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Andrea Woolf
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Andrea Woolf
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- [01:01]
Mia Sorrenti
to intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Why do some of history's most radical thinkers disappear from view? And what might we learn from a man who challenged the prejudices of his age through travel, science and a belief in our common humanity? On today's episode, historian and writer Andrea Woolf joins philosopher and historian Sophie Scott Brown to discuss the extraordinary life of George Forster, an overlooked, enlightened, ultimate thinker whose ideas feel strikingly relevant today. A naturalist, explorer and political radical, Forster traveled around the world with Captain Cook as a teenager before becoming one of the most original and progressive thinkers of his age. Drawing on unpublished correspondence and Forster's journeys across Europe and the Pacific, Woolf traces how his encounters with different cultures challenged the assumptions of 18th century Europe. The conversation explores his opposition to slavery, racism and empire, his belief in universal human rights, and the influence of the French Revolution on his political thought. Let's join our host Sophie Scott Brown, now with more.
- [02:09]
Sophie Scott Brown
Hello, my name is Sophie Scott Brown and this is Intelligence Squared. And I'm joined today by best selling author Andrea Wolf to discuss her new book, the the Revolutionary Life of George Forster and His Search for Humanity. Andrea, welcome. It's such a pleasure to meet you.
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Andrea Woolf
Thank you for having me.
- [02:27]
Sophie Scott Brown
I hope we're going to have a really interesting discussion. Firstly, congratulations, fantastic book. And I'm going to start off just so George Forster, he's this the epitome, the embodiment of the Enlightenment man. He's all about cosmopolitanism. He's the original citizen of the world. Really interesting and you follow him in incredible detail pretty much from his very early childhood all the way through to his very untimely death at the age of 39. And this is an incredible, rich, layered story. But I'm gonna start off with the obvious question. So George Forster's a bit of a hero that we don't know about? Not really, obviously. Hopefully your book's going to change all that. But what do you think is the value of finding these figures, these characters from history? And you mentioned that you'd already stumbled across him. When you're covering other people you've written about are much more sort of are familiar and better known, like Wilhelm Humboldt. And you uncovered him whilst telling their stories and decided, no, this guy needs to have a story of his own. So what, as a historian and biographer, what is the value of doing that? Even when technically it's a little bit of a publishing risk, isn't it? I mean, that must have been some sell to a publisher.
- [03:40]
Andrea Woolf
Well, I do write very long proposals, so I think they can be sure that this is a good story. But I think so. For me, history has never been this kind of, you know, pile of dusty old ideas which have nothing to do with us. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm interested in history because I think it opens a window into our times because we are. We are shaped by our past. And I think we in the Western world, we have very much shaped what happened in the kind of long 18th century. So, you know, from the late 17th century to the very early 19th century and in particular the Enlightenment and then later Romanticism. So I've, you know, a lot of my books have looked at this period. And I do also love a forgotten hero. It's much more fun to write about than someone everybody has read about. So I do find them more interesting because, you know, when you uncover these letters and diary entries, you kind of know that no one has. Not that many people have kind of looked at this. So I find that more interesting. And with Foster, it was really. I mean, he is a naturalist, a revolutionary, a kind of passionate believer in humankind. He led a life that is, when you just look at the basic facts of his life, it was pretty adventurous. He became a traveler at the age of 10 when he went with his very tempestuous and narcissistic father as a botanist on a wild exploration through Russia, where just before his 12th birthday, his father takes him to London, where he becomes the family's breadwinner. At 16, he attends the learned meetings of the Royal Society At 17, he joins Captain Cook's second voyage around the world. So he's only 17 when that happens. So quite a CV for a teenager. And then on his return, he becomes famous across Europe. He becomes this kind of public intellectual and then he gets pulled into the vortex of the French Revolution. He has a very short life, but it's incredibly packed, which I think, for a biographer, it's fantastic because you don't have those endlessly long years when nothing happens, and then the endlessly long years after what they've done is exciting, then nothing happens anymore. So he was a perfect subject just in terms of that. Then also, we have thousands and thousands of his letters, so the material was really rich. And he was someone who was very unusually, very open about his emotions, his vulnerability. So you get a very personal portray of him by reading his letters and his diaries. And then on top of all of that, he is someone who, at a time in the 18th century when Western society is deeply steeped in racism, he's someone who fights against white supremacy and someone who believes in the equality of the races. He was just such a fantastic character to write about.
- [07:04]
Sophie Scott Brown
I mean, that's a fantastic introduction when you come back to several of those themes. And I'll just add into there. He was also extraordinarily advanced in his views towards women and the equality between genders as well. The portrait of his marriage is extremely touching and rather beautiful, but just to sort of carry on with this idea of heroes. So you've given a brilliant introduction to him and we're sort of getting a bit of a picture now. But this is a guy who has quite an amazing. I mean, he is the original polymath. He speaks multiple languages, he translates, He's a very gifted draughtsman. He does. He's a botanist, he's a naturalist, he's a scientist. He's also a philosopher. So he's one of these really, you know, 18th century, sort of all rounders. There's nothing this guy can't turn his hand to, quite astonishingly. But the other interesting thing is it's not just so much that he's the hero we didn't know we needed and wanted, which I think, you know, I'm open to being persuaded that we do. But he challenges some of our more familiar heroes, which is quite intriguing. So, in particular, he challenges Rousseau and he challenges Kant. Could you sort of tell us a bit more about how he troubles some of these characters that we're so used to associating with that big humanistic project that you're describing George was pursuing.
- [08:30]
Andrea Woolf
So he's. So Rousseau was very famous in the 18th century for his idea of the happy, peaceful savage who live untouched by civilization in their state of nature. And as George Foster travels with Coke's resolution across the South Pacific, they stop at a lot of tropical islands and there are the indigenous people. And he very quickly realizes that, for example, in Tahiti, he sees a huge war. 159 double hulled canoes ready to go and fight. So he writes a beautiful travel account about this journey called A Voyage around the World, where he describes these indigenous people and says they are not like the peaceful happy savage. They are humans like everybody else. Because good and evil, he says, is in all societies, you know, there isn't a kind of the better societies because they're civilized, or in Rousseau's case, because they're not civilized. And he gives a much more rounded portrait of these societies. And he says that, you know, the world is not neatly divided into virtuous and immoral or virtuous and evil. Quite the opposite. It is this very complex tapestry woven from the different shades of human lives and experience. And again and again throughout his life, he criticizes Rousseau for this kind of idealization of the. The noble savage. So that's Rousseau. And then he also picks a very public fight with Immanuel Kant, who at that time is really the most celebrated philosopher across Europe. And in 1785, Kant writes a treatise about the human race. And in this treatise, Kant says there are four separate human races, all defined by the color of their skin, with of course, the Europeans being the pinnacle of creation. And so George Foster publishes a reply in a newspaper saying basically this is all completely wrong. And he says Immanuel Kant, who's been famous for never leaving the town of his birth, so he accuses him and says, how can you say these things? You have never traveled. And the people I've seen during these travels, they do not fit into these neat categories. And he says everything in nature is connected by nuances and by shades. So with that, he kind of takes the greatest philosopher in Europe and says, you are basically wrong. And Kant, unsurprisingly, is not pleased about this and replies with another article telling Foster, you don't have an idea about this because you have to start with a theory. So it ends up being this quite interesting fight about the method of how do you gain knowledge? With Kant saying you have to have a theory and then you kind of find your kind of empirical proofs for that. And Foster saying exactly the opposite. He says, well, you first have to observe. And after you have recorded your observations, then you can come up with a theory.
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Sophie Scott Brown
So the real clash between the kind of rationalist perspective and the empiricist perspective, and if we come on to that, because that's such a striking element of the book. Now, you've already mentioned that you had some incredibly rich archives to work from. And reading the book, I mean, you've done this quite, you know, quite brilliant thing where, yes, there's a lot of detail when you're discussing his arguments or his articles, but you also weave it just into the thick texture of the book, even down to details like what he bought when he went shopping and how he felt about those things. I mean, it is extraordinary, extraordinary amount of insight. And as I was reading it, it kept sort of reminding me. He kept sort of reminding me of a bit of a kind of 18th century Herodotus type character where he start, as you're saying, he starts to actually conceive his ideas about the common traits within humanity from such a close observation of difference and particularity, particularly when he's traveling. So what was it, you know, I mean, just what was it like to be confronted with that huge amount of detail? And obviously also, he's really good, as you said, at documenting his emotions, but also his intellectual processes, his thoughts as he's going. So you can really see his mind in action. You can see his theories emerging out of the sources. What, you know, what was that like? What was that cachet unlike or like to kind of dive into?
- [13:39]
Andrea Woolf
It is quite, you know, at the beginning it was quite overwhelming because there was so much. But at the same time, it was so exciting because I don't think I've ever had such a rich, such rich source materials because there's so much personal, personal stuff in there. And there, I mean, there are thousands and thousands of letters, but there are also these diary entries where he's very open with himself. I mean, down to recording that he's masturbating, for example. And because he's such amazing observer who's interested in everything. So he just kind of notes everything from what people wear, what they eat, what they do. And he's an intuitive ethnographer. So his descriptions of Polynesian culture are to this day regarded as the best description of Polynesian culture before European contact. He's. And it's very interesting if you look at other explorers who came before him. So, for example, if you look at Christopher Columbus, who had real. I mean, he had really problems to describe South America Anything but green. I mean, it's green. The landscape is green. And the indigenous people are naked. Naked, which equates not civilized. And then you read Foster, who just conjures up this completely different world and writes it in a way that reads almost novelistic. But the way he describes the indigenous people is incredible because you have. He really approaches them without prejudice. So he describes what he sees. He doesn't judge. He describes hairstyles. He describes food. He describes their clothing, their housing, their animals. And just lets the reader walk into these villages on a tropical island. And for me, that was a. I mean, that is just kind of stepping into another world. I mean, with Humboldt, for example, Alexander von Humboldt, who I've written a book about before, he was. I mean, he left a lot of materials, too, but he was much more scientific in the sense that he would not write too much about his own feelings. So there were sometimes long, long letters about kind of very detailed astronomical problems or something like that. And in Faustus case, it is always punctuated with a little story about someone, a little gossip about someone. So you really had the feeling that you get to know him as a. As a person. And in particular with his relationship with his wife, which was complicated, and we might talk about that more. But he writes to friends about his problems within his marriage. So you get. Or with his father, about his childhood. So there was just a richness of source material, which is very, very rare, especially when it's someone who's not been written about very much.
- [16:52]
Sophie Scott Brown
And he's such a connective thinker in that sense. So he doesn't discriminate between these different realms and domains of knowledge. Whether it's self knowledge or emotional knowledge. Or it's, you know, the more traditional forms of scientific observation. I mean, that's quite fascinating. That does connect him maybe with. With an element in kind of European intellectual history, which we might come back to. But just whilst we're in this area. So traveling is obviously the dominant motif of the entire book. George is a traveler. There are passages where you're saying, well, where does he get his sort of big humanitarian or notions of common humanity from? Is it because from a young age he's always considered himself something of a nomad. That he doesn't have a personally strong sense of a sort of settled, rooted national identity. And certainly lives what we would certainly call kind of in terms of his career, a kind of European life. But obviously he travels widely and just connecting this back as well. So he's developing these. It's a rich ideas of the sort of. The links, the commonalities between sort of different kinds of humans. Despite all the diversity and the difference. That sort of unity within or through diversity, which is a. It is an idea we're more familiar with now. But perhaps wasn't so apparent at the time. Or much less so. But with all this traveling he's doing, it is sort of taking place within a larger kind of colonial enterprise. And in part, this is what he's responding to. This is part of pushing back and pushing against. This is what he's responding to. Nevertheless, he is, to a degree, participating in it. And similarly, when he's in places like Paris or when he's mixing with the great intellectuals of the day. There's that sort of unavoidable element of hypocrisy. For all the great liberal thinkers at this time. That, you know, a lot of what gives them the ability to be these intellectuals is also participating in a wider sort of colonial and increasingly capitalistic type project. So how do you feel. I mean, did you get the sense that Forster was. Was sort of very conscious of this? Did it prey on his mind? And how did you sort of, as a historian, kind of grapple with these contradictions? Because nowadays, obviously, it's. You know, we can be a little forgiving in our attitudes towards this. We can say, you know, that, well, that's not acceptable. Right at the beginning, you give a short statement saying, well, you know, we need to contextualize this. You know, what was available for him to think with and think about at the time. But nevertheless, it can still be quite a kind of meaty problem to grapple with.
- [19:33]
Andrea Woolf
Yes, very much so. And you are absolutely right. I mean, being on the Resolution is very much part a colonial endeavor. I mean, Captain Cook is sent on the Resolution with the expressed goal of finding the fabled southern continent. Which scientists back then believed had to exist to counterbalance the landmass in the northern hemisphere. And that is obviously a colonial project. The idea is we'll find the southern continent. And it will be full of. It will be full of maybe gold, silver plants that we can use and exploit. So he is part of that. Although what I would say is that he is 17 when he embarks. And he did not really have any choice in this matter. So it is his father who makes him go together with him. But when they first arrive in New Zealand, for example, George Foster is still very much a child of the Enlightenment. From the kind of Western perspective who sees himself and the Europeans as superior. So the very first encounters with the Maoris, for example, when you read them, this is what we are used to reading in the 18th century. So, for example, they stop. They've just been four months along Antarctica. They stop in New Zealand, they replenish their stores. They have to repair the ships. So they set up all these workshops on shore. And he describes it and he says, look what great art and industry we are bringing to these barbarians. I mean, very, very typical European of we are superior. But then within six weeks of being in New Zealand, his attitude shifts completely. I mean, completely. And his writing becomes very, very different. He begins to communicate with the Maoris. And as you said earlier, he's this, you know, he's a real linguist. So he picks up languages and very quickly. He's deeply fascinated by their culture. He tries to understand what's going on. He always admits that he will never truly understand. But he very quickly realizes, well, these are just humans as we are. And he admires their bravery and he admires their carvings. So within a few weeks, his attitude has shifted. And throughout this three year voyage, again and again and again, he tries to approach the indigenous people without prejudice. And he returns with a deep seated belief in the equality of racism, with an unshakable belief in humankind. And there are several things he works out for himself. One is that there's good and evil in all society. So we can't idolize, we can't romanticize, but we can also not demonize. And he begins very openly to criticize the kind of British imperial project. And as they travel and as he sees the crew use their firearms wound and kill islanders, his criticism becomes more and more vocal. And he says it would have been much better for the South Seas if the Europeans had never arrived here. So by the end of the voyage, he thinks that this is, you know, it would have been much better for everybody if Europeans had never arrived there because they just basically bring death and disease. So for me, his life and, you know, I've worked a lot about the 18th century. For me, his life is the proof once again that we tend to think that racism and bigotry were inevitable in the 18th century. You know, this is just, you know, the way to see the world. And his life is really a proof that it's a choice. And it was also a choice back then. It was not an unavoidable way of seeing the world.
- [23:51]
Sophie Scott Brown
I think that's a really important point, actually. And the other really significant thing about George Forster is we watch him thinking things through and changing his mind. I mean, Normally when we do intellectual history, there's this tendency to sort of have this kind of implicit assumption that the thinker arrives with their thought ready forms and it's our job to work out how they got there. And actually what's really interesting about this is we watch someone, you know, forced to confront the values and the dominant ideas of his times and to gradually develop the confidence and the resources in order to challenge them. That said, I mean, he does still persist with a kind of his own sort of version of a much, obviously much, much milder, much more benign version of the development of humanity than Kant's. I believe he sort of equates it to the different ages. But perhaps what he's. I mean, maybe you could clarify this. I mean, maybe what he's actually describing is not necessarily racial divisions, but merely sort of phases in cultural development which is actually incredibly kind of anticipating something that will, you know, sort of kind of an approach to culture that we, we were much more familiar with much later on.
- [25:04]
Andrea Woolf
It does make for uncomfortable reading this idea. As you said, he compares the development of societies with ages. So there's the baby stage, the young, the adolescent, the adult and the old age. The old age is the most civilized. But the interesting thing about this is that he does not equate the most civilized with the best. Or in Rousseau's case it would be the less civilized, the best. So it comes without moral judgment. And what I did find fascinating is that one of the markers for him to kind of if a nation is more civilized or not is how they treat their women. So he says the worse people treat their women, the less civilized they are. So for example, the Maori, he said they treat their women as beasts of burden and as drudges. And he does not like that. While the Tahitians seem to treat their women with kind of slightly more respect. So I would say that's the only time when he really, when there's a judgment from his side. Otherwise he's just trying to observe it. It's not like if they're naked or if they're, you know, dressed elegantly. That is not for him where he's seeing a kind of different stages. And it's not a hierarchy. And I think that is quite important. So it's not a racial hierarchy ever for him. So that for him all the races and the genders are equal.
- [26:59]
Sophie Scott Brown
Hence it's trying to describe a process of cultural like develop like literally treating cultures like their bodies and how they develop varying stages of sophistication or complexity may be more accurate.
- [27:12]
Andrea Woolf
Exactly. And he looks at, you know, can they, you know, read or write or how sophisticated is their language. But it does not come with a judgment. And it does. And that, I think, is the important thing. It does not come with this idea of a racial hierarchy with, you know, with the white European at the crown of creation.
- [27:38]
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Sophie Scott Brown
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Andrea Woolf
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Andrea Woolf
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Andrea Woolf
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- [28:35]
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- [28:50]
Andrea Woolf
Nueve dolares yen el protes de los
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- [28:57]
Andrea Woolf
AGI Lisa.
- [28:58]
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- [29:05]
Sophie Scott Brown
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Andrea Woolf
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Sophie Scott Brown
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Andrea Woolf
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Sophie Scott Brown
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Andrea Woolf
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- [29:34]
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- [30:46]
Sophie Scott Brown
So like you mentioned, you know, during this point, Rousseau is such a dominant figure and obviously going to be very, albeit interpretively, but influential for the French Revolution. There's Kant as well, who's in like the, in the ascendancy, absolutely key dominant figure in philosophy. And later there's going to be sort of Hegel. And actually for me, George Foster sort of keeps alive a sort of a kind of flame or a thread in European, Western European kind of intellectual tradition that sort of stems from figures like Montaigne, for example, who have that similar kind of very ethnographic, very empirical, very kind of sort of not relativistic, but within those that sort of much more culturally sensitive approach. You're sort of a kind of cultural historian before the, before the letter, as it were. Is he conscious? I mean, because obviously you're quite clear, he doesn't have a formal schooling. And in some ways that's a great blessing for him because it allows him to be quite open minded. He's not schooled in sort of any systematic sort of discourse of knowledge or information. He can therefore decide for himself what he thinks is valuable. But was there any awareness of who he thought that he was kind of responding to or who any prior thinkers that he felt were influential for him?
- [32:14]
Andrea Woolf
I think so. I mean, first of all, I think you are absolutely spot on to say that the lack of his formal education is, although he complained about, allows him, as he himself admitted, to philosophize in an unphilosophical way. That's how he puts it. So he's not bound by the scientific establishment, he's not bound to a particular ideology. It kind of gives him the freedom to roam intellectually, I think. But he's of course influenced by what he reads and he reads a lot. And his father has a huge library. So when he was little, his father has about two and a half thousand books, which is quite a lot at that time. And his father is very much interested in Enlightenment thinkers. So he has read before he goes onto the resolution. He has read writers like Rousseau, for example. I'm pretty sure he read Montaigne because when they witness cannibalism in New Zealand, the whole crew is kind of disgusted and appalled. And again George Foster tries to kind of step back and says, I am not going to use my European morals as a framework to judge them, because how can I judge them if I don't understand their culture and their value system? He tries to understand why might they be cannibals? And then he says something where he goes and says, in any case, we Europeans might think we are too civilized to be cannibals, but don't we send thousands of soldiers into the battlefield just on the whim of a ruler? And that is something very, very similar to what Montaigne said. He wrote this very famous essay on cannibalism. So Foster is very much influenced by and kind of well read by what is going on in Europe. So as they travel, I think what happens is that what he sees falls onto kind of quite rich soil in his mind. It's a very educated mind, although in an unusual way. But he is very aware and that is unusual. He's very aware that he sees stuff through the lens of his own mind. So he writes in the Voyage around the World, he says something that much later ethnographers will say that you have to describe. You have to kind of say who you are and as you observe another culture, because your own culture will inevitably color the way you see other people. And he writes that in the introduction of his book. So I think he's very much aware of this and quite unusual for his time.
- [35:19]
Sophie Scott Brown
Practicing self reflexivity before that became a thing. That's very, very impressive. So I'm just gonna ask one final question. And this is I'd like to sort of move us, bring George Forster into our present moment. And it's a sort of a two part. So in some senses, George Forster really does embody this. What it would actually mean to think like and act like a citizen of the world, as it were. He's a true cosmopolitan in many senses. And we're at a moment in time where we're struggling to know what that means. And we're very much, it seems that politics is very much moving away from that direction. One of the ways that George Forster does, not only through his adventures, his travels, you say at one point he travels in his mind. He crosses sort of emotional borders and thresholds a lot. But he also physically travels. And undoubtedly it is this and these physical encounters, like on the beach in Tanner, in the Pacific Islands where the shooting take place. These are really formative, impactful moments. Now, of course, traveling has become almost a rite of passage for young people today. It's much more easy to do. But there is an element to which a lot of countries are now finding this an intrusion and pushing back. And we've got places like Spain and places like Cambodia and places like Thailand saying, well, we've had enough of you coming and having your formative developmental experiences here. Actually, it's a little bit abusive. And I suppose I'm going to tentatively link back and say, well, there was even a tiny bit of that with Forster on the resolution. You know, that's an element to which this was a wonderful experience for him, as he acknowledged, less so for the indigenous people. So I suppose this is a sort of kind of roundabout way of asking you, Andrew, sort of, do we still want those, you know, do we still need those citizen of the world heroes? Are they. Are they, you know, do they still have relevance? Are they more important than ever? And if so, how do we. What can we take from George Forster about how to have this openness to the world without necessarily abusing it as we go? So no pressure there. If you could just solve these huge problems for us in five minutes, that'd be lovely.
- [37:37]
Andrea Woolf
I'm not quite sure if I can do that. So I think I'm going to tackle this from two sides. One is, I think traveling has become something very, very different today. So when you look at, I don't know, the kind of long queues snaking up Mount Everest or when you see kind of like the once quiet island of Santorini in Greece kind of being completely overrun, you kind of wonder what kind of traveling is that? That is traveling, trying to be on the same spot millions of others have been, to take a photograph and to share it on your social media. I would not call that traveling. Full stop. That is not for me, traveling, that is because traveling, you know, is about, I think, exploring something also in yourself, encountering local people and not just, you know, as a kind of photogenic background to wherever you are. But, you know, I mean, I mean, I remember that we used to try to kind of learn a little bit of a language before we went to a country that doesn't seem to be, you know, now we have Google Translate, we don't have to, you know, really bother with that anymore. So I think traveling has become a very, very different thing. And I'm not quite sure how open minded we return from those kinds of travelings, from those kinds of travels. But I think that the kind of traveling that Forster did, did open his mind. And not just because he saw different worlds, but also because he was a perpetual outsider. So it's not just the travel on the Resolution, but he didn't even know what country he belonged to. By the time he was 17, he had lived in Prussia, in Russia, in England, and then kind of boarded the Resolution on it. And then he came back and he kind of zigzagged. He lived in England and France, in several German states, which is the reason why he called himself a citizen of the world, because he didn't have that belief that he belongs to a nation. And I think, in a way that is important for me, because he was always in transit. There's no kind of clot of land where he is anchored into, which also means you can't put all your pride into the place you come from. He puts his pride into being human. And when I think about our current climate, where discord is fostered, where divisions are emphasized, where we kind of retreat behind national boundaries, and we kind of forget that the glue that holds us together is our common humanity. That's what makes us human. And I think. I mean, he was a human with flaws. I mean, the way I just talked about him is maybe it sounds like if he's on a pedestal, but he loved to shop, he overspent. He was always broke. I mean, he misjudged situation. I mean, he's very much a human being with all his flaws. But I do find his life inspirational because it is a reminder of the importance of kindness, of love, and of our shared humanity. And that's something we just forget sometimes. At the end of his life, he compared humans with harp strings. And he said that because of our diversity, we are like harp strings. So humanity, they're all of different lengths. And because they're all of different lengths, they create a great variety of harmonies and melodies where they're, you know, all of one length, the richness of the music will completely disappear. So the symphony that is humankind is based on our diversity. And I think that is, for me, the kind of important message or inspiration from his life.
- [42:03]
Sophie Scott Brown
So if we want to travel like George Forster, then actually what we need to do is be open to the shock of encounter and to let that change us.
- [42:12]
Andrea Woolf
And, you know, and I also think travel, you can also travel with your mind. You know, you don't. It's not just about traveling physically, but to let your mind roam to places you have never been, which might be uncomfortable. You know, we don't have to agree with everybody we discuss. For example, you know, I find it exciting to talk to people who think differently to me. And, you know, sometimes it's uncomfortable what they say, but it is an exploration of some kind and an encounter with something alien and strange to how I think. But I can learn something from it. I don't have to agree, but I can learn something and maybe understand another person point of view. And that is traveling too sure and
- [42:59]
Sophie Scott Brown
well at this particular moment in time, which seems to be so dominated and characterized by such divisive opinions. Maybe taking an approach that starts from a curiosity or an interest may be one way we can start moving beyond the beyond the catastrophic aspects of division and towards the more creative Andrew Woolf this has been absolutely gripping. I could talk to you all day. The Traveler I think it's out now. It's out now. I thoroughly recommend it. Andrea, thank you very much.
- [43:29]
Andrea Woolf
Thank you.
- [43:31]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode is produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and if you'd like to join us at future live events, you can find our full program and buy tickets over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us. On the eve of the pivotal US Midterm elections, Anthony Scaramucci comes to live audiences across the UK to offer an insider's account of how America reached breaking point and how we might find a way back. The former White House communications director turned outspoken Trump critic and host of the Rest Is Politics US will discuss his new book, all the Wrong Moves, at seven venues across the UK with Intelligence Squared.
- [44:38]
Andrea Woolf
I wrote all the Wrong Moves because I've been on Wall street and the intersection of politics for the last four decades, and it is a template for what has gone wrong in the United States in terms of our policy decision making that has led to the systemic rise of populism and leaders like Donald Trump. But I also wanted to provide some hopeful solutions. I will be in the UK in September 2026 on tour with Intelligence Squared.
- [45:09]
Mia Sorrenti
You can buy your tickets@intelligencesquared.com that's intelligencequared.com for tickets.