Antidoters Podcast

Hands up if you’d be up for a quick drug to fix the biggest problem in your life. 🙋Unless you live under a rock, you will have heard that this is now available for one of the most sizeable (sorry) facing Western populations: Fat.  And the ramifications could stretch much, much further than waistlines.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Please subscribe for free to receive new posts and share to support my work.Obesity has become the biggest cause of preventable death in the West.  In the US it contributes to the premature death of more people each year than all American deaths in battle ever (source: Johann Hari).  In the UK, over 60% of the population are now overweight - a contributing factor in more than 50% of cancers and with preventable diabetes now costing the tax-payer 10% of the NHS budget.   In <50 years, the rapid introduction of ultra-processed foods coupled with increasingly sedentary lifestyles has resulted in excess-weight replacing malnutrition as the biggest health issue in the modern world. But the miracle solution is finally here: GLP-1s, e.g. ‘Ozempic’- injections that suppress appetite and trick your brain into ‘satiety,’ (a new favourite word).   It’s the reason why most of the celebrities you have seen pictures of recently are looking increasingly hollowed out. Given the evidence for its efficacy this could be the greatest antidote I have ever and will ever cover on this blog.  But there’s an oft-quoted saying that there are only two types of drugs:  drugs that don’t work and drugs with side effects.  The question is whether the benefits outweigh the side-effects.  And for this one, we need to look at the potential of far-reaching ramifications across the whole of society and the economy... not just those in the human body.  The problem is, our politically short-term silo-ing of issues means we’re very bad at this, instead playing sticking-plaster wack-a-mole on unwelcome side effects as they arise.Implications for Healthcare In the US, people have fewer barriers to getting their hands on anything that they’re prepared to shell out for.  Not so in a tax-funded health system.  In a Spectator article by Max Pemberton this week, he discussed how this innovation - being rolled out rapidly across global health systems - has the potential to bankrupt the NHS, diverting resources from other conditions and potentially removing incentives to embrace healthier lifestyles.  He considers how far weight should be considered a ‘disease’ vs. a ‘lifestyle issue’ and how this might be evidence of more ‘mission creep into the realm of personal responsibility for our wellbeing’.   Such conversations come up frequently around issues like nose jobs, hair-loss and IVF and are challenging to draw lines within.  Dear Government, Fix us please.  It’s not our fault (or responsibility?), Kind regards, The Electorate. But if not tax-funded, might we not see an even starker socio-economic divide with poor access to such drugs for the less well off (already over-represented in the statistics)? The implications for the economy So let’s think this through looking at the US market where two thirds of adults are considered either obese (70 million) or overweight (99 million)… a mere 169 million.  Imagine half of these were on the drug and dropped their calories intake by 50%...  Wow.  The impact of that on the convenience food industry.   Coke, Nestle, McDonalds, Krispy Kremes, Chocolottalatte frapacccinos…. The literal and almost over-night shrinking of half the population may be fantastic for the individual, but for industry, it requires agile forecasting and the ability to pivot rapidly to avoid mass industry demise (something few big businesses are adept at) = mass job losses. With the agricultural and food sector employing 10% of people in the US, ‘thin, but broke’ could be a very realistic possibility for many.  I’ve no doubt the food industry lobbyists are on the case. Few product industries would be immune to this significant a change, but of course there would be benefits too:  the fashion industry would see a huge boost in demand alongside reduced textile costs (and, according to a fashion friend, handbag sales could go into steep decline… make of that what you will); the drugs apparently boost self-control across the board reducing smoking, drug and alcohol consumption;  airlines would save a s**t-tonne on the cost of fuel-tonnes; the jewellery resizing industry is apparently already booming;  demand for medical devices for hip and knee joints will decline + + +   The mind boggles as to how many others might see a significant direct or indirect impact and the opportunities and threats it presents.  And what about the black market?  There are undoubtedly shady entrepreneurs dissecting these drugs in unregulated underground labs at this very minute, hoping to cash in on the magic solution for an already multi-billion dollar industry drowning in quackery.  The implications for long term health  Few yet know the answer to this one yet, but it’s inevitable that such rapid weight loss will come with side effects - to muscle mass, bone density, joints, correlation to certain cancer-types and more.  And what about the possible loss of all the mental health benefit that comes with increased exercise (inevitably deprioritised by this, regardless of official ‘advice’). And what does the dramatic slimming-down of the celebrity world mean for already body-dysmorphic teenagers?  How many more crippling eating disorders might these trends trigger in our superficial, looks-obsessed world?  The implications for not doing the hard workThis is the broader, more philosophical question that intrigues me.   In our modern quest for quick-fixes, is yet another ‘easy’ solution that absolves us from hard work good for us, as a society?  Psychologically, we know the satisfaction and sense of personal fulfilment that follows effort.  The view at the top of the mountain is so joyous as a result of the energy expended to get there;  the food so much more delicious post the time in creation and careful preparation; the book that has the greatest impact on us is the one we write, not read..   Life is a journey of slow, hard-won achievements, not a destination where we should expect instant-gratification on tap.  Interestingly, I heard that the suicide rate quadruples for people post bariatric stomach surgery with various theories as to why.  One being that the removal of food as a source of numbing comfort can send many into deep depression;  another that once the diagnosed single-source of unhappiness is solved, an existential crisis occurs as all the others come flooding to the fore:  loneliness, toxic relationships, poverty or poor life choices.   So many innovations in healthcare have revolutionised life on this planet - from antibiotics to vaccines - eradicating truly evil diseases and dramatically increasing life-expectancy. Let’s sincerely hope that this proves to be the next in that line.All hail the scientists and inventors… until they give us reason to curse them for the new, different scourges they might unwittingly unleash on the world. Take my other obsession as a case in point: social media and the attention economy. Hailed for its global community-building powers of connectivity and for providing free access to all the information in the world,  but with the not insignificant ‘side effects’ of addiction, social polarisation, concentration degradation and the mental rewiring of our children.  Could we have foreseen that? Certainly there’s a case for trying to look further around the corner on this one. Personally, I suspect Ozembic PLUS Sweatcoin is a much better solution  (always be selling).  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

Entrepreneurs are optimists by nature and masters at turning problems into solutions.  Many of the best harness counter-intuitive thinking that plays on human emotion rather than rationality - as best articulated by the Prince of behavioural interpretation (who may or may not appreciate being verbed).  So how can we harness his antidoter ways of thinking to solve the teen smartphone problem? (or get him in a room with Jonathan Haidt for a brainstorm - I’ll make the tea and take notes).My career has been shaped by seeking to fuel the innovations of optimists.  It’s why I’ve invested the last three years at Sweatcoin, an exciting business which took the huge problem of our increasingly sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles and turned it into an opportunity.  They believed (and have since proven with over 150M global users) that incentives and rewards can represent a paradigm shift in how we think about movement:  the difference between choosing to stand on a moving-up escalator or walk up it; of taking the stairs rather than the lift or proactively getting off a bus a stop early.  Each additional step = points which can be spent on a range of goods and services.  It provides daily nudges that have the power to impact life-long behavioural change.  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Ultimately, the Sweatcoin vision is to create a ‘movement economy’, one to rival the attention economy - but unlike the latter, offering a win-win for all, connecting brands and users in a marketplace of reward and benefit, with the potential to save the taxpayer billions on preventable diseases. (Type2 Diabetes costs the NHS £14Bn a year, >10% of its total budget and more than the police, fire and judicial system put together(!!).  With news this week that diagnoses are up 39% for Under-40s in just 6 years, move more, people. Move more).    Being a small part of Sweatcoin’s success leads me to wonder how such incentive-led solutions might be harnessed for other problems I care about.  Working closely with such do-ers also explains my frustration with the opportunity cost of so much navel-gazing social discourse and the negativity of tear-down strategies.  Too many super-smart people get stuck in awareness-raising-mode (often misdirected by biased data) or rage, seeking to dismantle rather than build to take bites out of problems. Rory Sutherland is the master of positive alchemy and counter-intuitive thinking. He wrote the book on it.  He is one of the most erudite, amusing and potentially irritating podcast guests, with his hosts struggling to get a word in edgeways as he goes off on tangents of whimsical anecdotes to highlight insights into behavioural science E.g. here, here, here  (lesson to podcasters: just let him rip). He is particularly strong on how simple reframing can solve problems. E.g. repositioning the annoying bus that arrives to unload plane passengers as a VIP chauffeur direct to immigration to avoid the queues; how a fraction of the money earmarked for HS2 rail could have created greater opportunity if it went towards upgrading existing trains with greater comfort and reliable wifi for relaxation and deep work opportunities; or how the Uber live-map functionality is ‘a psychological moonshot’- not reducing waiting time but making it 90% less frustrating.   As an Ad-man, he frequently references the many brands that have successfully played with perceptions, turning weaknesses into strengths - think Guinness’s ‘good things come to those who wait’, Stella’s ‘reassuringly expensive’ or Marmite’s ‘love it or hate it’.    Some favourite quotes: “Engineers, medical people, scientific people, have an obsession with solving the problems of reality, when actually … once you reach a basic level of wealth in society, most problems are actually problems of perception.”“The skill you need to win an argument is not the same as the skill you need to solve problems, yet our education system conflates the two (and we only reward the former in politicians)”.  “A flower is a weed with an advertising budget.”“The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.”“It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative. The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors.”“what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal”‘A rich man is any man that earns more than his wife’s sister’s husband’ (*possibly not his but sounds like it should be)On listening to Rory, I find my brain fires in different directions.  Of course, one strategy is simply to challenge preconceptions and problem-diagnosis with nuance (the antidoter blog strategy), but how can we also channel energies and his type of thinking into incentivising, positive solutions?  Take kids and smartphones. Now the evidence is in for its many negative impacts, my fear is that we are at risk of creating a punishing vacuum for the young with few alternatives in our safety-first culture.  Where are the incentives?  There are fewer youth clubs or places to hang out; fewer parents willing to give their children the independence in real life (IRL) that they enjoyed (despite evidence it’s much safer than the online world); poor public transport, plus - most fundamentally -  a huge chasm to cross before we can reach a tipping point of those without the internet in their pockets being numerous enough to occupy each other.   We urgently need entrepreneurs to rush into this challenge.  How do we reframe screen abstinence as IRL opportunities and make it cool?  What incentives could we provide as an alternative to scare-mongering, nagging and abstinence? Can we connect IRL brands (who will be losing business to the 7 daily hours now spent on devices) with teenagers in a loop of reward akin to Sweatcoin’s model?  How can we encourage investment in new offline business models when incentives are now so skewed towards the 100x returns that only tech-scalability can offer?   One aspiring business I’ve discovered (through this blog and its associated Linkedin posts) and hugely appreciate is ‘The Den’ who are building a nationwide network of social clubs, designed by teenagers for teenagers.  Take <3 minutes to enjoy their powerful video setting out the problem and their vision, alongside the brilliant social campaign they’ve kick-started #IRLRevolution.  Invest if you’re so inclined…This week, a request: please share any others that you stumble across that you believe might have a role to play in tackling this problem, however obliquely.  Holiday clubs, Forest schools, conversation-starter cards, geocaching ++ etc.  We may still be in the problem-identification stage, but we need to move rapidly to solutions: knowledge-sharing, dot-connecting and market and network-building.   Antidoters Assemble! * subtitle quote not actually Rory… credit: Charlie MungerMore: Do subscribe to Jon’s Substack to keep abreast of his work. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

This week I’ve been overwhelmed by ‘bounce head’.  My term for something every working mother will understand:  the feeling of holding more to-dos and conflicting emotions in your head at any one time than it’s possible to get down on a list; that sees your focus bounce back and forth constantly, within seconds from the most mundane lifemin to the most important family, friend or working-life priorities.Sometimes known as ‘the mother’s mental load’, here’s mine this week in no particular order but as they bounce around my bounce head:Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.A CEO Linkedin strategy; de-flea-ing an unhappy cat; 2 x two-page-long packing lists for school residential trips; replacing a rotten window frame that has just fallen off its hinges; inviting 20 Health-tech leaders to an event in Amsterdam; messaging eight mums re. dates for a birthday sleepover;  two more chapters of the book draft I’ve promised a publisher by end of June; booking a summer holiday; (damn it, and camp bookings between those dates); a 5-page business award nomination; puppy training for a dog that won’t stop rolling in sh1t; getting the final slides in for a main-stage talk at London Tech Week; replacing cricket whites that now flap around the calves; refunding unhappy guests in a tired, requiring-update Airbnb; 378 pages of board-paper reading (and more importantly, thinking);  four waiting loads of washing; trying to find a pitch template I saved 2 years ago to share with an impressive social entrepreneur I’ve just met;  buying four birthday party gifts;  follow ups to four exciting meetings;  a marketing strategy for the local town market; walk the new puppy; and all this around the existential emotional worries: an act of utter carelessness that has hurt a much-loved friend; that one child has received next to no 1:1 attention of late or that another’s academic confidence is in decline -  oh, and a blog to write.  And it’s only Tuesday.  Aaaaaaaand breathe. Bounce head is not actually about the sheer volume of the to-do-list but the head f*ck that comes from moving from one highly emotive or important issue to five other mundane, urgent actions in the space of a single minute.  And I bet many mums could meet or raise me on that list in any given week.  Our heads are a constant melee of emotion, guilt, frustration, irritation, deadline pressure and exhaustion - we’re Neo in the Matrix, dodging bullets that just won’t stop coming.We’re left with an inability to prioritise the deep work that is really important until we’ve cleared some of the mental load of the urgent - with much of the latter triggered by immediacy - a call from the school nurse; a customer complaint or the sports kit left in the footwell of the car that is required prior to the away-coach leaving at 1pm. This is the reason that I lose patience with the ‘productivity’ industry (primarily promoted by childless men).  Yes, it would be lovely to eat the frog, time-box, read more self-help books or just do the three important things that day.  To choose not to worry about the washing piles or the kitchen table covered in a detritus of scrunched-up uniform in bags, dropped flower heads and sticky stains - but for most mums, the urgent can’t wait for the important.  The sh1t hits the fan when it choses and it’s impossible to push the little irritations into the back brain to enable deep focus elsewhere.  Decks must be cleared. And much of this is female.  It plays out along gendered-lines in so many family homes around me and all over the internet with men stepping over the optimistic pile on the bottom step or able to focus perfectly well on their laptop amidst the scrunched up uniform and on top of the sticky stain.  (Here’s Sally from Home & Away crying as she has this phenomenon explained to her by a psychologist, quoting how much more biologically wired women are to this, than men).   Those women blessed with partners, could, and should delegate more. We know this… and here’s one doing so, refusing to do her grown ass man’s laundry or book his hospital appointments, but I personally think she misses the point.  We’re not trying to be martyrs.  Many of us need to have a finger on the pulse of all the minutiae of detail within the walls of the family sanctuary.  Indeed, we are the pulse of the family home and calendar.  Many of us want to be. Feminism has risen all our expectations and flung open doors of opportunity - especially for the professional class - but it hasn’t fundamentally rewired us.  Is this just the price we pay for wanting it all, or am I just personally an idiot for taking on too much, being unable to delegate and martyring myself in the process?  All I can think is that maybe it’s no wonder increasing numbers of GenZ women don’t want to follow in their professional mother’s footsteps… You’ll miss these days, they say.  Those were the happiest years of my life, my mother tells me.  And I know I will.  There’s so much love amidst the chaos.  And there are solutions beyond just taking less on and learning the power of no. Family management apps, shared calendars or software project management tools; even virtual lifemin concierge services like BlckBx (which I use and am a big fan of - currently on the task of ranking local secondary schools for me -  but which sadly can’t measure a rotten window, read a physical gas meter, or take the sports kit back in).  As a company perk, it’s positioned at fast-paced companies who employ busy professionals, run by entrepreneurial women who know these challenges well.  (Indeed, its annual cost paid for itself in just one insurance policy renegotiation this year).  Workplaces generally are waking up to this challenge, allowing women greater flexibility or part-time hours and (albeit with less speed and uptake) rolling out similar incentives for men to try and address the imbalance.  These work and do help the many women who use them, but we should be under no illusion that their disproportionate take-up does have an impact on the pace of female career-progression - and ultimately the gender-pay gap.  What proportion of this gap might be influenced by choice is a question I’ve wrestled with for many years, especially when it’s a choice made by some of the highest female earners in society who are often also the loudest critics of ‘the patriarchy’. For my part, of course there’s also the therapy that is this blog-theme and the time required to write it (in a week I can’t afford to). It forces me to stop, breathe and consider the antidotes to this conundrum - and there are many to remind myself of that slow my pounding heart.   The new puppy and the requirement to get her out on walks - come rain or shine - has provided another. Walks that remind me to feel grateful that I have people in my life who I love so much to want to ‘win’ this admin for;  work that I’m motivated and energised by and want to do well; opportunities that i’ve created that excite me; and most of all a husband who (post cowering at my initial outburst) understands that, to use Brene Brown’s analogy on the ‘crock of s**t’ that is the concept of a 50:50 marriage, when I’m at 20, he needs to find 80:We have to sit down at a table anytime we have less than 100 combined and figure out a plan of kindness to each other. The thing is… marriage is not something that’s 50:50.  A partnership works when you can carry their 20 or they can carry your 20 and that when you both have 20, you have a plan where you don’t hurt each other. As ever, I’m in awe of anyone that has to manage this solo.  Heroes.  This week, maybe have a think about anyone you know who’s either struggling to be the 100 by themselves, or who’s on a 10 or 20.  Can you give them 10 of yours?  Or maybe just be a walking companion?  It’s not just partners that make a difference, but good friends. Now the pressures of the start of this week have abated and I’m back to 50, I’ve resolved to do better.  Further reading * Update: Great minds: Here’s Mary Harrington today much more eloquently tackling the same subject matter and identifying the difference between the ‘CEO of Earning’ and the ‘CEO of the home’ and the division of labour that fluxes according to each individual’s circumstances. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

Activism is in-vogue.  So much so, ‘Activist’ appears to now be a job-title according to LinkedIn and it’s perhaps no surprise given that rage has replaced sex as the hottest marketing tool (Scott Galloway is great on this here). Maybe it never left, and arguably, we have much progress to thank it for.  The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right that most of us in the West believe in wholeheartedly.  It can be hugely inspiring to observe and no doubt participate in crowds thronging together in a single, shared world-changing purpose.  Feeling like we’re ‘doing something’ and ‘making a difference’.  As Yascha Mounk writes in the Spectator this week of the current protest : Its ostensible cause is hardly ignoble. It’s possible to be appalled both by the 7 October attacks and the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths. It would be inhumane not to share the widespread horror at what is happening in Gaza. And anti-war rallies have, of course, long been part of the student experience, a hallmark of a free society. But as the above article goes on to demonstrate, I am not alone in fearing that the current angry, lawless iterations risk damaging their causes more than furthering them.Like this? Intensely dislike it? Please sign up & share to help spread the word so we can all have a civilised debate about what I get wrong!  Like many, I’ve watched the on-campus protests in the US and many others in recent years- increasingly imported to the UK - along with their descent into unruliness with a mixture of alarm and fear.  Where is the line between peaceful protest and anarchy?  On the current issue, I utterly accept my own ignorance, despite having sought to read as widely as I can from all sides.  But given my ongoing ignorance of the complicated historical, religious and ideological context, I defer the debate to experts and instead, like many, to resort to favouring gut instincts based on my own values - democratic processes, respect for law, tolerance of difference, free speech, debate and the rules of modern warfare - all of which, frankly appear under threat.  It is alarming. And deeply upsetting to witness mass loss of civilian life, but personally I choose not to wade in and fuel any agenda with further ignorance. The issue on which I have Antidoter concerns this week is around modern activism itself. Primarily… does it actually work?  As far as I can observe, it seems to turn people away rather than towards the violent protestor’s cause (and I do draw a distinction between peaceful and violent), driving even deeper wedges down through society between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’.  Have we entirely lost the ability to converse respectfully on contentious issues, instead requiring shouting and worse - destruction and violence - to make ourselves heard? When passions run high, anger is unavoidable but common sense suggests it’s rarely the best strategy.  If we resort to dehumanising each other and violence, have we not already lost the argument?   As the saying goes - never negotiate with terrorists… and as any parent of toddler-terrorists knows, it is rarely effective.  To acquiesce to the demands or descend to the level of the screaming child rarely gets results, and worse, it risks damaging the causes the protesters care so much about.  In our attention economy, it’s become performative and darker. As I’ve come to realise, it’s perhaps the most high-profile symptom of so many of the various issues I’ve discussed previously -  polarisation, privilege, victimhood and narcissism.  Many (not all!) activists drink from a firehose of one-sided, angry, politicised content and then tribe-up in self-affirming bubbles of outrage to signal their global-good-person credentials vs the ‘unenlightened’. These days, it’s fuelled by binary short-form content which is performative by design, stoking fear and rewarding outrage.  The intention now seems to be to stir up physical altercations that can be filmed and distributed to create social stars of the creators.  There is little that depresses me more than the sight of 100s of onlookers getting their phones out to record a confrontation for an opportunity to win followers by throwing fuel on the fire.  Is it really being recorded for ‘evidence’ and the greater good? To my mind, it just shows a lack a basic humanity, bordering on glee, to be so close to the drama. And of course, the proliferation of these videos, from every possible angle warps our sense of their prevalence. Ignorance and hypocrisy can seem rife (no doubt again, amplified by opposing sides): Palestine protesters unable to name either the river or sea, or define ‘intifada’; UK BLM protestors kneeling and shouting ‘don’t shoot’ to unarmed UK police;  Both pro and anti Brexit tribes conflating the powers of the EU, the Euro-zone or the European Court of Justice; Just Stop Oil protestors using oil-based paints to destroy priceless works of art (created with oil-based paints); climate protesters flying around the world to rallies or causing miles of idling motorway traffic that exacerbate pollution.  Youth, anger and ‘how dare you’ soundbites now trump degrees or Nobel-award-winning lifetimes of experience.   Shadowy well-funded political organisations pull strings behind the scenes, funding placard production at best, bussing in ‘professional’ external activists at worst, or providing tents, play-books and police-baiting strategies - often recycled from the last anti-capitalist/ anti-establishment upswell.   Key organisations supporting the current US protests, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), explicitly celebrated Hamas’s terror attack in the days following 7 October. In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party is always found at protest rallies, no matter the cause, handing out free placards and flags.  (More here).   On campus protestors can come across as entitled - typically middle class and from affluent families - albeit fleshed out by outside ‘professional’ agitators who have made up a heavy proportion of recent arrests. It will be interesting to see what happens on campuses once the summer break arrives. This week at Dartmouth University the student government held an open "no confidence" vote on the president's handling of campus protests. It passed (no confidence) 13-2 (with 3 abstentions). When then repeated with a secret ballot, it failed 8-9 (with 2 abstentions)...  making something of a mockery of the process and serving to demonstrate the huge recent growth of self-censorship that open hostility to others’ ‘wrong’ opinions results in.  Is this not the definition of bullying? When public property is damaged or everyday people seriously inconvenienced, prevented from hearing diverse viewpoints or worse- vilified, a cause rapidly loses support.  Back in the votes-for-women time, there was a divide between the more militant suffragettes and the more peaceful policy-focussed suffragists, with Fawcett, the leader of the latter accusing the former of setting the movement back.  She commented: "I can never feel that setting fire to houses and churches and litter boxes and destroying valuable pictures really helps to convince people that women ought to be enfranchised."There remains to this day debate over which group affected more change or how far it would have happened anyway post women’s direct involvement in the war effort and amidst wider emancipation for men during that period. I’ve long feared this in one of the realms I do know a little more about - the contentious field of gender ideology.  I wonder if the biggest threat to trans people going about their daily lives in peace is actually trans activism.  This debate turns nasty very quickly and has actually appeared to damage public support (which has swung downwards in recent years) - whether by insisting on exposing children to over-sexualised drag content in the name of promoting inclusivity or labelling anyone daring to voice even a modicum of concern over the complicated balance of rights or myriad of issues self-ID presents - to children’s health, women’s sports or women’s spaces - a TERF, bigot or even child-killer. Whether shifts in public opinion move away from the aggressive efforts of those who de-platform and choose violet protest or angry rhetoric over debate, or towards a (typically) more measured, longer-form debate of the other is a question that merits investigation as it may be a key to understanding how to actually shift public opinion. Whatever the case, should a certain prospective president in the States wish to run on a ‘restoring order’ manifesto, it’s likely to find many more sympathetic prospective voters than it might have done prior to the recent uprisings.   The phrase ‘cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face’ springs to mind. More:  * Terry Eagleton In defence of our new student radicals * Park Macdougald on The people setting America on Fire * Yascha Mounk - How Universities Raised a new Generation of Activists* Washington Times opinion piece ‘Who is Paying these Outside Agitators?’  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

How does one market the certainty of death to people?  It’s tricky if not impossible given we all prefer (need?) to believe we’re invincible. And yet the Death Industry is the most market-robust of all, patiently residing in the shadows of the internet awaiting a google-prompt at our hour of greatest, heart-breaking need: undertakers, coffin-makers, florists, wake-providers and head-stone carvers.  It serves a never-ending stream of customers via calm, soothing websites suffused with love-affirming quotes and calla lily images. As you’ll know by now, I love a good snorkel around a new industry and this one intrigues me.  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Specifically, the history-graduate-turned-tech-entrepreneur in me was troubled as to what the massive expansion of our digital footprint was doing to the historical record, both for society and for our own, personal memories. What will be left of our lives and the lives of those we love and will lose, with the days of discovering troves of handwritten love letters and sepia photos in a box in a cupboard now long gone? Yes, there is a lot more content that has been captured in this modern, digital age, but how accurate - and accessible - is it to those we leave behind?  How considered and thoughtful? The art of letter-writing has all but died, so which parts of our scrappy digital archive would we want people to know is actually ‘us’ amidst all the guff and digital detritus of grown-out-of opinions, out-of-context throw-away comments, ugly photos and old passions long-since discarded. On whose servers, and how safely does it reside for posterity?  Death is the only certainty in life.  Remembering that can be a source of panic… or reassurance, depending on how we perceive it.  None of us are immune and it is a passage that every human in history has taken before us.  It’s the final, great equaliser.  Like many others, it is the deaths of those I love that occupy my fears more than my own.  My experience of it - of a parent, a sister-in-law, a close friend - all of whom passed well before their time, are a constant source of pain, but one I’ve learnt to channel into gratitude for the life, health and love I have.  Little glimpses and memories of their vivid lives surround me: old articles and a hand-written diary from my father; my sister-in-law’s powerful, poignant art covering the walls of my mother-in-law’s house;  squirly, hand-written notes on the Christmas decoration gift boxes from my friend that I unwrap lovingly each year on decorating the tree.   To know about your impending death, or not to know? That is the question.  Objectively, now that the shock has long subsided, in many ways I’m thankful for my father’s sudden death on a Winter’s morning on a mountain side- his favourite place in the world, with his family around him.  No fear or the cruelty and pain of a drawn out terminal illness.  But perhaps there are ‘advantages’ to the latter (if you can call them that):  an opportunity to prepare and think deeply about legacy and your loved ones.  A university friend wrote the most beautiful memoir of her life’s learnings for her twin six year olds during her terminal months. Kate Gross’s ‘Late Fragments:  Everything I Want to Tell You (About this Magnificent Life) is an achingly poignant reminder of the beauty and fragility of life which I have now re-read 4x (and gifted many times).  It is the most precious gift she could have left for her young sons in the absence of her own loving arms throughout their childhood.   Perhaps this blog is a less profound version of mine to at least enable those I love to know a fraction of the myriad of thoughts that run through my head.  But will Substack still exist by the time my kids are of an age that they might be curious?  (Ironically, maybe i’ll produce a printed-out version for them in time).  And of course, not everyone is blessed with being able to weave words as beautifully and evocatively as Kate. There are 10s of 1000s of photos now to prompt both tears and memories of happier times with passed loved ones, but it is the words, voices and handwriting we really cherish.  And I long for more audio and video of my father, more of his stories and life-lessons to share with the son-in-law and grand-children he never met.   One of my biggest regrets is for all the encyclopaedic knowledge that he had at his fingertips about nature, history and politics that he and his photographic, thirsty-for-knowledge brain had acquired across 60 years.  The myriad of birds he could identify by song in the garden; his deep knowledge about the movement of people over centuries which go towards explaining how national identities have evolved; how glaciation many centuries ago carved out the valleys and fells of the Lake District we love… deep wisdom, insight and interpretations extinguished in an instant.  What would Dad have done or advised in this situation?  I’ll never know.  Arguably we are all living ‘terminally’ to some degree but for most of us ‘legacy’ amounts to little more than the love we evoke in those closest to us.  And to be clear, this is no small or insignificant thing.  Perhaps it is the most important thing.  But this longing for more from my father (plus listening to far too many episodes of ‘Desert Island Discs’) led me to ponder on the opportunity of curating audio stories from every-day people before they pass.  Archives we can draw on for comfort and reassurance in our grief, on bad or good days.  Down another entrepreneurial rabbit hole I fell.  And of course, I found countless businesses meeting this need.  Companies that offer ghost-writers to research and write beautiful, custom printed book memoirs (here and here), online remembrance websites for grieving people to visit on anniversaries (here) or accessible via QR codes on headstones (here) and audio ideas similar to my own e.g. here and here,  but the more I explored the industry, the more I appreciated its challenges.  If providing a digital archive, how can any lightly-funded start-up guarantee that they can hold these, most precious of memories in perpetuity and that they won’t fall within the 80% odds of failed start-ups?  (Ultimately, it struck me that this was a content-creation/ data-storage business which would struggle to monetise in an attention economy world of free big-tech storage).  How does one yield the best content without expensive Kirsty-Young style competence in interviewing skill (which is not to be sniffed at)?   And perhaps most importantly, how does the instigator kindly and carefully broach ‘you’re either in the process of, or might soon die so would you mind please doing x’ to the desired subject of the archive? It’s a morbid business. Literally.  But one I continue to believe there’s huge scope for. Conversations about special memories, experiences, failures and learnings are to be encouraged between family and good friends. They’re reminders of what’s important.  Why not make a recording of them a reason to have them?   But is this a business or simply a practice that could be more widely adopted - perhaps aided by prompt cards or format advice?  Nostalgic conversations recorded and transcribed; a DIY ‘Desert Island Discs’ with Grandad perhaps; or a weekly exchange of voice notes with Grandma in response to prompts - ‘tell me about your favourite holiday’, ‘your biggest regret’, ‘your best friends at school’;  After all, we already have the tech to record and store these precious audio or video nuggets in our pockets.   Perhaps these could be projects initiated between young and old, helping to stem the rapid growth of loneliness in society and bridge the growing age-divide in society.   (They could maybe serve to repair a little of our rapidly waning ‘respect for elders’).  Student journalists could ‘side hustle’ it. (Are they any student journalists these days, or are they all YouTubing?); schools could move to integrate them as homework deliverables.  StoryCorps in the US is a fantastic non-profit initiative that harnesses many of these and has yielded over 700K individual audio studios for the US Library of Congress Archive - partly via audio booths placed in public places around the country.  Everyday people sharing beautiful everyday stories - of love, loss, adventure and daily life through the decades. Death - the prospect of both our own and those we love - is perhaps the greatest antidote of all.  Life’s constant reminder to live well in the present, make memories, give more and love hard.  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

The self-belief industry (along with the exclamation mark) is off-the-charts thriving.  These days everything is all about soundbite self-empowerment. You-affirming slogans scream from posters on every wall, note-pad and card shop-shelf, t-shirt fronts, instagram grids and out of every music-speaker. Riffing further on the themes of last week, is it any wonder that there’s been such a decline in mental health in a society that constantly encourages us to look inwards, at ourselves, at how everything makes us feel and to examine what we’re getting (or not) out of any particular situation. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Stoking the ‘cult of me’ is a lucrative business. The ‘inside ourselves’ trends discussed last week is one manifestation, pop culture another with empowerment lyrics woven through so many top pop songs including  Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’,  David Guetta’s ‘Titanium’ or Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’.  Indeed, Taylor Swift has created a one-woman billion dollar industry about her inner monologue affirmations.  But perhaps the best examples are the huge growth of ‘life coaching’ and the success of the self-help book genre:  self-empowerment through self-empowering others, if you will.  You can subtly ‘stop giving a f*ck’ like Mark, embrace the power of Eckhart’s ‘now’, think ‘fast and slow’ like Daniel or adopt either Stephen’s ‘7 highly successful’ or James’ ‘atomic’ habits.   But no, I’m not disparaging coaches or a whole genre of writing.  Indeed, as an entrepreneurial gold-digger, maybe I’ll join them.  ‘What’s the point of everything?’, along with ‘what’s the point of me?’ are the questions a huge market is currently seeking answers to - perhaps in response to the rise of societal cynicism and nihilism.  I have myself benefitted from a wonderful coach and many of these are fantastic books by talented writers distilling wisdom borne of centuries of population-wide insight.  But as we move from one concept to the next, perhaps feeling momentarily inspired and motivated, are we actually addressing what has created the underlying issues in our lives?   To learn about ‘me, me, me’ is the only place to look ‘someone else, someone else, someone else’? The more interesting question perhaps being: when does self-esteem tip over into narcissism?  Here’s a helpful primer from ‘Psychology Today’ yielded from deep research on page 1 of Google on the difference between the two:  Whereas self-esteem refers to a person's subjective evaluation of their value and worth, narcissism refers to feelings of self-centeredness, self-importance, superiority, grandiosity, and entitlement. A person with high self-esteem thinks, “I am good.” A narcissist thinks, “I am special,” or “I am the best.”Oh. Too late.  Here’s Lizzo to drive the point home:  In case nobody told you today… You're specialIn case nobody made you believe (nobody, no, no)... You're specialWell, I will always love you the same….  You're specialOf course, self-belief can be self-fulfilling.  Supremely confident people are enviable and impressive, so where’s the harm in infecting more people with that glow of self-belief?  If we stop dwelling on our insecurities and believe ourselves capable, we can radiate confidence, which breeds confidence, freeing us to get s**t done without the neuroses.  But feelings are not facts. In fact, our feelings are rarely to be trusted… neither the negative, nor positive, I’m afraid.  Self-doubts take root and bloom, often when we’re tired, dejected or late at night when we should be sleeping.  Over-indulging leads us down a dark tunnel from which it can be hard to gain perspective.  But believing unquestionably that we’re awesome could be just as, if not more damaging.  I can’t help feeling it provides a superficial pick-me-up at best, an inflated sense of worth at worst… edging us into a narcissistic bitterness and/or blame for our unfulfilled-potential when we don’t feel we’re winning. The reality is that we are not all born special, uniquely talented or perfect and the more we tell people they are, the more we set them up for disappointment when they realise the truth (particularly if delivered by Simon Cowell).  We only become special through our actions, deeds and hard work and if we spend all our time and emotional energy working on ‘self-care’, it inevitably comes at the expense of working on things for the wider world around us - from where much more joy, satisfaction and self-learning typically flows. We can hack this by telling everyone we care - changing our profile pics to the next cause-du-jour, sharing reels of outrage about injustice - but who really benefits from this?   Interestingly, I recently heard from a charity CEO over dinner that their donations had fallen off a cliff due to people’s desire to feel like a good person being sated by public pronouncements now rather than donations.  It’s more visible and a great virtue signal to say, ‘Look at me! I’m a good person’. Self-doubt and reflection is growth.  Taking a step or two down the tunnel can be incredibly helpful, enabling us to self-analyse, improve or adapt our strategies to different people or different conditions or to invest in more learning and skills.  Not everyone will or should have to fit around us and our ‘unique’ personality or style.   Slightly different ‘yous’ are fine and indeed, to be encouraged to bring out the best in others.  An extrovert shouldn’t always talk over an introvert;  strong opinions shouldn’t drown out weaker-held yet better informed ones; and youth doesn’t trump the life-experience of age.  Plus the ‘you’ you’re affirming might not be doing you any favours…  for your health - if overweight; for your relationships, if unyielding in your strong opinions of others; or for your career if you can’t take constructive criticism.  A bit is fine, with course correction, beneficial.  Just not so much navel-gazing that we get trapped in the mirror and tip into self-obsession.  So, herewith - some proposed new poster slogans - which may in time become chapter headings to my upcoming self-help book ‘You’re not that interesting and that’s fine’  * Most people don’t care or give you that much thought at all * Your feelings are not more important than facts * Curiosity killed nothing but bad ideas* Life is not a battle between good people and bad* Dare to say what others are thinking* Boredom is a good thing* Social media rots your brain, read books* Hard work trumps deep introspection* Go for an unplugged walk* The ultimate happiness of giving, not taking And yes - you can buy many of these anti-slogans on t-shirts here  (further evidence of tipsy-induced creativity).  More Antidoters on this topic:  * Me, me me. Are we living through a narcissism epidemic? - Zoe Williams, The Guardian* Beneath the Mask of Vulnerable Narcissism - Rob Henderson* The Imposter Syndrome of Narcissism - 3 min clip from Modern Wisdom with Professor W Keith Cambell. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

If you think culture has become a bit ‘samey’ of late, you’re not wrong.  ‘Boring’, might be a better term.   Whether in fashion, music, film, advertising, thought-leadership or business, replication is the name of the game and ticking the buzzword-bingo boxes has become easy and predictable.:  ‘Sustainable’, ‘Diverse’, ‘Clean-living’, ‘Purpose-Driven’, ‘Productivity', ‘Mindfulness’ etc....  all safely within a rapidly shrinking Overton Window of ‘acceptable’ narratives.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Please subscribe for free to receive new posts and share with your networks!This is the age of copy-cat conformity and apparent cultural stagnation. Nine of the top ten grossing films of the last decade were sequels or franchises, pop music has got more similar over time, fan-fiction books flood into the top-performing genre (bafflingly, fairy-sex fantasy - who knew?)   The ‘Airbnb’ design aesthetic for interior design is now a thing, and punks, goths and emos have all but disappeared.The familiar is comforting. Algorithms know this and reward it.  TV adverts are formulaic to an almost comical degree; social reels recycle formats and soundtracks- with Beyonce’s ‘Texas Hold’em’ the current thumb-scrolling accompaniment.  Even Linkedin has become awash with generic posts such as ‘here’s a (bleeding obvious) observation’, ‘‘40 things I learnt by 40’ (that frankly, you should have realised by 25), ‘My Top 10 Productivity Hacks’ (including the innovative, unplugged ‘walk’) and ‘The Problem with AI is…’ (normally written by AI).  Why?  Because they convert.  Add some outrage and you’re really on to a winner. Check out the free Everything is a Remix documentary for more - and you’ll see that it’s not necessarily all bad as much of our remixing culture is all about combining new with the old-and-familiar to help us understand the world better, plus achieve cut-through for the new.  As Stephen King comments ‘imitation precedes creation’. All innovation is ultimately copy… transform… combine.  But we do still need to encourage rebels and mould breakers.  How can we teach true free-thinking to the next generation of innovators in an exploding-AI world which is inherently derivative and risks drowning us in copy-cat content?  A world where human quirk, creativity and unpredictability will become the point of difference. I suspect many activists would deem themselves rebels, but are they really?  Yes, they’re fighting ‘the system’ but activism is the new religion of purpose and it thrives within bubble-like tribes where adherents feel safe and welcome whilst indulging in mass confirmation bias. Many within ‘the system’ are typically sympathetic (academia and media especially) plus it’s much easier to advocate for simplistic tearing-things-down than for incremental progress on incredibly complicated, nuanced topics.  It’s rarely ‘risky’. Indeed, pushing back on activism can often prove more perilous to careers and reputation by provoking the ire of mobs. Better to play it ‘safe’, emulating tried and tested success or advocating for popular opinions than to go out on a limb in nearly any field.  The recent online documentary ‘Climate - The Movie’ utterly blew my mind on this point, honing in on the science and experiences of non-grata, yet incredibly eminent Nobel-award-winning sceptics and so-called ‘deniers’.  (A hugely worthwhile investment of time if - and only if - you’re intrigued by the possibility of having everything you’ve thought on the subject challenged.  Note: Most aren’t. Please feel free to share any strong rebuttals of it with me as I honestly don’t know what to do with this new insight 🤯).So where can we go for genuine inspiration now?   ‘Inside ourselves’ seems to be one answer.  Recently we’ve seen the mainstreaming of serious-enquiry into micro-dosing and hallucinogenic drugs (with ayahuasca-parties a thing in start-up circles);  the rise of breath-workshops that flood the brain with an excess of oxygen and revelation; ice-baths to shock the system; the boom of adrenalin-inducing activities and a resurgence of interest in spirituality in all its forms - yoga, nature-worship plus a renewed growth of interest in religion after many years of decline. Drug-induced spiritually doesn’t sit that well with the control-freak in me, although I’m intrigued by many of these (and did enjoy a recent breath-work ‘ceremony’ albeit distracted by being asked to thank the Earth-Goddess and Sky-God).  I do know a few anons who use marijuana responsibly and praise its calm-inducing, curiosity-arousing properties as a trigger for deeper contemplation.  Musk indulges here (famously on a Rogan podcast, another high-profile weed-fan) and legalisation for recreational use is creeping in across the Western World.   On a house-swap in Canada last year we received a huge, legal tub of it as a welcome gift from a generous neighbour working within the industry! Arguably, I’d say all of these legal stimulants (in moderation) and spiritual explorations - anything that instils a sense of personal-transcendence -  have the potential for more positive impact on our creative brains than the short-lived dopamine generated by stranger likes of generic content that can only serve to inspire greater genericism. For my part, I’d like to make the controversial case for good, old-fashioned booze.  Not alcoholism, note, but the occasional tipple.  My socials are awash with T-totallers embracing abstinence or ‘dry’ periods.  Concurrently, I’m privy to many private conversations with GenX peers questioning our relationship with alcohol and possible over-reliance on it (conclusions: not healthy and probably)…  but I can’t be the only one that is starting to find born-again sobriety-preaching just a bit tedious and self-satisfied?  Sorry. There are of course people for whom this is absolutely the right course and for whom it has been life changing and all power to them.  Few people reading this will be idiots, we all know the health risks - but it’s fine to acknowledge that most people don’t have an issue and can enjoy it responsibly and in moderation.  If I look back at some of my happiest memories, many (most?) have involved alcohol.  It’s why I first got together with my husband (my drunken green-eyed monster reacting instinctively to someone else’s intentions on him). It’s fuelled some of the most intimate, bonding conversations I’ve had with friends and inspired some of the best business ideas and countless blogs - this one included.  Would these have happened without?  Possibly some, but definitely not all.  I suspect ‘came up with it in the pub’ is the most common origin-story for start-ups and there’s been press recently (given its reintroduction) about Zuckerberg coming up with the Facebook ‘poke’ when pissed. Sounds about right. There is a sweet spot of ‘enough’ that lubricates my thought processes, opens my mind to new possibilities and allows me to indulge in deeper emotions that my sober brain seems to resist.   For example, there’s a certain amount that provides the perfect permission to self-indulge in grief for my father and I find these annual solo reveries - normally accompanied by our favourite music - enormously cathartic.  Jesus famously turned water into wine, appreciating its spiritual benefits, and others have commented at length on it as a ‘powerful instrument of mediation between humanity and the divine’.  So the next time I see you, the first round is on me.  Let’s allow it to help us colour outside the lines with our conversations and ideas and induce our inner rebel. Cheers!   If you liked this, please share! And don’t forget that audio versions are available at Spotify, Apple podcasts and YouTube. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

Have you heard of the ‘Dartmouth Scar’ project: a psychologist experiment investigating the impact of a victim mindset on self-perception, behaviour and well-being?  A fake scar was applied to participants’ faces and then secretly removed before an interview to create a scenario where the participants believed they had a visible scar in order to foster a victim mindset.  Nearly all displayed heightened feelings of powerlessness, self pity and a tendency to blame others for failures proving that regardless of whether there's actual discrimination, when we believe ourselves to be a victim, it results in negative consequences.Stumbling across it, it reminded me of one of the things I got criticised for in my TedX - pushing back on the victim mentality that I fear modern Feminism has been partly responsible for inducing in women.Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It was a nascent idea I threw in to generate debate (✔️) borne out of frustrating conversations with younger women I mentored. I'd frequently hear them say ‘I didn’t get that job/ funding/ opportunity because I’m a woman’ despite me being privy to deliberations (often including other women) and knowing that not to be the case. They simply weren’t as good on the day and this presumption proved hugely unhelpful as it closed them to questions of what they could have done better.  Heresy! What damage are we doing when we tell people they’re victims or paint them with broad-brushes of disadvantage when in reality, the world is much more complex plus more accepting of ‘difference’ than ever before (and on any measure e.g. here and here).   Are we ok with potentially patronising people through affirmative action in a ‘you-can’t-be-what-you-can’t-see’ world, with its potential to set people up to fail?  Or with creating a climate of fear around criticising or passing-over anyone on the victimhood hierarchy pyramid?  But of course, the concept of ‘meritocracy’ is now distinctly unfashionable given the modern belief that it is inherently unfair due to identity groups’ different starting points.  And there’s something to this when we look at data for different groups in population-wide terms but… a) is this primarily due to discrimination or might it also reflect many other complicated factors e.g. immigration patterns, cultural norms or a majority of fatherless families within certain identities - which we ignore at our (and the affected’s) peril? and b) how might it be a problem when applied simplistically to convince people of their disadvantage? Anyone who’s repeatedly told they are a victim will see it in every negative interaction, disempowering them in the process.  Is it a real scar, or an imaginary one?  To take just one statistic: individuals of Indian heritage in the UK out-perform the white British average educationally and earnings-wise, whereas those of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage under-perform, despite a similar narrative of disadvantage ascribed to all.   As a result, some of the most privileged in society can often be the beneficiaries of skin-deep, positive discrimination. Attempts to combat can cause more harm than good. A famous study which claimed that blind orchestra auditions increased female representation by 50% is still widely cited despite having been discredited (non-replicable, tiny sample and with non-blind orchestras witnessing similar growth in female representation over the same time period due to rapidly changing conventions).  In fact, blind applications have since been proven to harm not improve minority representation levels.  Turns out that affirmative action is hard to practise if you don’t know who you’re evaluating.  Who knew? Victimhood is power.  Hierarchies are evidenced in every big socio-political issue with different groups vying to be considered oppressed vs oppressor.  As a result, we’ve had a few high-profile hoaxes of people fabricating victimhood from Jussie Smollet (claiming to be a victim of a racist/ homophobic attack, since proven false); to Rachel Dolzeal, (the white BLM activist who pretended to be black); and Hasan Minhaj (the comedian forced to admit to making up stand-up stories of racial discrimination).Whilst we may assume these to be rare outliers, Professor Wilfred Reilly a political scientist found that the fewer that 1 in 3 ‘hate crimes’ reported were genuine and that they are more common than we might think.  According to a Wall Street Journal review of his 2019 book:  The author’s bigger concern, and rightly so, is the growing politicization of hate crimes, especially when they are directed at underrepresented groups and regardless of whether they in fact happened. The sad reality is that there is no shortage of individuals and entities with a vested interest in exaggerating racial tensions in the U.S.—from civil-rights organizations to corporate diversity officers to professors of race and gender studies.These alleged incidents are invariably seized upon by politicians and activists looking to feed a sacrosanct belief among liberals that discrimination and oppression are the main drivers of inequality. “In the mainstream media we hear almost constant talk about scary new forms of racism: ‘white privilege,’ ‘cultural appropriation,’ and ‘subtle bigotry,’ ” Mr. Reilly writes, yet “a huge percentage of the horrific hate crimes cited as evidence of contemporary bigotry are fakes.”… But Mr. Reilly has a larger point to make. The Smollett case isn’t an outlier. Increasingly, it’s the norm. And the media’s relative lack of interest in exposing hoaxes that don’t involve famous figures is a big part of the problem.Hate crimes are ‘up’ - and very topically recently legislated against in Scotland.  (Although in its first week of over 7000 filed complaints, police have revealed that only 3.8% of them are ‘genuine’). !??  So is this really ‘hate’ or is it actually our perception of the-impossible-to-prove motivation behind crimes that has been so acutely honed through recent narratives?  What they also do, of course, is damage the case of genuine victims by providing fuel to deniers and inflaming tensions between groups.  One of the criticisms of ‘me too’ was that by expanding the definition of male-abuse into the realm of microagressions we diverted the spotlight from those suffering at the sharp, traumatic end - and as discussed last week - potentially contributing to increased polarisation between the sexes.Whilst evidently low on the victim-scale, my advantages have elevated my potential way over the fortunes of most white men so I won’t accept any placement on a pyramid above them.  Brought up a ‘meritocrat’, it rarely crosses my mind that any setback might be due to my sex.  I assume it’s more likely to be down to me (‘you can be a little ‘Marmite’.. Mother, husband, best mate… many times) and I believe this outlook is to my advantage.  If ever encountering discrimination (hard to identify but possibly once or twice) I’ve always been more bemused than offended, seeking to call it out with humour, a raised eyebrow or by demonstrating my status another way ie. prove the f*ckers wrong!   I personally don’t want any shadow of doubt as to whether I got an opportunity (or customer) ‘because I’m a woman’ - buy me because I’m worth it.  As Kristen Scott-Thomas’s character so cuttingly quipped in ‘Fleabag’ when referring to a woman-in-business award she had won:  “it’s infantilising bollocks… It’s ghettoising. It’s a subsection of success. It’s the f*****g children’s table of awards.”To showcase the point still further, there was a video of a female pro-golfer doing the rounds recently who was mansplained-to about her swing and just politely thanked him and silently smacked her next ball out of the range.  The female crowd erupts… a way more effective put-down than wounded insecurity or anger.   That brings out the feminist in me.   To be clear - no, I don’t think we should stop protecting the vulnerable in society and I will always believe that awareness of disproportionate outcomes remains very important. But maybe we might want to pause and think a little on the impact of the current cult of victimhood, it’s crude and over-simplistic interpretations and most importantly, how it might undermine the confidence, wellbeing and prospects of those we decide should feel vulnerable…Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right  - Henry FordThanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

Not long ago, I referenced an FT article  that reported on the rapidly widening political and ideological polarisation between men and women - a global phenomenon.  It’s a worrying trend that didn’t seem to get the attention it deserved; one that concerns me - not just as a mother of boys and a girl - but as a woman who met her husband a little later (in my early 30s) and who can acutely recall the panic I felt (normally when inebriated at weddings) that I might never find someone with whom I’d share a life or have the chance of a family.   Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.In short, women are turning ‘left’ and men turning ‘right’… and in significant proportions.  This has been put down to multiple factors from women now being more educated and tuning into many more progressive arguments on campus, coupled with a growing contingent of ‘angry young men’ who feel their very real challenges are being swept under the carpet, with many writing-off dating and turning to the increasingly resentful online ‘manosphere’.  (Without wishing to become a bore..)  Smartphones and social media are also playing a huge role as habits of usage, content preferences and respective echo chambers vary hugely between the sexes, to say nothing of the in-person interaction-time they limit.But what does this trend mean for the romantic prospects of our species?The challenge is, that for right or wrong, most women suffer from ‘hypergamy’: the action of marrying or forming a sexual relationship with a person of a superior sociological or educational background.   Female main-breadwinner couples remain rare and ‘trading up’ is apparently in our psychology for innate reasons (as with most mammal species) when choosing potential fathers for offspring. This is a real problem given that soon two women will graduate for every one man with so many young men are now opting out, disappearing into basements on video games.  Nearly 60% of 18-25 year olds now report feeling lonely and almost a third of unpartnered men in the UK and US over the age of 20 still live with their parents.   Whilst these trends predominantly affect younger generations, I have noticed a resentment building amongst my professional peers (albeit in whispers) around the current not-another-white-man preference - which of course affects not just their prospects, but the lives of their partners and children.   Despite the mutterings, there seems to be a tacit acceptance (at least publicly) of the pendulum needing to swing the other way for a while amongst my generation (X), but it’s perhaps no wonder that there is much less amongst those whose lives and careers are only just getting started.Having deep, supportive love in a life partner is another much under-appreciated privilege. As a woman who’s enjoyed some professional success, I truly credit my husband (and perpetual cheerleader) with much of it.  I think it was possibly the least-feminist statement in Sheryl Sandberg’s girl-boss-power book ‘Lean in’ to acknowledge that the best career decision she ever made was who to marry - which resonated hugely with me. Recently I saw a clip of Susan Sarandon in a film answering the question ‘why do people get married?’ with the following words: “Because we need a witness to our lives.  There’s a billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean?  But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything.  The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things.  All of it.  All the time.  Every day. You’re saying ‘your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness.’Gorgeous words to all blessed with it, but heartbreaking to those without - or perhaps grieving lost-love.  I was so lucky to grow up observing how my parents supported and witnessed each others’ lives and with every year that passes with my own co-witness, sharing not only our lives but those of our children, I am more acutely aware of what my mother so devastatingly lost on my father’s early death. Here’s hoping the dating industry evolves still further in a more human, less superficial direction; that with a reduction in smart-device use, the young rediscover each other in the real-world; and that the battle between the sexes calms and subsides a little recognising the nuance, personal challenges and uniqueness within everyone.  More than anything, I want this love for my children.   Keeping it short this week, as in other news, we got a puppy. Overnight, we’ve become those annoying people that want to talk about, share pictures of and chat to all and any dog-owning stranger about our ‘baby’. We are besotted.  A true investment in memories… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

This was a week I’d been looking forward to for a long time.  The publication of the book ‘The Anxious Generation:  How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness’ by Jonathan Haidt.   Sounds cheery, doesn’t it?  (Warning: don’t invite me down the pub any time soon if you want a pitch-free night).(Note - all audio versions of Antidoters are now available on most podcast players - see here Spotify, Apple, YouTube - please do share this blog and the links - it would hugely help me to grow the audience and generate more conversations around the themes I cover. Thank you!) Haidt is an Antidoter I’ve mentioned previously (e.g. here), and on his book launch week I thought it worth giving him the entire stage. His work has had a huge influence on me.  His last book with Greg Lukianoff ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ fundamentally changed how I think about parenting and I haven’t since stopped banging on about it in conversations with other parents, my kid’s teachers, the headmaster, strangers in pubs since…  I believe I’ve bought over 10 copies now as gifts.  (you’re welcome, Jonathan).  Given that I have three, all-consuming children under 10 it’s not an understatement to use the word ‘life changing’ where this impact is concerned.   The book heightened my appreciation of all the little acts my husband and I were guilty of that might damage our children’s resilience; the risks of helicoptering; society’s increasing promotion of victimhood narratives; the growing prevalence of ‘feelings’ over facts; the critical importance of boredom; plus it introduced the conversation regarding the potential serious impact of screen time on rapidly increasing rates of mental illness in the young.   Immediately we embraced ‘boredom’ time with our kids and felt less pressure to have to stimulate them at all times. Letting ourselves off the hook a bit proved the perfect antidote for two busy, working parents - the mantra in our house to the ‘i’m boooored’ whine, simply ‘only boring kids get bored’..  The Anxious Generation builds on this, with Jonathan and his researchers having since immersed themselves in the evidence, seeking to untangle causation from correlation and concluding definitively that yes, smartphone usage is damaging and hurting our children.   Arguably, it’s hardly shocking when data now tells us that the average teen spends over 8 hours a day on their device, with tweens >5 hours.  That’s a full time job…  and aside from the mental health ramifications, begs the obvious question I’ve asked recently of what else they’re not doing with this time.  There’s lots in the book that I was already aware of as I’ve been following the data avidly over recent months as he’s put it all in the public domain, inviting criticism at every turn.  Not least due to accusations of scare-mongering after The Coddling.  It is for this reason that the reviews - across the political spectrum - have been universally glowing.  (Although also possibly due to our ongoing obsession with doom-laden news).   The beautifully-readable picture now in the book is terrifying but as Jonathan himself goes to pains to stress… all is not lost.  Whilst this may be one of the biggest challenges facing modern society, there is hope. And there are tangible solutions to this mess we’ve inadvertently found ourselves in.  Namely: * No smartphones before high school (roughly age 14) * No social media before 16* Phone-free schools * Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence…four strategies that cost almost nothing and can be enacted in homes and schools rather than through top-down policy.  We invented seatbelts and cycle helmets, legislated to protect the young from cigarettes, alcohol and gambling.. it’s now time to take this most critical harm seriously. Although of course, to the busy parent, this might be easier said than done. The ‘square aupair’ has proven a godsend for many. Already Mrs Beast has awoken in the form of mum activists.  Parents are mobilising - via the rapid, recent spread of the ‘Smart Phone Free Childhood’ UK grassroots initiative, set up by worried parents and spreading like wildfire through the country via every parent’s most hated smartphone s’app - whatsapp.  The intention is to educate parents enough to enable them to have proper conversations about phones with their children, to increase pressure at government levels (although to what end is another question) and to encourage more parents to delay the age at which kids first get smartphones.  Appreciating the pressure from children with regards to getting a first phone, the simple idea is that if c.25%+ of parents can resist it prior to age 13 or 14 (at least) then no one child is stigmatised for being the only one without. (This mirrors a US-based campaign’s efforts ‘Wait until 8th)’.  Lots of solutions are being brainstormed to retain safety and connectivity once children reach ages of greater independence - dumb phones, data-locking, tracking etc.  And I have no doubt that entrepreneurs will rush into the newly-created opportunity.  Indeed, my 10 year old son is somewhat aggrieved to discover he’s about to become a guinea-pig for abstinence for his generation and is currently ‘creative consultant’ to a book/ pamphlet we’re working on to try and translate some of The Anxious Generation’s findings for his peers (not least as he wants to go as himself to National Book Day next year). It strikes me that the element missing in much of this is how to bring them with us, rather than impose restrictions, like a punishment on them.   He’s fuelling me with countless Youtuber and Fortnite analogies (and Prime) to help make the case more compelling for this age group.  Female friends are supporting with their analogies, as it’s striking how different the trends are by sex.  Jonathan’s top-level diagnosis is that over-protection in the real world and under-protection in the digital world are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the ‘anxious generation’.  And I’m not sure there are that many more serious issues we should be discussing right now as a society.  I’ll say little more this week than encourage you to fall down this rabbit hole with me - and via the words of the author directly linked below.  But for kid’s sake, just buy the book. * The website - Anxiousgeneration.com (incl free resources for parents and teachers) * Jonathan’s ‘After Babel’ Substack * The Guardian review/ excerpt* The Independent review* The Atlantic article* Podcasts:  Honestly with Bari Weiss (spotify) Joe Rogan (youtube); * UK: The Smart Phone Free Childhood grassroots initiative (more free resources) - and do get involved in any local groups set up under this banner if you’re interested in finding one locally.  I set one up for my school and I’ve found the tone of the conversation kind and judgement-free.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

If you had to liken your career to a role in a musical ensemble, what would it be?  A conductor, co-ordinating a multi-section orchestra (CEO/ MD)? A first violin, skilled at your specialist trade (team lead, scientist, programmer, academic)?  Or maybe the lead singer or bass in a rock band, composing and evangelising for a start-up brand with a disruptive mission (entrepreneur, inventor, product designer)? Percussion, keeping everyone in rhythm from the back (Ops, HR)?  Or maybe you’re the clashing symbol (in-house lawyer?!).   Inevitably most spend their lives as rank and file orchestra players, moving up a seat as skills and experience grow.  You might be playing school halls to begin with, graduating to better and bigger venues with talent.  Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.I’ve played in orchestras and conducted a few (small) bands, but on balance, I think I might be this guy and whilst it probably won’t get me to the Albert Hall, that pleases me.  Look how happy he is! Most entrepreneurs are this guy or at least start this way (all credit to one of my favourite entrepreneurs, Helena for feeding the analogy - investors - check her out). The more successful become conductors but others prefer smaller stages or enjoy their instrument too much to pack it away in a case.  I’m not bad at a few different instruments but rather than specialise I prefer to play a little bit of all of them  (albeit playing my 7 year olds recorder through my nose has apparently lost its charm). People like me are known as generalists, ‘renaissance wo/men’ (if we really want to flatter ourselves), or the best term I’ve come across: multipotentialites, as introduced by Emily Wapnick in her excellent Ted talk to describe people without ‘one true calling’ who dip in and out of different things.   I’ve used a lot of various analogies to describe this personality-type which, for a long time I saw as a weakness - jack of all trades, master of none.  Another is that I’m a ‘snorkeler’ rather than a deep sea diver, holding my breath to free dive into greater depth about a particular industry or technology (currently health-tech and charity shops), but frequently returning to the surface to explore other reefs.  One way I snorkel, and indeed, the joy of this career choice, is the scope to open up conversations with different people from as many industries and walks of life as possible.   In this socially siloed age, fewer and fewer people mix outside of their professional, socio-economic or life-stage demographics - especially educated professionals (the ‘Anywheres’ that David Goodhart has so eloquently written about) -  who have typically relocated from their places of birth to postcode-lottery areas of ‘people like them’.  This is hugely to our detriment and a key driver of socio-political polarisation, especially when concurrent with the rapid decline of local community institutions like churches, rotary-clubs, the Women’s Institute, the Scout Movement etc.   It’s the reason why few Remainers knew or understood many Brexiteers; why it has become so easy to write off others as ‘ignorant’, racist or sexist for holding alternative views on complex, emotive subjects such as immigration, race-relations, crime, drug-use and more, when context on others’ lived, community experience is so lacking. In the last month, I’ve been diving more deeply into my ‘chopping’ (charity shop) theory about it being a lens through which we can better understand modern society.  I’ve initiated conversations with over 50 volunteers - including retirees, transgender individuals, people with disabilities, the unemployed, an ex-convict and (most strikingly), school-pupils sans-smart-phone.  I’ve listened in on the daily-life of the charity shop - held or overheard conversations about loneliness and grief, local crime, the personal ramifications of the cost-of-living crisis and much more.  Each and every conversation has expanded my worldview and given me a new appreciation of local issues and the unique challenges affecting individuals who I would not otherwise have had a reason to engage with.  They have knocked edges of my opinions, exposing me to many more shades of grey amidst issues typically perceived as black or white.  Conclusion one:  this ‘chopping’ book is absolutely happening.  Conclusion two: as an alternative to phone scrolling during down-time anywhere, conversations with strangers is a daily habit that needs to come back into fashion. If you work amidst ‘people like you’, all of whom have read James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’ and especially if not in a general-public-facing role, this is even more important.  On public transport, in a queue, at a checkout, in a shopping centre lift...  smile, share an observation, pick up a dropped umbrella, ask a question and the reward may be in the response.  It may feel superficial at times, but it’s better than nothing and with each conversation, you get a brief glimpse outside of the social machine you’re likely stuck in. Call it ‘personal growth’ if you must. People who live curiously, who soak up experiences and daily conversations like a sponge and who mix across socio-demographics are hugely valuable to society.  They’re dot-connectors and ‘linky brains’ (credit: Alex Dunsdon, Chris Tottsman). They sit at the junctions of innovation, cross-pollinating a business, industry, academic field or (if we’re lucky) a government department with insights and learnings from another.  They bring fresh perspectives and new eyes to teams whose immersion in any one industry or problem for a prolonged period of time has left them blinkered.  To harness them, recruit for curiosity and harvest the insights from any fresh, virgin eyes on your sector before they acquire their blinkers. Given the growing epidemic of loneliness (with nearly 50% of people reporting feeling lonely occasionally, sometimes, often or always), practicing daily curiosity might also have provided the only conversation that some people have had this week.  That is the power of the social-hub that the charity shop on every high street has become; of the cheery person on the supermarket checkout; of the ‘comedian’ announcer on the train platform that prompts strangers to make eye contact and smile together. That alone, is humbling. And heart breaking.  Important Note: I am now publishing audio versions of my posts for those who prefer their content on-the-go. They’re short, sweet (<10mins each) and you get to hear my dulcet tones. Check out the substack podcast tab for more or search ‘Antidoters’ and subscribe in your favourite podcast app. Spotify; apple; google podcasts & more to follow…Bonus, interesting links for antidotery linky-brains :  * 10 lovely visuals that will make you a better reader* A selection of mind-blowing AI-generated short videos… is this the end for Hollywood? * A fascinating historical thread of Britain’s role in ending slavery (whilst also acknowledging the many faults and evils in Britain’s history)Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

To be honest.. not much more at this stage than an audio version of the blog - for those on the run or who catch the content-fix on the go, in cars, on public transport or whilst out on a walk or run. I’ll let the audience dictate how much more this could be, if this if a much-requested format. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

Are you hot or not?   In this superficial, looks-obsessed age, what would you rate your looks out of 10? If you’ve never heard the terms ‘pretty privilege’ or ‘beauty bias’ it turns out it has a bigger impact on your life’s outcomes than you might think.  Amidst all the privilege and bias conversations, this is perhaps one of the most overlooked. According to research (e.g. here and here), physically attractive people - across sex and race -  earn 15% more than plainer-looking which is twice the gender pay gap (at 7.7%) and much higher than any individual ethnicity pay gap (near impossible to report on given patterns of immigration and the sheer variety of ethnicities who can each earn more or less than the white British average).  We all intuitively know this privilege exists: Cute kids get more attention; hot, Kardashianish girls skip the queues and get recruited for Love Island; it’s only attractive news readers who make national anchor; generic but gorgeous social influencers win fame; the handsome or striking get more choice in the dating market…  and all of this results in more confidence which is, in itself, self-fulfilling.  Overweight candidates are less likely to be hired as they’re subconsciously considered ‘lazy’ and hiring managers inevitably take looks into consideration when recruiting external-facing hires.  And of course, there’s the mirror issue of objectification to worry about, especially for women.What we do about it is hard to answer as I can’t imagine many would want to cite a prominent mole, large nose or eyes-too-close-together as a reason for being overlooked (although perhaps only as there’s no law protecting them - yet?). Plus the fact that there’s an impossibly sliding scale - one that many can move up and down on at different times in their lives e.g. tired/ ill or when deciding in your early 30s that you might suit a fringe. Blind, photo-less applications and audio-only interviews are one mitigating strategy; more size-appropriate workplaces and bias-awareness training, others. First impressions are everything.  But what can we each do, if not blessed with Angelina Jolie-genes to hack it?   Well, plastic surgeons, diet-providers, gyms, stylists and speaker-coaches are all arguably tackling this through selling us opportunities to make the most of our appearance and bodies or training us in body language and first-impressions. I know from my own experience that whilst I’m no oil painting (seemingly turning into ‘the scream’ with each passing year), this is a personal privilege as I’m rarely considered unpleasant on the eye and know how to dress to impress, with separate wardrobes -  a professional London one (blazers, boots, nice blouses) and a suburban home one (slummy mum of 3- trainers, jeggings, hoodies) with the former evoking greater confidence and (weirdly) better articulation.  The second ‘privilege’ is more of a hot potato - that of the two-parent privilege.  This has recently come to the fore with the publication of two fairly high profile books in the US:  ‘The Two Parent Privilege’ by Melissa Kearney and ‘Troubled- A Memoir of Foster Care, Family and Social Class’’ by Rob Henderson, a favourite antidoter. Both speak to the evidence that children from broken homes or in the care system *on average* (yes, that again) fare much worse and enjoy much less social mobility than those from stable, two parent families due to lower income households, less time or ‘emotional energy’ and with fewer father figures.  The evidence speaks for itself in terms of multiples-higher rates of poor physical and mental health and medicalisation, school exclusion, crime and incarceration and suicide.  But whilst stating the seeming obvious, both have proven highly provocative to the point of book-tour cancellations and protests at author appearances.  The complaints are that they stigmatise single-parents (predominantly single mothers who have had little choice and/or bravely escaped worse family situations) and are regressive, promoting the old-fashioned stereotype of the traditional, heteronormative family in an era where we’ve moved on from such stifling conventions to embrace many more modern, diverse forms of ‘family’.Rob Henderson’s memoir is particularly moving, detailing his childhood of neglect in the foster system into a path of drug-use and petty crime prior to enlisting in the Navy and then crossing the social-class divide against the odds to get into Yale and Cambridge. He recounts his experiences with affluent, 2-parented (90%+) Yale peers who assumed his (visible) male, elite-education privileges with no knowledge of his upbringing. He pushes back against their simplistic ‘luxury beliefs’ that failed to consider the impact of a troubled childhood or accept anything other than male + white (or in his case, Asian) = privilege.  In particular, he reflects on the fact that those most likely to disparage the traditional family are those who have benefited from it.  On statistics: In 1960, the % of American children living with both biological parents was identical for affluent and working-class families - 95%.  By 2005, 85% of affluent families were still intact, but for working-class families the figure had plummeted to 30%.  The Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam at a 2017 hearing stated, “Rich kids and poor kids now grow up in separate Amercias… Growing up with two parents is now unusual in the working class, whilst two parent families are normal and becoming more common among the upper middle class”.  Affluent people, particularly in the 1960s, championed sexual freedom.  Loose sexual norms caught on for the rest of society.  The upper class, though, still had intact families.  Generally speaking, they experimented in college and then settled down later.  The families of the lower classes fell apart.  He goes on, ‘We now live in a culture where affluent, educated and well-connected people validate and affirm the behaviours, decisions and attitudes of marginalized and deprived kids that they would never accept for themselves or their own children.  And they claim to do this in the name of compassion.  It’s fine if Antonio and I skip class and ruin our futures, but it’s definitely not fine if their kids do so.  Many of the people who wield the most influence in society have isolated themselves and their children from the world I grew up in, while paying lip service to the challenges of inequality.’  On drug-use, he comments: ‘...drugs don’t just affect the user, they affect helpless children, too…  A well-heeled student at an elite university can experiment with cocaine and will, in all likelihood be fine.  A kid from a dysfunctional home with absentee parents will often take that first hit of meth to self-destruction..’  Whilst my own privilege has denied me any deep exposure to such individuals, it has struck me from observing my own friendships that childhood grief is another of the most debilitating of all formative experiences and one that sits with them, silently, nowhere official on the privilege hierarchy.  The emotional scars of childhood grief are lifelong and do not discriminate by sex, race or social class. Such stories suffuse me with gratitude for my loving, supportive family upbringing that told me I could do and be anything; and now, for my happy, supportive marriage, my healthy body and my happy, healthy (infuriating) children.   It strikes me that an aspiring, entrepreneurial woman brought up in the care system is much more likely to identify with a successful male entrepreneur of colour with a similar background than she is with me. It’s one of the reasons I struggle so much with ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. It’s what you can’t that connects us - upbringing, beliefs, passions and values.The more simplistic and ‘visible-only’ the identity-disadvantage narrative, the more reductive and harmful it can be given the complexity of personal experience that cuts through every individual.  But I don’t think I’m advocating for more activism or affirmative action for those disadvantaged by either of the above privileges - nor any other factor outside of their control that might limit an individual’s prospects - as this route leads to an expansion of competitive victim culture that only dampens ambition and agency.   What’s that, you say? I can feel another blog coming on.  —--- Further reading/ listening * From BBC Sounds ‘Business Daily’ - Do attractive people earn more?’.  * Rob Henderson and Melissa Kearney on the Modern Wisdom podcast This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com

Marketers know it. Comedians know it. The fashion and beauty industries know it.  Film-makers and authors know it. Teachers and most parents know it.   Women and men on average like and want hugely different things.  My scepticism as to whether this is all due to social conditioning only increases with age and my journey as a parent to both sexes - observing first hand not just them, but the 100s of children around them.  Women come together to celebrate many of the ‘female’ passions - book clubs, crafting circles, fashion shows and romcom nights - yet still, few seem able to accept that these same differences in aptitudes or hobbies might also play out in life-priorities or career choice or bear any responsibility for inbalance in certain professions, (where it seems only female under-representation is an issue. Never male. Which btw, makes zero sense…) Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It seems that comedy is one of the last places where the differences between men and women are allowed to be explicity enjoyed.   I asked people to share funny memes along these lines and I was deluged.  The selection included men unable to find things in the fridge; their clothes only able to make it as far as the floor around the laundry basket; a male gorilla trying to turn on his uninterested mate by tweaking her nipple; and videos detailing the mental load of women with 100 jobs that need doing distracting her constantly as she walks through her home (links below).  Marriage gags are, of course, ever-green (and if you don’t laugh, you’d cry) but the instantly-recognisable male-female differences they showcase are rarely a lens through which sex-imbalances are examined. Women love romance; men love Star Wars. Women love gossip; men can spend a whole day with a best mate who’s just got divorced and not think to ask him how he’s doing.  Women face each other when they speak; men angle themselves at 45 degrees (which is fascinating, right? Just watch).  Women never forget; men rarely hold a grudge.  The list goes on and on and I’d highly recommend Caitlin Moran’s hilarious book ‘What about Men’ where she compares men to dogs in terms of their typical traits of loyalty, adventure-seeking, people-pleasing (aka ‘banter’) hole-digging, tinkering, crotch-fiddling and love for their mums.  Talking of which, here’s book preferences by sex to give another example:Once more, I’d suggest the antidoters are the ones injecting (professionally risque) caveats into mainstream assumptions to nudge conversations in more nuanced directions.  Louise Perry, Mary Harrington and Mary Eberstadt are just three interesting counter-thinkers on feminism who I’ve tuned into recently.  Where my TedX started (with some pretty superficial questions), they’ve gone much further.  They’ve given deep thought to questions including: how much ‘progress’ has actually been made by feminism as opposed to (predominantly male-invented) technology e.g. labour-saving devices, the pill, the growth of the knowledge economy etc.; how far women have actually benefited from a sexual revolution that massively over-burdens them at work and home and is now turning off their daughters from wanting to emulate; how 20%+ of women are now childless at 40, 80% of whom, not through choice; feminism’s partial culpability for the huge growth of single-parent families (a burden normally borne by women); and then there’s what it’s done to children… thrown into childcare at younger and younger ages and ‘over-parented’ by time-poor parents.  Phew! And don’t even get them started on the huge growth of porn-addiction and how it’s damaging relationships between the sexes. There’s a course a great deal more to all of these issues than feminism, but start peeling back the layers and the ‘wins’ suddently don’t seem so impressive. A powerful video I was shared a few times shows a strong, articulate woman biting back to the statement ‘We need to talk about the patriarchy’ with this fast-paced monologue: We could…  Or we could consider that there are actually more women than men in universities, more women than men who hold PhDs, women are being preferentially selected for jobs, not for being the best candidates but to fill equity quotas that they- were women. Women hold all the power in divorce courts, laws incentivise women to leave their husbands and take the kids, destroy men and get paid to do it, or skip marriage altogether and just have children to get the paycheck.  Are there really any opportunities we want that we do not have? I know there are plenty of things that we dont want and we can… just leave that to the men …while this evil-patriarchy ideology conditions little girls to cringe at the thought of being just a mom and debases building homemaker skills in favour of building an army of boss b*** ready to tear down the patriarchy when all it's really doing is tearing apart families tearing apart relationships and tearing down our femininity and with that goes our chance at peace in our home, peace in our communities, in our nation and on this planet… and maybe that’s the point. Ouch. But maybe this growing sentiment is why International Womens’ Day seems, at least to me, a bit muted this year?  It’s not complacency about the significant challenges that still disproportionately impact women (sexual violence, especially) to recognise much of the above and want to have a conversation about them… and about men.  Neither should it be a battle between women and men for who has it worse. Feminism shouldn’t need to be countered by Men's Rights Activism (or god forbid, Andrew Tateism), but the pendulum does seem to be shifting back.  A lot of the confusion about sex differences and how they play out in society seems to stem from people’s inability to understand bell curves, or the different distributions of average traits.  Any data along these lines is immediately countered with ‘but I know a brilliant female engineer or firefighter; a guy who knits or loves romcoms’…  Well, of course, that’s how bell curves work.  Sex differences exist, but this tells us absolutely nothing about individuals. The average British man is 5ft 9 and the average woman 5ft 4 but few people remark upon a 5ft 9 woman.  It’s the ends of the distributions where it makes a difference and in population-wide statistics.  More male geniuses, CEOs and leaders maybe, but also much more male autism, violent crime, suicide and homelessness.  The female bell curve is flatter and less extreme. A stereotype, no matter how borne out of accurate data, is still a stereotype which can be harmful if it prevents any one individual from pursuing opportunities outside it, so they are always worth challenging.  One of the (many) conflicts between gender identity ideologues and radical feminists speaks to this with the former evoking the psychological ‘innateness’ of feminine stereotypes that the feminist movement has worked so hard over recent decades to dismantle.  No easy answers here and it’s a hornets nest that I should probably have avoided the week of International Women’s Day… but ho hum… food for thought...?  Further reading/ watchingCredit: Blog title quote - Jim CareyWomen vs. Men memes (best viewed on a mobile)* Video: Gary Neville’s super-confused face.  Text: ‘Dads being informed of all the plans they agreed to for the weekend on a saturday morning’ (link)* Video: Women saying ‘Me telling my husband I need more affection’.  Video cuts to male Gorilla tweaking a female gorilla’s nipple, text ‘My husband’  (link) * Old man saying ‘I’m proud of you, you know that.  I hope you do’ Text: ‘When you husband opens the fridge and finds the ketchup all on his own’  (link)* Video: Woody, from toy story, emerging triumphant from a box:  Text:  Dad coming out of the bathroom ready to leave after mom just got herself and the kids ready for the last 2 hours (link) * Woman getting out of shower, drying as she goes; man throwing water all over the floor  (link)* Video - woman eating alone (sad music playing).  Text:  Eating another family dinner alone whilst my kids run feral and my husband takes his third dump of the day’  (link)* Video - confused/ worried spaniel.  Text:  When you ask your wife where something is, she describes its location , but you still can’t find it and now you hear her walking towards you muttering under her breath  (link)* Man tricks woman into ‘getting lucky tonight’ (link) * Video - man walking solo in the wild.  Text:  Maturing in marriage is learning the only thing your wife wants from you is to give her attention and to be left alone at different moments but all at the same time, most of the time and never but always’  (link)* Video of a day in the life living with a husband (music - Beyonce - ‘if i was a boy’) - scenes of shoes left, sandwich-making ingredients and crumbs on kitchen side,  wet towels left on floor, socks everywhere, 4 glasses of water next to bed, full-to-the-brim kitchen bin. Unchanged loo roll (link)* (more sad, than humorous) The actress who plays Sally from Home & Away responding to a psychologist talking about a Mother’s Mental Load (link)Bonus, totally unrelated link: Lovely X thread of photos taken at exactly the right time Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com