British Writer in Poland Explains How War Propaganda Shapes Western Media Coverage

Ben Sixsmith [00:00:00] Yeah, we have a certain amount of privilege as English speakers. I mean, if a Polish person moves to England and says, you know, bury mash, no one's gonna start talking to 'em. They're gonna say, what the hell are you doing? You know, get out of my shop. But if I go to England, Poland, and I meet someone, I can say, hello, what's up? And people will talk back to me. So it it is, it is a Anglos ferric privilege that we have. I'm Bruce figure, a veterinarian living in Sylvia, Kansas, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:31] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. My guest is Ben Sixsmith. Ben Hale's from the uk, but he's living in Poland and he is a prolific writer that publishes in outlets like Unheard and Collette. Ben came to my attention when he wrote an article about the propaganda coming out of Ukraine. He definitely believes that Russia is in an act of aggression when they're fighting the Ukrainians, but he made the point that oftentimes some of the media that's coming outta the Ukraine has to have been extracted in ways that we might not be very comfortable with if we really understood how they get some of the prisoners of war from Russia to recant and say that Russia is losing this interview, goes wide stretching, talking about all sorts of things, everything from Russia to inflation, to what's going on with the Johnny Depp case. And then we even get into subjects like smells and time and consciousness. Ben is an interesting guy and I was proud to have him on. If you are enjoying these podcasts and you'd like to be a little bit more involved, you can always join the Articulate Ventures Network. The Network is a place where listeners of the podcast, people that love discussing topics like what we talk about here and they get together in groups. We have morning coffees, we have speaking gyms where people practice their speaking to get better and more effective and more persuasive. We also have things like the Circular Firing Squad, where we practice debate. We also host a book club once a month called the As the Crow Flies Book Club.

Vance Crowe [00:02:06] Now, you don't need to be a member of the network in order to join the book club. Really, it's just a place for people that want to make sure they're always getting a little bit of reading in every month to be able to keep up with a good pace. And then to have a great discussion. Last month we did the book, the Mandibles by Lionel Shriver. That was an excellent book club. And this month what we're doing is a group of selected works by Jorge Luis Borges, who these selected works are short stories, about 10 to 15 pages. And we have about six or seven selected. So if you're the type of person that would like to join Book Club, maybe to get to know a little bit more about the Articulate Ventures network, DM me on Twitter at Vance Crowe and I will send you a link to be able to set you up with getting involved in the book club. I really hope you'll try it. If it's something you've never done, you've never been a part of a book club, you're a little nervous about it. Everybody that joins, enjoys themselves, gets to meet a bunch of interesting people and you get to have one of those experiences that only happens if you show up. So if you're interested in doing that, DM me on Twitter. And if you're interested in joining the Articulate Ventures Network, go to Network, Articulate Ventures. All right, now without further ado, let's go to my interview with Ben Sixsmith. Ben Sixsmith, welcome to the podcast.

Ben Sixsmith [00:03:26] Thanks for having me, Vince,

Vance Crowe [00:03:28] Man, I'm super excited to have you. I've read some of your writing on the Unheard blog and I really think you have some interesting points of view. To start off, how did you become a writer on Unheard? And for people that don't know that outlet, how do you describe it?

Ben Sixsmith [00:03:43] So Unheard is a, an English website, but it has a lot of international perspectives as well. And I think it founded what we was founded to fill a niche for kind of not partisan, not wedded to any particular party or ideology. Ideas, slightly more alternative than the ones we were getting from traditional institutions that would look for different perspectives from across the ideological spectrum. But always challenging, received ideas and prejudices, unfounded prejudices, at least, you know, that's the goal.

Vance Crowe [00:04:28] And how did you get involved with them?

Ben Sixsmith [00:04:30] So I'd already been doing freelance writing for a number of different publications. I still do like Collette, like the Spectator of the Spectator world. And I had a good relationship with one of the editors. So he got me involved writing various pieces, freelance for the site.

Vance Crowe [00:04:50] So you're also, in addition to having your British accent, you are living in Poland right now, which as far as the Western media is concerned, is a very hot place to be because as I understand it, Poland decided not to pay Russia and rubles and is now being cut off from gas. Is that right? Yeah,

Ben Sixsmith [00:05:08] Apparently that's what's gonna happen. I mean, they announced that rather abruptly yesterday. But the Polish government has a very critical perspective on the Russian government, obviously. So it wasn't about to cave into any Southern demands. So apparently that's what will happen. Luckily it's fairly sunny weather here. We take energy from numerous other places. So hopefully it won't have too dramatic an impact on us, but obviously there'll be some complex times ahead.

Vance Crowe [00:05:38] Well, so speaking of Russia and Ukraine and all of that, one of the first writings that I had seen of yours was actually published relatively recently where you said, Hey, some of the hype that you're seeing in the Western media may not be exactly what you think that it is. Would you care to kind of explain your article and, and some of the points you made about potential torture or pressure of, of captured prisoners of war?

Ben Sixsmith [00:06:03] For sure. So I think very naturally we have the sympathy with the Ukrainians who are being invaded under very specious pretext. I have the same sympathy myself for sure, but when we do sympathize with a cause, we want to kind of idealize this. Cause we want to imagine that in every sense, it's gonna live up to our hopes and it's gonna live up to our expectations. And that doesn't necessarily reflect how the world operates outside of, you know, the Marvel cinematic universe. Sometimes there are gonna be claims the Ukrainians make, which they're not making 'cause they're factual, they're making them for propagandistic purposes, understandably, because they're in the middle of a war. But that doesn't mean we have to believe them. And sometimes they're gonna have military practices that we really shouldn't approve of. So the example I used in my article is when the Ukrainians were using Russian prisoners of war for propaganda purposes, basically these Russians were coming on TV and saying, you know, oh, the war's just a big mistake. Russia's gonna lose. This is terrible. And I think if any other nation like Iran, like Russia used prisoners in this manner, we would recognize it as something these prisoners didn't really believe something they were being coerced, pressured into saying. In fact, that's, that's taken place with Russia quite recently with a, a British soldier who'd been fighting on behalf of Ukraine. We would recognize that as something which shouldn't be allowed under the Geneva conventions unacceptable behavior.

Ben Sixsmith [00:07:38] But because we feel so sympathetic towards the Ukrainians, we really wanted to believe, you know, maybe these Russian soldiers really had come around to our cause. So in the UK press and the US press, it was reported quite uncritically. And I was saying, now look, just because we sympathize with their cause overall, that doesn't mean we need to sympathize with everything they do. And it certainly doesn't mean we need to believe everything they say.

Vance Crowe [00:08:07] Yeah, I mean that the, the way the media started pro portraying Ukraine as like the all good could do nothing wrong. It struck me as very odd, but, and it wasn't until I read your article that I was like, yeah, wait a second, it isn't okay to do this. Like, it, it isn't something that is a common practice to have your enemies renounce their, their, you know, like somebody you've captured, renounce, whoever they were working for and completely diminish them. You're like that, that actually, if you saw that in a movie or you saw somebody doing that as a, an American saying, no, I, I don't, I don't think we should be here, this is all wrong. We would be outraged by that. And there's something quite telling about how people let their sympathies get in the way of, of cold and more objective judgment over these things.

Ben Sixsmith [00:08:56] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, according to the Geneva Convention, you shouldn't even be using prisoners of war and media at all. You shouldn't be exposing them to lighten that manner. And there have been similar instances of where unacceptable practices have kind of been brushed over quite recently there was a report that Ukrainian soldiers have been contacting the families of Russian soldiers who had died and allegedly sending them photographs of their dead bodies. Which again, I feel like if that was a conflict we weren't emotionally invested in, we would see as, you know, just brutal and completely unnecessary to inflict punishment on, you know, the mothers and the fathers of these servicemen. But because we sympathized with their cause so much, there wasn't, there wasn't much of a critical reaction. And given the amount of support we're giving to the Ukrainians, again, very understandably, I think we have the perfect right to say this is gonna come with some conditions. And one of them is these certain practices are not acceptable and definitely given the extent to which we're invested in this conflict now in terms of arms, in terms of diplomacy, we have the right to question their claims and, you know, fit them into our understanding of how the war is progressing.

Vance Crowe [00:10:22] It's interesting 'cause when you, when I read your article, my actual thought was this is likely not just the Ukrainians wanting to do this, but if you want, if the, if the western world wants to give the Ukrainian support, you would need to have a way to be able to get your population to say, look, we're the good guys, this is why you should do this. And so it didn't even, it, it's, to me it's even more complicated than just the Ukrainians are doing, are bad actors here because you've got our me the Western media completely complicit in it because they're airing the stories. But my sense is you wouldn't be getting those kinds of stories if there weren't thumbs up from the more like military powers of the West that's supporting Ukraine.

Ben Sixsmith [00:11:03] Yeah, that's quite possible. And I'm also, it's much more indefensible really than the Ukrainians doing it. 'cause the Ukrainians have the misfortune to be caught up in this war. We're at a distance from it. So really we should have that critical remove that allows us to judge it more objectively. So yeah, probably there has been at least, at least TASA acceptance of these behaviors from the early,

Vance Crowe [00:11:27] So to me, Poland is in one of the most unique spots in all of the world, right? Because you're a NATO member, but then right up against Russia and you're, you're receiving, or you at least were receiving many of the refugees. What's the temperature going on in Poland? And maybe a, a good starting point for that is what are you doing in Poland right now?

Ben Sixsmith [00:11:50] So I work in Poland. I've been working in Poland for nearly nine years now. I came here quite randomly. I was just offered a job after I had some kind of job posting on the internet and I just loved it here. So I stayed here in my small town in Sia and yeah, it's had a huge impact. The, the war I'm, we've had millions of refugees coming through, many of them have settled here for now. There was a huge just outpouring of generosity. I mean, we've had refugees living in just in people's homes or in hotels while they've had rooms paid for them, huge donations of food and medical equipment and clothes. So there's been an incredible amount of charity just from common polish people as well as from institutions. And obviously, you know, when with migration on this scale there's gonna be complications. I've heard some people who say, you know, I can't afford a flat. Why is this Ukrainian gonna get a flat? Or, you know, I don't have a job. Why are we making it easier for Ukrainians to get hired? So there's, there's gonna be some complicated times ahead, there's gonna be some unease, but hopefully of course the military situation will improve and more Ukrainians, as many have been doing, will be able to move back or to find homes elsewhere so that it can be more, there can be more of a balance in Europe.

Vance Crowe [00:13:21] Do you have any sense of a timeline being where you are that says, Hey, we think that the war is winding down, or no, we think things are gonna just keep grinding on

Ben Sixsmith [00:13:31] I I have no idea. I mean I think there was way too much optimism, let's say towards the beginning to the end of March because the Ukrainian resistance, it was certainly much stronger than many of us expected, myself included. So I'm certainly not trying to pose as the big brained expert on the conflict, but I think because we'd been so pessimistic before, it's like people swung around, they became super optimistic. They thought Ukrainians were gonna triumph much more easily than they ever could do. You know, I talked to some people in Poland and they seemed to have the sense that Zelensky was gonna kind of drive into Moscow. There was so much good cheer. And now I think we see that this conflict is just gonna grind on, like both sides are strong enough that neither of them can really prevail unless there's some major surprise. So I'm, I'm not sure, I mean, who knows? It depends on the military resources. The military will,

Vance Crowe [00:14:33] Yeah, I think there would've been virtually no chance of at least US support if there hadn't been that sense. And this is kind of the way that, that they present war to the, to the Americans all the time. Like, hey, we're gonna go in, we're gonna do something really quick and then we'll be done. And in two weeks this will be over same way with, you know, two weeks to stop the spread. Because that's one of those things that people are like, oh, I can endure something for two weeks. But if you'd have told people that the Ukrainian crisis was gonna go on as long as it is now e even just what it is with almost, no, there's been very, very little harm to the Americans directly. Although a lot of inflation and things are blamed on that, I, I don't think there would've been a stomach for it. So it's interesting to me to see how timelines are presented to people to make something far more palatable than if they knew what the reality was gonna be.

Ben Sixsmith [00:15:21] Yeah, absolutely. And obviously there have been many voices which have been suggesting that there should be a greater push towards some kind of deal between the Russians and the Ukrainians. And I'm very sympathetic to that because there are such hot interests on both sides and there is such power on both sides that it's difficult to imagine either side completely backing down. So if that's the case, inevitably there's gonna be some kind of compromise. But I guess, you know, there's so much grievance on both sides now that it's gonna be hard for either of them to budge. So yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:16:00] Because once, once somebody agrees and one side and then there's revenge and the the, you know, who started it gets completely lost and ever backing it off. I mean it seems nearly impossible unless there's a, a major paradigm shift. So, you know, you don't write all the time about things going on between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, as I look through a lot of your stuff, much of what you've been focusing on in the last few weeks have been on things about women having children, the dating world masculinity. But you are a prolific writer. So how is it that you decide what to write about and what's drawing your attention these days?

Ben Sixsmith [00:16:40] So definitely it varies. Sometimes an editor will reach out and they'll suggest a topic if they think it's kind of in my wheelhouse. But sometimes it's just what I happen to have been reading what I happen to have been listening to. I think for some writers they will have their niche and they'll have a kind of deep, but not necessarily very wide knowledge of that niche. And for me, I I, I have a lot of curiosity and not much patience. So I like to explore lots of different subjects and it keeps, it keeps the work interesting and hopefully it keeps readers interested as well.

Vance Crowe [00:17:16] And so let's talk about some of the stuff you've been focused on right now, particularly around masculinity and, and kinda the changing role of, of culture. One, one you put forward was that basically we're not living in the 1950s anymore, we're living in a more, i a different age. How would you describe what's going on and and are you specifically just talking about Poland or are you talking about the West in general?

Ben Sixsmith [00:17:39] General, no, I was talking about the west in general in that piece I was talking about how there'll be some feminist voices which still speak with this kind of almost paradoxical nostalgia as if we're still living in the kind of society where men will go out to work and expect the woman to stay at home and look after the kids and make sandwiches and about how we just don't live in this world anymore. I mean, relationships that exist are much more equal between the sexes of course, but also in many cases relationships just don't exist and people never start those families because it's, it's more difficult for people to put down these stable roots and to form these stable relationships and perhaps there just isn't so much of a will to start long-term families.

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] Is that going on in Poland right now? Are people not getting married or not having children at the rates that they are further west in places like the US

Ben Sixsmith [00:18:39] Probably, yeah, I think, I think the u us both rate is considerably above ours. I, I'm not sure how much Poland is lower than the average for Europe. I'd have to check that, but probably lower than the us. We have a lot of people here who live with their parents for quite a long time into their twenties and even into their thirties because it's difficult to afford like independent accommodation. So that's definitely obstructs family formation. 'cause of course if you have, if you have a girlfriend, you don't necessarily want to bring her home to your parents' house of an evening. And you know, if you have a wife, you know, it could be uncomfortable to get married and live with your parents or with her parents. So you want to kick it down the can a bit more until it's more realistic to live together. And I think that's a big problem with family formation here. Certainly,

Vance Crowe [00:19:32] You know, as you're describing this, I wonder if, if we aren't missing something about the way culture used to be. So I used to live in a place called Wisconsin, which is in northern the US and in Milwaukee specifically, it was actually quite heavily populated by Polish people. And one of the interesting things about the way they built their houses was a family would move over and a couple would start their home and they would build into the ground. So be at the basement level. And then when they had kids and those kids were about ready to start having a family, they would build another level on the house and the adults would move or the, the parents would move to the first floor and the new family would start on the second floor and you would see these houses grow up, which this kind of concept that you would live in this like multi-generational family in our modern context just doesn't exist. But I wonder if it wasn't far more common in a different age when you didn't have things like people waiting so long to get married, people getting married outside of the church, people living together before they got married, those kinds of things. Yeah,

Ben Sixsmith [00:20:32] I mean that could be true. I mean I, I'd be a hypocrite to complain about it 'cause I moved to a different country from my family, so, you know, I don't have much room to judge. But yeah, probably that has had an effect. I mean, families are considerably more spread out. This has an effect on yeah, whether we're gonna have children, but also, you know, who the grandparents are gonna live with. That's why we have this explosion of social care because generally they're not cared for so much by their children or their grandchildren at home. So yeah, in a sense that kind of multi-generational household, there was some stability there, there was some opportunities to, to grow the family. And I guess the independence we have now, everything comes with trade-offs and that's probably, that's probably been a trade off for that as well.

Vance Crowe [00:21:17] Certainly the largest trade-off is childcare, right? Like I, I don't know if you have children, but it is so expensive to outsource the, the watching of your children. But my wife and I are currently right now experiencing COVID and so we're trying to both be sick, keep working and watch our daughter full-time. And it is insane. And the only way I can conclude that anybody could do this was it gives you a lot higher incentive to get along with your mother-in-law or your mom because the, the i I could probably get along with my mother a lot better now knowing just how valuable it would be to have her care for my child.

Ben Sixsmith [00:21:59] Yeah, that's true. I mean, how childcare costs are amazing, but one good thing in Poland is there are subsidized nurseries. People do get some child benefits to help with that, but yeah, I'm not sure sometimes how people can afford it. And I mean, yeah, if there was grand to look after that could help. But I dunno, you know, I dunno how much of the grands want to want to do that nowadays. Certainly I know a lot of older people are interested in traveling once they, you know, pass retirement age, they're interested in focusing on their hobbies. So I guess all, all levels of generations we have these different incentives pulling us away to, towards our private interests, let's say.

Vance Crowe [00:22:41] Yeah, you had some really interesting observations about Poland entering more of a luxury sort of, of lifestyle where you were, I, I can't remember the TV show. I always see it just pull up on YouTube every once in a while. Those British guys that run around in their cars and, and there's an older guy that had made all these observations about Poland, about how people had left to go work in Poland. And this is a quite interesting observation, but not least of which was that Poland itself is entering a new phase of modernity where they have more disposable income, people want to travel, they get involved with cars. Talk about that.

Ben Sixsmith [00:23:21] Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, back in the days of communism it would be very difficult just to get your basic necessities. And then since communism collapsed and capitalism has taken off, there's been, yeah, an expanding middle class. People have a lot more disposable income and I think when capitalism starts, you do get a lot of kind of status seeking as well. People want to have the bigger house, they want to have the bigger car, not just because it's fun, but because they can lord it over the neighbors a bit. So this has great aspects. I mean, people have been able to travel, they've been able to have things which their grandparents could never have even dreamed of, but certainly it does lead to a certain amount of, of consumerism, of kind of petty neighborhood jealousy over who has the best stuff. I remember hearing about a dentist in my town, for example, he wanted to start up another clinic, so he sold his expensive car and bought, you know, a cheap old banger. So he'd have the money to fund it and started losing clients. And he spoke to one of his clients and realized it was because they just assumed that because he wasn't driving his expensive car anymore, he can't be a very good dentist. So when we have this money, they, it can encourage, you know, some unhealthy attitudes towards that money. But obviously, you know, you can't begrudge anybody from enjoying a more comfortable lifestyle.

Vance Crowe [00:24:50] You know, another big thing that I was surprised finding out, you know, you're from Poland, that the things that are so popular here in the US that Joe Rogan experience podcast and a lot of the things that are around him seem to, it seems to me that you're quite an observant person on what's going on and what this means for culture. Talk just a little bit about like what do you think of of Joe Rogan and the kind of crew of people he hangs out with and their impact on culture?

Ben Sixsmith [00:25:17] Well, I mean, I'm a fan of comedy, so I've been watching Joe Rogan for many, many years back when he was this little comedian and USC commentator arguing with Carlos Mencia on stage when his podcast was sponsored by some kind of masturbation aid. So I've been watching for a long time and then it somehow became this kind of cultural intellectual force with all of these different guests from so many fields of life. So I, I guess I've, like many people I've traveled along with it and watched its its progress into this alternative media be moth, which has been very interesting. And yeah, I think it's, it's definitely encouraged people to see that if you're gonna have entertainment, if you're gonna have intellectual content, it doesn't have to come from, you know, flashy, multimillion dollar studio or it doesn't have to come from a kind of hallowed academic institution, it can just come from your own home, which has been a, a very valuable change giving people this kind of independence to, to seek and to start their own content. But obviously as we've seen with Joe Rogan this year, it does come with a certain amount of backlash and sometimes it comes with a certain amount of difficulties when it comes to navigating which guests are and aren't worth interviewing or which claims are and aren't worth pushing back on. So I have this troubles, but it's very interesting cultural development.

Vance Crowe [00:26:48] Yeah, and it's really interesting thing because it, it kind of lays bare what's going on with the rest of media and I think everybody that's listening now knows that CNN's, you know, foray into this paid media thing where they were trying to, what was the CNN Plus spent like $300 million to get less than 10,000 subscribers. And it was just an utter failure. I mean, they, they saw the writing on the wall probably as soon as the subscriptions didn't come in. And you wonder like how much of those news outlets would exist at all if they weren't already just in, in the pipe? You know, I, I was telling somebody before COVID, I didn't know a single person that watched CNN unless it was on the, at the airport. Like i, I just, who watches CNN No one I knew. And yet they're this giant powerhouse and it seems to me that it's, it's just because they're in the pipe in some way. And I think Joe Rogan ended up showing, you know, just, just how fragile and you bullshit a lot of that was.

Ben Sixsmith [00:27:50] Yeah, I mean it's, it, it's this change towards having brands that people can kind of identify with on a more personal level. I mean, I'm sure you have fans of Joe Rogan who are like, I'm, you know, I'm a Joe Rogan guy, you know, they see themselves in Joe Rogan. Nobody's saying, yeah, you know, I'm a CNN guy. That's how I've chosen to build my personal identity around CNN like I say, it was just on tv. So if they come wrong and say, we've got this extra CNN product to sell to you, nobody's gonna be invested in it. It's just, it's not part of how we see ourselves. It was just, it was just a matter of convenience.

Vance Crowe [00:28:29] What goes on with Poland. How does the media work there? Do you have the same kind of public television, the PBS or the NPR that we have here in the us?

Ben Sixsmith [00:28:38] Yeah, we have a, a state

Vance Crowe [00:28:39] Private,

Ben Sixsmith [00:28:39] We have a state media channel, tatau, and then we have private media channels like Tatau n So it's, it's a mixed amount of media. And then of course I'm not very plugged into it, but you have all kinds of alternative outlets as well online and as magazines and publishing houses. So like, like in the US it's very, it's very mixed.

Vance Crowe [00:29:02] How do you get your news?

Ben Sixsmith [00:29:04] So my Polish news, I'm mainly, mainly to get to the internet. I'm not a big TV guy, so different mainstream websites like on it. And, and because my Polish is terrible shamefully, I also follow some kind of English slash polish commentators so that I don't need to frown too much at the screen trying to work out what the article says or plug it into Google Translate.

Vance Crowe [00:29:35] So you're polish you're, you're not able, are you functional, conversational, you're able to get around?

Ben Sixsmith [00:29:40] I'm able to get around. I mean, in my job I, I only use English. I'm, I'm an, you know, I'm an English teacher, so Polish doesn't really factor into it. And also living in a small town, I think people were very keen to speak to me in English because they didn't have those opportunities so much, so many people who had lived in England and then they'd come back, it was like a great opportunity to practice the language skills. So I didn't really have that finger prodding me to learn, but now I see that that was, that was really bad and enabled my own laziness and procrastination. So now I'm finally trying to catch up with it. But I definitely should have started learning the second I touched down. And I do, I do recommend that if anyone moves to a foreign country, they shouldn't just coast on their English because, you know, now I meet people I'd love to talk to or you know, I'd love to read the Polish classics in the original language and I can see that what, you know, what what seemed convenient a few years ago now seems like more of a disability. So I regret that I didn't throw myself into it more.

Vance Crowe [00:30:53] It's hard. I mean, when you have the English language, it takes you all kinds of places. You know, I was living in Kenya and I found the same thing. People were so elated to, to finally be around a native English speaker that I would have to really, really push them to talk with me in their mother tongue because what they wanted to do was practice their English. And you know, if you're tired at the end of the day, it's just easier just to go back and forth, you know, all right, let's just stay in English. It's easier for me to figure out what it is that you're trying to say than it is for me to do all the work of putting it through. So there's no judgment here, man. I understand how that goes.

Ben Sixsmith [00:31:27] Yeah, we have a certain amount of privilege as English, because I mean, if a Polish person moves to England and says, you know, Ash, no one's gonna start talking to 'em. They're gonna say, what the hell are you doing? You know, get outta my shop. But if I go to England, Poland and I meet someone, I can say hello, what's up? And people will talk back to me. So it, it is, it is a ang endless farrick privilege that we have.

Vance Crowe [00:31:50] So as a prolific writer, I find that most of the time those people are readers. You mentioned you wished you could read the Polish classics. What do you, what do you read these days? What's been capturing your interest?

Ben Sixsmith [00:32:02] So I don't read as many books as I should. I think it's because when you are into freelance writing online you consume such an amount of articles and essays. Sometimes it's hard to get around to a good book. But I've been trying to refocus myself on literature. So I've been going back and reading some books by my favorite novelist, Joseph Conrad, who's actually a British Polish writer. He was born in Poland and he moved to England at the beginning of the 19 hundreds and wrote, he acquainted himself with English and wrote some great novels like Heart of Darkness, which is what Apocalypse Now is based on. I think that's his most famous book. And some other books like Nostrom and Lord Jim, but mostly fiction because yeah, I read so many articles, so many essays as part of my work and sometimes book reviews that when it's just my, my leisure time, I generally wanna read some fiction.

Vance Crowe [00:33:05] I, I read Heart of Darkness while I was living in Kenya. That was a heavy, heavy book, but, but an amazing one. I didn't realize he was a Polish author. That's astounding to me. So let's talk about what's going on in the news today. I was thumbing through Twitter and it looks to me like people are saying the Euro is not doing very well against the dollar. There's a lot of money fleeing there. Is that, is the economy doing okay in Europe? What are you watching and seeing there?

Ben Sixsmith [00:33:33] Yeah, I'm not, so, I'm not so attuned to the Euro because here we have the Polish, but definitely we have. Okay, yeah, yeah. But definitely we have some big problems. Inflation has really gone up. There's a lot of supply chain issues, partly due to China and the difficulty of getting products through there. Especially now with the lockdown in Shanghai. I know there are issues connected with taxation 'cause we have so much, you know, so much still to make up for after the pandemic lockdowns and so much instability concerned with what's happening in Ukraine. So a lot of economic problems, certainly.

Vance Crowe [00:34:17] Yeah. So when you say inflation is up, what does that mean in, in practical terms for you?

Ben Sixsmith [00:34:24] So especially heating costs. When I got my, one of my gas bills this year, I thought I was gonna need an ambulance fairly soon because my heart was beating like, you know, John Bonham beating the drums for Led Zeppelin. So I wasn't happy money.

Vance Crowe [00:34:38] How much did it go up? Gimme a perspective.

Ben Sixsmith [00:34:41] I would say, I'm not sure how common this would be for other people. I'd say it went up by two thirds for me. And I know in, I know in Britain there's lis a poll thing. I know in Britain energy costs have just skyrocketed. So it's, it's quite a common European problem, price of food's gone up. And certainly here price of accommodation is going up, but hopefully it's gonna be a relatively temporary thing and it'll stabilize more by the end of

Vance Crowe [00:35:17] The year. Do you have that sense is that this is temporary and that these prices are compensatory?

Ben Sixsmith [00:35:23] I I wouldn't say I have that sense. I'd say I'm just trying to, trying to be a glass half full. Oh God.

Vance Crowe [00:35:31] I, I recently, so I run a book club and we, we just read a book called The Mandibles. And one of the key features, I don't know if you've heard of this book by Lionel Shriver, I highly recommend it. But one of the key things is they, they go through what they think of as transitory inflation and everybody's just waiting for the prices to go down. And when people realize that the prices aren't going down and that the value of their money has just been, you know, totally eradicated, that's when you see the s spiral really go right. Because if people start slowing down some of their purchases, 'cause they're like, ah, you know, maybe I'll wait for that. And then they realize, no, wait a second, they're gonna keep going up. And I have to wonder if I'm chicken little if this is just like my natural propensity is to believe that the economic doom is on its way or if that's what's really going on. And it's, it's hard because if you, if you are too dark about the economy, then you don't take the chances you need to take and you miss out on things that are sitting right in front of you. But if you're not dark enough about the realities of the world, then, then you are one of the last people to react and you end up really missing out on how to protect yourself. So it's this kind of tension that I didn't know if it was just being experienced in the US and, and not to say that I'm glad that it's happening in Poland, but I'm glad that somebody else has to deal with the, the tension between those two ideas.

Ben Sixsmith [00:36:54] Yeah, it happens. I mean, I was talking to a friend about buying accommodation and he said he'd been thinking about buying a house, but he was gonna wait a couple of years until the prices had gone down. And I mean it could go down, but definitely what we've experienced in the UK is they just kept going up and up and up and up and up. I think my parents bought their first house and then 20 years later they sold it for five times the price I, I'm not sure, but many times the price, sometimes the price just doesn't go down. And that's something we have to, we have to prepare for. So, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:37:27] And, and what are your thoughts on cryptocurrency? I saw you having some jokes about it on, on Twitter. What are you, what do you thinks about it?

Ben Sixsmith [00:37:36] So I think the problem with crypto is it's so, because it's so new, it's so prey to kind of faddishness. So I've definitely had a lot of jokes at the expense of people buying those just hideous apes because it was just so clearly like just a passing fad. Or some guy I think had bought a copy of a tweet as an NFT and for like a million and then it sold it for $200 or something pathetic like that. So it's, it's very vulnerable to those kind of, you know, schemes and failures. But then I guess any new technology at the beginning, there's gonna be serious complications 'cause people are still figuring out what to do with it. So maybe in the future, I mean, I'm not an expert, maybe in the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be an incredibly powerful tool, but I would for sure recommend that people be very careful about their investments or I, or very knowledgeable at least before getting too excited because certainly a lot of people got rich 'cause they bought Bitcoin early, but that doesn't mean you're gonna get very rich 'cause you bought a weird ape and a Hawaiian shirt.

Vance Crowe [00:38:47] Yeah, I mean there's just been such this giant conflation between what all these things are, right? Like that there would be these weird coins that, that people could say, you know, they couldn't describe at all what it does or why it's interesting, but that there was gonna be some occasion why that price would just spike up. And the NFTs were the, the, I don't know, the peak of that mania. And like you can of course see that there is a place where digital artwork where you own that in some way has some value that other people also value. And so there's some price stability there. But it went so insane, right, that that because you could crank out these digital and they look like eight bit pieces of, of art. Like they, they weren't really beautiful things. They were only the fact that you were first. And it seems like that mania has come crashing down. Although, I mean, I can imagine other scenarios where NFTs are very, very important. But, but yeah, you probably had to ride that first wave and and get bucked off in order to really see where the true value lies.

Ben Sixsmith [00:39:54] Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I hope if it does become more of an established industry, that kind of speculative value can be pegged to something which is of cultural value as well. Because I know, you know, I I I'm aware that people who are buying the apes, they didn't like sincerely think, wow, this is, this is such a beautiful picture of a monkey. Like it was, it was more of a financial and a status thing. But I'd like to believe that if we are gonna use NFTs as a, you know, as a financial asset, as a social asset, we can also use 'em to develop some kind of cultural assets as well. I know people have been selling books as NFTs, for example, and I'm all for that if it supports publishing. But let's not, you know, let's not focus our eyes too much away from things that are actually beautiful and actually true because otherwise why do we even have money in the first place?

Vance Crowe [00:40:52] Oh, say more about that.

Ben Sixsmith [00:40:54] Well, I mean, if, if, if I have money, but I don't know what's valuable to spend it on, then nobody's, you know, nobody's really gaining anything. And also if our economy is too focused away from things that are beautiful and true, I just can't imagine us having healthy enough minds to sustain any kind of social progress because we haven't developed the kind of cultural sophistication or intellectual sophistication which is gonna allow us to sustain that kind of economy. So

Vance Crowe [00:41:26] Yeah, art, art is just such an interesting thing for people to spend money on, right? Particularly in a digital age. So a couple of weeks ago I met with an artist who, who does work, his name's Alex Dodge. He has galleries in both New York and Tokyo. And we decided that we would get together in virtual reality and we built a museum. So we were basically looking at some of these brilliant works of art in as high definition as you can. 'cause you know, the amount of storage space in this VR world is negligible, right? So you could just put these giant versions of Monet's water lilies of a botero of, you know, sculpture. But there was something like synthetic about it that just didn't quite map to it being the real thing. Whereas if you stood in front of Monet's lilies, something about it being real seemed like it would be worth more money than just having that digital thing. But like the, the value of that money, you know, like I I particularly in a, in an age of inflation, art and inflation all becomes a very interesting thing. Would you rather have this object that is only valuable if other people see that it's valuable or desire it in the same way? Or would you rather have money which is diminishing in its ability to buy you goods like accommodation or, or food, things like that. It's a very weird time and, and mixing art and digital assets and all these things together are almost unknowingly complicated when you think about money.

Ben Sixsmith [00:43:01] Yeah. And, and it's not, it is not a hundred percent new. I mean, if you look at some developments in modern art where people have been paying unbelievable amounts of money. I mean recent, fairly recently I think there was a copy of a picture by Banksy, which self-destructed, like as soon as it was bought, it had some kind of shredder inside. So the picture was shredded and I mean, somebody spent millions to own these shreds of paper with a slightly crude drawing on them, presumably because of the status rather than because they loved this picture of a girl with a balloon or whatever. So much so it's not exclusive to NFTs, but I do think we have to try and connect economic and cultural value as, as difficult as that is, or

Vance Crowe [00:43:51] Banksy seems like such a big scam to me that seems like a few people in on, on an art, an artist that is no doubt creative and no doubt has things that are capturing, but the capturing of it is, it's, it's not quite as, yeah, to me that that Banksy thing with the shredder is, is almost a perfect example of a scam, you know, in in, in terms of art. Like if you didn't know that was going to happen to the art. But I don't, yeah, there, there's something really odd to me about the Banksy edition into our modern conceptualization of art because it's nowhere close to something like, you know, a Picasso or, or at least to me it isn't, I don't know. What are your thoughts?

Ben Sixsmith [00:44:36] No, I I I completely agree. I mean a lot of it is very so amorphic humor and not very well conceived. I think the big appeal was probably just the mystery of just who is this guy roaming around creating this art? Which I, you know, I can understand that to some extent. It's always nice to have a mystery in this kind of enigmatic sense of who it could be. But it is been so long that now I have to believe a lot of people know who he is and what he looks like and you know, what color t-shirt he wears and they're just not letting it on because the value of the mystery is greater than the value of whatever he scribbles on the side of a wall.

Vance Crowe [00:45:17] Yeah, I mean, and you think about when mysteries are really resolved, like who was deep throat and Watergate, like all the sudden you realize that the oxygen gets led out of, of the anticipation is probably what makes that Satoshi Nakamoto concept with, you know, the originator of Bitcoin. Deeply important and very interesting. And for me, I, you know, I'd probably go the rest of my life not really wanting to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is because in, in the not knowing there, that is where the power lies.

Ben Sixsmith [00:45:48] Yeah, absolutely. People are always underwhelming 'cause they're, they're always kind of like us or like people we know, whereas the idea of a person is much more powerful 'cause we can just project whatever we like onto it.

Vance Crowe [00:46:01] Yeah, actually that, that reminds me of the Amber heard Johnny Depp things. I don't normally talk about modern current events, but I've been completely captivated by this is this big news over in Poland, this like libel case that's going on there. Oh, lot.

Ben Sixsmith [00:46:17] A lot of people are following it. Yeah. A lot of people are glued to it, especially women are following the, the live streams. It's, it has become a kind of cultural slash almost perversely entertainment phenomenon. I know people who've been staying up till the late hours to see what new revelations are gonna drop. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a big thing over here as well.

Vance Crowe [00:46:40] To me it seems like two people that became enthralled with one another, right? Like that they painted on to the, they they projected like, you know, you, you get to be about 23, 24 and you start realizing like, whoever this person is that I'm falling in love with, the bubble is gonna burst. And if I have high expectations, I'm the loser here. Like, like having low expectations about who your person is going to, you know, ultimately be, ends up creating a, like a nice delta that makes love something that's a reality. And it seems to me that they both had these like absurdly high, you know, belief systems in who the other one was and when both of them were really human broken, you know, people that are, that are tossed and turned around by, by Hollywood and all the crazy things that does to you that of course this was just going to smash against the rocks. To me this is like, all you had to do was see the beginning of how this thing was working and the inevitable conclusion was going to be this crazy outcome that's happening right now. It seems, it seems inevitable, but it's still fascinating to watch because most of the time by the by, by the time you're 50, you're not doing these things anymore.

Ben Sixsmith [00:47:58] Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think a lot of us have this kind of main character syndrome where we dramatize our life and we kind of go around, maybe not quite with voiceover in our heads, but you know, we, we see this kind of narrative of our life and the ups and downs and when you literally play the main character, I'm sure that tendency is magnified many times. So I think probably, yeah, both of them had this very dramatic idea of relationships and of their personal lives and that really, yeah, obviously that really created drama. I mean I've only followed bits and bobs, so not enough to say who was more at fault. I have my suspicions, but maybe I better leave that until the end of the trial. But clearly they were both damaged people who brought their damages to the relationship with a very toxic results. Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:48:54] So you're somewhat not avant-garde writer, you know, you're kind of pushing the envelope. One of the questions I like to ask people that push the envelope is what I call the Peter Thiel paradox, which is, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on?

Ben Sixsmith [00:49:11] Wow, that's a big question. I believe, so this is something I've been working on recently. I believe that the question of whether or not there is a God and what, you know, how the universe came to be is very, very important and we're thinking deeply about, whereas I'd say most people I know, either they kind of lazily disbelieve or they lazily do believe not to challenge like their private morals or, or how they conduct themselves, but just in the sense of what they believe about the universe. They don't think it's terribly important and it doesn't really color how they see life. But I think we've, we've kind of, since we had this new atheism bubble, it's become almost cliche to talk about whether God exists. We just kind of, we passively disbelieve it or we passively believe in it and we don't explore it very deeply or very emotionally or very rigorously intellectually. So that's just the first example that came to mind. I don't wanna say that's necessarily, well

Vance Crowe [00:50:17] That's an interesting one. So how, how have you come to a conclusion or, or do you have conclusions about where we were, you know, prior to the Big Bang or what it all means?

Ben Sixsmith [00:50:28] Oh, I don't have conclusions, absolutely not. But I, I, I do, I I deeply believe in following the question. I wouldn't want to go to my grave thinking, you know, well I just, I, I dunno, I, I'd rather get as close to the answer as I possibly can because yeah, if I woke up tomorrow in a a foreign country, I'd wanna know how I got there and what had happened before. So waking up in this foreign country that we call the universe, I, you know, I wanna know what that's all about as well.

Vance Crowe [00:51:00] You know, it's interesting. So I'm the father of a, you know, she's almost two years old. We're about to have another child here in the next couple of months. And what's funny about the child is that they are so working so hard to be able to exist and to be able to figure out how to express themselves and curious about the things around them that they don't take the time to wonder, at least as far as you can tell, right? Like, where did I come from? Or what does it all mean? But you also like have, if you're a parent, you become, you have the very real experience of knowing child, you were not here two years ago. There was no you, there was no, you know, child that gets excited about seeing redheaded birds or, you know, stomps and cries when she doesn't get cheese when she wants it. Like this being just didn't exist. And it, it really is a profound thing that at least as a parent, it ha you know, where did this come from? I mean, I know physically where it came from when you combine, you know, the mother and the father together and how all that works. But there's still something very, very deep about the consciousness aspect of this and the personality that that exudes from all of it.

Ben Sixsmith [00:52:14] Yeah, and I mean there's, we did that as well. 'cause we're so immersed in our daily lives. I mean, to some extent it's ridiculous that I get annoyed if a restaurant doesn't have a dish I want. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, who cares? And to some extent that's necessary because if we spent our whole lives sitting around being philosophical, we'd never get anything done. And we'd never have developed such technologies and businesses because we'd, you know, we'd be sitting around on our backside thinking. So it, it's necessary. But I think we need to take those, those times to think about these existential questions as well.

Vance Crowe [00:52:51] You think a lot about the existential questions, where you came from. What do you think about where it is that you're going? Where do you want your writing to take you? What do you, what do you hope occurs as, as a result of this tremendous effort? I mean, your, your archives are, are prolific.

Ben Sixsmith [00:53:06] So partly I just wanna entertain people. I mean, essentially writing is entertainment. Most of us, when we go to our favorite websites, we're not like, you know, I really wanna get some truth this morning. We're like, well, you know, we wanna be diverted, we wanna be entertained. So partly I just wanna entertain my readers. I wanna say some things to the true and beautiful. I mean, I'm not the most big brained, intelligent, you know, deeply thinking person in the world. But I wanna strike some things at least, which are gonna change how people think in a positive direction. Yeah. Create some, some small amount of beauty in the world. I mean, I take, I take style quite seriously as well. I think we need to use language as best as we can. So create some phrases which might kind of echo in people's minds at important times, possibly. And yeah, just in more kind of concrete professional terms, I'd like to write one or two really good books that, you know, when I'm, when I'm dying, I can look up at my bookshelf and think, wow, yeah, I, I made something which was worth making professionally. Of course, of course, in private life, we hope to make things worth making as well.

Vance Crowe [00:54:18] And when you think about writing a book, are you thinking about fiction or nonfiction? How does this sit with you?

Ben Sixsmith [00:54:24] I hope, I mean, ideally both. I wrote a small fiction book last year more, more as a passion project than anything. And yeah, now I'd like to write a nonfiction book. I think it's good to use the intellect and the imagination, whichever genre we apply it to. So hopefully both.

Vance Crowe [00:54:46] I really like this concept that you've mentioned several times. I wanna do something that's true and beautiful. True and beautiful. Can you think of examples of other people that have produced things that are true and beautiful?

Ben Sixsmith [00:54:58] Absolutely. So, I mean, in literature, for example, I mean, Conrad, I think he had really deep insights about human nature, but it was also framed within very beautiful. They're very dark stories. I mean, poets as well. If you read, so for example, I'm a big admirer of t ts Elliot and a lot of his poems, I mean, they say deep things about what it means to be human, but they're also very beautiful. But hopefully prose writers as well. I mean, even opinion commentators, like from kind of even a horrible cynic like HL Mankin, he could strike up beautiful phrases or, I mean, I guess an example everybody knows is Christopher Hitchens. I mean, I don't, I disagreed with him a lot on a lot, but sometimes when you read his articles he thought, wow, damn, that's, that's just extraordinary writing the way he could capture an image or, or capture a thought. So yeah, many, many, many different artists, philosophers, and even kind of lowly grubbing hacks like me, we, we can aspire to that.

Vance Crowe [00:56:06] I, I agree with you on the Christopher Hitchens. Even if you were in a ferous dis disagreement with him, you'd still have to chuckle at the way that he put together an idea. And, and, and really, like I, and you're, you're, you were saying earlier, how much you like comedy to me, being in a place where you can watch a person on stage, get everyone to laugh about something that they feel really uncomfortable about or really unsure about. To me that is beauty. And, and it's because now in today's day and age, you know, you can watch a Netflix special or you can watch somebody doing this, but there's nothing that replaces being in a room, hearing a comedian say something you don't agree with at first, but then feel yourself being moved by the, by virtue of the way that they frame the idea, the way that they capture you, the way that you're around other people, and you can feel them moving too. That to me is something that's so beautiful that it can only be described in the human experience of it. There's, there's no way you can write about it. You can watch it, but you can't really know it until you felt it.

Ben Sixsmith [00:57:15] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, rhetorical elegance is so important to comedy, the way you can capture a thought so smoothly that it might take someone by surprise, but it eases into their brain. And there is there, like I say, elegance. There is a beauty to that, even if it is about a dark or a disturbing subject. And yeah, I mean, even, even with our friends, whenever our friends make us laugh as well, it doesn't necessarily have to be like professional comedians. It's always a very beautiful moment. That's why, you know, all, all of us with our friends, we have these in jokes that we still talk about, all these funny moments that we still laugh about because they resonated so deeply with us.

Vance Crowe [00:57:54] I once heard a, I think it must have been a college professor or somebody, they were, I don't think they were talking specifically about marriage, but they talked about the importance of, in a close relationship, being able to find a way to laugh when the two of you were the most angry at each other would be the salvation. Right? It would be the thing that would keep you together. And I remember thinking that was ridiculous. Like, if you're fighting, you wanna win. But now, as a person that's been married for more than 10 years, I can tell you that like truly one of the greatest things that can ever happen is to find a way to make a joke that makes both of you stop and realize the absurdity of the moment. Because otherwise you just get captured in it. And that sort of comedy, just like you were saying, is actually true and beautiful. It's, it's like to be able to diffuse an argument by making each other laugh or, or to laughter in intimacy, it's just like, those are the most beautiful moments of life. And probably the closest thing to truth, right? Because there's, there's, there's something so pure about it.

Ben Sixsmith [00:58:54] Yeah. It's such a, such a kind of deep mutual understanding that we can step outside of our own kind of maybe selfish or obsessive perspective and we can have that moment of connection, something that we both recognize as as funny. It is definitely a very beautiful moment, for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:59:15] So is it spring in Poland right now? Are you guys, have you guys started it? Are things getting green there yet?

Ben Sixsmith [00:59:21] Yeah, just starting. The weather's still very confused. It doesn't know if it wants to be cold or hot, but it's gradually getting more warm. Yeah. The flowers beginning to spread, birds beginning to sing. So it's, it's a good time of year.

Vance Crowe [00:59:36] So do you have a favorite smell in Poland? Is there a, is there a smell of spring or a smell of a certain kind of flour that captures you?

Ben Sixsmith [00:59:44] Yeah, I love running through the fields up at the back of our town. I mean, I couldn't, I'm not enough of a, a nature lover to tell you what the smell is, but I know, I know how it strikes me. And the smell of a Polish bakery is, I mean, the smell of any bakery is amazing in the morning, but there's something special about the smell of a Polish bakery at 6:00 AM when you're gonna work and they're tempting you inside.

Vance Crowe [01:00:10] To me, I, I keep talking about my daughter, but it's just, I spend so much of my time and since we have COVID now, it's just the three of us spending all of our time together and, and my time with you today. And smelling is one of those things that it really slows down time. So I have this bush outside of my house called a Korean Spice by Burnum, and it is an amazing flour. It smells like the most amazing perfume you could ever imagine. If you could bottle it as a perfume, it would, it would beat out Gucci, anything. It is amazing. And then as the season goes on, you have about a week of it smelling like perfume, and then it starts to smell like a spice like cinnamon or like nutmeg or something that's in that genre. And so you get to follow this pattern. And I realized because last year I was taking my tiny little daughter out there, and now I'm taking her out there again. That smells of the season have actually way slowed things down for me. Now, spring isn't just that time. I'm waiting for it to get nice enough to be outside all the time. Now it's like something I want to slow down and hold in the moment. And so I'm, I was just curious because you're a person that appreciates truth and beauty, that smells seem to be an important component of this. Yeah,

Ben Sixsmith [01:01:26] I mean, I don't, I'm not a met someone who goes in for meditation, but I think people who are, they'll kind of, they'll burn a candle or some kind of spices like you say, because yeah, it holds you in that moment. Definitely.

Vance Crowe [01:01:43] So, Ben, as we wrap up, what is something that people should be paying attention to right now in the world, considering all the things that they could be paying attention to?

Ben Sixsmith [01:01:53] So many things. I mean, definitely one of them is the knock on effects of the Ukrainian war. I think now is the best time to start thinking about next winter, especially if you are closer to Russia, thinking about how you're gonna heat yourself, how you're gonna feed yourself next year. For many people, that's gonna be a real, a personal issue, not just an issue that affects other people. So that's definitely something to think about. Thinking about how the conflicts could spread to other countries if they have kind of resource issues. And yeah, thinking about really enjoying the summer and time with our loved ones because we've been talking about it. And as we all know, the moment you recognize that summer is coming is normally the moment when it passes. So enjoying it as much as possible.

Vance Crowe [01:02:44] Well, that was the great answer. As you can tell, my COVID cough is coming back, so I'm gonna wrap this up, but Ben, if people wanted to learn more about what you're doing, if they wanted to read some of your stuff, where would they find you? So

Ben Sixsmith [01:02:59] They can find me on Twitter at at bd sixsmith. That's SIX Smith, or@bensixsmith.substack.com. That's my weekly newsletter.

Vance Crowe [01:03:09] Well, Ben, thank you so much for coming on and consider yourself in invited on if things change in Poland or Russia or Ukraine. I'd love to have you come on and tell us more about what you, what you think about.

Ben Sixsmith [01:03:20] Thanks so much. Thank you very much.