I've never known it this bad. I think the world is preparing for war. I'm despairing at the moment

where the United States is going and taking us. Do you think that we can do things to prevent

the catastrophes that you fear? My biggest hope about the 21st century is my most reasonable hope.

We'll scrape through and there will be disasters and catastrophes along

the way. And we might disrupt ourselves so much that a kind of peace will be said.

There's obviously a massive debate around freedom of speech. What is the biggest threat

to your freedom of speech, do you think? Is it the right or the left?

Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Christian Guri Murphy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives and the

events that have helped shape them. Today's guest is a writer who, if not changing the whole world,

certainly helped change the British novel,

as one of a group of writers in the 80s who began experimenting

with style and subject.

In the Cuen's latest novel, What We Can Know,

asks profound questions about who we are and where we're going,

set in a future where the lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas,

we are now just an archipelago.

Sirian McEwen, thank you for joining us.

If you could change the world in any way, how would you change it?

What I would love is a development that we can make some kind of peace for this thing that's

coming down the track towards us, which is AI, artificial intelligence.

We can't make it go away.

We're going to have to live with it.

...