Episode 25: Everything, everywhere, in 75 minutes flat.

Welcome to the 25th episode of the Hello You Podcast! Yes, that’s right, we’ve hit our quarter centennial celebration!

Somehow, we manage not to talk about this milestone all episode… If you can’t wait to hear what we did talk about, dive into the episode right now – here’s the link.

Alternatively, you’re more than welcome to check out the show notes below to mentally and physically prepare yourself for the onslaught of Salon-style chat that is HYP!

We started off, completely unexpectedly, riffing on the awesomeness that is Everything, Everywhere All At Once. What. A. Film. From a visual storytelling spectacle to a real moment for representation in cinema, EEAAO threads its way throughout this episode – especially the first 15minutes or so as we go on a deep, deep dive into it.
Interestingly, EEAAO is the noise Neil’s brain made after watching it for the first time. True Fact.

Language emerges as a theme from EEAAO, particularly the rapid language switching that it requires from viewers. We ponder on how much we take the privilege of belonging that language gives us for granted, and the absolute gift that EEAAO gives us to reframe our viewership experience.

Speaking of how language enables us to navigate the world around us, we dip into Thirteen Untranslatable Words and an exploration of how violence can be done to language when words become hollowed out. This is a regular thread for us, and we remember ranting about certain words about in Episode 2 of this pod’, which we then revisited in Episode 5, before exploring thoughts about linguistic colonialism in Episode 17 and understanding the anthropology of place names in Episode 22.

Louise drops a reco’ for Faith, Hope & Charity by Nick Cave & Sean O’Hagan, inspired by one of the untranslatable words, which happens to be Neil’s fave. We sidled into linguistic taxonomy and how categorising the world leads to our changed relationship with it. Meanwhile, Louise has just finished reading a Derrida tome, although is finishing reading Derrida, finishing reading Derrida?

Nipping through Algospeak and 1337 (Leet) speak, youth lingo, cockney rhyming slang and emojification, we investigate having conversations inside other conversations. Changing language to hide in plain sight is nothing new, but the change is now being driven by technology at an enormous pace.

There’s a natty segue into a fabulous podcast Louise shared – Emotion At Work – which features an incredibly strong theme around clarity. What do work cultures permit you to ask for, and how does this affect your experience? Clarity and compassion start to emerge, Louise puts her finger on a huge issue about the energy needed to navigate unclear situations and we deal with weaponised unclarity. Louise inspires Neil to explore an idea about how clarity is highly exposing.

“The courage to be clear creates psychological safety” is a beautiful jumping off point which helps us to deepen an exploration of clarity and its relationship to leadership. Thank you Louise ❤️ (before she then knits polyvagal theory into the conversation. Wow).

We finish up on the world of RSS, a technology that’s been around for 25 years+ but which isn’t widely adopted these days. Apart from by a stubborn few (yes, one of whom is Neil who ran two polls – one on Mastodon and one on LinkedIn – to give this conversation some semblance of empirical sanity), RSS seems to be largely forgotten. However, could it actually be our saviour from being “awash with content”, defeat algorithmic info-tsunamis and help us to take back control of our internet?

Neil says ‘Yes’ and Louise wonders if it is some kind of dark magic. But what do you say, dear listeners? Check out the episode and tell us what you think!

As always, the Salon is open for you, your friends, your nearest-and-dearest or those you’ve only just met on the bus to listen to. Episode 25 is now live for your delectation and delight – so pull up a chair, kick back and dive into the wonderful world of Hello You Podcast!

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Episode 24: Being messily human all over the place

Welcome to the 24th episode of the Hello You Podcast! We can’t quite believe that we’ve amassed two years’ worth of chats – and, we don’t know about you regular listeners, but we’re sensing a change in our chats and practice. We’d love to know what you think – comment away below!

If you want to get into the episode right now – head on over to our home on Anchor! Here’s the link for the latest episode – and of course you can catch up on any previous ones you have missed (as if you would).

We talk about reading ‘work stuff’ outside of work, riff on the value of generalists and specialists, and appreciate the value of curiosity.

There’s talk of things being (pardon our expletives), quite a bit shit in quite a lot of ways, and Louise drops the notion of polycrisis. However, it’s not all swearing and doom – Louise had an amazing experience recently at Helena Clayton’s Love Lab workshop and can’t wait to talk about it!

Stand Up for Love is a phrase Louise slides into the conversation (no, it’s not Destiny’s Child) before following up with a Hello You Podcast exclusive – she is developing a workshop on listening with love. Look out for a post here for a HYP exclusive to sign up!

We wonder about whether it’s possible to love an internet troll, the wisdom of firing crap from the moon (Neil’s phrase) to make a protective sunscreen around the earth and whether critical ignoring is the right way to go about keeping ourselves free from unwanted and unpalatable intrusions.

Since poetry is awesome, Louise finds a thread into Arji Manuelpillai, specifically a podcast about his ‘Improvised Explosive Device’ collection. It turns out that Arji’s work has been informed by an investigation into the views/practices of the English Defence League – not standard fare, perhaps, but important contribution to anti-polarisation and relationship formation. And then we slide into community, framed by a poem recently shared with Louise – ‘How do you create community’ by Tad Hargrave in fact.

This has been The Salon is open for another joyful, lovely, escapade around the messy business of being a human – and you’re invited to join us! Follow this link to listen in on Anchor.FM!

Things we mention in passing:
Philip Mackenzie’s amazing Deep Dive Podcast
Mark Ritson’s marketing writing
Zen Studies Podcast on “Acceptance” and “Non attachment”
‘Intro’ by John Grant
Peeps Magazine
Behavioral Scientist
Grayson Perry: Divided Britain
They by Kay Dick

Episode 23: 23s abound, technology doesn’t

Welcome to our 23rd episode! Louise & Neil get a bit giddy because 23s are flying at them from all sides.

Unlike, it must be said, the internet. Which is not playing ball.

However, the chatters persevered until the great 404 finally descended, thrusting them back into a near pre-internet age.

The good news though is that, through the magic of editing, this somewhat truncated episode has managed to escape the technogremlins, at least in part.

Strap in, dear listeners, for a giddy journey through bird-shapes (and noises); the excitement of daylight/changing seasons, and a spoiler free exploration of A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (which we’ve both read).

The Salon is open – and you’re invited! Follow this link to listen in on Anchor.FM!

Episode 22: Exploring slowly – and questioning realities

The Salon is open!

Welcome to our last episode of 2022! We’re recording just before Christmas and do the Terribly British Thing by launching into talking about Christmas decorations and who’s got what version of which virus doing the rounds.

Fear not! Dear listeners – we are hale and hearty enough to chew through some of the things which are rippling our universes… Louise also drops the word ‘miasma’ – which is gloriously unexpected.

Jump in here for the full episode!

It’s not quite as unexpected as discovering that South Korea is about to change its aging system. We’re thoroughly amazed, and start inquiring into the differences between a South Korean ‘Two Year Old’ and a Western ‘Two Year Old’ – and what this might mean, especially as an entire nation would get a year older at the same time. We also get curious about what this means for celebrating individual’s birth event anniversaries and how we construct our reality in relation to people’s age. This is a complete blindspot in our knowledge – so if anyone with a better understanding of South Korean culture and tradition is listening, please get in touch!

If the way we age (at least in numbers) is socially constructed, then what does this tell us about the construction of reality around us? Louise has found a superb piece from the BBC, narrated by Anil Seth (whose book, Being You, Louise is loving). We start with thinking about colour, then back to South Korean aging and on into ancient glassware in Bristol Museum which also defies reality unless you pay attention… Louise also plugs The Perception Census which sounds amazing.

Our joint flabber is generally ghasted when Louise drops the morsel that in Canterbury, England, there wasn’t a Cathedral Girl’s Choir until 2014. In an age where the doors of the patriarchy are quite rightly being flung from their hinges, this seems a bit odd. Apparently (a later reading of the above BBC news report reveals), the Cathedral has a 1,000 year history and “it can sometimes take a little while for change to occur”. Quite.

We’re both amazed that the plan for the episode is panning out as we move towards some radical anthropology and the embedded environmental knowledge contained in ancient English place names. Louise ups the game with a find detailing how bird song created names for particular places, and we both wonder at how much we have lost by losing the connection with the meaning of these original naming patterns. If we can only decode these names, these signals, we both feel like that’s a new way of understanding our realities.

There’s a thread developing here… Louise recommends her second book of the episode – David Abrahams’ Spell of the Sensuous, which sounds awesome.

As we enter the second half of the pod’, we start to enquire into slowing down and how it might be to intentionally tune into the rhythms of the natural world around us. This leads us into a discussion around stretching, Buddhism, experiences of Zen Meditation on YouTube and Neil’s current intellectual love – the work of novelist Ruth Ozeki – which is just fabulous.

[Note – in the podcast, Neil says that Ruth is a Japanese-American writer. She is Japanese-Canadian. He then gets Thích Nhất Hạnh’s name wrong. Sincerest apologies on both counts]

Returning to one of our favourite themes of psychogeography, we give a quick shout out for a recent episode of The Deep Dive Podcast with Philip McKenzie & Lezlie Lowe. We’ll return to this in a future episode but if you’re the type of person who navigates cities by clean public restrooms, you’ll love it.

Sticking with podcasts, and swinging back by Ruth Ozeki, Neil happened upon a talk she gave to the San Francisco Zen Centre about her writing and experience as a Zen Buddhist Priest. What really stopped Neil in his tracks was the revelation that, in Buddhism, the mind is a sixth sense – which means that thoughts have the same weight as sounds or smells. Louise brings Anil Seth’s Being You back in, specifically around the roles of our emotions in navigating the world. It’s likely that we’ll return to this in a future episode as it’s a rich tapestry to be unfurled – so stay tuned!

Coming to the end of the podcast – it’s time to blur our realities with AI and let ChatGPT make an appearance. If you haven’t checked it out yet, do. From answers questions to writing (slightly dodgy) poetry, it is a fascinating tool for retrieving information in a human-like fashion.

Until the next time – come in, pull up a chair. The Salon is open!

Episode 21: Playful natures as blue feathers fly

The Salon is open!

As if reaching the 20th episode wasn’t enough, HYP is now 21. Neil’s gabber is flasted, Louise is amazed and we wonder whether AI could be put to good use in counting the number of words we’ve got through up to this point… What else is AI good for?

The Salon is open and we would love you to join us! Listen in by following this link!

In this episode, we revel in a few exciting facts about the number 21, which meander from sports to ponderings on whether guineas (currency) came before guineas (birds), or vice versa,and the random facts about money through the ages.

Louise realises that she’s stopped paying attention to the news for a while, and has hopped off Twitter (did you know that ‘heavy users’ of Twitter are now described as people who log in a 6/7 days a week and post 3 or 4 times? That seems mad). But no silence filter is perfect and one piece of news that has broken into both of our universes is the research backed revelation that bumblebees play, even when there’s no obvious reason to do so. Bumblebees are fully awesome – can this piece of news make them even more so?

This of course prompts a meander into whether other animals – specifically birds – play or have a sense of humour. Maybe they do. Here’s a crow purposefully sledding down a roof on a plastic lid. You can make your own minds up… (Neil’s memory said it’s a silver tray. Silly Neil.)

While we’re deep diving into nature, Neil’s been forest bathing (something that we have spoken about before on the podcast). Having nearly sniffed up an earthworm and said Thank You to a twig, he can thoroughly recommend the experience. The National Forest Bathing Institute is well worth checking out for more!

Naturally, this presages a meditation on moving into autumn, death, dying and renewal. Which is when Louise drops this delight:

“You can’t accept something new in until you’ve experienced and acknowledged the loss of something else”

Louise

In the world of social media, we are both exploring the world of Mastadon (here’s Louise’s profile / here’s Neil’s). It’s very like the early days of the internet that we both remember and is proving to be a mirror for how we’ve been habituated by the big blue bird into certain behaviours which we’re not sure are serving us. Louise has done some fabulous digging and beautifully explains a lot of the theory behind how the platform works.

If you haven’t come across Mastadon and fancy try it, do connect with us. It’s kinda like Twitter, but not (as this article helpfully sets out). Here’s a useful ‘intro guide’ into the fediverse as well.

As is our way, we slide into a deep discussion about freedom of speech, and how this works on federated platforms. Should speech which we both find abhorrent (Nazi-ism, prejudice etc) be allowed within their own server instances in the name of free speech, or should the decision be made to moderate all instances? And who gets to make that decision?

This is a thorny topic – and we’d love to hear your thoughts, and we are choosing our words carefully here… Please comment below or on the podcast episode!

Having dropped a quick nod to Voltaire and a cheeky Sartre reference, we start to enquire into similarities between people quickly checking out of social platforms (have a look at this super Twitter thread from John Bull), and the current ‘phenomenon’ of quiet quitting in the workplace.

As we move gloriously, exploratorily, towards the end, Louise drops some love for Emotion At Work and the Thinking Environment. It’s social, but maybe not as we know it…

Until the next time – come in, pull up a chair. The Salon is open!

Episode 20: Momentous moments and regal ritual

The Salon is open!

Something momentous has happened, we have reached the 20th episode of HYP in this series! So Neil & Louise reflect on what’s happened since we last recorded … which contains a few other momentous things, as it happens.

Listen to Episode 20 here!

Louise has started a coaching qualification, with the aim of becoming an ICF accredited coach and is interested in working with people so they can express who they really are and what they really value.

Neil has become a property owner, moved from the South East to the West Country AND has already nearly unpacked all his boxes (“what dark art is this?” wonders Louise). Also survived COVID, and we chat about the feels associated with getting COVID and the complete lack of guidance from the UK government.

As if that wasn’t enough: Neil had his last trip out of Brighton, an important personal ritual, interrupted by the announcement that Queen Elizabeth II had died and overtaken by national ritual on a grand scale. We meander around what that means for us as individuals and for UK as a whole, finding that we can’t easily pin it down. We get interested in separating the Queen (and the Royal Family in general) as a person/people from the office they hold and its symbolism.

As a bit of light relief, Louise recommends reading The Queen and I by Sue Townsend (author of the Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 11&3/4).

After talking about the uneasy balance of humanity and royal symbolism we segue into the persistence of outrage (or as Louise puts it, “a roiling, frothing sea of anger”), which is a theme that we’ve touched on many times through the last 20 episodes. This article by Rachel Cunliffe explores the career of a “young, right wing sensationalist” and the ways in which journalism in the UK is … if not broken then at least limping a little. https://twitter.com/RMCunliffe/status/1562551184577425414?s=20&t=VvOzwutVimxb2qfm4coTYA

And this leads Neil neatly to this piece by Anya-Milana Sulavar, published in LiisBeth. We love her work (Peeps!) and this piece looks at the ways in which big business is hurting journalism: https://liisbeth.com/big-business-is-killing-the-fourth-estate/ We (as ever) get interested in what this means for local media and what we’re losing (have lost already?) in UK journalism.

While we’re talking about outrage, Neil picked up this Twitter thread on how to spot fake tweets: https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1567541626251231233?s=20&t=3dGwYk24XtLyIqlYs1tUHQ

We end on positive news about food (another topic that crops up frequently in HYP) with this article Neil shared on the positive relationship between fruit intake and mental health. Nomnomnom! https://www.psypost.org/2022/09/eating-more-fruit-and-fewer-savory-snacks-predicts-better-mental-health-study-finds-63904

Which reminds Louise of research that shows the order in which you eat veg, carbs and protein can attenuate blood sugar spikes, courtesy of the Zoe Health Study podcast: https://joinzoe.com/learn/podcast-how-to-control-blood-sugar-spikes. AND for the record, Louise DOES use the word attenuate correctly.

In closing Neil, who is on fire this episode, makes a connection to biophilia. This is a topic we both love and Neil hypothesises that the mental health benefit could be about being close to the naturey, planty goodness of fruit & raw veg as much as its consumption.

We hope you enjoy it as much we did – grab your chair, get cosy and join the Salon. Find us on Anchor here or search ‘Hello You Podcast’ wherever you get your pods!

Episode 19: Spiders, Spuffy and impossible birds

The Salon is open!

It’s almost September and the Salon doors are flung wide open (even if this means that autumn spiders come stomping inside)!

Have a listen to the wonderfully meandering conversation here – and check out the shownotes below for a taste of what you’re in for!

We begin in the natural queendom. Spiders drift daintily on gossamer threads through Louise’s forest, while in Neil’s house, wolf spiders capable of carrying off goats lurk behind the sofa. Turnstones might be Louise’s favourite bird, but she’s never seen them turn a stone. Are they lying?

While the Turnstones aren’t turning stones, they are hiding behind rocks, which makes them impossible to count apparently. This does however give Louise’s mind time to wander, and we swoop into a conversation about neurodivergence (particularly in the workplace).

Birds seem to be a temporary theme. Louise spoils Neil with a reference to The Canary Code (which isn’t about birds at all but rather intersectionality in the workplace). Following the flight path, Neil’s reminded of an inspiring piece posted to Behavioral Scientist about the lived experience of poverty and how including lived experience in intervention design makes everything better.

Louise’s recos come swiftly and solidly: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez is followed by a shout out for a recent ep of Four Thought, exploring the question of ‘Who Tells The Story?’. While Neil’s cognitively wiggling from those like a worm in a beak, BOOM! In comes Spuffy-dom and a delve into the fan fic universe of Buffy The Vampire Slayer via this article about an incredibly problematic episode (and what the fan are doing about it). We may brush against Freud and Jung but really… Wooden stakes speak for themselves.

Buffy kicked down some representational doors in her time, paving the way eventually for shows like Heartstopper (available on Netflix and based on a series of books by Alice Oseman). Neil wishes shows like this were available when he was young. But then there were only 4 channels in the UK. And ‘gay’ wasn’t a thing TV really liked to talk about unless it was terrifying, over-dramatic or Julian Clary (who could be all three in hindsight).

Flicking through the channels of chat, we alight briefly on the power of animation to tell stories and reflect things that standard shows can’t. Neil clangs down a reference to BoJack Horseman, and then (of course), The Simpsons ,which gets away with more than you’d expect it to.

It’s another wonderful conversation – and we invite you into the Salon with us! Follow this link to our official home on Anchor – or search ‘Hello You Podcast’ wherever you get your pods!

Episode 18: [To Pigeon] Are you in the Holly tree? Random animals abound …

Hello you! If you’re cool to slide into the chat via the picturesque venue of Lewes-twinned-with-Mordor (it will make sense during the first 5 minutes of listening) – WELCOME!

Come on in – the Salon is open and we’d love you to join us. Follow this link to listen in The shownotes are below to give you a bit of the shape of the episode …

We start off innocently enough talking about allotment planting and Canadian wonder beans, which produce the instantly recognisable red kidney beans.

Peaceful gardening exploits somehow lead us to Game of Thrones & the eye of Sauron. It all has something to do with Louise’s new attic office and the view of the Lewes telephone mast. We even found a website that gives you a map of the mast’s range and signal strength.

This brings us to the second ever HYP playlist – our random animal playlist! Listeners, we want your random animal tunes. Neil has started us off with last week’s Eurovision hit “Give that Wolf a Banana” and new this week “What does the fox say?” Could there even be a dialogue between animal songs with “Hungry like the wolf” naturally leading us to wolves and bananas?

Neil has been listening to some podcasts about music and listening habits. In particular he pulls the relationship between lo-fi/chill and developers in this episode of the Philosopher’s Zone which is part of a wider discussion about who and which class of people music is marketed at.

Also, other links to podcasts touching on music and other social issues:

This launches us on a long, beautiful arc about music, going to gigs, mental health, dancing and the experience of being taken out of the everyday. Immersion comes to mind for Louise which also reminds her of this Movember story about wild swimming.

After quite a lot of hedging, Louise shares her freshest thinking about her purpose and where she’s taking her business:

heart-led communication for everyone, everywhere

What does this evoke for you? Others that she’s drawn inspiration from include Helena Clayton’s radical work on love at work. Who else can Louise take inspiration from and is there anyone among our listeners who likes the direction of it? Let us know!

And this leads Neil into an enquiry around ‘what do we mean when we say we need to think differently?’ It’s cropping up in a lot of business (and other) blogging, but what IS it? He was inspired by this from Gillian Tett: An invitation to reexamine your familiar world (TedX Talks Daily).

Neil also remembers a film he loves and urges Louise (and anyone else!) to watch it: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

AND FINALLY: To reiterate, your listener mission from this podcast is to

Share your random animal songs by adding them to the latest HYP playlist!
HYP18 Random Animals Playlist

Some things we love

Episode 17: Disrupting wolves with bananas

Well hello! Pull up a comfy chair for Episode 17 of Hello You Podcast …

This month we talk a lot about disruption in one form or another. Disrupting the dominant narrative, disrupting how we experience the world by (re)naming, disrupting our own ideas of what inclusion means and what it implies. And, of course, something about wolves and bananas … (hint, it’s Eurovision related).

Come on in – the Salon is open and we’d love you to join us. Follow this link to listen in – shownotes are below to give you a flavour of what you’ll be dipping into …

Louise can’t help but jump in and talk about Visit Iceland’s outhorse your email campaign, which Neil had shared with her the week before. From there it’s a seamless (if giggly) skip to Eurovision. Louise confesses she always misses it – find out next month if Neil will ever forgive her.

Clearly Ukraine’s winning entry deserves a mention, however it’s Norway’s Give that Wolf a Banana by SubWoolfer that we most want to share. “Do watch it and I defy you not to be singing it a week later at some inappropriate moment”

Louise admits to still struggling with Derrida – she is currently still working her way through Peter Salmon’s biography An Event, Perhaps and she’s finally getting somewhere with it … she thinks: does it matter if an apple tree is called an apple tree or not? We also reference a short essay by Nietzsche on truth & lies in a non moral sense (try starting line 98 for the chunk we talk about).

This sparks a thought from Neil about linguistic colonialism, which was covered excellently in a recent episode of What the Duck podcast. And that spirals Louise into recommending David Abrams’ The Spell of the Sensuous.

– the Deep Dive podcast.

“Inclusion is opening the door to a space that already exists.” Neil ponders one of his blind-spots, which prompts Louise to do the same, prompted by listening to the always fabulous The Deep Dive podcast – do listen to The Black Experience in Design, it’s thoughtful and thought provoking as ever. We talk through our recognition of some of the problems with the concept of inclusion, which we find illuminates the threads around honouring messiness and the harm of reducing “pluriversality” to a unified narrative. Because we all know whose voices and experience get cut or glossed over … always those with less power!

And finally, we jump into an article on the concept of mental immunity. Where better than to go from messiness & pluriversality than to fake news and misinformation? We both find the article flawed in some important ways, and Louise poses a question for listeners:

“What might a better analogy be than immunity when thinking about how we process fake news & misinformation?”

“Or, if you think the analogy of mental immunity works fine, let us know why – what have we missed?”

Some things we love

Episode 16: The unbearable heaviness of being perfect

Welcome to Episode 16 of Hello You Podcast!

Come in, sit down and get comfy … all in the name of exploring discomfort. It turns out that reflecting on things that make us uncomfortable is the emergent theme for this month’s episode and, as ever, Neil & Louise dive in.

Come on in – the Salon is open and we’d love you to join us. Follow this link to listen in – shownotes are below to give you a flavour of what you’ll be dipping into …

Unexpectedly (and that’s for us, not just the listeners) we start with a discussion about wild garlic, because it’s that time of year and when Neil mentions sunshine, Louise remembered she’s recently been out picking ransoms. Here’s the wild garlic pesto recipe she’s tried; also here’s a vegan recipe.

We shimmy our way into a conversation about pitching and the discomfort of looking for external validation: is the pitch (or even the pitcher) only any good if they win the work? From there we forage our way into a discussion about what ‘good enough’ means and why we struggle with it. That’s both we, as in Neil & Louise and the ‘bigger we’ of UK society.

Collaboration crops up (a bit of a perennial topic on this podcast!) and what part fear plays in stopping us from doing the vulnerable sharing that’s essential for good collaboration. We also dip into flow states, find an article on getting into flow as a team here.

Of course, vulnerability is often a little uncomfortable which brings us to a recent experience of Louise’s, where she felt intimidated and uncomfortable with the thought of reading Chen Chen’s poetry, written in English and Mandarin. Here’s the Twitter thread that sent tendrils out in Louise’s direction and please do consider how powerful it is for the author to share THEIR linguistic world. A huge thank you to Tulika for sharing this with Louise 🙂 This reply to the original tweet also features in the podcast discussion. More about Chen Chen can be found on their website.

Language crops up (as it so often does) – Louise & Neil pop into the idea of learning a new language and what this might reveal about the world around us. Here’s a question, lovely listeners: if you could start learning any language today, what would it be and why? Let us know in the comments below!

Our final and fertile discussion point is Neil’s take on ‘They’ by radical queer writer Kay Dick. Louise admits to feeling uncomfortable and wanting to run away, but also wanting to read it. Neil talks about They evoking things that are uncomfortably like things he’s experienced.

Some things we love

They, written by Kay Dick and originally published in 1977 is enjoying a revival of interest and has us both spellbound with it’s dystopian discomfort style social commentary on art, artists and groupthink.