Are you a professional pillow fighter, or a 95 low-cost time travel agent, or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession? It doesn't matter. Whatever it is you do, however complex or intricate, Monday.com can help you organize, work a straight, and make it more efficient. Monday.com is the one centralized platform for everything work-related. And with Monday.com, work is just easier. Monday.com, for whatever you run, go to Monday.com to learn more. Welcome to The New Books Network. Hello everyone, and welcome back to New Books and Medieval Studies, a podcast on The New Books Network. I'm Yana Byers, your host, and I'm here today with Annette Kano, a professor of medieval history at the University of Manheim, to talk about her new book, The Green Ages, Medieval Innovations and Sustainability. We're talking today into 2024 on the occasion of its publication in English with Brandeis University Press in the U.S. and profile books in the U.K. But this book has been out since 2021 in German, yes? That's right, yeah. Hello, Yana. And as a favor to my English speaking, or to my German speaking audience, I'm not going to try to pronounce the name in the title in German, but perhaps you could tell us. Ah, Viacontenach Anders, which is, in fact, a very funny film. It's called Viacontenach Anders, and I was one of those hilarious comedies. But the idea is really, I mean, I call it in German. The idea is just to sort of activate our brains for the idea that, you know, people before us had to manage challenges, and they were very clever in doing so, and we might just as well get inspired by them. Oh, wonderful. All right. Well, and thank you so much for joining me today. How are you? Oh, thank you. I'm very well indeed. Actually, I'm sitting here looking out of the window. It's a really beautiful sky, blue sky, Bavarian sky, and yesterday evening I was at the Oktoberfest. So, you know, you might excuse if I have to take a sip of water or so in the meantime. Because, in fact, you drink a lot on the Oktoberfest, but it was great fun, really, lots of music, and the funniest thing is you sit there and you sing and talk. Well, you sing basically and dance with people you never seen before, and you'll never see after, but it's good. Well, that sounds delightful. And probably it put you in the right frame for this discussion, because there's a lot about Oktoberfest that hearkens at least to a mythology of a past, right? Yes, that's right. It hearkens to a mythology of the past year, obviously. And I mean, it's not important in this case whether there is a true past in terms of traditional clothing. I mean, you probably know that the dandel industry was never as successful as today. So, when I was a student, I studied in Munich at the time as well. None of us, nobody would go to the Oktoberfest because it was just so ridiculous and only old men went there and old women and elites who we wouldn't want to be associated with. Today, everybody goes there. My daughter has a dancer, and my son has a leader who's there. So, yeah, it's great. Yeah. Thanks, James, you know, Yana. Thanks, James. Thank God. On our past, the way we view our past and the way we use our past changes. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And the way we remember as well. So, speaking of kind of the use of the past, I guess, and maybe that was part of the inspiration, but I'm just curious about what brought you to write this book. Yes. Well, I've been asked this question a lot of times, and I've asked myself, I have to say it's probably my time as a university teacher because I am talking to students all the time. I'm dealing with them. And, you know, for one reason or another, they always, year to year, they are getting younger and younger. At least that's what it seems to me. But you realize it's their future, and then I have children myself, and then I have a grandson by now. And the idea that, you know, their future is really at stake was very or became very prominent with Fridays for future movement, which at our university was strong, and I'm also with people from the young generations. And I kept asking myself, what can you do in that, because you're a medieval historian. I mean, I cannot, you know, start calculating CO2 emission balls or whatever. But then I realized, I mean, what I'm doing along have been doing a long time ago as well as a historian is always sort of thinking of history in terms of historical anthropology. It has a lot to do with who we are as human beings, homosapians and his capacity to have a memory to remember, and also, of course, and that's the big difference which we have in contrast to many other mammals. We have over-generational exchange of wisdom and knowledge, because we are three or four generations living at the same time, which is not so frequent in not so frequent, it is there, but not not as frequent as in other populations. So the transmission of knowledge from one generation or to another from the generation of the grannies and grandfathers to the generation of children and grandchildren is really something which is a big advantage and I think we've lost the sense for that. So I just started looking for knowledge, you might call it traditional knowledge in the West. And I think pre-modern history, which is what I'm doing with the history, is full of inspiring examples of what we might call case studies for how to cope with challenges with big challenges. They were different challenges from what we are having to cope with today, but they are challenges and they were mostly challenges never heard of before, you know, we always think today we are sitting in a situation never heard of before. But the same was true for the people who, after World War II, had to rebuild their cities and communities, the same was true after the 30 years war or in the 30 years war and so on and so forth. So I think we underestimated human creativity and I just would like to make it sort of bring it into the discussion of today's handling of new challenges. Speaking of like, what are like today and kind of what we're looking at, the parameters for this book, your sources largely are high medieval sources yeah. Yeah. And you use, there's an incredible variety of sources actually, you do some very traditional kind of, you know, quantitative history work here too. Right. Well, I mean, what I do mostly is actually just reading thoroughly historically were that has been done by others I have to say, and there is so much that has been done I mean just take calculations for example, about the situation, life, life, daily life in the Middle Ages or whatever, there is so sorrow, quantitative studies for example on how many hours a day or a week you were working. And it's just so interesting we all have the idea, you know, inform in the old days people had to work such a lot, a lot and day and night and all feudalism was suppression and everything. But if you look at it, I mean it's just, they did work probably a bit less than we today, many more holidays. And if you had today to do a day's work for your landlord, that was, you know, a fall our stay. So it's just a different sort of calculation I mean, one of my, the, the, the researchers I'm working with the school very much but, and it just, they, their research just shows that this narrative, narrative of the things getting better and better for everyone is, is not really based on academic research, it's just one of those stories from the 19th century that sits in our head because obviously I mean, I wouldn't want to go back to the Middle Ages just to make that clear. But at the same time there is human life before the invention of a washing machine, you know, you can, you can, I mean, this is one of these arrogant, arrogant moments in Western mentality that all the rest needs to sort of profit from the blessings of our economy. And that makes us in fact sort of looking at everything else as a pre, what do you call it, a stage before the summit we have reached now, and obviously that makes sick, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a not, not a good way of thinking, especially because now we realize that we actually are about to destroy our home by this sinking. Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit more about the progress narrative and like one of our meta narratives in a little minute, but I want to just finish the sources real quick. So you've got this, like, quality, qualitative, I'm having a real trouble with my mother tongue today. I'm sorry, quantitative data. And then you have as well, just like in narrative sources, the rule of St. Benedict comes in. So it's a very broad source base, but largely focusing on what we call the high Middle Ages. Yeah. But the major shift, like the major kind of break in your narrative in the way this book works is between modernity and pre modernity. And that's a really hard point to highlight. So, can I ask like, maybe in this actually we'll get into the meta narrative kind of what is the modern age in the view of this book. Well, the modern age modernity and being modern is historically speaking, you know, 200 years old. So that's quite quite a quite a period of time. And if you want, it's really the way of doing things, the way of thinking, the way of putting laws down. As we started doing it in the late 18th and early 19th century so with enlightenment, there came a new way of thinking and looking at things in terms of getting rid of traditional knowledge getting rid of religion getting rid of rules. Flaring sort of brokers wealth and more comfort to the main aims of our way of doing things and efficiency was a very, very important keyword as well. I think this was a very great invention and I would really, I'm not challenging these developments, but we have to look now at the unintended consequences of all the, the progress we owe to modernity. And so that's why I say in the for the 21st century, we might have to change or to have a critical look at the paradigms of what we thought is good for the last 200 years. So that's really my point to the 21st century needs a different set mindset than the 20s or the 19th century. And I 20s and 19th century is what I would call modern and then pre modern is sort of before enlightenment. And the medieval period is just one of many but you know if you think about human history I mean we've been out of Africa, 100,000 years ago or 300 400,000 years ago, when we first sort of started what we call human civilization in the modern sense. I mean, why, why should we not use all the knowledge, all the expertise and all the intelligence and creativeness. But these people had, I mean, 200 years is nothing really so we should not, what is it renowned now what is it you know we should, we should make use of a longer a long term perspective the long duration may be much more valuable. And I think one of the key sort of problems with modern thinking is that we have a sort of. We get a training in shortsightedness. We are trained looking at things in quarterly outcomes, if you work in a company you know you need returns every quarter of a year, and look at the results that makes long term efficiencies very difficult. Which by the way is also a problem of our democracy, democracies at the moment because if you go from election to election, you never have time to put on long term sort of measures for changing for bringing about transformations that we are needing. So I think we should really sort of be honest and also correct courageous courageous. And try and have a look and you know let's look at how things were done differently and not everything was good than, but maybe some ideas have an inspiring and encouraging impact. Yeah I mean one of the things about modernity is an idea is it's so it's such a like a tautology we did we're modern because we do these things we just say are modern, and modern is good because well moderns obviously good. And you know like we we're wrapped up in this idea but we have we've set benchmarks that made sense with the development of the enlightenment with the industrial revolution and these benchmarks don't apply anymore right or perhaps they don't. You know and part of this is that meta narrative we were talking about of progress. That things used to be bad and humans have we've been in this constant slow but steady progression of getting better and better until sometime in the mid 20th century I think right. Well I suppose world were first and world were second were both sort of proving the idea wrong in the first place but. Yeah but there's an interpretation you know the decline in fall that everything was great until World War II. Yes. And that's really the end of it. Of course we're going to look at it and say that that's just what you're talking about is the 30 years war to World War II that's 300 years of non stop fighting. Oh great, but people are getting richer we're industrializing and we're doing all these things. And I find that this is always very funny though that this idea of the. You know the progress narrative which you point out. I mean it's certainly. Yeah romanticism about the past is just as sort of misleading as all these dark and dirty middle ages idea so. It's I think we should have a more realistic and maybe more friendly in relation with our ancestors neither you know it's been like in the family it's never you know there were always three sites to every story one is right. One is usually one I see one and a third site none of those overseas yeah and I think. Yeah it's it's rather. Looking for the traces where you can take something out for yourself. Or maybe you can also say. If you look at your own family history or you always realize that periods where not much happened or very unspectacular. And nobody looks at them but maybe some they weren't usually the best ones you know when you're lucky I mean you're happy you don't have time to write things down. You don't write diary you don't write you don't go to court you don't produce court cases and things like that so we have nothing about these times so. But history is a bit like journalism you know only bad news or good news so we only remember. In our memories bad things and I think that's one of the pitfalls of history. Books about wars to sell much better than books about you know sustainable practices. Oh let's see we might. Yeah but I think that's that's sort of the middle thing that's not about romanticizing the past and it's not about. It's really about it's realism and sometimes I have the impression that our world few and our maybe few of human nature of us of humans. It came a bit unrealistic. Maybe with one of the one of the big problems is the. Yeah, then the natural sort of the idea that humans by nature or self interested. What was what drives us all yeah I mean that's really bad it's it's worse than it's worse than original sin you know. It's a bit like the church is also talks we call it a realistic world worldview but what I think is actually. If you tell people that self interest is the driving force and if you tell them if you're not self interested you won't make it in our business. I mean, I become self interest I behave like that you know so that's one of the things which we forget and. Yeah, sometimes I think maybe societies in pre modern times had more realistic views about human nature. Yeah, but but that's yeah. I mean, yeah, I cannot. I don't know at least there was something. I mean there are other like other explanations for why we did things beyond self interest self interest was there, but so many other, you know, including a strong religious belief or altruism. And you know when I think it comes down to this idea, you know, to that like humans are inherently bad right the idea of original sin is that we are inherently bad. And we will fight about things and I is that true or not well certainly a lot of people are deeply invested in making us believe that right that is. And they are doing it because you can make a lot of money with it, you know, there's always been a lot of money to be made and a lot of power to be had by convincing humans that they're they're bad. Yeah, that's right, that's right. But then I mean we come to comments if we go on talking like this I mean can we that one of the things we forget if we are just think about rational choices that the human capacity to cooperation the human capacity to communicate and to work together. And actually to flourish or thrive in a way that you would not flourish as an individual. That's one of the points I make in my book very strongly so you live together in communities, monastic communities are just one of many examples but you have the big wins as if you want sort of female shared spaces within the cities in flounders and Amsterdam had baguinos has still I mean and they are coming back now again and this is a way of women sharing lifetime sharing space, not sharing their property and not sharing sort of, you know, common meals necessarily but just living together and working in terms of economic frameworks that leave them space to look and do their own jobs, some are rich some are poor, but they still share life. And this way of life has for a long time, especially in the Netherlands and also in flonder in Belgium. We looked at as a very suppressive mode of existence, because what we made of these women in the late 18th and 19th century that was indeed not a very nice that was a strong religious community. In 13th century flonders, when they were founded, this was just sort of, you know, a creative space and communities that enable you to do things which you wouldn't do. We have Montpellier has a as a good example they have the baguines there, they're definitely very active as capital givers venture capitalists if you want so if you needed to credit if you need money, young couple bakers. You would go to the notary in the notary would make contact with the big winage and then these women would invest money in young people who run a startup if you want. Yeah, I mean this little like investment capital micro finance from the begins and the beginning is where communities of women who live together not necessarily in a monastic and monastic like but not under a rule. And this is one of the examples you use in your chapter called sharing. You also talk about the mendicants and Peter Levy, who's a really interesting guy would you tell us about Peter Levy. He was one of those Franciscan, we call them minorites we call them mendicants people who beg for their living because they not only want to renounce individual property they also renounce common property. So, whatever they get, they would sort of hand over to the pope that was the legal solution wouldn't find. He started, I mean the thing is he was a very, he was all around France or some France, now born and then Paris and then Rome. And always very close to the local economy people who you know the long local undertakers aren't entrepreneurs why, because these mendicants were very, very popular as a bike theatre as spiritual advisors to entrepreneurs. Because they had for some reason, no, no, they didn't hesitate to talk to these people they were sort of an invention of medieval cities and an answer to the growing economy in medieval Europe in the 13th century. So, Peter's honest, he knew a lot about economic facts and he knew a lot and these people he was sort of advising, they were trying to do business without doing wrong. The question was you know is it okay to make profit or not. And so they start really developing a language of an economic language, which is amazing and some of my colleagues say that this is the first sort of theory, for example of price development which we have in in Europe if you want to. And so, all this theoretical framework leads up in in the end to about some call a pre pre requisite for the rise of capitalism later on. This talks about the commercial revolution and the Franciscans were big part of it. But what I found very interesting so there is a big sort of a very prominent expertise in economic thinking. They try to look for dealing with property without ownership, which I find very interesting. You can have, you can have, you can can use something without possessing it. You can eat an apple if someone gives it to you without, you know, so that's the oozos power, which is the only legal or accepted way of doing things. So, he would, he would be what I call a predecessor of what we today call minimalism, living with as little as possible, but at the same time being really rich because you have sort of the right to use a lot without actually owning it. So, I think there is one of the really crucial landmarks for economies that are coming up in a whole of Europe. I mean, Tina the more in Rotterdam she's working on corporate collective action, where we really see how people within communities organize economic practices without insisting on ownership on private ownership, but on common ownership. So, Petrus Janes-Olivie is one of these people who is a predecessor in thinking and very original, he was later, he was, you know, leading a good life and they discussed a lot about it and he had a lot of discussion and also conflict with the Pope and also with his with the general minister of his order, but never anything happened, sort of, they were accepted. It was a, it was a, it was a way of living that lived by, by conflict, which was nice. I mean, they were just talking to the teacher, only when he was dead. And he then later on got sort of not cursed, but excommunicated because they saw his teachings are all anti orthodoxy, which is very interesting because, you know, during his lifetime, nobody cared really, but then he was condemned and excommunicated post mortup. And later on he was re, re established again. Yeah. It's interesting, right, because there's this communal life that we see with some monastics with the, the, the, the mendic or the, you know, beginages, but they're not religious, but like the Benedictines and then we have this, like, very minimalist corporate existence from the mendicants, which reminds me a lot about just like urban living in a lot of ways now, you know, I don't have to own tools, I can go to the place where the tools are and use them. Right. Well, that's the thing. I mean, it's really car sharing in the monastery, if you want, or what you call, you know, circulation of clothes. What we do today, like, you know, sharing them and passing them on when you don't, this is actually the Benedictine rule has that. There was a one person responsible for all the habits and you get one every week and then it's washed and then you take it. So it's very handy. Yeah. And I'm thinking about minimalism and like, you know, like, I'm to think of like hashtag van life and Peter Levy was an interesting kind of change for me to think about it, but I see it. You know, while we're talking about minimalism or like another kind of stock word for thinking about the environment is recycling. Right, which is one of the pillars of the modern low impact environmental movement. This is not new at all, is it? Well, to me, it seems that circular economy was really sort of the gold standards of economic thinking and economic practices for a long time, because I think our ancestors were just much too far too clever to waste resources like we do. Of course, you have always, you know, counter examples, and we know that, you know, the forests were devastated by the Greeks when they built their ships or, or island was deforestated by the British, when they build their amount on things like that. We know that, but then on the other side, there is a real huge dresser drove of knowledge how to use resources intelligent. And one of the one strain in this intelligence is really how to use and reuse and recycle things. So, I mean, take, for example, the building industry. You can, you know, what would be used to call spolia, namely the reuse of antique stone in medieval houses or medieval churches. Long time it has been seen as sort of, you know, in the Middle Ages, they weren't capable to do proper building so they had to take antique ruins and build them into their houses. Today, I mean, art historians, architectural history, they are just trying to learn from these people how intelligent they used and reused building material in many ways. I mean, apart from the fact that you know the Colosseum is made of cement. What do you call it? Bit tongue. It's cement. What we, at the moment we have all these bridges falling down in Germany made of style bit tongue because they have been built in the fifties. And they weren't built properly so only after 70 years they fall apart. I think our ancestors were much cleverer I mean they knew how to use and build with cement and making it lost for centuries. The chair, the throne of Charlemagne, is one example. I mean it's just a mixture of mama blades. One of them, one of one side part is made probably from a marble blade from a bathroom or maybe an antique saloon where you did gambling. But you know, you put and stick things together, but it's not because they couldn't do better but rather because they knew that old things can sort of add value. I think this is something we have actively sort of crushed out because obviously producing new things and telling people that only new things are good things is an essential part for the way we are doing economy at the moment. Because if you don't buy new things, the economy goes down and what is it, the income, the VIP, the GDP and exactly, it's right, it's going down you know so it's really an economy based on producing new and new and new. I think we could, if we wanted to achieve the same results by making recycling and reusing really attractive and lucrative jobs. Yeah we have the idea of a productive citizen is someone who consumes right consuming is what it means to be successful and that creates demand which means we must constantly produce, but at what end to what end I mean so that there's money in the economy so that there's constantly growth like the Smith of growth, but that's a paradigm that doesn't work for us it is going to destroy the planet. I mean the other example for this not for recycling is but for the renouncing of everything is of course Francis from Assisi, he plays role and then also you would, I mean, just the idea of sort of living the attractiveness of living in sort of a loss affair with nature. It's something which is very appealing to a lot of us, not maybe in the long run because nobody wants really to live like Saint Francis of Assisi, but at the same time, I think there is, you know, a huge attraction you see people selling books how to travel through the world without money and you know there is there is some sort of, I don't want to say sex appeal but I think we have on the one side or the desire and the need for more and better and more comfortable, but at the same time we also have a need for less and reduced and quiet, we are, you know, we are all feeling in in a hurry we are all feeling like on constant over demands coming to us so that they are both sides and they have been with us for 3,000 years in history I think, and I think it's time to give more or a louder voice to the down great downsizing voice that has been with us for a long time and we have the less is more situation, you know, and this is just part of that relationship with our past, right, we are very, especially young people are forward thinking and we want the modern we want new and amazing, and then we start to get a little older and we become nostalgic because nostalgia is equally kind of made up, but I think we're also seeing a little bit of that right now as we have this idea of was the past where we snug and happy or where was the British nasty British and short, and we're starting to look at the past is like a snug and happy past where, you know, I'm thinking about like the hobbies that I might, like the millennial and the gen Z women are all knitting, like so important, you know stuff that my grandma did because like that's, this is this minimalist kind of back to nature simple idea, but you know, you know there is also this funny thing about when are things getting better, so if you are in a situation where what do you think you can take boxes, you know, and the first is if you really try very hard and then know, if you, you know, bring other people together and you try together, no, if you wait for, if you wait 20 years and look back and that was the good old days, we can make everything great again, just wait 20 years and then things are better So you close with the idea of the land of cocaine, which really struck me, so the land of cocaine from cocaine, I don't know, just realize I don't know how to pronounce that And so, and they're real parallels here, and first of all, can you just tell our listeners about this with the land of cocaine? The land of cocaine is actually Fablio, which is very old, going back to the 14th century, I'm very glad, I mean I studied in Ireland, in Trinity College, did my doctor there, and the earliest Anglo-Norman piece of literature is actually the land of cocaine It's one of, it's in the book of Kildare, where this Fablio is contained, and the idea is just that, you know, it's the land where you have honey and milk and everything and you don't need to do anything and just lie around and the birds are flying into your mouth You can bath in milk, maybe champagne if you want, but then at the time they didn't have champagne My idea is really at the end of the book, that the dream of cocaine at the time, in the 14th century, in the 16th century, when Bruegel was painting this Fablio, it was always somehow a caricature So the idea that humans are happy when they have everything was always sort of mixed with a big pinch of salt, because we knew, if you're lying around and having to do nothing, it makes humans ridiculous What you normally have as the conventional reading of this land of cocaña amongst historians, I have to say, is that, you know, at the time people were always hungry and that's why they were dreaming of having to eat all the time But that's not true, I mean people were certainly eating less than we are eating today, and also they were eating in rhythms, they had feast times and they had fast times, which we are rediscovering at the moment, yeah, we see how healthy it is Making breaks or changing diet every so often, so I think they were much healthier than we are, but they also just knew how to cope with times of having less and times of having more, but having everything all the year round and every time Whenever you want it, they knew this is what makes humans, but if you want silly looking or stupid or dulling, yeah, yeah, brogals, brogals, people are lying on the ground in a stupor, right, nothing is getting done They're, you know, what I'm thinking about like, H.G. Wells, right, they're the Eloy, I think, or the, you know, H.G. Wells book where the Eloy are useless and they're fed upon, or, you know, this idea that if you just, this constant state of abundance Yes, will rots at your ability to do anything, and the brogals pictures in so far interesting because, you know, it would be nice if people were lucky or happy, but they are not, I mean, they just, they look dull, drunken, stupid, and really not very attractive So it gives humans in a very strange state if you sort of live in a world of total abundance, mind you, in paradise, they wouldn't eat meat and they wouldn't have everything, I mean, they had everything, but they would sort of not kill animals They would, well, they would want apples, they wouldn't, they weren't allowed to Yeah, it's a discussion, it wasn't a, it was a fruit, it wasn't an applegum, yeah, yeah, yeah, but anyway, it was a vegetarian world, which is also what we forget very often I didn't have to work, which is nice, which is very nice, but, and so you see that we kind of always had this idea, we have, or strong bias in the West, we have written a lot of literature about how overabundance isn't only not much better But then, then complete deprivation, which you really demonstrated really well, yeah, yeah, yeah, overabundance, yeah, the problem of overabundance, I think it's one that is really sort of constantly heated, we produce overabundance, we need it economically It's the same time, be suffer from it, yeah, yeah, just a really nice way to kind of close out our little discussion about the book, so I just have one more question for you, which is, I know you've had a little bit of a time as you've been doing administration for a while, but One hopes you're going to, you're back to being a professor, a functioning full time back in your work professor, so what's next, what are you working on? Actually, I have been working on the Seven Deadly Sins for a while now, and the book is out in German, two days ago it came out. Congratulations. Yes, yes, yes, and the Seven Deadly Sins is really sort of an attempt to look at a system of rules in pre-modern societies, in pre-modern Europe, that sort of regulates social behavior, inspires or forbids certain ways of doing things. I'm very curious what people are going to make out of that book, it's an attempt to read the system of the Seven Deadly Sins as one container that sort of produces or brings forward traditional knowledge in Europe. I was looking, I was actually looking at traditional knowledge in Canada, at the northwest coast of Canada, going there to talk to people from the Kvakvakvakvak, which is one of those first nation people, and I was sort of very keen on trying to find non-European traditions in the way to deal with our words, with the human nature and everything. And the funny thing was when I was sort of talking to these people and also to colleagues in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia, the more we talk, the more this question came, you know, they said, you can't take our knowledge, you took everything from us, you Europeans, you took our traditions, you took our language, you took our land, you took our children, and now you want our traditional knowledge to solve the problems you caused. And then the question, then the question, don't you have your own traditional knowledge? And I was really like something, oh, I was really, don't do us Europeans have traditional knowledge. And of course we think of Hildegard of being, and we think of Shaman, or we think of Celtic Christianity and things like that, which is very interesting and fair enough. But then I thought, okay, the problem with traditional knowledge in indigenous cultures is it's obviously mainstream knowledge, and therefore I started reworking my ideas on the seven deadly sins, trying to sort of filter or concentrate on training in good or bad behavior or whatever you call it. So that's my, that has been my next book, and I will see what comes in three weeks time I go to Malawi, because one of the things I mean in Vidya is jealousy is one of the deadly sins. And that has a lot to do with insult and insulting other people and not letting them sort of, what is it nightish, a miscoon and in an guttous miscoon and if you're, if you're, if you can't be here that others have something. And it has a lot to do with witchcraft accusation, because that's what you accuse your neighbor of if he is, or she is successful in her business and you're not doing very well, you accuse her of being a witch. So that was part, I mean it has been part of witchcraft accusations for the last 2000 years. I have a research cooperation with people who are working there as paleo anthropologists. So I'm, I'm, I'm going to see how to make maybe individual case studies for the seven deadly sins in more local and regional and present day cultures. Ah, sounds great. I want to thank you so much for talking to me today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Great. Thank you, Jana. I hope I was precise enough and gave you a lot of stories. I mean, yeah, but thank you. It was great talking to you. And please take up with my chairman, which is a bit rusty. Thanks so much. All right. And have a lovely lovely day. All right. Thank you. [MUSIC] (gentle music)
