THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.182 - JOHN HIGGS

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Adam talks with British writer and cultural historian John Higgs about 90s TV, the KLF, trying to be optimistic about the future, what John Lennon might be like if he were alive now and what The Beatles and James Bond tell us about the British psyche.CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE 2015 FILM 'TOMORROWLAND'Episode recorded on October 2nd, 2021 in Brighton.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Ben Tulloh for conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenSee Adam and Rosie welcome you to Adam's YouTube channelRELATED LINKSTHE FUTURE STARTS HERE by John Higgs - 2019 (WORLD OF BOOKS)WILLIAM BLAKE VS THE WORLD by John Higgs - 2021 (WATERSTONES)STRANGER THAN WE CAN IMAGINE - MAKING SENSE OF THE 20TH CENTURY (AUDIOBOOK) by Joh Higgs - 2016 (AUDIBLE)ROBIN INCE TALKS TO JOHN HIGGS ABOUT WILLIAM BLAKE - 2021 (YOUTUBE)DISCORDIANISM by Josh Ray - 2016 (SUPER WEIRD SUBSTANCE WEBSITE)ALAN MOORE TALKS WITH JOHN HIGGS ABOUT ROBERT ANTON WILSON - 2015 (YOUTUBE)Interesting interview in which Alan Moore does a good job of sounding intelligent and plausible about some mind bending topics while smoking one of the biggest joints I've ever seen.'WHO KILLED THE KLF?' (DOCUMENTARY TRAILER) - 2021 (IMDB)Didn't realise this documentary had come out when I recorded the podcast links. Looks good, and features interviews with both John Higgs and Alan Moore.REVIEW OF 'WHO KILLED THE KLF?' by Peter Bradshaw - 2022 (GUARDIAN)DAVID FOSTER WALLACE - THE PROBLEM WITH IRONY (YOUTUBE)Short video essay by Will Schoder considering American writer David Foster Wallace's wariness around the post modern use of irony, particularly in TV shows.BRIAN AND CHARLES (OFFICIAL TRAILER) - 2022 (YOUTUBE)BRIAN AND CHARLES (ORIGINAL SHORT) - 2017 (YOUTUBE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? This is Adam Buxton here, and I am currently staring at my dog friend Rosie, a black whippet poodle cross, and she is sniffing at a spot in

one of the hedgerows here on the Norfolk farm track where we are walking. Rosie, come on, let's walk up this way. Come on, how about a flypast even? What about that? No, I'm just going for a lope it's sunday it's not fly past time lope past don't know if you heard that didn't find anything in the hedgerows i guess but it's exciting for rosie because everything is just crazily bushy, exploding with life. It being late June 2022. Anyway, shut up, buckles, and tell the podcats a little bit about podcast number 182, which features a rambling conversation with English writer and cultural historian John Higgs. Here's a few Higgs facts for you.

John, currently aged 51, was born in the Warwickshire town of Rugby, grew up in North Wales and now lives with his family in Brighton on England's south coast. That's for our foreign listeners who perhaps aren't so familiar with the geography of England. John is the author of a couple of idiosyncratic novels and several non-fiction books that offer fresh and frequently strange perspectives on various pivotal events and figures in modern cultural and counter-cultural history. He's written about the psychologist and psychedelic neuronaut Timothy Leary, art and music pranksters the KLF, 18th century romantic poet, artist and visionary William Blake,

and his new book considers the British psyche through the lens of James Bond and the Beatles. My conversation with John was recorded face toto-face in the front room of his house in Brighton on a rainy afternoon in October of last year, 2021. We talked about John's book, The KLF, Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, published in 2013. One of the people that John has become fascinated by over the years and writes about in connection with some of the ideas behind the KLF is Robert Anton Wilson, who became a key figure in the world of discordianism. Now, we mentioned that word a couple of times in the conversation, and though John explains a little bit about it I thought it would be worth just giving you a bit more background in case you're not familiar with it. Discordianism is often

described as an invented religion created by a couple of Californian writers in the late 1950s. It was intended to satirize various aspects of human belief systems and encouraged people to break out of the so-called mind tunnels through which we tend to view the world. In the mid-1970s, Robert Anton Wilson and journalist Robert Shea collaborated on the sci-fi novels The Illuminatus Trilogy, which incorporated themes of discordianism and was intended to poke fun at the world of conspiracy theories. Ironically, however, it ended up convincing many people

that those theories were true and later, in the Internet age, encouraged people to disappear down rabbit holes that led to movements like QAnon being taken seriously at the very highest levels of government. For more on Robert Anton Wilson, the Illuminatus trilogy, and a non-toxic perspective on conspiracy theories in general, I've put a link to an interview John Higgs conducted in 2015

with legendary comic book writer Alan Moore. Anyway, as for my conversation with John, we focus less on conspiracies and more on the weirdness of some of the films and TV shows we grew up enjoying in the 80s and particularly in the 90s. We also talked about John's book, The Future Starts Here, Adventures in the 21st Century, which regular listeners may have heard me mention once or twice before on the podcast, particularly with reference to how that book highlights the dangers of feeling obliged to talk about the future in exclusively pessimistic terms. By the way, that part of my conversation

with John does contain some spoilers for the 2015 film Tomorrowland. I don't think it'll ruin the film for you if you haven't seen it and you are hoping to see it. But if you are concerned, skip ahead five minutes when you hear me first mention the film and you should be fine. And finally, we also talked about John's latest book, Love and Let Die, Bond, The Beatles and The British Psyche, which is due to be published in September this year, 2022. Very much looking forward to that. Back at the end with a bit more waffle, but right now with John Higgs. Here we go. Ramble Chat you've had an interesting career john ah Do you start out in children's TV? I started out, I guess, as a runner on The Big Breakfast. Did you? Yeah, back in the early 90s.

Yeah. So who was presenting at that point? Oh, it was just after the Golden Age. Chris Evans had gone, but it was still sort of... Vaughan and Denise Van Outen, was it? Yeah, it was still sort of Vaughan and Denise Van Outen was it yeah it was around then yeah but I was more just sort of in the office doing the post than uh you know anywhere interesting was it an enjoyable experience it was it was an eye-opening one it was a whole bunch of people the likes of

which I'm not really mixed with before basically public school boys on cocaine I had no awareness of what this was like or i'd not encountered any of these sort of type of people before and i couldn't really i didn't really fit in and i couldn't really get my head around it and they're all so pleased with themselves about these ideas that they were sort of coming up with and i just thought these are terrible that there's the most obvious dumb things but because they were all so know, congratulatory and everyone was so excited by it all. This is mid-90s. Yeah, mid-90s, yeah.

And the TV world in the mid-90s, especially in the UK, was a very odd place. It was very strange, yeah. It was a whole raft of independent companies that just sort of sprung up. companies had just sort of sprung up the effects of post-modernism in full swing or at least getting getting to be in full swing like and and that stuff from the u.s drifting over as well shows like seinfeld and larry sanders and the simpsons that sort of deconstructionist ethic that was starting to be assimilated by tv in the uk certainly we were in the thrall of it definitely it was it was full-on generation x you know at their peak and um there was a great energy there you know in them sort of early brit pop years and

stuff like that even if a lot of what people were doing doesn't really hold up or or stand up and i i sort of loved the way uh my daughter's generation just shake their heads at it and the the whole edgelord thing they come up this fantastic insult just to dismiss sort of the entire 90s where being edgy was you know hey he's edgy that's that was the thing to to appeal to edgelord that's right i only recently came across that term and i think i came across it because i was thinking of re-watching fight club ah yeah and showing it to one of my sons who hadn't seen it before and uh i said oh yeah have you not seen fight club oh it's worth seeing i said having not seen it since it came out yeah Yeah. And looked online and saw that there...

Actually, I looked online after I saw it because I was interested to know, like, what is the legacy of this very odd film? Yeah, yeah. And the word edgelord came up quite a bit. Yeah. Because it really is quintessential edgelord movie-making, isn't it? But at the time, we thought it was so good.

The Breakfast club is another one right yes you talk about that in the future starts here i do i do it was the perfect eye opening moment for me of you know our generation it was a classic you know it was great uh had molly ringbald in it it had ali sheedy in it and then generation Z sort of came along and they just looked at it with like horror and it it just makes no sense to their eyes the way they view the world. While I definitely agree that it is beyond cringy to watch now I had to watch it through my fingers and I certainly did think like what does this say about our generation but I do remember thinking that it that there were certain aspects of it

that were jarring at the time. Yeah, the whole Annie Sheedy could only become desirable when she sort of dressed in a very sort of pink sort of way. When she became a girly girl. At the time, everybody hated that. Everybody liked the dandruff version of her much more. But it's more the, is it bender is it judd nelson um especially scenes like when he's under the table with molly ringwald and it sort of

implied that he sort of touches her without her consent yeah no there's a lot of casual sexual harassment going on yeah and he's such a bully that his his tragic backstory you know doesn't compensate i i really felt though that he was a bully because he'd been dealt a bad hand and life at home was so shit for him. But in comparison to the nerd character whose name escapes me now, Brian, I think he was called Brian, who towards the end is revealed attempted suicide the previous week. Yes, because his parents parents expectations were so high yeah yeah and he seems to a modern audience to be what the heart of the the story you know should be yeah that feeling like we're okay the kids are all right we're gonna stand up to the terrible grown-ups because when you grow old your heart dies. Yes, that was very much the lesson that our generation received.

And I sort of fully sort of took it on board. Yeah. And what are those forces that make your heart die as you grow older? They are things like, well, they're compromises, aren't they? Financial pressures. Giving up on dreams, expecting less, and all those things you're sort of seen as the norm they don't have to be no definitely don't have to be at all who are the people that you admire who buck that trend that are alive today uh who but oh gosh i don't know i mean david lynch flashes

into my mind immediately yes it's generally sort of fine artists or artists of one kind or another i suppose isn't it because they're yeah i guess so people who um you wouldn't think there's an obvious place for them in the world but they just do their stuff regardless and a place sort of builds around them there's a concept in um ecology of niche creation and the idea is it's not the case that a species will sort of come along and go oh i could do well here there's lots of food and things like that i'll just take that a species sort of comes along and just does his thing and by acting in the world he sort of creates the very environment that he needs to survive and it was when i made the decision to attempt to become a full-time writer, knowing full well the absurdity of it, given all of the business models of writing and all that sort of stuff.

There was a sort of an act of faith that if I just did it, people who read my books would start to appear. And slowly over time, I'd sort of build people who would go, oh, that guy's interesting. I'll read his next book. And just enough to support me. You sort of create the niche that you sort of build people who would go, oh, that guy's interesting. I'll read his next book. And just enough to support me. You sort of create the niche that you sort of need. It's not like the world was going, there's a real need for books by John Higgs. Where are they? You know, anything like that.

But if you do them, then the world sort of reacts around you. Field of dreams, isn't it? It's a field of dreams. I mean, it's a type of book. If you build it, they will come. Yeah. I mean, it's always on an edge of never quite working out properly. But, you know, it's, yeah, it was when I turned 40,

that was when I made the decision to sort of, I'm going to give it a go because I just had all these books building up in my head. And you should never waste your midlife crisis. You can do great things with a midlife crisis. If you just waste it on like a car, you know, it's just lack of imagination. Mine was the decision to, no, I will write books and attempt to sort of make a living there.

And the option seemed to be if I went for it, I'd be penniless. And if I didn't go for it, I'd be bitter. I'd be bitter going forward. Your heart would die. Yeah. And like penniless certainly beats bitter. So I made the decision. And that was 10 years ago.

And I'm still going. So, you know, touch wood. And so when you did start writing, I think your first book came out around 2007? Yes, 2006. I Have America Surrounded, The Life of Timothy Leary. Yeah. Thereafter, you wrote about the KLF, Making Sense of the 20th Century, Future Starts Here. These are some of the books you've written.

You've recently written about William Blake. Is there something that you feel your books have in common? Is there an animating interest that started the whole process? I think they all fit together. I think they all make total sense together. But I'm quite prepared for no one else. I feel as if there is, but I'm interested to know what you think that is. Yeah, I think so.

I always try to offer some new perspectives. I don't try and sort of say, hey, this is how things are, and this is how I see things. And to me, there seems to be a lot of almost like open goals of just like all these amazing books and stories that no one else seems to bother writing. I still can't get over the fact that no one had written about the KLF for 17 years

because it is the single most fascinating British music story of my lifetime, certainly. And it was just sort of sitting there. And I'd say to some music writers, and I'd say, oh, I'm writing a book about the KLF. And there was a pause and they just went, why? They just couldn't get their heads around why someone would do that and that happens a lot of my books I had it with

the Timothy Leary with things like Watling Street people but why are you writing that until you've written it and then people get it and it's sort of like oh why didn't I think of you know doing that to the extent that when I say oh this is my next book and if people go oh great i think oh that's not good something wrong that i had that with the william blake everyone was like oh great you're writing about william blake and i thought that's boring no a lot of the figures that you're interested in have that well that they're counter-cultural a lot of the time and they are people who can be viewed from all sorts of different perspectives and mean a lot of different things to different people yeah i suppose maybe one of the reasons people were

bemused by your decision to write a book about the klf was that in musical terms yeah if you just look at the music yeah it's fine some of it's great yeah but it's not a substantial body of work really when you compare it to a lot of other artists yeah what is fascinating is the story and the motivations of bill drummond and jimmy cortey and what they were up to how much did you know about that when the music was coming out i wasn't i didn't really pay much attention than when the music was coming out my thing was sort of more metal and paying attention to that sort of world at the time but then they burnt the million pounds right and i still remember

it was there was a big article about it in the observer just describing how they'd gone up to the island of jura with their million pounds and gone to this tiny boathouse just after midnight on the 23rd of august and you know set fire to this money and couldn't really say why they'd sort of done it and it's sort of just sort of stuck in my craw you know it's it's like if you understand something it's very easy just to sort of move on you know forget about it and look at the next thing but when something doesn't make sense it's a real hint you're missing something and so your response to that was not to write them off as just nutters as many people did well i certainly look at the notion that they're just nutters yeah

or just attention-seeking assholes was i think the it was a bit in the book of discussing whether they're just attention-seeking assholes yeah don't dismiss that sort of side of it at all but certainly not the whole there's a lot of attention-seeking arseholes out there. Yeah. And they don't really behave like that. They're behaving very sort of differently, I think. Yeah. Because I watched a lot of interviews with them at the time,

and there's one on an Irish chat show. Oh, yeah, the Gay Burn show. Gay Burn, right, with Bill Drummond talking about it. And it's one of the few interviews where he is at least up for directly answering questions about why they burnt the million quid. Yeah, but their audience is so angry. Yeah. They're just furious.

But also Bill Drummond doesn't, he doesn't have completely solid answers for it himself. No, not at all. He's just kind of, well, it seemed like an interesting thing. Yeah, and I mean, when i started writing the book my assumption was oh i'll go and speak to them yeah but the more i got into it and the more you know interviews with them that i read the clearer it became that that led nowhere you know they sort of couldn't tell you it needed a entirely different sort of approach and because they had sort of done

a tour and gone everywhere and asked for a response to what they were doing i thought that sort of approach. And because they had sort of done a tour and gone everywhere and asked for a response to what they were doing, I thought that sort of gave me permission just to write that book as it was and sort of put it out, and there's my response. Admittedly, it took me 17 years, but I feel justified doing that. There's not many stories about living people you do without, you know, trying to speak to them or anything like that, but that one seemed reasonable, I think.

Did you come to any conclusions? Did you feel differently about it after you'd written it? Yeah, I mean, perhaps six or seven years ago, I sort of made the decision to stop doing talks about the KLF because it was kind of like that book was taken off more than I expected. And the framing that it had was sort of being accepted more and more. And there was a sense that my voice was having undue weight because you just

want everyone else to chip in and give their takes on it. Cause it's a mystery to explore rather than, you know, a maths puzzle to solve. It's one for the ages though, isn't it? I mean, that's one of the, though isn't it i mean that's one of the i was talking about it to james acaster the comedian oh yeah excellent because a friend of his

he'd got into a row about actually they'd both been ranting about what a load of shit a lot of modern art was yeah and klf burning a million quid was one of in fact i think james mentioned it to his friend oh yeah What do you think about that? And the guy just was spluttering with rage, which I totally get as a first response. Yeah. But I did think it was odd because it just seems like it's obvious that there's so much more to it.

It's an act that means so much on so many different levels and makes you think about so many different things. I thought it was odd to kind of just reject it out of hand as being evidence of how worthless art is. You can totally get a good book out of it. But going back to that argument with James Acaster about whether modern art is rubbish. Yeah. Recommended practice in the sort of discordant world. Something Ken Campbell was very big on and Robert Anton Wilson. These are all figures that...

I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, so for people who don't know about discordianism... It was a 70s sort of prankster-ish. It was also like a spoof religion that was also entirely serious. It was a way of being playful with doubt. Yeah. That is really healthy, I think,

even though the absurdity of it, it you know can be a bit much for a lot of people i kind of like all this sort of absurdity of it yeah and well a good to give a sort of a good example the one of the things they'd recommend is just um adopting a different belief every now and again not say it's true but you just sort of try it on and suppose and act as if it's true. And because I've got to write a thing in the new year about the mutoid waste company, I'm sort of trying to get my head around that in the art world and where they sort of fit. I thought I'll just try on the idea that all modern art since about 1950 is just worthless. Right.

It's just awful. And it turned out to be one of those belief systems that is very seductive. Once you put your head in it, it makes so much sense. And you almost loathe to sort of get out of it because it's also intellectual and what Blake would call urizen. It's all in that rational sort of thing. But it doesn't go any deeper. It doesn't, you know, affect you on a more profound level than previous art and stuff like that. And it started to make me,

things like, I start to really admire video games just because of how visceral they were and just quite what an effect they had on you compared to sort of, you you know the chin stroking you know are you a gamer now i try to i don't have a lot of time for them uh and i do tend to be the more you know single players uh i'm going through the uncharted at the moment and like two raiders and things like that right and um they're a bit murdery for me yeah i'm not that desperate to murder people because i was talking about video games with vic reeves on my podcast oh excellent we both admitted to having an unreasonable prejudice

that they were a total waste of time you know like you play them and you feel guilty like i just wasted my time i should have been reading a book or doing something else that would have been more edifying or educational somehow and of course there are so many good things about video games and as you say there is the possibility that you can have some something fairly unironic and direct yes that visceral thing i was talking earlier uh and sure you can dismiss that as as unnecessary or irrelevant or it depends what game you're playing you're not being improved by it put it that way but it is definitely a thing and it is missing in a lot of art galleries or things like that that sort of uh a piece of work

having quite a profound effect on you yes i went to art school and i so I was at art school in the very early nineties and it was full on postmodern a lot of the time and lots of sliding signifiers and talking about Derrida and yes. And it did drive me nuts partly because I didn't understand a lot of it. Yeah. And partly because it just seems so obviously a get out for stuff that wasn't very good. A lot of the time you just talk about the theory behind it. Yeah.

People would roll their eyes if you couldn't do the jargon. You know, it's like, oh, well, you don't understand anyway. So, yeah. So I was I was conflicted because on the one hand, I felt excluded by these people who knew all the postmodern jargon. Yeah. But then on the other hand i liked the simpsons i liked the idea of taking things apart and i liked the idea that there was no high art or low art it was everything was just flattened out everything was relative you know

you don't realize at that point where it's going to lead you yes you don't realize that it's sort of a dead end if everything is just as important as everything else yeah i mean that's i mean i guess that's a bit of a straw man description of post-modernism sure um yeah the notion that because there are a lot of different perspectives and you have to try and reconcile them you know doesn't mean that they're all sort of so all equally worth worthless or or equally worthy but i suppose the idea of irony though was something that i latched on to and i felt that was really coming through strongly in the 90s and definitely that was that was the generation x thing that was the sort of the reaction to what had come before yeah because everything before was like oh that's cheesy anything

straightforward or sentimental or or direct or anything that might be self-consciously trying to improve things or teach you yeah teach you some kind of lesson or other it was like no no come on we're too cool for that we're not going to do that yeah i tend to think of it as a a lovecraftian view of the world that world that you got in the 20th century. And it's in things like, say, Adam Curtis documentaries. Yes. Adam Curtis is great. He talks about a lot of interesting stuff.

I'm all for his stuff. of the world where the individual is this small sort of separate thing and the cosmos is incomprehensible and malevolent and scary and it's going to get you and that's sort of this sort of automatic understanding of how things are there's a sort of paranoia there it's quite a dark way of understanding things and from what i can tell it's sort of gone for the generation that's raised online you can see it makes sense when people raise sort of passively in front of the tv you're sat there you're passive all this thing's going on in front of you there's nothing you can do you can't you're at the mercy of the mercy of a huge sort of yeah you know forces that just don't have your best interests at heart.

And that's that sort of level of understanding. And strange coincidences and strange alignments. Whereas if you see yourself as part of the all, which those raised online do seem to, that goes out the window. There's no separation between sort of you and everything. It means that you have a lot more responsibilities, your actions, you have to, you know, pay attention to sort of what they do, repercussions, and the whole sort of increase in things like anxiety and mental health problems seems highly connected with trying to sort of handle all this sort of extra responsibility of being a responsible part of the whole. There's been a massive fundamental shift, it seems to me, between the millennials and those born and raised in this sort of century. That's always the way though, isn't it? There's always a sense of it, but on occasions there's a real shift. I mean, from the baby boomers to the Generation X to the millennials,

there was just a gradual sort of shift. There was nothing fundamentally different about the way they understood the world. They reacted differently, had different priorities and things like that, but it all sort of fitted together. And I think it's taken people a bit of time to get their head around that there has been a similar sized shift now that we have the digital natives sort of right sort of around and a lot of um the culture war that you get in right-wing newspapers um there's it's that real sort of sense that something has changed and they don't understand why and they don't

understand what it is and they can write you know lengthy op-eds about why it's bad and terrible but because they don't really see the world in those terms and you can see that rising sort of level of panic almost even though you know the right they've got you know they've got their candidate in number 10 they've got a 80 seat majority they've got the hardest and most sort of ideological of brexit's they've got everything they sort of possibly want but there's this fear that really it's the end of them that what we're seeing now is sort of the last lash of the dragon's tail that there's that sort of hyper individual sort of way of looking at the world it's a very different sense of a generation that's more involved it's like the millennials didn't really vote compared to older people but like the ones coming through now they really can't wait to vote you

know they're yes they're sort of really sort of a going to be turning up in droves and i think it's going to be a bit of a shock to a lot of sure people one of the things you write about in the future starts here was even a friend of yours who decided that he was not going to look at the news yes that's right yes uh i found that really interesting yeah because it throws up so much interesting stuff about to what extent it's productive to be engaged with things that are happening in areas that you might not necessarily be able to control. And yet, you know, the default feeling for most people, I think now is that especially on social media, is that you should be involved with these things. You should know about these things. You have a responsibility to be aware of what's happening in the world.

And if you can add your voice to the voices that want to change those things for the better. It's whether consuming the news is the best way to achieve right that it's um because i mean i know as a writer that really what you're supposed to do if you want to be sort of taken seriously is to take the view that things are terrible and we're all doomed and if you take that view you're sort of given a certain credibility or gravitas you're sort of taken seriously uh because that's what people on the news sort of say you know the the uh if you use all your imagination and wit to come up with a brand new perspective on why things are terrible to make so people know that things are sort of doomed people treat you well i'm trying to think what was that book i hate the internet by

jared kobeck or something like that. I think it's great. It's a really good book. It's very funny and it's very wise. But he basically, almost forensically, lists everything that's like bad about the internet. And, you know, you can't argue with him because he's right about all these things. It's everything sort of bad.

But the moment you think, well, there you go then, the internet's bad, right? You've gone wrong because there is also everything that's good about the internet. You know, there's people meeting the love of their lives on the internet there's people's lives being changed and people learning and there's all there's a whole side of everything that's sort of good about it so what happened to your mate who um shut himself off from the news then i think he had a much better much better time of it and he you know um because it wasn't as simple as like he because obviously

certain things are unavoidable you're gonna yeah i mean he would say that um anything he needed to know it would come from talking to people it's like if you sort of look at say last week's newspapers you're sort of aware of like wow i really don't need to know 95 of this 95 of this is just a waste of my time and And if I spent all that time worrying and fretting about, you know, that really isn't the sort of best use of my time. Whereas to understand, you know, reading a book on a subject will teach you far more about it than the froth of what's happening in the news. And I think a lot about something Barack um barack obama said i think was it 2016 it was something like that he said if you could choose any point in history to be born but it had to be

random you know you couldn't choose who your parents were you wouldn't know if you'd be male or female or what color skin you'd have or whether you'd be gay or straight or rich or poor or anything like that it's entirely random if you could choose any points in time to be born, you would choose now. And, you know, if you look at all the statistics of access to health care, access to education, childhood poverty, all these sort of things, he's right. He's dead right. You know, you totally would choose now. But it sounds so weird.

It sounds so strange that the notion that now is the best point in history to be born when our immediate thing is like no this is the worst this is the worst it's ever been you know this is and tomorrow will be even worse but now is the worst you know i guess people are skeptical when you put things in positive terms because they worry that it will discourage people from trying to put right the things that are wrong yeah well yes um make them complacent there's a big difference between blind optimism and pragmatic optimism uh you know blind optimism ain't gonna work out that's not you know just the automatic assumption everything's gonna be fine just that's not a good move but sort of making decision to view things from a more optimistic than a pessimistic way just statistically just the maths of it is going to have a positive effect because you will come up with all sorts of

possible solutions to problems which you know most of which will be awful and most of which will be nonsense compared to if you just assume that we're all doomed there's nothing you can do you know one of the obvious problems with having that kind of we're all fucked attitude is that it poisons the future or it puts it at a disadvantage the idea that you might be able to imagine a better future yeah is a big important part of making that future happen absolutely if you can't imagine a better future and sort of how are you going to sort of build it yeah um yeah and you can see that shift in sci-fi which i suppose originally i guess after the Second World War,

they were very consciously trying to be positive with their sci-fi. It was exciting. Yeah. The future would be exciting. Imagine being in the future. We will have solved all the problems. There'll be flying cars everywhere. It's going to look like a really big shopping mall. Well, that came true.

But, you know, and there were films like 2001 and then shows like star trek and star trek the next generation which i really loved and then it seemed that after star trek the next generation which was all warm like everything about it was warm all the colors on the enterprise it was all sort of warm orange red yellow hues and things on the uniforms and everything. And it was all very much like, we're going to sort this out. Good kind of diverse crew. And a lot of the problems had been sorted.

And then you get Deep Space Nine, which was much darker. They're dealing with terrorism and racism much more directly and things like that. It's the thing that sums up for me is the no smoking sign on the bridge of the Enterprise. There's a no smoking sign. And there's a huge row about it. I think Gene Roddenberry was being edged out because they spent so much on the first film. Is there a no smoking sign? I think they got it. The director had put it there.

Yeah. And Gene Roddenberry would be like, oh, you don't understand. People are getting better. People are improving. In the future, people are better than they are now. People on spaceships wouldn't be smoking. You don't need to put a no smoking sign on the Enterprise. And of course, we know now that, you know,

since the early 80s, smoking has just collapsed completely. And, you know, you'd really be surprised to find an ashtray on a spaceship these days people would not be so gene run and was exactly right but it was that sort of tussle for yeah it was that shift that you're talking about became a point where there was just no positive visions of the future in our culture anywhere and the last one i could find when i went looking for one was like bill and ted because like the future had great water slides that was the best that they could come up with that was the best that they could do well there was a odd film that you referenced towards the

beginning of the future starts here which is called tomorrowland directed by brad bird who did uh the incredibles and uh ratatouille and it starred george clooney and it was a flop basically it was quite an expensive want it at all no it's not a great film but there's a lot of great things in it it's an interesting film yeah yeah it's definitely confused but he's definitely trying to wrestle with exactly this. Like if we can't imagine a positive future, then we're in trouble. And the whole plot, as confused as it is, is an expression of that idea. It climaxes with the villain played by Hugh Laurie, who has, spoiler, basically invented a sort of machine, I which is it's able to see into the future i'm getting this wrong podcasts but it's something like this somehow they've been able to see into the future they see a big calamity for the human race so they start trying to warn everyone that

time is running out and the earth is gonna perish in order to shake them up yeah and to give them a scare but it has has the opposite effect right yeah and he says at one point uh the process the probability of widespread annihilation kept going up the only way to stop it was to show it to scare people straight because what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.

But they gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair. They didn't fear their demise. They repackaged it to be enjoyed as video games, TV shows, books and movies. The entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it

with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your earth was crumbling all around you, but it is, it's, I recommend it to people who haven't seen it. It's a weird film. And that speech that I just quoted a little bit from,

I found this blog post from someone who was saying, oh, when Hugh Laurie, this was a negative response to it he said oh i really i facepalmed when i saw that when hugh laurie gives that speech in tomorrowland he's speaking to a global audience of powerless wage slaves who are living in fear and struggling just to survive i.e this is the this is the reality of um the audience most people can't afford their own home or education,

much less build a utopian city. Telling the average person that it's their fault the world is burning is blaming the victim. So there's also that response to those efforts to be positive, I suppose. I mean, I don't see those two viewpoints as contradictory in any way. I think they fit together quite well. Yeah, I mean, I don't see those two viewpoints as contradictory in any way. Yeah. I think they fit together quite well. Yeah, definitely. I'm checking my account at the memory bank.

The memory bank, the memory bank. We're thanking you for banking on your memories. I'd like to take out a happy memory thanks. The memory bank, the memory bank. Oh, sorry, but you're very overdrawn. I will repay with interest when i get back up on my happy feet the memory bank the memory bank i'm very sorry but we're closing your account my what where am i the memory bank the memory bank where the nice bank would you

like to bank with us there's always so many little details and references, perhaps because we're a similar age, in your books that are really resonant. And one of the things that you mention, maybe even in the future starts here again, you talk about Johnny Rotten's eyes. Is that in there? Oh, God, when did I mention Johnny Rotten's eyes?

Look at a picture of Johnny Rotten in 1976. Look into his eyes, and you'll see something extraordinary is going on. I think that was an argument against pure materialism or something that sort of, it was something like that. I can't remember when I. I don't remember what I didn't write down in what context it came in. But just that line made me think, yeah. Yeah. There is something really extraordinary in there, isn't there?

And also. It's the sort of thing that you can't measure and so from a lot of perspectives it's not real some people say well you can't measure it's sort of not real and um it really is real isn't it that thing in johnny rotten's eyes you know you can't you can't cut things like that out of your sort of worldview obviously with him it's weird because he's turned into such a different character now in so many ways it's quite funny the way that for our generation punk was untouchable it was uh in credibility and cool it was it was there's no argument it was punk you know uh and again for the the generation that's growing up complaining about edgelords it's just

sort of some real sort of brexit-y sort of you know johnny rott and julie birchill yeah it's old old fart culture old fart culture and it's embarrassing to them you know and that sort of so edgy and so rebellious and things like that but again i'm sure that's that's bound to be the way though isn't it that's just the natural order yeah it is everything edgy ends up looking a bit daft. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It's just interesting to see it happen so quickly. Yeah. But as you say, when you look back at those pictures in 1976

and you're able to transport yourself back in some way to the moment when he was like that, when he was staring out in that way, and you just thought, whoa. Yeah, definitely. when he was staring out in that way and you just thought whoa yeah definitely i was trying to think about some of the best things about modern life like we've talked about some of them we've talked about the ways that maybe attitudes are shifting for younger generations but what about on like a superficial level can you think of some of the things that some of the moments where you think oh this is good modern life's working i think about it every time i use the maps on my phone yes that's right this is good all right this phone is there's lots of bad things

about it but this is good i think it's been quite a buzz to ride the rise of the internet and to see it build slowly and slowly i remember the first time i got maps up on my phone i was on a bus i was in a bus going across london i was trying to work out where to get off and this thing and i was looking at this map and then suddenly this blue dot appeared on this road and this was this blue dot i realized it was me that i was being tracked on on the map and suddenly that was like mind blowing. That was the first time that happened. Yeah. That was just amazing.

Rather than staring at the A to Z, I used to cycle around London the whole time with my A to Z. And if I ever left my A to Z behind, it would be like, now what am I going to do? I'm just not going to be able to go where I want to go. You have to ask someone. Yeah. Or phone up and write down the directions.

Yeah. It's just those moments when you're just sort of you know you've got all of recorded music there and also you can give it to your children you get a family spotify thing and you go here you are both my children here is all of recorded music and you remember what it was like to be shifting through the the bins and you know back of chester market and as a teenager trying to find the thing? Yeah. Although I'm conflicted about that one because I do think I like the hunt. Yeah, I suppose so.

And the feeling of achievement when you track something down. In the old days, John, you'd hear something on the radio or on a TV ad or something. You're like, what was that but if you could go back to that if say someone said I could take away Spotify so you can't have Spotify how would you react to that fine you'd be all right I really think I would be all right with it because I genuinely believe that the connection that I had with the music that I was discovering yeah I mean it's so hard this isn't it because I was a different that I was discovering. Yeah. I mean, it's so hard, this, isn't it? Because I was a different person. I was young.

Sure. Everything was different. But I do remember so vividly the feeling of elation when I would track these things down, when I would go to Paris, and I would find that they had these Brian Eno albums that you couldn't get in the UK. And it would be like whoa yeah so exciting and

then you'd listen to it and i found a copy of my life in the bush of ghosts in in new york and tower records that had this track called quran that was later deleted from further pressings because it was offensive to the muslim community because it had part of the Quran. And it was like, wow, this is exciting. Yeah. And that. Yeah, you sell it well. You make a good point. However, you know, as you say,

wonderful to be able to just include the children on my Spotify account, and off they go on their journeys of discovery. And you've watched their journeys of discovery. I mean, if anything, like my kids, their musical knowledge is encyclopedic now. It's just extraordinary. They've just sucked up 50 years of music and worked out what was good and what was of value. And, you know, it's fascinating to see them.

Yes. And they're making leaps and connections that I was never able to make. That's one of the really fun things i think about streaming online music are there things that you return to to prevent you from becoming cynical or becoming dragged down by the negative aspects of modern life well i mean i'm not against being dragged down by the negative aspects of modern life i was at a talk recently and a guy came up to me and again he was talking about the the future starts here book and and just how important it was to him and i not really thinking just said um oh you know i'd hope to one day write a really

sort of um book that's full of like proper welsh despair and his his face just sort of fell when i said that oh what have i said but my thinking being that you know if we get that balance of light and dark back in the culture then i can explore all of it you know it just seems irresponsible just to sort of keep stoke in the dark because when you write something and you put it out there it does have an effect and to some extent it's you can't predict what it will be but you are in some way responsible for it and if you write the thing that successfully tips someone into a pit of despair then that's kind of on you so yeah the proper welsh despair book is some distance away yet i mean i'm writing the book at the moment about the Beatles and James Bond.

Wow. Yeah, it's been quite a ride. I don't know if you've seen the latest James Bond film. No, have you? Yeah. How was it? Going in without spoilers is one of the, will be one of the key cinema experiences in your life. Yeah.

So go see it soon. But basically they're twins essentially they're both born on the same day they're born on the 5th of october 1962 it's like a friday afternoon bond and the beatles yeah the first bond film dr no and the first beatles record came out on the same day and beatles are basically love and bond is basically death and you know freudian thoughts you know eros and thanatos these are the two competing drives uh and neither story makes any sense compared to normal entertainment rules you know you don't create a film character that's still going strong 60 years later many have tried

it doesn't happen it's just impossible and no four musicians can do what the beatles did in eight years it's just they're just insane stories. But when you put them together, they're kind of these two different aspects of the British psych playing out on a global stage. They sort of highlight so many different and weird and interesting, well, things like class come up an awful lot in this sort of thing. The thing that sort of

set me off on it was a thing hanif koreshi wrote about how at school he'd been told that the beatles didn't write their own music because they couldn't because they were just like some scallies from liverpool they hadn't gone to the right schools there was no way they could sort of do it it had to be george martin and and Brian Epstein. He was taught this at school. And I could sort of now get how, for that generation who had that sort of background, did believe that because they'd gone to these schools, they were superior. It just created such cognitive dissidence in the British establishment by being, you know know just so much better

and so much more talented so much more original and so much uh compared to what anyone else could do yeah the country had to sort of revise how it understood you know how people were and how it thought so just telling these two stories together over this sort of period just keeps throwing up all these fascinating insights into Britain. Also male identity, what it means to be a man. Because like something like James Bond is supposed to be everything that's good about being male. But he's also everything that's terrible about being male. Yeah, yeah. All of Fleming's toxic sort of stuff is sort of there.

But they're sort of put together and sort of brought into the light in a way that strangely if you watch how it changes sort of over time specifically the past 15 years or so it is telling you a lot about how we are changing and how we are getting better yeah it's it's just to start my god have read any? I've never read an actual gold thing. It's the worst. Holy cow. Just in terms of like racism and the belief that Ian Fleming seems to believe that lesbians and lesbians because they were assaulted as young girls, but they need a real man and they will cure them. He's writing this and the racism towardsorean in that book is just astonishing anyway it's an example of how much we've changed and how much we are getting better even though we you know

don't always see it we don't always recognize it we don't always appreciate it yeah as is going from you know ian fleming's books to no time to die is a good example what do you think john lennon would be like if he were alive today oh it's a very good question he was he was he really was that sort of wounded healer sort of archetype he's a very strange specific thing and there's a well you might know about this um boarding school syndrome i don't don't you make of boarding school syndrome as a concept out of interest uh i think you can over egg it yeah but i think there's there's got to be a lot that rings true about it how could it not be you put a child through a traumatic experience if they love their parents very much and they love being at

home as a lot of children do not all and then to suddenly be wrenched out of that and have that relationship completely erased absolutely because ian Fleming had that and became just very, very damaged and emotionally stunted individual. But John Lennon, when he was taken from his mother and given to his aunt, also seems to have had a very similar thing and had a similar sort of emotional sort of damage into his life. Because it wasn't that his mother lacked love. If you read Julia Baird's book john lennon's sister you know she made some really lovely account of her mother and she probably needed help and support but you know she certainly loved her children and she could

she was a wonderful mother to them but she didn't lack love she lacked respectability because of having children out of wedlock after the husband had gone and all this sort of stuff. So Lennon was taken and given to his aunt. And it's a very similar thing to being sent to boarding school. They talk about it in terms of how it's a mistake to talk in terms of homesickness because it's a much deeper thing like that. It's closer to grief you've been sort of exiled you've been sort of sent away from what you thought was home to a place where there is no love and there is possibly bullying and and uncalled things like that and how it affected

that because you know obviously paul mccartney lost his mom she uh had breast cancer she died it was tragic. It affected him. But there's no blame. We understand it, and we understand the impact it had on him. The Lennon thing was much more strange and much more complicated. Yeah, and as I say, he sort of became very much this damaged, violent, wild thing in Liverpool who tried to become this icon of peace. And, you know, he was always flawed.

But the journey in itself is important, is significant, I think. Yes, I don't know what he'd be like now. I'm slightly scared. Yeah. He'd be well into the dark web, wouldn't he? It's the, you know, that sort of world of conspiracies out there is so

joyless conspiracies used to be like oh yeah stanley kubrick like made the film landings and the atlantis did this and and the aliens made the pyramids they were sort of wild and and they were fun they were really. They may have been nonsense. Occasionally you learnt something new from them. You know, Graham Hancock was off searching for Atlantis and he's the one who sort of raised the idea that a lot of Bronze Age civilisations were on the coast, which is underwater now, so you have to go there to find them.

And that's been a positive and sort of useful thing from having all these wild ideas about sort of Atlantis. But the world of conspiracy, oh oh it's just this paranoia it's just this sort of you're a victim and they're gonna get you and it's just well wasn't that part of discordianism weren't some of those people in there responsible for coming up with the Illuminati conspiracy as a prank. But how I see discordianism is it's essentially an antidote to all this conspiracy world. It sort of teaches you not to believe it.

You might be interested in it. You might be entertained by it. You might be knowledgeable about it. You ain't going to fall for it. And at the moment, you're seeing a lot of people falling left, right and centre. And especially, as I said earlier, you know, when people have not been going to the pub and speaking to people face to face, people have been getting sucked into these sort of reality tunnels

and struggling and drowning in them. And those who've read Robert Anton Wilson haven't been doing that. It teaches you never to properly believe these things you know and that's very valuable sort of you know the worth of doubt doubt is it's a great they've always taught that is terrible doubts a superpower doubts a wonderful thing yes there was a thing I wrote down from one of your books where you talk about if you want to be certain about something by an encyclopedia yeah and if you want to never certain about something by an encyclopedia yeah and if you want to never be certain by two encyclopedias yeah yeah yeah and i think that is maybe the thing

that i like so much about your books is that you're all about doubt and the danger of certainty and the value in considering other perspectives yeah i. I mean, Blake writes a lot about the side of the brain, which he refers to as Eurasian, which is the rational sort of side. And it's a model of the world and how things are, but it's insecure and it has to be proved right. It wants other people to see the world in the same way that it does.

And it will start all sorts of crusades and fights. And you just go on Twitter and you'll see all these people desperately, so their vision is the correct one. But, you know, there's nearly 7 billion, there's over 7 billion people on the planet and you're never going to find someone who sees the world exactly the same way

that you do on every level. You're never going to find them. It must make you question your worldview. Surely it must do. You know, you have to accept that i must be you know out on quite a few things here and there and i don't know what they are because we all have this blind spot and accepting that and being comfortable with it yeah that's the being comfortable with it and sort of i feel i'm quite good at being okay about people you know

seeing the world very differently to i I do and I'm happy with that I don't expect it to be anything that's just how things are people have all these different sort of perspectives and um you can learn bits from other people you know cutting them off and calling them them and designate them as the baddies and and sort of hating them and fighting them yeah you ain't gonna advance or learn from doing that you need to be able to sort of hating them and fighting them. Yeah, you ain't going to advance or learn from doing that. You need to be able to sort of put your head in other people's spaces. And when you get into that fundamentalist route, you can no longer do it and you're doomed.

It's, as Robert Anton Wilson put it, as convictions create convicts. You know, what you believe imprisons you. And Blake would talk about the mind-forged manacles. And it's all that sort of the need to be free of that because i ain't gonna do you any good and yeah as i say you're only here on this planet for so many decades and these are unnecessary ways to bind you and make your life just a fraction of you know what it could be so yeah totally down for a little bit of doubt.

Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready

to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Chicks, can I hold a smoke? That's what it is. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was John Higgs talking to me there. Really enjoyed meeting John and getting the chance to talk to him, having enjoyed so many of his books very much over the years. The one that really got me into his stuff is The Future Starts Here, Adventures in the 21st Century.

But the KLF book is fantastic as well, as is the William Blake. Well, he's written two on William Blake, I think. William Blake Now, Why He Matters More Than Ever, and William Blake Versus the World, which has just come out in paperback, I think. I also really enjoyed Stranger Than We Can Imagine, Making Sense of the 20th Century. I haven't read the Timothy Leary book that John wrote from 2007,

but it's on my list. There's a few links in the description of the podcast to a talk with John conducted by Robin Ince about William Blake. And there's a link to that interview with Alan Moore about Robert Anton Wilson and the Illuminatus trilogy and conspiracy theories and all that kind of stuff. I have now seen the last James Bond film. I found that it was quite controversial among some of my friends. A few of them liked it. Some of them really didn't like it. But it caught me in the right mood. And I enjoyed it a lot, actually. More than The Batman, which we sat around and watched last night as a family here

at Castle Buckles. It was fine. But I think it could have been a little longer. I mean, I don't think three hours is really long enough to properly tell a story about a sad emo guy in a magic costume that repels bullets and explosions. No, it's complicated stuff. And you need at least four hours, I would say, to deal with that. Also, I think it should have been more darker

because I could make out a couple of things in certain scenes. You know, sometimes when you have those dystopian, dark visions of cityscapes, Blade Runner style. What they do is they enable you to actually see what's going on, lights, etc., neon lights, that kind of thing, to provide more detail in the visuals. But luckily they didn't do that in the Batman,

and it was all just murky. That was the main thing, murky, and everyone was sad, especially The Batman. He's very sad. Speaking of movies, we've got links to a film that's been made by a couple of people I know a little bit and like. David Earle, a.k.a. Brian Gittins. David is an actor, comedian who pops up in some of Ricky Gervais' TV shows. And his friend Rupert Magendie. Anyway, they've made a film called Brian and Charles, written by David Earle and Chris Hayward, who both star in the film, along with the very talented Louise Brealey. After dealing with a particularly harsh winter,

After dealing with a particularly harsh winter, Brian, an inventor living in rural Wales, decides to lift himself out of a depression by building a robot companion called Charles. Now, they actually made a short film called Brian and Charles, and I've put a link to that in the description. When did they do that? 2017. So that was the first incarnation of what has now turned into a feature-length film, a comedy, a quirky comedy, which I haven't seen yet, but I did see the short, liked it very much. So if you're looking for something to go and see at the movies that isn't very dark, four hours long, with no smiling, then I encourage you to go out and support Brian and Charles. Okay, that's it for this week, I think.

Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his work on this episode. Thanks to Ben Tullow for conversation editing. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Seamus. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to Ben Tullow for conversation editing. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Seamus. Thanks to Helen Green.

She does the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to all the people who help me at ACAST. Rosie! Come on, let's head back. Come on. But thanks most of all, as ever, to you for listening to the whole podcast and getting to this point. Only about a quarter of people. I know I'm not supposed to admit this,

but, you know, not everybody listens to the whole podcast. You are part of an elite force, the quartermasters. And I'm very grateful. Hey, would you like a hug? Absolutely. You don't need to have it. It's just a bonus if you're feeling like it would be nice. Okay, here we go. I'm leaning in right now. I'm leaning in, coming over the left shoulder. what's happening hey all right look go carefully out there thanks again and for what it's worth i love you

bye Bye. Thank you. Thank you.