Gemma Milne: Smoke and Mirrors

We interview Gemma Milne, host of the Radical Science podcast on how hype and trends can influence your view on facts and innovation.

00:35 Insights & Takeaways
10:00 Interview

Links:
Book on Amazon: here
Author website: here

---------------------------------------------------------------
 The Wicked Podcast:
Support us on Patreon: here
The Wicked Podcast website: here

Find us on Youtube: here
'The Wicked Company' book on Amazon.co.uk: Buy
The Wicked Company website: visit

Music:
'Inspired' by Kevin MacLeod
Song: here
Creative Commons License

Sponsor: Zencastr : http://www.zencastr.com Get 40% off the first 3 months for unlimited audio and HD video recordings Code: wickedpodcast

'The Wicked Company' book on Amazon Associate Link: https://lnkd.in/dk34h-_s

The Wicked Podcast: Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thewickedpodcast

The Wicked Company website: https:www.thewickedcompany.com

Music: 'Inspired' by Kevin MacLeod Song: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3918-inspired License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:15

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch.

Troy Norcross: 0:21

And I'm Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 0:23

and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast,

Troy Norcross: 0:26

we take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's

Marcus Kirsch: 0:41

we know you want actions, not theories and his actions that we want to help shape, because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company. Hey, Mark, not just not,

Troy Norcross: 0:59

whiskey, don't really buy

Marcus Kirsch: 1:00

whiskey,

Troy Norcross: 1:01

it's too expensive. I'll try it. Wait.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:04

Now we keep that in. It's like, you know, Gemma here was from Scotland. So I thought I'd bring the scotch out.

Troy Norcross: 1:11

That's really, really kind of you. That's really, really good. It is cold and wet. In Portugal, what's going on in London,

Marcus Kirsch: 1:18

it's grey, oh my god, it's great. It feels like don't want to sound like a print designer, but it's like 20%, extra black on the sky, it's just really dark, really have to switch on lights really early. Okay, so

Troy Norcross: 1:32

I'm not planning to come back anytime soon. But in the meantime, Marcus, who's on the show.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:38

So we have the lovely Gemma Milan on today. And she wrote a book called smoke and mirrors about hype, and how to see through it essentially.

Troy Norcross: 1:48

You know, and it was indeed a book about hype. But as we discussed during the interview, there's so much really, really good insight and information into a really wide range of topics from from farming to nuclear fusion. I mean, it's so much more than just a book on hype.

Marcus Kirsch: 2:06

Absolutely. And I think what I liked and I think that was interesting when we put the questions together is, is actually not about the tech is actually about, you know, the critical thinking behind it. And there's a need in our culture and in most societies around the planet, that we are brave enough to ask questions more and see that things are not black and white.

Troy Norcross: 2:30

Hmm. So so my big takeaways, I mean, we only got there at the very end. But I love the fact that she said it was one of the most popular questions, the most frequent questions she got, which was, how do you do responsible hype? I think it's understanding that organisations just need hype, they need attention, whether it's fundraising or whether it's to drive sales, or whatever, they need to do that. And there's a certain amount of ethics involved in choosing how and when you use and build on that hype. So that was really good. And the second thing is, we Gemma is incredibly smart. I mean, Heaven knows how many individual PhDs that she has in order to get where she is. But she says, You know what, you can't be an expert on one thing and be expected to be an expert on everything. And if you are a company, you're trying to get a diversity of opinions, you need a diversity team, which we've talked about several times on the show, but you need multiple external opinions and get diverse opinions. Don't just take a single source to make a major decision. So if I'm going to advise my clients, I'm going to say, always get a diversity of views, and do it from diverse teams. And if you're going to use hype, apply some ethics to your decision about how you're phrasing your hype. But that's my takeaways, what are yours?

Marcus Kirsch: 3:56

Yeah, so on my side, I think the actions for organisations and I seen this a lot. And I think I'm the tendency to think that certain things are right or wrong. And when we talk about, you know, getting in a specialist and listening to that person that we perceive as knowing more, and I've been around so many technologies that only been around for, let's say, five years, or things have been around less. And then you have a specialist coming in often claiming they've done this for 1015 years, and you go, yeah, hasn't been even around. They're like, you know, I work in service design. I think the name was maybe shaped, let's say 1518 years ago or something like that. Before that it didn't really exist. It had other things, but people out there with 25 years experience in service design and you go that's something you need to point through, right? You need to bring those things in and say, Well, you know, ask questions and see how much it holds up. But at the same time, you know, he can ask a lot of small questions. It doesn't have to be completely right, completely wrong, but go and ask more questions. And also Be brave enough that you think you'll have your own opinion on it, that you maybe read a paper somewhere, or you got some enough evidence of it and go. But this exists. So what does that mean? Right? And that's where I think you may and I think Gemma mentioned it as well, where we often ask ourselves, why do organisations not spend more time on exploring these things? And, you know, asking questions and trying things for to go and build stuff. And I don't know what it is either. There's probably multiple answers to this. But I would say, do it just spend a bit more time exploring because these things are now so you know, those wicked problems, those moving targets, they are systems that have network and exponential impact, on a very small nudge, you can have big things happening, that can go wrong. So do lots of rather small steps, and spend time on it. Even project management one on one tells us that the later you want to change something, the more expensive it gets. So knowing that for 5060 years, that's just a cost argument.

Troy Norcross: 6:08

Speaking of late, we've been trying to get our interviews kind of on time and women failing horribly. So should we quit solving the world's problems? And Shall we go to the interview?

Marcus Kirsch: 6:20

Yes. So ask more questions. Take time for research. Here's in three words. Let's go to the interview. So Hello, everyone. Today, we're here with Gemma Milan. Hello, Gemma, and thank you for making time for us.

Gemma Milne: 6:34

Hi, thanks for having me. This is gonna be a lot of fun.

Marcus Kirsch: 6:38

Yes, because we all have drinks. So let's start at the top while we're still sober. And please tell us a bit who you are, and why you wrote the book.

Gemma Milne: 6:51

Sure. And so I suppose I have a bit of Well, everyone nowadays seems to have a strange routes they've taken to their job. But I suppose a very quick past history. I studied maths at uni, and did a little very small amount of time and talent and investment banking thinking that was really well wants to do, was there for three months and was like, nope, this is absolutely not what I want to do. So I googled creative business jobs, London. And of course, when you Google that you end up in advertising. And so I went and worked at Ogilvy for originally on sort of, you know, client management stuff, and then really didn't like that and ended up in the innovation team. So I was in corporate innovation. And my job was essentially to go find interesting startups and people and connect them to the agency. So I spent a lot of time just travelling and going to conferences and meeting awesome people was really cool job. And it was kind of there that I started thinking about hype, and its various different roles, and the various different feelings I had towards it, shall we say, so obviously, working in an advertising company, you know, people who literally make how you that is the job, but then also working in corporate innovation, which is an interesting kind of department, which is sometimes used as a form of hype and marketing for agencies. But equally, you're also trying to work out, you know, sorts hype from reality in terms of what's new, and what's interesting, and what should people be paying attention to. And of course, I guess also thinking about it is the sort of is what we're doing and is what these these innovations and whatnot where they are doing right or wrong and and all those sorts of questions, kind of keep them in that job. And, and then that was kind of cut short. And after a couple of years at Ogilvy did a very innovative thing, and they shut the innovation team. So I was made redundant. And after, after that, I, I suppose I kind of fell into freelancing, doing various different kinds of things, from journalism to a little bit consulting here and there mainly in the sort of innovation tech space for companies for European government and UK Government. And, and ended up writing my book. And again, having that sort of working in journalism thinking a lot about how you think about the fact that I guess I was part of that as well being a member of the media, but then also getting lots of pitches in my inbox and going to conferences and watching startups Tell me what how they're going to change the world, and added to make any thinking around it. And I suppose the book was originally written out of a sense of frustration, and being sort of a lover of science and tech, and it being the thing that I always wanted to do and seeing on one hand, people misunderstand it and perhaps not think that it's as interesting as it is and me being like God, I want everyone's find this amazing, but also on the same side. On the other hand, sorry, seeing companies and individuals see things about science and tech that are completely in some ways not true massively over exaggerated and sending people down the wrong garden path also was extremely frustrating. So wanted to I suppose do a bit of hype busting. But when I looked into a lot more, as you'll know, from reading at the top, it kind of goes a little bit deeper than just going, what's hype and what's not, and rather looks at the sort of phenomenon that is hype and looks at it more as a tool and kind of how can we wrestle with this? I guess necessity that we have based on this kind of information world that we live in, whilst also making sure that we understand the world as best as possible. And to kind of round off the story, I suppose I'm no, and they're doing a PhD that's in looking at corporate futurism and sort of the ethics of that. So what does it mean to talk about narratives of the future in a corporate context, which obviously, you know, builds on some of the themes that are going to smoke and mirrors?

Marcus Kirsch: 10:44

Well, yeah, I think I have stopped, I've stopped probably counting the kind of people who had a brush with advertising and marketing industry on that, on that level, that's for sure. And I'm sure I've ended up at least in one type of self help group. So but, but it's, it's really, you know, as my personal as I like to say, stack unfair to whole wicked problem thing that I mean, your book is full of those. And it's really interesting to look at that. And I think nice, someone looking at the complexities of what it is. So and what I've come across a lot is when you go somewhere, and you say, Well, yeah, that is, let's say, ai or you know, Troy's dealing a lot with blockchain, for example, like, Oh, well, it's a bit more complicated than that. Or rather, to say, What's, what's the straightforward answer, if that's working on or how much of this is a value, you go? Well, it's complicated. Those can be quite intimidating stories. Because, you know, we know how businesses and organisations are set up, they don't always seem to have the time to really engage and look at and dig deeper into what what does it mean for us? And what is it? Excellent. So how do you normally? How do you normally respond to people that come to you and say, Oh, you know, like all? Isn't that just too complicated? Or if you have to say, instead of saying, well, it's complicated, what do you normally respond to?

Gemma Milne: 12:07

Gosh, I mean, so many different things to say in this topic, I think the idea of sort of trying to search for a simple answer is the same sort of idea of trying to get the easy way out, it's not having to think and not having to read wrestle with sometimes quite personal moral judgments that we don't necessarily want to think about or feel able to think about. And that's not me saying, people that are looking for easy answers are bad people, it's not that at all, it's sometimes you don't have time, or the inclination, or sometimes we're not getting paid to do that. It's not our jobs, all these various reasons for not knowing or not feeling confident, a lot of time as the main one. But for me, it's trying to shift the conversation away from, oh, this is too difficult. Just give me a street to going if I give you it straight, and you don't think about it, you'll probably cause some damage or to you know, your company or to other people or to society as a whole or whatever. So why would you want an easy answer? quickly. So. And also, I think, on the other hand, the idea of complexity is, I think, sometimes complex, he's got a bad rap, like, it's this thing that we don't want, we want to try and sift through it, we want to try and unpack the complexity when realistically, I think a lot of time, the most interesting things in life, whether it's in business, or personal, whatever, comes from diving into complexity and trying to find your way around it. I mean, most literature's is, you know, fiction is is all about complex situations, and seeing how people react and you kind of going into that and going, what would I do? And how would it work and all that it's difficult, and that's, that's the richness of life, right? So I think it kind of comes back as well to the fact that we've not really been taught to be confident, or, you know, we've been taught to try and find answers and not sit in this grey area. Even if you think about the way we talk about politics. It's like, what side are you on? This idea of sitting on the fence is like a cowardly position. It's like, Well, no, I mean, actually, that's probably the most realistic position most of the time. That's not to say you excuse people from having an opinion, but it's rather, you know, if you're completely one side or the other, I would argue you're probably not actually thinking that deeply. So what I say is, I suppose to get past that the bad rap thing is to dangle. Okay, what does it look like to dive into something complex? And the kind of analogy that I use in the book is around, I suppose, like this idea of like a tidal wave of information that's coming towards you, which it can sometimes feel like particularly if you said to someone, oh, go and work out with dealers with like, nuclear fusion. I mean, it's like where do you start, especially if you've never come across it before. So it is this tidal wave of, of information and people that are no Wanting to deal with that complexity that don't want to critically think that don't feel a bowl kind of freeze and either run away or decide that this is not for me takes off there, wetsuit runs off. And whereas people who perhaps are more inclined to like it, or to see the importance of of diving and spice, they jump into little rubber Diggy diggy, sorry, we have an order, that's probably going to snap, but they see it more as like an extreme sport, as opposed to this, like dangerous situation, that's really scary. And I hit the key point here is that, you know, people like myself, the air in this space that thinks a lot about science and tech and have done for a long time, I still feel like that with most of these topics all the time. And because they're not simple, and because you things are changing. But if I was to just go, oh, AI is bad, and I'm never gonna engage in anything to do with AI. I mean, where would that leave? You know, like, and and I think it's, it's, it's about working out to what extent? And how important is it to you, that you dive in? I think if you're feeling that fear, and it's scaring you a lot, then it's probably like, actually, it's probably worth going in and trying to, it'll feel less scary once you at least are able to map what's going on, as opposed to just going to an expert, what's an expert even mean, but going to an expert and saying, Can you just tell me straight, because you'll probably miss something and that you know, down the line could be even worse than the amount of time it would take two, just swim around a little bit, and train, you know, see a couple of different viewpoints and at least map the complexity map. What's difficult, what are the different variation? It won't just be two sides, it's probably eight sides. What are they? And a lot of time you can work out yourself, you don't necessarily need to do a PhD to be able to swim in amongst all that complexity.

Troy Norcross: 16:52

Yeah, really, really nice analogy. I like the tidal wave of information. And it brings together a number of thoughts that were kind of going through my head while you were speaking. One I try not to talk about facts, or truth, or lies, I talked about data. And I said that all data needs context and source. And that's part of what critical thinking is, for me, is the data is the sky is black. Well, if it's nighttime, you're right, the sky is black, it's not blue, like normally people think it is. Or if you're a non sighted person, then the sky is black, and you source and context to look at all of this. But what I know and have figured out over the years that critical thinking takes work, it's really hard work, it's worth doing. But if I really applied critical thinking to every single bit of data that came into my life, I would be overwhelmed. And I would get nothing done. Right. And so a lot of people what I call outsource their critical thinking, they pick a pundit, they pick a point of view, whatever, and they say, okay, you're going to do my critical thinking for me, and I will decide my opinion based on what you think. And with social media being what it is the polarisation that's happening is, is really, really extreme. And so I'm gonna, I'm going to kind of wrap this question up in two parts. One, the old, quote, attributed to many different people, one of which is to, you know, Mark Twain, I didn't have much time. So I wrote you a very long letter, and taking incredibly complex things and simplifying them down to their essence to where you can communicate them, is indeed an art. And the other side of the art of engaging communities is around engaging them at an emotional level. Because a lot of the things whether it's Brexit or whether it's the presidential election, people have been swallowing emotions whole and ignoring the data and the rational thought and the critical thinking that kind of goes along with it. So our audience are enterprises. They want to know what what what is the actionable insight? What can they do to better engage teams, to better engage shareholders or stakeholders, and better engage customers in this world of title information, where people are outsourcing critical thinking, and are easily hooked by emotion?

Gemma Milne: 19:26

Sure, no, absolutely, gosh, so much to say. I like the idea of outsourcing. We all have to do that to some degree. Right. And there are people employed to do that for us. I mean, politicians are there to represent many scientists are in a job to try and find answers that we are meant to trust as much as we can. And so there's a balance here between encouraging everybody to, I guess, have a level Loves healthy scepticism about things that they read, whilst also not reducing trust in general, around perceived expertise, or around what society deems expert, whether as scientists or politicians or so on and so forth. And I think when it comes to this idea of outsourcing, I mean, the first one is don't just have one person you outsource it to, I think that already could massively enhance how you how you think about things. And also not just one, what I mean by one person, not just one angle, shall we say, try and find three angles about something that is, is obviously contested. Like, for instance, you know, if you're trying to work out whether you should, as a company employ facial recognition technology, for security purposes, right? That is something that is not 100%. Yes, or 100%? No, so you can find even just three or four different angles on this to try and work out. Okay, what are the risks here? What are the benefits? And where does it sit with what we're trying to achieve? As a company? Who is we're interacting with? And why we're doing it in the first place? Right? How do I weigh all that, that doesn't take that much time, that's not that difficult to do. And I think we're, this, especially when you're making decisions like this, I can refuse to believe any company would take sort of, you know, a big decision, like an investment and sale, I'm just gonna listen to one thing, I'm not ever I'm not going to try and map the different ideas here. I think what's key is just making sure that you you have a diversity of different outsourced experts with you know, if you don't have the expertise, or the time or the the in house, you know, people to do tonnes and tonnes of tonnes of research yourself, which they would probably end up looking at that whole field and reducing it down to a few things, more or less roughly the same as you would if you were good at making sure that you have those diverse inputs

Troy Norcross: 22:01

and diversity, if I can interrupt. That's one of the big themes that we've had across a number of authors and a number of books, the broader and more diverse the teams that are involved in those decision processes, the more likely to have a better quality

Gemma Milne: 22:18

outcome. Absolutely. I mean, to me, I don't know whether it's just because I've been engaging. And these are I've seen and heard these kind of narratives are well, no, but to me, it's it's so blatantly obvious the benefit of this No. So when I see teams that aren't diverse, it's kind of like, wow, you're you're It feels really, really, really out of date. And, and arguably quite dangerous. So I think, to me, that seems quite obvious, but I don't think we're always good at with that in terms of looking for expertise elsewhere, in terms of whether it's different people in the media, or whether it's different kind of bringing in different kind of experts, it's kind of like, let's just find who I think the best person is, or the person that's got the most, I don't know, coverage around them, that brings them up first when you Google, as opposed to be quite intentional about who you're bringing in, and who you're reading and who and who you're taking those ideas from is just as important as who you have physical on your team. So I think that's, that's one thing was kind of just making sure that you, you do weigh up pros and cons, you don't have to go and do a PhD in something in order to do that. You can do that in an afternoon, arguably. And I kind of refuse to believe that any big decision isn't worth the time. Looking at those kind of options, I think what you said earlier, but this idea of like aligning with emotions. It's kind of interesting because so my I'm and what you said also about data and facts. And truth is fascinating. because on one hand, I'm kind of looking at this as you know, a researcher in science and technology studies and there's so much discussion around kind of, you know, for is truth and situated knowledge is and all this sort of things you have to be so almost like overly nothing is nothing is true, to some degree, which I don't really I don't buy into that from a sort of pride school perspective. And but I like what you were saying about data and kind of context and sources because the big word that I kind of always lean into and kind of harp on about is context. It's like, Where did you get this message? Where did you get this idea from? And how was it put to you? Where were you emotionally engaging with it? which is totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But where are you able to then see past that emotion so like, you know, a perfect example is is phrases or ideas like the robots are gonna steal our jobs. That's an extremely emotional idea. And you know, stealing robots this other this is this thing that isn't human this, whatever and Of course, jobs like security and and all these things. And also, it's got a lot of connotations with how we talk about immigrants in the media as I do stealing jobs. So it's like a very emotionally weighted narrative. But the sort of, I suppose data or the facts, or the truth that you're that you're kind of alluding to is around the reality of automation and what automation is, which ultimately is a replacement for basic human labour. So it's, it's about how do you get to the sort of central point of the idea more so than the narrative that was used to get you there? And how do you kind of jump beyond the motion. So for instance, you could easily talk about emotion by saying about automation by saying, you know, corporate executives are making active decisions to replace human labour with robots that they have bought for the purpose of profit. It's another emotionally charged narrative that's getting to the same point. And so, for me, a big thing that I'm trying to do with smoke and mirrors and just talking in general is, how do you train get citizens and individuals and everybody to understand that hype, narratives, whatever, are normally used to capture attention in the US emotional tools, but we have to ourselves be able to have the responsibility to and the curiosity and whatnot to go hard. That's interesting that I've been emotionally charged by that. Why am I scared? Isn't that interesting that I'm scared? What does that mean? Let's look into that. As opposed to going I'm scared, that must mean, this really scary thing is true. And it's scariness and I'm only gonna think about that. And that's kind of how I, when I'm talking about like, you know, hype is the thing that exists, and we just have to be aware of it. You know, it's not it's not a banishing, it is about seeing that it's there. And getting people to reframe, you know, if everybody said data source context, the same as you, the world would be a better place, because it's about acknowledging the fact that, you know, there's a layer in between yourself and information, truth data, wherever you want to call it.

Marcus Kirsch: 27:05

Yeah, do you? What do you say that? Cause does does justice quite a lot in there, and I'm trying to unpack and while you're talking, there's a lot of references flying? Sorry.

Gemma Milne: 27:16

Just just interrupt.

Marcus Kirsch: 27:18

I'll do the same I'll, it's great to observe it, from my point of view to see how I sound? No, it's great, because I think it just gives you this kind of multi layered view on things. And there's a couple of things apart from the fact I think there's there's not been studies for a while where, you know, it shows, for example, that cross disciplinary teams de risk and perform better. The Google, Aristotle study about best performing teams has shown as well, that the soft skills like letting someone speak and letting everyone speak, on the table sits on the table, creates the best teams greatest the best results, right? So just just just starting to be really, really solid statistics on this. And from no one less than Google, for example. The other parts also not just been watching and sending a friend of mine, I think I put it out on LinkedIn as well as like, So Adam Savage, who used to do Mythbusters, he's this really probably some kind of polymath on you. And he can do, he can build you anything. He knows a lot of things about so many things. And he was asked if, if, if he is ever struggling to be a generalist like that, which is, which is an odd question. I've been posted question as well about, you know, jack of all trades, and he likes to say, the jack of jack of all trades, master of none, often better than master of one, which really love notion which goes into this idea of if you have a specialist and only looks at things in a particular kind of way, you're gonna lose a lot of context, right?

Gemma Milne: 28:59

Well, I mean, I say I say I'm jack of all trades master of not getting stuck in a box. That's

Marcus Kirsch: 29:05

right. Yeah, exactly. So it's that kind of thing. So but but all of that leads me down to so it's either, you know, these t shaped which one of those countries Oh, yeah, whatever polymath like, you know, and shifting a bit away from specialist to specialist thing seems to have run its time a little bit. Not that specialists are not needed anymore. But at a particular time, and phase maybe of problem solving. You need a different kind of skill, and then you can drill into it. And I'm getting very excited here. By sensually that gets me all the way back to the principle of a potential shift between not being able to say or not needing to say, right or wrong anymore, right. The world's not black and white. It's somewhere in between. It changes every day. But we're sitting in a society where public Critics have really polarised social media is very polarised, you know, we're literally you always pin these, this is right, therefore this is wrong things against each other. what's what's your view on that kind of way of communicating that kind of tendency that there is a right or wrong? Because we all know and most scientists, who are specialists would, you know, subscribe to the fact? Well, it never stops. We only have more questions after that. So what do you think we could do? or about to really break that habit?

Gemma Milne: 30:30

So few things to hear. So I think I don't think there's no such thing as as right or wrong. I know, you're not saying that there's no such thing at all. But I think that this is not about getting into such a grey area that you that you never do anything, right. I mean, and you hear so many examples of this, like, you know, I don't know you're standing in the supermarket aisle, and you can't decide which yoghurt to buy, because, you know, oh, this one's made in this country, and they treat people badly. But then this one's bad for the planet. But then this one, you know, and and there's your This was with oat milk, or almond milk or cashew milk or whatever. You actually sometimes you can argue that cow milk is bad, you know? So it's, it's, it's not about getting into a funk that there is simply no answer. And therefore no action is taken. Because a we can live our lives like that. And be that also is a form of disassociation from responsibility, which at the end of the day, people, companies, governments, whoever do have to take responsibility and have to do things and have to justify, I think it's about the journey of going from not just thinking, I think this is right, so we're going to do it. But going, I think this is right. Why do I think this is right, and going on a bit of a journey to see if you really do think it's right, and being as open mind as you possibly can. And, you know, you might come out the end going Yep, I do think it's right. I'm not seeing that this original version of me was right all along. But I just happened to be right and have no good justification for it based on x, y and Zed or making it actually no, I think it's it's wrong, I'm not gonna take this action. Or I might say, Actually, you know what, I'm going to now go and consult more people, because I still don't know. So I think it's more about encouraging the journey, not just a justification, but like of exploration. And that's kind of ties back to your point about the sort of jack of all trades, master of none. I mean, particularly in the sciences. If you think about the sort of people who tend to end up as a lab scientist, right, they tend to have been at school, studied the sciences at school as their main subjects, gone to university and studied this, the central science at the end, it was biology, or physics or whatever, done a Master's done a PhD, become a research scientist like that. That's a very standard journey. That's not to say everybody's like that. But being someone who studied maths university, I know for a fact that you don't learn any history, any philosophy, any FX, anything at all, as part of that degree at any, any stage of that journey that I was on. Yeah, okay. I could have taken electives, wherever, but it's not embedded at any point. And so, I think, from my own experience of like you, and especially when it when I think about your finishing University, and going into banking, it was because that was what you did, as a math student, it was either you being a math teacher, you went into banking, or, you know, the Secret Service got in touch, which, you know, so the point I'm making is, a lot of people are very siloed. In, in jobs that require, or usually attribute expertise to, that's not to say those people are not experts in that thing. But it doesn't mean that we should attribute expertise across other areas or assume that this individual because they're a quantum physicist, they're also going to know about other things. And because that's not necessarily the case, unless they are they are more of a kind of generalist or more of a polymath in other areas, too. So I don't know I mean, there's there's so much to say about whether we talk so much about how more people need to understand stem, we need to get more people understand stem more people should understand science better than a DA, I think that people in science absolutely need to be reading history, and politics and, and the arts. And I say that as someone who's gone on that journey myself and felt very late to it, and like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I've never really understood this really basic thing to everybody that does any form of humanities, because it just didn't happen to pick up a book on it to, you know, my mid 20s. So, you know, I think it's, we have to consider, we have to be more open to that idea that, you know, just because you're an expert, one thing doesn't necessarily mean that you can have something to see that is weighted in justification. If that's not where your background lies, so yeah, hopefully that can help. So question somehow.

Troy Norcross: 35:02

I mean, it's a very full kind of a full bodied answer across the entire subject. I think it's really, really good that just because you're expert in one thing doesn't mean by proxy, you're expert in everything. And I love the diversity of education. The scientists should read history. and expand that. Your book is called smoke and mirrors. Your opening section, you talk about magicians, and I guess it's a brilliant kind of pulling together for my next question, which is all about drawing attention. And a magician draws attention away from where it should be, so they can perform the trick. And some people in the audience focus their attention to find where is the sleight of hand, and I believe hype is all about monetizing attention. Facebook monetizes attention, they don't sell your data, they sell your attention. Newspapers are selling attention. And even startups are trying to monetize attention, the attention of the VC community, because they're, they're desperate to get all of that attention. And what I'm trying to figure out is, how do people draw attention? responsibly?

Gemma Milne: 36:25

Yeah, this is a question I get a lot. What does what is responsible hype look like? or whatever? And yeah, I mean, the reality is the we live in a world where it's difficult to get attention, and but you need it if you want to be able to do certain things. And, you know, you can, I believe you can do it responsibly. So when I specifically I'm talking to startups, and my sort of bits of advice that I gather around not telling problem, solution stories, and instead telling system stories. And so what I mean by that is instead of sort of building this beautiful narrative, this personal story, we've all seen it in the startup pitches, the five minute pitches or whatever, where it's, you know, Jenny has a problem, her life looks terrible. You know, this has been a challenge for x many years. She's tried this, and she's tried that. But none of it worked. We have created this jetty is so happy, please give us your money. And it makes sense to tell that story, right? Because, I mean, God, yeah, that's what your product is trying to do solve a problem. But in my mind, is completely irresponsible to not talk about the system in which your problem exists in which your person exists, in which your solution exists, and particularly in the area that I'm most interested in, which is in deep tech, because most of the work in deep tech is, you know, working within ginormous global systems, like the energy system, or the agriculture system, or traveller, logistics or whatever. And so by saying, you know, we created this, I don't know, solar panel for farmers so that they can, I don't even know get more energy to, you know, so they can have sensors to feed their plants or something, right. I don't think that you there's enough to talk about that you'd have to talk about, well, what kind of farmers are you talking about big farms, small farms, like what are the sensors do what happens with the data, they didn't even have somewhere for the solar panel, like what you agriculture's very, as we know, very, very interconnected in so many different ways. And so distilling down to this, like very simple sort of, here's a problem, here's a solution, I think is a very irresponsible way to talk about a product. And and so it's how do you talk about the system in which you exist, and what part you fit into, and how what you do impacts this global system, as opposed to like a very specific individual. And, and the other sort of area that I talked about with responsible hypers really making clear the difference between vision and reality. Because a lot of the stuff in when we talk about missions and you know, hyping up this, like what is it you're trying to do as a startup and particularly our company, because you want to kind of engender trust in those that are investing in you that you're really in it, you know, for the long haul, and you won, you know, the people who are buying into you but as customers, whatever to believe that you're doing it for good reason or whatever. But sometimes what can get lost in translation is what you're ultimately aiming towards versus what you're currently doing. So an example would be a startup is talking about a company that's talking about connecting everybody to the internet using a particular kind of satellite technology that they've come up with right and the vision is like everybody should have access to the internet. This is you know, we live in an age where it's, you know, everyone needs to bank and live and you can create this wonderful picture around what the world would be like if we had internet and that's wonderful and you can say I want a bank they can get you know social tech funding they can get tech for good or the impacts investors all this sort of thing. But the reality is, in order to get your tech to like a cheap enough state, perhaps you need to sell your satellite technology to oil companies that are able to situate their shipping routes, or it's probably most likely to the military. And that's up to whether people want to engage with you whether they think that's justifiable, if the ends, you know, justify the means. But if you don't put that forward, that's when it's responsible, right? It's about letting people make that decision for themselves, as opposed to you pushing this kind of idea that's emotional, that is tricking that has a tricking nature to it. There's a big difference between saying, This is what we want to get to, it's really hard. We need to do this in the meantime, but stick with us, this is where we're going and nobody else is doing it. That to me is far more compelling than saying we're connecting everyone's Internet, and then you go, why are they still not connected? Oh, well, we haven't put this athlete up yet. So I'm gonna be up for eight years, because we need to make money for military first. So it's, I think it's not just about honesty, it's, it's going back to that context thing. It's not about going, Oh, yeah, sorry, we're actually selling to the military, it's going the reason we're doing it is because of this and standing by it and going, we're making this decision, because we think it's the right thing to do. If you don't think it's the right thing to do. Maybe you need to be thinking about that a bit deeper, as opposed to thinking about what hype you're putting out. But, you know, if you think that what you're doing as a business is justifiable, then put it out there. You know, if you're hiding it. You know, I don't know what to say to you,

Troy Norcross: 41:35

Gemma, like, Oh,

Unknown: 41:39

yeah.

Troy Norcross: 41:42

First of all, we are out of time, I want to tell you that we really, really enjoyed reading the book. And it's more than just a book about hype and how hype can be managed and responsible hype. You have got pages and pages of really great insights into cancer into farming into nuclear fusion. I mean, it's a great educational book above and beyond the hype. So really, really well done. Congrats to you. Thank you both really enjoyed reading it. We've loved the time with you this evening. Marcus, any closing thoughts before we wish Gemma Good night?

Marcus Kirsch: 42:18

Yes. So it's really a book that is I didn't count them how many stories but you know, they're all wicked problems, which I love. I think it's great that someone breaks these things down says, Look, this is all these things that are happening. These are all the things that actually connected. And I think it's a very timely book, you know, in the age where you know, Coronavirus and climate change, which are all wicked problems, you know, we need to start shifting our mindset more towards being brave enough to dive into these, even though we're not scientists, because I think everyone has to contribute and, and collaborate on this. And I think the honesty there to say, well, reality will be different, and reality will show and you need to wait for that. And you need to try and experiment those things is really, really, really, really important. And so yeah, so therefore, it's very time to book. It's, it's sort of now after at least one I sleep. After I read it, you know, it's actually great for any of the subject matters stories you go into, like you can look it back up you go hang on a second fusion Yeah, or let me just read that. And there's so much in about fusion or AI and those things, and it's really, really brilliant. So for that it's a great book like that. I really, really love it for it. So thank you so much for your please play. No, I

Gemma Milne: 43:39

was gonna say if I could just say one little thing. First of all, thank you so much. I really appreciate that and want just for listeners who haven't read it into the context. My goal with all these chapters is yes, to obviously educate people on these various different things. But what I actually really want is to kind of give people, the little nodes of understanding enough so that you can fill in the gaps yourself, you can think about these things yourself. And crucially, you can then follow the news on these things. You can see an announcement about nuclear fusion and think, Ah, that's interesting because of this and that, and oh, I wonder what that means, you know, and it allows you to kind of follow the current conversations, as opposed to feeling like you're getting like a science explanation of something that happened 50 years ago, it's more about trying to be current. And you know, the only way to be hype, the only way to get past this whole attention thing that does result in polarisation and problematic emotions and all sorts is for people to feel empowered to engage as opposed to shying away and kind of just seeing things at face value is like we can't stop the inflammation train. So all we can do is empower ourselves and it's just my little contribution to that.

Marcus Kirsch: 44:45

That's brilliant. I think it's also you know, I think is a jamesburg many, many like few decades ago who did the constellations TV show and those kind of things showing the world is more interconnected, those kind of things, you know, it feels like that and I think it's something media could borrow from and bring back To go,

Gemma Milne: 45:01

I hope so.

Marcus Kirsch: 45:02

That'd be great. Okay, thank you. Gemma, thank you so much for your time and your insights.

Gemma Milne: 45:06

Thank you for having me. This is good fun.

Troy Norcross: 45:11

You've been listening to the wicked podcast with CO hosts, Marcus Kirsch and me, Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 45:16

please subscribe on podomatic, iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 45:30

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked and beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross, also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company.com