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Supercommunicators won the vote for September’s book! Grab yourself a copy of Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg, and let’s get reading. Just as a side note, after three unsuccessful months, Quiet will be removed from the voting pool and replaced by something new.

Here are your reading targets for each week to match each week’s video. The videos will be released on Wednesday nights following this schedule:

Week 1, 9th September, Prologue - Chapter 2, 71 pages

Week 2, 16th September, Chapter 3 - Chapter 4, 63 Pages

Week 3, 23rd September, Chapter 5 - Chapter 6, 67 Pages

Week 4, 30th September, Chapter 7 - Afterword, 49 Pages

Happy Reading!

The Book Club will no longer be behind a paid subscription!

I want the book club to become the main focus of Learned-ish for its next stage, and I want anyone who wants to join to be able to. Reading one book a month is a really achievable goal, especially when done with clear reading targets, community and something to track on a weekly basis.

I’d love to see the Book Club grow and for more people to be regularly voting on the books and reading along and learning.

In September, we are reading Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. Tomorrow I’ll be posting about the reading plan for the month.

The Download Articles and Podcast are being paused.

This is a really hard decision because it was the foundation of Learned-ish; however, it was the biggest time sink and took a lot of work. I felt that in the final few months before the summer, the quality of these articles/episodes was dropping - mainly because I wasn’t able to give it the time I wanted, especially in terms of researching and planning.

In terms of my life balance as well, I felt like with everything I’m juggling, the time spent on these was causing the most stress and imbalance.

I’d love to bring these back in the future, but for now, it’s paused.

The Blog-ish will no longer be behind a paid subscription, but will also be more ad hoc rather than on a monthly schedule.

I really enjoy writing these more personal blogs, and want people to be able to access them. I think the paid subscription was too much of a barrier for many people, and I want to change that. Although I won’t commit to a monthly blog, I do want to keep these going on a semi-regular basis.

All my previous Blog-ish posts have been unlocked, so if you haven’t read them, feel free to go check them out.

Thanks so much for all your support so far, and let’s keep learning together.

As you read each part of the book, please do comment on each part’s video, share your thoughts, what stood out to you, and what you think of my reflections. It’s a club, and each week I want to continue the conversations and reply!

This week, we continue with Divided by Tim Marshall, exploring the Berlin Wall, immigration, and division with the UK.

Reflective Questions

1. What do you think of the EU’s aims? Were they trying to do something too idealistic and not realistic enough?

2. What’s your view of immigration right now?

3. If you’re English, or if you’re not, what’s your view of English Shame as talked about by Orwell?

I’m now going to be on a summer break until September, when the book club will return. Look out for voting and the decision on what we will read.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents - Isabel Wilkerson

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking - Susan Cain

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg

In this groundbreaking book, Charles Duhigg unravels the secrets of the supercommunicators to reveal the art - and the science - of successful communication. He unpicks the different types of everyday conversation and pinpoints why some go smoothly while others swiftly fall apart. He reveals the conversational questions and gambits that bring people together. And he shows how even the most tricky of encounters can be turned around. In the process, he shows why a CIA operative was able to win over a reluctant spy, how a member of a jury got his fellow jurors to view an open-and-shut case differently, and what a doctor found they needed to do to engage with a vaccine sceptic. Above all, he reveals the techniques we can all master to successfully connect with others, however tricky the circumstances. Packed with fascinating case studies and drawing on cutting-edge research, this book will change the way you think about what you say, and how you say it.

If you’re wondering exactly when things will be back:

• The next Download article/podcast will be out on Monday, the 14th of September.

• The Book Club will start again on Wednesday, 9th September.

• The September Blog-ish will be back on the 19th of September.

I’m going to be taking a break over the next few weeks of summer (the school holidays here in the UK), but Learned-ish will be back in September! I’ll be finishing off the final week of the July book club, we’ll vote for the September book club, and I will get the July Blog-ish out (I’m working on it now). However, until September, there will be no more episodes of The Download. There are currently 14 articles/podcasts available, so go see if you missed any.

The reason I’m taking a summer break is that a lot is going on at the moment! Starting Learned-ish has really pushed me with juggling working full time, being a present dad and husband, looking after my physical and mental health, having some small smidge of a social life and doing other things I enjoy too. I spend most mornings between 5:30 am and 6:30 am, and then also normally 5/7 evenings a week working on Learned-ish. It’s a big commitment! At the moment, if I’m honest, it all feels quite a stretch, especially with some other stuff going on in my personal life that is draining and time-consuming too, with lots of uncertainty.

But Learned-ish will be back. I just need a quick refresh, and breaks are also good because they will give me time to reflect and maybe get new ideas and a fresh vision.

I hope you understand!

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to get some feedback on Learned-ish. Please consider filling in my feedback form to help me grow and improve what I’m doing here: https://forms.gle/v8RcCnn1gN2P4gBfA

If you’re wondering exactly when things will be back:

• The next Download article/podcast will be out on Monday, the 14th of September.

• The Book Club will start again on Wednesday, 9th September.

• The September Blog-ish will be back on the 19th of September.

In this month’s Blog-ish, I want to explore this more, talking about what my experience of grandparents has been like and why the idea of becoming a grandfather has become such an important idea to me.

In my life experience, grandfatherhood has been limited. I never knew my dad’s dad. He died long before I was born, and therefore he never got to be a grandfather to me, and I’m not even sure he got to meet my older cousins. I can’t even fact-check this, for reasons I’ll explain in a little while. Sometimes I mourn this fact, a loss I didn’t even experience, a man I never knew. A possible relationship and impact on my life which never saw the light of day. What was he like? How would he have enjoyed having grandchildren? I don’t know. My dad barely spoke about him; I couldn’t even tell you his name, what his career was like or anything about him, and in my naivety, I failed to ask. I have mixed feelings about him and what could have been. A grandfather of the unknown.

On the other side of my family was my mum’s dad. I knew him for a while; he died when I was a teenager. But I didn’t spend much time with him in my teenage years or loads of my childhood. He wasn’t a great man. In fact, I’d go as far as to say he was a pretty horrible one by all accounts. He was abusive, controlling, manipulative, racist, a liar and behind all that, probably a coward. My mum has endless stories of his terror, from her childhood until the moment he died. And in her wisdom, my exposure to him was limited. She tried to be family in my early years, but as I got older, she wanted me exposed to him less, and I praise her for it. I can’t even imagine some of the horrors she went through because of him, yet she was still brave enough to continue facing him until the day he died. Honestly, I don’t grieve him. Maybe there’s a grief of what could have been, but it’s lost somewhere, hidden deep. This is a man I’m glad I spent little time with and who has had little influence on me.

As you now know, my experience of grandfathers is limited. I never really experienced what it was like to have a grandfather who loved you, cared for you, and helped raise you in their own unique way. I guess this is sad, a missed experience, yet like most things in life - your experience is all you know, and I can’t know anything else. To me, grandfathers simply don’t exist, or they haunt your parents.

Right now my dad is dying, and he’ll soon be gone. There’s obviously all kinds of emotions and grief coming with this, but relating to this blog, one of those things which is really sad is that my daughter, Ada, and any other potential children Steph and I might have will never know their Grandpa. Ada will have some photos of her as a baby, with this increasingly ill-looking man whom she doesn’t know but will have heard about. But that’s it. It’s another generation within my family that will never know a grandparent. My children won’t get to experience my dad, and all that he is, or was.

There are loads of things that are really gutting about this; firstly, it’s another generation of family not knowing each other; it’s key people in a family tree being strangers caught in the past or the future, disconnected. It’s the experience of grandfatherhood that my dad will never get to experience. The life of Ada he will miss, the guiding hand on my fatherhood he won’t be part of. The life we’ll experience, without his unique input.

Ada will hear of who he was, but won’t truly know it. Like me, feeling a small gap in my life, a slight grief of a grandparent unknown to me, she’ll have similar feelings. She’ll never know my dad’s voice, his gentle kindness, and inquisitive nature. She’ll never have an awkward conversation with a man who struggles with small talk (it’s where I get it from), but will happily explore a range of deep and interesting topics. She’ll never be made to roll on the floor, belly laughing at a surprising comment filled with humour you almost forget exists within this quiet man. She’ll never have a meal lovingly prepared by him or hear him effing and blinding as he drops something while cooking. She’ll never see the sacrifices he makes and his selfless nature. There’s a lot Ada will miss out on, all of what my dad is and was, plus all of what their relationship could have been.

The good news for Ada, though, is that unlike me, her grandparents aren’t all dead or awful people. She still has my mum, plus Steph’s mum and dad. Tim, her Grandad is brilliant. Already he’s one of her greatest joys in life; she loves being with him, and I know that will continue for years to come. He’ll teach her, encourage her and inspire her as she grows.

I think my experience of grandfathers, or lack of them, has had a profound impact on me. It may sound cringey or silly, but I think it’s made me desperately want to be a grandfather one day, and one who is present and sees his grandchildren grow and flourish. In my opening description of Learned-ish, I say this: “When I’m old and grey, there are two things I want to have achieved: to have my own library and to be considered Learned by my grandchildren.” There are more things I want when I’m that age, and I want my grandchildren to consider my other things, more than just learned, but the point remains - this is something I think about and dream about.

Family is one of, if not the most beautiful things we get to experience in this life. Those people around us to whom we are tied. Not necessarily chosen, but born to. When it goes well, which clearly it doesn’t always, existing within a multigenerational family with all its layers of relationships is a truly human experience. Each family is unique, with its quirks. And I dream of building a family that absolutely loves each other, is for each other and wants to be in each other’s lives. I imagine myself, the partriarch of a family unit, leading it with Steph, having multiple generations who I’ve been able to positively input into, who I’ve been able to love, who love this family, who I get to see grow up and find their places in the world, who make a positive impact on the world around them, and grow into their unique personalities.

I know it won’t be perfect; I know there will be challenges and bumps along the way. But there’s not much I want more in life than a moment, when I’m older, sat around in a house or at an event, surrounded by my family. A family I’ve helped make, grow and lead. A family with deep bonds and deep love for one another. Where I get to be an active and present grandfather, loving everyone around me.

Now, I’ve spoken a little about my experience, a little about my desires and longings; you might ask a question like: how does this actually impact you day to day? What’s the impact of these experiences and desires? To which I’d reply, good question!

I think one obvious thing that this really informs is the way in which Steph and Ada are such huge priorities in my life. When Steph and I got married nearly 7 years ago, it was the start of us really forming our own family unit. In many ways, it was the beginning of putting some of my previous family experiences behind me and stepping into forming my own. Then, when Ada was born, this was the next step for our family. Having a daughter has been the most incredible experience so far, and the joy she brings me is enormous. She is enough in her own right to bring this joy, but then when I watch her with Steph, with her grandparents, our friends, it’s an incredible feeling. Watching her grow up, develop and learn. Watching her grow into her personality, explore the world, and gain new skills. Nothing beats it.

Although I’m far from a perfect parent, I think I do prioritise my family. I’m a present, active and involved dad, and I am to be forever.

A second, and slightly more interesting way I think it affects my life is that it impacts my view of health and longevity. As I said, my grandfather died before I was born, my parents have both had major disabilities in their lives, and my dad is about to die at the age of 75. I desperately don’t want that to be me. Aware that there are many things you can’t control in life, I want to give myself the best chance of living as long as I can and to give myself the best chance of having as much time with this family I want to build as I can. Although I’m not a model of health perfection, I take it seriously.

Exercise is a priority for me, and something I enjoy. I work out, and I run, knowing that a balance between strength and endurance is a great foundation for long life. You need both. There are all kinds of links between balance, grip strength, core strength and long life. Then, equally, having a strong heart, respiratory system, VO2 max, and all that stuff has good long-term health effects.

When it comes to healthy eating, I feel like it’s something I’m really working on. I definitely eat healthier than the average person, especially in the Western world, but I know I can still get better at this. Especially when it comes to the quantity of food, and it’s affect on my weight. There are all kinds of links between being overweight and long-term health, but one that I learnt about in the last few years is not just the effect of being overweight generally, but how detrimental being overweight is over a long period of time. I’ve never been horrifically overweight, but I’ve also not been completely comfortable with where I’ve been in the last 7-8 years, as my metabolism has faded slightly within my 20’s. This is something I’ve been really actively working on in the last 2-3 years, fighting an uphill battle against a childhood habit (that has obviously continued into adulthood) of comfort eating and boredom snacking. I have a weight I want to be long-term, and I’m slowly working towards it, all while building a bit more muscle and learning more discipline within my eating - knowing this is a long-term game.

As I learn more, I take it seriously, and I want to do whatever I can to keep myself active, fit and healthy and to give myself the best chance of living a long, fruitful life with my family, hopefully one day becoming the grandfather I longed for and never really had.

As you read each part of the book, please do comment on each part’s video, share your thoughts, what stood out to you, and what you think of my reflections. It’s a club, and each week I want to continue the conversations and reply!

This week, we continue with Divided by Tim Marshall, exploring India’s high-tech fences, Africa’s thousands of tribes and colonial border lines.

Reflective Questions

1. What do you think of the role colonialism has played around the world in drawing up borders?

2. What do you think of gated communities?

3. Do you think it’s genuinely possible for all these people groups to get along?

Next Week’s Reading

We finished the book! Reading chapters 7- 8, plus the conclusion!

I dream of making this a platform which inspires people to keep on learning, to be curious and to never stop exploring intellectually. I dream of making it a community where people can come and learn together, push each other and grow because of it.

Your feedback will help me keep working towards this and make Learned-ish an even better space.

I created a short survey, which I’d love you to fill out openly and honestly.

You can find it here: https://forms.gle/2dqzvbTtFQmPN2VJ7

As you read each part of the book, please do comment on each part’s video, share your thoughts, what stood out to you, and what you think of my reflections. It’s a club, and each week I want to continue the conversations and reply!

This week, we continue with Divided by Tim Marshall, exploring what physical walls and borders may symbolise, looking at Israel’s walls around Palestinian territory, Israel’s internal divisions and the Middle East.

Reflective Questions:

1. What do you think of that first quote, about the present being more important than the future in politics?

2. What’s your understanding of everything going on in Israel and Palestine? Do you have an opinion?

3. Do you think Western countries intentionally benefit from the wars and tensions within the Middle East?

Next Week’s Reading

We read chapters 5 - 6, roughly 70 pages. See you next week :)

If you’d like to read this instead of listening to it, you can find a written version here.

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I’ve been running Learned-ish for just over 6 months now. I’m trying to gather feedback on how things are going and how I can keep improving what I’m doing. I’d love you to fill in my feedback form: https://forms.gle/2dqzvbTtFQmPN2VJ7

Subscribe now

I’ve been running Learned-ish for just over 6 months now. I’m trying to gather feedback on how things are going and how I can keep improving what I’m doing. I’d love you to fill in my feedback form: https://forms.gle/2dqzvbTtFQmPN2VJ7

Thanks

Imagine this: you’re working on your computer or laptop, typing away on a document. You finish what you want for the day, press save, and confidently turn it off. The next day, you come back, open up your document and carry on. As you’re working on it, something just seems different, slightly off, but nothing major, so you keep on going. But as the day goes on, the feeling of something being off grows. You think, ‘Is this really what I wrote yesterday?’ It’s your computer; no one else has access, so it has to be what you wrote. On day three, you come back, open up your document, and as you scan through to remind yourself where you are, you notice something’s missing. A few paragraphs you wrote yesterday are gone. How the heck has that happened? But it’s strange, because other parts of yesterday’s writing remain fine. Day by day, as you write, similar things keep happening. Often, they seem so small that you accept them. By the time you hand in this document, little do you know it, but it looks different to the actual words you wrote every day. But you remain blissfully unaware.

This would be slightly concerning, wouldn’t it? If our word processors, books, or records shifted what we had written, occasionally deleted things, or subtly changed things after we’d written them. Minuscule changes most of the time, but changes nonetheless, which could alter the overall message and specific details of what we had written. We’d start calling these mediums of writing broken, corrupted or untrustworthy. If we noticed it kept happening, we might even stop using them.

What if I told you that our memory is just as flawed? Memory is this thing we all rely upon, is used as evidence and is meant to record our existence and experience. What if it’s unreliable? What if it doesn’t remember things right? What if it deletes things? What if it edits things? Or finally, even scarier than all these previous questions: What if other people can edit and manipulate it?

Memory serves as a cornerstone for human existence and experience. It exists to allow us to remember and learn from the past and experiences, it allows us to function and navigate the world around us, and finally, it allows us, across our lifetime, to build a continuous sense of self, remembering who we are and how we relate to everything in the world around us. We see the devastating effects of memory loss in diseases like Dementia, where, over time, the person literally loses the ability to function, to know the world around them or even themselves, and then finally to live.

The part of your brain which plays a key role in memory is the hippocampus - this is where short-term memories (our freshest experiences) are consolidated into long-term memories. This isn’t the only part of the brain involved, though; the basal ganglia, cerebellum, neocortex, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, temporal lobe and sensory cortex are all involved in some way, shape or form. Memory is a big system, and damage to any of these parts of the brain can have a significant impact on your memory.

What we’re told as we grow up, learning about memory in its most basic form, is that it’s a storage system. Every day, our experiences are captured and recorded, filed away for later use or review. Matthew Walker, in Why We Sleep, talks about how as we sleep, particularly in NREM sleep, new information from the day is transferred into the “long-term storage sites of the brain” and then, during REM sleep, we mix it up with the rest of our life’s catalogue of memories. It’s one of the reasons sleep is so important.

Yet, when we grow up, and as we vaguely learn about memory, there’s an assumption that that’s it. We experience, we store, and we then remember and recall in the future. This, I’m afraid, just isn’t the case. Here’s a quote from Lisa Feldman’s Book, Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain:

A brain doesn’t store memories like files in a computer - it reconstructs them on demand with electricity and swirling chemicals. We call this process remembering, but it’s really assembling. - p43

This is an interesting starting point, as she clarifies something really important. The analogy that has been used for the last half-century, or longer, is that our brains are like computers, and that our memory works similarly to computer memory. I used it in the opening of this article because it’s the easiest image to use. Yet a fundamental difference is this: we don’t actually have a storage system like computers that has limited space and saves complete, unchanged files. We have a living brain, made of chemicals, that works differently. Every time we think we are remembering something, what we are actually doing is reconstructing a potential memory. And the difference between accessing a perfectly saved memory and reconstructing it? There’s a little wriggle room for outside interference and change. Did you ever play that game as kids where someone would start with a word or sentence, and they’d whisper it to the person next to them? Then the whisper would get passed on from person to person? Over time, that whisper changes, the words slowly distort and get confused, as people try to reconstruct what the original person said. Or have you tried copying a drawing, painting, or even a photo? It’s almost impossible to perfectly copy it. Imagine, like that whisper, it kept having to get copied, again and again, with a slight imperfection in it each time. Although not exact, that’s close to what memory reconstruction is like.

Sounds a little bit troubling, doesn’t it? I think that’s because it is.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone, convinced that they aren’t telling the truth, yet also sure that to them what they are saying feels like the truth? It’s that idea that we can convince ourselves of a truth, even if it wasn’t what we originally experienced. Sometimes, even when we show them evidence of their lie, it feels like their lie is so entrenched in them that they refuse to believe or accept the evidence of what we’ve seen. A lie that becomes a truth. This is one of the main possibilities that the assembling process of memory brings with it.

In another of her books, How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about how we perceive and understand the world is heavily influenced through the specific lens we wear, with things like needs, goals and experiences affecting it. This is also true of this reconstructing process, that our current needs and goals can affect that process and impact our memory. Imagine you’re in an interview for a job you really want, and you’ve pushed yourself to be there, and you’re talking, sharing about your past experience. Naturally, in this moment, you’re probably adding a bit of imagination to your storytelling, maybe a little hyperbole to what you’ve achieved and done. But what if, in that process of storytelling and hyperbole, with the memory reconstruction that is going on in that process, it no longer becomes hyperbole to you? There is every possibility that you enter that interview room with one memory of your past experience, and that you leave it with another. Memory, reconstructed and reformed, where you are ever so slightly more experienced and of higher performance than before. It’s subtle, and you’ve barely noticed it, but you now carry that confidence into that job, living in that new reality.

That’s a subtle way in which our goals and needs can impact our memory. Yet there will also be not-so-subtle ways. Imagine a murderer who can convince themselves that they didn’t do it, through sheer will of creative reimagination. Imagine a child who stole their sibling’s toy, convincing themselves, and their memory of innocence and ignorance of the toy’s location. Imagine a colleague making a mistake, but out of fear of ridicule, convincing themselves of someone else’s mistake to distract and divert. Lies, which, with the help of memory reconstruction, can become someone’s truth and the reality in which they inhabit.

Robert Sapolsky, in his book Behave, talks about another thing that impacts our memory: emotions. He states:

Emotions filter the nature and accuracy of what is remembered. - p28

Much like the lens of our needs, goals and experiences, emotions can act as a lens too. What if, whenever we reconstruct a memory, the emotions we are feeling in that moment influence how that memory is reconstructed? What if our emotions lead us to unconsciously edit our memories to fit the emotion we are feeling? In this case, I’m particularly drawn to think about childhood memories. Imagine you have an overwhelmingly positive outlook on your childhood, and you regularly reminisce about it with friends and family. Within these feelings of positive emotions, the more you recount and recall these memories, the more likely it is that, due to the effect of emotions on memory, each of these memories will become more and more rose-tinted. Your childhood, in your mind, will become over time even more cherished because you are unknowingly making it that way through the emotions you feel as you recount it. Bad moments are likely to fade or be changed to not to seem ‘that bad’, and good moments are highlighted even more. But the same can happen in reverse. Let’s say you have a bad relationship with your parents, which has lasted into adulthood. Strong emotions arise every time you’re with them or thinking about them; past memories are regularly brought to the surface. There is every chance that through the filter of these emotions, those memories are made worse. That the frustration, anger, sadness, or grief, like running paint on a page, seeps into that bank of memory, adding layers of those emotions and potentially adding details that we cannot be sure even existed.

The final and scariest flaw of memory is this: memories can be edited by others, and in some cases, it’s even possible to create memories out of nothing - implanting a complete fabrication into someone’s catalogue of experience. This is a concept I’ve read about a few times. In Bill Bryson’s The Body, he talks about an interview with Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist, who described memory like this:

It’s a little more like a Wikipedia page. You can go in there and change it, and so can other people.’” - p. 68

Similarly, professor of psychology and neuroscience, Giuliana Mazzoni (quoted in Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling), talks about how we can have memories that are detailed, vivid, and emotional, yet seem to be entirely invented, whether by others or ourselves.

Elizabeth Loftus, through an experiment called the Lost in the Mall study, proved this to be true. She was able to create a fabricated event, that of being lost in a shopping mall as a child, frightened and rescued by an elderly person. Through the use of repeated suggestion, specifically that they’d spoken to the participant’s mother and asked her for stories of their childhood, 25% of her participants claimed this memory as their own, claiming to remember all or part of this experience, unaware that it was actually fake. They’ve also done similar tests with editing memories, where they show people car crashes, and through the use of leading questions or another person’s mistaken memory, they change the details of the crash within the person’s mind. Things like the speed the car was travelling, who was involved, and details like the road signs can all be manipulated and changed within their memory.

Memory, unfortunately, is malleable; it’s editable, and when you really delve into it, it’s deeply unreliable.

There are some really interesting implications and knock-on effects of memory’s fallibility. The first of which is actually how we experience the world in the present. Every day, according to Will Storr - and others who write, research and study our experience of reality - we experience a hallucination. The things we experience, through our senses, are unique to us and formed by all these sensory inputs sending signals to our brains, which then try to make sense of it all. The interesting thing is that the way the brain makes sense of these inputs isn’t just taking them at face value and forming a reality from them; it’s instead influenced by our previous experiences, mixing these sensory inputs with our expectations. Expectations formed from memory.

In How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett describes this as the simulations our brains make. She says:

Simulations are your brain’s guesses of what’s happening in the world... Your brain uses your past experiences to construct a hypothesis - the simulation - and compares it to the cacophony arriving from your senses. - p27

So, as our brain tries to make sense of the world, using our sensory inputs, it also takes into consideration what we have previously experienced. Because of this, we form different realities from each other. Imagine you are in a conversation at work, and it’s getting slightly heated as a debate is happening. A colleague makes a firm remark, closing down the conversation, and moving the group on to another topic. Depending on your past experiences, moments like this can be understood, perceived and experienced in vastly different ways.

If you’ve grown up in a house where there are a lot of passive-aggressive remarks and comments flying around, you’re going to be more prone to experience this comment as passive-aggressive, potentially taking offence. If you’ve grown up in an environment where disagreements lead to rejection, you might experience rejection in this moment, especially without finding a resolution. If you’ve grown up in an environment where disagreement has been done well, you might be perfectly content in that moment. The same action has been taken, yet for a group of people, they could all experience vastly different realities in that moment because of this mixture of memory and sensory inputs.

This already means that the reality in which we experience is unique, messy and probably not accurate. But now we have to consider that one of the major influences on how we perceive the world around us is itself flawed, and that memories, which may not actually be real, or we are reconstructing incorrectly, then influence our current reality. Messy isn’t even the right word, is it?

It also brings up much bigger questions around the nature of truth. If we can’t trust our memories, the thing we so often use to recall events and depict ‘truth’, and our perceived realities are all so inherently subjective and flawed in nature, how then can we ever actually come to a truth?

An example that I’m sure I’ve read someone else talk about, but fail to remember who, is in the legal system. Our legal systems, all around the world, rely so heavily on people’s testimony as evidence. It’s one person’s word and their recall of an event vs another. At the best of times, and sometimes worse, it’s multiple people’s word vs another’s. This seems great with a basic understanding of memory, doesn’t it, getting people to recall what they saw, heard, or experienced. Yet, it becomes infinitely more complicated and problematic with a real understanding of how memory works.

Lies, I imagine, have always been a problem in these settings; people are always going to lie. But, as we now know, people can tell a story, live the emotions and share their truth, without the story actually being anyone else’s truth and potentially what they are recalling not actually being what happened.

This isn’t just a problem within the justice system, but in all areas of life. How are we meant to know what truth is when it comes to memory, storytelling and recalling information? Let’s say you have children playing, and they come running to you crying, claiming someone stole each other’s toy. How can we work out what’s actually happened? With subjective perceptions of the world, emotions filtering the nature of even the not-too-distant experiences we have, which child are you meant to believe? Without constant CCTV surveillance, it feels like an impossible task.

A final worrying thought about the implications of memory being flawed, in the words of Will Storr:

Our sense of who we are depends, in significant part, on our memories. And yet they’re not to be trusted. - p93

Does our flawed memory impact our ability to genuinely hold a consistent sense of who we are?

The further you go down this rabbit hole, the more problems you find. The implications of memory being flawed are large, and it should significantly impact our lives. Yet, it doesn’t seem to. We all continue to rely on memory, we all continue to trust memory, and we go on with our lives, using it as a foundation of our society and existence. Why is this? I wonder if it’s just because we have no other choice. Our current version of memory is all we have; it’s the tool we have to work with, and we’re all doing our best with it. It would be deeply impractical, and distributing, with this new knowledge, to suddenly distrust every memory we have and every memory others have. But there is probably a balance somewhere, a place to sit on this scale, with a healthy scepticism of memory, knowing that people may not be intentionally lying and that you won’t be remembering everything perfectly.

Our memories are deeply flawed, but they’re all we’ve got and all we know.

There are loads of books I’d recommend you read for this topic, but in particular I’d like to highlight Lisa Feldman Barrett’s two books I’ve read: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain & How Emotions are Made. These are two brilliant books about more than just memory, but they include great sections about memory

References

Barrett, Lisa F. 2018. How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. N.p.: Pan Macmillan.

Barrett, Lisa F. 2021. Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain. N.p.: Pan Macmillan.

Bryson, Bill. 2020. The Body: A Guide for Occupants. N.p.: Transworld Publishers Limited.

“Creating (False) Memories With Elizabeth Loftus, PhD.” n.d. Psi Chi. Accessed June 30, 2026. https://www.psichi.org/page/214EyeSum17dLoftus.

“Memory: What It Is, How It Works & Types.” n.d. Cleveland Clinic. Accessed June 26, 2026. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/memory.

Sapolsky, Robert M. 2018. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. N.p.: Vintage.

Storr, Will. 2020. The Science of Storytelling. N.p.: William Collins.

Walker, Matthew. 2018. Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams. N.p.: Penguin Books.

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I dream of making this a platform which inspires people to keep on learning, to be curious and to never stop exploring intellectually. I dream of making it a community where people can come and learn together, push each other and grow because of it.

Your feedback will help me keep working towards this and make Learned-ish an even better space.

I created a short survey, which I’d love you to fill out openly and honestly.

You can find it here: https://forms.gle/2dqzvbTtFQmPN2VJ7

As you read each part of the book, please do comment on each part’s video, share your thoughts, what stood out to you, and what you think of my reflections. It’s a club, and each week I want to continue the conversations and reply!

This week, we start Divided by Tim Marshall, exploring what physical walls and borders may symbolise, as well as learning about China’s Great Wall and Trump’s promised wall.

Reflective Questions:

1. What do you think these physical walls represent in the country you live in right now? Immigration may be a problem, but what else could it be?

2. Do you think China was wise to get ahead of the internet and bring in restrictions? Or is it too far?

3. How does it make you feel that people might feel contempt for you because you hold a different political opinion from them?

Next Week’s Reading

We read chapters 3 and 4, roughly 58 pages. It’s a slightly shorter week because of how the chapters aligned.

As you read each part of the book, please do comment on each part’s video, share your thoughts, what stood out to you, and what you think of my reflections. It’s a club, and each week I want to continue the conversations and reply!

This week, watch me talk about how sad this book makes me. But seriously, we learn more examples of neoliberalism at work and are shown how war has once again become one of the most profitable industries on earth.

Reflective Questions:

1. Have you ever heard, seen or experienced an example of successful trickle-down economics?

2. What is the main emotion you’ve been left feeling after finishing this book?

3. What’s been your biggest learning moment reading this book?

Next Week’s Reading:

Next week, we start Tim Marshall’s Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls. We’ll be starting the book and reading until the end of Chapter 2, which is roughly 76 pages. See you next week!

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When I think about the human body, I marvel at its complexity. There’s so much going on within it that when functioning well, it allows us as humans to do so many things and experience this crazy life we all get. It’s a marvel of creation, and something I imagine that most of us don’t fully understand. For example, why do you think babies have such round and cute-looking tummies? It’s not because they’re fat or they’ve eaten lots. It’s actually because, as infants, our livers are disproportionately sized, and so it makes babies’ tummies look massive, taking up loads of room in that region of the body. There’s so much complexity, nuance and wild bits of science and evolution that it’s probably natural we don’t fully understand how our bodies work, or why things are the way they are. Aware of this, Bill Bryson wrote a book called The Body: A Guide for Occupants, with the aim of educating people more about the body in which we inhabit. A few months ago, I read this book, and I want to share my top 5 things I learned from this book. I also really recommend you read this book yourself, as you will likely learn loads of other things about the human body!

1. The Impact of Gravity

Have you ever thought about gravity’s impact on people of different sizes? I know I hadn’t really considered it until Bill Bryson mentioned it. In a chapter all about equilibrium within the body, he talks about how humans can scientifically only really be the size we are. If we started growing much bigger, all our proportions would be out of whack, and particularly our bones - although they may scale in size, they wouldn’t continue to grow in strength, which would be a problem as we grow heavier and heavier. But this wasn’t the thing that caught my attention here. Bryson then throws out this random idea:

“It will not have escaped your notice that a small bug that falls off a tabletop will land unharmed and continue on its way unperturbed. That is because its small size (strictly, its surface area-to-volume ratio) means that it is scarcely affected by gravity. What is less well known is that the same thing applies, albeit on a different scale, to small humans.” - p223

The severity of a fall is impacted by 3 things: the mass of the falling object, the velocity at which it is falling, and the distance it is falling. Basically, the smaller and less something weighs, the more significant the force with which they collide with the floor, or anything else they fall against. It’s why babies who are learning to walk, or small children running around, seem so resilient to their falls - they simply just don’t get hurt as much or have as big an impact as if an adult had fallen over in that way.

This is something, if I’m honest, I haven’t often thought about. But this really stood out to me as someone who now has a baby. It particularly stood out to me in the case of head injuries. My daughter always seems to be hitting her head on things, whether she’s crawling around and not looking where she’s going, or trying to stand up while holding onto things and toppling over, now she’s even trying to walk. Often she plummets to the ground, headfirst, or close to that. I’ve always thought that if I fell over that much, I’d do myself some proper damage, but it’s kind of assumed that babies are just resilient; as Bryson points out, it’s actually physics which explains it.

The difference is so extreme that Bryson states that if a child, half my height, which is still currently taller than my daughter, falls and hits their head, they only experience 1/32 of the force that I would experience doing the same thing. That is a staggering difference in force. But it also applies to animals, maybe it’s why cats are so durable in the way they have 9 lives and always land on their feet, they just are small and take much less force on impact. There’s going to be so many examples, and I found this such an interesting bit of science.

2. The brain exists in a silent, dark box

When talking about the brain, Bryson expressed an idea that I’d heard before in another book: the funny thing about the brain is that it processes and creates a magical world in which we experience, through our senses (as well as things it makes up too), but in reality this organ which does all this exists in what Bryson describes as a “silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner”, or as Will Storr puts in The Science of Storytelling: “the silent, black vault of our skulls”. This is a paradox for Bryson, that the organ which provides us with all the information we know about the outside world has never itself experienced it.

The world we experience, the potential colours, sounds and smells, is all created by our brains. It’s fed information, pieces of a puzzle, by our eyes, our ears, our noses and all the rest of our body, but it’s the brain which pieces it all together, making the world we experience. There are billions of brain cells working hard to make our reality. But some question whether it is actually the reality the brain creates, or whether it’s a hallucination of reality. Storr argues this:

It feels as if we’re looking out of our skulls, observing reality directly and without impediment. But this is not the case. The world we experience as ‘out there’ is actually a reconstruction of reality that is built inside our heads. - p21

He goes on to argue, with the help of neuroscientist David Eagleman, that we don’t actually experience the full reality of the world around us, that although our brain is fed information through our senses, that is limited and only partial information. There are bits of reality that we just don’t experience, there are bits that we misunderstand, and even more interestingly, this organ that sits within this black vault that is our skulls, unseeing, actually makes things up. Storr describes it as our hallucination of reality, that in every moment our brain is predicting what a scene should look, feel and sound like. Based on previous experiences, based on what our senses are feeding it, and then it generates a hallucination based on these sensory inputs and these predictions. It’s why we can be in the same place, looking at the same thing, in theory experiencing the same reality - yet each of us can experience it in a different way because our unique brains are creating a unique story from within their dark prison.

It’s kind of sad when you think about it that the brain never gets to see the light of day. Like a person trapped in a room, only experiencing the outside world and people through screens, the brain, which plays the main character of our lives, is trapped, only experiencing a second-hand reality that is distorted and missing pieces.

3. C-sections vs Vaginal Births

C-sections are becoming more and more popular, to the point where soon they might become the primary means of babies being born. For anyone who is unaware, a C-section is a major operation where an incision is made across a woman’s tummy and womb, and then the baby is removed from the womb, instead of it coming out through the vagina.

There are lots of reasons C-sections happen, many are medical emergencies, such as if the baby is in the wrong position and it might be really hard or impossible to get them out normally, if the baby or the mothers lives are at risk through labour and birth, or some other medical illnesses that make labour dangerous. Nowadays, C-sections aren’t just reserved for emergencies; they can be planned - whether for medical reasons or now even personal preference. All of this means the number of C-sections is growing rapidly. As of when this book was written, 2019, one-third of births in the USA are c-sections, and it’s nearly a quarter of births in the UK. These numbers, I can only imagine, have risen since then.

Bearing this in mind, Bryson shares some really interesting data and research about C-section births. He says:

Various studies have shown that people born by C-section have substantially increased risks for Type 1 diabetes, asthma, coeliac disease and even obesity, and an eightfold greater risk of developing allergies. - p348

But why is this? Bryson states that we are only beginning to understand this phenomenon, and only really starting to understand the vaginal microbiome, but the basic premise is this: A microbiome is a collection, or community of microorganisms that exist in a particular environment. Within humans, this community exists within different parts of the body, and we are slowly learning that there are many microbes within these communities which serve amazing functions for us. The most well-known example is the microbiome in our gut, of which there are microbes which help do the essential function of breaking down food.

Although we don’t yet know as much about the vagnial microbiome, the theory based on the research so far suggests that it might be as unique and incredible as breast milk. Breast milk is a perfect evolutionary design, with each mothers being unique and serving their baby specifically with the right calories, nutrients, and even can stave off illness and things like that. It’s thought that each woman’s vaginal microbiome will be unique and will be passed on to the baby. As it passes through in those final moments of birth, a unique and powerful community of microbes, which seems to have a massive influence on long-term health, will flood the baby’s skin and start building the baby’s immune system and more. There was a suggestion that this microbiome also had a significant impact on the baby’s gut microbiome, but after more research has been done, it’s become clear that this isn’t exactly the case and that the gut microbiome will develop almost identically, whether a baby is born vaginally or not. It might just take a little longer.

Now, this doesn’t mean any baby born by C-section is doomed, at least I hope not; I was born by C-section. Remember, the research only shows an increased risk, not a guarantee. There are still many other factors at play. However, it is a really interesting fact with this trend of increasing C-sections and definitely an important factor that immediate health risks trump, but mothers should definitely consider and be aware of.

4. Teenagers and Dopamine

It’s well known, or at least I think it should be, that being a teenager is hard. It’s a time of life when you have hormones raging inside of you, pulling you all over the place, in an exhausting and often inconsistent pattern. You are more prone to taking risks, as you explore and adventure, yet you are often criticised for this evolutionary trait. And in the midst of all that, you’re meant to be working out who you are and starting to define your future adult life. Being a teenager is hard.

Something Bryson revealed to me within his book, which fascinated me, is that during adolescence and the teenage years, the body produces more dopamine than at any other time of life. He says:

At the same time, the body produces more dopamine, the neurotransmitter that conveys pleasure, than it ever will again. That is why the sensations you feel as a teenager are more intense than at any other time of life. But it also means that seeking pleasure is an occupational hazard for teenagers. - p74

Teenagers are flooded with dopamine. The highs are higher than at any other time of life, dopamine-producing activities are more addictive than they ever will be, and teenagers are driven by this to seek out dopamine-producing, pleasure-seeking activities. It’s no wonder that in 2026, teenagers are addicted to social media, video games and vapes. They are all huge dopamine stimulants. This also explains why teenagers tend to take part in risky behaviour - they are seeking out these huge dopamine highs.

This made me think, though, if they are producing more dopamine than any other time of life, although that may, in theory, mean lots of pleasure in life, I’ve learned recently that the body likes equilibrium, especially when it comes to pain and pleasure. Anna Lembke talks about this in her book, Dopamine Nation, how within our body there is a two-sided scale, always trying to balance pain and pleasure. So when we have spikes in pain, we are driven to seek out dopamine and pleasure-inducing activities. Equally so, when we experience pleasure, the body flushes out dopamine quickly, often accompanied by pain of some sort, to gain equilibrium. I wonder whether this means that, as teenagers are prone to experiencing huge doses of dopamine, and the pleasure it comes with it, they are also exposed to huge doses of the other side of the scale, painful experience, emotions, and the constant swinging between those states as the body fights for equilibrium.

I wonder whether this could be one of many reasons why teenagers are also so vulnerable to things like poor mental health, being sensitive emotionally, and generally just feeling like life sucks a lot of the time. They may be driven by the craving for these dopamine highs, to consume these dopamine-producing activities, but the body quickly equalises these feelings, bringing emotional turmoil with it.

5. Exercise is really good for you. Who’d have thought?

In many sports nowadays, there is a term that people use to describe some of the best players. It’s the term GOAT, meaning greatest of all time. In football, they might use it to describe Messi, Pele or Maradona. In basketball, people might say Michael Jordan. In Tennis, now people would probably say Djokovic. I think it would be fair to say that exercise is the GOAT activity any human can regularly do to look after their health, and I think Bill Bryson would agree. He says:

As well as strengthening bones, exercise boosts your immune system, nurtures hormones, lessens the risk of getting diabetes and a number of cancers, improves mood, and even staves off senility. As has been noted many times, there is probably not a single organ or system in the body that does not benefit from exercise. If someone invented a pill that could do for us all that a moderate amount of exercise achieves, it would instantly become the most successful drug in history. - p209

Exercise is the GOAT.

A moderate amount of exercise, say going for regular walks and getting your heart rate up a little, can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 31 per cent. Being active for around eleven minutes per day, which by the way really isn’t a lot, can add 1.8 years to your life expectancy. An hour a day can add 4.2 years.

The thing is, some people won’t care about potentially adding those few additional years to the end of their life. Instead, their focus is on the here and now, living well in the life they have now, right in front of them. The great thing is, exercise can contribute significantly towards that. When we exercise, we release endorphins, which are chemicals produced by the brain that do things like improve our mood, reduce feelings of stress and relieve pain. This is an instant way to improve your life today. It’s one of the reasons daily exercise is so good. But it’s not just the endorphins; regularly exercising builds up your stamina and therefore increases your energy levels. As Bryson writes, it increases the strength of our immune system - meaning we won’t be ill as much, a massive win for our quality of life.

Exercise, ultimately, is also fun; humans are designed to move and be active. And the great thing about exercise is that there are loads of ways in which to do it. Running may now be a really popular thing, but it doesn’t mean it has to be your thing. Team sports might be a better option, cycling, walking, dance, or swimming might suit you better, and you might enjoy them more. It’s just about working out what you find fun and engaging, what you can keep doing on a regular basis, for the sake of enjoyment and also the benefits of it. There is an almost unlimited list of ways to move your body and be active, all of which act like the pill that Bryson describes: helpful for everyone and the most successful drug in history. The GOAT activity for human health.

If you haven’t already been convinced, I would wholeheartedly recommend you read Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupants. I have literally scratched the surface, giving you five things that stood out to me in an ocean of thousands of things you could learn from this book.

References

Bryson, Bill. 2020. The Body: A Guide for Occupants. N.p.: Transworld Publishers Limited.

Lembke, Anna. 2023. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. N.p.: Headline.

Storr, Will. 2020. The Science of Storytelling. N.p.: William Collins.

If you’d like to read this, instead of listening to it, you can find a written version here.

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Divided won the vote for July’s book! Grab yourself a copy of Divided by Tim Marshall, and let’s get reading. Here are your reading targets for each week to match each week’s video. The videos will be released on Wednesday nights, following this schedule:

Week, 1st July: Introduction - Chapter 2, 76 Pages

Week 2, 8th July: Chapter 3 - Chapter 4, 58 Pages

Week 3, 15th July: Chapter 5 - Chapter 6, 66 Pages

Week 4, 22nd July: Chapter 7 - Conclusion, 87 Pages

29th July: It’s a five-week month! This means we’ll have a week off from the book club.

Happy reading and learning!

As you read each part of the book, please do comment on each part’s video, share your thoughts, what stood out to you, and what you think of my reflections. It’s a club, and each week I want to continue the conversations and reply!

This week, we look at more examples of neoliberalism in action: Russia, Asia & Iraq.

Reflective Questions

1. What’s your reaction been to all these stories of countries being shocked and exposed to free market capitalism?

2. Do you think there are any true believers?

3. Are there any recent wars/coups that remind you of this shock doctrine?

Next Week’s Reading:

Next week, we’ll be reading chapters 17 through until the end of the book. Roughly 122 pages, so 18 per day. See you next week!

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This blog-ish is going to be more of a collection of a few different thoughts, rather than a large piece. Here are a few things that have been on my mind, or I’ve been learning about. I hope you enjoy it and learn something new!

1 Year of Fatherhood

This month, we celebrate my daughter’s first birthday, and consequently, I reflect on the end of my first year in fatherhood. Fatherhood is something I’ve dreamed of since I was a teenager. There’s always been something about having a family, raising children, that has always really drawn me in. Maybe it’s evolutionary instincts, maybe it’s something else, but in June 2025, I finally got to step into this role.

I imagine most parents would say this, but so far it’s definitely been one of the best experiences of my life, yet also one of the hardest (it’s funny how this is often the case in life). When Ada was born, there was nothing which could have prepared me for the sleep deprivation and the disruption to what was our pre-child normal way of life. Yet, every morning as I wake up exhausted, it quickly fades when Ada smiles or laughs, and the day truly starts. Now, that may sound really cringe, but I honestly mean it. There must be something built into us that as soon as we see our baby, even after a bad night of sleep, the love we have for them just washes away the grumpiness - at least for a while, until they start screaming again.

But as Ada is growing, and I’ve experienced my first year of fatherhood, here are a few things I’ve learnt or am still wrestling with

1. The value of time

As well as the sleep deprivation (which is loads better at this point, at least for us), one of the other biggest shocks to the system, after Ada was born, was how your time just disappears. Now I’m not necessarily talking about how fast this year has gone, but instead I mean on a daily basis.

Pre-Ada, I absolutely took it for granted how much spare time I had. Time to do things I enjoy, to sleep, to not do a lot and just relax. Once you have a child, and I imagine it only disappears more as they get older/you have more children, so much of your day is consumed by them that very little is left for anything else. In the first few weeks, especially in my experience as a father, it wasn’t too bad. Ada slept most of the time, and when she wasn’t sleeping, she was feeding (it’s worth pointing out here that Steph’s experience was very different to mine as she was breastfeeding Ada every 3 hours, big up Steph.) But now, a year later, most days follow quite a similar structure. I wake up super early to have some time to read and exercise before Ada is awake. Then from 7 till when I go to work, it’s family Ada focused time, I get to work, I get back from work, and it’s family Ada focused time. Then at 7, once Ada is asleep, I might get a couple of hours of downtime before I fall asleep, exhausted. Before, my mornings were my own, my evenings stretched to be anywhere between 3-6 hours long, and weekends meant true downtime. Weekends now? It’s quality Ada time!

I love this new routine and lifestyle, but it’s different. It feels as if there is considerably less time in the day; I’ve had to sacrifice hobbies that are too time-consuming. I honestly have to weigh up and internally debate how I spend that precious time, each evening, as multiple different hobbies and interests are fighting for my attention. It’s a different way of living than before. It’s beautiful, but I have to acknowledge that sometimes I pine for more time, and feel not quite shame, but a slight sadness at how blissfully unaware I was, pre-Ada, of all the time I had in my day.

2. Patience

I wouldn’t call myself a particularly patient person. I can be impulsive. I like routine, sticking to times, being on time, and if things fit outside of my patterns and understanding of time, I struggle and can get frustrated. If I perceive someone to be doing something too slow, or too late, it’s hard (I’m fully aware this is a me problem, don’t worry). For the first 29 years of my life, I kind of got away with this. Then, in June 2025 Ada was born. She doesn’t care about time. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, to an extent. She doesn’t rush; she doesn’t care about time commitments, she’s a baby - a baby who has forced me to learn more patience. Or at least, get better at being patient. I still wouldn’t describe myself as a patient person.

You think you’re leaving the house at 10 past 10, that’s when you need to leave to get there on time. But suddenly Ada poos and needs her nappy changed. Pre-baby Ash would have been really thrown off by this, frustrated and inpatient. Now, I’m learning to accept this kind of thing, to have a wider tolerance for change, and accept that not everyone works to my schedule. Especially babies.

I also think with a baby you spend a lot more time sitting around not doing much, waiting for them to finish feeding or now eating, sitting them on a potty, watching them play, but making sure they don’t fall down the step in our living room. It’s a lot of sitting around, patiently waiting and being responsible. This itself is helping me to grow in this area - just generally becoming a little bit more patient.

3. Selflessness

Finally, I think having Ada is slowly transforming me into a less selfish and more selfless person. Trying to show a bit of self-awareness, I think I’d describe myself as naturally quite a selfish person. I think I have tendencies to prioritise myself in most of my decision making, how I spend my time and also even in my thought processes. Some of this might come from being an only child, but I don’t need an excuse here. What I recognise is that I really have to be intentional to break beyond that barrier of selfishness.

Ada is someone who is breaking down that barrier daily. To parent well, you can no longer be selfish; it’s just not an option. Especially early on, your world no longer rotates around you, but instead around that little bundle of flesh looking all cute and cuddly. Every decision, every bit of time, it’s all suddenly about how I can best serve this baby in front of me.

But I think this is leaking beyond just Ada. I think overall it’s slowly developing me into someone who is less selfish, more sacrificial in my decision making, and hopefully just a better person to be around and exist with.

My first year of fatherhood has been brilliant. Ada’s a dream, and it’s beautiful to learn and grow alongside her.

WORLD CUP FEVER

Every four years, something beautiful happens. Nations of the world come together to compete in the football World Cup. And every four years, I get completely sucked into World Cup Fever. It’s my favourite sporting event, and I cannot express enough how excited I am for it. Whether it’s believing that England can do something special or just enjoying watching the other nations, it captures me every time.

It started in 2002. I think this was the moment I truly fell in love with football, aged 6. I distinctly remember my primary school wheeling out TV’s in the classrooms to show some of the games in the middle of the day. It was probably the first time I had watched live football, because until that point, my parents had probably never shown it to me, since it wasn’t an interest for them.

I couldn’t tell you what games we watched (I was 6), but I remember that feeling of excitement, of everyone coming together, of the collective excitement, anticipation and celebration - at least up until the Brazil game.

Now, in the Quarter Finals, against a Brazil Squad that would go on to win the tournament, England lost. But despite the disappointment, I again fell in love. Not just with football, but with a player who would go on to symbolise the best parts of football on the pitch. Ronaldinho. For me, to this day, he is my favourite footballer. He was the definition of flair, the skills, the showboating, but also the end product to not just look good with a ball, but to win games and be one of the best players in the world. A year later, he joined Barcelona, and I remember on Saturday and Sunday nights, I would try to find channels that showed Barcelona playing, just to watch him. Sometimes it must have just been match highlights, but much like young kids now cheering on Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe or Yamal, that was me with Ronaldinho.

Now, all these years later, I still love football. It’s developed and changed; players have come and gone. But it’s still special. It’s one of the most accessible sports in the world, which any child can play almost anywhere. All you need is some kind of spherical shape, and there you go, you can start playing football. It’s beautiful. It’s the game for everyone. And the World Cup brings everyone together to watch the best of the best compete, representing their countries, despite all their differences, in a game which, at face value, is meaningless, but creates meaning and joy in abundance.

This year, I once again find myself in World Cup Fever. I’m excited by England’s chances. I’m excited by the number of nations that pose a genuine threat to one another and the competition it will build. I’m excited for the magical moments where a minnow knocks out a giant, where wonder goals are scored, and whole nations erupt in jubilation as their team advances through the tournament. Despite the time differences and many of the games being in the late and early hours for us in the UK, I will do my best to keep up and watch any games at reasonable times. It’s exciting.

Yet, whenever there is a World Cup, it often feels like there is a backdrop, or a shadow of controversy. Of the politics involved, often people are being exploited, and the dodgy characters within FIFA or governments are making shady decisions. This World Cup hasn’t escaped that. Even as the tournament begins, there are daily headlines of participants, referees & fans not being granted visas to enter the country, of people being detained and interrogated for hours, and even shootings outside the hotel the England team will be staying in. There are the outrageous ticket prices, meaning fans all around the world are being priced out of going - the opposite of what football, the people’s game, should be about. And then two of the competing nations are literally at war with each other. And these things feel just like the tip of the iceberg. Does this ruin the World Cup for me? Honestly, no. I probably love football too much. But these things have to be spoken about, remembered and hopefully - really hopefully - learnt from

Football is a beautiful game. It’s a global game that breaks down barriers and unites people. But unfortunately, despite its beauty. It doesn’t fix these problems, and they will linger as the underlying shadow of this World Cup.

The impact of powerful people’s decisions

Finally, power is something that’s been on my mind a lot recently, and I’ve been wrestling with it, trying to work out what I think about it. Specifically, its use in the context of belief systems, politics and decision making. I’ve read a few things recently about this, or actually, they have been stories of people in power making decisions that affect millions of people, whole countries at times, willing to gamble with people’s lives for the sake of trying to prove their theory correct, or at other times for the sake of personal gain. I consider myself someone who’s decent at putting myself in other people’s shoes, but when it comes to this kind of thing, I really struggle to understand it. This may be me putting myself on a moral high horse, looking down on others, but it’s blowing my mind.

For the Learned-ish book club this month, we’ve been reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Within this book, Klein shares story after story of a particular type of economic policy, free market capitalism. To be clear, Klein’s book is trying to expose and degrade the reputation of free market capitalism, giving case study after case study, from country after country, of its negative impact. I’m halfway through, and so far it’s been fascinating. Give it a read! Although I’ve been learning a lot about this, the thing that has really stood out to me is trying to understand the reasons behind people’s actions within these real-life stories. Despite growing evidence that free market capitalism stretches the divide between the rich and poor, destroys the middle class, and more often than not requires the abolition, or subtle avoidance, of democracy, there are many people who adamantly believe it to be the best economic policy for any country.

The Shock Doctrine, or at least it’s opening chapters (I’m not finished yet) describes military coups and dictatorships used to forcefully bring in this economic policy to countries around the world, detailing the use of torture, mass disappearances of resistance groups, and extreme fear to keep people in line and submit to the changes. It details politicians who have discarded democracy or used subtle, immoral loopholes, after being voted into power, to bring about new economic policies. And behind these dictators, leaders, and politicians is a vast network of very powerful and very clever economists, who are advocating for this economic policy and its implementation.

What’s fascinated me most isn’t the military leaders doing the coups. It’s not even the public-facing politicians who stand up on the stage. It’s the people behind the scenes, pulling the strings, detached from the scrutiny, detached from the actions, but willing to sacrifice groups of people, or whole countries, for the sake of testing their ideology. And that detached nature is important, that’s, I imagine, how these people do these things, they are detached from the action and the humans it impacts. They think only in theory, in numbers, in gain.

Another thing I find fascinating is the idea that there are people who are in positions of power advocating and fighting for things they don’t actually believe. A vague example would be a politician who comes out and says they care for the people of their country, when actually they don’t. Or even in more specific cases, a politician who might fight against the idea of climate change, not because they don’t believe in it, but purely because it goes against their self-interest, and so denying it suits them for whatever reason. I reckon Elon Musk is a prime example of this. He’s stirring up trouble in the UK and Europe all the time on his Twitter/X, promoting right-wing theories, leaders, and the like. I don’t actually reckon he believes in any of it; I think there is something else going on there.

I find this mindset fascinating, and I really fail to understand it. It must be exhausting, morally compromising, and in many ways. It’s actually impressive how people continue with the facade day after day. And it’s different, isn’t it? The person who fully believes in their ideology and genuinely believes it’s the best thing for people, you can kind of understand their zealous nature. They believe in this thing. But it’s the people who do the same stuff, without genuinely believing it’s the best cause or action. That’s scary.

As this scales up, with the more power and influence you have, the more it genuinely fries my mind, as I just cannot relate to it. It’s when these are people in major positions of power whose actions affect millions, and yet they are still able and willing to throw away the lives of all those people, for the sake of their own self-interest, or whatever other motives are behind it. Don’t get me wrong, there are hundreds of decisions I make every day, likely in my own self-interest, probably at the detriment of others around me - the thing is, these are micro decisions done without really realising it. It’s not often I make a decision, intentionally be deceptive, so that I can gain, and the result is that others lose something from it. Yet, that is what politicians, their advisers and business leaders do all the time.

It’s the intentionality that really gets to me, the hypocrisy, the moral compromise for the sake of personal gain. I really struggle to understand it, and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable and, at times, outraged.

It’s let me think, and be aware, that there’s always a human at the end of decisions. It’s humans affected by economic policies, not economies. It’s humans who take the brunt of changes, wars, coups, political upheavals, and business leaders’ decision-making. Whatever the scale, as I make a decision, I want to always remember that and consider the outcome. It’s never possible to please everyone, it’s never possible to help everyone, but I hope I can always try my best and never be too morally compromised.