Baroness Beeban Kidron: “Democracy is no longer representative. It is bought.”

This is a global production. TV broadcast newspapers, whatever. We've handed it all over. And now we don't have a public square. We've got private square. You encountered a young girl who just said, "How do they know I like red trainers, but they don't know I'm 12?" The public anger about AI, the parental anger about social media, the fury of young people about where their jobs are going. You have been warning about the dangers that are now in the papers every single day for well over a decade. All this growth in tech is not growth. It's transfer. (upbeat music) - Be even, Kidron, welcome. Baroness, Kidron, no less. Welcome. - Thank you for having me here. - It's lovely to see you. I mean, it's hard to know. We'll start. We begin at the beginning, 'cause there's nowhere else to begin, but you have worn so many hats in the course of your life and your career that, I don't know which one we're going to end up focusing upon more. So we'll begin at the end, in fact, and say that your new book uses how big tech took control and how to fight back. I mean, it's interesting for a whole bunch of reasons, but it did strike me that you must be torn between, oh, better late than never, everybody, and a sense of indication, because you've been on this mission, on this crusade since, well, at the very least the beginning of the last decade. - Yeah, well, listen, I do have that moment. I go, what took you so long? - Yes. - And the thing that irritates me the most is when a minister comes to the dispatch box and says we couldn't possibly have anticipated, or we don't know enough, or we have to see how this rolls out, and I go, no, we don't. We understand, we've known for a long time, it's political, it's not practical, stop pretending it's practical. And so actually, I really welcome this moment, I really celebrate the moment. I think that the public anger about AI, the parental anger about social media, the fury of young people about where their jobs are going. I think that's really proper, it's really important, and I would say right from the get-go, that's where my book ends up, it says we have to take democratic control back, and you know what guys, that means you, you who are listening, not people like me who have this privileged place in Parliament, so I say bring it on. - But you have been warning about the dangers that are now in the papers every single day for a well over a decade. - I have, I have. I walked into my kitchen, 2012 was the moment when a smartphone became the price point that an adult might give one to a child. I walked into my kitchen, and there were four, 15 year old girls not talking, and I just thought why aren't they talking? I mean, I've never seen four, 15 year old girls not talking, and then I realized they were looking at the phone, and I had this thought, I just, it just popped in my mind, and I thought, oh, I wonder what it's gonna be like to grow up here, like in my kitchen here, and there, and then I went, where is there? And that idea, that idea that there was another there at the end of the phone, that I didn't know, I didn't know what it was. That changed my life, because at that point, I was a filmmaker, I was a film director, I lived between UK and Hollywood, I was something of great time, thank you very much, but I picked up my camera, asking myself the question, where was there? I made a film about teenagers in the internet. - Is it in real life? In real life, by the time I got to the end of that year, 'cause I spent hundreds of hours with kids in bedrooms and doing whatever it was they were doing, but somewhere along that, I realized that there was an absolute generational injustice, and it was wrong. - It came out in 2013, just to sort of keep thumping this drum about you having been at the very, very vanguard of the warnings, and you did, you immersed yourself in the lives of these young people, some of the things that you unearthed in that film, and that you broadcasted in that film were, almost unbearable. You know, talk about child sex abuse videos circulating in a primary school, we learn about some of the things that parents had absolutely no idea that children were being exposed to, some parents were called still don't, and then sometimes I can't remember whether it was in that film or not. Sometimes it's quite an outwardly innocuous apercy that cuts to the heart of the issue, and you encountered a young girl who just said, "How do they know I like red trainers, "but they don't know I'm 12?" - Yeah, yeah, I think-- - She's like, "Whoa, that's the problem right there." - I think that is the problem. It's like there's so much sort of denial, and then at the same time promise, and you suddenly realize that they're promising this is really personalized, and then they're denying that they're having a go just at you, and you kind of go through that again and again and again. And one of my favorite ones of those is actually, a lot of us who are a bit older, absolutely love the internet in its previous 1.0 form, and we really did believe that it was gonna be a place where people could actually get rid of the gatekeepers and communists in a broader way, and we'd have access for all of that, and then it was a kid. I mean, this is out of the mouths of Bates. It was a kid who said to me, "I don't know why they keep on looking "for technical solutions. "Couldn't they just turn that shit off?" And actually, that has been at the heart of my political practice ever since that a lot of what's wrong with the internet is the things that they do to make it commercial, and they could, guess what, just turn it off. They don't have to introduce a grown man like you to primary age children. You could just stop doing that. You don't have to send notifications all the way through the night, keep people awake. Like, sleep deprivation is torture in war. Sleep deprivation is a norm in our society now. Think about that. They could just turn it off. And I just think that's really, really important to think about when we hear our politicians saying, "Oh, not now." It's quite uplifting as well. When you look at the size of the mountain and think that it's too high to even bother trying to scale, when you think that getting this genie back in the bottle is a fool's errand, actually. Some of the solutions that you have come up with and continue to come up with are relatively straightforward, like you say. Just flick that switch. They're not going to do it voluntarily. So pass legislation that compels them to do. I think that's right. And I mean, I do remember, you know, six months in, you know, I'd been to every school showing the film as much as I could, you know, doing that thing. Because I thought, if I said it loud enough, the world would understand not realizing at that point just how much lobbying went on, how much it had bought off our politicians were, et cetera, et cetera. My husband sat me down and he goes, I just want to check one middle-aged woman against Silicon Valley. And he goes, are you sure? And I actually did turn around to him and I went, you know, pain or consciousness love. You know, once you see something, you can't unsee it. And it is true that I didn't absolutely decide to put down my camera and become a campaigner and a politician, but that's what happened. And I say that because I find that really important. You know, in these David and Goliath situations, actually, you just need good people to start walking forward and doing the bit they can. And I think that the answers are a bit more simple than they'd have us believe. I do, there are obvious parallels with some other issues on there. I suppose climate change most obviously tobacco. The effort that's put into persuading people that things are fine versus the often self-funded or fringe figures who are sort of standing in the middle of the crowd going, no, no, no, they're really not, they're really not. And then you just have to hope that the crowd gets bigger. It makes your first sort of acclaimed film, Carrie Greenham home, but brings it into a kind of perfect perspective, really, that you're joining in with people and being inspired by people who were doing precisely that, who were standing in a crowd of borderline consensus and going, no, no, this isn't good, but we'll come to that. We're back up first all the way to the beginning, North London, 1961. I mean, it's almost, if this was in one of your scripts, you would probably send it back for being too implausible. North London, Jewish, Marxist theorist, father, a mother involved in radical publishing. This is straight out of central casting people. I know. And it's funny people often go, you know, what is your heritage? And I can just, I can say, I own everything you've just said in that last sentence. I love it, and I'm proud of it. But my brother and sister are very, very different. And they didn't, in a sense, take the lessons I took. But the thing that I took from that upbringing was my father's chant, which was "Live in the world as if it was a better place than it is" and as if it was the place you wanted it to be. And for whatever reason, that is like through me, writing in a sticker rock. If I am disheartened, if I am told that I'm an absolute idiot, that nobody's ever going to listen to what I have to say, I kind of go, "No, this is me living in the world the way I want it to be, and I am going to put everything, strenuous, everything into making it the world I think it should be." And I'll be honest, I get a lot of pleasure from that. I get a lot of pride from that. And do you know what? I get a lot of thanks. And I feel like I'm the lucky one, not the brave one. How did he enact that mantra? How did he live that life? So my dad, he was a really clever man and he was a political theorist, as you said. He started a political party, he started a publishing house, but he actually was always interested in everything. So he was the first person to start publishing the whole of the play at the theatre, so the Royal Court, they used to publish the programme, but the whole of the play. So the playwright got their words out. He did something called the Little Red Diary, which was diaries on different subjects. And in the various days of the day, you'd find out what the suffragettes had been up to, or what the eco worries had been up to and so on. And I think he saw culture, politics and fairness and reordering the political economy, all as one big thing. And I think that's maybe something that I took from him. I misread the notes when I was swatting up early. I described as a household shaped by books, debates, ideas and a belief that the world could be changed. No diabetes in our house. No, I think to clarify, but you moved to Hull fairly young, where your dad took up a post in Hull and that involved transporting the whole family. Yeah, and we actually lived in a farming village in the East Riding. And I think we were definitely the first Jews in the village. We were the newcomers. And my mother started up a nursery school in the village hall. And that became a centre for many of the women on the farms and many of the families in the village. And we ended up, even when we moved, because we then went to Pakistan and then we went to London again. But even once we moved, we still had a very long-term relationship with the people in that village. I mean, for decades. So from the very beginning then, that there was very little border between the theoretical and the practical, both of your parents didn't just think about and pontificate, they did as well. Yeah. And I actually think that that's something that's quite important in the political tradition. People can't quite put, I'm across Benchpierre, I'm not aligned to any party and I work with colleagues right across the piece. And I actually work with Americans on both sides of the aisle and people are quite surprised because I come from this progressive background and I go, no, I'm really sorry, my politics are the politics of making life better. And whoever wants to put their shoulder to that wheel, I'm in. And it does make for some uncomfortable decisions sometimes. But I think that one of the things that is wrong with politics is we're so much about what everybody said. We're not half tough enough about what they did. And I think that's something that we've actually got in a loop about and we should just calm down about what everybody's saying and start judging them on what they're doing. And I think they're coming up short. Yes. Well, you're doing it and it was going to work with that. So the primary school in in whole in Pakistan and in London or how did the ages primary school in in the next village or village. So near Beverly just. Yeah, yeah, yeah, outside Beverly, Lockington, it's called. And then we went for a year to Pakistan where my father was working on a political theory of the permanent arms economy. Okay. So basically the idea that Pakistan was giving up all its grain to buy arms from America and was continually impoverished by that idea. And it's commonly held now, but the time it was a very radical idea. So you're seeing a pattern there. And then and when we were in Pakistan, we didn't really go to school. Right. Because we he was working for the fourth foundation, which is big think tank and somebody came in and didn't really teach us anything. But we had a wonderful time. And then and then we came back to back to North London for the last year of that process. What were you like as a young as a child in primary school in Lockington? What I mean, did you engage? Did you enjoy it? I was shy. I was a bit grumpy. I think I wasn't actually very well suited to being a child at all sorts of ages. In fact, I am one of the few people who has enjoyed every decade I've got older, has been better and better. And so I actually embrace the fact that I do get older and this is the last third of my life. But I do think that it was very important to my understanding of the world that I've lived in a village. I've lived in a place where I stood out because of my colour and the hair and so on where I was other. And I've lived in a big city where it was a real medley of people. And I think that does change how you see communities and what you value. Did you find children flippant? No, I found them a bit scary. Okay. You know, they all seem so certain of themselves. They're not, though. No, of course not. They just seem like. They're just seem like. Same with adults. Yeah, really. Funnily enough, when I do a lot of work with children now, I've done workshops for the last 15 years talking about tech. And one of the things I say to them is just remember all adults are anxious too. And I think that they grow about six inches when I say that. I had a line to that. Actually, I got a very similar mantra when I'm in schools, but I always add in the ones that aren't associated paths. Which is probably lower than young. Excellent. What about friendships? Did you form friendships? It's tough to be parapetetic. Yeah, no, I did. And in fact, one of the reasons I used to go back to Yorkshire was my friend, Carolyn, who was my best friend, who and we learnt to ride together. And she is now runs a farm with her husband in Humberside still. And we remain friends for a long time. And I have friends from really right back at the beginning of my life. When I first, you know, when I was born in the first few years before we went to Yorkshire, we all were looked after in different houses by various people. And my best friend now, I remember her being born because I was friends with her older sister at the time. So I do. I have very long suffering friendships, not loads, but very, very important for me to feel that I have seen other people's lives as I've gone on my journey. And I often think about it like, you know, when you come back from the beach and you've got the sand, all the different colours in a jar. And I think having a friendship, a long-term friendship is a bit like that. You can see all the colours in the jar. And sometimes you kind of wake up and you go, "Go, I'm not sure we'd be friends now." But that jar is really important, that knowing and being known. It's a very visual way of thinking about friendship, isn't it? Had it become clear quite early on? I think you were late diagnosis dyslexic. So. It become, but you were work quite early on that you had a more visual brain than others. And that held you back maybe at school or? So I had this really extraordinary thing, which is, you know, I was born with a club paler and I was, to have an other operation when I was about 11 and I literally couldn't, I was being like this when I was 10. So that's another othering in a way or another outsider experience? That was huge. and I'm fine. right about that in the book and I think that people have been very moved by it because it was then that I was given a camera and it was through that camera that I saw what I described as power. I see who got to speak, who had to listen, who was excluded, who was included and somehow that moment never passed and because I took pictures from the age of ten. It allowed to talk for a while while you were recuperating. For a year. I couldn't speak and so when I arrived at secondary school I couldn't speak. I had like this, I had like a harpo marks, little horn and a pen and a little notebook to write things down and it was miserable. I mean it was miserable. People everybody tried to make it okay but it was just miserable. But you see here it is, you know, I was given a camera, you know, by ten years later I'm going to be in Hollywood. It's amazing. So it's an outsider experience but also an acute observer of human behaviour. I think so and I think that's a roundabout way of answering your question about visual which is I think you can see and hear in lots of different ways but the one thing you got to do is pay attention. You got to really pay attention and I think that you know when we get on to all the problems of the tech world that's one of the biggest things. They've stolen our attention. So we're not really seeing each other. We're not really hearing each other and we're not really noticing. There's too much noise and it's too distracted and we're drawn away into this other place. And so for me, the seeing, the hearing, the noticing, the taking pictures, the making films, the politics, oh God that's all just one thing. And everybody who looks at my life and goes, why did you give up being a film director to be a politician? I see it all as the same. Yes. And some of the interplay is providing a voice to the voiceless, turning stories in politics in documentary and in fiction. You can do those three things and in drama. Was it Fay Godwin who gave you the camera? Is it the first one? Fay Godwin gave me the camera and she taught me how to develop films and print them and that made me very popular at school because I could take everybody's photo and give them a print. And this at a time when you'd have to go to boots otherwise, wouldn't you? Or you'd have to take them in. It's not like now where you can get a camera that will get online and do it through your phone and just pop in anywhere and print them. But I'm interested in that moment because there's three things going on here, isn't there? There's the attempt, you're not being alienated. They're trying hard to involve you in life, which is a nice thing. But you are by definition going to feel isolated and removed. And it is the photography, it is the camera that I think gives you your first real sense of completeness. I don't think you'd engaged much in school. I don't think you found school easy on an academic level. No, no. And in fact, I think that's a really good way of putting it actually. I might steal that from you, if you don't mind. Completeness, I think the other word that I might use is purpose. And so you actually see that you can be other and useful. And I think that that's a very empowering thing because over the years you speak to lots of people and they feel very disempowered. And actually, or they feel like they're not the right kind of person. Or they feel they don't have the skills. And I think one of the things I can tell from what you've already said, you go to a lot of schools. I go to a lot of schools. I speak to a lot of young people. I think one of the jobs of people like you and I who have some, you know, a seat at the table as they call it, is really to persuade people that everybody has a seat at the table. You don't have to be in a bright spotlight. And I think having the camera and being shy and not having a voice, but actually being able to contribute something that no one else could do at that time was very emboldening. Did Mum and Dad worry about you? I mean, did they worry about your lack of academic prowess at this point or? I don't really think so. I think they were too busy, you know. They were too busy wanting to change the world for themselves. There is this expression that some of the Americans have that had similar backgrounds to me and they were called red diaper babies. And it was basically, you know, your parents were never off a C&D march, you know, and you're making toast at home. And I don't want to put any idea out there that I was in any way deprived of, but absolutely, that was not that concern. I do remember my father said to me, he said, "So long as you travel and you read, you will educate yourself." And I thank him for that because I actually ended up living school just around my 16th birthday. Yeah, just before that though, there's quite a seminal trip to Portugal, isn't it? Oh, yeah. With the camera in place. So this is the stuff of legend this. I love this story. So my father, as we've already established, was sort of a theoretical Marxist, but as the Portuguese revolution was bubbling up, the comrades from Portugal rang him up and said, "You know, might will you come here and give us some teachings?" And so we, and this is so typical of my childhood. So we ended up going on family holiday to a pre, you know, to a bubbling Portugal. And my father's in, you know, talking, "We're on the beach and then suddenly it is the day and the revolution breaks out, as it were. I'm there with my camera." Did you rush towards the action? Oh, absolutely. You knew what you were doing. Absolutely. I wanted to be in the thick of it. Well, as night fell. Yes. Literally all the farm workers came in to Lisbon on their trucks with their pitchforks and fires were starting everywhere in the city and everyone congregated in front of what must have been a parliamentary building. I have a vision of it in my head still, but I don't know what it was. And I started taking pictures because that's all I ever did. I mean, I was all I ever did from when I had a camera until, you know, well into my teens. You were 13. I was 13. 13 years old. I was 13 years old and I had the pictures of the revolution in Lisbon and because my parents were publishers and because there was a lot of magazines and journals at that time, a lot of them asked me for the pictures. And so at the age of 13, I was not only the girl with the camera, but I was published. How did that make you feel? Oh, I mean gorgeous. Yeah. And again, it's something that I try and discuss with children and young people and I go, you know, it's really very often the bad stuff that gets you to the good stuff. And so when you're in trouble, you've got to turn it around and go, what's the advantage? I mean, you know, I was born with a Cleft Baller. I had an operation. I was given a camera. It defined the rest of my life. It's a good life. Next stop, the photographer's gallery in London. You're still barely 14, but the photojournalist, Ev Arnold, is impressed by what she sees of your work. And you have to tell her that you're far too young to work for her, I think, at this point. It was out, honestly. That was probably the most eventful day of my whole life and they have been some, they really have. But the reason that I say that was, you know, she lived in, she actually lived in Mayfare, although she was American. She lived right in the attic. So you have to go up like, "Eons of stairs," and she stood there like this famous vision at the top of the stairs and I went panting up. And when I got to the top, she said to me, "You know, if you're going to be a photographer, you can't be fat." I think I do imagine that now. You know, anyway, she looked through my things and she said, "Do you want to work for me?" And I went, "Well, I've got to go to school tomorrow. I'm going to be 14 tomorrow." And she housed. I mean, she housed. But on my 16th birthday, she rang me out. She said, "This is Ev Arnold. Would you like to come and work for me?" And I left school that day. What do you think she saw? Well, no modesty allowed. No modesty allowed. I think she saw that I was curious and I think she saw that I was looking at the world in my own in the world. individual way. Yeah. And I think, you know, those two things, it's really hard because she did, I mean, I worked for a couple of years, I went traveling, I came back, I went to film school, all of that, but I remained a really close friend of Evarnald until she died at the age of 99. And so she is so important to me. I don't know what she saw that day versus what she saw the rest of our relationship. But what I will say to you is what I learnt from her, which is the things that have really, really been the crutches for the rest of my life. So I learnt from her that the work was never done. And she used to make me stay sometimes. If we were working late, she'd put out a bed on the sofa. And then next morning we'd start back again. I'm 16 years old working like a dog, but I saw pictures of China before it was open from Russia when it was still Soviet in its thing. You know, I saw pictures of Marilyn Monroe that nobody else has ever seen. I had an experience of work that was so inspiring and so sort of in-living, that's what I thought work had to be. And she also taught me how to travel light and pack a bag. And she always used to say, because I had to pack her bag for her. She said, "I carry heavy cameras, so I want light clothes, but I always need something to eat at a palace and to run from a mob." Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's how I packed my bag. I absolutely love that. That's sensational. Sensation. Eat at a palace and run from a mob. It's sort of a foreign correspondent. Yeah, actually that's really true. That's right. She also used to say something else, but it involves a swear word. You're allowed to swear, Bebe. But I appreciate you may not want to. She was also instrumental, I think, in moving your focus slowly or quickly, I don't know from still photography to movies. Yeah, she was. She looked at all the time I was working for her. She insisted I took pictures of my own and she worked me so hard. I sometimes used to say, "When am I supposed to?" She said, "That's your problem." But she used to look at my pictures and she said, "Listen, there's one observation I'm going to make. You take series of pictures and you keep on adding captions in my view, that's film." Okay. And that was it. That was all she said. But you know, she was, I think she was five foot. I'm not sure. Maybe she wasn't even quite five foot. But she was the scariest woman you'd ever meet. And all she needed to do was say that and you knew what she meant. So the next stage becomes fairly, I mean, it's not easy to get into the National Film and Television School, particularly for a woman at that time. But that was next. That was a camera woman. That was next. And I will ever be grateful to the film school. In fact, the application had three pages of education because it was a postgraduate course and then a statement. And so I wrote a letter and I said, "I'm not filling in your form because I have no education and it'll show me up badly." I said, "But this is why I want to come." And I was given a pre-interview because I said so many things in my statement that they just wanted to know if they were true, that those were experiences that I'd had and so on. And they told me in retrospect that I absolutely got in from that moment, but I had to then go into a whole press. Go through the motions. So if I'd met you then and I said, "What sort of films do you want to make when you graduate? What would you have said?" I would have probably said documentaries. I would have probably said things that really made the world different. And I think I would have probably said to make sure that everybody has a voice. And in fact, it was when I went to film school and the first term and I was absolutely shocked that there were loads of people wanting to go to advertising. And there was some other people who wanted to make bond. Nothing wrong with a bond. I love a bond, but not my thing. And I was the only woman in the cinema in the cinematography department. And they all seemed to have come out of the womb with a camera in their hand because I didn't know what I was doing. And it was all of those things that drove me to Greenham. I met someone in the canteen and I said to Amanda Richardson who then became a very eminent documentary filmmaker in her own right. But Amanda and I went, "Listen, I'm going to Greenham, I'm coming for the weekend. Will you do the sound? I'll do the camera. I need to work out which end to look." And that was the beginning of Carrie Greenham home. And that weekend turned into seven months, I think. What were you looking for? Do you know, now that's a bad question isn't it? Because you don't look for things when you're somewhere like that. You just wait for things to present themselves to you. I think. I think I thought I was just going to practice. But what happened that day, it was the day that 30,000 women came to put their arms around the base. And this is where my background picks in because I've probably been on more marches than most people by that age. And I'm looking at it and I'm going, "These women are serious." They have literally got 30,000 people out of nowhere, remembering pre-social media. That's an amazing bit about that whole episode, isn't it? Is the organisation the logistical side of it? Let alone the principles and the ideals. The logistics are unthinkable. It's fantastic, though. And there was a payphone near the base. And one woman or few women would go and each woman would ring 10 people and tell those women to ring 10 people, to tell those women to ring 10 people and you get 30,000. It was remarkable and I wanted to stay and I'd found something I was interested in. You also said it was the first time the world made sense. Well, here you are living in a community with whom's aims you agree. And I think, you know, I mean, listen, I listen to your show quite often and in amongst all the very specific conversations you have and the exchanges that you have, there's also a man raging that the world isn't a better place. And I hear you, you know, I'm in the car, I'm at home, I'm making money, whatever it is, you know, but I think that we all experience a frustration that what is so obvious, what is so obvious, it should be fairer. What is obvious that kids need a bit more care than adults? What is so obvious that if some people are so insanely rich that it actively impoverishes the rest, it's not okay and people will be upset. You know, that actually what is obvious is that we are all human, whatever language we speak and whatever colour we are. You know, I am sorry, it's not that difficult. So we are all enraged in small and big ways, you know, depending on your politics, depending on your life, depending on your circumstances. And in at Greenham, there was a clear enemy, it was the nuclear weapons and there was some clear sort of, you know, effort to shut us up, which was the police and the government of the day. And then there were these women who were acting out of just sheer principle. And that was the moment where I thought I don't have to be, you know, I don't have to have no view. In fact, it's really important I do have a view because I was watching all the media come down and ridicule them. And I thought, no, these are principled, warm, generous women. And frankly, I don't care if they smell because they live in a tent or who they sleep with. Sure. And I want to help them tell their story. And I want to tell their story. At what point do you realise if you had an already, perhaps you did at school, at film school, I'm quite good at this. No, I've never realised that. An inkling, then. No. Allow an inkling. Allow an inkling. I, I, do you know what, I've really, I'm not being false, you're just, I've, I've had a really incredible life and I've really worked very hard at it. I do remember later on when I get to Hollywood standing outside Shirley McLean's front door, she opens the door and I remember in the back of my mind, I'm going, if they could see me now. You know, so, you know, the, the, the grumpy ugly girl who liked her 19th century novel suddenly seemed to be in a very cool spot. So I'm not going to say I'm in human. I absolutely agree. Absolutely, I have those moments. But I don't know that people who are good at things, you know, ever feel good enough, because it's the ever journey, isn't it? And you can't ever think of the finished article, because then you may have forgotten. And you stop reaching, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I just don't think good and bad did it for me, but I am so kind of insanely and according to my children, embarrassingly interested in everybody and everything. And I suppose there's a natural progression then from Greenham to the city, isn't there? And then you make global gamble quite soon after the Greenham Commonwealth. It was at the next big project, all. It was actually just, I was leaving film school and I absolutely needed to earn a living. And this journalist asked me to do it. Wasn't what I was thinking of doing at all. There's a theme though, isn't there? There's a sense of the wealth and the money and the people behaving without, with impunity and without regulation. Yeah, do you know what, Jay? I write about global gamble in my book and I had to watch it very recently, because I was quoting the head of a bank before the crash. And I think that, you know, I really want to say this out loud, because, and I talked to the journalist actually, who worked with me on it, this is years, years and years before the crash. So we're talking about the mid 80s. We made this and we have on national television in this program, a banker saying, more or less, this is going to end in trouble, but there's so much money to be made. Yeah. And I just want to emphasise that, because I think a lot of what we're seeing now is in plain sight. Yeah. This is not hidden. We know what's going on. And that's why the political class are so shameful for allowing it, because they don't have the imagination and they don't have the strength to think of doing things differently. But I was amazed when I saw global gamble. That's haunting. It was. Yeah. It was. I go, so I. I would like not to be right about these things. Yes. I'd like people to actually wake up and say, you know what, with AI, with these huge investments, with trillion dollar IPOs, do you know what? That is going to cost my children, their house, maybe me, my job, down the line. Someone's going to be jumping out of a window because they've gone broke. You know, these are real life impacts. We've got to stop pretending. Well, turn me a bit about the second bit of the title of the new book then. How different. How to fight back. Yeah. What are the prescriptions that you offer? So one of the things that the book does, and to be honest, you know, now I'm doing a bit of advertising for myself, I mean, it is part memoir. There are some, I hope, very funny bits. There are bits about, you know, me confronting Mark Zuckerberg, me fighting with Nick Clegg. You know, there are some very, very sad bits and there's some bits where I work with the undercover cops and. That's the harrowing. Yeah, you know, properly. I don't think that stuff gets inside your head and you can't get it out of it sometimes. Yeah. So I'd like to say this is a good read. It's not just all policy stuff. For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when I get to the end, I go, look, obviously these are huge structural things that we have to do with politics and regulation. And here's 12 things that we have to do. And the kinds of things, I'm not going to do all 12, you know, but the kinds of things that would transform our lives in the UK, one is if we insisted on local billing for tech companies. Yeah, we're spending money. They're extracting it over to Silicon Valley. It's our job losses. So it's not that efficient, actually, guys. It's not efficient to put UK people out of work and then have a huge welfare bill and then let those geese as not pay tax. So that's one. We have to reconsieve how they, how we talk about tech. They are products. They are products and guess what? Products can't go into the system without being tested independently, without meeting standards, without having consumer rights and safety. We must get tech exceptionality out of the way. So there's two examples. So I go through in absolutely clear detail what any government should do immediately vis-a-vis tech. But, but, but, but. There are loads of people who over the years have said, what should I do? And so I actually finish the book with a list of things that you can do and you can do it for yourself, for your own use, for your kids, for their use. You can do it in your job, your profession, your profession, your, your, your union, whatever it is. It helps you. It sort of gives you a sense of the questions you can ask and the things you can demand just as an individual. And then it ends up saying something really obvious and I will, you know, I did a live event last week and I was about 500 people in the room and I go, I go, who gave you their vote on the basis of their political party's tech policy? How many hands? None. None. Five hundred people. Now tech. And I, and this. That's nuts. That's nuts. And I say that and I think this is what's really important. So I go, do you know what? How come the triple lock becomes, you know, the political hot potato because it's on the doorstep? Well, tech. We have all been internet it. Every aspect of our life, private public has been extracted by the tech bros. Why are we not voting according to how they're going to behave? And that's where I end up. So, you know, what I hope the book does is it goes, if you think you don't understand here's an easy way to understand, if you think you're outraged, listen to this because there's a lot of. I don't know. And then I think if you think you can't do anything, that's not true. Here's what we can do. And in that, I'm trying to say we deserve good tech. Tech can do good things for us, but we absolutely have to stop being used by those tech bros. It's a really anti-big tech, not anti-tech. A bit confusing then to back up. You went off the campaign in crusading filmmaking course and dived into the world of fiction, the world of drama, with originally with room, I think. And then the massive life change for you was the adaptation of Oranges and not the only fruit, which is an incredible film. The beautiful, the love is the power to destroy and the power to be destroyed. Why? So when I was at film school, as we said, I did cinematography, and then some of the other students asked me to work on their films and they asked me because after seven months at Greenham, I was the one who could hand hold the camera the best. Yeah, of course. And so it was a stylistic thing. It was like an extension of your arm by this point. Honestly, I didn't add a walk without. In fact, I slept in the car in the mini for seven months because the insurance for the camera meant we had to be behind a locked door. Obviously, at Greenham Common, there weren't no locked doors. So no, I was really good at that. And I was doing a film for another student and it involved being in the middle of the most enormous courtyard and doing a 360. And I'm spinning round, spinning round, and it was the most stupid film and the most stupid shot. And I just thought, oh, I could do better than this. And I just decided not to be the person who other people pushed around, but to be the person whose voice, whose idea I was going to, you know, I was going to manifest in the world. And it's really funny because you asked me something earlier and then you corrected yourself. You went, what were you looking for? And then you went, oh, no, you don't look for anything. I cannot tell you how right you are because I think I am someone who just starts walking and then subsequently goes, oh, well, I did it because. And actually, it's almost always because I think there's a better idea. And I'm trying to work out what it is. And I suddenly saw drama as an opportunity to paint this world better than it was. And it goes all the way back to that idea. I thought, oh, we get to make up our own worlds. So we can show how it should be or we can show how it feels to this group of people. And in doing that, we're bringing everyone along. And so I have to put my hand up here and go, I don't think at the time I had that idea, but I had that feeling. And this is I suppose that the period of your life where your work will be known to people listening, kicking off with oranges and not the only free of it. An indication of the impact that that had along with Antonio and Jane is that Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas are on the phone. Yeah, yeah, how about that? Yeah, as they are, as they do. And Hollywood is literally beckoning. Yeah, yeah. I mean, quite quickly this happened, didn't it? Quite, quickly. I was still in my 20s when I went to Hollywood and I was actually in post-production on my, on my first studio movie when I had my 30th birthday. Yeah, so I was insanely lucky. I had a really, I was insanely lucky. First of all, those guys paid for my ticket out. While I was there, I then met another king of Hollywood, a man called Larry Gordon who ran 20th Century Fox, who, if I might say, is now 90 and was here in London this last weekend. And we had lunch and we then had dinner and he has the best stories I have ever heard about Hollywood. So I was very lucky in that some of these guys just saw something in my work that was other. Again, you know, I think that what people saw was a sort of a different view and an independent view. And they started offering me work. And again, you know, you said earlier, you said, you know, how do you feel about being good? I don't know that I've ever felt good. But boy, was I happy when I used to drive up on the 20th Century lot and the barrier would go up and they go, good morning, Miss Kidron. And I had my own name in my parking lot. I mean, honestly, it was like, you know, for a little girl from North London, I was like pumping the air there. But, you know, I wouldn't change it for the world. I had a fantastic period of my life making big commercial movies with big movie stars. It was, it was an extraordinary time. But I think I always felt the pull of doing something else. And so I got into a bit of a habit of making a movie and then making a documentary, making a movie, making a documentary. And that's sort of how I spent my time until I actually made in real life and never made another film since. I mean, some of the films that you made during that period include the Bridget Jones film, The Edge of Reason murder. Did Cinderella for Channel 4? I mean, I'm just pointing out that people listening to this, everyone would have seen something that you did. Yeah, two-one-foot is the one that everybody, yeah, it's, that one is just such a cult movie. Yeah, it is. The daughters love it. Oh, really? Oh, amazing. And then, as you say, and then it's time for in real life, which changed everything. Or at least revert, but took you back to where you started in a way. Is that a fair comment? I think it is. I mean, you don't always know that's what you do. Of course you don't. But absolutely, I think it turned me into a campaigner. And so, you know, you can imagine this moment. All right, I end up doing that film, you know, really just walking forwards and thinking this is interesting. Then thinking this is a generational, you know, a crime, a crime against a generational. It's an injustice. That's what I thought. And okay. The people you were mad. Absolutely mad. They thought I was middle-aged woman, new rock 'n' roll, didn't get it. More panic. More panic, the lot. And also, I was a bit naive, right? Because I had just been put into the Lords. I had a quite. How did that happen briefly? Briefly. 2012. When I was still a filmmaker, I set up something called Film Club, which became into. To the Lindsay Mackey. This was the Afterschool. Yeah, Afterschools Club. In fact, during schools sometimes. But basically watching film to educate kids about the world. It became a huge success. It's now available in all state schools. Very happy about that. And I think that the government of the day thought I could maybe be really good on film, on education, and so on. Put me in. So there I am, you know, new peer. Just made this film. I've got a Hollywood phone book. You know, no longer so shy. And I tried to talk to the tech companies. I tried to talk to politicians. I tried to talk to the media. Honestly, no one was interested. It was just literally this was. You know, our future was the internet. Everybody progressive thought that we were in the middle of the Arab Spring, whatever it was. Everybody, you know, conservative thought it was just business doing its thing. I mean, I just honestly, I could not get arrested. And. Incredible. It's like an anxiety dream. Yeah, really? And so I did this mad thing. And it's again, you know, keep on walking forward. Yes. No one was listening. So I somehow managed to say in public, I would visit any school with my film and talk to the kids. And I went everywhere. Honestly, Jane, I went to Brazil. I went to Germany. I went to Denmark. I went to Manchester, Glasgow. No, no, no, no, all over like that. I went to any school that invited me. And as I talked to teachers and as I talked to kids, I knew I was right. They knew I was right. I knew I was right. And that was it. I was, you know, I was on the battle. And the Silicon Valley figures knew you were right. But they were going to make an awful lot of money before it all ended in tears. Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, that I take two things from this. You know, one is we do have an emergency. Yeah, we do right now. There is a better, fairer, you know, honestly more relaxing world that we can have with technology that will make your kids life, your life, the nation better. Yeah. I've just come this morning from a meeting with computer scientists who are looking about how to judge sovereign AI in the UK. Actually, things that are built here. Science here, data here, you know, really, really down in the engine room from the engine room all the way to the earlier part of our discussion about where you put your phone at night. These things are absolutely central to what happens to modern life over the next decades. How do you account for lethargy as opposed to opposition? What do you think explains? Again, I'd probably cite climate change as a similar phenomenon where people are kind of conscious of how scary things are and how dangerous things are. You can't quite muster up the energy needed to resist or to engage. It's a brilliant question. I mean, the short answer to question is, you know, there are three villains in the piece. One is big tech, one is a political class that's too bought off, and the other is lobbying, which actually is so pervasive. I think if I'm proud of anything in the book, it's the lobbying chapter because loads of people have come back to me and said, "I had no idea." So I'm really glad if I can give you an idea of what lobbying looks like, then you'll see how the lethargy is papered with money. But I think there's something else that your particular listeners will be interested in, which is, I had a chat with someone who was very. If I could say, "You can't get any higher up in the security services in the US." And they were saying to me, you know, that they were looking at a piece of research, they were looking at why government doesn't work. And they did a really interesting piece of work. And what it showed was that until the mid-18s, in America, Congress, the Senate, people used to vote according to the interests of their area, Kentucky, you know, California, New York. What would be good for their constituents? And they were ruthless because they wanted to be re-elected. Since the mid-18s, they have consistently voted for what suits the top 10% of earners. Democracy is no longer representative. It is bought. These guys are trying to get in power and stay in power. They are not seeking to represent us. And when people look at their own choices, I ask them to look at that. And I'm going to say something so outlandish, which is, I don't care anymore, whether they're left right or in the middle. What I want to know is, are they independent? Are they for me? Yeah. And I don't mean me in a tiny way. I mean me in my neighbourhood. And that is what it is. And so I think the answer to your question is we've been bullied and a combination of bullied into distraction. So we're all worrying about the wrong thing. We're all sort of just busy scrolling and worrying about how thin we are. And at the same time, you know, the people who are supposed to represent us have given up that job. And they're representing the other guys. And in that toxic mess comes through five companies that seek to rule the world. Literally. Literally. And I'm not interested in that world. And you know, if I'm sitting here, if I'm writing a book, that's why I'm writing the book. And you know, I had a brief window of hope a few years ago when I felt the Twitter was becoming a force for good in the battles that you describe. And then along came Elon Musk. Yeah. And that's something I just let me get it out there because I do do, you know, I do do some explaining why social media is not freedom of speech. But you know, if you see what Twitter has become because of a single person, then you have to accept that is his freedom, not ours. Yeah. And I think that we have very foolishly, you know, handed over something that was public and various and pluralistic and irritating in part. Of course. You know, TV broadcast newspapers, whatever. And we've handed it all over. We've got a private square. And that is policed. And it's actually manipulated. Yes. And everything that we see is sort of paid for. And I think people don't realise that, you know, it's like, you know, we pay for prominence, we pay for reach, you know, we pay for our blue tick. You know, and there's a section in the book and it says, you know, it says we can't afford it. We can't afford free. And there's a little section and it explains why free is actually our imprisonment, you know. And in fact, you know, also, I hope in a, in a helpful way, also says, you know what? All this growth in tech, it's not growth, it's transfer. So walk down your high street, look how miserable it is, and then look at what Amazon's made. Yeah. Look at the problems at the post office. And then you'll see part of that actually comes from the Amazon delivering five times a day. You know, that there's a lot of things in the democratic ecosystem. And even in the sort of dare I say 20th century capitalist ecosystem, they actually spread the risk, spread the load and spread the benefit. And it's all being extracted in this very, very vicious model that is openly saying, we want to be the one, we want to have control and what's more, we're going to take Mars too. So I really think this is something that your listeners in particular might want to get a little bit, you know, into. I think you're absolutely right. A final question. Will you ever make another film? I don't think I'll make another film. You know, as I said earlier, absolutely thrilled with that bit of my life. I'm really lucky. I'm actually married to a playwright and a film musical writer and so on. So I got a little bit of one foot in the glamour of it all if it is glamorous. He would say it isn't. But so and a lot of my friends obviously are from that world. So so I love it. I'm a user. I'm a trustee on a number of different cultural institutions, but you know what? It has been a privilege. You haven't asked me about whether I support the House of Lords and so on, but it has been a privilege to be a crossbench peer. And I think that so long as that privilege is last, it is my job to have my ass on that red bench and fight for these things that have been lost in the mix. And until you know, when we get proper representation, I'll stand down. Well, I don't know how to respond to that because you know, I'd quite like proper representation, but I want to continue enjoying your contributions. And this contribution is up there with the best of the ones that you've already made in your life. Beab and Kidron's users, how big tech took control and how to fight back is out now. And listen, just buy it seriously, buy it and read it. Beab and Kidron, thank you. Thank you.