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Hello and welcome to BWB Extra, where we continue our conversation

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with author, journalist, and political commentator, Grace Blakely.

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All right, let's get, let's go back to the start.

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Let's, let's, let's wind the clock back.

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Right, let's wind the clock back.

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I was gonna, not gonna use it, but you get upset when I don't say it.

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No, no, it's fine.

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You know what, and people have that, anyway, uh, how did you end up doing what you're doing?

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So I am, um, I'm an author.

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That's my main source of income and what I spend most of my time doing, uh, is writing books.

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So I've written two books already.

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I've got a new book coming out next year, which I've kind of just finished writing.

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It's being edited and copyedited So I do that.

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I write books about capitalism, basically.

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I also do a lot of, kind of, media appearances.

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So, you know, I'll go on Question Time and Politics Live and all that sort of stuff.

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Top podcasts.

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Yeah, and top podcasts, of course.

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Talk about the day's affairs and that sort of more, like, directly political stuff.

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And, yeah, so I'm kind of, you know, mixed between writing and media.

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Your last book was How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism.

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Yeah, that was just a short one I wrote during the pandemic.

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What are you working on right now?

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So this one, um, is called, we actually came up with the title really

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late because there were big disagreements on what the title should be.

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Anyway.

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We, your team.

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Me and my publisher, because they've bought the book, so they basically get to tell me what it's going to be called.

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And I was like, I want it to be this, and they were like, no, that's

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boring, no one's going to pick it up, we want it sexy, or whatever.

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So it's going to be called Vulture Capitalism, which is, you know.

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And it's going to have a naked woman on the cover.

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It might.

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It might do, yes.

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It's attacking already.

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That would be incredibly anti feminist.

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There should be a naked man on the cover.

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No, I'm just saying, if somebody's gonna pick it up.

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Yeah, yeah, true.

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Anyway, we've really lost the plot.

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But we have some top tips of printing ideas there for your book.

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We were going down the route of how did you end up doing it.

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Oh, how did I end up doing what I was doing?

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So I started, I did my degree at Oxford, did politics, philosophy, economics,

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along with all of the kind of worst people in our political system.

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Yes, exactly.

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And then I started working for a think tank.

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I was in an intern at Think Tank for a bit.

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Um, and that was actually doing stuff around like local economics and local politics.

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Then I went to work for K P M G actually for like less than a year, uh, doing consulting.

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Yeah, for their government and healthcare practice, which I was not particularly good at.

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I'm not, again, you know, A D H D, not very good in big organizations.

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Big picture.

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It's too detailed.

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Exactly.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Let's say I I'm Same page.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So didn't do that for very long.

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I then went to work for I P R, which was a think tank.

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I really enjoyed working there.

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Actually.

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I stayed there for three years, I think, doing lots of reports, and that's where I started doing media.

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It's where I started doing interviews and, like, doing more journalistic writing.

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Eventually got the offer to write a book.

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Took some time off, wrote the book.

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The book did well.

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Started doing lots more media.

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So, you know, things just basically took off.

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And it was during the kind of, you know, 2017 to 2019 period where socialism was suddenly fun again.

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So lots of people wanted my opinion.

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Suddenly fun again.

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Yeah.

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Uh, have you got a long term goal?

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My long term goal?

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I like to think about what I do, really, as trying to change the way that people think about capitalism.

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I'm trying to change the way that people think about the economy.

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So for me, the goal is get the ideas that I'm trying to push out in as many hands as possible.

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And at the moment that looks like writing books, but it also looks like longer term, you know, potentially taking

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that onto different forms of media, like trying to get young people particularly engaged with some of these ideas.

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And yeah, you know, just to kind of expanding my reach really.

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What's the most misunderstood thing about what you do?

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I think people underestimate how hard it is to write a book and overestimate how hard it is to go on TV.

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We all think we could write a book if we just had enough time to do it.

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It's very challenging to write a good book.

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What's the hardest thing about writing a book?

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Keeping everything together in your head.

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So it's, you know, you know, you can write a whiteboard, I guess.

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Yeah, exactly.

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You can write an article that everyone thinks, Oh, if I can

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write an article, I can write ten articles so I can write a book.

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But actually having, like, the argument and the structure and being able to keep those

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ideas together in your head, coming back to them all the time in every, every section,

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every paragraph, making sure you're really driving home that key point, it's hard.

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I always found, like, writing a dissertation, I kind of thought,

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I've got this great argument, and it's, it's gonna fall to pieces.

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And then it sort of falls to, exactly, it falls to pieces and there's nothing really there when you get right into it.

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And when you push yourself, it's so true, yeah.

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Actually, there's only a few times I've heard authors, I think it's Agatha Christie was one of the people

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who could do it, that she didn't know what the end of the story was, and she'd sit down and she'd write.

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And three days later she'd, or a week later she'd finish her book.

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Are they, are they shit?

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I've never read one, but I mean, you know.

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I mean, characterization is not really non existent in them.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And also they're just stories, aren't they?

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And I sit down to tell my kid a story at night and sometimes I get really into it.

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And then as you say, I forget where I am in it and all the details and I just have to finish it.

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I'm like, and then the farmer just said, Oh, I can't be doing this anymore.

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What are you most excited about?

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What am I most excited about?

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For your career.

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God.

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Um, I suppose I'm pretty excited about my next book coming out.

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Yeah, I mean that, like, the process of writing a book is a nightmare.

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Having it come out is really fun because for about a year you're doing

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events everywhere, you know, I've got book deals in dozens of countries.

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You're the toast of the town.

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Yeah, so you're going all around the world, you're meeting loads of people, talking about ideas, doing interviews.

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You're just talking about this thing that you've created.

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After a while it gets a bit boring, but initially it's really fun.

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That's better than music.

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I find by the time you release, and Diem would agree with this, and

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you're a musician too, but by the time you release an album, then...

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Yeah, you hate all the songs.

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You're just so bored with it, and then people are like, oh, I really like that album, and you're like...

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Yeah, whatever.

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Yeah.

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And I guess if you were a big artist you might then tour and talk about your album, but

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in a way you don't talk about your album that much, you just go play music sort of thing.

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So by the end of a book you're not sick of it, you're glad it's over, you're quite happy to chat about it.

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Well, you may be.

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I think, I would say it's about a year after the book's actually come out, you're sick of it by then.

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Maybe six months, depending on how much you like it.

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Um, I'm not sick about, of, of this book yet, and I've nearly finished it.

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Maybe I will be by the time it comes out, but no, I'm, I'm still really excited about it, actually.

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What's your biggest fuck up?

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So, probably, actually, and this comes down to the big picture versus detail thing.

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In my first book, I had a couple of little...

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You know, like factual errors and like stuff that was wrong and that wasn't double checked.

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And because I was, you know, this, I didn't have a lot of resources behind the book, but I

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was growing on social media, so a lot of people were looking really hard at what I was doing.

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This is how to save the world from finalization.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, they like took me apart online for, you know, like some...

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On page 63?

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Literally, literally that.

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you've missed, you know.

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Yeah, so that was...

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It's quite annoying.

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Luckily, you know, they all came out very quickly and we managed to do a reprint within

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a few months that had all the errors corrected, so it wasn't too much of a big deal.

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But it was like, you know, awkward and embarrassing.

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It's horrible to be wrong, isn't it?

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Yeah.

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I hate being wrong.

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It's a good lesson.

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Because you're always going to be wrong about something.

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It's your own, like, your own creation.

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Yeah.

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I thought you, I guess it was the start of your career, so you don't

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get to just hand it to someone to do the really, really boring work.

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No, yeah.

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I was like twenty...

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three when I started writing that, yeah.

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And the publisher says, you've checked all of this, yeah?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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No, exactly.

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Yeah.

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I'm surprised there wasn't more wrong with it, to be honest.

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What's your passion outside of work?

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Again, the same as my vice.

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Surfing.

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Okay, yeah.

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It's such a cool thing to be passionate about.

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Like, let's just, let's just, you know, get that

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clip.

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I love it.

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It's great.

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Whenever anybody says something to me, I immediately think of...

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Sharks, that's what I think of that film with...

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Point Break.

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Point Break.

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I love that film.

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It's so fun.

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That's what I think about.

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Look, my problem is, because I watch George, I can't do the paddling with my legs dangling with my head above the water.

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I don't care what country I'm in, even England, my limbs are going to disappear.

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Something's going to be a little tug from the neck.

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I see.

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I have to get out of the water so I can never surf.

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And also, you're a huge attraction, you know, if you're in the right part of the world.

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Great whites love those seal looking things.

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California, Australia, South Africa.

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You are, you're in a bit of danger.

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Oh my God.

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I haven't surfed in any of those places.

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But yeah, there's a guy who studies sharks.

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He gets a surfboard and he puts a hole in it, and he puts a camera in the

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thing looking downwards, and he reels it out on a massive, uh, fishing line.

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And this is in South Africa?

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Yeah.

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And he's all guy studies.

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So you get this footage of great wes hitting this thing.

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Wow.

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So it's dark.

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It's like a really good camera, but it's dark.

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And then you just see this, oh my, you see this thing and it comes so fast.

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Yeah.

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And the mountain.

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And you're like, because they think it's a sea.

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Oh my god.

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I have never.

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And now, a quick word from our sponsor.

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Business Without Bullshit is brought to you by Ori Clark.

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Straight talking financial and legal advice since 1935.

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You can find us at OriClark.

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com What's the worst advice you've ever been given?

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Oh god, yeah.

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So when I was at school, everyone used to say, oh, you're really good at arguing, so you should become a lawyer.

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I would have been a terrible lawyer, because again, the attention to detail thing.

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And actually, a lot of lawyers don't, you know, don't actually argue, yeah.

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I don't do a lot of arguing.

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Yeah, exactly.

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You're, especially now, when you're doing solicitoring and barristering

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and it's, you know, and you know what I do because I'm a corporate lawyer.

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So even when I'm like, if I'm selling or buying a company for somebody, everybody wants to get to the same place.

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They all want slightly different things because they want to buy it for as cheaply as possible.

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And these people want to sell it for as much as possible.

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But you're all actually trying to do the same thing.

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So it's not really.

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There's nothing really to argue.

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Yeah, I mean, so that was not a very good piece of advice for me.

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What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

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The best piece of advice I've ever been given, I think the one that I come back to most when

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I'm trying to make a decision is just, my mum always used to say to me, just trust your gut.

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And I think that's like, Just the most important thing, you know, in any decision making process, because you can

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write lists and analyze any problem for God knows how long, but if you're actually in touch with what you want,

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and you really, you know, can ground yourself in that, like, intuition, I think that's the most important thing.

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What advice would you give to your younger self?

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What advice would I give my younger self?

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I think...

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Get a hobby.

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I would have liked it if I'd started doing the surfing earlier, because,

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to be honest, for most of my You did music, that was your hobby.

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But I wasn't I worked so hard.

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I was just obsessed from about the age of 22 to, I think, like, 28.

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I was just like I didn't listen to my parents advice when they were like, just be happy.

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I was like, no, I need to succeed, I need to prove myself, I need to prove everyone wrong.

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I'm going to listen to all the things that everyone's saying about me,

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and I'm going to take them to heart, and I'm going to, you know, do.

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And

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it's good, because I achieved a lot, but I've gotten to this point in my life now, and I'm like.

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I didn't focus on my relationships.

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I didn't focus on myself.

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I didn't have anything else going on.

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It was just work, work, work, work, work, right, right, right, go

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in the media, put myself in such stressful situations all the time.

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I feel like I was constantly on edge for a lot of that time.

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Um, and it wasn't good for me and it just made me like.

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you know, a shell of a person, really, when I think about when it was the worst.

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Feels like you're having a midlife crisis I am 100 percent having I could imagine,

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this is the chat, I can almost imagine it out on the waves, on the circle,

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can't you, with the lad saying, you know, I just, I just, I just work too much.

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And they were like, yeah, man, yeah, man, people work too much.

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It's like, the only California in Britain, I always think it's Cornwall, because when

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you do get down to Cornwall, it has that vibe of like, man, chill out, man, you know.

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Recommendations on what to read, what to watch, what to listen to.

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I mean, obviously, my own books.

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Absolutely.

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You can get them on, in all good bookstores, there's an audio book which I read myself.

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Oh, nice.

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Hilariously.

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Um, the next one's coming out next year, obviously.

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Oh, you do it in a hilarious manner, or you just do it?

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No, just like, it's funny to listen to do.

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It was.

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Bizarre.

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It's actually so difficult to just sit there and read something.

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It is, you've got ADHD.

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Yeah, you just trip over your words all the time and you go too fast, you go to, oh, it's just a nightmare.

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But anyway, it's there, it's available.

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But no, okay, so other stuff.

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My, a friend of mine, we're talking about, we've talked about climate change.

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Um, Michaela Loach has just released this great book called It's Not That Radical About Climate Breakdown.

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And she's this amazing activist.

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Who has done loads of work on, you know, campaigning and all this sort of stuff in the UK.

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And she's, she's got this book out which I think everyone should read.

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And it's really, you know, simple and easy to connect with.

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Podcasts?

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Podcasts.

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Oh yeah, everyone should check out.

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If you want a kind of easy to listen to summary of, you know, socialist stuff going on in the UK, Novara Media is great.

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They do a lot of kind of podcasts and audio and visual content and stuff.

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Um, and they get loads of interesting guests on and whatever.

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That's kind of a socialism 101.

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Obviously, also, I write for Tribune magazine, um, so Tribune in the UK, definitely check us out.

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Uh, this is like, Tribune was like an old magazine that was for the, the socialists back in, you know,

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the 1930s and kind of, you know, stopped really being released for a while and it was then bought up again

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recently and we kind of relaunched it and grew it and it's now, you know, got this kind of community around it.

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And it's about news from the labor movement, news from the left opinion, like all this sort of stuff.

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So definitely worth checking that out.

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And if you want to subscribing, I find the bipartisan thing just, I think it's almost, we talk about the structural

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problems of democracy or economics, but I don't think we talk about, you know, this basic problem that of having red or

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blue or left or right or anything, you know, the reason I'm left, I mean, I'm, I'm, I want to be in the middle because.

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You know, I think we all need to be a bit like if you start any conversation with the point of view is I hate rich

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I'm just gonna be crass, but I hate rich people or I hate poor people or I think this or I think that you know We'll

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never solve this world because we need to be humans We need to basically we you know climate change I hope brings

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us eventually all together because I think eventually it will people would die and die and die Until we all sit down

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at the fucking table and say right Let's sort this shit out, you know, and no red or red left or right shit, you

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know I don't think either side would describe themselves in that way No, but I just think I just think don't take a

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side The best way you get to the middle is by having people articulate opinions on the opposite end of the spectrum.

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Otherwise you get this kind of faux centrism, right, which is

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what, you know, people like Keir Starmer say they're gonna do.

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It's like, oh, I'm just gonna go and design this policy based on what a couple of people in a focus group told me.

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No, but can't we just take one question at a time and stop worrying about whether it's left or right and

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try and come up with the right answer and you would end up with something that isn't necessarily either.

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By the way, do you know where the whole idea of left and right comes from?

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Yes.

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Oh, yeah, that's a re go on, tell us.

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Uh, well, I think it's from the, well, not really parliament, but the assembly in, during the French Revolution.

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And the, the various different factions in the French Revolution stood on different sides of the chamber.

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So it's all the French.

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It's all the fault of the French, again.

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So that was this week's episode of BWB Extra.

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And we'll be back tomorrow with our finale for the week, the Business or Bullshit Quiz.

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Stay tuned.