Reading Between the Lives

The Human Library is a groundbreaking initiative founded in Copenhagen in 2000, where instead of borrowing books, visitors "borrow" people — volunteers who share their personal stories and experiences to challenge prejudice and foster understanding.

In this episode, founder Ronni Abergel shares the origins of the project, its global expansion to over 80 countries, and the careful process of selecting and supporting "books" to ensure a safe, respectful environment for both storytellers and readers.

The episode delves into the transformative power of these encounters, both for the volunteers and the public, and discusses the challenges of maintaining the project in a changing social and corporate landscape. This is the extraordinary story of an ongoing mission to break down barriers, one conversation at a time.

Find out more about the Human Library at https://humanlibrary.org/.

Visit www.archipelagoaudio.com for more information.

Transcript

Ronni Abergel: Ask me anything you want. I'll be honest, but it'll be my truth. There's no universal truth here. It's their journey. It's their life. And readers can question them and ask further questions, but they can never say that they're wrong because it's their life.

James Clasper: Hello and welcome back to Archipelago, the podcast about arts, culture, and ideas in Denmark. I'm your host, James Clasper. A few weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon in Copenhagen, I went to the library. A library, where instead of books, you're able to borrow a person. Where instead of reading stories on pages, you hear them directly from the person who lived them. And where a 30-minute conversation with a stranger can shatter assumptions you didn't even know you held.

This is the Human Library, founded in Copenhagen in 2000 with a simple idea — that the most powerful way to combat prejudice isn't through lectures or policies, but through the simple act of listening to someone's story. When I visited the library's Reading Garden a few weeks ago, there were several good titles on the shelf, so to speak. And though I couldn't decide between the Greenlander and the person with schizophrenia. It turned out to be the same person, a woman called Viva. A former student of American literature originally from Greenland, Viva wasted no time telling me about her decision to move to Denmark, how she came to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, the negative perceptions of Greenlanders in Denmark, and what volunteering to be a book has done for her.

I have to say I enjoyed hearing Viva's story and I wasn't surprised to later discover that the Human Library idea has spread to over 80 countries. Indeed, what started as a small project in Denmark has become a global movement. So to find out more, I spoke to Ronni Abergel, the founder of the Human Library, and began by asking him how this extraordinary idea first came to life.

Ronni Abergel: The idea really was an opportunity to go to a festival here with a small budget to develop a concept. And there were four of us working in the NGO where I was a stop the violence youth peer-to-peer education initiative that we had started because we had a friend in common that was stabbed. I actually, you know, just proposed to the others in our leadership team and I said, look, I have this, this is a bit of an off idea. I know, it asks a lot. I told them of people because it's not just a sit and watch thing. It's not a let me be entertained or I'm gonna sit on this ride and two minutes I'll get off. And it was tickling. You gotta give something to get something here. But it's really crossing some boundaries. And especially for the Scandinavian setting. And so I said to the others, let's try and find some of the people that we think about, worry about or afraid of, or just judge really harshly from a distance, but never give them a chance to prove us wrong. Let's build a list. Who do you like? Who do you dislike? Who would you most like to talk to? Who would you really not like to talk to? We gotta get them on the list. And so we all were really honest with ourselves. We put our most vulnerable and our intolerance on display by building these lists saying, I can't stand this group. Because of this and this and that. Well, you need to talk to some of them find out if it's true and if it's true, it's true. And they said, but what if nobody comes? I said, if nobody comes, we've just built a list 55 or 75 of the most unpopular groups in our community.

Male chauvinists, unemployed, Swedish people, drinkers. Bodybuilders with big muscles. We had everything. And blondes even were on the list. And so they'll talk to each other. I said, we can't lose here. Have them talking to each other. And when readers come, everybody will be talking to each other. I think we've got a win-win win scenario. It's all a question of having the courage to be curious and courageous to engage even with the groups we might be afraid of. And so the others bought into it, and we put it together. We came up with rules. We came up with the role for the librarian. We developed this in cahoots, you could say. And it's a library for all mankind. I'm just a custodian of a sort trying to get the message out there and help people build it. Right? We started with an invitation to drop in at a big festival, and we grabbed the opportunity. We were there four days. We put more than a thousand books out to readers. And it told me that this was universal because our readers came from all of Europe and beyond. What we decided when we were packing down, I looked at the others and I said, look. This is the most impactful thing we've ever done. We've seen people change in two hours from being so upset about something, to be more understanding about something, to have repositioned, to have calmed down, to have deescalated their views. We've seen actual change happen in front of our eyes to our books and to our readers. It's too powerful to let it stay anywhere, to let it die with this festival, which won't come back until a year from now. I said, I can't let this just lie here. I have to bring it forward. And so I went to Hungary. I went to Norway, I went to Portugal, and I set up local events with local books and trained them in the methodology and in the role of being a book and facilitated the loans with local librarians and partners. And it turned out it was working perfectly. There's some adaptation needed. Obviously in the way you communicate every language, every culture is a little different, but. The biases, the judgments, even some of the groups that we're afraid of are the same worldwide, like mental health is a stigma worldwide.

Doesn't matter where you publish with schizophrenia, there are people there who are afraid, who have misunderstood. But I knew that I had to do something to bring it out to the world. I couldn't just leave it behind. It was too, too impactful, too powerful, and too important. And time has shown that it's more important than ever. I don't wanna say we were ahead of our time, but in a way, probably we were.

And the library as a sort of a concept is thousands and thousands of years old. It's been a place that's helped us evolve, understand knowledge, pass over knowledge, multiply our knowledge, and also as a space of great freedom, because who will tell you what to do in a library? Nobody. Who will tell you can't come in there? I mean, if you're prepared to respect the framework and the rules for borrowing books, et cetera, and everybody else's right to be in the space, nobody will tell you not to come in. That means it's the most welcoming place in our culture. It's the most inclusive institution we have.

Doesn't matter if you're five years old or 95, doesn't matter if you have a hundred million pounds in the bank, or if you barely have, you know enough to eat today, that doesn't change your rights inside that building. And it makes it a very, very interesting place.

James Clasper: Yeah. So, okay, so just paint a picture for me. What, what does the library look like? What does the borrowing process look like? What's going on when someone goes to the Human Library?

Ronni Abergel: Well, we're pretty much piggybacking on the library that we all know and love. Basically you walk into our place, which is typically pop-up format. We'll be in a certain space at a certain time with a certain selection of topics that you can engage with. You can walk up to the desk, you can talk to our librarian and you can say, Hey, I would really love to borrow a person who's HIV or transgender or I wanna learn more about this topic. We will then go in the back bookshelf, find that person and tell them we have a reader for you. And then there are very simple rules. You have 30 minutes, you can ask any question you want within the topic, and you've gotta give the book back on time and in the same condition. And you will find a place to sit in the vicinity of the library. And that's the space you now have to explore yourself and that new person you borrowed.

I mean, I know it's a little uncommon because you can't borrow people and we can't lend, people aren't a thing and know that. We also know the saying, don't judge a book by its cover. But all of us know that that's not true. It's impossible not to judge a book by its cover. So why do we keep saying that? That's rubbish. Okay. So is the Human Library in the sense that we say people are books, that's kind of a little silly and it's kind of rubbish, but it's to make it more simplified. It's for everybody to be able to recognize what this is really about. So we'll present the topics short and sweet. It'll be bipolar, immigrant, asylum seeker, unemployed, suicide survivor, obesity, HIV, Buddhist, Muslim, change activist, politician, member of the National Rifle Association. Then it's up to you. Be like, wow, I have all this choice. What am I most curious, afraid, or nervous about? Where should I put my courage, my civil courage and go in and confront some of my biases? Be like, well, I think these immigrants coming over to my country is I better borrow an immigrant and ask some questions. We'll bring out the immigrant. And of course, you need to be respectful. You need to treat our books with the same respect you want to be treated. You're unable to do that, you can't borrow our books. So we're expecting you to be kind and gentle, but honest and frank and say, Hey, I have questions. Some of them might be a little difficult and I'm not trying to be impolite or rude or anything, but I'm really curious what brings you to my country or how did you become so obese? Or what's your journey from male to, to trans or to whatever? What is non-binary to you?

Imagine you could talk to that person because you knew they had volunteered and they would be happy to tell you what happened and what had gone before, and you know how their life is today. And so this is what we offer. We offer access to unique engagements where you can learn about yourself and about all the groups in your community that you might be a little nervous about because, Hey, wait a minute, they're not like me. They look different. They sound a little bit different. The clothing they wear, it's very different or whatever the features are that make you realize that we're not the same. But maybe when you sit down and talk to them, you're gonna realize you're a lot more the same than you think. And the things that you might be a little apprehensive about the root causes might not be defendable. There are no reasons to be apprehensive about it. Now that you understand, once you understand the ways in which people are different and you can see that it's no threat to you or your life, or the way you are living in this community, why would you be bothered? You know? So I think all of us have an opportunity here to gain a greater quality of life if we can dismantle some of our fears, our social angst about each other. This fear of each other and fear of what's different is being used to pit us against each other rather than to build cohesive and sustainable communities together, we're now looking at who belongs here, who doesn't belong here? And start judging. And that's another thing that's at the core of our concept, because like I said, we don't encourage people to, you know, don't judge the book by its cover because we all do it. We in fact take responsibility for it. And then we say, our slogan or our motto is, here's an opportunity for you to unjudge someone. That’s our big offering to you, James.

James Clasper: Can you tell me how you find books? I mean, do most people volunteer when they hear about it or is there kind of a recruitment process and has it at least changed over the years? Did the beginnings, you know, the kind of recruitment and finding the people. And then gradually more books kind of volunteer themselves.

Ronni Abergel: It's a little bit of both. Early on, obviously we were handpicking people. I even recruited books. I met on the street and told them we're going to this festival, would you want to come? We'll give you a bracelet and food and a tent. They said yes. And I got this young punk with a mohawk and piercings and tattoos and leather all over. And his mother had to give permission 'cause he was only 16. But he went with us and he was a book. He's now 40. But interesting enough. It was difficult in the beginning, but once word starts getting out, we do have a constant influx of applications from around the world. People that now want to be books with us.

But obviously if we have, let's say we have a special grant like now to build a new presence in Switzerland. So we're working with the foundation and they provided us a multi-year grant to build a local book depot that could help serve the community in one of the cities where they're very heavily invested in the community programming. And we said, that's great opportunity. And then we'll go out and we'll recruit books and librarians and volunteers for that specific project also. And we'll use many different channels, you know, social media websites and reaching out to organizations in that area to see if that could yield interested parties.

But I think now we're in a privileged situation where we have a certain influx of books coming and we benefit from that. We also have a certain group of books that remain for many years and then someone clocks out for a year. They're having a baby, they're going through things and they come back. Once a book, you're always a book.

James Clasper: Are there people who just cannot be books?

Ronni Abergel: Yeah. So let's differentiate here between the ethical boundaries of what we and who we can publish, and then the personal competencies and abilities needed. The skills needed to truly be an open book in the library. Start with the first. It doesn't matter if you are very eloquent with language. It doesn't matter if you are visibly autistic or that you might have certain things that make it difficult for you to be, you don't have to be up to par, high performing or anything like this, but you have to be in mint condition. For example, if you are bipolar you're on the one to, on one to 10 scale of your mood, you can't be a 10 and you can't be a two. You have to be somewhere in a balanced, good mint condition, or it'll be too much for you or too much for the readers. And it's not social exploitation either. It's not the social circus come and see me be depressed. That's not what we're about. So we get to know every book personally, so we know what kind of condition they're in before we publish them. And if they show up at an event, when we have eye contact with them and we check in, we don't feel that they're in a good place. We'll sit them in the back room and they can have coffee and snacks and food and hang out with us, but they will not go out to readers. That call is one we will make when books are not able to make it themselves. And some books obviously can be so vulnerable that in one situation they're not able to judge that, and then we'll do it for them and they'll come back another time. So those personal traits are more about being able to be honest and authentic about what you've experienced, and more importantly, not be on a mission. So if you are here to convince me to become vegan, Buddhist, whatever. Forget about it. If you're here because you're campaigning against the health system because you're angry and you're upset because you didn't get the operation you needed in time and it's caused all this and you're really upset, then you are not past things that have been greatest challenges for you yet. And once you're past that, you can come be a book. But this is not a place to sit and ventilate. And it's also not a place for intolerance. So if you're against Muslims or Jewish people, or Roma people, or you're against trans or whatever it is, that's your opinion, that's fine. We respect your right to have any opinion.

We're a library. We don't judge in that sense. But you can't be a book with this. It's not a space for that. It's more space to say, I'm not gonna say what it is for others, but for me, being angst or for me being a widower or for me living with HIV, this is my truth. I'm happy to answer questions for you about that. What did my parents say when I came out? What did my boss say when I was transitioning? How did my family react? You know, ask me anything you want. I'll be honest, but it'll be my truth. And so the great confidence our books can have is it's their truth. There's no universal truth here. It's their journey. It's their life. And readers can question them and ask further questions, but they can never say that they're wrong because it's their life. So we build confidence in our books. We help train them, we help support them. We provide psychologists. If you have a reaction after a reading and you need to talk to somebody, and the debriefing with our librarians didn't help enough, and you have a down. We have somebody you can call. Because without our books, we're nothing, and we're not here for people to get worse. We're here to help people feel better about who they are, about their journey, and also about being better understood from the society that they're part of. So it should be a win-win for everyone.

James Clasper: What about controversial books or books that are maybe beyond the pale? Where's the line drawn where you say, we're just not gonna have that book in our library?

Ronni Abergel: So we have a category for our literature called victimology. So if you've been a victim, we are happy to publish you if you can, if you're at a distance and you can reflect and you can be open about it, and it's not too vulnerable. Could be domestic abuse, could be bullying in school, could be all kinds of victimization.

Yeah. If you are a perpetrator, there are certain categories that we can work with, and there are certain categories we cannot. So there was a man came to us. 30 years ago, he was involved in an accident and someone lost their life because of him. He's been to jail, he's paid his dues back to society, but he was always felt terrible and locked out and isolated. And he came and said he'd like to share his journey. And we read the book and we realized that this man had no intention of harming anybody. And obviously we could all get in an accident. So there are certain boundaries, moral, an ethic that we discuss all the time. They're not setting in concrete or, you know, nod in marble. They're sort of very flexible. From the individual book. But if you have caused harm on purpose to someone killed someone as a murderer, been a violent, abusive person, if you are a pedophile, there are certain boundaries. These are not conversations that we can offer. Or if you're intolerant, if you're racist, if you're blatantly antisemitic or Islamophobic or homophobic or any kind of topic where the purpose of your intervention or what you're offering doesn't rely on trying to build bridges of understanding, rather on creating divides, we would deselect you as a book. But we also understand that just because you were a victim of domestic abuse doesn't mean you can't hold racist views. And just because you're trans doesn't mean that you are absolutely accepting and tolerant of every other trans person. For example, we learn also because walking into our backstage, our book depot, you're gonna see a diversity unlike anything you experience anywhere. And you'll be like, wow, this room is full of different people, very exciting people. Some might feel or very different people and very scary people. So others might feel, but it's, we're also asking a lot of our books 'cause they can't just sit there with their readers and talk to talk inside our library. They have to walk the walk. 'cause if they're intolerant to Muslims, they're not gonna be able to be there. If they're, you know, angry with trans people and they can't control that anger and they sit there, they'll end up losing their space there. Because of course if you're intolerant, you can't be part of that. So what a lot of books don't understand when they sign up is it's not just readers that are being educated here. It's all of us. And some books are not to be books, yet some readers are not ready to be courageous and embrace it. And they realize when they're in the space that it's maybe too uncomfortable to be having these conversations. And that's okay too.

James Clasper: How do you handle situations where the conversation gets heated, uncomfortable, aggressive, even?

Ronni Abergel: It is very, very rare we've seen any kind of aggressive, I mean, I can count that in one hand for 25 years. I think heated is okay. If it's heated in the way that I'm excited or I'm provoked but I'm still in a positive approach here and I want to engage and have a conversation heated in the way where I begin to hate you. When I wanna walk away from the thing, I can't tell you. I've seen that in all earnesty. They maybe go home and have a reaction. Wow, I didn't like what that person said. Now that I think about it or whatever. But it's not something we experience. What we do try to handle is sometimes there'll be readers who question our books and the validity of what they're saying.

And sometimes we do need to have conversations with our books after about how to deal with the emotions that you get from that. Because it can be quite rough if you've been a victim of stalking and you're sitting there with three women that are all highly educated and good jobs, and one of them says to you, well, I don't really believe that you had no fault in this. And that's after putting the details out there and sharing what happened. And obviously I am, I'm assuming in this context of this complaint that we got, or this reaction we had from one volunteer book was that they had not accepted that premise. And that was tough for the book, but that's actually the book's problem. They have to find a way to deal with that and we'll try and help them and support them in finding ways to park that kind of, or deal with those kind of reactions. You can get that not all readers are that empathetic or some of them might think that what you're telling is just too incredible. I mean, three stalkers in two years and you didn't go on a date with any of them. They just found you and started stalking you or you know, and that's actually happened to one of our books that people saw her on the street and followed her. And that happened three times in two years. And we've got the police records to prove it, but somebody didn't believe it. We believed it. And if we believe you, we'll put you on the bookshelf. If we don't believe you, we won't. And it can be sometimes not a great feeling you have when you have to turn down a volunteer now and then. But very often we've come to see that we're not wrong when we're turning volunteers down. Especially their reactions will confirm that. Because if we're wrong, there'll be a certain reaction. And if we're right, there'll be another reaction and we don't have a lot of these, but I'd say nine out of 10 get the reaction, which confirms to us that we were right in not putting this person on the bookshelf yet they're not ready.

James Clasper: Can you share a particularly memorable example or two of a transformation that you've seen as a result of a reader taking out a book?

Ronni Abergel: Well, readers and books, I'll start with the books. I have one example that sits with me because it was a young man, 25, a bit heavyset, with autism. Kind of a boxy person, a little bit boxy with edges, very likable. You wanted to give him a big hug, but he looked like he wouldn't like that because he was a little bit socially awkward. And I noticed when I became his friend on social media, I had a hundred and something friends. Five years later, socially rounded. Indeed, very huggable. Approachable didn't seem at all this boxy anymore had like 500 something friends and a girlfriend and moved and got a job driving the bus. I've seen some people move from, don't know, a place of lesser interaction, lesser inclusion, lesser acceptance to a place of greater acceptance, greater inclusion, greater understanding, and also seeing a personal journey. Another book with schizophrenia, getting off meds, losing weight, ending up getting married, having a baby, and a job as a recovery mentor. And also for readers. I actually could see the journey in two hours. James, you wouldn't believe it because we have a format that we offer, especially to our corporate partners, which is where we much of the resources and funding for our work, is by partnering with companies that are interested in creating more inclusive organizations for their staff. And what we'll do is. We'll then come and bring a learning space to them. One of them is called the Human Library Reading Hall, and it's built as a format to create, accommodate larger groups. We could take up to a hundred or 400, 500 people at the same time. We just need a lot of books there. We can also do that online, but in person, it's interesting to observe the body language of readers and the faces. Be with us two hours plus, right? They'll meet three books and have half an hour with each book. So imagine your first book is bipolar, the second one is body modified, and the third one is transgender. Three very, very different topics. Mental health, lifestyle, orientation. So the first 30 minutes might be sitting a little bit leaning back from the table, closing your arms with a little bit of a nervous approach because we really gonna talk about these very personal things here at work. Oh, oh, with my team right around me. I'm not sure I want to be here. Okay. And then you got the next reading with the body modified where, wow. Do you have horns on your head? What's that tattoo across your face? Opening up. And by the third reading, they're leaning in. Now I won't do it because it'll affect the microphone sound, but they're leaning in across the table. They can barely get close enough to this book because they want to be as close as possible to the information. So I see them transitioning and I see the shoulders coming down. I see men in suits with fancy ties and high salaries, getting up, crying, giving us a standing ovation at global companies. So I see impact. I see human beings moving right in front of me from one position to a greater place, greater for them, greater for us, greater for the community. I've seen nothing but win, win, win for 25 years until Trump. 'cause we've been in constant growth for 25 years Trump version two. Until Trump and our friend from the electronic car company declared war on diversity, equity, inclusion work. We had been nothing but going forward, reaching more and more people the world. But now that has all come to almost a full standstill because DEI is dead. And that means a lot of companies have pulled back from the work leaving us in a vulnerable situation because how can we host free programs in the civil society with no funding? And our funding came from these corporate exercises. We want it to be politically independent. Now, you can't be politically independent if you get government funding. So we're like, no, no, no more government funding for us. We never had any in the   Human Library. We've reached 85 plus countries without the Danish government supporting us at all. And it is what it is. I don't blame them. I actually, it's my preferred approach. But also, there was no funding for us available. We had to make our own money. And so we did, because we can create value to certain companies and organizations. If it's now become illegal to have these conversations about our mental health, about our disability, about our beliefs, our religions, our orientations, everyday issues like depression and bereavement. If we can't have these conversations anymore in the corporate space, then we can't generate any resources. So we're 25 years, but I'm not sure we're gonna be 50.

James Clasper: I mean, what do you say to the idea that the classical version of the Human Library, if I can put it like that, is more self-selecting. So the people that show up at the Human Library on Sundays in the summer in Copenhagen are maybe less biased or less prejudicial than others. They're more likely to be more curious individuals that kind of pass by that part of town and go, huh, yeah, that looks like something I might try. And it's actually in the, as you say in the corporate setting, where there are people who would probably never stop by, never seek it out. If they heard about it, they would say, maybe, yeah, not for me. And it's when you come to them in the reading halls that you have the biggest impact is, is that a fair assessment that there is a self-selecting group for some aspects of the Human Library, and it's actually the people who are most resistant to it that you really want to kind of get to, to really prove the point of what you're doing.

Ronni Abergel: I don't think there are some people that are more biased than others. I think there are some people that are more courageous to challenge and more aware to challenge their own bias than others. But I think we're all judgmental. We all judge. But you're completely right in your observation, James. It's fair to assume that the people that seek us out on their own, like yesterday from Lichtenstein, from France, from Germany, from the United Arab Emirates, from the Ukraine visiting the Reading Garden yesterday, to us specifically because they wanted to do this. Now are they especially courageous and curious and taking responsibility for their own labels. Yes, they are. And I commend them and I respect them, and I appreciate them for coming down and visiting our reading garden. I also understand that the decision makers, the gatekeepers to the labor market, many of the people that are holding our books back because of their judgments, we gotta get to them through their corporate space. And they might not seek us out on their own, not because they don't care, because they don't know the kind of impact this could offer. If they knew they would come, if they knew how they could change and become stronger and more competent, they would come and seek this information out. But they don't know.

So it's also our responsibility to make them know this. What we've noticed with many of our corporate partners, and I'm going to drop a few names now with the risk of them being prosecuted by the US government, but companies like Heineken, McDonald's, eBay, for years have engaged with us. And we've done important work together on their journey and revisiting us and distributing us further widely across their organizations. They've seen the impact, they've understood the value, and they've embraced it and invited us to partner. Now, some of that work is completely slowing down a little bit in some organizations, not necessarily the ones I just mentioned, because we've partnered with more than 200 global brands. But we're feeling a, we're feeling a clear reaction and thinking, wow, more than ever there a need for what we're doing? So maybe we just hold our breath for a second and see if it won't be a second breath of air. And some companies will return to their values. Return to their journey, because we need to impact decision makers. We can host public events all that we want with the walkups to the classical Human Library desk like you described. If we want to be really simple, we could say that probably is a little bit preaching to the congregation and they need that too. We do need wider reach. And that is why we also host online Zooms free. And we for people from around the world, and we try to take this to as many decision making levels in organizations and companies that we can.

James Clasper: How do you measure your impact? How do you know it works? Beyond the anecdotal, the appearance of change, the transformation that you see. How do you kind of gauge any sense of yeah. Progress, I suppose.

Ronni Abergel: I mean, we've been privileged to partner with some institutions that have rolled out some evaluation studies for us, some impact studies. Most recently, the University of Glasgow with the School of Medicine, where we partnered for years in trying to bring their students through some learning modules with us on their journey to become medical practitioners. So that case study has shown some very interesting and promising impact. But I'm more the anecdotal type in the sense what I see is what I believe. And then when I get a letter from somebody 21 years later reflecting on their experience that day, sharing details that they remember for 21 years, then I know that I was right. And then I get a letter three years later from somebody. 17 years down the road the same kind of thing. Like, and I know that I was right. And it doesn't really matter if I'm right. What matters is the library works. Yeah. And I don't think anything could stand on its feet for 25 years without public funding and redistribute itself to all continents almost if it didn't work. So I think everybody feels it when they do it in Tallahassee, in Florida, when they do it in Brazil, when they do it in New Zealand, when they do it in Canada or in Bangladesh or in Japan or the Philippines at the University de University Library there. Why do they keep doing it? It works. So, you know, there's no reason to reinvent the deep dish here. We've got the space, but we need more people to take advantage and come down and learn.

James Clasper: Have you noticed any difference in how you've implemented the Human Library concept around the world and among different countries and cultures? Have some been more or less receptive to the idea of opening up and challenging prejudices and unjudging people?

Ronni Abergel: Sure, and I don't want to expose anyone, but I want to say that there are significant challenges in implementing this concept across different cultures, and we need to be very respectful and careful. So when you go to the United Arab Emirates and Dubai, there is a community there ready for certain conversations and some conversations they're not ready for. When you go to Russia, certain conversations can be had in the public space, others cannot they're not ready. Tunisia, South Korea, Japan, Egypt, it doesn't really matter where we go. There are certain things that will be global bestsellers, like mental health, like I mentioned, but then there are other conversations that they're not so keen on welcoming at this stage. But if we start somewhere, James, then we can expand. We didn't expect to be able to go to Tunisia and publish, say, well, the Jewish book on the first day, or the gay book. Okay, let's, let's go gentle. Let's take the steps and when they're ready. Because we don't wanna bring anybody in harm's way here. We can't have people showing up, being angry at our books or wanting to punish them or prosecute them or cause them harm. That's not what we are about. So we can't do that. So we try to adapt. And then there are certain boundaries, and I'll be very short the Russian authorities tell us that we're not welcome in the state library anymore unless we take away the LGBTQIA book or books. Then we're like, we can't go back in your building then because we think it's a fact that there are LGBTQIA plus people in your community and they need to have a voice like everybody else. And so, unless it's illegal. To be gay, we're gonna publish the gay, just go somewhere else. So some places will have to navigate the sensor and other places we're showing consideration to the local acceptance level, what will they accept? Because we don't want to anger or offend people.

James Clasper: How often are you a reader yourself?

Ronni Abergel: I'm reading books at every event where I go. I just don't sit down for the half hour, but I get to know them backstage while we're waiting for readers and I get to know their story. I would say in that context, I definitely read between two and four books a month. Getting to know people backstage, behind the scenes. It's mostly the new books.

James Clasper: And is there a book that you still remember as having a particular impact that challenged you? It changed the way you see that topic, that issue.

Ronni Abergel: Many books have helped me change and improve, qualify, expand my perspective. But I gotta say one book that hit me home, well, there are many, one that hit me personally was the one on bereavement is meeting a man from the UK who's been on our bookshelf for years. And I've, you know, I've been in conversation, I've read all the book reviews that he got in and I saw what people benefited. And one day we got to go on a trip to Sweden and publish for a company there. And he came over and we got to talk more. And understanding his journey versus my own, as I'm a widower myself, suddenly lost my wife 12 years ago, was really valuable on a personal level. All things aside, not being Human Library related in that sense. But in South Korea, meeting a woman. Who was an open book on bereavement, but could not tell her kids that the father had passed and was not being honest in her social circles, that the father had passed in a traffic accident in the US, he was still there avoid social marginalization of being a single mother in South Korea. That it dawned upon me what was going on that he had been gone for two years and still nobody knew except her because the social burden it would bring on her family, which was already almost unbearable. Single mother with little children. I was just, I was devastated, to be honest, and I'll never forget that ever.

James Clasper: Ronni Abergel. That's been absolute privilege and a pleasure. Thank you for being on this episode of Archipelago.

Ronni Abergel: My absolute pleasure and thanking for letting me do the long talk. It's always so short and today really I felt I could go in depth and bring perspective. I hope it's useful. Thank you, James.

James Clasper: You've been listening to Archipelago, produced and hosted by me, James Clasper, for Archipelago Audio. You'll find links to the Human Library's website in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone else, leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you don't miss the rest of this season's stories. Next time on Archipelago, we'll meet Denmark's biggest Elvis Presley fan and find out what happened when he built a replica of Graceland in Jutland.

Henrik Knudsen: One morning I woke up and I thought, you know what? I don't want, get old and not have tried this. I've been an Elvis fan all my life. I have seen people making a business out of it. And I thought, even though Denmark, even though Randers is more odd than anything, I want to try it.

James Clasper: That's next time on Archipelago. I hope you'll join me.