Leila Johnston - Writing, AI Anxiety, and the Library of Mistakes
What if the greatest threat to creative careers isn't competition but rather the rapid advancement of technology itself?
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Episode Summary
What if the greatest threat to creative careers isn't competition but rather the rapid advancement of technology itself? In this thought-provoking conversation, wordsmith Leila Johnston pulls back the curtain on the real world of freelance writing.
Leila's journey from journalism to digital copywriting reveals the psychological challenges of freelancing – the constant pitching, the perpetual uncertainty, and the nagging feeling that AI might render an entire profession obsolete overnight. "I never feel safe professionally," she confesses, articulating a vulnerability many independent professionals will recognize but few discuss openly. Her candid insights offer valuable guidance for anyone navigating today's fractured career landscape, from building multiple income streams to securing longer contracts that provide both financial stability and the human connection of teamwork.
We also examine Leila's involvement with the Library of Mistakes, a library in Edinburgh dedicated to financial history and learning from past economic failures. Founded by Russell Napier, this institution represents a deliberate move away from the digital overwhelm toward thoughtful reflection on historical patterns. Through the library's collection of books, artifacts, and regular events featuring prominent financial thinkers, visitors gain perspective on current economic challenges by understanding their historical precedents.
Whether you're a creative professional concerned about AI's impact on your career, a freelancer seeking greater stability, or simply someone interested in how financial history shapes our present circumstances, this conversation offers both practical strategies and philosophical depth. As Leila reminds us, "People in the past were just people, which is people like we are now" – a simple but profound insight that might help us avoid repeating the mistakes of previous generations.
Transcript
Sebastian Lees
00:00
Welcome everyone to another edition of the Fat Tony podcast. Today's guest is Leila Johnston. Leila is an expert wordsmith who started her early career as a journalist, rising to the ranks of deputy editor before switching to focus on digital copywriting and later working as a freelance copywriter. Her writing these days has a focus on tech, energy and finance. She also has her own podcast, one Thing About Money, which we will include a link to below on all of our platforms, and she's also involved with the curiously named Library of Mistakes more on that later and also the Adam Smith Heritage Center. I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation. Adam Smith Heritage Centre. I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation. I've been following Leila on Twitter for a while and I'm just really fascinated to learn more from her. So, without further ado, I'll just start by saying Leila Johnston, welcome to Fat Tony's.
Leila Johnston
00:58
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Sebastian Lees
00:59
So I want to start by trying to paint a picture of your world. I guess I think there's this perception of freelance writing being quite a glamorous kind of glamorous, sexy profession. There's mental images of being freed from the daily constraints of a nine to five career. There's these images of sitting in trendy cafes and glamorous locales, you know, with the coffee and the MacBook. What's your experience of freelancing? You know, coming from more of a traditional journalism side and entering that world, and why did you decide to make MacBooks?
Leila Johnston
01:43
I mean, it often is exactly as you described you can do whatever you want all day and you can have a fun time. I actually started as a freelancer and then I went. I think I found it quite hard, the demoralizing it's very demoralizing to be pitching all the time. Um, and I was, as a traditional journalist in the sort of mid-2000s that's how that's how you did it. You just kind of constantly wrote to people and hope that they picked up email, um, and tried to have good ideas that they would want to, and, and, as someone in their sort of early 20s, I was very, uh, very aspirational, so I would literally just write to the best things I could find and go look, you need me, you need me to do a column for you, whatever newspaper, and just go.
02:33
You know, completely unrealistic, but, um, so I, so I got very disillusioned. So I did do some freelance stuff, managed to pick up a few things and then I got the as you mentioned, the deputy editor job. Um, out of nowhere really, it felt in um, a magazine called move to the country in Colchester, which was a great, uh, learning experience, but it was it's as though they're I think they've closed recently the company's closed down because magazines are unfortunately folding like dominoes but it was a um publishing company that did the sort of magazines that you would find on you know the have I got used for you slot, where they find the weird magazines for the headline fill in the gap thing.
03:14
So it's those kind of magazines and the one that we were doing was one of the more mainstream ones because it was literally a property magazine about sort of green shifting and we discovered during the process of making that that there wasn't really an audience for people who are interested in property investment and people who are interested in green shifting. Like that wasn't really an overlap so that you know, we couldn't sell any ads on it because nobody was going to buy an egg loo who was also interested in doing up a mansion in the countryside. So at the time it was a really difficult sale. But it was a great experience and I really enjoy working in office and I enjoy being around journalists and that kind of creative buzz and just writing things and editing work with words. So I do remember that time quite fondly.
04:00
But it's very difficult to get those jobs and every so often I still I don't feel like I'm wedded to being a freelancer or being a full-timer. I do still apply for full-time jobs. I just never seem to get them, so it's almost like I've been forced into this and then you have to really embrace it and go. It's like people who I don't know where you live, but I always find that people who live in London really double down on the fact they live in London, and I think it's a similar thing with freelancers Like you go no, it's amazing Like shut up.
04:25
It's the best. And people who live in London live a very difficult sort of strained life a lot of the time, where they have to travel for an hour and a half to see their friends and things across the other side of town. And I think it's a similar thing with being a freelancer that you're often sort of forced into it and then you have to really and I really respect people who aren't forced into it and who just go no, I'm gonna go for it and then this is the life I want. But yeah, I mean, I could, I even now I'm every week I apply for jobs, but I still do the freelance stuff at the same time because I think it like psychologically, it's a security thing, like I never feel safe, like I never.
05:00
And I think that, as long as you have, it's not that I don't feel safe as a freelancer, I just never feel safe professionally. So I think as long as you have as many contacts as you can maintain and podcasting is really good for that and you have as many skills as you can keep developing, you can build your little platform of security and that's, at the moment, incredibly anxiety-inducing. Well, because I feel like AI is coming for us, and I know you mentioned AI in the notes you sent to me before, but that is a source of extreme concern for anybody who does anything that can be replicated by a machine, and I think copywriters are getting the chop a lot, and yeah, so I don't know if that answers your question, and I think copywriters are getting the chop a lot, and yeah, so I don't know if that answers your question.
Sebastian Lees
05:46
I think it does and I think there's several really interesting things. I want to pick up on that before going on to AI, which I definitely want to talk about. So what's interesting you were saying about the constant pitching? I've got a couple of friends who are journalists and I think there's this story in the media recently about I don't want to say the chair, but someone high up in reach, tlc, owners of many local magazines. They sort of hoovered them up under the brand of locally, globally, I think, is the pitch tag, but they sent out a mandate to all journalists of you have to write six or seven stories a day.
06:20
That's your target, and there was a huge backlash against this because you know where is the creativity here. You're just turning it into a conveyor belt and partly, I think some of this is a reaction to the fact that content, now content creation has just exploded exponentially in our lifetime. I think we're roughly the same age in our lifetime, going back to maybe a morning and an afternoon newspaper and a couple of hours of news a day, to then the rise of cable television on the 24-hour news cycle, and then social media and kind of citizen journalism where just constant, constant content being pumped out. And now you've got ai. So it's this, this constant battle to the industry, I think, against these kind of threats. I'm I don't even know if I'm a software developer and I kind of work on a freelance consultant, whatever you want to call it. We're different badges, but it's all the same thing. Gun for hire and I totally share that feeling of always being slightly worried, always having to keep your skills on top. It it's all the same thing, gun for hire, and I totally share that feeling of always being slightly worried, always having to keep your skills on top. It's definitely something I can identify with.
07:31
So you mentioned AI. Let's jump to that and talk about that because it is relevant and everybody's talking about it to the point where I think some people might be getting a little bit oversaturated by it. But it is relevant here. And you and you mentioned it's an existential threat to the copyright business. There was a story recently about I think it was Getty Images, the image provider who sued OpenAI for copyrights Because they were saying your image generation is trained on our corpus of images. What's your take on the whole? Is this copyright that? Is this a genuine idea engine that's pumping out? Do you feel that your work has been stolen, and your industry's work is being stolen to an extent?
Leila Johnston
08:19
I mean I was using gen ai this morning actually because I thought I'll just make like a funny picture to send my cousin for his birthday and I thought it was hilarious. But no one else in the family chat found it amusing at all, which was a shame. But yeah, I think it amazes me what it can do, and the only way that I think it can do the things it does is by breaking the law in some way, like it must be. But no one's given it permission to find out the things it knows. I think that AI must be doing something illegal. It knows so much that it must be scanning and taking information from everywhere because it knows that it can't be caught. So that's my perception of what's going on. I also think that it's too big to stop and no one really wants it to stop enough. So I think we're past that point already. I mean, you're a programmer, you're more about the technology of it than I do, but I just feel like it's got to that point culturally. I suppose that that people just have accepted it already and people are worried about it, but it's way too late and I I see things happening like there are think tanks who specialize in ethical AI, and they've closed down and you're going well, if you don't have business now, then when's that going to happen? Like they were doing quite well until it started to get popular and then everyone went oh actually we don't care about the ethics, and you can literally see the ethical companies going and they're all going, and so it's quite depressing in that sense. But I guess because my background, one of my backgrounds that isn't really on my public record, I suppose, anymore is that I used to do comedy writing and I wrote for I've written comedy books and written for radio and written lots of websites, which is how the books came about. I used to write joke websites and stuff and those kind of things slightly immune you to the idea that your ideas are special and unique. So I've had so many things picked up or just coincidentally appear in other places that you know you go well, yeah, is anything really that precious? You go well, yeah, is anything really that precious? So I've gone quite unpretious, I think, about things being picked up and taken used.
10:30
There was a weird moment because I used to do this thing called hack circus, where I made a magazine and an event series to launch each magazine and it was all about it was. It was called fantasy technology and everyday magic. So we had like strange inventions and fun takes on things. And I asked the chat GPT the other day oh, I'm thinking about making something that's similar to Hack Circus. And it went, oh, now you're talking that does this kind of gay best friend persona thing? And it was like, yeah, here's a load of stuff that would be like Hack Circus.
11:00
And then it started to write in what sounded like my voice and I was going, oh, wow, you found stuff online that's like probably from years ago and you've turned into me. And that was a bit unsettling because I was like, yeah, that's strange. If anybody searches for this stuff, they're going to potentially surface some sort of cannibalized, butchered version of me. Wow, but yeah, it's, it's unsettling at the moment. It it's happening very fast and I don't know, and I tend to catastrophize anyway. So I'm thinking, yeah, this is it, like this is going to be the end. But you know, I was the same in COVID. This is the end. No one's ever going to leave the house again. And everyone else was thinking it'd be over in two weeks. I was like, no, this is forever. And now I'm the same.
11:40
This is the end for yeah copywriters, this is the end for creatives. And then because I think that the algorithm's reading my mind and all I see on linkedin is other people also saying this is the end for our jobs. And but I mean, if it is the end, that's an interesting thought experiment too, because then you go well, maybe there'll be some sort of handout from the government to cover all the jobs that are being lost, or like they'll have to change the structure of society and the financial system and you know the way that we understand economics and everything will change because suddenly loads of people will be effectively unemployed. And will they create jobs? That ai's can't, you know you go down that route.
Sebastian Lees
12:19
But yeah, big changes are coming, that's for sure it's interesting what you were saying about the change in the economy, because I'm slightly slightly less apocalyptic, I think, because I remember well before I was born, but I remember this promise in the 50s and 60s of modern technology is going to make you know, by the 1990s we'll all be working five-hour weeks and technology will free us. And I think the opposite has actually happened. It's made us more productive, but in many ways more busy than ever before. And a glimmer of hope, I think, with AI is that I liken AI to almost like a magic trick, in that the first time you see it it looks incredible and you're like, wow, this is absolutely incredible. And then the fourth or fifth time or the 10th time you use it, you do start to see the cracks appear slightly in it and there's definitely what I would call an AI smell in writing or an AI. You pick up on it and already I'm pretty confident I could look at two paragraphs of text and be able to tell you nine times out of ten yeah, that's written by AI versus that's written by a human, because it's very hard for me to quantify it, but there's just a feel about it where you're like no, this isn't written by a human, and there was a really interesting article recently I was reading about.
13:51
Now I don't know the proper grammatical term for this, but it's like the long dash, almost like the double dash, the end dash and how, for whatever reason, ai is trained to overuse that far more than humans would, and it's a really telltale sign now that something is written by AI, but in one of those quirky sociological art imitating life, humans imitating technology. Younger kids at school are now starting to use that in their real writing because that's how they think things should be written. So it's this really weird chicken in exile and I do think there's a degradation to it. So I think Nassim Taleb called it a self-licking lollipop AI where it's been trained on what's on the internet. But now if we see a sea of AI content flooding, spamming everyone, it's going to be trained on the AI trained content. So it's like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, where the quality is going to degrade over time and hopefully it will be an aid to both of our professions.
15:05
By the way, I share what you're saying. I've seen it in software development as well People saying software developers are dead. Ai is going to be writing all the code from us, we're doomed as a profession. Maybe Time will tell and go back to your process. So when you have a brief, when you have a client crafting your story, what is your process of getting the idea out of your client's mind? Because again, there's parallels here between what I have to do when I take the idea of what a client wants for a website or a software out of their mind and turn it into reality, and in the past I've likened it to archaeology, where I know the idea is in there somewhere but it's going to take a bit of excavation work to get it out. What is your process of crafting a story?
Leila Johnston
15:57
I mean this is a boring answer, but I think it's true is that it varies hugely according to the job and the person. So the stuff I'm doing mainly at the moment that's in my head this week is writing for the Mensa membership magazine. So I write for them every every it's. It's a bi-month, as in every other month, so I write for them every other month and that's really nice because this is like the dream job for a writer. The editor just comes to me and says oh, we want to do something about memory or we want to do something about magic or chess was last time. So I got to do a really, really fun article on chess, which I love, and then. And then they're really open so I can just find the experts I want to talk to and find the angles I want and everything else, so that that's an extremely creative style of journalism. I suppose. For copy, say, it's for a website or something. Sometimes they generally clients aren't very good at explaining what they want until they've seen something, I would say. So you can show them some stuff and go Like.
16:59
Quite often I used to do this thing when I worked at an agency, sort of digital agency, where I would give the other people in the team a range of options. So I mean, I remember distinctly we used to have Skype as a client and there was a thing called Skype in the Classroom which was like an educational I don't know how long ago it was, because obviously Skype's not even a thing anymore but yeah, I used to write these paragraphs and I'd write and I just came up with this thing like I'll just write, I'll just give them some different options. So I'd like, like an AI does now, in fact, you'd write sort of three different versions of the paragraph and go please vote for the one that you, that you want um, and I'll develop it from there. So that was exactly what I used to do as a, as a human, and and yeah, I mean talking about AI like I. I don't blame people for using AI as an alternative either, because I think, yeah, the process is so similar and the stuff that they come out with for a lot of options is good enough. It's like, yeah, of course you would, but yes, so I suppose, if it's something like I mean, this is the problem with the copywriting work trying to think what I've done, like I did some stuff for nokia that was um part of a launch for 6G which was obviously they're working 10 years in advance, and that was kind of looking at the tone of voice guys they had already and thinking about how they would.
18:15
But what usually happens the way that I work, there's usually a step in between me and the client thinking about it now, because I go for the kind of the big money jobs, like I don't just work for, like the local community center, I'll go like how do I get this big client and find the way through where I get asked to do something through, somebody I know will say, oh, I'm doing this thing for Mozilla or whatever. Can you come and help? So to be honest, there's not often a direct relationship with the client thinking about it now in the same way that there has been in the past. But yeah, it's. It's kind of asking questions about what they want and and showing them stuff and not being afraid to show them the wrong thing.
18:52
So you go, was it this kind of thing? Because I don't mind if it's not and that that's a learned skill, I think. And it's like a learned sort of soft skill, it's like a, you know, not taking it personally and showing them some various things and even talking to friends about things that they want to develop or developing their own brands and things. I'll always say to them find some examples of stuff that's similar to what you're thinking of, like it's that sort of cliched, doing a pitch document where you go oh it's, you know, it's taskmaster meets beverly hills cop or whatever, like just two things that come to mind. But you're thinking like what are the two things? It's a bit like that aren't really like each other. That's that sort of thing. But yeah, there's a massive range of stuff that I do and get asked to do, which is lovely, and each time it's a new challenge to work out what the best approach is.
Sebastian Lees
19:40
I have two follow-on questions from this and, uh, maybe switch gear slightly. First is again relating to clients and freelancing, because we do have a lot of listeners who I know are interested in pursuing that career and I get this question a lot of seb how did you become, you know, self-employed? How do I make that job? Do you have any tips on dealing with I kind of what I would call the feast and faming cycle of freelancing. You remember you mentioned always being a little bit concerned about it. How do you deal with that personally?
Leila Johnston
20:17
um, I, yes, I think the concern is unrelated to the situation. In a way, it's like I feel worried even when I don't need to, and I sometimes don't feel worried when I should, but the so I think it's like detaching yourself from that a bit and also realizing that there is actually huge security in only relying on yourself, because as soon as you start relying on other people, they can lay you off. You know some of the people who are in the most vulnerable positions. You know, even when I was growing up, my dad used to get made redundant all the time and he had quite a specialist job and he was quite clever and it was like that was always a real shock and I think that was possibly something that's embedded in my head as like never rely on a single employer and never rely on the specialist job, because you could really get screwed over.
20:59
But the thing that I've done in recent years is sort of how you see my website as a bit of a recent reinvention of what I do, because I've come from more of a creative journalistic background, and then I've said maybe I'll get more work if I say that I specialize in these things. I currently have work in which, as you said, the beginning was finance and energy especially, and possibly that helped me get long term contracts like Yorkshire Water, which I've done for the last two years. I've had really long, like six-month contracts with Yorkshire Water, basically working full-time on a day rate, which is the dream really for a contractor but that's on a five-year regulatory cycle. So they do a couple of years and then you won't hear from them for five years and I'm pretty sure that in five years' time there'll be an ai doing it. So I think that that run is over now for me, unfortunately, because it's really really interesting helping right there their arguments and looking at their economics documents to help them find basically argue for more money from the government and put their pricing up and stuff really popular with the, the general public, this kind of work asking helping water companies to put their prices up.
22:06
But but I recommend if you're asking for what specific advice, I would say take the longest contracts you can, within within reason, I suppose, because some people do freelance and and do contract work because they have other stuff they want to do in their life or they have a family or they have other responsibilities. But the really nice thing about doing longer contracts is that you are in a team and I think that's something that I don't know if you found this, but I really miss that when I'm working and, um, yeah, it was, it was really lovely like had a really good manager, yeah, and just felt like it was kind of whenever there's a any kind of conflict or stress, it's it's real, there's a real like us against them, kind of you know, you've got people on your side and it's really lovely. So that was a great thing at yorkshire water that I really enjoyed over the last two years yeah and I'm missing now because this is the first summer in three years.
22:56
I haven't done it. But yeah, I would say, take the longest contract you can, and I suppose don't be if I want to say, don't be afraid to ask for a decent day rate. But at the same time, I know that's caused me problems, because I've definitely lost work because of it and I've definitely, I think, caused a slightly weird dynamic with the client because of it as well, because it's so much more than they're expecting. So I mean but I mean pay is a whole other subject but there is definitely that annoying thing where people will say how do you like, how much would you quote us, how much would you expect this to be? And you give them a number and they're like I was thinking more like this. Well, tell me that first. Then, if you've got an opinion but yeah, it's, um, it is tough.
23:37
And I think if you've done it, for if you're doing it for a really good reason, you know that you can't like in my good reason at the moment is basically, I can't get a full-time job like there aren't. There aren't any that are suitable. That's good enough, and you just need to stick to your guns and think well, this is the, this is the best option I have at the moment and yeah, it's, but the but. The thing is, if you get a long contract that pays well, you can then create other investments for yourself. So the reason that I'm less stressed this year is because I've just bought this sounds like such a weird brag, but I've just bought another flat which I'm renting out, so I have some property investment. So because I have property investment, you know, my fiscal stress is actually quite low, but my mental like conditioning as a freelancer is still like you must be working or it'll all fall apart. And what if your house burns down? And you know you go to these places?
Sebastian Lees
24:29
it's really interesting. I don't think I realized before we start talking just how similar maybe our two professions have in common. Definitely, I have had multiple times full-time developers speak to me and say oh, how do you deal with the nerve-wrackingness of being in? You know bounce around being here and there, and my personal opinion has always been I'm safer than you are, I'm more to steal.
24:57
You know nasim taleb's wording I'm anti-fragile yeah, yeah yeah, you know, because in a recession they're going to lay off the permies and hire, you know, flexible staff. Yeah, and in good times they're going to hire flexible staff while they're scaling up. So, either side of a coin, there's going to be work there for me, yeah, and I've always considered myself more secure than permanent employees. So I'm really, really glad you said that. And also this idea yeah, you know, dabbled a lot in midday rate contracting as well and, um, there's definitely an element of loneliness versus team working.
25:36
Uh, I'm I'm an introvert by heart anyway, although I can't turn it on when I have to, but even then, when you are just, you know, sat staring at code for eight hours a day and you have these existential moments where it's like all I do is move words around on the screen for eight hours a day and talk to nobody, then you know it is lovely when you have the team elements.
25:57
Conversely, I do have periods where I'm like, oh, I wish I was just working on my own on a project. So there's an element of grass is always greener there, think for me personally. So, okay, let's talk a little bit, you, you? Oh, actually I just wanted to mention going back to ai slightly, but you mentioned about changing your website and sort of specializing a little bit. I have heard multiple thought leaders say that the way forward through this is going to be hyper specialization and finding a niche that you do really, really well and becoming the go-to person in that hyper specialized niche, and that's, yeah, that's going to be the reaction to ai. So, um, I don't know what that means for me as a. As a coder, I said I have to find some super obscure programming language or something yeah, I'm not sure about that one, that hyper specializing.
Leila Johnston
26:49
Yeah, I don't know that. To me that feels more vulnerable. Again, I think I think you have to present maybe it's just the way you present rather than what you actually are um, so like you can have a call with somebody who hasn't really looked at your website but knows you vaguely do something and then sort of chameleon, like morph yourself into what they need, um, but, um, but, yeah, having a, a complete identity, that is, I literally just do you know this kind of whatever, whatever the technical thing is that you do, that feels very vulnerable maybe, maybe, maybe.
Sebastian Lees
27:21
The answer is several niches, yes, several high, but balance it out. The boom and bust cycle across.
Leila Johnston
27:26
You know, yeah, you have a bit of property, yeah, you hyper specialize, and then you have a separate website where you hyper specialize in something else and uh, you know just exactly, yes, just catch for different income streams yeah, I was thinking that because I thought, like one of the one of the big things I do is podcasting, like I've you know, I've almost every organization that I've worked with certainly like since COVID, but before that as well, I created a podcast for them.
27:51
In some way I managed to sell them. I've done just done it with the library that we're going to talk about later as well. But, yeah, I was thinking, maybe I should have a whole website just about my podcasting stuff, because I do. That is definitely something I'll offer, that I don't really think of myself as offering. And so, yeah, there are things I think it's. Yeah, as a freelancer, make yourself as secure as possible, even if that means like shattering your identity a little bit across various websites and social media things to show the different sides of you yeah, absolutely, and similarly, I definitely don't consider myself a podcaster.
Sebastian Lees
28:24
This is just a bit of a random path that life took, but it's really interesting. I did a blog article that was completely unrelated to software a few days ago about retail and it went viral. And then I had two people add me on LinkedIn who were co-founders of tech companies and I'm like, oh you know, might be interested in some work from you, so you never know where it's going to come from. It's really interesting. Yeah, that's great. So I want to switch tack a little bit and talk about, I suppose, the tech and finance writing world. There's a lot of craziness for want of a better word in both of those areas at the moment A kind of perfect storm of tech oligarchy politically in the US and also political tariffs and other financial concerns.
Leila Johnston
29:13
Yeah.
Sebastian Lees
29:13
There's so much noise being generated through these kind of hypermedia cycles. When you have things like Trump and Musk, how do you differentiate, how do you separate the signal from the noise in what you do? And has your writing or have you seen writing in general change to kind of accommodate this world we live in, where there's so much noise now?
Leila Johnston
29:39
this world we live in, where there's so much noise. Now, I think this is a slightly indirect way of answering, but I think the one way that you can tell what's going on is by reading reading things about the systems of the world rather than reading people's reckons, and I think we're in a horrible culture now where anyone can have any opinion and you know, musk is sort of a result of this. Maybe some of your listeners are big Elon Musk fans and will disagree and think that he's great. In some ways, he is great. Actually, he's been very, very successful. There's no doubting that at all. But he is the product of rhetoric, and so is Trump, I think I would say. I mean, I can literally give you some recommendations like read Vaclav Schmiel. He's a brilliant author. He's written some amazing books and he's an amazing personality as well. He's just like a recluse who lives in like a shed and writes everything by hand. And Bart has written some of the most amazing books on the history of energy and things like that. He's awesome. And then, after I read one of his books that was really big and took me ages, I then saw that it was on obama's reading list or, um, one of the one of the president reading this. Yes, of course he is, he should be.
30:44
But, yeah, find, find the systems underneath all this, because that there is, there always is something. And also, I guess, going into the library stuff that we're going to talk about afterwards. But the the library is a history of finance library and if you can, if you can look at what's happened before and what the trends are, then you can work out what might happen next time. I think people's understanding of, of political and financial history is very poor, so and there's no incentive to improve it, because we are in a world where you get a lot of reward like a, like a pavlovian dog, for having an outrageous idea or opinion, rather than for knowing something that's true or boring or, you know, calls back to a previous time, before you were born, yeah. So, yeah, it's difficult, and in the sense of in terms of how I use it in my work, yeah, I'm trying to work that out at the moment, I think.
31:41
So the tech writing stuff that I've done has been increasingly to do with products, I suppose. And quite, yeah, there's still a buzz around, there's still that sense of like. We have to be excited because it's the next big thing. I think that mood is probably changing, though I think maybe now it's more like we're a little bit worried about tech, we're a little bit worried about digital. It's a bit like that sort of um, uh, year 2000 bug thing, but like, uh, you know, on a bigger scale that's affecting everybody. Well, it was affecting everybody, but there weren't as many people on the internet in the year 2000, but it's that sort of feeling. But about ai, now, that's that's what I think is happening. So people are starting to go.
32:21
Maybe digital isn't that cool and maybe technology is a bit something that we now have a worried feel about rather than an excited feel, and that changes the type of work that you end up getting. You end up doing, I think, and whether you know if you even get get any work at all. Most of the writing work now is for training ais. Like that's a big thing that comes up if you type in copywriting work in the tech world or it's fintech, which doesn't should interest me but doesn't yet. But I'm open to being interested in it. Like I just feel like it's such a wow a deep, intense thing.
Sebastian Lees
32:52
I need to give it some energy at some point, but haven't managed to find that yet that feels like there's an element of being paid to eventually do yourself out of your own job massively.
Leila Johnston
33:02
Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Yeah, it's. I mean, I'm in some freelancer groups on whatsapp. We talk about that all the time and share job ads that are really quite insulting. It's just like, yeah, come and come and you know, help this. Ai write better than you can and yeah, it's
33:19
It's a very strange time, but I, yeah, I think there's a mood shift and I'm not optimistic, and I'm not optimistic about the idea that we can persuade people to do something boring. I think that we're in which is as in look back at history, look, look at what's happened before actually sit down and study it. There's a book called Disorder by Helen hang on, I'm ending this bit out, but I've found out who she is Helen Thompson. Yeah, there's a book called Disorder by Helen Thompson, which is really great on this stuff as well, but I almost feel like books can't keep up with the speed things are happening. So, yeah, I don't know where you. Books are often the best place because they are fairly. They can be quite informed and neutral sometimes, but they're the slowest place. So you don't want to go to a popular podcast because it'll have a strong angle and you don't want to go like where do you find out this stuff. It's very hard, but yeah, I don't know Tricky times.
Sebastian Lees
34:20
Two quick points before we move on to the library of mistakes based on my answer. So, yes, absolutely. There's this kind of neomania now where there's this constant push for new is good. People's attention spans it's an attention economy now right. People's attention spans it's an attention economy now right. So people's attention spans are dwindling. So it's just a constant push of neomania. Whatever's new must be interesting. Keep pumping that stuff out.
34:47
And you see that in tech you see absolutely outrageous ideas being funded, having money thrown at them. You see all sorts of things like this and this rejection that you were saying about people becoming weary. Historically, I think this comes in waves, because I think in the 50s and 60s there was a lot of what I would call tech utopianism, where there's a real belief that science was going to really improve our lives. This, you know, the standard thing I remember is, as a kid in the 80s, from like tomorrow's world and stuff was by the year 2000 we'll all be having a pill which will have all of our dietary requirements every day. And then there's this huge rejection about and we almost went the other way in that, in that example where organic food became huge farm to table. So I do think I have hope that we might see a similar thing here, where we actually go in completely the opposite direction, once collectively we realize that the path we're going down is not good. But maybe you're right, maybe we're too far down that path already. Who knows?
Leila Johnston
35:52
time, time will tell I like your optimism, I do. Yeah, I, I do try and listen to optimism because I I've. My feeling is that it's so embedded, it's like it's like trying. It will be like trying to be amish in the modern world to try not to use ai. I think um, or um, yeah, that yes, there might be a trend back to kind of the profound, like authenticity and growing your own veg, and that that sort of um, whatever the modern version of self-sufficiency is, um, rejecting that kind of thing. But um, I mean, I feel like aesthetically and creatively and socially, people would rather not use it.
36:35
People don't really like the artwork, people don't really like yeah the, the idea of talking to a robot instead of a person, which is effectively what it is. So there is hope there, but then it's so easy and it's so free that it's it. My worry is it lowers the standards for everyone and we might get to a point where you just get, you just get used to it and you go, oh, that's fine, that'll do um, in the same way that we've got used to mass-produced cutlery and stuff and that we probably, hundreds of years ago, would have balked at the idea of not using something that was beautifully handmade. But it is. Yeah, it's weird and it's unprecedented, to use a popular term, because there's nothing quite like what's going on now, even if you do look back through history. I suppose there are interesting analogies that can be made, but it does make you feel very old because you sort of go well, this isn't my age anymore, like this isn't my era. It's time.
Sebastian Lees
37:25
Yeah, I don't know how to cope in this world. Now tell me about it. I feel like I've been around the block a few times. The adoption is fun because I remember I don't know if this is your experience, but almost when satellite television, sky television, it seen the middle class has almost looked down on it, it's like, oh, it's not something you would have, they're very working class thing. And then eventually the adoption happened and now everybody happens. Okay, let's segue slightly. So I want to talk about the library of mistakes, the curiously named institution of which I know you're involved with. I suppose the obvious softball question is you know what is it? Could you tell our users users, I've been talking about tech for too long Could you tell our listeners what it is and your involvement, and also if you know the kind of? What was the impetus around its creation?
Leila Johnston
38:13
Yeah, so the Library Mistakes is a library in Edinburghburgh. It's moved in the last two years to a bigger bespoke space. It's been developed specifically for it but used to be in a different quirky little corner of weems place, I think it's called, but now it's on melville street in the west end of edinburgh in a really lovely converted guide hut actually, but it looks like it's always been there. It looks like an old-fashioned library, the way they've designed it. It's really beautiful and it was started by Russell Napier 10 years ago as a place for kind of. I suppose how can I say this? It was sort of started as a place of reflection, I guess, after the crisis and multiple crises that we've had in finance and government, to allow people to spend a bit of time thinking. And I think Russell's always been a writer and he's always been a big reader of books and he's very well connected. He's got lots of people that really respect him and think a lot of him. So he's very well placed to do this and he managed to get a lot. I mean, I don't want to say I don't really know exactly where the funding comes from, but I know that he's been supported by a lot of people from the finance industry and it's a charity. So it's the. The face of the charity now is the library, but there are also lots of other strands to the charity which involve supporting young people in financial education, getting girls, girls, into industry, in the finance industry. That's another part of it. There's a course that's a big fundraiser for the charity actually, which is about financial history. So you can sign up to this course and go and do it virtually or do it in location in London or in the library, and we do those quite regularly. And now that we've got the new space, it's a higher space as well.
39:59
But I think, yeah, I think the original idea was really that there should be a place where people can go, and I think russell just quite liked the idea of having a library and he's he's very irish and very social and wants that, like he was. I mean, we interviewed him for the podcast I'm doing for the library now the other day and he was saying that he thinks the next big thing is going to be places where people can meet in real life. That's what he really believes in, which is which is really nice. So that's kind of one of the last corners that hasn't been claimed by technology, so it's quite. It's quite old-fashioned in a way. It's real physical books you can go and it's a reference library. But we're trying to make it what we're working on making it a lending library so you can join and go and take the books out.
40:40
And there's stuff in the collection as well. It's not just books. There's funny things like an Enron baseball cap and a rugby ball from some financial project that failed and some North Sea oil. There's lots of little weird things failed and some north sea oil. There's lots of little weird things posters from like there's a poster of ponzi, of ponzi scheme fame, and we've got one of those and a beat-em-ax advert. It's like it's like a little little museum of failure. But the but the books are a great resource and there's. There are also libraries in other countries. Now I think there's one in india that's been set up and they have plans of world expansion. But really it's a really small thing and it's just russell.
41:23
Me and fraser are the communications volunteers, so we're doing the podcast and fraser does the linkedin and I do the instagram and yeah, so it's it's kind of a, but actually I should say the main thing about it really is the events, that they're regular events. Almost every week there's something and they're really high quality. Like Alistair Darling, rip opened the new building, he was on the rotor of Connections. Ed Chancellor some of your listeners might know. He's got a brilliant book about interest which is one of my favourites, called the Price of Time, and he's always doing stuff with the library. Merrin Somerset Webb is a big friend of the library. Some listeners will know him from Money Week and Bloomberg now.
42:09
So there are lots of really high-profile speakers and people who've had really interesting books out. Jesse Norman he's a Tory MP who wrote a really, really brilliant book about Adam Smith. He came and did a really funny talk recently. But yeah, it's just a great thing and it's really fun to work for because I get to find stuff out and go to talks and meet amazing people and it makes me want to do one. I just feel like I want to start my own library or finance bookshop or something. When I'm doing it, I'm like, yeah, I could do this, I could do my own one. That would be, you know, it's that one of those inspiring things that you go yeah, look, this is a good thing to be doing. But yeah, it's great and and it's it's really like found the flames of my existing passion for financial history, so it's, it's a good fit for me.
Sebastian Lees
42:58
It sounds amazing. I must confess to feigning slightly less knowledge than I actually know of it for our listeners, but it's an institution I have been fascinated by for a couple of years now. You know, being a fan of Nassim Taleb, who's very much has that overlap and I love the idea of it. It's just such a quirky fun idea and I love what you and I love the idea of it. It's just such a quirky fun idea. And I love what you were saying about the idea of what has brought on me these third spaces where people meet in real life.
43:28
Because, again, you probably tell by now, but I think I'm more of a, more of a natural optimist and I do feel that this could be the answer to the declining high street and as retail dies, these units in town centres become more and more used as these third spaces, these meeting spaces, and we reclaim that kind of lost art of the 17th century coffee culture, coffee house culture, businessmen would meet and things like that. So I'm optimistic. We might start to see that in the high street. I would love to, sincerely love to, and I think at one point there were whispers of maybe a London branch of this. I don't know if that's still in the pipeline, but I haven't been able to make the pilgrimage up yet to visit it in person. But obviously I would absolutely love to see a London branch.
44:17
Why do you think, I suppose, why do you think we're so prone to repeating these kind of mistakes? There are so many financial bubbles and crashes which have decimated countries, economies, societies, yet it feels like once we're out of a generational memory maybe like 20, 30 years, we just constantly repeat it. Why do you think we're so doomed to do that?
Leila Johnston
44:43
Yeah, I wonder. I think there is something about human nature, isn't there, that we are just very motivated by greed and by trying to get away with stuff and fudging it and eventually these things catch up with people and they realize that the money wasn't real and yeah, but as you say, maybe that's exactly it. It's a generational memory thing. And I think we have a problem with history actually, where we see history as a bit like a cartoon. We don't really realize that they're real people and this thing actually happened to them and they were not very different to us. Real people and this thing actually happened to them and they were not very different to us. And I think that's something we could all do with fully taking on board is that people in the past were just people, which is, people like we are now, um and and yeah, reflecting on their mistakes actually does tell us something about about us and the kind of things that we do. We've been thinking about that a lot lately how, yeah, there isn't that much difference between the reasons that people did things 500 years ago and the reasons they do them now. I mean, I hosted an event in at the adam you mentioned the adam smith heritage center in kakodi, which is his birthplace, and they've recently opened as a museum in the last couple of years as well. And, yeah, I was thinking about this thing of the.
45:56
The interesting thing about reading adam smith's books and thinking about him is that a lot of the problems that especially the theory of moral sentiment moral sentiments, which is what we're talking about the event I was hosting, um, is that, did we love to blame digital and I'm guilty of this, obviously as well and the modern age and you know young people today and stuff for loads of things, but a lot of these things existed in in adam smith's time and he talks about the exact same things and you go yeah, well, this was really common in, you know, the 17th and 18th century as well, and this was just the way that people have been always. So I think that there's just something about human nature that you understand when you read history and you read the classics and this kind of thing, that becomes much more apparent. And even just, you know, I just encourage people to watch, you know, remake of pride and prejudice or something if you want to. You want to find out where sex in the city came from. It's like these. These are. Yeah, these kind of attitudes have always existed. So, yeah, I suppose that's what it is. But it's a good question, isn and it's? I think it's a case of encouraging people to see to slow down maybe and just and just go to a library and read these books and think about things.
47:07
You mentioned Tomorrow's World. I actually interviewed recently former presenter of Tomorrow's World for an article and they were saying that one of the projects they're doing now is trying involves trying to encourage children to think about solving problems and create little solutions, and it's like a tech club thing, and I think that is something that I work again with ai. It's becoming a theme, but I think, again, that's a big problem that we don't sit down and go how could I solve this myself now? Um, and yeah, what? What would I want to solve? And then how would I create a solution to it? Because it's so easy to search stuff and it's so easy to just go to the and we all do it just go to the nearest google and the nearest ai and ask a question.
47:48
And that's part of the same thing of like we have to take a step back and just almost meditate on problems and think about them a bit rather than rushing, and I think we're going to see a lot more of these things, that these, these crises and these like peaks and troughs, and they probably are going to be a lot more extreme, which is, yeah, again, probably my pessimism speaking, but there's a the more, the more we hand over power to a couple of individuals in the world, the more dramatic the consequences could be, I think.
48:25
So, yeah, I do worry about things like that, but human nature I think that's a big part of it. That's a big part of what the library's about as well is really, who are these people? Where do they come from, read their biographies, find out out what, who hurt them, as they say, and then, uh, extrapolate from there and maybe it will make some student might come to the library and read a biography of robert maxwell and then go yeah, I'm not going to work for that guy that reminds me of him, I'm going to try something else. And so suddenly, these things will give away.
Sebastian Lees
48:55
I don't know I love, I love uh, the nod to robert michael there, the I really, really love what you're saying about history as a cartoon and people thinking because you're totally right and I realized instantly I'm totally guilty of this.
49:09
It's you know, and maybe that will change with as we've now got modern media and you know, we've got high definition video and we can see people much more alive. I think there's a stereotypical image of, you know, victorian people being these unsmiling, stern people, because that was the style of photography, but they weren't like that day-to-day in real life. They were laughing and joking. And there's this famous photo that's doing rounds of the internet of a Chinese guy from, I think, like 1906 or something, and he's like smiling and he's doing a jokey pose with some food and it looks modern because of the fact that he's acting informally. So breaking that barrier and just making people realize you know these were real people.
49:59
I love the thing you were saying about pride and prejudice and sex in the city parallels and it's so true, it really really is. Uh, I think our mutual friend gerald actually likes to say nothing new under the sun, quite a lot, and it's true, it is there and we're coming up to the end of our hour, so I think that's a really, really lovely place to leave it really. And I suppose before we finish, I just want to say a few things. So the books you've mentioned we're going to obviously add links to those. We're going to add a link to your podcast and your website as well, of course, and to the Library of Mistakes and the Adam Smish Heritage Centre. Is there anything else before we go you wanted to give a shout out to? Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything you have a burning desire or any projects coming up you wanted to mention?
Leila Johnston
50:48
I don't think there's anything specific, but I would just say, yeah, I'll just do an advert for myself If anyone is looking for any freelance writing stuff. I think I am realising that the thing I really enjoy is talking to people. I'm really enjoying doing interviews at the moment, as, in interviewing people, I never get interviewed. As I was saying to you before I've started recording, this is the first interview I've been invited to do for probably 10 years, so it's a great pleasure. But yes, I think if anybody is looking for some journalistic assistance or anything else they think I might be able to help with, then please do get in touch. And yeah, if anyone wants to go in on starting some kind of financial history book club or bus, I've got a vision of a mobile financial history unit that we somehow drive around Scotland and maybe, maybe, maybe further afield too. Wouldn't that be cool?
Sebastian Lees
51:41
so yeah, that's that that would be amazing. I think, yeah, definitely, uh, maybe you could have a tour of various business schools in the country. I think that would be useful to rock up so good, so good.
Leila Johnston
51:53
So if anyone wants to come in on that, then, um, yeah, get in touch.
Sebastian Lees
51:56
I may take you up on that. That's genuinely fascinating. Well, Leila Johnston, it's been an absolute, absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining and, uh, goodbye thank you, goodbye.