Get Booked – Thomas Weaver, Artificial Wisdom 021023

You are listening to Get Booked with me, Hazel Butterfield, for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Welcome to today's show. Featured on today's show, we're going to be talking to the author Thomas Weaver about Artificial Wisdom, the unputdownable climate and AI techno thriller for fans of murder mystery, and fast-paced twists and turns. Set in 2050, yet with scenes mirroring the current Sharon heatwave and record high temperatures hitting scorched countries including Italy, France, Greece, the United States, and Canada, this gripping novel, already receiving early praise for its vivid world-building and insightful predictions of future tech, is a gripping read for fans of Harlan Coburn and Blake Crouch. Successful tech entrepreneur turns techno thriller author Thomas Weaver. You can find out more about him at thomasrweaver.com. He is actually one half of the tech entrepreneur duo responsible for selling Flight to Just Eat in 2019 for $22 million, no less. He knows his Artificial Wisdom, it's due for release by Chainmaker Press, is about how far we'd go to use a technology to solve the climate crisis and at what costs, told through the story of a journalist determined to find the truth about a huge cover-up no matter what the consequences. Right, now on the show we are going to be looking at Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver, an AI thriller that hits way too close to home in terms of where we are look— looking like we're heading as a global issue. In Artificial Wisdom, it is 2050 and the effects of global warming, ignored for too long as an issue for the future, has left the world unrecognisable. California no longer exists. London is a flood-transformed cesspit. Kuwait suffered an astronomical murderous heatwave that killed millions, and the rich have moved to floating islands that are climate-controlled and engineered to be a perfect solution for those that can afford it. A global dictator has to be elected to make all the important decisions for the planet to prevent an apocalypse. And the final two in the running are an ex-US president and an artillect, a fully AI commander who has been successfully managing the floating states for a decade. Politics, they are a day-to-day game at the best of times, but when global annihilation is at stake, we need truth tellers like journalist Marcus Tully to make sure everyone has all the information required to make an informed decision as to who is the best candidate to save the world. This is an immaculate and creative piece of work by today's guest, author Thomas Weaver. And Artificial Wisdom, it's not only intoxicating, but it's terrifying. A fantastic thriller. And I'll now introduce today's guest, the author of Artificial Wisdom, Thomas Weaver. Hi, how are you? Hi, I'm great. Thank you for having me on the show. You are very welcome. I've had, um, I've been devouring this book. It looks fantastic. I think the cover's just brilliant. But I've had so many people who have had their eye caught as I've been walking past, kind of head in a book. I'm one of the— I'm that annoying person that has a head in a book, that walk around everywhere. And I've had people going, oh wow, what's this? And like 45 minutes later, you know, I'm on my way walking again. Um, you must be so proud of it. Uh, well, I am, because I'm— funnily enough, that was actually always my dream, um, when I wanted to become a writer, aged, um, you know, it's probably around 9 or 10 when I first read Roald Dahl's BFG. And there's a dream which the BFG gives Sophie, the protagonist, which is that she writes a book, and this book is so amazing that people are walking around not able to put it down, and their heads are in it, and, you know, they're crashing cars and, you know, uh, having all these accidents because they love this book so much. And I remember that scene captured me so much, I thought, I want to write something that captures people like that. And so that was my hope. And even if that only happens for one person, I will feel immeasurably proud of what I've managed to pull off. I think you don't have anything to worry about. It's— I've just been enthralled. I mean, it is intoxicating. I've annoyed many people by just kind of ignoring them and choosing to read the book instead, because Yes, it's brilliantly written, it's a great story, but it's, it's so close to home. It's so easy to imagine that this is where we're going to be in 20, 30 years. And the detail you go into— and I read a bit at the back about how, you know, a lot of people kind of pushed you to go into more detail and be more creative and go back and redo things and expand on them. And it's It's so intricate, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I think, um, I, you know, I'm a big fan of thinking about the future. I've always loved great science fiction. Um, you know, my— one of my favorite movies as a kid was Back to the Future 2, where obviously they go into 2015 and it's this— it's pretty utopian actually as to what you might imagine things to look like today. But the thing I always felt was that, um, you know, we always imagine massive change over a future period, whereas in actual fact, if you look back over your lifetime, you know, 15, 30 years, you can see that whilst there are some things that have moved a lot, there are other things that have moved very slowly. And so, you know, I really didn't want to write a future with flying cars. You know, I wanted to, to take the things good and bad that we can see evident in today and project them forward 30 years. It's not actually that long a period. And obviously I did that from a technological point of view. I took things that we can see emerging today, like augmented reality, and said, okay, what will that look like in 30 years' time, but also of course having to take the state of, um, of the planet into account and the geopolitical landscape. Um, you know, how will things like climate shift, um, everything we understand about things like borders and where people live and, um, where's even habitable? Um, so that— so yeah, I mean, there was a lot, obviously a lot of thinking going on. It was a lot of it was born from from worry and my own worries about the world and where it's heading and the, the feeling that, um, you know, we obviously have this space to act now, um, and unless we actually start acting now, we are going to find ourselves in an even bigger pit to extract ourselves from, which is surely the role of any science fiction. It is to paint, like, some of the pictures of this is what happens if you ignore all of our warnings. And this is the thing, and in artificial wisdom, just for all the listeners, they— it's been decided that they need to elect a global leader because this is the problem. We're always working against each other. There are so many nations that don't agree with other nations, and so sometimes you kind of feel like they're working against them just to spite them. And so it has to be one person making the decisions and we're all on exactly the same path, otherwise it's just a wasted journey. So I think the concept is fantastic, and I think it's you know, it's not far from what is very likely going to happen because we do all work against each other. And I think there's a lot of people that just think, oh, there's so much that needs to be done, what's the point? Because we're doing this and somebody else is ruining it 10 steps down the road. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can see even this morning, I mean, there's topical news about the, the UK government, uh, you know, changing their, their kind of green policy. Um, but, but what actually sparked this one for me, I remember it actually very vividly a few years ago, reading reading an article about how certain countries above a particular latitude will actually be beneficiaries of climate change because as the Arctic warms and as, you know, a lot of the sort of tundra and the kind of areas which today are in places like Siberia and in kind of, you know, the very north part of Canada and Alaska, you know, there are going to be resources that open up. And that really floored me because it kind of brought a lot of things into perspective. The, the idea that actually, um, of course, you know, if you're, if you're living below that latitude, of course you think, well, you know, we can't destroy the planet for resources. And then yet there are probably a few countries thinking, actually, you know what, this is going to be good for me. And so I kind of realized This is such a complicated issue, incredibly complicated, but the climate is interconnected. If one country is polluting very heavily, other countries pay the price. And therefore individual policies on a country-by-country level, I was thinking, well, you know, ultimately it's going to make no sense. We're not going to be able to tackle it. What if one country decides to launch a load of dust into the atmosphere or, you know, something to geoengineer, kind of block the sun. Can they do that? Like, what's the rules on this kind of thing? How do you make decisions which affect everyone, uh, from a national standpoint? Um, and so that's really— that was really the inspiration for this idea of a dictator, um, which was, you know, it's become such a negative word. And actually, one— I had one editor beg me to take it out because they said, look, dictator is, you know, it's a bad word, it's a negative word. But obviously, it wasn't always a negative word, actually. The Romans, actually, Caesar actually had a bunch of dictators, and they were appointed literally just to come in, solve a crisis, like, hey, we've got a bunch of Carthaginians coming over the Alps at us and marching on Rome. What do we do? Go fix it. Here's all the power. They go and fix it. They come back, you know, and hand power back. And that was the point of dictatorship in early Rome. Well, this is the thing. Part of it is reworking the narrative and reworking preconceived ideas. I mean, we've been harping going on for the last 30 years about how we're scared computers and robots are going to take over the human race. And yet they have the capability to do things that we can't do. And it's, it's a fine line between trying to figure out what we should use AI for, uh, and, and if— well, I suppose it's an age-old issue of if you give too much power, can you get it back? Do you regain control? We all like to keep control. Which was the issue with the dictators in the first place. That, you know, this is where it kind of went off the rails with Julius Caesar, who decided not to give power back, you know. But I think this is really valid, what you just said around AI and computers, because when we write books, when we create movies, when we, you know, film these wonderful TV series that are around today, we seed people's imaginations, for better or for worse. And of course, when you're telling stories, the obvious thing to do is to paint some worst-case scenarios because that's what makes stories interesting. Characters have to dig themselves out of a hole that they've got themselves into. Um, and so I think it's perfectly natural that actually, um, sci-fi writers over the last 30 years have imagined the worst cases of robots and AI, um, and have seeded it to the point where we do imagine, of course, that these things are going to destroy us. Um, because if we were suddenly catapulted to the, you know, the top of the power chain, we'd probably do that. So we see it from our own perspective. But that is possible. And, you know, I don't think anybody can say, but I'm a tech optimist, but I'm somewhere in the middle where I'm a tech optimist who always believes that whatever innovation we have comes at a price. You know, we have smartphones which have transformed our world, but have stolen our attention in the process. You know, so there's a huge amount of positives that have come from it and a huge amount of negatives. And I know we'll get on to mental health later, but I think smartphones is a great one to talk about in that segment. Well, actually, let's go on to the mental health, mental wellbeing elements. Obviously, women's radio station and men's radio station, we are, um, we are constantly trying to produce information in our shows to try and help people understand their mental health and how to be able to focus positively on their wellbeing. And it is issues like this, the more knowledge we have, the more scary it is, but You know, it's how we consume that knowledge as well, how we use the information that is out there and the technologies that are out there to not absolutely petrify us. And yet, you know, at the same time, you know, global warming, it could be an apocalypse. But there are people saying, yeah, but I've got real issues now that have to be addressed now. You know, there's starving nations and there are people who are petrified about paying their bills. There are so many different issues for everybody, and it is a mental health issue because what do we do when we feel completely overwhelmed with information? We just find a great big pot of sand and stick our head in it. Yeah, and maybe that's exactly what's happening now. I do think that the, you know, the signal-to-noise ratio, if we can call it that, in information is just vastly shifted over the of the last decade and a half, two decades. You know, suddenly anybody with a social media account can post an opinion, um, you know, they can post a point of view, and we're drowning in it. We're drowning in so many perspectives, some of which, um, you know, from experts that really know what they're talking about, and some of which are not. But it doesn't seem to matter because actually, um, Unfortunately, people are finding that the kind of more negative news you can talk about, the more that gets shared, you know, the bigger negative thing that you can say, the more that gets attention. So we're in this horrible kind of spiral loop really where, you know, it's suddenly attention has become a drug. You know, we're no longer really experiencing things. We're sort of We're filming them, you know, watching them through the lens of the smartphone. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day, you know, they were at a fireworks display and everybody was filming the fireworks display and nobody was watching. Oh, that kills me when I see that. Yeah. So, and you're never going to watch it back, right? So we, to some extent, we've chosen to drown ourselves a little bit in this sea. And I do think actually taking control a little bit and And just starting to try and step away from these things a little bit more and step away from your phone and try and be in the moment is critical. And not getting sucked into anything too polarizing. If you're finding that you're just consuming a lot of stuff that you agree with, you've probably got to be asking yourself a question as to whether you're in some kind of echo chamber and whether you're really, really actually just choosing to hear things you want to hear. I find it interesting because it's— there's— the information is so easily accessible. It's all based around moral panic, clickbait, making people press on the next link and want to find out more and more and more. It's all distorted. All the information has a grain of truth just to get people to listen even more. I have teenage boys who are constantly on Instagram and TikTok and telling me about all these things that seem to be happening in politics. And global warming. And I'm like, but the information you've just given me, you do realize that can't be true. It's— you're just consuming this information because it is delivered in a way to make you keep on watching, to get the views, to click on the next link. And yet you're relaying it. And yet you're going to then go and plug in your phone again, keep on watching more. And there's actually no action. There seems to be a completely counterproductive response to all this poor information. Yeah, I'm with you. I've got two teenage girls, so I'm, you know, super worried about this too. And we've had some real interesting experiences so far with social media, particularly around TikTok. Um, I will slightly offer a defense, which is, um, I do find that the number of things my girls know about the world at their age compared to what I knew is vastly, vastly superior. Like they seem well, way more plugged in for better or for, I don't know if it's a bad thing, right? So sometimes the level of discourse that we have with our kids blows me away because I'm like, God, how do you even know about some of these things? But of course they will sometimes spout things which they've obviously got from influencers and teenagers being teenagers, they're right. And you know, you don't know what you're talking about. I do see that as an opportunity to educate them and, or at least engage in the discussion. You know, I think a great one for me is generally around things like cancel culture and in history, where it's a very complicated topic. It's obviously a bunch of people who, you know, may have done some bad things in their lives and a bunch of good things in their lives. And, you know, I think that's a great one to debate with kids. What's right and what's wrong? You know, do we upend an entire person's legacy because of, you know, an incident which by the judgment of their time wasn't necessarily bad, but it is bad by today's morals. What a great opportunity to discuss, you know, what people in 50 years will view about us today and the choices we make, which maybe takes me all the way back to climate change. Because yes, we have all these worries today and concerns today, but I do wonder, like, you know, will our children's children look back and go, my God, like people back then they didn't do these things and that makes them bad people. Um, you know, we will be victims of exactly the same kind of behavior in the future. It is, um, it is interesting actually. Are you, are you a Futurama fan? Oh, I love Futurama. We were watching it literally last night. Yeah, this is something that me and my kids kind of guiltily just, you know, we devour it. And there are so many issues on global warming at the moment and how there's zero waste and then they have to create this waste to kind of save the planet. Uh, and it is actually kind of ridiculous, but as I've been watching it over the last week or so, I've seen so many interesting elements that reminded me of your book, and I was just thinking, I wonder if he's a Futurama fan. It is— there were some similarities. You know, actually, so funnily enough, I haven't seen Futurama for a long time, And it's only recently with my kids, you know, reaching the kind of age where you can watch them. We've literally just been watching it from the beginning. But, you know, it is— it's a brilliant series. It's so much wonderful. You know, I love— I do love sci-fi because there's so many different kind of ways of imagining what our future can be. And I find that exciting and sometimes terrifying, you know, and there are the— I'm reading a great book at the moment which everybody's been praising to me called, you know, it's called We Are Legion. It's part of a series called the Bobiverse, and it's about a man who, you know, has an accident. He's become rich. He's decided to invest in cryogenic stuff, you know, frozen his head if he dies, and literally walks out the place and gets killed. So they freeze his head and he wakes up hundreds of years later imagining that he's going to be in a nice fresh body. And it turns out he's an AI and he belongs to someone. And it's just wonderful because it's all this exploration really of identity. Is he the same person? As an AI than he was as a human. Um, and I just think there's just so much kind of interesting thought experiments out there. Um, you know, and obviously I was trying to write something which really wasn't quite sci-fi. I wanted to be accessible to everyone. I think sci-fi is a very scary word. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I, I, I was more inspired by trying to write something that felt a bit more like Jurassic Park, you know, the sort of stuff that Michael Crichton would write where. It just felt like a normal book, and it just happened to explore, you know, the intersection of science and, and kind of ethics of bringing back extinct creatures. And that's the kind of book that I wanted to write. I think you married so many different elements together, actually, kind of focusing on the mental well-being elements, dealing with bereavement and loss and addiction. While dealing with political issues and the thriller issues. And what I do want you to try to explain to our listeners a little bit, the concept of and how you came across this idea as well of the Ego Space. Yeah. So, so one of the technologies that I imagine in the future is that we'll have a future version of today's virtual reality. In virtual reality today, obviously you put on a nice headset and you've got some input into your visual field and you've got, you know, sound. So you've got kind of two senses. But I can see a path towards a place where actually we are able to hack all of your senses, you know, straight into your, into your brain's cortex, right? So we can essentially put you into a virtual world inside your brain instead of trying to pipe things in through through all the other senses. So I've created something called neural reality, and I'm imagining in this world of 2050 that actually it becomes a much more convenient way of, you know, why bother traveling across the world anymore when actually you can, you can see people and experience things as if you're already there because it feels so real. And, you know, part of the fun of that is kind of imagining, you know, what does Zoom look like in this thing? And, you know, what does the security systems look like in this thing. So, so a lot of imagination around that. Ego space. So I kind of have this idea because I've tried, and obviously I'm a tech guy, I love technology, and I've tried virtual reality. And normally when you start kicking into virtual reality, you have something called a home space, and it's your own home, but it's very, you know, it's, it's beautiful and it's incredible, but it's a place to launch other things from and gather yourself before you start your journeys. Um, but it's not particularly personalizable. It's a little bit personalizable. And I had this idea that actually, you know, because with— we're imagining this sort of launch space, the first thing you do as you arrive in NR, or Nora Reality, is to arrive in your own space. And it should to some extent be a reflection of, of you and what you're— what you want to see, what you want to believe about yourself, um, in the world. So you can craft it to be a very intensely personal kind of space that nobody really will ever go into. Um, and so I had a lot of fun with that. You know, I was creating, you know, spaces for all of it. We only see 3 different characters' ego spaces, um, but I spent a long time thinking about what those spaces would be. You know, for the character who's grieving his wife, you know, he's got a space which reflects peace and tranquility and somewhere he can pay tribute to his wife, like almost a shrine. Um, for a character who lost her father,. And that has become the most important point of her life. She's got an ego space which reflects his study, but as she remembers it as a kid, so everything's slightly oversized because she's seeing it from a 7-year-old's perspective. So that was a lot of fun. And I think as much as anything, it was wish fulfillment because that's the sort of thing I'd love to experience myself. And I, you know, do ask myself the question, what would my space be like? That sounds like a really fun activity to kind of just do with a glass of wine at some point and just go, right, I'm going to create my ego space and it I would find that like quite, quite a cathartic process. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we, I used to work in thinking about the design of spaces. It was something I did a long, long time ago in my life. I believe fundamentally that the spaces we occupy change our mental state for better or for worse. And so, You know, I, I like to choose the setting that I work from on a daily basis depending on what kind of mindset I'm in. Um, and so, uh, yeah, I think, I think it's important, even though we can't do that in the future, I do think it's absolutely critical that we become more aware of the spaces that we're in and make conscious choices around the spaces that we're in. Um, you know, even, even to the point of, well, okay, I, I need nature around me now, so I'm going to go for a walk in nature, you know, what will that do to my, to my mental state? So yeah, I think it's, I think it's important. Yeah, um, I said that kind of feeds in quite nicely into— I, I always like to ask my guests here on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station for their, for their 3 top tips on mental well-being, and I suspect one of them is creating an ego space. Yeah, well, the day that you can, that will certainly be on my list for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I could talk for several hours about this because there's so many things I think about, you know, and let me say, I kind of come from a perspective of having been a startup founder. So, you know, created and ran and sold a startup a few years ago, which was wonderful and incredibly stressful. And because it was so incredibly stressful, I developed things like high blood pressure. And for the very first time in my life, was faced with something that I obviously needed to think about fixing and be much more aware of my physical and mental well-being. So, you know, this is something I could talk for hours about. I think my top 3 tips very much are things which would come as no surprise to anyone, which is, I think the fundamental basis for me is that interconnection between body and mind. So it's much harder to influence your mind directly. It's much easier to do something for your body directly. So, you know, going for a run or doing some sport or lifting heavy weights obviously creates certain neurochemicals which change your mood for the better. Being fit per se generally helps you manage things better. You know, getting enough sleep and eating well, you know, and it's simply just taking care of your physical state, I think is so critical just for your mind. So that kind of is very much my first one. I think the other thing, the one that's probably more interesting for me, something I've really been focusing on in the last year. Now I read this incredible book by James Nestor, called Breath. And, um, it was kind of eye-opening because it's something that, you know, we, we take for granted the fact that we, we breathe. It's just, it's just a thing we do for the moment. We— it's the very first thing we do and the very last thing we do, right? I mean, we— our breath is just an automatic part of our life. And we all know a little bit that actually, um, breathing does influence, you know, how we feel, but we don't really do much of it apart from if you're starting to learn to meditate But, you know, if I told you that when you're breathing in, your heart rate goes up, and then when you're breathing out, your heart rate slows down, um, you can immediately think, well, I can influence my mood that way, right? If I'm— if I want to get— pump myself up, then I need to take longer inhales. And if I want to calm myself down, I need to take longer exhales. Now, the very fundamental basis, just, just that in itself is a— is revolutionary, that actually I can control my mood simply just by the pace at which I'm inhaling or exhaling. In, um, you know. And of course you can go much deeper than that. And I think there's, there's a lot of stuff out there now. People like, you know, Andrew Huberman talking about things like the physiological sigh, which he reckons is the very quickest way of actually calming, um, your, your, yourself down, which is to breathe in very quickly and then take an extra little breath that kind of fill up your lungs and then breathe out slowly. And he reckons that doing this, like, is is profound to your mental state. Um, these are all things I've been trying to teach my kids, you know, when they're facing a difficult situation at school. Hey, just do the side, do it really, you know. I, I've actually been doing this with my, with my youngest as well because he struggles sometimes with this. Sometimes he feels incredibly overwhelmed and he can't understand why. And I said, you need to start thinking about your box breathing. And even when you were talking about it then, I found myself just be more conscious of it. And the thing is, I know it works, and yet we always forget the basics when we're panicking. Yeah, yeah, we do. And so, um, I mean, there's a ton of different things in life that we, we, that can help us deal with that, right? Which, if you take martial arts as a practice, you know, one of the reasons they drill the same exercises again and again and again is so that when they're in a situation that they need to draw on martial arts, they can use it without having to actually think. And I think that's the key there. It is trying to build some conscious practice around these habits so that when you're in a situation where you're needing it, it's happening, you know, a little bit— the right thing is happening on autopilot. You don't need to call on it so strongly. But it's hard because who has time for any of this, right? I mean, that's the challenging thing. I went to a wonderful 1-week breathwork retreat in Austria, and it was incredible and profound. And we did breathing things up a mountain, and it was wonderful. And I got back, and of course I was going to integrate that into my daily life every day, and I don't think I've done more than one since I got back. So, you know, it's the reality of it all. You may know all the right things to do, and you may not find it as easy to do them. But I do genuinely think, you know, if I sit down to do a piece of complicated work, I'll take a, you know, a few deep breaths filling my lungs and let them out slowly and get myself into the right mental state before I actually start it. So I just think building some of this, even if it's 10 seconds, 20 seconds into your routine, or as you say, at that moment, like, if you're feeling like a little bit upset or worried, you know, try it then, you know, see, to see, does it have an impact? If it doesn't, try something different. If it does, wow, well, you found something, you've got a tool there. It's about expanding our toolkit, isn't it? And just when we feel that, that we're kind getting up into those high anxiety levels, we remember to just dig into our toolkit. And even if we think, right, I don't have time, I'm completely all over the place, I can't just sit here and do some breathing— well, actually, if you spent 5 minutes doing this, the next 4 hours are going to be a damn sight more productive. 4 hours. If you speculate to accumulate, and we just need to rework our ideas and where we're going to prioritize what we're going to do to kind of make ourselves feel better. Which is absolutely my third tip actually, which is be purposeful about where you invest your time. You know, I've got some friends who, you know, I exercise every day, right? Or at least I do 4 kind of big training sessions a week and try and do just little bits every other day because I really especially after I'd been diagnosed with high blood pressure, I decided that staying physically fit was, was critical. So the one thing that I will not drop no matter what's going on. Um, and you know, I found other friends, I'd love to go to the gym, but I just don't have time. And I say to them, it's not that you don't have time, it's that it's not number one on your priority list. So therefore you're prioritizing other, other things to do with your time over that. And, you know, I think it's important to think about time and where you're choosing to spend your time, not to spend it reactively, not to spend it, you know, based on what— where you— where, of course, there are things, you know, if you— especially if you're working in a job and you've got kids and all that sort of stuff, and, you know, to some extent your time is a luxury that's being pulled on by other people. But there are still chunks of time every day that You have to choose the balance of what you're going to do with them, where you're going to put them. And I try and think about what's the best return on time invested. You know, if I'm going to the gym and I'm putting my hour there, well, I could have put that hour in writing instead. So to some extent, that's not great. But actually, if it actually helps me live longer and be in a better mental state, then maybe my writing, when I do get to write it, will be better as a result. Well, also you will be more energized as well. I mean, I, I remember when my kids were very young and I'd have all my other moms in the group saying, I don't know how you find the time to go to the gym, you're so lucky. And I said, well, it's not about that. I know that if I go to the gym, I have more energy to deal with the rest. Um, my brain gets clearer, so I don't lose it with my children when I'm extremely exhausted. And I feel healthier. So mentally that's making me feel better. It's I need to do that to be a better parent and to be a better me. And, um, and some people just can't quite understand weighing that out. And I have a lot of friends who say, oh, you've got so much time to read, you're so lucky. I'm like, I need that to reset, you know, I need to calm down a bit. How much have you watched Netflix in the last 2 days? And it's like, well, 9 hours. That's a whole book, babe. Well, this is precisely it. And again, I do think smartphones are one of the biggest things that have stolen our attention, and certainly mine, you know. And I believe I probably spend less hours reading now than I did before because the smartphone is cognitively easier to pick up and do something with. And I noticed that a bit with my kids as well, which is why we're trying to make sure that you know, the phones don't go upstairs with them in the evening, and that they've got time in bed where they, they, you know, have reading time. Um, but, you know, we are competing. Everything's competing for our attention. And yeah, we can either throw that attention into something, um, you know, like Netflix, which, you know, it's good to have a bit of time on Netflix, it's also fine. Um, but if you're, if you're feeling that you're not getting enough time doing something else, then maybe actually that should be high priority. My greatest example on this was as a kid loving video games, as a teenager loving video games, you know, finishing university and packing it away and saying, I'm never— I'm not going to play another one. And not because I don't want to, but because I didn't feel it was actually the best productive use of my time, and I found it far too addictive And, you know, I was very career-minded when I finished university. I was determined to go out there and, you know, get ahead and do things really quickly. So I just didn't have time for that in my life. And actually, I don't regret that at all. Actually, I think it was one of the best decisions I made was putting down something I loved, which wasn't really doing much for me apart from a bit of chill time, and actually, you know, taking control of my time and choosing where I wanted to spend it differently. Well, a lot of life is about balance, getting it right, trying it again, and everybody's different and they all have different ideas of what that balance should be. And I think taking it actually back to Artificial Wisdom, there is a lot in this book about using fiction to assess what that balance could and should be and how everybody is different and they've got different requirements. I'm so annoyed that we're actually running out of time. I had about at least 10 things I wanted to talk about, and I think I've covered 2 of them off in total, Tom. Um, we should have extended this interview for like a 3 to 4 hour slot. Uh, just— I'm here if you want to jump on again, we can do it. Yes, definitely. Um, but thank you so much for joining us on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. I've loved everything that you had to say, and you've— and your tips as well, that was so thoughtfully put together. And just, I think it serves as an excellent reminder to all of us just how important things like breathwork, um, we know about it and we just keep on ignoring how important it can be. But thank you so much for the thoughtful conversation that you've provided today. You're very welcome, and thank you for having me on. You are welcome. I'm looking forward to the next book, although I'm a little bit scared about what that might be. Ah, the next book is very different. I needed a bit of a palate cleanser in between, but I'll get back to the scary stuff, don't you worry. Brilliant. Thank you so much, John. Thanks for joining us on Get Booked. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's chat with today's guest. Quick reminder, it's 2050, a decade after a heatwave that killed 400 million across the Persian Gulf, including journalist Marcus Tully's wife. Now he must uncover the truth. Was the disaster natural, or is the weather now a weapon of genocide? A whistleblower pulls Tully into a murder investigation at the center of an election battle for a global dictator with a mandate to prevent a climate apocalypse. While a former US president campaigns against the first AI politician, is someone trying to tip tip the balance. Tully must convince the world to face the truth and make hard choices about the future of the species. But will humanity ultimately choose salvation over freedom, whatever the cost? This is an enthralling murder mystery with a vividly realized future world, forcing readers to grapple with hard-hitting questions about climate change, AI governance, and the price of salvation. A quick reminder, you can pop on thomasrweaver.com to find out more about today's guest. But right now, our guest has very kindly done us an extract of the first chapter of his book. Sit back and enjoy. London, July 1st, 2050. Marcus Tully pitched the tumbler as hard as he could at the screen. It slipped through the floating image and shattered against his study wall in a burst of golden He glowered at the undamaged display, still hovering in his vision 6 feet away. Afternoon sun from the dusty floor-to-ceiling windows glinted from the crystal shards now scattered across the carpet tiles. 'Well,' a pundit sneered at the newscast host, 'I just don't accept the premise of your question. 10 years since this so-called Tabkir hit the Persian Gulf, and I see no credible evidence the heatwave really killed anyone.' It was a coup, nothing more. Damn all Tapkir deniers to a humid hell. 10 years since the threads of 100 million lives were cut from those left behind. 10 years since Zaynab, his wife, had died. 10 years of holding tight onto every memory in case they slipped away when his back was turned. Shit, he was drunk. The faint whirr of cleaning bots sounded across the room. He staggered over to the window, placing his palms against the cool glass, and then his forehead. Far below, the poor and desperate of London scurried around in the baking summer heat. 10 years. 10 years today, but it still felt so fresh. Move on, they said. Get over her. But what if he didn't want to? What if the day he forgot her voice was when she was truly gone? Play call recording, he told his neuroassistant. Marcus Tully and Zeynep Tully, July 1st, 2040. There was a beep, the sound of the old phone systems. "My love?" Zainab said. He squeezed his eyes shut at the sound of her voice, so alive, so real, as if he could reach out and touch her. "Hey, I'm here, Z," he said, a man with no idea his world was about to change. "You okay?" "I've been better. Didn't sleep well. None of us did." It's too hot and we're having brownouts. Pretty warm here too today. It's early, must be 8 AM in Kuwait. There was a pause. Marcus, it's really, really humid here this morning and the heat, I can barely move. Another pause. It can't be good for the baby. He could still remember that feeling of that first flickering moment of worry. That sudden sharpening of his attention. He opened his eyes again and stared at the skyline. "But your father has, er, good aircon, right?" Ali said. "Brownout, Marcus." There was a crackle, and she cut out for a moment. "Aircon isn't working. Nothing's working apart from the phones." "Maybe you should come home early. I know your mother wanted to spend time with you before the birth, but—" "I'll come." 'Zeynep, I'm on the phone,' she said, too fast. 'Let me know when you've booked the ticket. I can't do it from here, the connection is as bad as it—' 'Eh?' There was another crackle, then nothing more. 'Zee?' he said. 'Zeynep, can you hear me?' But she was gone. It burned him up not to know what really happened to her in the hours after that call, like a fathomless acid in his belly. He lurched over to the desk and grabbed the rum bottle. Where the hell was the glass? He sensed a pang, warning a notification was impending, like an artificial tingle deep within his forehead. A second later, he could see the message teasing at the upper right periphery of his vision. Red-edged, for unknown contact. He ignored it and pulled the cork stopper, then took a gulp of the rum. There was another pang, also red. He shook his head now and took another sip. A third pang made him groan, but he looked up. Tully, read the first message. Got a story you need to hear. Can we meet? Has to be right now. The second message read: Government secrets, okay? Not safe. And a third followed: You got 2 minutes, big shot, or I'm going to your competitors. Bradley, maybe. Oh, this also concerns your wife. The bottle slipped from his hands and smashed on the edge of the desk, releasing a sickly stench. The cleaning bots bleeped disapprovingly. Tully blinked at the last message, reread the first two, then stared again at the third. She'd been dead for 10 years. What the hell would a whistleblower know about it? I'm Hazel Butterfield, and you've been watching listening to Get Booked for Women's Radio Station and Men's Radio Station. Catch me here every day of the week at 5 PM on WRS and every Tuesday at 4 PM at MRS. And catch up on previous shows at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked. Now playing us out to the end of the show is a little look back on a recent show just to whet your appetite. It is by the incredible Gayle Aldwyn, and she is discussing The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell. Thank you so much for listening, and hopefully you'll join me next week. Right now, time for today's guest on Get Booked. We have Gail Aldwyn, and we're going to be chatting about The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell. This book was perfectly timed for me, having only recently listened to my first ever unsolved crime mystery podcast in the last few weeks, and I know I'm very late to the party. Uh, so the book, it is 2014, and Stephanie has just been made redundant from her position at the local paper after many years of service, yet Doug, her boss, thinks this is a great opportunity for her to flex her creative muscles in new media, namely podcasting. Back in 1979, when Stephanie was starting out in journalism, a girl from her school went missing. And to this day we still don't know what happened to her. Could modern communication and a less newbie approach to investigative journalism be the answer to uncovering the truth? While delving into the past and forging a way through with her future, Stephanie gets to encounter new people, gain a better understanding of small-town ignorances, learn about resilience, and humanity. But will she get to uncover what happened to Carolyn Russell? Welcome to Get Booked, Gail, and congrats on the book. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Yes, and I'm really pleased with the book. It's a nice looking product. I'm still on that sort of newly published high that you get after such a lot of work. I was just quickly checking out your website for your latest post at gailaldwin.com, and I saw— I love it— that you found a dress dress that perfectly colour-matched your book. I know, the story of the green dress. Yes, I bought it over a year ago, so it's absolutely coincidence that it went so well with the book. But yeah, it was really nice to be able to wear that and show off the book at the same time. Yeah, it looks fantastic. I mean, the cover's fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. Um, I'm quite keen to get cracking. How did the idea get born for The Secret Life of Caroline Russell? Well, it did start off with podcasts, so I'm gonna backpedal a bit and go back to 2019. Um, I took a voluntary post with a VSO to go and work at a refugee settlement in Uganda, and it was a very remote place, as you can imagine, refugee settlement. So it was right on the border with South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in a very under-resourced area. I mean, the, the refugee settlement itself was on a former hunting ground. So although the theory that the refugees coming from South Sudan could build a house, you know, they could cut clay and build a house with a thatched roof, the theory was that they could grow vegetables, but actually the land was completely infertile, so it didn't really work out. Having said, while I was there, I was living in a nearby town, and the electricity supply was very erratic, and the water supply was also very erratic. Although my— one of the things of working with VSO is you are promised piped water. It may not be regular, but you know, you get piped water. And I moved into this little house, and my landlord promised me piped water every day. And I think I had it for about 3 days in a row, and then it was off for like 4 or 5 days, and then on for a day and off for a day. And you can imagine, all the red dust in Africa, it was pretty hard going. And the electricity supply was terrible as well. So I might get electricity in the morning for about an hour, and then made life, working life, really difficult because you couldn't print anything, you couldn't use your computer. And for me, it was really hard because I'm living in this tiny little house, no electricity at night. I had a power pack that kept my fan going until about midnight, and then I'd just be sweltering in the heat on this foam mattress under my mosquito net. So I'm painting a picture here of, you know, quite a challenging lifestyle. But the, the, the bonus was there was a hotel in this town where I could charge my phone and download loads of podcasts. So while I'm sweltering in my bed at night, I was listening to podcasts. And somehow I just got tuned into the true crime podcasts, and I started listening to ones that were individual stories. So you'd have a new story with each podcast. And then I sort of tapped into the series podcasts, and, uh, you know, they, they set out to solve a, a mine. And one of the really important influential ones— I mean, it was a bit like research, if you would. I was listening to this podcast called The Teacher's Pet, and it's all about, um, a wife who goes missing in 1981. None of her family believed she would leave her children behind, but, and, uh, they didn't really suspect her husband of actually murdering her until much later. But because she was never found, you know, um, eventually— actually, it was last year— he was actually convicted of her murder. So event— the podcast itself brought this police interest in reopening the case. Um, and then he was convicted last year for the murder of his wife. Her body was never found. And I was listening to these podcasts and I thought, oh my gosh, you know, this is true life, yet you couldn't have plotted it better. And actually, these podcasts are not linear, you know, they do take snippets of different bits of the story and sort of weave it together. And I've been listening to all these podcasts thinking, oh my 'Oh my goodness, you know, this is such a, you know, how can, you know, how can true life be emulated in fiction?' And so I got the idea that I could do something like that with a missing person. And then I created the sort of young character of Carolyn Russell, who's 16. And I did a bit of research around that in terms of trying to get the sort of 16-year-old voice. So I listened to quite a few episodes of BBC Radio 4's My Teenage Diary, and that kind of hooked me into the teenage logic that drives the narrative. It's, it's interesting, isn't it, because there's, there's issues with resources, there's issues with historic crimes, you can't get them reopened with the police, and so people are looking for different avenues to reinvent investigate crimes. And these crime podcasts, they kind of, they go off in these little rabbit holes that you, that's through intrigue and something that, you know, traditional investigations with the police force can't necessarily go down or waste time going down. And then you've got this element of the public fascination of wanting to get involved and to feel like they've solved something. So I think podcasts have this really interesting place in trying to uncover truths, um, whether or not actually they don't have their hands tied as much as traditional methods. Um, and we're obsessed with them. And if we think we can— we all like to have our opinion heard as well. Um, I mean, obviously there's certain issues with subjectivity with these podcasts, but it's all about increasing awareness. And you just don't know if you're gonna finally— if when they're popular, if it's going to reach the right person got that snippet of information, or somebody who maybe disappeared out of choice and suddenly can come forward years down the line. Um, it's, it's an interesting method. I mean, I got, as I said, when I first, when I got this book, I'd just done my first ever podcast, um, listening to my first ever podcast, and it was the Pamela Adlon one through Audible, and And it was interesting reading The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell from the perspective of the person producing the podcast and everything that goes on in life behind it and all the constraints and, you know, pulling teeth to get information, trying to get people to speak. And it was, it was interesting marrying those two perspectives together. I think you did a fantastic job.— it's definitely, it's a fantastic book. You must be getting some brilliant reviews. Well, thank you for that. Yes, I'm really pleased with the way it's been received, so that's been really rewarding, um, and I'm glad that it's— she's kind of hit the spot with a lot of people. I mean, for some people of a certain age, it's kind of like going back and reliving those sort of, uh, teenage years in that time period as well, in the late '70s, which is quite shocking too. Um, it's dramatic, and I think, yes, the elements of what you brought out in The Secret Life of Caroline Russell, about the problematic nature of 1979 and all the way through '80s and '90s. You can even go to the early '20s of what was just deemed okay, how people had to put up and shut up, the creepiness of men and how women just made you feel like you should just get on with it because she didn't want to be a problem or a burden or be, you know, a tall poppy in any way, shape, or form. And so it was stifling, it was worrying. People felt scared to say, actually, I'm not comfortable with how I'm being treated and how I'm made to feel. And is this right or wrong? Because nobody was standing up for people and saying, oh, you know, it's just men, they're allowed to kind of grab you a bit like that, that's just their nature. Yeah, women are different. It was horrific. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, you know. And when, when you kind of think about it, that is so confusing for young people, isn't it? Knowing that it doesn't feel right but not having the voice to sort of challenge anything. Really, really difficult times. Well, you can see why there's two, there's two sides to it, I guess. You can see why somebody would just go I am so unsupported. I'm, I'm crying out telling you there's something wrong. And if you feel unsupported by your friends and family, a lot of people will just go, I'm out of here, I, I'm going, and I don't want to give them any sort of time of day to tell them where I've gone and why, because they didn't, they didn't care initially. However, because nobody was listening when something horrible happens, if they have been murdered, then nobody was listening to find out the information as to, you know, who did it, why something happened to them. It's, it's interesting, and I don't want to in any way allude to the end of the story. Yes, it's— but, but this is the thing, and a lot of these crime podcasts, they don't uncover what happened. No, that's true. I mean, I'm really fascinated by how much time the investigative journalists spend in building up relationships with people that enables them to feel that they can come forward. And at the same time, there's others that are so keen to give their point of view as well, you know. There's a lot— there's a bit in the novel about, you know, small town attitudes, really. And I think that's very true, you know. If they— you can get into a position where everybody, you know, wants to finger one particular person. And I think that can really happen as well, you know, that there's a gossip and belief that, you know, a particular person has done the deed, um, and others that, you know, hold different viewpoints and have other information but have never really been asked about it.