Simon Waller (00:01)
Hello and welcome to episode 15 of The Future With Friends. Today I’m being joined by very old, very dear friend of mine, Zoë Routh. And Zoë and I first met, well, it be about, I reckon, 12, 13 years ago in a little community called Thought Leaders. Do you remember those days, Zoë?

Zoë Routh (00:22)
Yeah, they were pretty intense and significant and momentous. So absolutely. I remember meeting you. It was 2015, my first year in the community. Yeah. So I think you were already. Yeah. That’s right.

Simon Waller (00:25)
Yeah.

2015 it was for your first year. Aha. So I must’ve been already in it for a year or or year or two before you arrived.

Yeah. And it was like, ⁓ you know, you’re not the first person from thought leaders to have made it onto the podcast. And I do remember as much as anything, my joy of that time is the community of people that you got to spend time with. Like it was a, it definitely can be the attracted to a certain type of person. Often people who, who had big ideas and potentially
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a desire or almost like a drive to be able to articulate them and share them with others. So entirely unsurprising that a couple of guests have made it to the podcast.

Zoë Routh (01:08)
Absolutely. I made some excellent friends there and that sense of community and collaboration was essential to help grow my thought leadership practice as well as bolster my confidence and conviction in what I was doing and just really, there’s just some amazing people around. ⁓ And so I’m forever grateful for that experience. You being one of them, of course, and we did some great collaborations since our first meeting there, which had been awesome.

Simon Waller (01:34)
Yeah.

Like, well, when I went, when I went into that, I didn’t really know. I thought I knew a bit about a lot, but found out that I didn’t actually know much about anything. And I think this must’ve been only around that time that I was really trying to establish myself as a keynote speaker. So that’s a decade or so ago. And you were actually one of the people who gave me, I know one of my breaks, one of my big breaks. You actually had your own leadership conference at the time called

Zoë Routh (01:53)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (02:04)
The code was a future of leadership. I was right now is, ⁓ edge of leadership. Yeah. which you host up in Canberra and you actually invited me to be a speaker on your event, which, I said at the time, felt really significant to me that first of all, ⁓ you know, when you’re in that early stages, you’re very grateful for people putting their, like their faith and their trust in you. ⁓ but for someone like you to put your faith and trust in me actually meant a lot.

Actually, I have a lot of respect for you and the work you do in the leadership space. And yeah, I was pretty chuffed to be invited to be part of that.

Zoë Routh (02:42)
You’re so welcome. And it was a privilege to have you be part of that event. And I know people got huge amounts of value out of that. About conversations about the future and technology that they weren’t having yet or was overwhelming at that time. Well, I think it probably still is overwhelming at the time and still relevant. It’s just the topics, the specific nitty gritty has evolved since 2017.

Simon Waller (02:55)
Mmm

Yeah. And this is interesting. ⁓ we obviously we’re here to talk about a scenario that you’ve written and there is, as people will find out very soon, there’s a whole bunch of different ⁓ tech related concepts that appear in it. do. Yeah. Like since, since coming on, ⁓ yeah. And doing that keynote for you, my, my work has kind of evolved a little bit. ⁓ or you’d even say it’s devolved a little bit in the sense that I’ve actually gone back to some of the work I used to do at Rio Tinto years and years ago around scenarios and.

Zoë Routh (03:17)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (03:34)
And this idea that the future becomes a safe space to have difficult conversations or confronting conversations. And I do think that at the time when I came into that keynote, ⁓ yeah, was shared there, I shared a whole bunch of different technology tools and how this has changed the way we work. And for a lot of people, when you confront them in the moment that all this stuff exists, you are kind of now having to deal with this level of change in your work. That’s hard. ⁓ I definitely increasingly find that this stuff that’s more.

narrative driven, future focused provides almost like a safer way or a place to play with these ideas. And what would that mean for us? And how would it change the way I work in a way that’s lot safer than perhaps what I used to do. And I feel that this might be an idea that you agree with.

Zoë Routh (04:22)
Absolutely. That was kind of the impetus behind starting to write fiction. So I’ve been writing nonfiction leadership books for five, 10 years, five or six years. And that point I’m like, would fiction be something that could capture people’s hearts and minds a little bit more to help them dive into leadership practice in a different way? So I started with that as a premise and then when the personal side of me is like, could I write a novel? That’s personal agenda. And those two things came together and I did some

leadership futurist thinking work around it. And that was the genesis behind my first ⁓ sci-fi series, the Gaia series. ⁓

Simon Waller (04:58)
Yeah. So

I kind of jokingly said to you before that, like you obviously cheated before you came on the podcast. A lot of people have never written a scenario before and you went ahead and wrote, was it, you said now it’s five fiction. right. So, and do you defer, like, I mean, uh, do you distinguish between the concept of, uh, science fiction and speculative fiction? Do you, where do you put your own work in that spectrum?

Zoë Routh (05:11)
Yeah, yeah. The fifth one’s in production as we speak, yeah.

So when I was very naive first time novel writer, I didn’t know pretty much anything about the concept of genre, which was not helpful for marketing. So I finished my book, gave it to my editor. And as he was editing, like, where do you, I started reading about genre fiction. like, my God, I have no idea how to categorise this thing. And ⁓ he suggested climate fiction. like, what the hell is that? So I had to go and read about Clifi and then expand my view.

my view about sci-fi. as I understand it is specular fiction is the broad church and underneath that is science fiction because under speculative fiction you can have science fiction, you can have just imagined futures and so there’s lots of different subcategories is the idea and even in sci-fi there’s a whole bunch of subgenres in there. Military sci-fi, alien sci-fi, barbarian romance sci-fi like you got it. So I’m like

Simon Waller (06:19)
you

Zoë Routh (06:23)
So I’ve been trying to figure out where mine kind of fits. And I think I’m, ⁓ I’ve got dystopian edges. I’ve got techno thriller edges. So, climate fiction. if I was to categorise, I’d be saying it’s a cli-fi techno thriller, high five book. So there you go. And then I was explaining this to my running friends who are readers, but have no understanding of the nuance of genre. And they’re like, that sounds like a very niche market. I’m like,

Yeah, probably is. But you know, you kind of have to go broad church.

Simon Waller (06:54)
Yeah. But, but

if you get niche enough, you can be the number one book on Amazon that there’s trade-offs.

Zoë Routh (07:01)
There, think that game has changed quite

a lot. So when I first launched, could gamify it a little bit more to hit number one and your very tiny little niche, but now they’ve restricted the number of categories you can go into and it’s, anyway, that’s an Amazon story.

Simon Waller (07:06)
Yeah.

Yeah. But I

think also, you know, that game is, is a game, right. And it’s actually not the reason why we play in a sense. I remember when I heard about the first book and I was trying to think about the right attitude to describe it. Like I thought it was like, Oh, that’s really brave. It’s not actually to think it’s probably the right adjective I’d describe it is it’s very adventurous. Um, in the sense that, you know, you have such an established brand in kind of that leadership development space.

Zoë Routh (07:37)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (07:45)
interesting enough though, another massive part of your life’s work has been with organisations like Outward Bound. so there’s certainly an adventurous edge to who you are anyway, but that’s how I think I framed it. like, what an adventurous thing to do to basically go, I’m going to like from a cold start, right. I, sorry, how did we describe it? A Clifify, a techno thriller novel, right. ⁓

Can you tell us a little bit about what that was like, the first one? I imagine the first one would have felt really kind of ⁓ almost like awkward to translate from writing. you already had what a handful of non-fiction books, leadership books. What was that like to transition into that fiction space?

Zoë Routh (08:33)
So parts of it were easy. So in all my nonfiction books, all the case studies and stories were kind of mini versions of a novel, you like. So you had main characters, they’ve got a challenge, they resolve it somehow. And that’s essentially what a novel is. You’re following trajectory of one or more people who have a goal, they have a lot of obstacles and they get to an ending point, either successful or not. If you’re going to just summarise what a work of fiction could be.

That’s the genre fiction, literary fiction, something different altogether, but similar. You know, you have people that go through stuff, it’s either good or bad, something happens in the end, hopefully, unless it’s orbital, which is just a description of the people going around the planet in the International Space Station that won the Booker Prize this year. ⁓ We’ll just park that for the second. So that was what the similar things are, is just expanding on the story. And then…

there was a whole bunch of stuff. I’m like, ah, I wonder if there’s a template in Scrivener, my novel writing or my book writing software for novels. So can you pull it up? like, oh, fancy that. Other people have thought about that. There was character pages, there was play settings. I’m like, oh my God, there’s a lot more to this than I possibly thought. And so as I’m writing the story and ideas for it, I’m also at the same time reading about how to write a novel and all the structures that go into it. And it went.

Right. Okay. So I then found a developmental editor and I gave him the first 30,000 words before I committed to going down this track. like, have I got any talent here? Any hope of being successful? So he did a big critique of it, which he tore apart a few of my main premises, which I had to sit for a while thinking about, you know, his impression of X, Y, and Z. So one of the characters in particular, his trajectory changed radically after that.

and also the flavor of the book and trying to speak to genre. ⁓ So there was a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t know that I wrestled with and kind of worked my way through. But I did know the story I wanted to tell in terms of theme. I wanted to discuss the future of leadership, the future of power in these different driving trends that we saw. Climate being one of them, which is I think why my editors thought climate fiction, because climate played such a huge piece of the driver.

in that first novel and continuing into the other ones. So that was one of the elements. So it was a massive scenario plan and then taking characters and bringing them to life and making sure that it’s a good read for readers so that they felt like they could experience some of that lessons and challenges alongside, which is what makes good fiction, in my opinion, that you go on these emotional journeys alongside the characters, either hating or loving them, but getting something of value from it.

Simon Waller (11:23)
Yeah, I talk about the concept of scenarios as being fiction based in fact. So it’s basically extrapolating out some of the technologies or the cultural shifts or the environmental changes that we’re experiencing and extrapolate them out into a particular direction and going, what might this ⁓ combination of factors result in? And let’s tell a story about that. Yes. He’s the power of narrative.

Zoë Routh (11:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Simon Waller (11:48)
to be able to engage an audience in these ideas. I definitely picked up in reading some of your books, like, yeah, the leadership angle, ⁓ your kind of, your work work certainly comes through in it. It’s almost like there is a, there’s a level of, ⁓ I think we talked about this. You didn’t like the idea that it’s a parable as such, but there’s a…

Zoë Routh (12:14)
Oh,

no, no, no.

Simon Waller (12:16)
But there

was a lesson to be learned or there was something to be reflected on that is bigger than just the story itself. Is that fair enough to say?

Zoë Routh (12:26)
Absolutely. And I think a lot of writers bring a moral imperative, moral perspective to their work. And certainly the books that resonate with people have something in there. It’s not always slamming it against your head, which is what I parables are. Can’t do it. It’s just like, it’s just too obvious. And I think in my first novel, think just a little bit too obvious on reflection, like having written four since that first one.

It’s like, probably didn’t need to shove it down people’s throats so much, but I don’t know if I shoved it down their throats, but it was just a little bit too overt in my opinion. Now looking back on that, ⁓ maybe you have to go back and reread it. I haven’t read that first book in three years. So I’m like, maybe it’s not as bad as I’m imagining it to be. ⁓ But there was some deliberate things in terms of the conversations the leaders have about selecting ⁓ their staff to go and build the prototype for the base on the moon. know, they wanted to

Simon Waller (13:12)
Hahaha

Zoë Routh (13:23)
combination of particular skills and there was a conversation about skills versus potential, which is a great leadership conversation. And then there’s comparison to other leaders who are doing different things, different strategies and how that plays out. There’s a whole section on leadership maturity, which is taken directly from the work that I do as a leadership expert talking about people’s different perspectives and development and what’s possible for them. So yeah, those threads are definitely in there.

And that felt like a wonder, that felt like a good expression of helping people explore some of those big ideas, which is what I do in boardrooms and different programs with leaders and their teams.

Simon Waller (14:03)
Yeah. I always remember back into my English literature days when I was kind of year 11, 12, and you read these kind of, you know, classic fiction pieces, you know, whether it be Shakespeare or Wordsworth or whatever. And you’d be asked to make this interpretation around what the words mean. And on one hand, like I suppose it’s entirely legitimate for everybody to make their own interpretation of what the words mean. But at the same time, you’re always like, am I really giving a meaning to this that is entirely

Zoë Routh (14:22)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (14:33)
different from what the author intended. ⁓ The benefit obviously today is that we have the author of the scenario here on the podcast. And so we’ll get just to ask you directly. ⁓ We’re jump into it a sec. I beforehand, obviously, I when we spoke about this, obviously, I said, look, hey, Zoë, you can talk about the future of absolutely anything that you want. And you ruminate on this a little bit.

Zoë Routh (14:41)
Hahaha.

Well, I think…

Simon Waller (15:01)
But you come together with this scenario, what would you, what would you say this is the future of?

Zoë Routh (15:06)
Future of power.

Simon Waller (15:08)
The future of power.

And is there a particular reason like why that topic? What, why, if you could have chosen to talk about the future of anything you chose power.

Zoë Routh (15:17)
I’ve been obsessing about that topic since I wrote People Stuff in 2020. So that is a nonfiction book. And in my research around that book, did a lot of, read a lot about power and how it’s deployed, abused, et cetera, in leadership scenarios and how it affects people and how they show up and how they interact with each other. And I thought, back then I’m like, we really need to change our relationship to power, ⁓ understand it better. In fact,

I’m trying to think who, who is it that talked about power literacy? Alicia McKay. She did a whole thing about power literacy on her sub stack recently. I’m like, yeah, that’s basically, I wish I’d have that title. That would have been a really good book title. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I think that’s definitely the case. We were not as leaders, like the leaders I work with aren’t, they know when power is being misused, abused, and it’s

Simon Waller (15:59)
⁓ At least it does that. Yeah.

Zoë Routh (16:15)
directed against them. They’re not necessarily aware when they do it. And I think this is part of the conversation. We need to know about power, how it affects us, how we can use it better, how we can develop and deploy it in a useful way. So that started the genesis of fascination with power, ⁓ oligarchies, ⁓ and also autocracy. So I went into down that political side of things, looking at how power is used and abused by people in positions of

great authority at a national global scale. And for me, it became an urgent thing. I’m like, if it’s happening at that global scale, it’s happening on a micro level. And my research for my next non-fiction book, which came out this year, Power Games, was based around that. ⁓ Discovering that everybody I spoke to had experienced some sort of power abuse and how debilitating those experiences were. And I just got really crushed by that. It’s like…

I’m, cause I’m naturally an optimist. And I think through the conversations and research around power, I’ve become a tempered optimist. So I still believe that we have a possible right. I don’t I don’t even know it’s rational optimist, but I think the shine has gone off, you know, optimists tend to have great, beautiful, bright colored glasses on. think, there’s less of a shine now. think discovering that’s

Simon Waller (17:21)
a rational optimist. ⁓

Yeah.

Zoë Routh (17:36)
psychopaths are real and the kind of damage they can do in workplaces was sobering for me. And how many of them get to positions of influence ⁓ and authority, I think, was pretty scary. that sort of started the, that’s been ongoing conversation for me and discussions and research since 2020 up until now. And I wanted to explore that in my novels as well. How are the different approaches to power playing out in characters and their interactions and their decisions.

Simon Waller (17:45)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (18:06)
for better or good. ⁓ that sort of, when you say, what do you want to talk about? I’m like, future of power. Because I have a philosophy about where I would like it to go. And I don’t think there’s a linear projection towards that. I think it’s going to be a struggle to get to. Okay. Parking it.

Simon Waller (18:10)
Yeah.

Perfect.

Well, I’m really, we’ll let’s park that because I think when we people

hear the scenario that will make a lot more sense. And I think will give us a lot of like material to work with in that conversation. last thing. the year you’ve chosen to have chosen, uh, 2055. So 20 years from now, is there any, is that right?

Zoë Routh (18:33)
Yeah.

I can’t remember. Like is that 20 or 30 years? Okay. Did I? Okay. 20 years. Yeah.

Simon Waller (18:46)
Yeah, let’s say it was because it’s what you did write it on the top of the scenario. yeah, but 20 years from now. And again, I find

this an interesting timeframe where it’s again, far enough away we can imagine something to be a little bit different, but anchored very much still in some of the conversations and the technologies and the things that are going on right now. Was there any other significance to the timeframe for you apart from trying to find that space where you could

be expressive in the scenario, but also connected to the present. What else came up for you in that timeframe?

Zoë Routh (19:21)
⁓ this is maybe the realest optimist. How real is it, realistic is it that we’re going to get to Mars in the next couple of years? I’m like, I don’t think it’s going to be that realistic to build a community on Mars in the next five years, despite what Elon Musk spruiks. And that’s based on a lot of research I’ve done around what it will take to establish a community, either on the moon or Mars or both. it’s, the obstacles are incredible. ⁓

Simon Waller (19:32)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (19:49)
And will we be able to do it? Will we have the political, financial, economic will to do it? I don’t know. I suspect it might take more than 10 years. It might take more than 20 years. So that’s sort of where.

Simon Waller (19:59)
Okay. Well, I think with that,

I think with that, the scene has been set and we’re now going to throw to you, Zoë, you’re going to read your scenario from the beginning all the way through to the end. The microphone is all yours.

Zoë Routh (20:14)
Thank you. Lincoln Ellison pulled his silver plated comb through the helmet of his hair, smoothing every strand until it gleamed. He smiled and checked his teeth. White as sheets, chiseled symmetrical, lustrous. He breathed into his palm. Minty fresh. Good. Excellent. All the anti-aging protocols, the optimisation regimens, the endless tweaks, working.

Mr. Ellison, they’re ready for you now. His assistant, the doppelbot Caesar bowed and held the door for him. Lincoln savored the deference. Critics had mocked him for reprogramming an AI based on Julius Caesar into servitude, but really, humility would have done the old general some good. Hubris had left Caesar bleeding on a Senate floor. But today was Lincoln’s triumph, his metaphorical lap of glory around Rome.

His empire, Spaceward Bound, was unveiling planetary-scale air purification. No more sulfur dust bowls, no more acid rain. Soon, clean skies, clean lungs. Lincoln’s smile broadened. Water salinity? They’d already solved it. Potable water scarcity was about to be a thing of the past. With their squeeze on the Helium-3 mining operations on the Moon, Spaceward Bound had the resources to offer an abundance of air, water,

and energy. They could reverse the worst effects of industrial climate change. Better yet, they can make the planet better, a better climate, a healthier environment, a more peaceful world. He could almost weep. Standing in the wings of the giant stage, spaceward bound logo floating around a holographic Earth, Moon and Mars, he took a few steadying breaths as the host read out his introduction and his long list of accolades. There were, of course, a few hurdles to overcome.

Lincoln’s mind batted each thought away as it arose. Competitive water purification tech from Ariana Industries. His spies claimed it was 10 times faster than their own, but his lawyers had that tied up in a bogus patent claim, thank goodness. Then the specter of the Lunar Commission finding out about their helium-3 skimming. But the biggest risk right now is Dr. Victoria Tang, still unwilling to sign over her air scrubber invention.

Lincoln preferred persuasion over coercion, but things were on a timeline now. Please welcome to the stage, Lincoln Ellison. A roar erupted. Lincoln strode to the center of the platform, palms pressed together in saintly gratitude. Friends, we are on the cusp of humanity’s greatest leap forward. His voice boomed and tingles rushed from his crown to toes. We brought you abundant energy with Helium-3.

We delivered clean water with prima aqua and now clean air with the alveus biogenic cartridge. Dr. Victoria Tang is now working with Spaceward Bound to manufacture and produce the scrubber so we can bring clean air first to the worst affected areas like Posecco and then for the entire planet. Thunderous applause. Somewhere in the crowd, a voice called out, at what price? We can’t afford your water, let alone your air.

Lincoln kept his smile unassailable. The Doppelbot security would soon silence the heckler. But we have bigger aspirations. Pause for dramatic effect. While we heal Earth, we go to Mars. Lights flashed, tears surged. Lincoln wondered if the lights would cast a sheen on his forehead. He felt the prickle of sweat at his collar as he stood in the tractor beam of the Floylites. In six months, we will be launching the first human mission to Mars.

With Dr. Tang’s alveus cartridge, the Chinese double-bott base is ready to receive the first pioneers. At long last, we are ready to amend the Mars Accord and send humans to the red planet, humanity’s next frontier. Spaceward Bound is taking applications for the first settlers. Bounders will have first right of application as company employees, and as the first Martians, you’ll each have your own habitat dome. All modcons, built and powered by Spaceward Bound.

As the first pioneers, you’ll be able to claim mineral rights. Spaceward Bound will supply you with all the manufacturing and mining bots you need to build your own enterprise. In the meantime, we’ll be activating the air scrubbers to get the terraforming done. Breathable air, planet white, planet wide within a generation. You’ll make us slaves on a planet with no laws, someone shouted. A scuffle rippled through the crowd. His smile didn’t waver.

Mars is our next frontier. He spread his arms wide to embrace the cheering crowd. I offer wealth, prosperity, or a man, or woman, he added hastily, with hard work and focus can build abundance. Then somewhere closer, a voice that raked claws on his consciousness, the warning to Caesar and General’s past. Memento mori, Alison, memento mori.

Simon Waller (25:36)
⁓ Look, the five books of practice have certainly paid off. This is fantastic and beautifully delivered by the way. I love, ⁓ not just the, the, includes like the intonations and stuff, but then the hand gestures and all the rest of it. Like if you ever needed another career, I reckon primary school teacher reading to kids, nail it.

Zoë Routh (26:04)
Okay. I’m not sure they would go in for power abuse stories, but anyway.

Simon Waller (26:05)
Hahaha!

As I said, like this is, you shared this with me about a week or so ago and it was kind of like, oh, hey, here’s the first crack at it type thing. I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like you don’t have to do anything. This is just so, so well done. I always like don’t know where to start. Padme wants to start the end, but before we get to that bit, can we just talk a little bit about…

You obviously not new to this in terms of Ryan, do you have a like when I gave you this as a task or a thing to do for the podcast, what ⁓ was the process you went through to get from here’s this idea I want to write this scenario about the future of power to having this delivered?

Zoë Routh (26:49)
I went through you, cause you propose using chat GPT to go through a bunch of questions, ⁓ to produce a scenario. So I did that and which I was fabulous process, by the way, I really enjoyed that. If you don’t have that published somewhere for people, I think you ought to, it’s really helpful. And I came up with, I had a bunch of different scenarios I could list out and play with. And there was, you know, there was so many, like I could have written half a dozen of these really, like there was.

The one I ended up going with was techno feudalism, which is this scenario, but there were sovereign citizens, was direct democracy. ⁓ There’s a whole bunch of other ones as well in there, which I think were all really useful. And then the end, I’m like, I’m just gonna make this easier for myself. And I took ⁓ this particular theme and story is out of the latest book, Olympus Dawn, which is in production at the moment. So this particular scene is not in the book. It’s alluded to in the book where he does

He’s skimming Helium-3 off the moon operation, so he’s doing something illegal there. He actually has water tech and he’s, but Ariana Industries has got a better thing and he ties that up. So he manages to railroad and control both energy and water. And then the air tech purifier, he steals. So that’s a little, is that a, well, you kind of read it the first chapter anyway. So he gets control of all this stuff.

And there’s a race to Mars now because the tech has been developed on Mars and he knows that Mars is going to be the next next earth. And so it is ripe for wealth and prosperity and abundance. And so I’m like, right, what does this look like in terms of an announcement in the concept of future of power? And so the announcement thing was just fun tying all those elements together. The future of power really is expressed in the techno feudalism future that Lincoln Ellison represents. And it’s not the only future that is

⁓ explored in Olympus Dawn, but it’s the one that’s kind of malevolent. And that’s the one I wanted to explore because there’s a trajectory that can take us down that path. And I think at the same time, there’s an alternative trajectory.

Simon Waller (28:58)
Yeah,

so there’s a couple of things I pick up in there. So one, I think that’s so beautiful that this kind of sits alongside the books that you’ve written almost like it’s an unseen chapter, it’s an unseen scene of it. And that people who have read the books could read this and see how that’s very cool, by the way, I just think that’s awesome. Second of all, I think the thing you pointed out there about this is one of many possible futures that we could have. And I think

Zoë Routh (29:08)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (29:24)
It has been alluded to before on the podcast, but when you do scenario planning on a more rigorous level, you would never write just one scenario because by writing just one scenario, you’re actually biasing people towards that particular outcome as opposed to acknowledging the general uncertainty of the future, which means there are multiple outcomes we need to consider. So I think that’s obviously the process that you’ve gone through and gone, yeah, there’s different ways this could unfold. Here’s one particular way. And now I’ve chosen that pathway.

I’m going to create this alignment between this and this kind of, you know, this world of characters and storylines that you have actually used in your own book. So I think that’s very, very powerful as a way of going about this. Yeah.

Zoë Routh (30:07)
Can I add something also,

which I bring to the imagination of these possible futures through a mental model of developmental leadership maturity. So this is a very, and I have to be as a leadership practitioner, I’m very conscious that this mental model informs a lot of the way that I decipher and think about people dynamics as well as any sort of future-based topic. And what I mean by that is that developmental models,

showcase how we can mature and expand our worldviews and our action logics as we mature and grow as individuals. And that’s one of things I wanted to explore across the books as well, different stages of leadership maturity and how they respond to the challenges and are they up for the challenges that are on the table. So I have that being brought to the table as well. And when I look at possible futures and I see it playing out in the culture wars, is there really different value systems that are struggling with one another? So

And I think that struggle will continue. I don’t know how it’s going to be resolved. Like that’s the unknown piece for me. And you can look at, well, how does our culture move through these culture wars and resolve differences or heal the downsides of each of the perspectives? That’s the work that we have to do as a collective. And that’s sort of sitting underneath all of this as well. ⁓

Simon Waller (31:28)
Yeah, and I do wonder whether or not the objective of resolution is an unrealistic one in and of itself. Like I think part of the way that humans operate is we like to simplify things so that we can make sense of them. So we like the idea that something is either binary, like unresolved, and then it gets resolved, you know, but in truth, there is no solutions, there’s only trade-offs.

Zoë Routh (31:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Simon Waller (31:53)
And so when you actually get to the end of one thing, you create the foundation of a new thing to emerge. So there’s no like every, every finish is just the point on another journey. Like it’s start of another journey, right?

Zoë Routh (31:59)
Mm-hmm.

I agree with that and developmental models say the same. Every new stage you move into has its downsides and that propels growth, hopefully, or regression. And I think that oscillation.

Simon Waller (32:15)
Yeah. But even then I think you

look at some of the challenges going on in the world right now and some of the conflict, say for instance, in Eastern Europe, we felt this was resolved at the end of World War II. But what we actually had already done is sow the seeds of the next conflict. And so I think that that’s something I think that’s really powerful in this. So can you tell us a little bit in that developmental model?

Zoë Routh (32:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Simon Waller (32:43)
Are there like other particular stages that you have tried to represent in this scenario?

Zoë Routh (32:50)
Yes, perhaps not as classic archetypes, but elements of that. So Lincoln Ellison is the bad guy. If you want to diminish it or distill it down to that. So he is the antagonist. He has got a particular view of the world, which is about aggrandizement and wealth accumulation. So he’s got two kind of active paradigms in his profile through the spiral dynamics lens. If you’re familiar with that, he’s red orange. If you’re

If you ego leadership maturity, it’s very much about opportunist and achiever. So he’s very much about wealth, pragmatic acceleration, not at all about community and integration and environmentalism. That’s he’s got a very extractive worldview. So people and things and planets are resources to be taken advantage of. So it has very much grounded in that.

that kind of, it’s almost like a commercial view of the world, which kind of strangles any other opportunity. Plus he’s a psychopath, so he’s got no empathy. So I’ve definitely placed him as a psychopath in there. So he’s quite a challenging character, but psychopaths are also incredibly influential and charismatic. And I’m sure I made him charismatic enough.

Simon Waller (34:10)
Yeah,

so I was wondering about this is actually one of the first notes I wrote here was like, Oh, I wonder who are the avatars? Or do they exist? Are the avatars in the real world that you have drawn on for this character? And obviously, the easy obvious one might be someone like Elon Musk, because of his just his obsession with taking us to Mars.

Zoë Routh (34:30)
well, look, okay, let’s take Elon and put him on the table because he’s quite an interesting character. yes, his Mars ambitions. And if you take his about his rationale for why Mars, it’s very different to Lincoln’s as far as what ⁓ Elon has said publicly, his mission for Mars is to help humanity survive itself, you know, beyond this planet. So he sees the future of consciousness, the future of humanity. That is something worth preserving, which means we need to get off Earth because Earth has a finite

⁓ trajectory and also it’s hugely at risk either from human generated ⁓ climate change as an example or just a big massive asteroid coming to destroy it. So he’s like, let’s get off the planet. We need to put our toe hold out into other areas so that humanity and consciousness survive. So that’s his mission. That is not Lincoln Ellison’s. Lincoln Ellison’s is I want to live for a long time. I want to enjoy wealth and prestige. So there’s an ego aspect to it. There’s a wealth accumulation aspect to it.

So there’s elements of Elon that go into that. There’s elements of Jeff Bezos that go into him. ⁓ Those are the two primary ones. Let me see, who else did I put into that one? All of my characters kind of become their own thing once you start exploring their world, because their world helps create and foster them at the same time. know, as much Elon has no charisma as well as charisma, like he has devotees, and I think Lincoln Nelson.

Simon Waller (35:41)
Mm-hmm

Zoë Routh (35:55)
has devotees as well, somebody who can master business in the way that he has, which is what makes techno feudalism such exciting and sexy for some leaders, is that they can start to control so many different resources for the advancement of their own cause. And when you look at the signals and research I did for this scenario, like, that I’ve been watching how big corporations are setting up their own nuclear powered generators so that they can

create their own AI databases, this is taking over from what traditionally has been the world of government. So the organisations, global enterprises like Microsoft, like Google, are becoming a world unto themselves. You the fact that Apple has so much wealth, way more than any other country, those are massive signals, like techno-feudalism is the way forward and how, where governments can’t keep pace with the demands of these big enterprises, they’ve stepped in. They’ve started building housing or influencing housing agenda.

Simon Waller (36:43)
Hmm.

Zoë Routh (36:52)
building their own power supplies. said, sometimes they have their own little ⁓ mini cities that’s happening. ⁓ Tesla and ⁓ SpaceX are doing that as well as, if you look at, think Facebook Meta has its own little community to and developing housing estates as well. And even here in Australia, Atlassian has its own kind of mini village, if you like. there’s ⁓ big massive signals going saying, hey, we’re going down this road.

Simon Waller (37:22)
So can we pause on that idea for a second? Cause this is something I picked up as well. Um, and there’s other very high profile versions of that. think even if you look to say, instance, things like the, the line, um, as being this kind of utopian, um, techno feudal development. That is government run. Yeah. But that, that aside, one of the things that I kind of picked up, um, and almost in the way that

Zoë Routh (37:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But that’s a government run one, right? That’s, yeah.

Simon Waller (37:52)
⁓ that, that, Lincoln Ellison talks about Mars. It’s, it’s done through the lens of this as a green fields project. So I, there’s nothing there. We’re going to make this idealistic thing, ⁓ out of what is out of nothing. Okay. And I find this happens a lot in, these kinds of conversations is the issue is everything that humanity has ever done.

until this point, right? Like society is the problem. The existing infrastructure is the issue. And so we’re going like, if you could just start from scratch, we could just raise the ground and start from scratch. We could build something better. And I think it’s interesting that like, in a sense that on one hand, how overly simplistic that premise is. That somehow you could erase all of human history just by building something in a greenfield environment.

Zoë Routh (38:51)
I actually, can I just?

Simon Waller (38:51)
Second of all, that you could do something

better than all of the evolution of human history combined. Do you mean like, yeah.

Zoë Routh (39:00)
That’s not Lincoln Ellison’s agenda though. He’s not selling utopia. He’s selling opportunity. So he’s saying, look, there’s a huge amount of, like just kind of the pioneer component is what’s really driving him. It’s not like, let’s set up a new community. Now the utopian vision is what goes for the protagonist. So the idea of setting up colonies on the moon. So Maya, Garcia.

Simon Waller (39:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Zoë Routh (39:26)
and Gaia Enterprises and Arianda Industries, that’s the alternative worldview. And they very much have a collective utopian vision of what they could create, both on Earth and then the moon and then on Mars. So it’s kind of, that’s the competing worldview that’s going there. And I don’t think that they’re saying we can erase all of human history with the ups and downs of that, though I think they’re probably more optimistic than they anticipated. there’s, kind of, ⁓ kind of, their utopian world vision is,

tampered with the reality of pushback, of earlier stages of leadership maturity, which are extractive and commercial, as opposed to collective and community. So it’s this tug of war between these different developmental edges that is continuing to play out across planets in this particular scenario. But I hear you though, like in, and I’ve listened to some of your other interviews with other optimists who have these utopian visions of what’s possible. like, and…

Simon Waller (40:04)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (40:22)
Yeah, we’re still bags of bone and water with the same kind of drivers that we, that’s the real work that we, that we bring all of that to the table still, just because we set up a new infrastructure or a new, ⁓ you know, whether it’s the line or whatever, people are going to still show up with all the stuff that keeps us fighting and screwing forward, you know, as to misquote somebody else.

Simon Waller (40:27)
Yeah.

Yeah. But also even in that sense, we see, we see it as baggage. Like we see it as being a negative thing that we didn’t have to deal with that. This would be so much easier as opposed to actually seeing it through like a positive lens of like, it’s not baggage. is like our collective human, like, know, you talk about baggage is my belongings. Like it’s the stuff that has built us and created us.

and informed us and inspired us. is every story and everything. Do you mean like, like we can look at that idea of it being baggage, but baggage has a negative connotation to it. I mean, what do call that same stuff when we actually took it through a positive lens and

Zoë Routh (41:23)
call it upside

down side. You know, it’s not baggage. It’s just all of us. If again, through the developmental model, each stage has an upside, something positive to bring to the table and it has an Achilles heel. And when it comes to talking about the future of power, the same is true. It’s, don’t think we’re ever going to resolve fix, know, complete our work around power. It’s, it’s part of an earlier stage of leadership maturity. And I think we have an allergy to the downsides, which allows it to get expressed, repressed, and then expressed.

in negative ways. And I think that’s the work is to, it’s shadow work really. It’s understanding the downsides and being able to see that they’re there and know that they, if we allow them to, they can take the reins, but we don’t want to allow them to, we want to integrate that. We want to have positive self-expressions of power while mitigating and managing the swell, the upswell of the downsides. I think that’s probably a more useful frame to look at than like throw the baggage out. Like, no, I think it all comes with us.

Simon Waller (42:18)
Mmm.

Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s like, again, we have a tendency to try and find simple solutions to difficult problems. So we kind of go like, if I could just get rid of the baggage, this would be so much easier. Like we kind of like, that’s, it’s kind of almost like the game that our mind plays on us. It tries to find simple things to actually, as I said, what is a ⁓ complex evolutionary process. talk about the, so funny enough, I hadn’t touched on spiral dynamics in any of these podcasts until the last one.

Zoë Routh (42:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (42:49)
with my friend Michael Schiffner, who was actually talking about experience of going to Burning Man. And as a, was talking through the lens of spiral dynamics, and you probably know this better than I do. It’s something, some stuff I touched on when I did my masters, maybe 10 or so years ago. But this idea that at moments in time, we get to see a vision of the next level in the spiral. And we kind of have this moment of like, my God, this could be so different. And we’re talking about, ⁓

Zoë Routh (42:53)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (43:17)
Burning Man has been an opportunity to see an example or a glimpse of what a higher level in the spiral might look like. So we brought up spiral dynamics and the work of Claire Graves and stuff. You mentioned this in terms of ⁓ Lincoln Ellison’s own development has been red orange. Again, my understanding of that in a simple sense is red is actually a collectivist, a nationalistic viewpoint. Orange is kind of individualistic, capitalistic viewpoint. ⁓

Zoë Routh (43:47)
Not quite. no, yeah. Red is power. So it’s very much of individual energy and drive. That’s where power sits in the red. The orange is the commercial stuff. And both of them are individualistic, if you like. And it’s the other colors which are collectivist. So purple, blue, and green. So purple being about loyalty, tribe, paternalism. ⁓ Blue being about law and order. Green being about the collectivism. ⁓

Simon Waller (43:48)
No crime.

Mm-hmm.

Zoë Routh (44:15)
not a word, but activity, collaboration, humanism, individualism, that kind of thing. in the spiral, we sway between the two as we go through the stages, focus on self and then focus on collective focus on self as we grow our worldview or expand our worldview. ⁓ So red and orange are echoes.

Simon Waller (44:16)
you

And so where would you put,

where would you put Caesar on that spiral?

Zoë Routh (44:38)
He’s a, well, God, he’s definitely red orange as well. ⁓

Simon Waller (44:41)
Yes.

This is probably what I was kind of trying to, I mean, that the idea of this being an evolutionary thing, spiral dynamics, it shows. And obviously it’s not suggesting that evolutionary is, ⁓ evolution is a, is a consistent thing that goes up over time. it, it, my question, suppose, always like, interesting that we have a character in here that is, you know, the best part of a, a couple of thousand years old, Caesar.

Zoë Routh (44:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (45:08)
has

been a character in this who would largely be seen to have similar traits to Lincoln. It’s like, gosh, how much have we really evolved in the last 2000 years? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Zoë Routh (45:24)
Yes. So I’m also obsessed with ancient Rome through the power lens. And next year I want to be writing a series based in ancient Rome. So I’m going to change genres entirely and look backwards 2000 years to see how power played out there and what we can learn from it. And Caesar is a fascinating.

Simon Waller (45:41)
Is that

Hi-Fi historical fiction? Is that what it gets called?

Zoë Routh (45:44)
I don’t think anybody calls it high-fi. Yeah, maybe they do. High-fi, yeah. I’m into high-fi. ⁓ Yeah, ancient Rome. So the echoes, well, think Caesar, like thinking about, he was a genocidal conquering general, which was part of the norm of that time. I suspect he was a psychopath as well. Like he was incredibly charismatic and psychopaths often are.

Simon Waller (45:46)
⁓ They will now. They will now Zoë. Yeah.

Zoë Routh (46:13)
and he was a populist as well. So as a populist general, knew how to get to the hearts and minds of the people and the hearts and minds of his soldier. And that’s where he got a lot of his power, much to the chagrin and angst of the senatorial class who saw Caesar as a threat to their own property and wealth and influence. Have we evolved? Well, I think as a… ⁓

Center of Gravity is a collective, As communities, we have absolutely evolved. We’ve managed to collaborate and collectively look at the rights of fellow human beings. We don’t do slaves anymore. And at the kind of scale it was 2,000 years ago, where having slaves was part of the economy and normal acceptance of the order of things, though, you know, it ended not that long ago in the US, and it’s still existing in parts around the world.

So we have definitely evolved. have things like collective welfare in different organisations. We have things like democracy. Those are absolutely huge developmental shifts as a collective. Now that’s taken a while for us to move through that and individuals, still have to go through each of these stages, which is very frustrating. It’s like, it takes a while to go from the opportunist two-year-old, which is all about me and my things saying yes and no and putting down boundaries.

to the evolved wise elder who can see great complexity and navigate the kinds of challenges that we’re talking about. You can’t do that necessarily easily as a 14 year old when you haven’t gone through those leadership maturity stages. That’s if you use the paradigm of the developmental model. So I’m just keeping that in mind, know. That’s a mental model I’m applying. So have you evolved? Absolutely. Do we still have the same challenges? Absolutely.

Simon Waller (47:59)
Yeah.

Zoë Routh (48:06)
There are psychopaths now just as there were in Caesar’s time.

Simon Waller (48:10)
Yeah. And so I suppose one of the things I reflected on when I looked at this scenario in its, in its, its whole was, you know, almost do we have a system? There’s a systemic issue. It feels like that encourages certain types of personalities to, um, to, to grow into these types of leadership roles and what would be required.

Zoë Routh (48:33)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (48:38)
know this is kind of outside the scope and maybe it’s a different possible scenario you could have written. What would be required from a systemic perspective to actually facilitate the development and evolution of, sorry, the development of more evolved or more collectivist, assuming, okay, I’m biased towards the view that, ⁓ you know, a collectivist global ⁓ leadership perspective

is beneficial to the long-term success of humanity. I’m biased towards that and I know there’s no solutions, there’s only trade-offs and we can talk about what the negatives of that are, but do we actually have a, it feels like globally around the world, not just in this scenario, but in terms of what we’re dealing with right now, we’re moving further away or we’ve retracted from that perspective. We were heading that direction post-World War II, the development of United Nations, global cooperation.

It got used and bastardized by ⁓ some global players, has now led to a, what is it that systemically we could create that allows the flourishing of humanity? Is that a big question to ask?

Zoë Routh (49:47)
Yeah, it’s big question. And the work is also big. So when you’re looking at systemic solutions, it’s not just about the infrastructure. It’s what’s beneath all of that. That’s your meta-language and your value system. And so I think that’s in terms of the culture wars, that’s sort of where we’re sitting. We’re seeing the exposure of where those two value systems bump into each other and aren’t supportive of one another. You have the collectivist versus the individual. And you can see this in the ethos and myth of America.

Simon Waller (49:49)
Yes.

Zoë Routh (50:17)
The myth of the American dream is about the individual creating prosperity and abundance for themselves if they have enough proactive initiative. That’s the kind of myth of the American dream. And that is very much individualistic. And that doesn’t sit very well alongside collectivists, which are the wealth and prosperity of all of us is essential. And the individual exists as part of a community to create abundance for all. So those are the competing worldviews, the competing

value system. So if you can talk about systemic change, you have to come back to that level and think how do those two things coexist? What can we take from the best of each of them to create something new and emerging? That is incredibly difficult work because no one actually likes to have their values challenged because they embody them as a truth. So if you talk to a Christian fundamentalist about tradition and family and what is appropriate and proper and the right way to do things, that is an embodied truth for them.

And you say, no, you’re wrong. What are they going to do? They’re going to say, I’m right. And you are wrong. So that work of bridging the conversation about leaning into understanding each other’s worldviews is really difficult work. And we need to do the work of connection and listening to be able to find a path where we can find those truths together. This is the work that I do with leaders, where I run them through different ⁓ scenarios.

Role plays even and say, okay, what are your values and, and rank them. So when I get leaders to rank their values, this is incredibly difficult. And then I say, you know, look at your neighbors. What are their ranked values? And like, they go, well, they’re wrong. I’m like, really? You’re telling somebody that their ranked values are wrong. You’re sitting around the table, trying to solve the same problem of water resources, say, for example.

Simon Waller (52:03)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (52:09)
How can you make them wrong when you’re trying to share this resource and develop the future of the water and environment and community? You can’t make them wrong. You have to understand. And then you have to challenge yourself to flip your own values. So Simon, if you’re sitting there going, know, collectivism and global solution solving is the value that I promote. What happens if you flipped it? Could you do it at least as an intellectual exercise and embody

that empathy, that point of empathy. And it might feel like you want to vomit when you’re doing that. And I think this is the work of leadership is to be able to sit in the vomiting, inducing situations and go, okay, I get it. I don’t like it. And I get it. And these are my fellow human beings. What is value? Where’s the value in that point of view? And I think

Simon Waller (52:44)
you

Yeah, so

one of the of the work that I do, which is related to that, which I think is interesting. So I often go like, so the values that we have are based on an interpretation of the lived experience that we have preceded it. So there’s things that we see in the world, our brains try and make sense of those things by forming patterns. We interpret those patterns to have meaning and we give those those meanings words, like, and we call them our values or our beliefs.

So the first thing is kind of to acknowledge that other people with different lived experiences are likely to have seen different things that are equally true, but just not what we’ve seen. And so therefore it’s quite legitimate that they also, given their selection of ⁓ lived experience, would generate a belief system that may not be exactly the same as ours. how do we actually go back to, so tell me what you’ve seen.

Like how can we go back to almost like strip it down to the bare bones? What were the forming, like what were the forming action, sorry, the forming ⁓ experiences that led you to this path of belief as opposed to what is the belief itself? Interesting, think it’s so, so what I’m suggesting is not that one is right or wrong, but that we’re both doing some similar work around trying to address that challenge of the conflicting beliefs and finding a way of almost like elevating the conversation beyond that.

Zoë Routh (54:22)
think that’s part of the work is that self reflection, self awareness piece, you know, what led you to believe what you believe is a really useful conversation to have someone who has very different values set for you and to sit in the curiosity around that and rather than impose your judgment on it, you know, it’s like, so you had like a right wing upbringing, that’s the way you think the way that you do, you know, that disparaging judgmental tone. And that is one of the downsides of individualist green stage of leadership maturity, where we think

Simon Waller (54:46)
Mmm

Zoë Routh (54:52)
Unless you think egalitarianism, you’re a doofus. So there’s an embedded judgmentalism hierarchy, even though at Green we’re supposed to be anti-irarchy, there’s a hierarchy in that. Unless you believe what we do, then you’re not evolved enough. And I think that kind of arrogance is what we need to unplug. And I see it a lot in leaders who are doing systems thinking is that they like, we just need to hurry up and rush people through this. it’s like, hang on, how much respect?

do you have really for the people around the table? Are you really listening to them? So, you know.

Simon Waller (55:24)
Yes,

I think when we talk about the systemic issue, I think this sense of time constraint that that is so pervasive in modern organisations is a real, it stops us. It’s a structural deficit that we need to overcome if we are going to find a path forward, it feels at the moment like no one seems to have the time to sit in this space and strip back.

some of our fundamental or not enough people, not enough organisations seem to be willing to give, to strip back the conversation to the point of, but let’s just start at the bare bones, go back to bare metal. What have you seen? What is the foundation of those beliefs rather than what is this? Like, you we get almost like, yeah, but we got to get our strategy in place. Like we kind of skipping seven steps to get there.

Zoë Routh (56:16)
Yes, and at the same time, think nature is doing a wonderful job of forcing us to the table. And if I think about my experiences working with the leaders in the environment water space, trying to solve water and environment challenges at community level has caused them to run up against brick walls. And it’s only when they start to do more of a collaborative exercise and bringing more voices to the table as messy and as challenging as that was, they actually managed to create

better responses that were more systemic, bigger picture, more interconnected than if they just tried to pass legislation at a community level or a top down level. So it’s interesting how nature as the great teacher is saying, well, that didn’t work. know, like the early Murray Darling Basin plans were burnt. There was the burning of those plans in the communities because it was top down dictated. wasn’t evolving from the people who were affected. so

Simon Waller (56:50)
Mmm.

You

Zoë Routh (57:13)
the idea of looking at things systemically is actually a new emerging way of being in the world. And it’s only about, according to the research, about 10 to 12 leaders who can sit in that space and be able to look at systems. So you and I having this conversation, who are grounded in this philosophy and approach and ways of being, there’s not that many of us. And the good news though, is that you only need a little bit more than 10 % to start to tip the groundswell or the center of gravity.

in the ecosystem to change that way. So the more that we talk about this and share with people, get people thinking in this way, we have a chance of influencing the greater system and getting people to think connectively about it. ⁓ The other thing I was gonna say about ⁓ commercialism, no, it’s gone, it’ll come back.

Simon Waller (57:52)
Hmm

That’s okay. I want to nerd out with you a little bit on this stuff, if this is okay, just a little change of tact. Because what I think I really appreciate is like the depths of research that you’ve gone to around the technology side of this as well. And I know we had a little bit of a chat about this when I read one of your books, Terra Firma, we’re talking about some of the tech that goes in and I read through this and I actually had to go and look up a couple of things. Cause was like, I know this is not an accident that Zoë has put this in here.

Zoë Routh (58:06)
Go for it.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (58:31)
But I wanted to pick up on the helium three mining on the moon. And I didn’t realise this, but obviously helium three is a potential fuel for ⁓ nuclear fusion, fusion, sorry, fusion, fusion, which is kind of the experimental technology, which has been worked on around the world right now. But the big issue is, well, we need to find elements, certain feedstock for it. And it’s like on, on the moon, it’s like,

Zoë Routh (58:34)
Yeah.

You, Jenia. Yeah.

Simon Waller (59:01)
Significantly more abundant than it is here, correct?

Zoë Routh (59:03)
Yeah,

that’s right. It’s all through the regolith on the moon. So like the dust on the moon. So you’d have to filter a lot of moon dust to get the helium-3. Now that helium-3 tech, you read some critics who are like, don’t talk to me about helium-3, it’s bull crap. It’s never going to come off. But he’s like, well, you know, what if it does? What if we evolve our technology so we can create this bountiful nuclear fusion, clean energy that would transform the planet?

Really, it would transform economies. The whole power dynamic would shift. And that’s sort of what I explore in Olympus Bound onwards, this Helium 3 discovery, which changes the purpose of the community on the moon, by the way, which is meant to be developing communities as a Noah’s Ark for Earth. And it became, uh-uh, now we’re mining energy. So it was a massive shift. And that’s something some of the characters struggle with a lot. They had this utopian collaborative vision and now it’s turning.

Simon Waller (59:30)
Yeah.

Zoë Routh (59:57)
backwards, if that like into this commercial enterprise with lots of people wrestling for power over it. So yes, that was absolutely one of the things I researched as a driver, because if you have a new source of energy, the things that have knock on effects around that are incredible.

Simon Waller (1:00:14)
Yeah, even taking out like this particular scenario, but looking at nuclear fusion on Earth, even in its current level of development, has the potential to dramatically ⁓ shift power dynamics around the world. ⁓ We at the moment have a society whereby access to energy ⁓ has been a driving force around ⁓ people’s ⁓ quality of life.

And so the people who control the energy potentially have a control over or a massive influence over people’s quality of life. And, you know, at the moment we have a relatively distributed, energy infrastructure, both globally and even within a nation like Australia, there is multiple power stations and people that solar panels. And there’s actually the idea that with these, these types of reactors are so massive and so expensive, you may not have more than one or

Like that would be like such a concentration of power, ⁓ potentially.

Zoë Routh (1:01:20)
depends on how the tech is evolved. It could be hyper localised. I think that’s a better future for all. If you have hyper localised energy production, and certainly a lot of rural remote communities in Australia have gone hyper localised because they can’t, the infrastructure getting from Sydney or wherever the power base is out to these tiny communities is ridiculous. So they need to be self-sufficient, whether it’s through renewables, typically through renewables or their own sort of gas feed is what’s there.

Simon Waller (1:01:48)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (1:01:50)
For abundance, reckon localised ⁓ energy production is an abundant future, but I don’t know enough about the tech to say is that possible.

Simon Waller (1:02:00)
No, I think

what you’re going to see though, like, you know, obviously, you you mentioned before about currently tech companies investing in things like what they cost more ⁓ modular reactors, SMR nuclear reactors, which is actually still a largely unproven technology. And I’m not sure whether or not really how much of it will actually come to fruition. I think at the moment tech companies need to be seen to do something.

Zoë Routh (1:02:10)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:02:24)
about power security because or energy can security because they want to build data centers, which are sucking up a huge amount of energy from the grid. And if they weren’t shown to be doing something, then people like, hang on, what about my power and blackouts of my house, which is actually happening in places in the US and stuff already. ⁓ Whether or not they will actually you mean that the technology doesn’t exist is not commercial as of yet within ⁓ Western nations at least.

Zoë Routh (1:02:30)
Mm. Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:02:52)
And it would be at least a decade or more before the first one gets built. Right. So that’s the first thing. If we applied that same type of timeline though, to what’s currently being built, which is this abundant free energy in nuclear fusion. ⁓ The first reactors that get built are going to be massive and clunky, just like the very first nuclear reactors kind of back in the 1950s and 60s. It could be another 50 or 60 years before that technology is scaled down to something that becomes distributed, becomes big.

at the base of a distributed system. yeah, and as you said, throughout that whole process, as you pointed out in this, the person who has access to the supply of energy becomes in some ways incredibly influential from a power perspective as well. Another one I picked up on here was, and I don’t know if you, you must be aware, the, know, we talk about these kind of the domes that we’re going to build on the moon and on Mars and driven in the 1990s, I think it was they had the biosphere.

Zoë Routh (1:03:34)
Yeah, and I said.

Simon Waller (1:03:49)
experiments that they ran. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and so they were trying to build, um, you know, a fully self-sustained environment. And I think they put eight scientists in, there was a massive fanfare. These guys are going to go into this dome and they’re going to live in this time for like, I think the idea was every five years, like it’s the extended period of time. It was about the social dynamics and all the rest of it. And I think that they lasted less than a month before the whole. I’ll go.

Zoë Routh (1:03:50)
I told you, yes, yes.

No, no, they, they were in there

for a while. they were in, yeah, a year, year and a half at least. Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:04:19)
Over there.

But was it the issue, it social issues or was it the dome actually started? Like they couldn’t actually be fully self- I thought there was only a few, like it wasn’t even a month before they actually had to break the seal because they didn’t have everything they needed inside the dome.

Zoë Routh (1:04:38)
There was that, so they did send somebody out who had a major accident. So that was the first, one of the first things that they did. And the other thing they depended on was a massive generator, which was, you know, that was the other thing. That was the other problem with that. So they had this big diesel generator to keep them supplying power. The idea of having a whole mini biosphere inside the dome didn’t work out so well. They worked out like,

it’s really hard to micromanage nature. they had things they hadn’t anticipated, like a lot of slime on the walls. They had a lot of problems like that because they couldn’t just micromanage all the elements of having plants and animals and water flows and stuff. ⁓ And they couldn’t grow enough food either. So they got really, really, really skinny. So they did last 12 months. socially, they ended up in two factions, four against four. And…

outside the project management, I can’t remember their title, was arrested for corruption or violence or something. So the police ended up on site arresting the CEO, I think. Like it was just a basket case of things. ⁓ So it just proved how hard and incredibly difficult it is to recreate a whole planet-based system in a microcosm like that, which makes communities on the moon and Mars just seem

Simon Waller (1:05:49)
Yeah.

Zoë Routh (1:06:02)
incredibly far-fetched, you you’re have to have a lot of input of resources ⁓ before it even gets anywhere close to self-sustaining.

Simon Waller (1:06:11)
Yeah. And this is why the reason I kind of raised it was because you mentioned earlier on that the more you’ve investigated this, the less confident or left optimistic you feel. And is this one of the things that you feel less optimistic about? Can we actually really build a self-sustaining community on another planet or on the moon?

Zoë Routh (1:06:32)
It might be possible, but it’s going to take generations, decades, hundreds of years, possibly. And a lot of things are going to go wrong. A lot of people will die setting this up because not much needs to go wrong on the moon for you just to have an implosion. You you just have penetration of your habitat and you’re all gone, like dead in moments really. Ca use as your atmosphere vents out, you’re just gone. So it’s, real, in doing this research, I

realised how incredibly fragile the human body is.

and how incredibly amazing it is, this planet that has allowed us to evolve to be walking around, feet on ground, breathing air, drinking water, eating food in a way that is this interconnected miracle. And trying to do that in space is just mind boggling in terms of its complexity, things that we don’t even know. After a year in space, there’s so much damage to the human body from radiation, from lack of gravity in our systems, from…

⁓ blood pooling, fluid pooling in our eyes, we lose eyesight, ⁓ exposures to cancers, like there’s a lot of challenges. So I think the future of human exploration is going to be cyborg or robotic. And just because the human body is so fragile, I think the future of humanity off world is probably going to be more cyborg-y with a little bit of flesh maybe, in order to withstand the rigors and potential challenges of living in that kind of environment.

Simon Waller (1:07:44)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (1:08:00)
So the doppelbots who in my books are basically humanoid robots They get sent by the Chinese to build a base on Mars and they’re there for ten years building this base and operating and Doing just fine. Thank you very much because they don’t need air They need power which they can get from the Sun and from their nuclear generator I don’t know if they have they probably have a helium-3 generator there. I didn’t really go into that

But they don’t need much. They don’t need water, but they just building everything at their own pace without any risk to human life. sending and the Mars accord in the book is like, let’s not send any more humans there because it’s too risky, too expensive. We can send bots. It’s fine. ⁓ to set everything up. So that I think is the potential possibility, but it’s going to take a long darn time and a lot of resources and willpower to do it. Meanwhile, people are dying here, you know, and that’s the, that’s the constant battle. It’s like,

Simon Waller (1:08:48)
Yeah

Zoë Routh (1:08:54)
How much are we investing in our future off planet while neglecting or not addressing the issues here?

Simon Waller (1:09:01)
Yeah. So I think that’s, that’s to me, feels like a really important conversation that’s emerging at the moment. Like it’s almost the novelty of the Elon Musk announcements about where we’re going to be going to Mars. I’ve kind of just worn off a little bit and been like, on, but wait a sec. What does that actually mean in terms of the energy and time and resources that gets put into something like that versus why wouldn’t we ⁓ make the

the world itself a more safe and inhabitable place immediately. And obviously that doesn’t answer some of Elon Musk’s perspectives around an asteroid hit, I suppose. But it feels on the other hand, entirely much more achievable, given that complexity. It actually brings in, I don’t know, a couple of books that I’m not sure if you’ve read. Douglas Rushcroft’s book, Survival of the Richest. Okay, so he has a great podcast as well. ⁓

Zoë Routh (1:09:53)
No, I haven’t read that one.

Simon Waller (1:09:59)
called team human, but, ⁓ he was kind of like, ⁓ suppose a, a techno advisor. He tells this beautiful story of, ⁓ being invited to go and speak at a conference and, know, the conference was going to be in the Bahamas or something like that. And he gets invited off and he lands in this airport and then suddenly like he’s met by this person who then puts him on a private plane and he gets flown to a private Island.

with these billionaires there. And what they actually want to ask him is how are they going to protect themselves when the apocalypse happened? So we’ve built these bunkers and we’ve done all this stuff, but what is to stop the security cards from just taking over? Like if money’s not worth anything. And

Zoë Routh (1:10:52)
Mm. Mm.

Simon Waller (1:10:55)
And he’s like, he was completely blindsided because he goes like this. I didn’t think I was coming to do this talk and I’m not even sure I really like what it did. He goes, but like, well, the easiest thing would just be nice to them now. You know, that was his kind of answer. But one of the things he goes through in this book was this idea of like, we ignore the fact that you’ve built these bunkers, but you still have outside people come in and change the air filters and do this other stuff. And like, there is a massive network of support that must exist for those bunkers to exist.

Zoë Routh (1:11:18)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Simon Waller (1:11:24)
And again, it kind of almost speaks a little bit about this is like we underestimate the complexity of what’s required to be able to make this stuff work.

Zoë Routh (1:11:30)
Mm. Yeah, yeah, a huge amount of resources.

Simon Waller (1:11:35)
Yeah. And the other book I’ll throw in there, which again, just cause I think you would love it. ⁓ one of my, one of my favorite books and my favorite authors is Ben Elton. So Ben Elton, ⁓ wrote The Young Ones Black Adder and a whole bunch of TV show stuff. He’s done a, he’s done musical theater and everything, but he wrote a series of books that all kind of sit in that kind of, I suppose that that it’s techno dystopian space, science fiction or speculative fiction space.

Zoë Routh (1:11:47)
Yep.

Mm.

Simon Waller (1:12:05)
So

he did one called Stark, another one called Gridlock, but the one that relates very much to this is one called This Other Eden. And I believe it was written about the same time and inspired by some of the stuff that happened with the biosphere experiments. And he talks about this fictitious future where people almost start giving up on climate change and start just building those biospheres in their backyard. But he does a great job, if you’ve ever seen things like The Young One or Blackadder

Zoë Routh (1:12:20)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:12:34)
satirical perspective that he brings into it, which I think is very powerful as well. ⁓ we, I don’t know, we’re kind of running out of time, which seems disappointing because I feel like there’s so much more to talk about. one before we go, I do feel I said I was going to actually start the end and now we’re going to have to end with the end, but let’s go to the very last lines of your, ⁓ scenario. And he hears this kind of voice.

Zoë Routh (1:12:46)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:13:03)
in his consciousness, memento mori, Alison, memento mori. Do you want to explain what, what, what, what is this to you?

Zoë Routh (1:13:16)
So I first came across memento mori as whether it’s myth or fact, don’t know. But when Roman generals used to go for a triumph into Mars, into Mars, into Rome, they were pulled along in this little carriage and they had a slave whispering in their ear saying memento mori, memento mori. And the idea here is to remind the general that they are human, they will die because

getting all these accolades and all this astounding recognition is guaranteed to ramp up your hubris. And hubris is the downfall of everyone in power. So it’s the idea of just stay humble, you two will die. There is a finite end to your journey as a human. So that’s the origin of it and what it means to me. And it’s kind of speaking a little bit to…

Should we just not invest our future into planet Earth? I kind of vacillate between the two ideas of we’re creatures that are born onto this planet. This whole ecosystem is part of us. We are part of it. Our future and our fate is attached to it. Surrender to that. Memento mori versus our future can survive and go beyond this planet, go to Mars. So I kind of oscillate between the two.

you know, should we just be fatalistically attached to our planet and just focus all our energies on that? It will boil dry in two billion years if something else doesn’t wreck it. There is a finite end to this planet. That’s, know, it’s the Earth is the sun will expand and consume it. So that’s kind of a two billion year old fatalistic version of that. And at the same time, well, that’s sad. What if we need to get out of the solar system? Because the sun will consume us as we go forward. Shouldn’t we try and

continue to be part of consciousness. So I kind of vacillate between the two. And the whole idea of managing from hubris to humility is the leadership challenge for all of us. And I think that is one of the antidotes to power is staying humble and curious. And that is one of the futures of the future of power requires us to stay humble and curious.

Simon Waller (1:15:11)
Hmm

Yeah.

Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve had similar, you know, internal dialogues is what you’re talking about there. And my increasingly, and again, I don’t know if it’s just a sign of, you know, getting older and slowing down myself, but kind of also wondering whether or not, yeah, I’m sure these are some things that we need to address, but we don’t have to address them now. That almost we’re kind of rushing the process a little bit that the process of getting off earth or

send up an outpost on Mars, maybe that should be a, I don’t know, a 5,000 year goal rather than a 50 year goal. That there isn’t the urgency now. The urgency now is actually in creating a sense of harmony and being able to live within our means on the planet that we’ve got. That would feel like the more urgent thing.

And once we have shown our capacity to do so at a global scale, we’ve shown there are indigenous groups around the world who’ve shown that they can do it on a local scale, but we haven’t shown yet that as a race, we can do it at a global scale. If we can do it at a global scale, then I think we’ll be much better positioned then to be able to go, okay, and so what next? And I do feel like sometimes in the futurism space, like there, feels like it’s pushing us forward at an ever increasing speed and

that not actually better for it. That maybe we do need a little bit more time to spend in contemplation and slow development rather than trying to just rush to the end game.

Zoë Routh (1:17:06)
I don’t know if I have a time scale attached to my desires because I would love to see humans land on Mars, just as a curiosity thing or anything else. And I also want to see people and communities living harmoniously with each other and the planet. So I have those two ambitions. And ⁓ it’s not time, I think, that constrains me more. I think when it comes to the future of power, power needs to be shared.

And that’s a challenge for us. So the future of power is collaboration and collaboration is freaking hard. It’s really hard. it’s going back to some of the things we were talking about earlier, you know, sitting with, these are my rank values. Those are your rank values. How do we bridge that? How do we find a way forward together? That hard heart centered work is the work that we need to take in order to us to move through these complex challenges. And I think that’s, that’s where we need to put our

work and effort into is learning how to do that. Because when we can do that, we can tackle a lot of the complex systems challenges that we’re facing. But it starts with listening and understanding.

Simon Waller (1:18:15)
Yeah. one of the things I asked you to kind of just ruminate on before the podcast recording was, you know, within this, this is obviously a space that you have thought about a lot, like not just in the sense of this particular scenario, but in the sense of a series of books in terms of like your, like this is a journey that you said you’ve been on for the best part of a decade. What do we do about this challenge of power? And as you rightly point out, some of these things are

Zoë Routh (1:18:29)
Mm.

Simon Waller (1:18:43)
significant in terms of their complexity and their challenge. And yet somehow we also need to bring it back to what is it that someone could do now, like could do today. If we were subtly to try and shift our world towards one, like use the words, like say collaborative, but it feels like that’s just one aspect of this. What would advice would you give to others in terms of how do we nudge the world in the right direction?

towards one that allows ⁓ power to be used in the right way or to be to the right ends.

Zoë Routh (1:19:21)
So it goes from the hyper personal to the bigger systemic. the hyper personal was whenever someone or someone says something that pushes all your buttons and makes you jump into judgmentalism, frustration, anger, whatever it is, is to sit with that, lean into that, get curious about that. Try and imagine what it’d be like to be that person developing those values system and those beliefs and find a modicum of empathy for them.

And then secondary part to that is to think what is useful and valuable from that point of view. There’s gotta be a strength in it somewhere. What strength is it bringing to the table? So that is actually incredibly difficult work. So that would be the micro personal element of it. From the systemic point of view, I’d be like, let’s see how our institutions are being led and managed. Are they in service to the greater good? Are they creating more us and them? If they’re creating more us and them,

Simon Waller (1:19:59)
Mmm.

Zoë Routh (1:20:17)
Get active, get proactive, get political and try and influence that. Add your voice to others who want to create a better world for all of us, not some of us.

Simon Waller (1:20:28)
I think the very act of ⁓ of using your voice. We sometimes think that, but what’s one voice amongst thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of voices? I think the very act of using it reminds you that you have it to be used in a way, like it reminds you that you’re an active player in this because the very act of being active reinforces the need for it to be so, if that makes sense. Yeah. Finally, ⁓

Zoë Routh (1:20:53)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:20:57)
And I kind of feel like it’s almost an unfair question to ask because of the amount of work that’s gone into this concept for you. Well, before I asked you to come and go on the podcast, but I’ve asked this of everyone. It’s like, Hey, you know, what did you take away from this process? Was there anything in particular? There was a, you know, either through the development of the scenario or throughout conversation, that’s probably either shifted a perspective that you have or provided an aha moment. Um, and again, on one hand, I was like, I’ve got zero expectation because I know how much you’ve already done.

in this space before I contacted you a couple of months ago. But is it something that stands out? Like what’s it been like for you to go through this as a scenario process perhaps versus how you’ve gone around writing your books previously?

Zoë Routh (1:21:41)
Okay. So I’ll answer first part of that question, which is what shifted for me. think asking that question, what needs to change and how do we change a system? I think it is a big fraught question. And I think that that is where I think slowly, slowly, carefully, carefully is that sort of making me want to explore that a little bit further. And first of all, wanting to go and map the integrated systems in the challenges that we face.

and ask that question, how might we affect that system? What are the levers we can play, ⁓ pull and press and should we, and what could be the unintended consequences? So doing that.

Simon Waller (1:22:22)
Yeah, just through using, mean, you’ve had your own process of writing and stuff before. You mentioned earlier that you quite liked the, you know, I provide both like a manual and an, like a, and a kind of chat based approach to going around scenario writing. You know, did, did that shift anything in terms of your own, you know, thinking about how you approach these, these kinds of scenarios or writing fiction in this space.

Zoë Routh (1:22:25)
yes, how was it different? Yeah.

So the questions that you provided to help generate content or ideas for the scenario and using it in conversation with an AI was definitely something that shifted ⁓ my thinking around this. like, well, this is an accelerated way to get people to think in a systemic way so they don’t have to absorb and consume so much. Like you and I were talking before we hit record around that, you know, this in terms of the future of podcasting and the future of conversations, there is less of a drive to consume.

to read, listen to whatever in order to feel ahead. And the idea that we can have a thinking partner such as ChatGBT or whatever AI you’ve got to skip past the consuming all that content to distill it, to play with ideas, I think is a radical new idea that I think is going to help do the S curve as you talked about. So not exponential, but S curve. I think we’re into the S curve bit now of how information consumption

will shift to information processing and deduction to exploring new ideas. And I think that’s actually pretty exciting.

Simon Waller (1:23:50)
Yeah. Yeah. So we did talk about that previously because I hadn’t mentioned, obviously you have your own podcast as well, which again, makes you again, ridiculously overqualified to be here talking about science, like scenarios of mine. But again, the style of yours is similar in the sense that it’s a conversation. It’s in conversation with somebody. It’s not a, like a rapid fire series of bullet points that’s being kind of hyper compressed to get as much information into a 10 minute slot as possible. It’s like, Oh no.

This is an exploration that requires time and, you know, changing our mind and integrating new ideas into our thought systems takes time. And so, yeah, I feel like that seems important in terms of that. Yes. Moving from that, concept that we’re in this somehow, exponential growth of ideas and information and energy and all the rest of it to a plateauing and a stabilising, which I think we need. Zoë, thank you so much.

Zoë Routh (1:24:28)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:24:48)
⁓ I really love the way you showed up as well. Like I like that you, you, you challenge my ideas as we go through in this, kind of really value that. ⁓ I feel richer for having had this experience of having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for making time. And, ⁓ yeah, it’s, been a wonderful conversation.

Zoë Routh (1:25:10)
Thank you so much. Likewise, Simon, this has been really enjoyable to riff with you and to lead into some of this stuff and to have a think about what we could create together. I think collaboration is the way forward. And I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be here in collaboration, in conversation with you. It’s been a joy.

Simon Waller (1:25:30)
Thank you. Well, that’s all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening in. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with episode 16. Until then, take care. Bye.