What's the key to great communications — and where do podcasts fit in?

Consulting Guru, Chell Smith, talks leadership, communication and podcasts.

Want to know how to communicate effectively with any group of any size? Meet Consulting guru, Chell Smith! Chell has grown successful global Consulting businesses at EY, Capgemini and Cognizant. 

I sat down with Chell to talk about how to get your message heard across both internal and external communications — and where podcasts fit in. Read on for the nine key takeaways from our interview.

1. The only problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred! 

As a consultant, communication is all that you do. You’re helping to transfer your experience, your insight and your knowledge to your clients. What I’ve learned is that the challenges of communication are always the same, whether you’re speaking one-to-one or one-to-many. The first thing to understand is that no one can absorb a complex message in one hearing. It takes many iterations. Repeatedly introducing the challenge and introducing the concepts. There’s a reason you see adverts over and over again. Once you understand that, it changes the whole game. 

The challenge for any leader is to communicate a message multiple times without being perceived as repetitive or harping. And to do that requires a combination of varying the language and varying the medium. 

 2. Be crisp, clear and concise 

Whether you're doing a consulting engagement, talking to your team or trying to sell to a new client, you need a crisp, clear way to articulate the issue you want to address. It takes work to get below the surface and find the essence of what you want to say, but the more succinct you can be, the more likely you are to get your message across.

This is vital at the CEO, senior executive level, because here you’re dealing with people who have a lot on their plate and not a lot of patience. But over the years I’ve found that it’s true whoever you’re talking to in an organisation. The difference is that below senior executive level you have the opportunity to be a little more social and a little more engaging in the way that you deliver the information.  

3. Stay authentic 

In any communication, in any medium, the most important element is to be authentic. To be yourself. Don't try and put on airs. People sense authenticity immediately – and they respond to it.  

If you're uncomfortable, if you're being guarded, it stops people believing what you're saying. Now they're going to question everything that you say. This is a human thing: it happens at every level. We all make that judgment.  

Take it to the world of politics. A few years ago, Mitt Romney was running against Barack Obama. You didn't need to agree with everything Barack Obama said to understand that he was being authentic, that this is what he really felt. Whereas Mitt Romney was hamstrung by a Republican platform that he didn’t believe and hadn’t acted on.

You could see that it wasn't authentic for him. I think that was a huge reason why he wasn't successful.

4. Know when to stay neutral... 

Leaders introduce change. But neuroscience teaches us that every change is threatening to people. It can be threatening in many different ways and in many different dimensions. As uncomfortable as people may be in their current situation, change is still threatening. There's just no way around it.  

So, when you are instigating change you have to articulate the current situation and the reason for the shift. But it’s critical that you do that without letting judgement – or the perception of judgment – creep into your voice. When people feel judged, they feel guilt. That prevents them from hearing or absorbing what you’re saying.  

The answer - when you’re describing the current situation and building the case for change - is just to state the facts. Keep the information factual and keep your voice neutral. Then people can hear you.  

This takes practice. When I’m preparing for this type of communication I’ll sit down and sketch my core message out on paper. But – as judgment is all in the perception of the listener – I’ll always run it by other people. I try and find four or five people that have very different perspectives, get their feedback and adjust.   

5. ...when to use emotion... 

Where you have the opportunity to bring emotion into a communication about change is when you start talking about the what's in it for me, for your audience. Why should they care about this? What does this mean to them? What are the opportunities that this opens up? 

6. ...and when to use humour 

Knowing when to use emotion feeds into another point, which is the importance of connecting with your audience. When people feel at ease, they’re able to listen.  

I try and connect with people through some kind of humour. I’ll say something about the situation we're in and it will often be self-deprecating. I want to show that I’m open and vulnerable.  

7. Ask questions 

People want to be listened to.  So I always make it clear that I really am here to listen, not just to talk. 

There are a lot of ways to do that. One I'm pretty fond of is starting with the question and asking for feedback from the audience. So, today we want to talk about cost of sales. You guys have been in this company a long time, give me some perspectives. What do you see around cost of sales? Is it an issue? Do you think you are best in class?  Open it up and solicit feedback.  

8. Use every communication tool you have 

People learn differently. People have different styles, some are more visual, some are more aural, some like to read. So, use all the tools at your fingertips. Meet with people in person; combine white papers and strategy documents with calls; webcasts; video; podcasting.  

“It was clear that we needed something more concise for people to wrap their heads around. That was when we settled on podcasts. ”

— Chell Smith

I've had really good luck with podcasting. What I like about the medium in particular is that people can listen to podcasts anywhere. They can be on the way home or out on a run. That accessibility is huge. And I’ve found that with a short podcast – 10 minutes – people will both listen and re-listen. So, you can give your audience bite-sized chunks of information that are relevant to them and you can meet them where they are.  

9. Make it a conversation 

When you can make communication conversational, it’s much easier to listen to and to absorb. This is another space in which podcasts play to an advantage.  

At Cognizant we had a new concept we were bringing to market about how organisations needed to operate in the face of rapid technological change. It was an approach that we knew would challenge organisational norms: crossing fiefdoms, challenging people’s territory and turf and responsibilities – all of those things that aren’t easy to challenge. 

So, after sourcing feedback, we started communicating. We did a series of white papers. We did internal sessions. We did webcasts with clients to introduce them. It still didn't feel like we were getting though the full uptick, particularly internally. It was clear that we needed something more concise for people to wrap their heads around. That was when we settled on podcasts. 

We started with an introductory episode that introduced the concepts and the research. Then we did a series of industry-based podcasts. If you're in Insurance, listen to this one. If  you're in Life Sciences, listen to this one. That allowed people to select what mattered to them, while absorbing more detail and more context.

The thing that I got the best feedback from was the fact that we did these as a Q&A. I was the moderator, interviewing the people driving the concept. So, the podcasts had the authenticity of being a conversation – which meant we got our message heard.  

Want to learn more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand reach new audiences. Find out how we can help you by getting in touch.

Educational Podcasts: The perfect teaching tool

Podcasts are already a popular tool for self improvement. Tap into this appetite by creating engaging, evergreen and accessible audio content. 

Podcast production is a brilliant tool for education companies who want to find more engaging, evergreen, accessible ways to cater to meet the needs of their students.

With the pandemic changing how schools and universities operate, remote learning and educational technology have become more important than ever and setting up a podcast is great for reaching students where they are. They’re also informative, engaging and accessible – the perfect mix for learning. Let’s break it down. 

1. Podcasts are informative 

People are hungry for podcasts that teach them new things about history, science, language, and so much more. 

Teachers are already using existing podcasts as classroom resources. They’re listening to them in lessons or recording their lectures to help students catch up. So why not make the most of this trend and create your own educational podcast? 

We know how much audiences appreciate informative podcasts because we’ve made some ourselves. 

One listener to our podcast about the Middle East, Conflicted, thanked us, saying, “I've really gained a lot of new insights.” 

And the podcast we made with Remembering Srebrenica was the perfect way for this charity to educate people about a little-known genocide in Bosnia. 

“Education is a pivotal part of our work at Remembering Srebrenica, so we wanted the podcast to be an educational resource as well as interesting for listeners.” 

Kate Williams, Education Manager, Remembering Srebrenica

2. Podcasts are engaging 

So many people give their full attention to their favourite podcast series in a way that teachers dream of. An amazing series can have people binging episodes, just like a good TV show.

Why is that? Well, podcasts use dialogue, music and storytelling to captivate audiences. The same people who might be drifting off after three minutes of reading could be hooked on a podcast for an hour or more. 

It’s also because the experience of listening to a podcast is participatory and intimate. You feel connected to the host, you start conversations with fellow listeners, and you create a community together.  

3. An alternative to video 

Podcasts hold attention for longer than video because they stimulate the imagination – the student’s mind is free to visualise and fill in the gaps. 

Sitting down to watch an educational video can be unappealing for those who’ve been at work or school all day, staring at a screen. Plugging in your headphones and turning away from the computer is much more enticing after a long day.

Podcasts are also easier to fit into a busy schedule than videos or reading. They allow you to multitask by listening on the commute, at the gym, or while doing the dishes. 

Not only is this a time-saver but while the student is distracted by a routine activity, the information is more likely to sink in.

4. Podcasts are accessible 

Podcasts are a flexible resource which allows the student to participate at any time, in any place. 

Most people already have an easy-to-use podcast app on their phone. This means the educator can push out new episodes and as long as the student has subscribed, the material will arrive in their hand with no extra effort. 

Adding auditory resources like podcasts to your educational mix also opens up the world of learning for so many people who may otherwise be excluded. It gives more options to students with learning difficulties or visual impairments or those who are studying a new language. 

They can pause, rewind, and repeat small sections or even entire episodes. In other words, every learner can go at their own pace. 

Create your own!

For the student, listening to a podcast feels intimate and personalised – it seems as if the host is speaking directly to them. In reality, the same show could be heard by thousands, if not millions, of people. 

So podcasting gives education companies the valuable possibility of reaching a vast audience where each individual feels personally catered for. 

Educational podcasts are already out there and popular with listeners. Creating your own means you can tailor the information and the style to suit your students.

Want to learn more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand reach new audiences. Find out how we can help you by getting in touch.

Podcast KPIs: How to measure the success of your podcast

Podcast KPIs: How to measure the success of your podcast

When it comes to making a successful podcast, download numbers aren’t everything. Here’s the KPIs you should really be measuring.

Here at Message Heard, we preach the gospel of measuring podcast performance. It helps us learn, iterate and improve from season to season. 

When we’re talking with clients and partners, we also encourage them to set goals to measure performance against. However, we too often see people hung up on one particular measurement: number of downloads. 

Whilst the reach of your podcast is important, it's definitely not the only measure of success and should always be looked at in the context of other metrics. 

To avoid being blinded by the light of download numbers, you should set out clear goals at the start of the podcasting process that align directly with what you want to achieve. 

Using KPIs to set strategic goals 

So, how do you go about figuring out the right numbers to pay attention to?

When we launch a show, we like to think about who we’re trying to reach and how we want them to react and engage. We then select 3 or 4 key metrics which to track closely through the season. 

For example, if your show is about something niche or aimed at an internal audience, there are natural caps to listener numbers but audience engagement levels or listen through rates might tell you more about what you're actually achieving with your podcast. 

Or if you're looking to grow your personal brand, press hits and invites onto other media would be a good measure of success. Want to grow an engaged audience? Why not create a Facebook or LinkedIn group, promote it in your podcast and track the growth. 

What success looks like for branded podcasts

The takeaway: success looks different for everyone. 

As an example, let’s compare our show we measure the success of Conflicted versus how Buffer measured the performance of Breaking Brand.

With our show Conflicted, we boiled down success to three KPI’s (key performance indicators): 

1. Download Numbers - Listener reach is important to us as this is a general interest show where we’re looking to reach as many ears as we can. 

2. Revenue - We wanted to generate revenue via ads and sponsorships to create a sustainable show. 

3. Engaged Audience - We wanted to build an engaged audience across various social channels so listeners could become more involved in the show. 

As an independent show, these are quite direct, mercenary concerns. However, a branded podcast with broader goals of building brand and raising awareness would naturally have completely different measurements of success. 

Ash Read, Head of Editorial at Buffer, told us their key measurement was how long listeners spent listening to the show. And Breaking Brand saw strong completion rates — on average, people are listening to 83% of each episode. 

Message Heard · Buffer - Breaking Brand - Results

Hear more about how Buffer measured the results of their podcast.

This means that the audience isn’t just showing up, they’re sticking around and engaging with the content. For Ash, this has a lot of potential: “If we continue to publish content in this feed, they’ll continue listening. That feels really valuable for us.”

So what are the metrics you should use to measure success? 

What KPIs should I actually be measuring?

Again, it's all about selecting the right metrics for your podcast strategy. So as you read this list, ask yourself why you're making a podcast and what you want to achieve. 

These are all great metrics to select as your key performance indicators, but yet again, they need to be tailored to your individual podcasting goals.

• Downloads - Do you want to reach the broadest, largest audience possible?

• Demographic data - Are you trying to reach a particular group? Can you see that audience growing?

• Consumption Rate - Arguably the most important stat as it measures depth of engagement. How much of each episode are the audience listening too? Are people not just coming but staying till the end?

• Social following - Do you have an engaged audience that are sharing?

• Mailing list - Similarly, have you a dedicated audience engaging with your content?

• Group members (eg. Facebook, LinkedIn) - Are you looking to have a conversation with your listeners or build a community? Groups are a great way to do that. 

• Press - Are you looking to raise your hosts’ profile? What coverage has your podcast achieved and has it put you in front of new audiences?

• Inbound leads - If you’re an agency, maybe you’re using your podcast to draw in leads. If you haven’t already, could you start tracking where leads, asking specifically about the podcast come from??

• Revenue - Are you looking to monetise your show? Is the revenue covering costs? 

• Engagement with sponsors - Are you driving a good amount of traffic to your sponsor? This might be important for keeping them onboard. 

• Engagement with a competition - Are you running giveaways or competitions? You should track social shares and entries.

• Website traffic - Is your podcast driving a large amount of traffic to your website?

Have we missed anything off this list? I’m sure we have! There are going to be even more specific things which will tell you if your podcast is working for you.

Send any suggestions this way, and we can continue to expand the list.

Want to learn more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand reach new audiences.

Want to create a podcast that exceeds your brand KPIs? Get in touch!

What's your perfect podcast marketing mix?

Grow your podcast audience by creating a tailored marketing plan.

When we get asked “What is the best way to market our podcast?” 

The answer is always: “Well, that depends…”

Very unsatisfying we know! But it’s true. 

For some clients the budget for splashy ads might not be on the cards, or others might have existing channels we can cross-promote - like a blog or a youtube channel. Some podcasts have a very niche audience, and others have a mass appeal. With so many factors at play, every marketing plan has to be bespoke. 

So, the bad news is: there is no one size fits all solution. 

The good news though: there are repeatable tactics and approaches. You just need to select the right ones for your podcast. 

In this post, we’ll give you the building blocks of a podcast marketing plan that is built with purpose. 

But first, let's talk choosing the building blocks that work for you. 

What is a podcast marketing plan?

Having a strategic marketing plan is key to growing your podcast audience. And, to build these plans for each of our shows, we first ask:

• What is your marketing resource for this project?

• Who is your target audience? 

• And, how will you measure the success of your podcast?

With the answers to these questions in mind, we start to create a marketing mix that will help you build the audience you want, and deliver against your goals. 

This is when those key ingredients we mentioned earlier come into play. 

Your Perfect Podcast Marketing Mix

Whilst every podcast needs a bespoke plan, you don’t need to start from scratch for each show. 

We think about a marketing mix in three channels: paid, earned and owned: 

• Paid is anything where you exchange money to secure promotion, namely advertising. 

• Earned is where you depend on someone else’s curation to gain coverage or promotion - like a feature on Apple Podcasts or a review in a newsletter. There are sometimes external costs involved with this, such as award entries. 

• Owned covers the activities conducted on your channels like your website or social media. 

With these channels in mind, as well as the budget, audience and goals for the podcast, we then pull out different tactics from each channel to build the perfect marketing mix. 

Here are all the different channels and tactics to consider: 

This is by no means an exhaustive list! All podcasts will have unique real-estate they can use for promotion. Do they have an app they can promote on? A print magazine? For example, our client Buffer uses their login page to put the podcast front and centre:

I love this so much. @buffer putting their podcast front and centre on their login screen. The show is the best expression of their brand and they're committed to growing an audience of raving fans. Raving fans = lifelong customers. More brands should do this - especially now. pic.twitter.com/Ov1e1Shryc

— Harry Morton (@podcastharry) July 11, 2020

These are simply the building blocks we use to create a balanced marketing mix that will allow you to grow your audience strategically. This is also an ever growing list, have we missed any key ways you grow your audience? Let us know!

Want to learn more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand reach new audiences. Find out how we can help by getting in touch today.

Podcast publishing 101: Where to publish your podcast?

A guide for checking your podcast is published everywhere it needs to be.

Podcast publishing is a bit of a minefield — but getting it right is key to creating a successful podcast, so it's worth investing some time in. We've learned a lot from publishing our own shows, and we're here to share our learnings with you, so you don't fall into the common traps.

We’ll share our tips about podcast publishing, and share our ever growing podcast platform checklist that you can use to make sure your podcast is accessible on whatever app your listeners are using.

Why is podcast publishing important? 

From Apple to Google Podcasts, there are so many places that listeners can discover, listen, rate and review your podcast. 

With our show Conflicted, we can see that listeners use over 26 different podcast platforms and there is still a large chunk of unattributed listens which could come from any number of other podcast platforms. 

The vast majority of listens come from a few big players: 68% Apple Podcasts, 14% Spotify and the remaining 19% split between over 20+ other apps.  

A table showing some of the places people listen to our show, Conflicted.

But no matter the size of listenership on that platform, it’s important your show can be accessed everywhere as it improves the experience of every potential listener you have. Think of those potential super fans who will be very annoyed that they can’t find your awesome show on their chosen app! 

The good news is it’s pretty easy to do, but there are a few factors to consider especially when it comes to timing. 

When should you publish your feed?

It makes sense to focus on making sure your podcast is on the biggest podcast platforms first. 

We discovered the hard way that Apple Podcasts, which along with Spotify, is widely one of the most common places people listen to podcasts, encourage you to allow up to 10 working days for them to approve your feed once it’s submitted. 

So to avoid any last minute panics, we now make sure all our feeds are set up with the trailer uploaded 10 days before we planned to start promotion. 

Once the feed is created via your chosen hosting platform, you will generate an RSS feed link. We then make sure this link is submitted to the top players: 

• Apple Podcasts - Submit your feed here via iTunes Connect. Make an account if you don’t already have one, and you can also see analytics through this portal.

• Spotify - Submit or ‘claim’ your RSS feed through Spotify for Podcasters. You’ll also need to create an account, and similar to iTunes Connect, Spotify offers specific analytic via this portal. 

• Google Podcasts - Google now have a podcast manager portal as well where you can submit your feed directly. You can log in with any google account, and as with the others, you will need your RSS feed link at the ready.

From there, we’ve found your RSS will be automatically picked up by most other podcast platforms. This may take some time, so you can also check and submit your feed via the links in the list below! 

Where else should you make sure your podcast is published? 

As we mentioned, the RSS feed does a lot of the hard work for you and you might find your podcast has found its way on to many of these platforms without you submitting it directly. 

So, we suggest waiting for up to 10 days and once you see your link appear on these platforms you have already submitted to: 

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify  

• Google Podcasts  

Then go through and check your podcast is displayed on these players, if not you can add them via the links or instructions below:  

• RadioPublic

• CastBox

• PodcastAddict

• Pocket Casts

• Overcast - There is no specific way to submit to Overcast, they say you should see your podcast on Overcast 2-3 days after you submit to Apple. 

• Stitcher

• Acast - Scroll down to the green button where it says ‘add your show’ 

• Player FM

• Luminary 

• Downcast - Downcast also don’t have a direct submission and use Apple Podcasts, but if your show is not appearing you can email them: support@downcastapp.com

• Doggcatcher - Doggcatcher also doesn't have a direct submission. If you can’t find your show, you can try using their support forum. 

• BeyondPod 

• Himalaya

• Alexa - Lots of podcast apps already have skills which you can use to access your podcast, but some shows also create your own skill but this requires custom development. 

• Entale - You can add your shows to Entale if you wish to add reference materials like images or links. 

This is a running list we have compiled. Have we missed any? Let us know if your favourite podcast platform isn’t listed and we’ll add it along with the link to submit. 

Want to know more about marketing and distributing your podcast? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand to reach new audiences. Find out what we can do for you. Call today: 02081036034 or email us at: contact@messageheard.com.

The SEO Benefits of Branded Podcasts

Want SEO success? Think podcast marketing! Here’s why... 

There are A LOT of reasons why brands want to rank high in the search engine listings. This page details most of them, but here’s a quick summary:  

• Search engines matter. Search engines are vital for driving traffic to your site. They account for 300% more traffic than social media.  

• High rankings matter. 75% of people only look at the first page of results.  

• Search engine visibility matters. 50% of people are more likely to click a result if a brand appears multiple times in their search engine results.  

Here’s the second thing to note: Google is far and away the king of the search engines. Check out the stats:  

• Of searches done on mobiles and tablets, 94% of the traffic comes via Google.  

• Google also holds 75% market share of desktop and laptop searches.  

• Google processes over 57,000 searches, every second.  

Third thing to note: podcasts boost your search engine rankings.  

The SEO Benefits of Branded Podcast #1: Increased Search Engine Visibility 

Podcasts increase your search engine visibility – and therefore increase your ranking.  

Google now surfaces individual podcast episodes in its search results. Why does that matter? Because this means that every episode of your podcast increases your chances of Google ranking you. 

Google has had the tech capacity to index your audio since 2019. This means the search engine isn’t reliant on your podcast’s title or subtitle or meta-description: it’s looking content. So, if you create a podcast (or a podcast series) that focuses on aspects of your business or industry in which you have core expertise, that valuable content will be recognised and surfaced: enhancing your SEO.  

The other takeaways?  

• The more episodes your branded podcast has, the more likely it is that your content will reflect popular search results.  

• The quality of your podcasts will count. This is about content but it’s also about the quality of your audio. Great audio = easy transcription = enhanced results.  

• Podcasts with expert guests will boost your results. Google will pick up their presence on your podcast and surface you in response to searches for those guests. 

Underlining Google’s commitment to podcast, in 2018 the company’s Podcasts Product Manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen said that his team’s mission is, ‘...to help double the amount of podcast listening in the world over the next couple of years.’ In other words, the biggest search engine in the world is actively trying to grow your podcast audience.  

The SEO Benefits of Branded Podcast #2: Greater Brand Awareness and Reach 

 Podcasts are a popular and evergreen form of customer-attracting content.  

Why does any piece of branded online content matter? You know the answer: it’s because it gets the brand exposure; highlights your areas of expertise; builds your credibility and extends your reach. In this sense, podcasts are another channel for your quality content. And the benefits they bring in this regard are three-fold:  

1. Podcasts give you the opportunity to present the same content in two forms – audio and written. You can multiply the content from your podcast in very simple ways. You can create a transcript. You can use extracts from your podcast as a springboard for blog posts. You can tweet about upcoming episodes. You can even create visual content off the back of your podcast, by creating click-worthy episode art. These are all avenues that use your podcast content in slightly different ways to broaden your reach.  

2. Podcasts reach a different audience. People listen to podcasts on the go: often when they’re moving or driving. At these times, it’s not possible to engage with written content. So, podcasts reach an audience who want to consume information in a different way. Your audio content complements your written content and grows your audience.  

3. Podcasts take you to new (online) places. Podcasts are hosted in spaces that are not reached by other means! With a branded podcast, you find a home on channels like Apple Podcasts and Spotify (plus a plethora of other hosts). New audiences have a chance to discover you in these locations by using a podcast app search, which scours titles and episode descriptions for relevant content. It’s yet another way of building your base.  

The SEO Benefits of Branded Podcast #3: Attract Quality Backlinks 

Podcasts attract the backlinks that build your base and boost your ranking.  

People link to your page when they feel that your page is providing quality information that matters to their audience. To put that another way, every link you attract has the potential to grow your audience. And there’s another reason why backlinks scatter gold dust over your brand: they function as a powerful search engine magnet. Search engines love sites with lots of links because the links tell them that your site has content that people value.  

What does that have to do with podcasts? Everything!  

When you create a quality branded podcast, you are creating content that ticks at least one of the following link-attracting boxes. A podcast that’s... 

• Informative 

• Entertaining 

• Useful 

  OR 

• Newsworthy 

...will entice people to link it to their website. This builds your brand in three ways. Firstly, it feeds into brand awareness and reach. That website’s followers become aware of your brand. Secondly, it allows you to create clever internal links. Your podcast page; your transcript; your show notes; your podcast-related tweets can all lead to your website or even to your website’s conversion pages. Thirdly, it builds your search engine visibility. SEO appeal!  

Want to know more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your brand to reach new audiences. Find out what we can do for you. Call today: 02081036034 or email us at: contact@messageheard.com.

Two Seasons In, Here’s What We've Learned About Podcast Marketing

When it comes to podcast marketing, do you feel like you’ve tried everything, or that you don’t even know where to start? 

Frustrated your podcast isn’t getting the audience it deserves? Confused as to why your downloads plateaued? We know the feeling… we know all the feelings.  

We have been creating and releasing our podcast Conflicted since February 2019. It’s taught us first-hand how hard building a podcast audience is — it’s not enough to make great content (if we say so ourselves) and throw it into an RSS feed.  

But, after two seasons, we’re feeling positive about the progress Conflicted has made:  

• We’ve received coverage in The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times.  

• 99.6% of listeners say they would recommend it to a friend, family member or colleague. 

• For Season 2, average listenership over the first 7 days has grown 62% compared to Season 1 for the same time period.  

• We’ve grown an engaged listener community — 96.3% of the members of our Facebook Group have actively posted, shared or reacted.   

• And the cherry on top: we were nominated for an ARIAS (the Audio Oscars) for Best Independent Podcast alongside  some of the world’s biggest podcasts. 

We know there is still work to do, but at this juncture we wanted to share a whistle stop tour of what we’ve learned over the past two years of distributing and marketing our flagship podcast.  

Our growth: Season One compared to Season Two.

Plan, Plan, Plan

For every podcast we make — either under our Originals umbrella or for our clients — we preach the gospel of strategy.

Thinking critically about who your podcast is targeted at and how you plan to reach them is vital, as is adapting that plan as you release your podcast and learn more about your audience.

We have tried different tools for planning, including Trello and Monday.com, but for Season 2, it was a good old fashioned word doc which really helped capture our strategy as well as the tactics we’d use.

How we map out our thinking.

We also recommend creating a master copy document to create consistency and make sure you tailor your messaging to each channel, including your podcast’s metadata. This metadata includes your podcast title, podcast description, episode titles, show notes and other data like tags you input when you upload episodes to you podcast hosting platform. Using a master document helped us keep our language consistent but also acted as checklist prompting us to input all the data correctly each episode.

Marketing Needs To Be Baked into Production

Before you even press record, you need to have a production and marketing strategy in place – especially if the people producing and promoting the show are in separate teams.

Why? There are so many marketing considerations which overlap with the way your show sounds and what you capture during recording:

• Audience Development - Who is this podcast targeted at? Who are you actually speaking to when you step behind the mic?

• Audio Branding - Theme tunes, music beds, jingles, archival tape. What audio-materials will you use to create your distinctive sound?

• Visual Branding - How will the look of the show capture the podcast’s tone and attract your target audience? A consistent visual identity across all brand touch points will professionalise your brand and attract new listeners.

• Tone of Voice - Again, your show’s voice needs to be consistent across all touch points. The language of the show and language used in marketing need to complement, not quarrel.

• Call to Actions - How do you plan on engaging your audience? Are these CTA’s scripted? Will they cut through?

• Social Media Assets - Are you capturing the assets you need to promote the show during production ?

• Trailers and Teasers - What are you sharing? And when are you sharing it? Do you need extra voice overs for your trailers? How are you building excitement?

• Guest Engagement - How will you work with the guests on your show to maximise your combined reach?

• Press Assets and Reels - What sizzlers do you need to sell your show to the press?

Cover The Basics

Making sure you are covering the basics is key before you start exploring marketing approaches tailored to your show.

As a company, we are now at a place where we have a best practice approach for all the shows we produce and release.

How to build your own best practice? When something works - write it down. Build a checklist as you learn. And execute that checklist. Every. Single. Time.

Doing core promotional activities for each episode also helps you spell out what actually works, as you can compare and see how things like content, topic and guests affect downloads or engagement. It’s about tracking the individual items AND the combinations of items to create a clear picture of what actually works.

Engage Your Audience

Tailoring your engagement strategy to your audience means finding the right channels for your podcast.

For the launch of Conflicted Season 2, we have focused on building a Facebook Group and running weekly giveaways. We’ve also started to see the benefit of having distinct social channels for each show, especially on Twitter, we’re people can tag, share and recommend the show to others.

An example of listeners engaging with the hosts via our Facebook group.

These were invaluable step for us in creating a dialogue with our listeners — but for your show the best channels and tactics may be different. Think about who your audience is, what engagement you want from them, and how to reward those who interact, share and feedback.

Test, Iterate, Improve

There is no silver bullet. There isn’t one scalable, repeatable thing that will get you a committed audience of millions overnight.

We do believe however, that there is a cocktail of things that will get you there one day. Working out that magic marketing mix involves testing, iterating and improving.

That is why we conduct thorough retrospectives after each season of the show. This entails:

• Reviewing the Data – Dig into your analytics. Examine your growth, listenership trends and demographic data. Don’t just focus on the numbers —make sure to factor in any qualitative insights from Apple podcast reviews, emails and tweets, too.

• Collecting Audience Feedback – We did our first audience survey for the end of Season 2. This has become an incredible resource for data about what our audiences enjoys and what they want to change. You can see our survey here, and Bello Collective also have a great resource on making an audience survey.

• Doing a Team Review - We asked: what we do well, what went wrong, and what we could improve when it comes to marketing, production and monetisation of the show. Out of this process we have an actionable list of improvements to take forward.

Some of the results from our Audience Survey.

What isYour Unique Opportunity?

Every podcast needs to play to its strengths, as well as the resources you have at your disposal. 

In this example, Conflicted is a discussion show so it made sense to focus on platforms that allow listeners to engage more deeply and run giveaways that provide ‘further reading’. It’s also personality-led, so we wanted our content and coverage to profile our hosts and allow their personalities to shine. 

Ask yourself what unique opportunities your podcast has — is it the profile of your guests, your social media reach, your connection with listeners? These are the building blocks you need to grow your show.  

If you want help developing a podcast marketing strategy that plays to the strengths of your brand and speaks directly to your target audiences — get in touch.

Click here to contact us about our services!

Conflicted - Climate Crisis

As the financial crisis moved off the front pages, activists and politicians began to organise around another global emergency: climate change. In the final episode of this season of Conflicted, Aimen and Thomas sweat their way through the swamp of science and politics that surrounds the world’s most flammable issue.

Listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and find the full transcript below.

Read the transcript here:

Conflicted S2E6

THOMAS: Hi everyone. Thomas Small here. I'm coming to you from deep undercover, literally. I'm sitting on my bed with the covers pulled over my head, trying my best to recreate the conditions of a recording studio. You see, the episode you're about to hear was recorded before lockdown, but before we kick it off, Aimen and I have a favor to ask. As we come to the end of season two, we're doing a survey to find out what you, dear listeners, enjoy about the show. What you want more of and where we can improve. The survey will only take about five to ten minutes to complete, and let's face it, you're at home twiddling your thumbs waiting for this global pandemic to end. So why not just click on the link in the show notes below or go to bit.ly/conflictedq. That's all lowercase bit.ly/conflictedq. And as a Thank You, anyone who completes the survey will be in with a chance of winning a copy of Aimen’s book, ‘Nine Lives: My time as MI6’s top spy inside Al-Qaeda’. Now on with the show.

THOMAS: Welcome to the last episode of this season of Conflicted. I am Thomas Small and of course Aimen Dean is here with me. Hi Aimen.

AIMEN: Hi Thomas.

THOMAS: How are you doing today? Don't say you're still alive. People are getting sick of that joke. [Aimen laughs] I noticed that there's more gray hair in your beard. Is that the toll of being a jihadist or the toll of being a father of two young children?

AIMEN: Um, I can tell you I've been through many wars and I can tell you nothing prepares you to raising children. [Thomas laughs] Raising children is worse than actually going to war. [Aimen Laughs]

THOMAS: All right, so, so far, we have been on a long journey of tracking the rise and demise, potentially the demise, of America's New World Order. In the last episode, we turned our attention to how the collapse of the American economy, or near collapse of the American economy in 2008, rippled around the globe. And today, to conclude the season, how is the history of the environmental movement connected to the history and politics of the New World Order? And what does the global climate crisis mean to the billions of people who don't live in what we call the Western World?

[Theme music plays]

THOMAS: So, we've been talking about the end of the New World Order, the end of liberal democracy, the end of capitalism. But with the climate crisis, are we actually witnessing the end of the world itself? This is potentially, Aimen, not disconnected to the question of the success of global capitalism, which along with its arguable benefits has also, or so the scientists tell us, had a pretty huge negative impact on the environment. Now, before we get into this, I want to say that this is a topic that many people today feel really passionately about. And I'm going to be honest, I don't always know what to think about it, because there's so much conflicting information out there. Not so much about the problem itself, about which the science is pretty settled. But about the best solution. Which is where, of course, science takes a back seat to politics. People are truly conflicted. So, Aimen, we've discussed this issue a hundred times, and some of your views might make people think you're a climate change denier, are you?

AIMEN: No, definitely not. I'm not a climate change denier. I am more or less skeptic about the solutions that some quarters are putting forward. So I am someone basically who believe, while I'm not a scientist, I believe that the total disruption of human economic activity all across the globe is not the answer.

THOMAS: Right. Okay, good. So you're not a climate change denier, and we will discuss later your views about the more radical suggestions that some voices have about how to deal with the crisis. But before we get there, I just think it's good to offer a brief history of the environmental movement. And the first thing to point out is that movement is actually very old. Its roots lie in the 19th century, the romantic movement really, which coincided with the industrial revolution. Poets and philosophers began to grow uneasy about the rising pollution that resulted from industrialization, not to mention the social and spiritual dislocations that followed. Legislation in Britain and elsewhere from the Victorian period onward, primarily over air pollution was passed, plus conservation societies were founded all across the world. In 1962 Rachel Carson's hugely influential book ‘Silent Spring’ kicked off the modern environmental movement, and the first earth day was celebrated in 1970. So the movement has really deep roots. But it was really the establishment of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, followed by the first UN Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 where global action on climate change began. The Rio Summit was actually expressly a post-cold war effort to bring countries together so they can discuss how to cooperate on development issues, which involved what was then called sustainability, sustainable development. The countries wanted to make sure that prosperity rose, but they were concerned that with rising prosperity would be an increasing environmental degradation. This all eventually resulted in the Kyoto protocol of 1997, which has struggled to be ratified by the countries of the world, to put it lightly. Especially the United States has been an outlier. They have not signed the Kyoto protocol. This has all led in recent years to lots of activists being fed up with what they consider to be global inaction on a pressing problem and the growing popularity of green political parties and what's called the Green New Deal and other such policy proposals. So that's the history. And we can see that really the era of the New World Order, which has seen this explosion of capitalism and economic growth everywhere, has been shadowed all along by a growing concern. That it is not sustainable in the long run and that the Earth is suffering as a result of all our prosperity. Now, before we focus on the politics of climate change in the West, I'd like to talk about the Middle East. Ultimately, listeners come to you, Aimen [Aimen laughs] to hear about the Middle East. So how has the climate crisis and the facts around the climate crisis been a factor in everything that Conflicted has been discussing over the last two seasons?

AIMEN: Well, don't forget. We in the Middle East are the source, or the largest source of this pollution. [Aimen laughs]

THOMAS: Because of the oil that you're pumping out.

AIMEN: Oil and gas. So basically, we've been pumping oil now for almost a hundred years to the rest of the world. You know, basically the two thirds of the world energy exports, they are coming from the Middle East, of course. So if you look at Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Iraq, Iran, Libya, the production levels basically are just tremendous. So of course we are the producers, but we are not necessarily the polluters.

THOMAS: Well, you do consume a lot of petroleum yourselves, but of course it is the West and more recently, China.

AIMEN: And India

THOMAS: And India, Yes. So the source is the Middle East, but then from that source of the pollution is created everywhere. AIMEN: Yeah. So when I talk to people, whether it is in Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Iran, or Yemen, wherever, basically they say, look, you know, the World is angry about OPEC being one of the biggest polluters in the world because OPEC, you know, the organization for petroleum producing chemicals--

THOMAS: [Overlapping]The global petroleum cartel really.

AIMEN: Exactly to the point where there were even environmentalist who were shouting that OPEC is a terrorist organization because—

[Aimen and Thomas laugh]

THOMAS: Yet another terrorist organization from the Middle East.

AIMEN: Exactly. [laughs]

THOMAS: Gosh, you guys can't help yourself.

AIMEN: No, we can't. Because you know, it should have been disbanded and assets seized and all of that because unfortunately with the environment, the environmental message from the West that is actually seeping through to the people in the Middle East is extremely negative. And they feel that basically, that the environmentalist are hostile towards the Middle East because of so many, what I call intersectionalities of causes, that are dumping more and more of the world's problems on the Middle East.

THOMAS: Well, if rising carbon dioxide is seen as the major problem, then petroleum is the source of that problem.

AOMEN: Ah ha, but someone from the Middle East would say, well, excuse me. We were living in nomadic lives, or semi urban lives. We were agricultural, or pastoral or having livestock going around. Until you guys came discover the juice [Thomas laughs] beneath our feet and you decided to extract it and give us the money.

THOMAS: Well, let's not talk about the pollution itself. I want to talk about the effects of this pollution, i.e. climate change. And how climate change has influenced the things we've been talking about on Conflicted. I mean, it's absolutely true that in the first decade of the 21st century there was widespread drought in countries like Syria and Yemen. These are countries that became hotspots for the Arab Spring, and of course civil war. Has climate change played a role in that?

AIMEN: Of course. There is no question. That as the climate changes drastically, you start to have areas and pockets where drought follows, and crops fail. Of course not entirely the environment's fault, but also the management of the countries. Basically like Yemen and Syria are poorly managed as countries

THOMAS: Because of the drought, Syria specifically, a huge influx of rural residents moved into the cities. So there was a burgeoning population explosion in the cities. There weren't enough jobs for these people, which created the unrest that to some extent led to the Arab Spring and the civil war there.

AIMEN: Exactly. And actually, by pushing more and more rural people into the urban centers, they--these became the foot soldiers for the rebellion that followed in Syria and also for the civil war that followed in Yemen.

THOMAS: The urban population of Syria increased by 50% in a decade proceeded up to the civil war.

AIMEN: Exactly because of the fact that the crops were failing because of rising temperature as well as, less water and rainfall. The same thing happened in Yemen and Lebanon, for example. Lebanon was affected also. Lebanon now is becoming more and more a narco economy.

THOMAS: Drugs.

AIMEN: Drugs, yes. Do you know why?

THOMAS: No.

AIMEN: Because with water becoming more and more scarce, so what would you rather plant? Because if you spend so much on water, you might as well plant something that's actually have more intrinsic value. You know, like…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Marijuana.

AIMEN: Marijuana and coke and opium, [Thomas laughs] than tomatoes, potatoes and peaches.

THOMAS: You can maximize your profit.

AIMEN: And the same thing in Yemen, they also turn to drugs instead of coffee.

THOMAS: Especially Khat.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Yes.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] This very famous Yemeni drug where you see Yemenis with a big sort of bulb, bulge in their cheek. [Aimen laughs] They're constantly stoned.

AIMEN: Exactly. So what happened is it affected the populations. They became more and more lazy drug addicts. They becoming more and more reliant on the fact that this is a new source of income, but it is either criminal or semi-criminal and it's not sustainable. So actually the shortage of water and the rising temperature caused both Yemen and Syria partially to become failed States and caused Lebanon to become a narco economy, to some extent.

THOMAS: The ISIS phenomenon also involved water. It's not often talked about, but one of the things that ISIS managed to get a hold of during their conquest of much of Syria and Iraq were several dams up the Tigris and Euphrates River. Which you know, have seen in the last couple of decades, a precipitous drop in water level. So water was involved in the struggle with ISIS as well.

AIMEN: Indeed. In fact, if you go back to the Yemen episode in the first season, we talk about the fact that the entire Yemen war from the Saudi perspective, was based mostly on the fact that it is about water security for Saudi Arabia. And that's why, for example, if you look at countries like Oman. Oman is going to run out of oil in just 20 years or less.

THOMAS: And what will they do?

AIMEN: And already, basically they are enlisting the help of Saudi and Kuwaiti companies that specializing in building, and this is the new innovation, in building solar power plants on the sea that also does water desalination.

THOMAS: Water desalination is so important throughout the peninsula. I mean, I think something like 50% of Saudi drinking water comes from desalination.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] 95%.

THOMAS: 95%!

AIMEN: Saudi Arabia alone produce one third of the entire world output of desalinated water and the UAE produced one fifth. So the reality is that the entire peninsula produced almost 60% of the entire global consumption of desalinated water because there is that entire big peninsula, the size of India, not a single river or lake. So the water sources are very scarce. And therefore any drastic change in the environment could have negative effects, as well as some other positive effects that we'll talk about later. But the negative effect is the scarcity of water and rainfall. So here's a problem for Oman which will be the first oil rich Arab country to run out of oil in the near future, 20 years is nothing. We will see it in our own lifetimes, that in less than 20 years, the last oil tanker leaving Oman to export oil, we will see it.

THOMAS: And they’ll be waving it away with tears on their face wondering what does the future hold.

AIMEN: Exactly. So from now, they started using solar power to desalinate water.

THOMAS: Solar power to run desalination plants? But those plants require huge amounts of energy. Can solar power power them? AIMEN: Yes. If you have enough concentration. If you produce roughly between 500 and 600 megawatts of power per day. Then that's it. You have it.

THOMAS: I'm glad you brought up the subject of solar energy because green energy in general, as it increases in its sophistication and as the West especially begins to rely more and more upon it has an economic effect on the Middle East, because as demand for oil and gas decreases in the West, that will affect the economies of a country say like Saudi Arabia. Are they aware of this? What are they doing to prepare for this?

AIMEN: Why do you think Saudi Arabia is frantically trying to diversify their economy as soon as possible by relying on the religious tourism and expanding it from $16 billion per year to $63 billion per year in 2030? Why do you think they are trying to rely more on extraction of other minerals like gold, silver, uranium, phosphate, bauxite and other things? Why do you think they want to build these tourism cities like Amaala on the Red Sea and other places, and using their cultural sites and opening the visa system so anyone can visit Saudi Arabia? Why do you think they're doing it? Because basically they know that there will be a time when ships will sail away with the last bit of oil and that’s it.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Or oil will become not valuable enough.

AIMEN: Actually, many people are telling me oil will not become valuable enough. And I will say basically that is still far away in the future. Why? Because still there are two modes of transportation that cannot be powered by electricity yet. Maybe by natural gas, but not by electricity. Not yet.

THOMAS: Which are those?

AIMEN: Airplanes, commercial airplanes and commercial ships. So, commercial shipping there is no engine unless if you placed nuclear powered engines on the big ships which is most likely impossible to do that for thousands of tankers and massive container ships. THOMAS: I can imagine your old friends in Al-Qaeda would love to get their hands on a huge tanker with a nuclear bomb on board.

AIMEN: Exactly. It's a security hazard. So you will still have to rely on diesel engines and also kerosene engines for the aircrafts for a generation to come. Because no amount of electrical batteries can actually power a seven, triple seven plane to fly from London, let's say to New York, it’s impossible.

THOMAS: So, oil will remain in demand for the time being.

AIMEN: Yes. But the question is what other parts of the economy that we can, you know, remove the fossil fuel from? So we're talking about power generating so we can use solar, we can use wind.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Well, and Saudi Arabia has been investing tremendously in green energy itself, actually, especially solar power. I believe they're building right now the largest solar farm in the world.

AIMEN: Yes. Because why? We have an area in Saudi Arabia called the Empty Quarter. The Empty Quarter basically is nothing but the emptiest most desolate and inhospitable desert in the world. THOMAS: But you invoke the empty quarter and it gives me all sorts of romantic ideas of...

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Of Thesiger?

THOMAS: Wilfred Thesiger walking across the Empty Quarter to the mountains of Oman. Oh gosh, those were the days.

AIMEN: Exactly. [Laughs]

THOMAS: For the listener, Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great British explorers, in whose fantastic book ‘Arabian Sands’, I really recommend this book ‘Arabians Sands’. He describes his journey across the Empty Quarter to Oman, and it's just a magnificent book.

AIMEN: I totally agree. Funnily enough you'd mentioned this, just now as we speak Saudi Arabia and Oman finishing the last touches on the road that actually track the Thesiger journey from the Empty Quarter, basically to Oman. So you can take it and you can basically bask in the beauty of the Empty Quarter.

THOMAS: Oh Aimen, I hope you and I can maybe take that journey together.

AIMEN: We will do, I have a car in Dubai in a park there. So we can go and take it and do it.

THOMAS: I'm going to hold you to that.

[Thomas and Aimen laugh]

AIMEN: So basically, the reality here is that the Empty Quarter have a huge amount of sunshine throughout the year, the rainfall there basically is extremely negligible and cloud cover is almost nonexistent. So, and what they do basically is the new technology with the solar farms, some of them make them 400% more efficient in terms of production. So Saudi Arabia basically could do two things: wind farms for the night because at night the wind pick up in the desert, and in the day the sun is shining. So basically you have two sources that are almost complimenting each other, throughout. And once you add the fact that the battery technology, thanks to the efforts of people like Elon Musk and his teams, the battery technology, if it become more and more efficient, then whatever's produced during the day that has an excess can be stored so it can be utilized during the night from the solar power. Also, Saudi Arabia, controversially, is investing in between 17 to 18 what they call mini nuclear reactors.

THOMAS: Mini nuclear reactors.

AIMEN: Why? Again, it's the water security issue here. Because you said that solar can produce, solar power in intense production can desalinate water. The problem with water desalination is that it requires intense source of power. So while 500 megawatts, or even one gigawatt can produce enough desalinated water for two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand people, so it's good for Oman. It can power a province with it and give enough drinking water for a province. The problem here is in Saudi Arabia, the population in 2030 we'll hit 40 or 45 million. So what you need is intense source of energy that is continuous in order to generate that. Also, the Saudis, and this is not in the public domain, but this idea is being floated by ministers and deputy ministers, and I've heard one from a deputy minister there. They are toying with the idea that the nuclear energy output could actually desalinate so much water that you can basically pump an entire river into the interior of Saudi Arabia to change the climate.

THOMAS: Well, this sounds like fantasy. This sounds like something out of Dune or something like that.

AIMEN: But funny enough, if you look at the numbers and if you look at basically the energy output from a nuclear reactor on the Red Sea and how it could basically pump water in huge quantities into the interior of Saudi Arabia, building oases in the desert, that can actually fundamentally change the environment and fight desertification. Then you see basically that we can fight climate change but in the Arab way, very entrepreneurial and very radical. [Aimen laughs]

THOMAS: Well, maybe the Arabian Peninsula will become heavily forested before I die. Wouldn't that be amazing?

AIMEN: That's what the prophet Mohammed himself said.

THOASM: The prophet Mohammed said that?

AIMEN: He said that the end of days won't come until the land of Arabia become once again lands of meadows and green hills and rivers.

THOMAS: Another prophecy, always prophecies with you Aimen.

AIMEN: What can I say? Look, I grew up in Saudi Arabia and then I joined Al-Qaeda, it's just nothing but prophesies there. But in order to convince the Arab World, which is very climate skeptic, by the way, to convince the Arab World that actually it is in their interest to look for greener sources of energy, even including nuclear, and I know it's controversial, but remember, in the Western World there is abundance of water, in that Arabian Peninsula, which is the size of India—

THOMAS: [Overlapping] There’s none...

AIMEN: There is no water. So nuclear is the safest and the greenest guaranteed source of power they could have in order to make sure they have enough water. Otherwise, if water isn't available in quantities enough for the population to drink, wars and ugly situations will emerge.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Mass destabilization.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: So the Saudis and other Middle Eastern states are pursuing policies in response to climate change. What about more widely? So what to say, the high-level people outside of the middle East, but not in the West, so China, India, et cetera, what sort of things are they telling you about the climate crisis? What is their attitude in general towards climate change?

AIMEN: The problem with India is that they, India and China, they are gripped by this idea of a conspiracy theory that the environmental movement is nothing but a ploy by the West in order to derail their economic progress. That's what I hear in China.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] They’re convinced of this.

AIMEN: And I hear also from other Indian entrepreneurs in Dubai whenever I meet them that, well, the environmental issue, they try and basically to strangle our economies by saying, well, it’s all the environment! You have to reduce your carbon footprint. But the problem here is, and when you talk, especially Indians, they say basically that on a government level, on a central government level, on New Delhi level, the initiatives are just really bureaucratic talk. The real initiatives are taken by small towns, villages and individuals who are installing solar panel on their rooftops. Even sometime in shantytowns they install, you know, not because it is environmentally friendly but it is pocket friendly. [Aimen and Thomas laugh] So it turns out basically that, you know, some of the charities that donate solar panels to these villages and towns are actually doing the right thing. But you know, here's the problem, is that it's really a drop in the ocean. You need to have a massive production of solar panels in India, as well as in China, and other places in order to convince them that, okay, this is economically viable, and the government can do it.

THOMAS: I want to return to what you were saying, how Indians and others, they have this conspiracy theory about the climate crisis and the politics of the climate crisis being exploited by the West to undercut Eastern prosperity and development. Because it's, I'm not saying that it's right, but geopolitically, the politics of climate change have been taking an interesting turn of late. For example, it is Western leaders and Western people in general who care most passionately about climate change. And it might be possible to spy within that concern something like cynical power politics going on. For example, the president of France, Macron, and other leaders of you know what, let's face it, these are relatively speaking, shrinking powers at the moment, France and Britain, and even the United States, relatively speaking, shrinking powers. The president of France threatened to spike a major EU trade deal with Brazil, unless Brazil put an end to rainforest clearance. And some analysts are beginning to wonder, so just as the threat of the Soviet Union used to be invoked to unite the West around ideas of human rights as a means of projecting and shoring up their global power in the 20th century, the question is, is the climate crisis now being invoked by primarily Western powers to do something like the same thing? If the West can rally around climate crisis, can they force the Eastern world to adopt policies that might protect Western power? AIMEN: That's what I hear in places like Beijing, in places like Delhi and Bombay, or Mumbai as they call it now, and in places like Riyadh and Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

THOMAS: And in in your analysis is there's some reason to worry about this?

AIMEN: [Overlapping] That they say that the way they are doing it, which is do it now impose taxes like this. We will impose taxes on carbon, we will impose taxes on plastic, we will do this, this and that, I mean, they believe that this is all designed in order to assert Western hegemony. That is the problem here is that for many of them, and especially when you talk to policymakers in the East, whether from China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, or in the Middle East itself, they will tell you basically that the problem here is that the message that is coming from the West is rather confused and aggressive at the same time. It's like, we're going to die. But we look around and we don't see that the changes are so drastic that we're going to die. That the world will end, but we don't see this around us. We are not seeing anything in the horizon approaching slowly with the word doom written in cloud formation. [Thomas and Aimen Laugh] So we don't see it. So, but nonetheless, they are, you know, doing it in a way to try to push us around to adopt certain economic and regulatory standards. And of course, we'd have to push back because what they say, we already are taking measures to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Not because of the climate change, but because fossil fuels will run out eventually. So we need to start from now. So it's an economic imperative, that's the first thing. The second thing is a health imperative. In China in particular they are in a hurry actually to replace as many of their coal power stations, which they are building still, but they are trying to replace them, especially around the big cities, with either natural gas, solar, wind and nuclear.

THOMAS: But this is to protect people's health.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Cause air pollution is a huge problem in that part of the world.

AIMEN: I mean, every time I go to Beijing, and I go to Beijing a lot every year. Not for the past months, just for disclaimer because of the coronavirus. But, every time my poor wife have to deal with the fact that every time I come back from Beijing, I suffer for two or three days from nosebleed.

THOMAS: From the pollution.

AIMEN: From the pollution.

THOMAS: Ugh.

AIMEN: And so, you know, the pollution is stabbing inside my nose. So of course that's why they want to do it. They want to make sure that their skies are clear. This is also what they're trying to do in New Delhi also. So the pollution is a health issue and that's how I think swe should be selling this to the rest of the world. It's an economic issue, as well as it is a health issue.

THOMAS: Well, instead of selling it in that way in the West, at the moment, people who you know, are increasingly concerned about climate change. They have adopted a different rhetoric, a rhetoric which I think--

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Doom and gloom.

THOMAS: A doom and gloom rhetoric, let's call it. And, I think that this rhetoric is at the moment, particularly associated with this movement Extinction Rebellion. You know, the global environmentalist movement. Which, you know, depending on your point of view, is either notorious or inspiring, which started actually here in London. And I actually can remember first encountering Extinction Rebellion when in April 2019 they took over Oxford Circus, a big sort of roundabout in the center of London near where I work, and I would come up from the Oxford Circus tube station and I saw them there. They’d sort of camped out in the middle of this huge intersection. They’d erected tents and they created this sort of platform and there was sort of clownish hijinks going on. It was a very strange, rather phantasmagoric scene of, on the one hand, political activists on the other hand, what-- sort of hipster entertainers. It was weird. And their rhetoric was certainly very, very, I would say extreme, trying to encourage us all to panic. They were saying, the end of the world is nigh. We haven't done anything really to address it. We must start doing so now. Now I'd like to talk about the way Extinction Rebellion is organized. It's very interesting. There was a quote from The Economist that says, ‘Whereas the occupy movement’, which as it happens we discussed in the previous episode, ‘a similar outfit became bogged down in cumbersome people's assemblies, Extinction Rebellion has adopted an approach called Holacracy. Holacracy claims to spread power across employees by ditching traditional management hierarchies in favor of semi-autonomous circles. In Extinction Rebellion's case, this amounts to what are in effect franchises of the main brand which plan and carry out their own protests following a loose set of rules set out by the main group’. Now, when I read that, I thought I must ask Aimen because that sounds a little bit like the way Al-Qaeda is managed. Are Extinction Rebellion, just terrorists Aimen?

AIMEN: I mean, look at the similarities between the two. You know, from a rhetoric point of view, I'm not talking about action. I'm talking about rhetoric. Both are saying that the world's going to end. [Aimen and Thomas laugh] Both have prophecies of doom and gloom. Both believe that their cause is righteous and anyone basically who deny their cause is a monster. So you know, the problem here is, and both of them have a defined enemy. My problem is that they believe somehow that the enemy is the human race. And you know, the use of rhetoric that the world is gonna end, that we will have an environmental catastrophe of biblical proportions in 12 years time and that we will all die, and if we don't do anything right now. I don't believe that even, if the entire world decarbonized tonight, and we all went to the stone age again tonight, that it will slow basically the climate change in 12 years. If there is a catastrophe, that the catastrophe wouldn't happen. So it's kind of irrational.

THOMAS: Yes. Al-Qaida and Extinction Rebellion both think the world is going to end. One difference to be fair to Extinction Rebellion is that they're basing their prophecy, if you like, however perhaps exaggerated it might be, on scientific facts. Unlike Al-Qaeda who are being inspired more by religious texts and the religious prophecies. The thing about Extinction Rebellion and other such groups is that though they are responding to a scientific consensus about climate change, they are themselves actually a political group, a political activist group. Which is why their organization is actually interesting. So if we're going out on a limb here and saying that Extinction Rebellion, at least in its organizational structure, is similar to a group like Al-Qaeda, I want to ask you, what did jihadists think about climate change?

AIMEN: I'm sure the listener will be baffled by the fact that Osama Bin Laden wrote a letter to Barack Obama asking him to take the environmental crisis seriously.

[Aimen and Thomas laugh]

THOMAS: In fact, it's true, Aimen. And in that letter, Osama bin Laden actually calls on the American people to launch a revolution in the name of the environmental crisis.

AIMEN: So no one should actually berate us for comparing Extinction Rebellion with Al-Qaeda. Look, when it comes to Extinction Rebellion, I admire what they do. I understand why they are doing it. And it's a great cause. It's an honest cause, it’s a noble cause. I don't doubt their intentions. But unfortunately, I doubt their methods. And there is a lot of naivety also there.

THOMAS: You know, Extinction Rebellion was founded initially by an organization called Compassionate Revolution, whose webpage states that it was birthed in the occupy movement, and there are, as you say, ideological similarities. Both movements reject capitalism, they both believe that capitalism is incompatible with democracy as they understand it. And the Occupy Movement was also explicitly environmentalist at times. And Extinction Rebellion’s slogan is ‘System change, not climate change. Only revolution will save us now’. So if we're talking about ideologies, as we often do here on Conflicted, this is as a political ideology revolutionary.

AIMEN: And that's why their message has been the most harmful to the environmental cause. No group that ever advocated for combating climate change has done more harm to the cause of combating climate change, like the Extinction Rebellion.

THOMAS: Because of the panic they're trying to foment?

AIMEN: Because of the panic and because of the message and the intersectionality of the message. The problem is the intersectionality here. Where you have vegans, basically uniting with animal rights movements, I think, basically with anti-capitalist movements, with the pro-environmental movement, and then basically have them all together threatening the system that sustains the global economy as it is. And the problem is when you try to sell this to people in India or Africa or the Middle East or China or Southeast Asia or Pakistan, I'm talking about the most, and Bangladesh, the most populous nations of the world, two-thirds of the humanity, when you try to sell these ideas to them, it's not just only coming as, you know, the single issue of the environment it’s a whole package. You need to stop eating fish, you need to stop eating meat, you need to stop eating honey even, you shouldn't wear leather, you shouldn't eat dairy, milk, ice cream, whatever. And so basically someone from Saudi Arabia or someone from the deserts of Africa will look at you and say, okay, it's not green where I am, unless if you actually make a rain 24/7 so I can grow tomatoes and cucumbers, you know, then I'm going to eat the desert animals, like the camels and the goats or whatever, that it feed on scarce desert vegetation which is not suitable for human consumption.

THOMAS: So Extinction Rebellion's rhetoric isn't really landing in the developing world, but in the Western world--

AIMEN: [Overlapping] It’s rejected—it’s not landing, it’s actually viewed as a joke. [Aimen and Thomas laugh]

THOMAS: But in the West it is not viewed as a joke. I mean, anecdotally, I can just say, based on friends of mine who are really passionate about this and Extinction Rebellion's message is really landing with them. They are scared. They are panicked and they are changing their lifestyles in response to this. They really are, the amount of vegans, the amount of people who they no longer buy things from Amazon. They no longer buy new things at all. They go to charity shops more and more. They just, you know, it really is a movement. It's almost like a spiritual movement.

AIMEN: And that's a problem, it’s becoming like a cult. To some extent.

THOMAS: That's a negative way of putting it out, but I actually am, I'm often very impressed by, especially my younger friends, who are able to summon the will from within them to live in a more sustainable way, which after all, is not a bad thing. I find myself not as able to do so.

AIMEN: Yeah. But the problem here is you can't come from an environment like Europe and North America, which is lush, green, abundance of water, abundance of vegetation.

THOMAS: And already post-industrial.

AIMEN: Exactly. And demand that two thirds of humanity who have access to none of these, not abundance of water and not abundance of vegetation, not abundance of, we're talking here about 3 billion people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods in terms of food and protein intake. Because you can't go to the coast of Somalia, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Maldives, Indonesia, Malaysia, all of these places and tell them, stop eating fish.

THOMAS: To be fair to them, they are mainly lobbying their own governments and their own politicians to implement new and more radical policies. But ultimately what they would like is for those politicians to create a global strategy for combating the climate crisis along the lines they wish. And that would entail the Western World ganging up to some extent on, the rest of the world.

AIMEN: Look I have lived a life where I've spent years in four different war zones, and then I spent two years in the banking sector. I spent years in multiple countries from the West to the East. And I've been in different jobs from the spiritual to the economic, to the semi scientific when I was actually building, you know, chemical weapons for Al-Qaeda. In a sense, over 40 years lifetime, you accumulate some, I won’t call it wisdom, but I will call it basically...

THOMAS: Perspective.

AIMEN: Perspective and the perspective here is this: climate change is a crisis, that I accept. What I don't accept is panic. So how do I propose to deal with it?

THOMAS: Exactly. How do you propose?

AIMEN: Two principals that you always apply in business. And you apply in your own personal life and you can apply to every situation, including governance. The first one is crisis management, and the second principle is business continuity.

THOMAS: How can these two principles taken from business help us address the climate crisis?

AIMEN: Okay. Let's say basically that we have a factory that, let's say makes ice cream. And suddenly there was a hurricane that affected the dairy farm that was actually supplying the factory. It affected some of the employees…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] The supply chain has been disrupted.

AIMEN: Yeah, the supply chain has been disrupted. So what do you do? Already there is a plan. There is a contingency that should the supply chain be disrupted. Okay. Do we have enough in reserves for a day or two or three to keep the factory running? If there are shortage of employees, do we have any people basically who can come and fill the capacity? What about the road network, can we take alternative roads? Because you need to stay in business even if you know, okay. If we have to reduce capacity because we are really affected by the catastrophic climate disaster, how do we do it? So basically, we reduce the capacity by 10%, 20%, 30%, even 50% but let us actually keep working at 50% capacity in order to recover later. So this is called crisis management and business continuity.

THOMAS: So basically, the world needs to come together and say climate change is real, but in order to establish as much continuity in prosperity that we can, we need to manage this crisis. Not freak out about it and adopt radical revolutionary solutions. AIMEN: Yeah, because imagine two scenarios here. Okay. Let's say we are in a concert. And some terrorists basically pulled out a knife and start stabbing others there in the corner of that concert.

THOMAS: I can imagine that happening.

AIMEN: It's happened, unfortunately. So, what happens is if the ushers and the security manager of the venue is clever, he will announce quickly on the megaphone that ‘ladies and gentlemen, please proceed to the gates, there is an emergency. It's only an accident. There is nothing to worry about, but just proceed to all the emergency exits in an orderly fashion.’ It's a calming, calm, measured thing and you don't basically disclose the entire information because people will panic. You don't shout attack, attack, flee for your lives. What's going to happen to stampede will kill 10 times more people than the stabbing incident itself would have killed. See, these are the two differences here. Panic kills. THOMAS: But people who are advocating, well, let's say the people who are panicking say, look, there is no solution. We just need to stop with all of our consumptions. Stop with all of our industry. Stop with all of our resource extraction. We need to stop.

AIMEN: Okay.

THOMAS: If not, what do you suggest? What do you put your faith in to save us from what you acknowledge is a climate crisis?

AIMEN: Technology, we should put our faith in technology, in innovation going forward. Because just as I was talking to you minutes ago when I said that in Saudi Arabia they are actually experimenting with new solar power technology that is 400% more efficient, and if we are seeing that roads can be built from plastic waste, and even install solar panels on these roads so actually a static infrastructure become more useful, if we are looking at carbon capture technology, which one plant, one plant alone would replace the need for 40 million trees to suck the carbon out of thin air and sequester it or use it as when you mix it as hydrogen become a carbon neutral fuel. These are technologies now and in the last episode I told you basically that the technology in the past 10 years is greater than the technology of the previous hundred years.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] And the previous hundred years greater than the previous 10,000.

AIMEN: Exactly, so what's going to happen in the next 10 years? In the next 10 years, as you know, when humans feel the need, and they say that the need is the mother of all invention, when humans feel the need to come up with solutions, they will come up with solutions. Bill Gates is one of the great investors in this new technology of carbon capture. And carbon capture technology is proving to be more and more efficient than just only planting trees. I actually, I'm all for planting trees. But one plant over three or four acres of land could actually suck more carbon than 600,000 acres of forested area.

THOMAS: That's a lot of carbon sucking.

AIMEN: Exactly. Which we can sequester it in the ground safely, especially in empty oil fields. In empty previous extracted oil fields. Or we can basically mix it with hydrogen and basically it become a carbon neutral to some extent, carbon neutral fuel.

THOMAS: So you put your faith in technology, but Aimen, you're a Muslim. You're supposed to put your faith in God, and here you are sounding like some Silicon Valley techno futurist bro.

AIMEN: Oh, well, you know, in my own personal belief, I believe it's God who guided us towards this technology. God is merciful. Yes, he saw that how we are destroying his beautiful creation, but at the same time, he is whispering into our minds the solutions for it. So, I'm not saying Silicon Valley is receiving direct a star link from God. But I'm saying here is that there is a solution and the solution is technology and human innovation. Those who say stop everything right now. Unfortunately, they are actually dooming us even further, not actually providing any solution. You can shout in the streets all you want. You can shout until your lungs explode, but shouting will not get us anywhere. Panicking will not get us anywhere. Blockading airports and roads and bridges and subway trains and underground trains will not get us anywhere.

THOMAS: Well, I agree with you. I think that panic isn't the solution. But as for your faith in technology, mm, you might be an optimistic Muslim, but I think I'm more of a pessimistic Christian and I'm not sure that I put my faith in Silicon Valley and men like Elon Musk. I just can't bring myself to do it. I sort of think we probably are going to be soon facing a much more catastrophic change in political economies, change in our levels of consumption. I mean if you ask me, I tend to sympathize with those voices from the 19th century romantic movement that sees as a consequence of this industry and the consequence of our rising prosperity, see something like an essential spiritual problem at work there. That is now manifesting itself outside of ourselves. And, and for me, a spiritual problem really has a spiritual solution. I don't know what that solution is and it probably just muddies the water even further to bring it up. But the part of the Extinction Rebellion movement that, beyond the panic, is encouraging people really to spiritually transform, they might not think of it in that way, but consume less, buy less, save, live in greater harmony with the environment. That strikes me as at least part of the solution.

AIMEN: I agree. But still, I have to say that this message does not transcend the borders of the Western World. It's still a Western mindset, a Western white man savior mentality. I'm sorry to say.

THOMAS: Oh no!

AIMEN: It's still, I'm just saying from the point of view of people I talk to in the Middle East and China, in India and Africa. People just basically are not buying it.

THOMAS: The climate crisis is the new white man's burden. And we're going to bring the light of revolutionary environmentalist change to you, brown and black people who don't know any better.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: Oh god, that's so depressing.

AIMEN: I know but that's the reality. Like when you talk to an Arab, they are very optimistic. They will say, oh look, we are using, yes, we are getting the carbon, hydrocarbons out of the ground. We are extracting, we're making money, but what we are doing with it, we are saving. We are investing. We are basically buying more technology to replace our petrol power the electricity generators with solar, wind and nuclear. So we may survive, and we have water. So basically whenever you told them, yeah, but the West is saying though, they will immediately wave their hands specifically and say, let the West shut up. They have all the water, we have none. So they should shut up. Because we have far more pressing problems than theirs and we know how to deal with ours. Let them deal with theirs. That’s the message I'm hearing.

THOMAS: So Aimen, Extinction Rebellion's rhetoric isn't appealing to the non-Western world, as you say. So how could Western environmentalists change their message to appeal to the East? You mentioned earlier they could perhaps position their message along the lines of health, of human health.

AIMEN: What they need to do is to focus on the environment and the environment only, first of all. There is no need for the intersectionality of causes, like veganism and socialism and all of these things, just drop it. It's not going to sell in the rest of the world. That's the first thing. Second thing is to tell the people it is for their own health. And the second thing is for their own survival. So for example, if I'm going to convince the government of Bangladesh for example, that it is in their own interest of the government of Bangladesh to implement environmentally friendly policies because they are one of the first countries that will suffer if the sea levels rises because they are a very low country, the possibility of flooding that could displace tens of millions. THOMAS: This is the strategy that has largely been pursued by the UN and other global bodies.

AIMEN: Exactly. Because it's a calm measured way of approaching this. THOMAS: So on balance then you're actually rather, you're not antipathetic to the environmentalist movement more generally. You know, the moderate bureaucratic, almost way that it has been pursued over the last few decades. It's these more radical voices that have sprung up in recent years that you don't really think are on the right track

AIMEN: Because you can’t go to people in developing countries and tell them that sorry, you will never reach the prosperity that we ever achieved because you know what? The world is about to end. Sorry you missed your spot; sorry you missed your time. But that’s it, we're going to switch off the tap of prosperity. You know, and you have to live in the stone age. This is a message that has coming in into the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is giving the middle finger back.

THOMAS: So, Aimen, what do we do?

AIMEN: Just don't panic. My fear, Thomas here, is that I've been in an organization that is classified as terrorists, which is Al-Qaeda. And what I'm afraid is that as movements like Extinction Rebellion and others are framing the human race as the enemy and with the rhetoric going about how humans are going to doom the world and end the world, there would be some young minds who are genius and clever, but nonetheless isolated and you know, full of conspiracy theories in their heads. They might just decide together to develop a virus and just release it into the population in order to reduce the human population or even end it. And they see this as a favor. Already there is a university professor here in London, she came up with a book just recently where she argues that we should stop all having babies and let the human race die so the planet may survive. Ideas like this are becoming normative.

THOMAS: It's true. I mean, I think you do encounter such ideas more and more regularly. And I can imagine that certain impressionable people, maybe the same sword who might initially get involved in a mosque study circle to increase their own piety. And then they hear more and more of this sort of conspiratorial apocalyptic rhetoric from the Islamist right, or Islamist left or whatever you want to call it. And it might, you know, they might find themselves on a road that leads to evermore extremism that sometimes does result in, in violence.

AIMEN: In fact, whenever I talk to my clients either in the private or public sector when it come to counter terrorism issues, they actually express the fact that they are seeing the embryonic stages of environmental terrorism because that rhetoric is so vicious. Right now from minority of environmental activist.

THOMAS: A huge minority of them-- But just like Muslims--

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Exactly.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] A huge minority of Muslims get involved in Islamist violence, but it causes a big problem.

AIMEN: A small minority, not a huge minority.

THOMAS: That's an interesting question semantically. A very small minority of Muslims are seduced by Islamist violence, but it causes a big problem.

AIMEN: Exactly the same thing with the environmentalist movement. We will have a small minority who would actually most likely end up resorting to violence and terrorism in the future, possibly the near future. Because if we have this deadline of 12 years unfortunately being propagated by politicians who should know better, you end up pushing agitated people towards violence and we need to, this is why I'm saying we shouldn't panic. People just please calm down your rhetoric. We're not gonna die. We will survive and don't worry. We will survive.

THOMAS: So if it is true that it is the climate change political rhetoric that might unite a diminishing West and allow them to claw back some of the power they've been losing of late, it might be that weirdly enough, environmentalism becomes the ideological underpinning of the New World Order. We are certainly living in a world very different Aimen from the one that we grew up in. George H. W Bush’s New World Order didn't turn out as he planned, but nobody can doubt, compared to the cold war when the globe was split between the two superpowers of America and the Soviet Union, or even to the 90’s when for a brief moment, America was totally dominant, today following everything we've touched on over the course of two seasons now, 9/11, the War on Terror, the rise of China, the return of Russia, the clash between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the oil rich Gulf and the twin crises of global capitalism and climate change, we're in a much more multipolar world than we were. A world that remains conflicted.

[Outro Music Plays]

THOMAS: Dear listener, thank you so much for sticking with us throughout this season of Conflicted. We hope you've enjoyed it and will keep listening when we come back for our third season. And don't worry, you won't have to wait very long this time. To hear the details as soon as we announce them, subscribe to the show in your podcast app and follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at MHconflicted. And of course, once again, you can win a book connected to this episode. It's called ‘Wilding’ by Isabella Tree. And it is a beautifully written description of a pioneering rewilding project, a reminder of the power of nature to heal itself if human beings step back and let it happen. To have a chance to win it, join our discussion group on Facebook before the 29th of April. You can find it by searching ‘Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group’. Conflicted is a Message Heard production. It's produced by Sandra Ferrari and Jake Otajovic. Edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley. Thank you again. My name is Thomas Small and Aimen and I will be back soon. Stay tuned.

AIMEN: Goodbye.

Conflicted - Wall Street

From a bomb maker to double agent to… banker?

In this episode, Aimen draws on his experience as a helping banks combat financial terrosism as our hosts explore the 2008 Financial Crisis and its impact on the world order.

You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts, and you can also find the transcript below.

Read the transcript here:

Conflicted S2E5

THOMAS: Hello and welcome back. You are listening to Conflicted. My name is Thomas Small and with me, of course, is my co-host, Aimen Dean. How are you doing today, Aimen?

AIMEN: I'm still alive.

THOMAS: Still alive. Thank God. But where would we be without you, Aimen?

AIMEN: The land of the living perhaps? [laughs]

THOMAS: Oh, I think I'm there, but I'm not, I can't ever be quite sure. So, in season two of conflicted so far, we have been focusing on how America has been faring over the last few decades in its attempt to establish their New World Order. We've examined all three of their main objectives to achieve this. Essentially, those were: first sorting out the Middle East, bringing neo-liberalism to Russia, and establishing a new relationship with them after the Cold War, and as we learned in the last episode, bringing China in from the cold and integrating it into the global economic system. We learned about China's New Silk Road, which is their initiative to basically take control of continental Eurasian trade, which if successful could create a Chinese new world order to rival America's. In this episode, America is more clearly in our sights. We'll go back to 2008, the last time everyone thought the world was about to end, the financial world at least. Yes, I mean the credit crisis of 2008 and the impact it had on the West's hopes of a global neo-liberal order.

[Theme Plays]

THOMAS: So Aimen, we're talking about banking today. What makes you an expert on banking? I understand that after you left your job as a double agent for the security services working inside Al-Qaeda, you became a banker. [Aimen laughs] How did that happen?

AIMEN: Well, it's basically exchanging one form of terrorism to another.

THOMAS: That old chestnut. You love that joke.

AIMEN: I love that joke, because it's almost true. Actually, most funny jokes are the true jokes. But in reality, when I went into the banking sector, after I left the service of MI6 and MI5, I actually was there fulfilling three functions. So the first function is the global strategic security function. The bank that I went to work for, which was one of the biggest global banks, was attacked before in terms of terrorism and they lost many staff and they lost their entire headquarters, in one of their middle Eastern countries.

THOMAS: I mean, they were, they were actually the victim of a terrorist bombing.

AIMEN: Indeed. So that's the first function I fulfilled. The second function is terrorism finance. So, no I wasn’t--

THOMAS: [Overlapping] You financed terrorism? Wow!

AIMEN: No, no, no. Okay, okay, okay, I rephrase here. I rephrase. It's CTF or counter terrorism finance.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Oh that’s less interesting. Oh that’s too bad.

AIMEN: Making sure, basically that high-net worth individuals or charities that are operating within the Middle East and beyond are not exactly dabbling in financing terrorists.

THOMAS: And the third thing you were doing?

AIMEN: And the third thing basically is investigating companies, high net worth individuals, and sometime even banks that are operating within the Middle East for signs of either corruption, money laundering, and understanding basically how they are operating to make sure basically that there is no corruption or money laundering going on.

THOMAS: Corruption amongst high net worth individuals in the Middle East. That must've kept you busy. Now, [Aimen laughs] now when you joined the banking system, what were your first impressions of it? How was it different from the worlds you had been inhabiting in Al-Qaeda and in MI6?

AIMEN: I felt basically there is no difference between them and Al-Qaida except they’re wearing suits.

[laughter]

AIMEN: But you know, I felt, of course it's full of nerds, geeks, it's full of also lawyers.

THOMAS: Well you must have felt right at home.

AIMEN: [laughs] Yes, and one of the things is that I felt that basically that my job was quite interesting because, you know, I was moving between these three functions seamlessly. Between the security function into the counter terrorism finance function into the investigative, financial investigative function. And of course, basically I had to learn a lot. You know, I had to be mentored by other people who will teach me about finance, how banking works. How financial services work, how insurance work in order to understand how financial fraud and insurance fraud work. So it was a learning curve—

THOMAS: A steep learning curve, but presumably during your times as a terrorist and as a double agent, you were aware of how terrorist financing happens from that side. I mean, were you ever involved?

AIMEN: I was involved in it, actually. [Laughs]

THOMAS: How did that involvement work?

AIMEN: Well, we used to infiltrate charities that were operating basically in places like Afghanistan or Azerbaijan and Georgia on behalf of the Chechens or in the Philippines or in Kenya on behalf of the Somali terrorists. So basically in order to divert charitable funds and resources and donations…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] These are donations given with goodwill from people. They didn't necessarily know that you were there pocketing the money and spending it on building bombs.

AIMEN: Ah, yeah, of course. It was all done, you know, without the full knowledge of the poor donors who were thinking basically it's going to buy, you know, tents and medicine for flood victims in Afghanistan or in Somalia.

THOMAS: So you knew about terrorist financing from the terrorism side, and it was a steep learning curve to come up to speed with how the banking system works. But tell us more. How did you use the resources of banks to help governments fight terrorist financing globally?

AIMEN: Well, because basically I came with the knowledge of how terrorists move money. And then I came into a bank where they told me basically about, you know, the basics of banking. And then, I combined the two together and I started to come up with ideas of how to spot what we call hotspots of terrorism activity in terms of finance. And so we can shut them down, we can track them down. And this is when you start to see an evolution. Where the banks started to become in some countries different from others, of course, but in some countries, the banks became the eyes and ears of governments to track down the movements of individuals, not only involved in terrorism, but sometime even involved in drugs and involved in child sex trafficking because there are certain hotspots around the world where these people congregate.

THOMAS: Yes, so tell, you say you came up with ideas. What was your big idea? What ultimately, what tool did you create that allowed you to combat terrorist financing from within the bank?

AIMEN: Okay, so banks utilise something called data mining software. They are expensive. I can tell you that they cost millions of pounds or dollars or whatever. So, but the problem is, data mining is like looking into 30 needles in a billion haystacks.

THOMAS: Wow, that sounds like a big job.

AIMEN: Yeah. Therefore you still need human intelligence to direct or zoom in on certain specific spots around the world in order for the data mining software to actually yield the tangible results.

THOMAS: You need to find the right haystack so you can focus on the right needles.

AIMEN: So let's take an example of ISIS. Since ISIS now is almost destroyed, almost, like physically destroyed. In hibernation, I would say.

THOMAS: [overlapping] Yeah for now…

AIMEN: So let's take an example. A certain bank here in the UK with a very expensive data mining software operation. They were thinking logically, rather than thinking as a terrorist. [Thomas laughs] So basically, they decided that, okay, let's look at the cities on the Turkish Syrian border. If any of our debit or credit cards are used there in ATMS or in shops or at hotels or whatever, then we flag it up.

THOMAS: And these aren't major cities actually along the border.

AIMEN: Yeah cities like Urfa, cities like Gaziantep, like Kilis ,like Reyhanli …

THOMAS: Provincial cities, Turkish provincial cities.

AIMEN: So, but they all close to the Turkish-Syrian border. So it started to give them results, but the vast majority were useless results because why? It turns out basically that these cards belong to British citizens or British residents who are of Kurdish origins. And they are going there to visit their families.

THOMAS: So not terrorists.

AIMEN: They're not terrorists at all.

THOMAS: Tourists, really.

AIMEN: Tourists, not tourists only, but actually visitors, expatriates in the UK who are visiting their families for the summer or whatever. So, you know, the results were so disappointing. So, and I walk in, and I say, basically, you are looking at the wrong place. You know, there is, you have to look at Istanbul. So I remember, you know, the banker who I was dealing with, he was saying, come on Aimen. Istanbul at any given day, including residents, tourists, and visitors and day workers there will be 30 million people there. So, you know, it's impossible. I said, no, no, no, no. So I took him up, and I'm not going to mention the name of the place so they don't avoid it anymore.

THOMAS: Fair enough, fair enough, the terrorists don’t avoid it.

AIMEN: So yeah. But I draw a 16-block radius to him on the map of Istanbul. And I said, this is where you will get results.

THOMAS: And you know this, I mean this reminds me of what you were saying in episode one of this season when you were talking about being a private spy today when you would go to cities and you would talk to taxi drivers and other such people to find out where the terrorists in that city are congregating. So this is how you can use this knowledge for practical purposes with the bank. You say they're here. Look here.

AIMEN: Exactly. So when I draw that square over 16 blocks radius. They said, okay, that's, that's manageable. It's not an entire mega city like Istanbul, which is, you know, if you include Istanbul in Europe, it would be the largest city in Europe. So basically, he said, you know, that's fine. So they looked at the 16-block radius. They asked me the question, of course, how do you know? So I said, because I've been there myself. I went there, I infiltrated the place. It is an elevated place; you don't end up there by mistake. Tourists don't go there. You only go there because you want to go there. And because you have business there. It's a place basically where jihadist congregate, where immigrants from Muslim countries and…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Because there are radical mosques there? Because…

AIMEN: Radical mosques, you know…

THOMAS: Safe houses…

AIMEN: Safe houses, you know, associations that support them. So as soon as they implemented that they started to get tangible results that ended up basically with even sometime families, UK based families, being intercepted by the Turks before they reach ISIS and then deported back to the UK.

THOMAS: To face justice here.

AIMEN: Well, not necessarily because they haven't committed a crime yet. But the idea is to bring them back, confiscate their passports, make sure they don't travel to join ISIS. So in other words, basically it really saves lives. Because these families could have been killed by the coalition bombs there when ISIS were bombed.

THOMAS: Not to mention the people they might've killed themselves.

AIMEN: Yes, exactly. So there is…so when you talk about bank saving lives… [laughs]

THOMAS: People usually don't talk about that Aimen.

[laughter]

Aimen: Indeed, but this is basically part of their CSR, their Corporate Social Responsibility. That they make sure that none of their customers is dabbling in terrorism. And this applies also to areas of concentration where drug dealings takes place. So they take the profile of the individual, let's say, basically, they wouldn't necessarily take an individual who have a Turkish surname and say, Oh, he's there, let's investigate. But if there is someone basically with an English surname, a French surname, a Pakistani surname, an Algerian surname, but end up in that area in Turkey, then…

THOMAS: It's a red flag.

AIMEN: It’s a red flag. So profiling works. It saved lives.

THOMAS: So that's Istanbul. What other cities were you able to sort of target…?

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Well Karachi, Manila, you know, in Nairobi in Kenya. So basically there are many places around the world, even places that you would think it is kind of benign, but nonetheless, there is a concentration of certain individuals there or certain activities there. Even in Bangkok for example. I mean, there are places that are famous like you know for people who unfortunately go and have, you know, inappropriate sexual relationship with young girls. So, you know…

THOMAS: To put it lightly.

AIMEN: Yeah, to put it lightly. So this is where, you know, you can really you know…

THOMAS: Infiltrate and well, what's the word you can really…

AIMEN: Detect.

THOMAS: Yeah, detect.

AIMEN: This is how you can detect terrorism intention. So, and therefore, basically you can alert the authorities.

THOMAS: So there you are now working for a bank, in fact, it was quite soon after you started in the banking system. And in 2008, the famous credit crunch, the credit crisis, the global economic crisis begins to play out really starting in April 2008 and then really hitting the fan in September of 2008. What was the environment like inside the banks as the bankers realized, Holy smokes something really bad is happening?

AIMEN: Nervousness. Oh my God, I never seen many of my colleagues nervous. And you know where I was working, it was in Canary Wharf which is the financial hub of London where the banking industry have their skyscrapers there. And I remember there is a place called the Reuters Plaza where Thomson Reuters headquarters is there and in front of the underground station, which is the equivalent of the subway in America. So I saw many people from Lehman brothers, which is just on the Plaza itself from their building coming hundreds of them with their boxes. That's it, because it collapsed, and that's it. They ceased working and their faces told me everything that I need to know.

THOMAS: Yes, Lehman Brothers, which was allowed to go bankrupt in September 2008 and Lehman Brothers, which was an enormous global investment bank, was allowed by the federal reserve bank in the United States and the treasury department of the United States to collapse. They didn't bail it out. This is usually identified as the thing that…

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Catalyst.

THOMAS: Yeah, the catalyst, the thing that really started the whole house of cards collapsing. So, lots of bankers are losing their jobs. But you didn't lose your job. Why not?

AIMEN: Because my function became more important because many companies started to default on their loans to the banks, especially in places like the Middle East. Immediately after the crisis, two large families from my own hometown owed the global banks more than $22 billion after they collapsed due to the strain of the financial crisis. So it was my job, among others, to investigate whatever assets left of those two families in order to recover as much of the bank's losses as possible.

THOMAS: So for you, the credit crunch was a job opportunity?

AIMEN: Oh, yes. Actually, I got multiple pay rises after that. [Thomas laughs] You know, because of the fact that I started working, you know, seven days a week.

THOMAS: I swear Aimen. I wish I had signed up for jihad at the age of 15 [Aimen laughs] because clearly it means that from then on you're born under a lucky star. So just to sort of provide some historical context here, the credit crisis had many phases. On the 17th of March 2008 in New York, the federal reserve bank bails out a huge bank called Bear Stearns. It bailed out Bear Stearns, which was on the verge of collapse. And this, analysts pretty much agree, increased what was already a very morally hazardous situation because all the other investment banks, which were also facing huge pressures on their, on the system at the time thought, well, we'll be bailed out too and that seems to be proved. When on the 7th of September that year, in 2008, two huge government backed mortgage security broker institutions called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government and bailed out. And then a week later on the 15th of September, the Lehman Brothers bank was not bailed out, it was allowed to fail. Even though the following day on the 16th of September, the government did bail out the huge insurance company, AIG. So there was one bail out after another one, one rescue after another, with the exception of Lehman. But the whole world realized, oh my God, something big is happening. We're all gonna go to hell in a handcart. I can't impress upon the younger listeners that at the time, everyone was glued to their TV sets. We thought, this is it. The world is coming to an end. I can remember President George W. Bush is coming out standing in front of the cameras to give this speech about how the government was going to rescue the financial system because unless the government rescue the financial system, the whole world would end. And he was white as a sheet. He just looked like, Oh my God. He actually looked more scared during that press conference then he had a seven years earlier after 9/11.

AIMEN: Indeed, because it looked like as if the entire house of cards was collapsing and there was no one to put this back together again.

THOMAS: So Aimen, why did the credit crunch happen? I mean, we've heard about these things, I remember, and people probably remember hearing about things like credit default swaps and all these acronyms and all this financial verbiage used to be flying around. What, underlies the credit crisis?

AIMEN: It all comes down, after 14 years of being a financial investigator and still to this day, I came to the conclusion that it was the result of abandoning that concept of risk. It's abandoning risk aversion when it comes to lending.

THOMAS: So you mean banks used to lend with the full knowledge that if they lent unwisely, they would lose, they wouldn't get paid back.

AIMEN: Exactly. Banks take risk when lending, because remember, banks don't just lend what they have, banks lend where they don't have. So if you think basically that a bank is, the money that they lend you when you take a mortgage or a credit card or a loan, that this is money that is already existing there in the bank and by other depositors, then you're mistaken. The banks basically lend you between nine to ten times more than what they already have in deposits. So if a bank have $1 million of deposits, they can lend up to $10 million to customers on the knowledge that not every depositor will come and take their money at the same time.

THOMAS: This system is known as fractional reserve banking.

AIMEN: Indeed.

THOMAS: So banks are empowered to lend more than the amount of money they have in the vault.

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: That obviously is an extremely risky thing to do because if you lend 10 times the amount of money you have in the vault and you don't get paid back then all the money's gone. Nobody has any money.

AIMEN: Exactly, but why we have this system? Some listeners would be screaming, why, why? And we have two answers for this. The first is to make sure that more people have access to credit. Otherwise, economic prosperity will be nothing like we have seen today since the 1950s. And the second is to increase the money supply in order for more people basically to have access to actual money in the system. The reality is that 95% of the money that we have in circulation are actually digits in--

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Computers.

AIMEN: In computers in these banks. You know, really only 5% of it is really tangible cash that we can hold. And the reason for this, some people basically saying this sounds like a Ponzi scheme, sounds like, you know, as we all it a house of cards. But this is exactly why we have such a huge amount of prosperity. Because the reality is there is no physical, tangible, currency like gold or silver or platinum that can actually correspond to the amount of wealth that is in the world right now. Whether it's natural resources, land, space, data, technology. We don't have enough--

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Anything of value.

AIMEN: Anything of value to catch up with it. I think the entire global gold and silver and platinum supply doesn't exceed $10 trillion, but the wealth, every year we generate is 250 trillion. So you see there is a 24-fold shortage of anything tangible we can use as money. And so we created a system based on trust that we have money based on confidence that it has a value. We agreed that it has a value. So when people basically say that this is unsustainable, we say, no. It is sustainable because it actually has the global wealth as a cushion to stand on it. So confidence is not a bad idea but it's a little bit fragile.

THOMAS: Yeah, it certainly is fragile as was proved in 2008. So I return to the question, in this case what caused the credit crisis to happen? Why did the house of cards collapse then?

AIMEN: The house of cards collapsed because there were too many houses in the system being bought by people who cannot afford them.

THOMAS: So the banks in America and elsewhere, primarily America, were compelled to give mortgages to people who actually in the past they wouldn't have given mortgages to because they couldn't pay back the mortgage.

AIMEN: Three letters, that’s all it takes to understand what happened, three letters, CRA.

THOMAS: The community Reinvestment Act.

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: Now, this was passed in 1977 it was an act that the American government passed in order to encourage banks, if you like, or force them, to give loans to people who previously had not been able to get loans in order to buy houses. And in America because of the, you know, systemic racial injustice of America there was a sort of racialist tinge to this act because traditionally African Americans and Latino Americans hadn't had access to mortgages to the extent that white Americans had.

AIMEN: Exactly, but you do this gradually. I've learned throughout my life that if you're given adrenaline shot to any economic problem, it’s going to cause another problem in another organ somewhere else. Here's the problem is that if you have done this gradually, over years so basically you start to reduce the risk criteria by let's say 5%, 5% incrementally over time, then this crisis wouldn't have happened. What happened is that basically the risk aversion criteria has been thrown out the window altogether. In order to rectify a clearly social injustice that was always there, which is the fact that African Americans and Latino Americans couldn't have access in large to mortgages in order to buy homes. But when you suddenly remove the barriers without making them gradual, just do it now in the early 2000s, what happened is that many of them now are able to buy homes. So we're talking about millions of families are rushing into the market where there aren't already millions of homes built already to cope up with the demand. So what happened is that it created a bubble where the price of these homes…

THOMAS: Skyrocketed.

AIMEN: Yeah Because--

THOMAS: More demand than there was supplies and the price went up which caused all sorts of malinvestments to occur in the economy. Huge amounts of money was pumped into house building in order to catch up with the demand, the supply expanded, the price is expanding, and then credit is being extended in greater and greater quantities to people who can't pay back the loans. And then of course, this becomes very complicated. These bad loans are then packaged by hedge funds and sold around the world where very unscrupulous hedge fund managers are convincing global banks that, no, no, no, everything's fine. These are great. We have created very sophisticated mathematical algorithms that's going to protect you, [Aimen laughs] even though these are bad loans. They're not really bad loans because look I'm waving my magic wand. They're not bad loans, but they were bad loans, and then [explosion sound] eventually, when the time came, no one could pay them back.

AIMEN: Exactly, because what's happened is, the government, you know, in its haste to rectify certain injustices and win votes and all of that, they actually created a bubble.

THOMAS: But that's interesting because you're, you see, you know, most of the time people say that the bankers caused credit crunch, but you seem to be laying the blame more at the feet of the politicians.

AIMEN: Yes.

THOMAS: For example, there's a very famous act which regulated the banks called the Glass-Steagall Act in America, which was founded during the great depression, which separated off commercial banking, ordinary everyday checking accounts…

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Retail banking

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Retail banking from securities banking.

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Investment banking, it’s called investment banking

THOMAS: Investment banking and Commercial banking were split off from each other until 1999 when the act was repealed, which allowed the previously two kinds of banking to be carried out by the same institution. A lot of people say the repeal of Glass-Steagall is what caused the credit crunch about nine years later.

AIMEN: Not necessarily. I mean, not necessarily. Many of the banks that are actually both retail, commercial and investment banks did not suffer the same fate. Lehman Brothers was actually more of an investment bank and did not have that much of a retail banking--

THOMAS: [Overlapping] That’s true and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were certainly not banks in any traditional sense at all.

AIMEN: Exactly

THOMAS: AIG was an insurance company.

AIMEN: Yeah, so basically this is a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it. And this is why I'm saying that the reason it happened is because the government, without, you know, unintentionally, and as you know the road to hell is paved with good intentions, created a bubble. Because, okay, you have, let's say a hundred people that you want to bring into the housing market in a village. And you wanted to lower the mortgage criteria, the mortgage lending criteria in terms of risk. So you don't remove the barrier to all hundred at the same time. Otherwise, the price will skyrocket. Speculators who are greedy will come and start speculating and driving the prices even more, you know? And as a result, you end up basically with a massive bubble. And bubbles is always synonymous with modern capitalism and even as far back as the Tulip bubble in the Netherlands in the 1600s. So what you do instead of removing the barrier for the hundred people in the village, you remove the barriers first for five. Once they settle into their homes, the next five, once they settle, the next five, and then you stop to see what is the housing stock is like. I mean, are there enough supply basically to cope up with an extra five or 10 demands? That's how you do it.

THOMAS: But this sort of gradual, long-term thinking isn't exactly what our democratically elected politicians are famous for.

AIMEN: Unfortunately.

[Laughter]

THOMAS: Well, we can talk on and on about the, the details of the credit crisis from a financial point of view. But frankly, we'd put everyone to sleep. I'd like to shift now to talk about the response to the credit crisis on the ground. Because very quickly we saw in America, and spreading from America outwards, tremendous populist movements opposed really to finance capitalism as it was being practiced. Most famously, the Occupy movement, it started on Wall Street, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and then it spread to other major cities. I certainly remember here in London when the Occupy movement came here, and they, they ended up camping out in front of St. Paul's Cathedral for weeks and weeks. And it was quite funny because, you know, I remember TV interviews with the Dean and the priest of St. Paul's cathedral, you know, who are very well intentioned, nice Anglican vicars and things, were really wringing their hands. What do they do? Do they forcibly remove these protesters who are, after all animated by an antipathy to greed, which I think Jesus Christ also felt in his heart. So they didn't know what to do. Eventually, the protesters were moved on and some of the priests resigned. You know, it was, it was really an extremely sort of heady time where you had, on the one hand, the big evil forces of the banks versus, you know, plucky protesters on the ground saying, we need a new system. The system is rotten to the core.

AIMEN: I remember one of my friends at the time asked me a question, he said, Aimen, you work in the banks in it. Don't you think these banks are evil? And my answer was, this. They are too incompetent to be evil.

[Thomas laughs]

THOMAS: Well, I mean, I don't know people have told me that Al-Qaeda is incompetent, yet they are pretty evil.

[Aimen laughs]

AIMEN: Well, the problem is with the banks and I met many of their chief executives and the chief operating officers and the chief risk officers and all of these people basically to think that they are evil. It's just basically they are normal human beings like you or me who were lucky enough basically to be in the positions where they are. But you know, do they have greed? Every human have greed. And the idea that somehow the bankers are a class of their own in terms of greed is rather… You know, I've seen more royal oligarchs, and land-owning gentry who are the personification of greed. But bankers on the other hand, well, they see themselves as the conduit for human prosperity and the servants of free market forces. That's how they see themselves.

THOMAS: Hmm. I'm not sure the Occupy protesters saw them that way.

AIMEN: Yeah

THOMAS: I mean, Aimen, let's be serious, now. You've described the system, you're, you know, in general, a very objective observer of this system. But isn't injustice to some extent, at least built into this system? Doesn't it favour some people over other people and caused this growing inequality that we see today?

AIMEN: Of course.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Are we just supposed to accept that?

AIMEN: Yes. The entire economic system of the world as it is right now will always have inherent injustices built into it. Why? Because life is unjust. Life is unfair. You cannot escape the unfairness of this world in any sector of it, no matter what. And this is the problem. And when people basically say that we want to build a completely fair, equitable, society, and I say, while it is noble, unfortunately, when you try to go against nature, nature, fight back. You know, and this is, you know, the problem basically with the financial world. Okay, I’ll give you an example now. Let’s say that, we are in the UK here, so let's basically take the entire UK population, 65 million people, let's say that we take all the wealth that everyone owns, and let's give everyone £10,000 to start with a new life, leveling everyone at the same level. And let's start. I guarantee you Thomas, that everyone have £10,000 today, within a week, within one week, we will have millionaires emerging. Within a month, we will have multi-millionaires emerging, and within a year we will have billionaires emerging/

THOMAS: Because it's just the natural order of things…?

AIMEN: The natural order that's it.

THOMAS: This is very depressing.

AIMEN: No, it's not depressing. It's the problem that not every human is as responsible with money as others.

THOMAS: Yes and not every human is as immoral as others. I mean, some people will steal that money. Some people will trick other people out of their money.

AIMEN: Exactly, but some people basically will come up entrepreneurial ideas, you know with products, that other people want to buy and they will start accumulating this money because they are making products.

THOMAS: I suppose your point is that before long, the world would just return to more or less what we have today. [Laughs]

AIMEN: Exactly I mean, so what I'm saying to people is that, do not be financially illiterate. You need to understand what wealth is and what money is.

THOMAS: Let's get back to that in a second. I know this is one of your great bug bears. We'll get to that in a second. I want to move away now from the Western world because we've talked about how in the higher echelons of Wall Street panic broke out and the banks were bailed out and government got involved. And down on the ground level in Wall Street, the Occupy movement rose to fight against the evil bankers. Now, as all of this is playing out in the West over the next 18 months, In the Middle East, something occurs which we discussed in season one of Conflicted. The Arab Spring breaks out first in Tunis, it spreads. It spreads to Cairo, it spreads to Damascus, it spreads to Yemen. It spreads everywhere, Bahrain. The Arabs are rising up against their rulers and they're saying, we want justice, we want democracy, we want freedom, or whatever they're saying. Is there a link between these two things? On the one hand, a kind of ground swell of anti-capitalist movement in the West and the Arab Spring in the East?

AIMEN: What people don't understand is that the world is a village. And you know, in one corner you have finance, in the other corner you have industry, in the other corner you have commerce, in the other corner you have agriculture, and in the center you have water. So the water, I mean by that, basically the energy of the world in oil and gas and natural resources, like in the Arab world and the Muslim world, you know. And the finance is America. The industry is Europe and China, and the agricultural is India and Russia and other places basically. And so you see, basically the world is interdependent. So if America sneeze, the rest of the world catch a cold.

THOMAS: Well America sneezed in 2008 and by January of 2011 the Arabs were on the street.

AIMEN: Exactly, why? Because everything because of, two words, really. The supply chain. The supply chain, we come back to the supply chain. Now when there is a credit crunch here, in North America, in Europe, people stop buying products. Now these products, let's say clothing, you will see lots of clothes basically, made in Morocco, made in, from Egyptian cotton, you know, made in Bangladesh or China or whatever. I mean, basically these are made from materials obtained from different other countries. You might wear a sweater, but this sweater basically, could have been handled in four countries by the time it comes to you.

THOMAS: So a access to credit in the West contracts, demand in the West goes down, and therefore the people who've been supplying that demand, they no longer have any orders. They're not being asked to make shirts anymore.

AIMEN: Exactly. Not just only shirts, but parts or even extraction.

THOMAS: So how does that lead to the Arab spring?

AIMEN: Because what's happened here is you end up with a situation where you have more unemployed. You'll have more unemployed. The whole Arab world caught fire because one single individual who was a university graduate and unemployed, Bouazizi

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Set himself on fire.

AIMEN: Set himself on fire and the rest of the world with him on fire, actually.

THOMAS: In protest against kind of

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Unemployment.

THOMAS: Well he had a little stall. He had a little market stall--

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Because of the unemployment.

THOMAS: I see, He was forced to resort to simply selling vegetables on the street.

AIMEN: Exactly.

THOMAS: And then some unscrupulous bureaucrat was oppressing him, and he decided the whole system was rotten. So he set himself on fire. And from there it spread.

AIMEN: Exactly. So that is why, you know, the idea that somehow what affects one part of the world doesn't affect the rest, and these ideas of protectionism and we need to be putting tariffs and putting walls and putting — no. We are in the 21st century and whatever happens in one corner of the world affects the rest of it.

THOMAS: That's one way of putting it but another way of, since we're talking about the New World Order, is that, you know, if America has erected this globalized order, globalization after all. Where, as you said, agriculture is in one part of the world, manufacturing is another part of the world and it's all being financed from the huge banks in London and in New York. Doesn't it mean that the New World Order is inherently fragile? Do we want a world order where if a bank sneezes in New York, unemployment throughout the Middle East grows to such an extent that civil wars breakout?

AIMEN: Let's put it this way. When I said to you, the world is now a global village, then what we see here is that, yes, it's a fragile village, but it's a prosperous one. Because look at the levels of abject poverty in the world in 2020 and look at the abject poverty in the world in the 1900s, just a 120 years ago. In the year 1900 I think the abject poverty basically reached heights of 80 and 90%. Now abject poverty around the world basically is around 9%. So to tell me basically that globalization did not shrink poverty is rather disingenuous in anyone's argument. So that's why I'm saying that yes, it’s fragile, but because it relies on peace and order as a conduit for this prosperity. But if peace and order start to crumble and nations started fighting each other, then the entire system collapse.

THOMAS: Well, it's true. I mean, it certainly is true that that abject poverty has decreased. It's hard to tell that to, say a poor Egyptian who has no job, has no money, bread subsidies are being lifted up because neoliberal ideology is taking hold there. He can't even feed his family. So he goes into Tahrir square and just starts demanding... Well, this is the interesting thing. What is he demanding? You know, during the Arab spring, the demands were more political than economic, it was all about democracy. We want democracy. But would you say that in fact, the Arab Spring protesters were barking up the wrong tree? It wasn't really about politics, it was more about the economic systems of the Arab world that needed reform? That just changing the politicians wouldn't do that, wouldn't do the trick or extending the vote isn't really going to achieve anything? Is that what you're saying? Or is it all sort of mixed up together?

AIMEN: Look, they understand—

THOMAS: They, you mean the Arab Spring protesters.

AIMEN: The Arab Spring protesters understood from the beginning that it's the oligarchy that is ruling them, which basically monopolize the money. If you look at every country, which you know, the system entirely collapsed. If you look at Ben Ali…

THOMAS: This is in Tunisia.

AIMEN: Yeah. He, his daughter, his son in law, controlled lots of businesses basically in Tunisia. And look what happened.

THOMAS: Egypt?

AIMEN: Egypt, the president, his two sons, Gamal and Alaa Mubarak

THOMAS: [Overlapping] The whole army.

AIMEN: The whole army as well as the party apparatus, Hosni Mubarak’s party, the national democratic party apparatus. All of these people who controlled, monopolized many aspects of the economy.

THOMAS: Libya?

AIMEN: Libya, of course. Basically you have…

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Colonel Gaddafi

AIMEN: Colonel Gaddafi and his sons.

THOMAS: Saif al-Islam!

AIMEN: Saif al-Islam, Hannibal, Moatassem

THOMAS: [laughs] Hannibal! Can you imagine naming your son Hannibal, really? [Aimen laughs]

AIMEN: Well, you know, he believes that… He hated the Italians so much because basically of Italy’s history in Libya and you think basically, okay, our neighbors the Tunisians have Carthage, and we were a part of the Phoenician-Carthaginian heritage. So I should name my son, Hannibal, the scourge of Rome.

[Laughter]

THOMAS: The man who conquered Rome, well almost conquered Rome…

AIMEN: Almost conquered Rome, to spite the Italians so…

THOMAS: Anyway, So Gaddafi controls a lot of the economy. The Tunisian leadership controls the Tunisian economy, the Egyptian leadership—

AIMEN: [Overlapping] Same with Syria, Syria for example, you know Bashar al-Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhlouf, her brothers and her nephews, Rami Makhlouf and others, they control 60% of the Syrian economy. Just let this sink in 60%.

THOMAS: Yemen?

AIMEN: In Yemen, it was far more different, but it was a failure of this nation state to provide any sort of services whatsoever.

THOMAS: So you think that the Arab Spring protestors really did know that when they're protesting against their government in the name of democracy, what they're actually wanting is the dismantlement of this oligarchic, corrupt oligarchic economic system and increase there of economic opportunities for everyone, basically liberalism. Basically the thing that the American New World Order is supposed to be giving them.

AIMEN: The ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid in 2011, he gave a speech, it was a rare speech where he was so candid. He was so candid. He was saying to the audience in a conference in Arabic, he was saying that, I always have told my colleagues and my friends remember, he is also the prime minister of the UAE as well as being the ruler of Dubai. He said, I've been saying to my colleagues in the Arab world, feed your people, give them jobs, give them opportunities. Do not allow certain people to monopolize everything. Because what's going to happen is that these people will end up rising against you, because hungry people have nothing to lose. Hungry people got nothing to lose. So, and this is why in the UAE, as well as other resource rich countries in the Arab world, you know, the royals are very rich, filthy rich. But at the same time, they do not really squeeze the people out of their savings and out of their pockets. They still allow people to have loans to build houses. They give them free parcels of land. Land is free. Give them parcels of land, give them long term loans from the government…

THOMAS: [overlapping] Encourage entrepreneurship.

AIMEN: Yeah. You know, encourage entrepreneurship, give them loans to start businesses, send them to America and to Europe to gain degrees. I remember during the election campaign here in the UK, whenever you hear, you know, people who are leaning towards, you know, socialism like Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the labor party, whenever basically he talks about economic models, I always look at him and say the country that you most hate in the world, which is Saudi Arabia, he’s written so much against it, it's the economic model that you want to implement, you idiot. You know it's the one you wanted because basically, he wants free education. Well, Saudi have got a free education, and actually they send their students basically to Western countries to pay their tuition fees, their tickets…

THOMAS: Hundreds and thousands of students.

AIMEN: Hundreds of thousands, I think by far now is 400,000 students who have benefited from this. They've got salaries and accommodation and their tuition fee paid and tickets back and forth to their education destinations. So, you know, free healthcare, or insurance covered by the government or by the employer.

THOMAS: A very generous housing program for citizens.

AIMEN: Exactly. So the question is, you know, what is it that you hate about them then? Apart from being pro-American. Is there anything else? Their economy is a mix of state enterprise, profitable state enterprise, and private sector enterprise.

THOMAS: Well, sure, but Saudi Arabia also has that little magic bullet of huge amounts of oil to sell.

AIMEN: I tell you something, every time someone brought up this issue and says, Oh, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, whatever, they have oil man. They have oil so of course they would be economic successful, and I will say yes, this is partly true, but if it is purely just natural resources, then Venezuela, and the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, will be far richer than Saudi Arabia. Because the DRC sits on $25 trillion worth of—

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Natural resources.

AIMEN: Natural resources and Venezuela have more oil than Saudi Arabia. And yet, look at both of them right now. It's not about, purely just natural resources. It’s about—

THOMAS: [Overlapping] How you empower the economy to take advantage of them.

AIMEN: Exactly. Exactly. That's why when people tell me the Arab world, they rose against oligarchy. And I say yes, but they say, well, Royal families are oligarchs too. And I will say yes, but the difference here between one set of oligarchs and the other is that if one oligarch or a government. Let's put it this way, if a government runs its country as a business and take stock of the potential of this country to generate profit, then you have prosperity comes in. So if you look at the model that is followed in China, in Turkey, you know, to some extent, especially between 2003 and 2014 in Turkey, and in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in UAE, in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in the city-states. If you see that they are running their countries as businesses, any country will look at its capabilities. It will look at geographical position, whether advantages or not, population size, big or small, natural resources, you know, many or none.

THOMAS: Geographical location.

AIMEN: Cultural sites for tourism, natural beauty, there are many ways in which our country can look at all the negatives and positives, advantages, disadvantages, and basically makes it work. And then start with the idea. First of all, everything you've learned about economics in terms of Marxism, Capitalism, whatever…

THOMAS: All the great 19th century ideological buzzwords.

AIMEN: Exactly, throw it in the rubbish right now dear listener, please throw it in the rubbish.

[Thomas laughs]

THOMAS: Aimenomics, everyone. Here we go. Aimenomics.

AIMEN: Why? Because we live in the 21st century where the last 10 years technological advances were more than the past hundred years put together and the past hundred years were more than the past 10,000 years put together. Which means we need new kinds of economics. And with the world becoming a global village where we are so interdependent because of technology, because of the communication revolution, and the information revolution, we need to have new kind of economics.

THOMAS: Not some one size fits all, global paradigm of neoliberal American domination but...

AIMEN: Or socialism.

THOMAS: Or socialism.

AIMEN: No, we don't need Marxism. We don't need capitalism.

THOMAS: So when you said that countries should be run like companies, you're not just parroting some super right-wing capitalist perspective.

AIMEN: No, I tell you something. The right-wing people basically say the state should just regulate and should not run any business whatsoever. I disagree. And the left-wing will say that the government should own the means of production and run them for no profit motive, for the benefit of the people. That also I disagree with. What I agree with is a country where there is a state enterprise run efficiently for profit and also private sector that actually supports the public sector to achieve profit and to maximize the prosperity for the people.

THOMAS: And this is the model being pursued in these countries like Turkey and China and elsewhere that you mentioned.

AIMEN: Exactly. So when someone says to me, Aimen, have you seen any, for God's sake, any state-run company that generate profit? Because this is the skeptics always. And I tell them, yes, the largest company in the whole world.

THOMAS: Saudi Aramco.

AIMEN: Saudi Aramco. Because my father worked there, my uncles, all of them without exception work there, half of my cousins and their kids work there. So I know all about Aramco and I can't tell you basically that the largest state-run enterprise in the world is the most profitable company in the world. In 2018 they made $111 billion more than the other five largest oil companies that come behind them combined.

THOMAS: Well, of course. I want to counter by saying, well, you can sell oil, so pump oil out of the ground, you sell it. I mean, is that so difficult?

AIMEN: Look at the national oil company of Venezuela, they are making losses all the time. And basically the other five private companies just behind Aramco globally combined together, actually, they have larger production value together than Aramco. Yet their profits were less than Aramco, even though they are privately run, and Aramco is a state run--

THOMAS: It's also very important to point out that Saudi Aramco doesn't just sell oil. It actually is the linchpin of an incredibly sophisticated petrochemical industry that the Saudi state has allowed to grow in Saudi Arabia where they don't just sell the oil, they refine the oil. They oversee manufacturer of oil products. So it's a whole industry, which leads to economic prosperity there.

AIMEN: Exactly. So, you know, and Saudi Arabia and other companies basically like this. Maaden which is their minerals company.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Mineral company.

AIMEN: They do that. So they do that. So actually, Norway does that. You know, it's not just only—

THOMAS: Yeah, the Norwegian oil company is state owned and profitable.

AIMEN: Equinor. Equinor is profitable, and this is state owned. The idea that somehow, we are afraid that the state will be inefficient, well look, if you have the will, you can create state owned companies that generate profits and compete like capitalist companies, like free market companies in that market, like each other.

THOMAS: This sounds remarkably moderate and balanced for you, Aimen. You're basically arguing for an intelligently designed and run mixed economy. Some state ownership, some private ownership, as long as everyone is animated by the profit motive in order to spread prosperity more generally.

AIMEN: Exactly. So first of all, leftist should drop this notion that profit is immoral.

THOMAS: [Overlapping] Evil.

AIMEN: And the right-wing, you know, ultra-capitalists should drop the notion that there will be no efficient and profitable state-run enterprises.

THOMAS: But Aimen, what about, dare I ask it… democracy? Human rights? Liberal societies? I mean, you've mentioned China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia. They don't really score very highly when it comes to that side of political economy.

AIMEN: Of course they don't score highly on that side.

THOMAS: Is that not something we should care about?

AIMEN: Of course we should care about the human rights of every single human being on this planet. Their right of free speech, the right to assemble, the right basically to express themselves. The freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of not having a religion to begin with.

THOMAS: How does that square with what you're advocating?

AIMEN: Okay. Because politics and economics are two separate things. And anyone who tried basically to argue otherwise. Look at China. Look at Hong Kong. Look at Singapore. Look at Saudi Arabia. Look at Norway. All of them have very different politics from each other. Yet they all achieved some sort of, you know, successful mixed economy of efficient, profitable state enterprise and a thriving private sector.

THOMAS: And perhaps the idea is: with prosperity down the line will come an increase in the protection of human rights and democracy, or not necessarily? This is of course, what animated George H. W. Bush’s New World Order. The idea that with prosperity would come, democracy, would come liberal democracy. It doesn't seem to be happening that way.

AIMEN: It doesn't seem to be happening because the more prosperous I see people become… For example, I have friends of mine in Saudi Arabia who were extremely critical of the government, the vision 2030. And the fact basically that there will be liberalization of the economy—

THOMAS: [Overlapping] This is an enormous program of reform, particularly economic, but also social and cultural reform that has been going on in Saudi Arabia since the coming to power of King Salman and the rise to power of now Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. It's called Saudi Arabia Vision 2030.

AIMEN: But with this liberalization and economic reforms comes greater repression, greater control over people's thought. I mean, basically there is less freedom of thought in Saudi Arabia in 2020 than that was in 2014.

THOMAS: Isn’t that bad?

AIMENL: Oh, of course it's bad. No question about it. But the friends who I had who were critical suddenly changed their minds when they started having good jobs. Oh I love it. Now I have a job, they were telling me about the new joint ventures between big international companies and Saudi companies. They got jobs finally after they graduated long time ago from universities in the U.S. and what about the oppression? You were talking to me about, Oh, it's such a stifling situation in Saudi Arabia. We can't speak our minds. Oh yeah. I was just basically angry about being unemployed, but now I'm employed. [Thomas laughs] You know, I have a parcel of land now from the government and they are going to give me a loan to build a house on it and finally, I can get married. Suddenly all the talk about, you know, freedom, democracy and human rights evaporated as soon as you know, Mohammed bin Salman stuffed in a, a wad of cash in their mouth.

Thomas: Aimen I know last time I said that you were depressing me. I don't want to say this time that you have depressed me, although you do have this remarkable capacity of spinning an optimistic narrative that leaves me thinking, things aren't really that good. [Aimen laughs] But as ever your perspective is informed and thought provoking. It does make me wonder if the New World Order that America set out to create in the 90s, which we discovered last time when talking about China has countered a serious rival in the Chinese’s own version of that order, that the New World Order, the idea that through globalization, prosperity will increase, that through globalization the globe will become a village and we'll all be interconnected and that ultimately in some way fitfully we will all benefit from this, maybe it's not that it is failing, but that it is succeeding--

AIMEN: Economically.

THOMAS: Just not in the way that America expected and perhaps not ultimately to America's own benefit.

AIMEN: I tell you something. Do you know who really won the globalization game so far? Really? Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook…

THOMAS: Silicon Valley

AIMEN: Silicon Valley. They were the ultimate beneficiaries of globalization.

THOMAS: Well, we are going to talk about Silicon Valley, among other things next time on our final episode of this season of Conflicted. As we've been discussing today, after the credit crunch, the Occupy movement rose to try to fight back against what they considered to be the injustices of global capitalism. The Occupy movement in the end fizzled out or did it? In the next episode, we'll describe the way the anti-capitalism movement following the credit crunch morphed into Extinction Rebellion and other environmental activist movements. And how with the end or at least mutation of the New World Order the new game changer for global politics may be the end of the world. That's right. We'll be talking about the climate crisis in the last episode of this series. I'm sure it will be a doozy.

[Outro music plays]

THOMAS: If you would still like to find out more about the effects of the 2008 credit crunch, enter our competition to win a copy of a wonderful book called ‘Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed’ the World by Adam Tooze. This is presently the definitive narrative history of the 2008 financial crisis. Tooze is an excellent writer and though his left-leaning views would probably irritate Aimen, the book is well worth reading. To be in the running to win, just make sure to become a member of our Facebook group before the 15th of April. Find it by searching ‘Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group’ on Facebook. In the group, you will find articles and further reading and it's also a place for you to enter into discussions with all the other Conflicted listeners. You can also find Conflicted on Twitter. We are at MHConflicted. And if you enjoy listening to the show, please do us a favor and rate us, review us, or maybe even tell other real human beings in your life about Conflicted. Join Aimen and me in two weeks’ time for the next episode of Conflicted. In which we conclude our journey across the unraveling of America's New World Order.

Conflicted is a Message Heard production. It's produced by Sandra Ferrari and Jake Otajovic. Edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.

Working Remotely? Use Podcasts to Boost Employee Engagement

Unprecedented numbers of employees are now working remotely.

It’s a situation in which clear internal communication – always important – becomes critical. Podcasts offer a creative solution.

If you haven’t yet explored the possibilities of podcasts for your internal communications, now is the time to do so. This form of audio has distinctive features that help to facilitate certain forms of communication.

It’s a preferred means of communication for many younger workers. Plus, it’s a medium that is particularly well-suited to the needs of remote workers or for highly distributed organisations. Here’s the run down:

• The distinctive features of podcasts

• The types of internal communication that suit podcasts

• How podcasts facilitate remote working

“Podcasts are a proven and popular channel. They enable us to communicate in an effective and timely way, connect, share important updates and build a common purpose.

For us, they have brought our solutions to life, bringing clarity in the messaging in a succinct way and have summarised some key points. ”

— Mark Absolom, Head of Marketing, Cognizant

The distinctive features of podcasts

1. Connection-building: One of the greatest strengths of podcasts is that they build intimacy between speaker(s) and audience. That simple experience of hearing an individual human voice creates a sense for the audience that they ‘know’ the speaker. So, podcasts humanise your messages and – in so doing – help to build connections and community.

2. Flexibility: Podcasts are infinitely variable. They don’t have to conform to a particular length or format. That means you can use them to convey clear, top-line information or news or use them to explore an issue in depth. You can feature one speaker or many speakers. You can find a style that works for you – but you can also be creative and surprise your audience! Even recording can be done remotely. Our head of production, Sandra Ferrari, says “with new available technologies and some guidance from a professional, you can get quality sound at home.”  

3. User-friendly: When it comes to featuring guests, experts and speakers, many people find podcasts a less ‘scary’ option than video – for the simple reason that they don’t have to feel self-conscious about their appearance. That means it’s easier to find people to feature on podcasts, which boosts the value of the content. 

4. High engagement: The stats show that podcasts engage and retain their audiences. Plus, the technology allows you to track this, so you know which content keeps people listening.

5. Convenient: The other stand-out feature of podcasts is just how convenient they are. Once a podcast is published, your audience can access it at any time that works for them. They can listen while carrying out other tasks. They can take a screen break while engaging with your content. They can access them on the move. This means that podcasts can be digested in a way that just isn’t possible with other mediums.

The types of internal communications that suit podcasts

CEO / news updates: A short and sweet podcast giving key company/ industry updates. This keeps everyone in touch with the need-to-know information and helps them to feel connected and part of the business.

Explaining strategy/ corporate policies:

Podcasts are ideally suited to expressing complex messages about change or weighty company decisions. The issues can be laid out and explored in depth, with time to answer questions about why a decision was made; what the likely consequences will be and how it will affect colleagues.

Sharing colleague views:

In a longer podcast format, there’s plenty of opportunity to explore issues in-depth and to introduce a range of colleague voices. That can be done using recordists (when we’re not in lockdown!); via voice notes and memos or by utilising easy to use online recording platforms.

Sharing projects:

The podcast format allows you to think creatively and tell stories about your business and industry. Are there projects you want to celebrate? Work your colleagues would like to understand? Volunteering projects that colleagues take part in? Podcasts lend themselves to human interest tales and storytelling are around the great work being done in your organisation that may need more visibility.

On-boarding:

Either...  

• A stand-alone podcast - talking new employees through the culture and values of a company.

Or...

• Episodic content that talks through different aspects of a company and how each part fits into the greater whole.

Learning and development:

This is a form of evergreen content which can be embedded on your website or intranet to be share with employees around career miles stones or transitions. It could cover issues such as:

• Internal progression

• The value of lateral moves

• How mentoring works

• Up skilling

• Colleague career paths

• Colleague career tips

• Industry-relevant niche topics

How podcasts facilitate remote working

The accessibility of podcasts – and the intimacy of the format – bring people together and help them to feel as though they are part of something bigger: even when they are working at a distance from their colleagues. This is content that’s made for them; features them and offers them information that’s valuable and inclusive.

And that’s not all. Podcasts build relationships between different parts of your organisation. They bridge the gap between remote workers, between senior leadership and other teams, between teams that can otherwise feel siloed and out-of-touch and between colleagues who may work in different countries and time zones. They create a community around a shared listening experience.

And that’s not all. Podcasts take account of the needs of colleagues who work remotely: providing an information stream that fits into people’s days and is there to be accessed when needed. They offer the clarity of being only audio: so that people focus on what is being said, without the distraction of visual clutter.

And even that’s not all! Podcasts also allow you to explore a whole range of topics at a depth that is unappealing in other mediums, or to quickly parcel up important information and share it widely in a cost-effective way. It gives your workforce – even when working remotely - a unique content library that benefits them and your business.   

Want to know more? At Message Heard, we make podcasts that help your business to reach its employees, wherever they are. Find out what we can do for you. Email us at contact@messageheard.com.