mystery.
They don't understand the
levers of the order of events.
They don't understand how to
put a narrative arc to work.
My ex, um, gay, who was my joint chief
executive with me for a long time
at Eden, she coined a great phrase.
The secret is to dare to dream
and organize, to deliver.
And I think one of the, the things I
notice, I mentor a lot of, quite a lot
of people and I am just struck how people
that are really smart just don't know
how to put one brick on top of another.
They don't know the order
of how to deliver dreams.
And when you start to show people the
order of doing things, they go, wow, wow.
That's amazing.
I get so many people who send me their
business ban for doing something.
And I go, you know what?
You've got one really good idea in
here and you've now hung about a
dozen other things around it because
you, you think you need to have an
education program and a this and a that.
Just do what you're good at.
Do what you are good at.
Stop trying to do what you think other
people will think you are cool for doing.
Do the thing you are good at.
So many people li live their, they,
they, they waste their lives away by
trying to be something they're not.
If you are really brilliant at
one thing, just do that thing.
Brian Cluff, my, my football manager
hero, who was used to say that.
He said, I don't, didn't pay you
a lot of money to tackle back.
You're rubbish at tackling back,
but you're the best crosser of
the world ball in the world.
I just gotta make the guys who can
tackle back work even harder to give it
to you so you can then cross the ball.
And I think that's a
really big secret of life.
Just understand what you're good at,
and then the next bit, if you have a
dream, is to then start understanding
the bits that you're not good at.
I knew when I built Eden, I knew when I
did GaN that my temperament, the way I
speak would not encourage bank managers.
I knew the more that I was fantastical,
the more their eyes were with me.
Their hearts were with me, and their
brains were shutting the wallet because
they knew that they would look foolish
supporting somebody who was a dreamer.
Therefore, I knew the secret was to
have on my right shoulder, somebody who
understood business brilliantly and could
use jargon of business to impress them.
And on my left shoulder, I needed someone
who'd built amazing things elsewhere.
So they said, here is a dreamer who
really does understand what's needed.
Masterminds teams, Hmm, who
can do what I cannot do?
How do I.
back to the alliances.
How do I make alliances with those
people to deliver the dreams?
And if we're lucky, perhaps there's
friendships along the way too.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there's one last story I'll show
with you, which is my daughter is,
is very smart, who, you know, Laura,
we were looking at creating a place
for children to come and play, right?
We, we own, as you know, the
Shipwreck Center in, uh, Charlestown.
And she said, dad, do you
know what you're doing?
I said, yes.
I'm, I'm looking at how we can
build a brilliant place for kids.
She said, yes, it'll go bust Dad.
And I said, what?
What?
I said, do not know I'm
a genius at what I do.
She said, yeah, but you
just don't understand.
What you've gotta build is
nothing to do with kids.
You are building a.
Where moms do not feel guilty having
some time to themselves, a place that's
safe for children and interesting
enough to keep them occupied.
But you will have high speed wifi
and really good coffee and cake
so they can see their kids and
have some time to themselves.
You are building a
respite place for parents.
You're not building a playground for kids.
And I thought, wow, that is so insightful.
So listen to the young, listen to
those who speak truth to your power.
Yeah.
When it resonates, act.
Yeah.
Stick to what you're good at.
Well, no, no.
Before you I did say that.
Stick to what you're good at.
Well, I was, I think I, to be more
accurate, it should be stick to where
your instincts are telling you to go.
Ah, which is different.
So at Halligan I knew
nothing about plants, did I?
But I knew everything about romance and
storytelling and I knew that I loved the
romance of sleeping, beauty and plates
of time where people had lived their
lives for centuries, one after the other.
And I knew that if I could bottle
that essence around a canvas that
was gardens, it would be successful.
I know you gotta go.
I've gotta go there Are those
who say they can't, they dunno
how to trust their instincts.
What's the fe?
What do you get?
Do you get a physical feeling when an
instinct comes in and an impulse comes
in that says, you must act on this.
Do you feel it somewhere
in your solar plexus?
Yes.
Okay.
I do.
I do.
And the other thing I would say is, One of
my greatest stresses is when I'm given two
choices, and I don't actually care about
either of them, I don't feel an instinct.
It actually drives me nuts.
So I have to walk away from them.
Okay.
You want this?
Trust your instincts.
Yeah, trust them, my dear friend.
I wish I wish so much you could
walk through that screen and we
could go and have a beer together.
I would give a lot for that.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Speak soon.
Bye bye.
Bye-bye.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you for joining us.
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