Hello, welcome to John Richardson and the FutureNort series six, episode five. We're back after a brief.

You've got to say hiatus there, haven't you? It's the only word. I don't know that. Well, I think we've taken hiatuses to a new level, haven't we?

Sejourn. Yeah. Oh, I prefer Sejorn. It makes it sound like we've taken hiatuses to a new level, haven't we? Sejean. Yeah. Oh, I prefer Sejours Sejourn. It makes it sound like we've been having a nice time, which is obviously not the truth. I think I've just been lying on my back in horror at what's happened over the last six weeks going, how can we possibly record anything about this? Yeah. Sojourn sounds better after a brief, blindfolded sludge through the unending shit that is existence.

How have you both been?

When I say, how have you both been?

Are we ignoring anything, it looks like news or global?

Are we taking that as red?

Or do you want to sort of all-encompassing, how are you?

I thought you were kind of bleak trudged through the unending shit of existence was probably quite actually. I mean, it's, yeah, I don't think we need to dwell on that. I mean, people know what's going on up there. I said to a friend of mine the other day, I kind of liked it when we were just environmentalists fighting for climate change and biodiversity. And now we have to fight fascism and two. And it's like, fucking hell, that's got another job to add to the list. We also seem to have to re-establish the case for environmentalism. Yeah, yeah, well, we'll get into that. Don't worry about it. There's lots of good news that people don't talk about. For instance, like China's emissions are plateauing or falling. Huge.

Huge. Enormous. Amazing stuff. All the stuff I'm doing in soil, incredibly hopeful.

What a sentence that is. I mean, obviously everyone who listens to this podcast knows that what you mean is researching new ways of regenerating soil. But the sentence, all the stuff I'm doing in soil

on any other podcast could sound like somebody

who's just had a full breakdown. It's just sliding around naked in their own background.

Well, the two things are not mutually exclusive.

I've saw a brilliant satirical piece this week, the Metacrisis helpline, where the economy

had discovered that it lives inside something, and they had a comment from the economy

saying, we're not against soil exactly, we just don't understand why it has to underpin everything.

Anyway, so what have we been up to? Come on. Ed, let's start with you, because you're the

most depressed, and we need to end on a high note. I've been working with the responsible leaders.

Both of them. Yeah, but...

I'm about to write a piece, I think, about where is our leadership?

Because I wrote a piece a few years ago called The Emerter of Consultancy,

...