Antidoters Podcast

Building a More Soul Society

Hey! It’s been a while. Sorry. I’ve been hustling, business-developing, Zoom-ing, moutain walking; web-designing, product-testing, conference-speaking, making 100s of packed-lunches; business-planning, ad-testing, trade-marking, veruca-treating; podcast-appearing, pitching, AI-training, picking up socks; you get the idea… As a result ScrollAware [http://www.scrollaware.com] is gathering exciting momentum and appears to have hit a serious nerve, with *big* brands and 🤞some high profile ambassador conversations in play. But my own nerves are frazzled. So much for a slow Summer. I’ve felt like a priest at times, unwittingly eliciting countless confessions around bad habits and screen time fears. It can be depressing - horror stories abound - but it’s all validation that something’s gone seriously wrong and that we need more reminders to stop, pause and smell the roses. In moments of overwhelm, it can feel futile and like pushing water uphill. Am I staking my reputation and using up all my network’s goodwill on trying to push against the gravity of global-trends and cultural change? Is this a business, or is it a ‘movement’? Can it be both? There are certainly enough awesome antidote products, and services to support more intentional living - the returns from which could fuel the movement - but equally, I’m increasingly realising that much of this is simply a life philosophy to focus on how much of the good stuff in life is actually free. I feel like I’m trying to package and market an amalgam of personal philosophy (as revealed here) and old-world wisdom into something suitable for this age of overwhelm. To turn the clock back in many ways, but leveraging the modern tools of promotion that I find so icky: personal brand and the cult of celebrity, the primacy of social content and data optimisation, with the intensifying earthquake of AI-opportunity/ threat rumbling underfoot. The ‘More Soul Society [https://moresoulsociety.substack.com/]’ has launched this week in response. It seeks to offer the simple reminders that I need in order to to practice what I preach, packaged into a short, weekly, free missive. A ‘slowletter’ if you will, rather than a newsletter. It’s the start of the audience-building side of the movement to create a home for all the More-Soulers whose confessions I’m privy to. Fancy it? Yes, it’s another substack… but a shorter, pithier one. Fewer elipses, semi-colons and rambling-Jess. And one that might trigger a mass ‘unsubscribe’ to so much other superfluous noise and out of which a movement could emerge to shift the pendulum back a little. It’s certainly a ‘could’ worth aiming for. More mature Antidoters may find some of the contents obvious or trite (Hi Mum), but trust me when I say that much of this stuff will be depressingly new to many under 30s and/or partially forgotten by the generation above them. The prospect of sitting on a bench for 5 minutes to people-watch, sending a physical postcard or going out of your way to give a stranger a compliment can be hugely novel, unnerving concepts. Idleness, reverie, pondering and boredom are close to extinct states of being. So I’m keeping this as short as I can(‘t!) as I’d rather you checked the below out than spent more valuable minutes reading this. (And Antidoters will continue in the same vein, as freewheeling as ever. As and when I have some spleen to vent). Please subscribe and share. PS- I was tempted to auto-subscribe you all as the sales-funnel gurus would advocate - but I figured that would be counter to the philosophy. This has to be opted-in to by those that feel this and find it a breath of fresh air in over-optimised lives. But bribery’s ok, right? I’ll send a handwritten postcard to anyone that gets 10 Soul Society sign-ups. A Smaart Pocket [https://www.scrollaware.com/shop/p/the-smaart-pocket] if you can get 50… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com [https://antidoters.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Less Scroll, More Soul... in 5,4,3,2...

I’m so excited. It’s been less ‘Eureka’ and more a fog slowly clearing through the end of a telescope but after months of reading, writing and processing, my thinking has crystallised into a next professional chapter I can’t wait to write. One that hones in on the problems I care most about and draws on all my experience to date. Let’s start with a thought experiment: a short utopia in an age of dystopia. It’s 2035, and the Analogue Renaissance is thriving. It all began in 2025, when a people-powered #LessScrollMoreSoul movement took hold. The message appeared everywhere as a reminder of what society was losing in our 3 hours+ of daily scroll and what we had to gain from reclaiming some of it back. GenZ led the ‘digital defiance’ charge as frustration grew around childhoods they realised they’d lost, but it quickly spread as all woke up to the fact that we are what we pay attention to and that our time was ours to optimise, not others’ to mine and sell. A craze kicked off to visibly carry and use phone sleeping bags to signify disconnection and presence to ourselves and those around - our kids, friends, colleagues. Phone cloakrooms are now common at social gatherings with ‘no-phone zone’ signage in most public spaces. It is now frowned upon for phones to be out in social settings. Selfies, once hailed as a form of self-expression are now viewed as narcissistic and deeply uncool. Amateur public filming stopped, accelerated from 2031 by the risk of prosecution for sharing images without consent. Posting children on social media stopped altogether by 2030 after a number of AI-image manipulation abuse cases captured the media’s attention. Public spaces began to be designed more thoughtfully to invite connection: benches facing each other, communal talk tables, free chess boards and community walls for public expression and local event promotion. Dating app use declined, ‘single zones’ and public connection walls replaced them. Eye contact came back into fashion and analogue is cool again - vinyl, paper-planners, alarm clocks, disposable cameras, game nights. Bookshops are “digital detox zones” with cafés, events and open-mic nights. The previously diminishing concept of local, in-person community has crept back. Corporate CSR budgets increasingly back local initiatives - grassroots sports, youth clubs, events and community facilities. ‘Digital Sabbaticals' for young adults became common-place with 3 to 6 months spent off-grid, and the unplugged travel sector now booms. As evidence for the efficacy of ‘free’ antidotes grew, ‘Disconnection prescriptions’ became mainstream in mental healthcare; ‘Helicopter’ parenting continues to give way to ‘cavalier parenting.’ Kids fall. They get back up. Chores are back in vogue along with teen jobs. Band-aid sales have gone up, inversely correlated with the decline of antidepressants. In education, whilst tech and AI remain critical subjects in this tech-enabled world, their use in other disciplines has decreased with schools reviving slow learning: books, pens, gardening and map-reading. ‘Life lessons’ include media-literacy, financial management, “how to hold a real conversation” and “how to manage conflict” . Offline competence matters again and the humanities have received a new emphasis and boost as the ‘soul’ subjects that distinguish us from AI. As global governments woke up to the shifting public sentiment, 35 countries (so far) have enforced age-restrictions on social media. The Advertiser Revolt of 2027 effectively forced the social business models away from outrage and insecurity-fuelling toward quality-first content. Paid tiers were introduced for those who wanted to reinstate friend-only feeds or editing-control over 3rd party content. The ‘Digital Balance’ sector is booming and IRL (in-real-life) is big business once again. Naive? Perhaps. But a huge cultural shift is coming… you feel it as so do most people. And many elements of this utopia, especially the shifts in social norms and perception, I now consider my professional mission… * a quest to reclaim technology as an enabler for our real lives as opposed to a destination where we spend most of them. And deeper than that: * To remind people in a dopamine-driven, hack-obsessed, over-consumption world that happiness and pleasure are not the same thing, indeed they conflict. * To promote the age-old wisdom that happiness comes from embracing people, place and perspective (or ‘soul’ time): time in nature, sport, community, the arts, creativity, skills-building and collaboration. The phone is not really the problem The smartphone is awesome. A truly magical wand in our pockets that can enable soul time: inspiration, logistics management, event-booking, education and community-building. It’s much more specifically infinite scroll and the attention (addiction) economy that is causing most of the problems. It’s the ‘free’ business model of doom-scrolling (along with its sophisticated algorithms that sate our worst human instincts) that is lobotomising society. An industry that’s literally mining us of 720 billion minutes per day (143 mins/ user/ day), 260 trillion minutes or 500 million years of collective human time annually (source [https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-deep-dive-the-time-we-spend-on-social-media]). The average 18 year old is currently on course to spend 93% of their free time for the rest of their lives in scroll (source [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TMPXK9tw5U]). And it’s not just the time-opportunity cost, but the damage done to our powers of concentration - especially pernicious to young brains still wiring-up - but a problem for all who now exist in a distracted state of multitasking overwhelm with the weight of global problems on our shoulders. ‘A model that’s literally mining us of 720 billion minutes per day (143 mins/ user/ day), 260 trillion minutes or 500 million years of collective human time annually’ Maybe you have more self-control - well done - but if you’re not worried about these stats for civilisation’s sake, read them again. And I’m not saying I don’t deeply care about specific ‘harms’: the proven links to child anxiety, extremism, polarisation or dis-information- entrenching insecurities and tribal instincts. But I see these as downstream from the issues of time and focus and shifting adult perceptions as the key to unlocking action. In recent years we’ve seen the total extinction of boredom. Children never experience it despite the evidence [https://childmind.org/article/the-benefits-of-boredom/] of its critical importance for creativity, agency and resilience-building. The average child now spends less time outdoors than a high security inmate (source [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/25/three-quarters-of-uk-children-spend-less-time-outdoors-than-prison-inmates-survey]). And how often do any of us adults sit with our thoughts, processing or making sense of our experiences, chewing on curiosity rather than tapping it into Google or ChatGPT? We don’t, not even on the can. ‘The average child now spends less time outdoors than a high security inmate’ For as long as our attention is manipulated, we are not in full control of our own lives. If we’re not careful, the next great social divide will be between those who know how to harness it and go ‘deep’ and those who don’t (likely, as with all disparities, to fall along socio-economic lines). The former will rule the latter (as China appreciates [https://apnews.com/article/china-internet-restrictions-children-smartphone-limits-8435b530b117b70357856ddf6a5968d1]). But enough with the gloom. The tides are shifting. Introducing Scroll Aware [http://www.scrollaware.com]… …with constructive optimism at its core. Scroll Aware is a new social enterprise to tackle tech addiction and a collective-action movement to reclaim time, attention and soul in a screen-saturated world. A national (international?) #LessScrollMoreSoul consumer ‘health’ campaign will kick it off soon with many high profile partnerships in place or in discussion. Whilst the zeitgeist is shifting (see the recent Deloitte survey [https://www.deloitte.com/uk/en/about/press-room/gen-zs-favour-social-media-ban-for-under-16s-as-digital-fatigue-hits.html?icid=top_gen-zs-favour-social-media-ban-for-under-16s-as-digital-fatigue-hits]where 53% of GenZ favour a ban on social media for U16s), many initiatives are discounted as doom-mongering (even if truth-telling) and/or luddite. As such, Scroll Aware has a fabulous opportunity to shape a positive conversation with measurable targets for behavioural change that invert the scroll:soul ratio. Scroll Aware is a non-partisan social enterprise. It’s a positive, antidote-based take on the challenge and less anti-tech or anti-phone as pro-people, pro-place, and pro-perspective. 'Less Scroll' is the push - shining light on the addiction economy incentives and imploring brakes and boundaries, with 'More Soul' the pull - reminding people to act on the age-old, life-affirming benefits of offline living and in-person time; re-emphasising the benefits of nature, sport, community, art and more. Scroll Aware is a coalition of businesses, influential ambassadors and not-for-profits united under a ‘Less Scroll, More Soul’ banner and committed to cross-pollinating the best of each others’ work. Together, we want to give people the inspiration and courage to log off, look up, and live more intentionally. What you can do: Professionally… * Please share this mission with any consumer brands, charities or organisations in your network who are in the business of ‘less scroll’ (digital balance) or ‘more soul’ ie. promoting sport, leisure, nature, hospitality, toys, events or community. Forward them this blog and/or our champions summary [https://www.scrollaware.com/champions]. * Get your own organisation involved (share with leadership, marketing, CSR and HR teams). * In September, we’re hosting a London Summit of ‘champions’ and partners who believe in this mission to shape and launch the collective action manifesto. Personally… * Share share share. Share this. Share the website [http://www.scrollaware.com]. Please share your thoughts on your social channels and reach out to anyone in your network who might be able to help us amplify this message. * Pledge [http://www.scrollaware.com] to more intentional living. It’s free. We’re building a waitlist right now to whom we'’ll be sharing updates and short nuggets of motivation, inspiration and recommendations for more intentional living. * Get a ‘Smaart Pocket [https://www.scrollaware.com/shop/p/the-smaart-pocket]’: The gift of time. A sleeping bag for your phone to visibly signal your intentionality, when with friends, children, colleagues or to yourself when you feel the need for focus or relaxation (with % of proceeds to Scroll Aware. UK delivery only for now). In fact, ask your organisation/ employer to buy them for all their staff or for client-gifting… * Try our free ‘smartphone habit audit [https://www.scrollaware.com/free-habit-audit]’ for a personalised report on your habits, or download free [https://www.scrollaware.com/free-downloads]phone screensavers for personal use or venue-signage for your workplace or hospitality venue. * Know anyone famous? Send them my way…. we’re actively seeking high profile patrons and ambassadors who want to be part of building a legacy project. * Join me. Both volunteers and future hires are so welcome to reach out. I’ll close with a huge ‘thank you’ to all those who have supported and advised me on this so far, given me their time and opened up their contact books. Heroes, the lot of you. And I’m delighted to welcome everyone else to the Less Scroll, More Soul people-powered movement. Join us. And let’s go. www.scrollaware.com [http://www.scrollaware.com] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com [https://antidoters.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Idle Way: Flirting with Anti-Consumerism

Something in me is shifting. It struck me as I walked out of security last month at the departures terminal and into the walkway that snakes through duty free. Every sense was immediately assaulted. Glossy images of A-listers, neon lights, huge point-of-sale booze-deals and an overwhelming scent of perfume. Three children tugged me in the directions of giant M&Ms, tech accessories and overpriced body-sprays respectively, whilst my own eyes were involuntarily drawn to the rows of sunglasses and Swatch watches I don’t need, (but feel a nostalgic 80s love for). It took every ounce of willpower to stay in-lane, snaking my carry-on through whilst shaking my head sternly ‘absolutely not’. I felt a bit nauseous. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. It struck me at that moment how gross and exploitative this omnipresent consumerism has become. Stuff, stuff and more stuff. Stuff to make us prettier, less-inhibited, more organised, more noticed, more… more. Happiness in the form of retail therapy and the dopamine of a shiny new thing. We’re all susceptible. Brands wouldn’t exist if we weren’t, but how happy does any of this really make us? My husband and I often play the Marie Kondo game. What ‘stuff’ do we own that actually ‘brings us joy’? The answers are odd and have zero correlation to price: his (ugly) gilet; my thermos coffee cup (to which i’m surgically attached prior to 11am); our ceiling-projecting bedside clock; my mud-boots for dog-walking; our dry robes for saturday-soccer; my thrice-yearly photo books; the Eastpak rucksack I picked up at the village-fete for 50p that is now my handbag; our crocs (oh, spare me your judgement)... and er..? It’s a pathetically small list when I think of all the money we spend on crap. Crap that ends up causing a huge amount of stress in a house of three children as it’s never bloody returned where it’s supposed to go. Another exercise: ask a kid what they got for past Christmases (even the last one!) and depressingly, they rarely remember. They recall what they did around that time, who visited, any festive outings and which games were played, but rarely the gifts themselves, despite the huge expense, time, worry (and midnight assembly hours) ‘Santa’ invested in them. The most played-with toys are *never* the ones you expect. I’ve spent the best part of my career in the world of brands: building tech to harness attention; selling loyalty schemes and honing marketing messaging. I enjoy brand-building and message-massaging around the behavioural science of what people need or think they need. And I’ve believed in the value delivered by the brands I’ve worked on. Through choosing them as consumers we make a statement about who we are. They can be aspirational and provide identity, status, comfort or convenience. Branding is the way to make our (uniquely brilliant, obviously) product stand out in a crowded marketplace. And it’s no coincidence that many of the biggest social movements of the last few decades… Pride, Extinction Rebellion, BLM, LiveAid etc have succeeded by harnessing the branding playbook… logos and merch included. Purchases do produce ‘highs’.. but they’re short-lived, so desire for them is now insatiable. These thoughts have intersected with the work I’m doing at the moment on antidotes to tech addiction. I have a few exciting product ideas of my own (on which, more to follow) and (with thanks to Jonathan Haidt’s team), have been chatting to a number of talented, energising entrepreneurs working on solutions. Given the growing demand for solutions, I suspect some of these products and services may end up being very lucrative indeed. But actually, the best solutions to this issue are free… education, willpower, socialising, reading, walks, nature, more pondering, community engagement etc. But therein lies the problem…. as if they’re free, it’s no one’s real incentive to market them well and make them seem ‘cool’ or aspirational. No VCs to back the social-media marketing campaign or SEO. Feeling sad or overwhelmed? Here’s a premium app subscription to master the act of mindfulness. Much cooler than 10 minutes of watching clouds drift across the sky or half an hour spent on an old puzzle from the back of the cupboard- despite them having a very similar effect. Maybe, where lifestyle brands are concerned, paying for something provides a placebo effect in itself though? Maybe if you pay, you’re more committed to change. This psychology certainly works for me where my gym membership is concerned. Anyway, the other event that prompted me to flirt further with my growing anti-capitalist inclination was opportunistically reaching out to the hero-author of a book I loved recently and landing a lunch with him. Tom Hodgkinson wrote ‘The Idle Parent [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Idle-Parent-Less-Means-Raising/dp/0141030356]’ and has, for the last 20 years been running ‘The Idler [https://www.idler.co.uk/]’- a wonderful counter-cultural publication dedicated to ‘slow living’ and our lunch was fabulous. It was like meeting another version of myself in a parallel world, someone who’s spent most of his professional life promoting free life-additives through a lens I feel like I'm only just rediscovering. As readers will know from my ‘what I can’t see I can’t overparent [https://antidoters.substack.com/p/what-i-cant-see-i-cant-over-parent?r=1iqd3]’ post, I was immediately inclined to his book from its title and it did not disappoint. In turn, laugh-out-loud funny and ridiculously annoying, as I wished I’d written it. In essence, a tract on why parenting less is good for both parent and child. Why a slower, less ‘proactive’ family life is a more fulfilling, richer life. Why possessions - especially plastic ones - are less important than experiences. Why you should never take your child to a theme park [https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/04/the-idle-parent-2.html] and how the best family days are the ones where parents drink together in a tent on one side of a field and the kids run feral on the other. I’m in. I highly recommend that everyone sign up to his newsletter for the opportunity to receive a free download of ‘The Idler’s Manual’ - a quick-read charter for life that is a funny, poignant reminder of so many of the ‘boring’, unmarketed things that make life worth living: messing around on water; wondering a city aimlessly, riding a bike for fun, staring at walls, afternoon naps, playing old games and lolling by a fire - to name just a few examples. The Idler mag itself is gorgeous escapism, full of brief journeys into the fascinating worlds of philophers, historians, art and ukelele playing… worlds that few on the ‘productivity’ treadmill ever make time for. It’s annoying when people articulate your thoughts better than you can, but herewith, the Idler Manifesto: The religion of industry has turned human beings into robots. The imposition of work-discipline on free-wheeling dreamers enslaves us all. Joy and wisdom has been replaced by work and worry. We must defend our right to be lazy. It is in our idleness that we become who we are. It is when lazy that we achieve self-mastery. Jobs rob our time. Productivity and progress have led to anxiety and unease. Technology imprisons as it promises to liberate. Careers are phatasms. Money is mind forg’d. We can create our own paradise. Nothing must be done. With freedom comes responsibility. Stay in bed. Be good to yourself. Inaction is the wellspring of creation. Art, people, life. Bread, bacon, beer. Live first, work later. Time is not money. Stop spending. Quit your job. Study the art of living. Live slow, die old. Embrace nothing. Know nothing. Do nothing. Be idle. What a breath of fresh air. Am I in danger of dying my hair blue? Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com [https://antidoters.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Why Pubs Matter More than Ever

Today, I’m delighted to be sharing my first guest post from a great friend of mine, Adam Nicoll. Adam is truly an ‘old soul’, and someone I hugely enjoy for his irreverent sense of humour and salty language. He pulls no punches, debatewise, has a penchant for spraying robust opinions on radio phone-ins and along with our better halves, we frequently put the world to rights over drinks. Indeed the name of our 4-way whatsapp group remains ‘Nelson’ after our gammon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult)] fury some years back at the changing of a school house name from ‘Nelson’ to ‘Attenborough’ (ick). The subject of community-decline has been a recurrent theme in our conversations but whilst lots of people talk the talk, few walk that talk. Adam does… and for miles, as his post outlines. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Whilst a high-achieving C-level/ board player in global corporations, he is also a fierce family and community man with solid priorities. If I have any criticism of what follows it’s that he greatly understates the gargantuan task he undertook in rescuing his local village pub. He was a man on a mission to which he gave everything, including calls to breweries from mountain-tops during a shared family holiday. The stunning value of what he created and continues to sustain as an intensive passion-project is evident to any visitor. He is my antidoter of the week. The world needs more Adams. “Only Connect” EM Forster, Howards End. Over the last 25 years or so I can recall at least half a dozen occasions when leaders in the businesses I’ve operated in, have toyed with the notion of cancelling work socials, parties or culled the work canteen – ‘but people can walk to Greggs easily enough...’. Some have acted accordingly. When they’ve done so in the spirit of saving money or driving profit, they have ignored one fundamental truth. People like people. More than that, people need people to be happy. People only work because of people. Removing that social interaction and expecting a business to continue to operate at the same optimal rate, is like expecting an orgasm at a funeral. It’s possible but unlikely and a social car crash. And it’s not just businesses which make such glaring mistakes. We’re all quite good at it for ourselves. We often don’t know what’s good for us. It never ceases to amaze me how people draw conclusions about their lot in life and then prescribe themselves the very medicine which is most contradictory to the diagnosis. Since COVID, this trend has found a fifth and sixth gear. Dare I say, it’s the younger generations who seem more susceptible to this pitfall and perhaps experience counts for something after all? Here’s how a thought process may roll around the topic of remote working. “People in the office are getting more opportunities than me. I didn’t get to go on that Parisian jolly but I’ve always wanted to see the Paris office. Maybe I wasn’t around when it was mooted around the water cooler? Jade got it. She would have been at the water cooler. She’s always in the office, sucking up to the bosses. Cow!” It’s cold and the cost of living is ridiculous right now, especially heating bills. Now I’m WFH it costs at least £20 to heat this place for the day...but I suppose that’s cheaper than commuting…. even if the WiFi is terrible I want to WFH to have more freedom and control over my destiny and workload. It saves me on commuting costs too and I’m in when Amazon parcels arrive. I got a couple of great books today. One to tackle my loneliness and one about anxiety. Great. I wish I had a job where I felt I belonged to something bigger. There’s no sense of identity and community at this place. Why am I so unhappy? What’s this survey from HR in my inbox? Oh, it’s asking me if I still want to work remotely or come back into the office 2 days a week!! WTF. I don’t like the tone of these questions. It’s like they’re FORCING me to come in or else. I’m ticking that box, ‘I prefer to work remotely 5 days a week’. That’ll teach ‘em for victimising me. HR arseholes.”... Just as people have gained more freedom regarding when and where they work, their mental health has collapsed at an alarming rate. Up to 80% of workers report that remote working impacted their mental health negatively [https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20220616-is-remote-work-worse-for-wellbeing-than-people-think]. Why? Well, it’s clear to many of us that it’s about connection. Isolate a rat in a lab from its pals for a few days and it shows signs of stress. We’re just the same. As EM Forster writes in his opening line of Howards End ‘Only Connect’. Over the last several years the social glue of society has been dosed in a solvent, robbing us all of a cohesion which used to make us smile more, and love more. In 1990, one in five people in the UK met their spouse at work. Today’s figure can’t even be surveyed for fear that people would get sacked for completing the survey honestly...’work relationships!!!’...Ewwww, HR AND COMPUTER SAYS NO, CANCEL AND DETONATE ON SITE! So that, finally, brings me to pubs, why they matter more now than ever, and why I’ve been asked to guest blog today. Well, you know where this is going. Pubs are connection. They are community. They are not just where culture flows, they are that culture. It may be too antiquated a cliche to say that pubs are a part of the fabric of society; and perhaps too exclusive and rural-biased to reference that the holy trinity of a village community was once a village shop, a Church and a thriving village pub. Those days have long gone, but I can’t help but quote Hilaire Belloc “Change your hearts or you lose your inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” I’m sure some readers won’t dare to relate to this, think it jingoistic, have vomited and already started playing Fortnite with a repeat offender in Wisconsin who they’ll never actually meet, like, love or loathe. But, whatever your religious viewpoint or ideology, pubs matter. They matter to towns and villages and to all countries where they comprise a significant cultural impact. And now, more than ever. Places to connect in person are disappearing at an alarming rate. If they were a pink footed goose, there would be a Chris Packham-led appeal on BBC9 at 8pm every weekday asking people to dig deeper. Community centres are in short supply and underfunded, church attendance has been on the wane for decades, working men’s clubs have vanished, newsagents going, village shops vanishing, even bookmakers have disappeared and youth clubs have gone the way of the dodo. And yes, people will argue that coffee shops have plugged the gap and society has just moved in a different direction from the boozer. Well I’d say walk into a coffee shop and count how many people are alone, working on a laptop or scrolling on a mobile. How many people are actually connecting in the way that they might in a pub... All this, and in a world where 9 million people in the UK alone describe themselves as ‘lonely’ or ‘very lonely’. Is it any wonder, when you can’t even guarantee speaking to someone in a shop at the bloody till. It drives me mental when I see an elderly person struggling with self-checkout. Well done, Lord Saintrose, you’ve saved a bob or two with your miserly automation but made everyone’s lives more stressful. You’ve outsourced a chunk of your ‘service’ to the people actually paying for your product - those who are most vulnerable in society and who may only get out once or twice a week to speak to someone in real life (since their other half died and their kids moved away). You’ve cast them into a digital oblivion of covid-infecting screen swiping.... Arrrghghhghgh. Shame on you. We know the loneliness diagnosis, and yet we prescribe solutions which bring more of the same misery. Madness. Back to pubs. There aren’t many left. Under 39,000 actually. In 1990, there were 63,500. My village pub was under threat a couple of years ago and I decided to stand up for it. I stood on a pub table a few times in actual real life, and then did more of the same virtually on Facebook to generate noise to save the thing; eventually got some funding from a generous chap who ‘got it’; and shamed the conglomerate who owned the pub on radio enough to convince them it was easier to sell it to a community inspired bid. Almost a year down the line and the pub is open, refurbished, viable and thriving. But it’s in the conversations I hear in the pub where the real victory lies. People discussing break-ups, their latest diagnosis or prognosis, their children’s victories and challenges. People moaning about their boss in a safe place, airing their woes about the world and occasionally their politics. People decompressing from a day at work with a pint on the way home or a game of darts. Without a pub, many of these conversations would have no natural home. They wouldn’t happen at all. They’d be inner talk at best. Inner chat which may eat away at us, pushing happiness further and further away, isolating us from others. Emotions bottled up with no release. Worse still, we may put these thoughts on social media instead, to be misinterpreted, driving anger northwards, and polarising society ever more. So, a pub isn’t about alcohol, it’s about much more than that. It’s our collective happiness that’s in the balance. They’re as important as that. You’d think Governments would appreciate that and recognise the psychological value to those who use them, the hole in society they fill and suture. Without wishing to get political - as all parties have a poor record in this regard - sadly the recent budget is likely to see our pub count drop another 5,000 during this term; still fewer places to meet, love and laugh. A continued erosion of what is natural for people to do. Only connect. Belloc’s words bear repeating: “...when you have lost your Inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” Mine’s a pint. Adam Nicoll [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-nicoll-6b2aa43/] Fractional CMO in hospitality | People and Culture leader | Pub-lover The pint’s on me, Adam. Cheers to you. (And if you liked this, you might also enjoy my ‘In Defence of Rebels and Booze [https://antidoters.substack.com/p/in-defence-of-rebels-and-booze]’ post) Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com [https://antidoters.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Where Have all the Compassionate Neighbours Gone?

Hello Strangers! Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve spent a lovely last month taking my own advice and prioritising family, plus reading to restock my mind-pantry. Because the truth is, I’d run out of spleen-venting material and feared I was repeating myself. (Perhaps it might help all our content-overwhelm if people stopped posting for the sake of it. Two ears, one mouth etc). And what a last month it’s been with so many explosive global news events in all my fields of fascination/ concern: a poisonous feast of political polarisation; a prospective (likely abortive) TikTok ban in the US; tribal battle lines drawn over whether it’s possible to accidentally extend one’s right arm; identity-politics playing out in responses to two huge UK news stories- grooming gangs and the tragic Southport murders; and much more. I’m following as much of it as my stress levels can take, and yes, I have opinions (indeed, I was sat on a zoom with Sky News at 7.30pm last friday, thirty seconds from interview go-live to discuss the TikTok ban I wholeheartedly support before being bumped by the demise of a much-loved footballer). Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Global politics is viewed as either deeply concerning or a welcome course-correction as pendulums of ascendant opinions swing around wildly, but our obsession with the global comes at what cost to the local? Indeed, how much of what is (or isn’t) happening at the local community level is responsible for it? Arguably, all of it… The decline of community is one of the repetitive themes of Antidoters and last week I was hugely struck by a brilliant long article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson that articulated and evidenced this phenomenon much more beautifully than I ever could: ‘The Antisocial Century [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/]’. (If you have the time, stop reading this and read that - you have my permission. If not, some highlights as follows). Whilst it’s US focussed, I believe it to be just as relevant to the UK. The article details how, from the very social early part of the 20th century (thriving churches, growth of local group participation plus the rapid spread of libraries, theatres, music venues and parks), various trends over the last few decades have seen communities go into terminal decline. It started with the rise of car-culture and the impact on urban-planning… then shifting political priorities… then TV’s appearing in every home… (“From 1985 to 1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by nearly half” (Robert D Putnam “Bowling Alone”).. All this well before the turbo-charging of these trends by recent technology shifts, Covid, on-demand entertainment and the explosion of food-delivery services: “If two of the 20th century’s iconic technologies, the automobile and the television, initiated the rise of American aloneness, the 21st century’s most notorious piece of hardware has continued to fuel, and has indeed accelerated, our national anti-social streak. Countless books, articles, and cable-news segments have warned Americans that smartphones can negatively affect mental health and may be especially harmful to adolescents. But the fretful coverage is, if anything, restrained given how greatly these devices have changed our conscious experience. The typical person is awake for about 900 minutes a day. American kids and teenagers spend, on average [https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/607724b2ae76e535db9552ff/665e3221ce1495cf2ebcf44c_State%20of%20the%20Youth%E2%80%94Report%20on%20Raising%20a%20Connected%20Generation.pdf], about 270 minutes on weekdays and 380 minutes on weekends gazing into their screens… By this account, screens occupy more than 30 percent of their waking life…. The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality…. More worrisome than what young people do on their phone is what they aren’t doing [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/]. Young people are less likely… to get their driver’s license, or to go on a date [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/], or to have more than one close friend, or even to hang out with their friends at all…. Phones mean that solitude is more crowded than it used to be, and crowds are more solitary. Bright lines once separated being alone and being in a crowd… Boundaries helped us. You could be present with your friends and reflective in your downtime. Now our social time is haunted by the possibility that something more interesting is happening somewhere else, and our downtime is contaminated by the streams and posts and texts of dozens of friends, colleagues, frenemies, strangers…. Practically the entire economy has reoriented itself to allow Americans to stay within their four walls. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to remote work. It is something far more totalizing—something more like “remote life.” And one lovely framing theory that I’ve since plagiarised in conversation is the following: Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around us. “These are your neighbors, the people in your town.. We used to know them well; now we don’t” I would personally add ‘the narcissistic obsession of self’ to the inner ring - and global political obsession to the outer, tribal ring. But yes, the middle ring we neglect at our peril. Thompson goes on to explain how the “the middle ring is key to social cohesion… Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance”. Bumping regularly into those with whom we might disagree on ideology or politics but share so many other experiences, family-dynamics or local concerns allows us to truly see each other and find common-ground. Different experiences and life-perspectives are given greater consideration. Accommodation and peaceful co-existence becomes both possible and necessary. And so, in an attempt to take my own medicine, my antidote-quest has driven me to middle-ring proactivity. I’ve volunteered with a local hospice initiative to be a ‘compassionate neighbour’ for an hour a week to a local elderly person who is lonely or socially excluded. I hesitate to share this, as I feel there’s too much ‘look what a nice person I am’ virtue signalling in the world, so I’ll be honest and admit that my motivation here is only part altruistic and part selfish/ for research-purposes. Who are the people that do this and what is their motivation? What difference do/ can they make? How might one scale this? On a personal level, who might I get to know and how differently might they see the world based on their much longer experience of it? I’d love to hear personal stories of bygone-times and to broaden my narrow ‘people-like-me’ social circle. (But yes, I will commit to it and not quit once I’ve extracted some Antidoters value!) So far, without yet having even been matched to a new socially-excluded friend, my research curiosity has already been piqued as follows: Why was it so hard to volunteer for this? Why did I need to be DBS-checked, impose on two friends for references and attend a whole-day training event to give an hour of my time each week to have coffee with another consenting adult? But of course I know the answer: the precautionary principle. If I murder Doris or steal all her money, someone will need to be held responsible (albeit possibly Amazon for selling me the knife [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg85lkpz0zo]… ‘do something! anything!’ *facepalm*). Whilst potentially there from the best of intentions, how far are all these barriers putting many off from getting involved in local initiatives? How many more football coaches, youth workers, scout-leaders or citizen-advice volunteers might we benefit from without them? We’ll never know. (In related research, I talked to the British Nightclub Association last week about the potential of putting on alcohol-free ‘lite club’ evenings in their venues for teenagers but yet again, the precautionary principle is a key blocker. One negative news story involving drugs, a fight or a spiking would see the whole initiative would go up in flames of negative publicity, so it’s easier not to try. Let’s leave the kids to hang out in dingy, underfunded parks. (Or not… watch this space… or take that idea for yourself and run with it)) Why were all the 15 volunteers in my training session (bar one) female and with an average age of c. 68? Again no surprise perhaps given how similar percentages play out across the care sector (only 18% of the people working in adult social care identify as men – and even fewer among care workers (16%), senior care workers (15%), nurses (13%) and occupational therapists (11%) source [https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/About-us/Our-policy-positions/Capacity/Recruiting-new-demographics-into-social-care.aspx#:~:text=Gender,and%20occupational%20therapists%20(11%25).]). Is this due to stereotyping and nurture? Or nature, with the female brain more attuned to community and caring roles? (My friend David Goodhart’s recent book ‘The Care Dilemma [https://amzn.eu/d/ggN1Qcr]’ provides a fantastic analysis of this subject for those interested). No doubt, I’ll share more on my experiences compassionate-neighbouring in due course, but to close for now, a small selection of some recent reading/ listening: * The Telepathy Tapes podcast [https://thetelepathytapes.com/]… has literally blown my mind. I’ve been trying to comunicate telapathically with our dog for the last week. Updates to follow. (Whatsapp passive aggression seems to work well enough on my co-parent). * TikTok - Weapon of Mass Distraction [https://unherd.com/2025/01/tiktok-weapon-of-mass-distraction/]by Gurwinder Bhogal * I Can’t Believe That Free Speech, Color Blindness, and Meritocracy Became Right-Wing Issues [https://open.substack.com/pub/imightbewrong/p/i-cant-believe-that-free-speech-color?r=1iqd3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false] by Jeff Maurer * Two of my favourite men [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZPHUuyHsY8] talking about how to save the Western world and why the UK is going to sh1t (all podcast providers/ and YouTube) More soon (albeit, I won’t be a slave to weekly). Thanks so much for reading and do please share if you find any of this of interest. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com [https://antidoters.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]