Our final episode: thank you
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Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Graptopoulos. Okay, we have reached our final episode. This is officially my chance to thank all of you for being with me on this incredible run over the past five years.

For this last one, we have brought you a very big episode. As the Brits say, a bumper episode. It's for the real fans. And I love it because it combines my three favorite things about the show. The first is questions and where they lead us. As you know, I live in questions. I will ask why until your ears fall off. And I loved reading yours. The second are my colleagues. I bring my colleagues a question and they add intellect. They add depth.

They add research, they add whimsy, and they add a lot of fun. That includes my colleagues that make this show, Katya and Lulu, and our executive producer, Topher, who you all know because they have been on this show many a time. It includes our sound engineers, Breen and Sam, who are absolute magicians. And it includes virtually every editor, journalist, and critic we've ever had on here. My third favorite thing about the show is you.

Sometimes listeners will send me photos of where they're listening from, and it'll be something like a sunset on the Irish countryside. And it says, like, just went for a run and listened to your last episode. Or it'll be like a beautiful breakfast on a balcony in Spain. And it always makes me feel like we're together, like we're both having a conversation, whoever you are, while you're cooking lunch or while you're commuting to work in almost every country in the world. Yeah.

And I've just found that to be an incredible honor. So thank you. You're all very curious people. And I feel that you and I share a spirit. Okay, let's get into this episode. I wanted to make this final episode so that I could mix your last chance questions with my questions and then bring them to the colleagues that I think can help explore them best.

So what you'll hear are a series of little conversations where we talk about music, cooking, fashion, work, how to live a good life, and the concept of home. I can't promise we have definitively answered all of these questions, but that's because you asked big ones. And the best questions just don't have one answer. So here we go. We'll start with Tim Harford.

Okay, I am on the line with the great Tim Harford. Tim writes the FT's long-running column, The Undercover Economist. He has an excellent podcast called Cautionary Tales, and I have long admired his work. Tim, hi. Welcome. Hello, Lila. Some of my favorite conversations have been with you once you told me that if my to-do list ends, I'll be effectively dead. Yeah.

Yeah. We're coming back to that now, aren't we? I suppose. We are. Yes, we are. So when this question came in, I immediately thought of you. This question is from Pandora McKenzie in London. It goes like this. My question for the final episode is one I have grappled with as a life mantra. How do you get the most out of each day or maximize each day without burning out in the long run? How do you live each day like it's your last when in fact it's

It's not. Record each podcast episode like it's your last, Lila. And here we are. Here we are. I know it is funny, but in a funny way, I actually have to not think of this as my last because it will get in my head. So I don't know if there's a lesson there, but I'm curious what your initial reaction was when you heard this question. I love the question. I mean, Pandora is really onto something

The weird thing is, live each day like it's your last is terrible advice, if you take it literally. And yet it's somehow, it's kind of adjacent to good advice. So that's worth exploring, I think. I mean, so it's terrible advice because it's probably...

not your last, right? Most of us get, I think, about 30,000 days, something like that. So odds are it won't be your last day. And if it was your last day, probably what you would want to be doing is making sure your will was up to date and kind of throwing away all the stuff you definitely don't want your family to find, which is actually not that much fun. But I think that what the advice is getting at

is what the writer Adam Gopnik calls the causal catastrophe, which is the idea that... He was talking about parenting. So you're bringing up your children, and you're not doing anything for the sake of the children. You're doing it all for the sake of the adults that you want them to become. And the broader version of the causal catastrophe is that everything is a means to some other end. Nothing is ever worth doing in its own right. It's all worth doing because...

at some future stage, you'll get some reward. You'll get the promotion you want, you'll get the partner you want, you'll become the swole daddy that you want to be or whatever it is. And nothing is ever kind of fun and worth doing right now. And I think that

it's very easy to slip into that mode of thinking. And it is a catastrophe. So like, I'll read with my kid now so that they get into Harvard maybe one day, as opposed to, I kind of want to read with my kid now. Yeah. So we're trying to walk this line between not being absurdly short-termist and living as though there's no future when in fact there is a future. But at the same time,

We don't want to act as though there's no present. And the only thing that matters is the future. And so that's the balancing act. And one way to think about this is you shouldn't live each day like it's your last because it's not going to be your last day. But it might be your last year and it very well might be your last decade. And for everybody, it's your last century. In the end, we will run out of future life.

And that and all that's going to matter is all the present moments that we enjoyed along the way. Yeah. You know, I started to relate more to this question when I started thinking about it. Like, were I to die tomorrow? You know, knock on wood. Like, would I be happy with how I spent yesterday? And I think I would. I mean, like yesterday. How did I spend yesterday? I...

Talked to a stranger at a bus stop. My partner Larry made a soup. I put our butter in a butter dish that says butter because it's cute. I went for a jog at sunset. You know, I called my mom. I feel like

To make your life the life that you want, you have to make some big choices and you have to take some risks in those choices, like where you work or where you live. But then from there, it's really a series of little choices. It's like a mindset. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that spending each day like it's your last might mean is, you

You can't do everything. You can't get everything done. And therefore maybe you want to prioritize a bit.

And maybe it also means you need to give yourself a break. Oliver Berkman, who I know we both admire, emphasizes the idea that we're all finite. There's an infinite number of things we want to do. We don't have an infinitely long life in which to do them. So, you know, recognize you won't do everything you want to do and make the best of it. And maybe the idea of, well, live today like it's your last is a super exaggerated hyperbolic way of getting you to think about that. Yeah. Yeah.

There's also this word maximizing that they talk about. Oh, I hate that. I'm supposed to love that because I'm an economist, right? We're supposed to be utility maximizers. But yeah, no, that's going to drive you mad, isn't it? Trying to maximize. I think so. I would love for this listener to release this idea of maximizing a day, you know, like allow for the chaos a little bit. Yeah. I mean, you don't want to squander things. You don't want to kind of...

fritter your life away doing stuff that you don't want to do, being distracted by social media, you know, wasting time. You don't want to do all of that. But at the same time, you cannot optimize everything. And you cannot be gazing at a sunset and going,

Am I really appreciating this sunset to the maximum? Am I getting the most out of this sunset? Am I living in the moment now? Am I living in the moment now? I mean, you are going to drive yourself mad. Totally. Yeah. Tim, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. It is a pleasure. Take care.

For our next question, I have asked our friend Harriet Fitch Little to join us. Harriet is our food and drink editor for the magazine, and we absolutely love her here. Harriet, hi. Welcome. Hi. Thanks for being here. It's so nice to be back for one final time. I know.

Okay, so this question comes from Perth, Australia. Here it is. I love cooking from cookbooks, specifically big plates of food versus tiny bites. I mainly cook a lot of Ottolenghi, Diana Henry, Anna Jones, so very Anglo-centric in audience. I also have cookbooks from South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Turkish cooks.

I'm wondering if there's a different cookbook out there that I can learn a little bit about the culture and food of a new place or region. Preferably something that isn't in the top five and I can actually cook from, so isn't just food porn. Okay, so that's the question. Well, what's the first thing that, uh...

you thought of when you read this question? Well, I was thinking, what sort of book does she want? So she doesn't want food porn. It sounds like perhaps she also doesn't want the opposite of that, which these books have been very popular over the last few years, which are basically written through memoirs that just have a recipe perhaps tucked at the end of every chapter. And actually, I feel like, I don't know if it's bad to say, but I am actually with her on that. I want a cookbook to sort of

read like a cookbook, you know, pictures for every recipe and a bit of context, but then, you know, a method that you can really follow. Right.

So I think that's the sort of sweet spot we're working in. I think that sounds about right. And then the recipes are good, tried and true. And the recipes are good. Very important. Okay, well, I give three specific recommendations from the FT's stable, Fuchsia Dunlop's book, Food of Sichuan. I think that's exactly what she is after. Totally.

totally blows apart the idea there's any such thing as, you know, quote unquote, Chinese way of cooking. So she focuses in really specifically on the food of Sichuan province and

I mean, obviously, the thing here and with all these things is she's kind of right in saying that you want to choose a cuisine because to cook well, you need to sort of build up a set of staple ingredients. There's nothing more disheartening than sort of thinking, oh, I'll try something from X cuisine tonight and realizing that you need to buy sort of 10 staple products before you do, right? So this is actually a good approach, just saying, you know, I want to find like one new thing to focus on. And I'm going to sort of explore that for a couple of months.

I want to second you on fuchsia. Actually, that book is like a tome in our household. And a really good gift is to buy that book, some Sichuan peppercorns and a cleaver for somebody. That is so nice. And then give it to them. It really, yeah, it's such a good cookbook to actually cook from. And she's like a font of knowledge about that region. That's brilliant.

Another book I'd recommend is a book called Sweet Saloni, which came out last year and didn't get a huge amount of attention by a woman called Maria Bradford from Sierra Leone. I think it's the first sort of modern cookbook from Sierra Leone, but it sort of moves out from that into West African cooking, into Afrofusion cooking, as she describes it. And then she also lives in the UK, so there's a lot of sort of UK influences there.

And that's the favorite cookbook of the owner of a brilliant bookshop in Notting Hill called Books for Cooks. When I went in there and said, you know, of all these things you've got on your shelves, what would you recommend? That's the one he pointed me towards. So I think that would be a really lovely one to explore.

And then the last book I'd recommend would be Fadi Kattan's new cookbook, Bethlehem, which came out last year. That was on mine too. Same taste buds. And I know he writes good recipes because we published a recipe from him in the FT. The thing that all those cookbooks have got in common is that they look like cookbooks, lovely big pictures, but, you know, all the recipes are sort of contextualized in terms of like...

this is when this thing is eaten. The culture. Yeah, exactly. In a really nice way. What do you think? Did you have sort of specific titles to add to the list?

Well, I have one. I mean, honestly, Fuchsia and Fatty were on mine, too. We had Fuchsia and Fatty on the show, and they were both brilliant, and they, like, know so much about these regions. And then the other person that you didn't mention that is a cookbook that I love, we also had her on the show, Patti Yenich. She put out this cookbook a couple years ago called Treasures of the Mexican Table, and it has recipes from all 32 states of Mexico, and each state is pretty diverse, and she kind of, like, explains what the different states are like.

and how they're different and like the cultural like energy of each and the history of each and that sort of thing. So I actually, I like a lot of

People who put out cookbooks, but not all of the cookbooks are like enjoyable to cook from. But these three are. Yeah. And now I'm going to also buy the cookbook from the author from Sierra Leone. I mean, I have to be honest, I'm a bit of a tough crowd because particularly before I started this job, I'd sort of totally given up on recipes and cookbooks. I don't think I'd have ever got the job if I'd have told them that.

But I'd sort of got to the point where I was a good enough cook, but I sort of thought, well, you know, it's just, you know, salt, fat, acid, heat, throw these things together and you'll make something nice. Right, exactly.

And it was only when I started having to test recipes for the FT that I realized, oh my God, a good recipe can teach you so much, you know, that you can then apply to the rest of your cooking. The way like cooking down onions for four hours just like totally transforms them into something absolutely different. Adding weird fruit to your breadcrumbs and using that instead of like Parmesan. It's just all these weird sort of

tips that I actually realized there's so much a good recipe can teach you. And I actually sort of lost track of that until I started having to do them for work. Totally. I interviewed Tara Wigley when she's a recipe writer and tester, and she co-wrote a lot of Adelangi's cookbooks. But what she said, I was really surprised by, which is like, even when I cook for myself, this is someone who's a total expert. She's like, I follow the recipe's

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so I also want to know if you have any spiritual guidance about this. And by that, I just mean general. One thing that I have started to do is like bring cookbooks to bed with me and at the end of the night kind of read them like novels. And there's a lot that actually also opens up to you that way. No, but that's lovely because...

I mean, people have done the statistics on how many recipes people actually cook from a cookbook. And, you know, it's like three on average. Three. But it's like so low. So you do have to find another way to enjoy them, don't you? What else do you have? Well, I think my

I think my main bit of let's call it spiritual guidance for once in a while. We don't have to. It's not very religious by accident. I think, you know, cookbooks are only one part of what she wants to do, which is discovering a new cuisine. And to me, I think

My biggest bit of advice would be to look at what really good shops you've got near you, you know, whether you've got like an Asian supermarket, for example, whether you've got like an Afro-Caribbean butchery and to perhaps like make one of those the starting point for what you want to explore. Because the other lovely thing with that is I think...

So much of what is pleasurable about something like this is to have that interaction and to be able to build a relationship with someone who works in these shops. And I mean, my experience of Asian supermarkets in particular is that just as soon as you express...

an interest in a particular cuisine. Every time you walk in, you'll be presented with a million new options that relate to cooking projects you might want to undertake. And that's just such a nice... You'll need this, you'll need this. Exactly. I mean, everyone should aspire to be the person who, you know, you walk into the butcher shop and they say, you know,

I put some chicken gizzards aside for you because I knew you, you know, I know you like the weird things. Yes. And what makes a shop owner happier than someone coming in and saying, I'm really into your cuisine. What should I, you know, what should I have? Nothing. Nothing.

You have a new best friend. The other thing I wanted to say is to just kind of like wing it and let the exploration be fun for you. So like if you go to a used bookstore and just beeline it for the cookbooks and just look for the region that you're kind of interested in, you'll find a lot of like old cultural association cookbooks from that region that are,

Within the recipes, you'll learn a lot of fun little silly facts. As you know, I have an interest in food from Anatolia, like Asia Minor and the Levant and that sort of thing. So every time I go to a used bookstore, I look for that and

And sometimes you find, like, I found one in Brooklyn about Turkish cuisine that was written half in Turkish and then translated on the page into English. And it was written by these, like, young progressive cooks. And they were kind of being snarky about, like,

you know, politics and talking about how to honor the old traditions and modernize them. And there was just a lot in there that taught you like a lot more about the culture than a book for specifically for a Western mass audience. That's so cool, isn't it? I thought it was great. Harriet, what a delight. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the question. Thank you.

Our next question is specifically for a regular guest on the podcast. His day job is senior corporate finance correspondent, but he is also the best dressed man in the New York office. He dabbles in fashion reporting. It is the great Eric Platt.

Hi, Eric. Hey, Lila. Nice to have you. I'm always happy to be in the room. So nice to have you. This question is from Raphael in Falls Church, Virginia. He says, I'd like some advice from Eric Platt. How does a gay man dress in a non-boring way in a stuffy work environment without being stereotypical but still conveying an I am that bitch vibe?

This is a great question. And I should say, like, I don't think I'm the coolest dresser, right? I think there are a few really important tools that someone needs. So, like, the first thing, everyone needs a tailor. And I think you need to be tailoring clothes that maybe you don't think need to be tailored, right? Like what? Like short-sleeved button-downs or...

Honestly, your pants need to be hemmed, right? Like everything needs to be properly proportioned. People are conditioned to buy off the rack or buy online and then they just kind of like wear that to go. But it's – that's where you get kind of these like unflattering fittings and things suddenly don't look kind of as they should on someone. Yes.

So that's my first real tip for everyone. Somebody suggested once, I think our fashion editor, Lauren Invik, suggested that like if your jeans don't fit you right, you don't have to just shorten them. You can also get them tailored to fit your body. Exactly. Of course. But it never occurred to me that jeans, because they're so casual, were a thing that you can tailor. I've had t-shirts. Really? Yeah, tank tops, everything. Because you realize like you'll look at something on a model on the runway and you're like, wow, that looks fantastic. And then I'm trying it on somewhere. I'm like, I look great.

Why? And you're like, oh, this person was, like, fitted into this outfit. Yes. And so, like, I should be doing the same thing. That's a great one. Okay. That I'm a big fan of kind of –

Having your uniform, right, like I used to wear a lot of striped shirts or gingham and things like that. And now it's like, no, pure white button downs with a blazer if that's what you're if you're kind of in like a traditional office environment. And then bringing an accessory, right, like maybe it's a crossbody bag. Maybe it's an oversized scarf that you're wearing in the winter with some color, you

And invest in just like a few of those pieces, right? It's signaling enough that like you have a personality outside of the uniform that you're ultimately wearing every day. Right. I think other ways, especially if you're queer and you want to be bringing some of that into the workroom, especially if you're a queer man, feel free to experiment with slides. You know, these are backless shoes. Yes. With socks. Have fun. You did get a pair of short shorts into the office. Yeah, and I wear them on Fridays. Yes.

What I think is interesting is, like, my straight coworkers would wear gym shorts on Fridays. Right. No one would say a thing. Yet everyone does. They notice the short short, even if it's, like, fitted properly with the button down, because they notice the effort that's being put into it. Yeah. And it's great because then, like, if I have drinks with a source afterwards or something, like, I can...

I'm not totally casual, but I can kind of like put on that I'm put together today. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Also, so my big thing when it comes to – I think Lauren had this fantastic article a few years ago about like I'm only going to buy seven things this year. I don't need any more and that's it. And I kind of take a very similar perspective. I like to look at something for a really long time and know that I want it. Yes. And let that build.

Not just for a few weeks. This is like we're talking months, maybe a year and be like, oh, I still want that pair of boots. Like, yeah, I'm going to get the Doc Martens. It's worth it. Or I'm going to like I've seen these on someone for two years and I want to wear that. Right. Great advice. My last question is what to you makes a good sense of style? Like what does it encompass? It's a good question. Yeah.

I want to see some creativity, right? Yeah. I think the confidence matters a lot because it also gives your colleagues the sense that like, oh, I should be venturing outside of the box more too. I don't need to be kind of wedded to this idea of this is what the finance bro wears or this is the traditional journalist garb. Right.

Because that's not how any of us live anymore. Totally. And I found that like the best way to pull something off is just to start wearing it and then you're pulling it off. Completely. I have a giant kind of fake fur coat that I've started to wear in very inappropriate situations for a giant fake fur coat. And it's now it's a coat I wear. And like people are like, I could never pull that off. And I'm like, just just try. I'm just pulling it off because I'm wearing it. That's what makes me pull it off. You could do it, too.

Yeah, I feel like I got when I wore the slides for the first time. Men in the office were like, oh, what? And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, how many women in this office do you see wearing backless shoes every day? Come on. You too can live this great lifestyle. Right. This could also be for you. Eric, thank you so much. This was so fun. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Okay, for this next one, I have brought in my dear colleague, Isabel Baric. She is the voice behind the FT's Working It newsletter and podcast. She just wrote a book called The Future Proof Career, and she's here to give us some career truth bombs.

Hi, welcome. Lovely to be here. Thank you, Lila. I'm so happy to have you. So we got a lot of questions about careers, actually, a lot more than I expected. And we had a lot of listeners write in, basically, with the big picture question being, how

how to make their careers meaningful. So the first question I want to put to you is from Eva from Prague, and it is just, are there general guidelines across professions on how to make one's work meaningful? That's a great question.

So some careers are what I would call visibly meaningful, meaning that you would work for an organization that you believe in, you know, maybe a charity or a climate startup or teaching medicine. You know, these are purpose-filled workplaces. Right, right. But many of them are kind of dysfunctional. There's a disproportionate amount of difficult workplaces in these sectors where people want to do good.

Okay, so the first point is that even if you have a meaningful on-paper job and you're sort of like saving lives in some literal way, those jobs can be dysfunctional. So it's not like those are perfect either. No, it's like do you find meaning extrinsically or are you finding it intrinsically? I guess is the distinction I'm making. But for everybody across any business or organization,

I think the biggest change since the pandemic is that meaningful work involves a much wider mix of things like how does it fit with your home life? Right. You know, do you have a community? Yeah. And the final thing is, do you like your colleagues? Because work can be as meaningful as you want. But if you hate your boss, you will hate it. So I guess my advice is find a good boss wherever you work. Yeah, right. I think that's true. Yeah.

A few people were asking, how do I combine...

the quote-unquote boring kind of work that I do with my interests. So one is Metap Ilmaz. He's been a banker for 28 years. He actually wants to cash it all in and be an art curator. He said he has no experience, but he has a lot of enthusiasm. And then Gerda from Lithuania is a lawyer, and she loves art, and she wants to see if she can combine those interests. And that made me think, like, you know, I find meaning in my career in that...

you know, my interests are aligned with the thing that I do every day. But it also is still a job. And by definition, that means it's not perfect. And so it did make me wonder, like, do we make the passion the job or do we do the job thing and

And the passion gets infused sort of in it and we do it in the side and, you know, we even do it later. I mean, I think a lot of... I think do we make the passion the job is a question for any stage of your career. Yeah. But I think later, over 50, and I'm really glad they're asking about this. Your listeners are ahead of the curve, really, about this kind of I've been a banker for 28 years, what do I do now? Because I think this transition thing is going to be one of the big work trends in coming years. It's just...

starting to emerge, particularly in the US. Yeah. A lot of Ivy Leagues have courses for CEOs looking for their next thing. Right. So the market for transition coaches and people who will help you find your next thing or your passion is

This is going to be big, big business. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting because why should we do the same thing for 50 years? Yeah. But there's a kind of grief associated with leaving a long career or a long standing employer. So for listeners who are listening, I'd say look for, if you're interested, try and look for the next thing while you're doing the thing you're doing now. Right. Maybe go part time. Yeah.

and maybe get rooted in your community. You know, ideas can come from anywhere, can't they, Lila? Listening to podcasts. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I want to ask one more question around this, which is from Marie Keep. She said that she and her friends think a lot about how to make a meaningful and successful career change in your 50s. Like you've spent this, this is related, but you've spent a lifetime building these niche professional worlds.

And how do you sort of like whittle that down and try to figure out what's next and start to do it? So I do think going part time might be a thing if you can afford it. Yeah. But also what they're really asking here is about status. That's interesting. How do I navigate that?

a next act where I don't have the status that I have in my high paying niche career. And that's a really potent thing. And I think it's almost the hardest thing for people to get their heads around. If you've been a VP of a big financial services company or something, that's a really hard thing to give up. But you know, if you're the CEO, even harder. So we can look, I think, look for good examples of people you know in your networks who've done it

And just sort of feel your way through it, but accept that there's going to be a lot of people who don't want to talk to you anymore because they were only interested in you for what you did, not who you are. And that's a really clarifying thing in life, I guess, isn't it? I think so. Is there anyone that you've seen do that really in a cool way? At the FT Festival last year.

I did a panel about this kind of topic and there was a woman there who used to be a really high-flying corporate lawyer and she's now a midwife. Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah, I love that. Okay, good. All right. Well, I'm not there yet, but when I am, I'm becoming a midwife. Me too.

Is there anything else, Isabel, before I let you go that you want to leave us with? Just big picture that you think that we should like think about or care about when it comes to our careers? Yes, I'd say...

Yeah, I'm very old now, Lila, and I kind of think... No, you're not. Looking back, I think, why was I so hung up? You know, careers are like 50 years now. You don't have to go off like a rocket. Right. You can go on cruise control for a few years. You're still going to be there when you're 60 or even 70. So be kind to yourself and it doesn't always have to be upwards, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. My career goal for...

for 2025, I don't know if I should say this on the podcast, was care a little less. Say it. Ha ha ha.

But that's a mantra for us all in 2020. Everyone who listens to this is an anxious overachiever. That's true. All these people, all FT listeners and readers need to care less. Yeah, yeah. Well, like you don't need to run. You can walk. You can amble. You can enjoy the scenery. Yes, you can amble. That's it.

Isabel, what a delight. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much.

Next up is a very interesting question about music. So I have called up a great friend of the show. You will remember him well for his defense of Taylor Swift and his takedown of Katy Perry. It is our very talented pop critic, Ludovic Hunter Tilney. Hi, Ludovic. Lila, hello to you. Hello. It's so good to have you. It's great to be here.

Okay, so here's the question. It is from Robin Silver in Paris. She wrote me that she has wide-ranging musical tastes that cover practically the whole spectrum, and she goes outside of her comfort zone all the time, but she just can't get into rap. She said she recognizes its musical and sociocultural importance, so she wants to, and she was hoping you could help her push the boundary on it. How can she get into rap?

Well, I hope that I can help Robin here, Laila. What I would like to encourage Robin to do is to actually think outside some of the history that she knows and she realizes is important and actually take it a bit further. So when we think of rap music, which is basically the main genre of pop music today, I mean, it's an extraordinary, it really is the most extraordinary genre. It's like the jazz of our age.

I would like to, rather than go back to the way that rap, its history, it's looked upon as things like the Sugarhill Gang and things like this, going back to the early 80s or goes back even perhaps to the early 70s with The Last Poets and people will look to Jamaica. I'd like to actually encourage Robin to look back even further and to think in fact about the beginning of modern popular music, which I would date to essentially the mid-1920s, in fact, almost exactly 100 years ago when recording studios began to use the electric microphones.

before which they used recording horns, acoustic recording horns that people would have to visit

very loudly into rather like so which is why opera singers were so famous in those days right the microphone when it was introduced by columbia records in its new york studio in february the 25th 1925 they began to use it to record and that changed instantly the way in which vocals could be um experienced oh cool changed the type of singer so that you could have a much more

sort of more nuanced way of singing, a more conversational way of singing, a more colloquial, idiomatic way of singing. And you had singers at that point who were called whisper singers. Wow. Honey, I have something to tell you.

which before was not a register you could ever have used. You can't whisper on a stage. No one would hear you. Right, all you could do is kind of cry. Yeah, you'd just be singing very loudly. It'd be all about vocal projection. But the microphone does the projecting for the singer, so you could be much quieter and you could be a whisper singer. They were proto-Krooners. This style, which was very, it was quintessentially American. I mean, it comes around at the same time that there's mass democratization. It's like a conversational way of singing. And I would suggest that rappers are the heirs to Krooners.

essentially how Frank Sinatra described the croon as art. Frank Sinatra called it talking words expressively to a background of music. That's basically rap music. So I think if one thinks of rap as being the crowning achievement of a way of singing that began 100 years ago, which basically inaugurated the modern era of pop music, you sort of maybe I would hope that that could help Robin to hear it slightly differently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And rap and hip hop has always sort of like embraced technology, right?

I feel like it's always like at the forefront of technology with music. You're so right there. It's always been at the forefront of technology. I mean, the very idea about having the two turntables and a microphone, the thing starts with a sort of technology. And then it's sort of they all you're completely right that rappers have always been the first to go and embrace new technology. So when it comes to things like the era of streaming and YouTube, it's rappers are the ones who have gone and adopted it.

most quickly and the most successfully as well. Ludo, when I sent you this question, you sent me back a song. You sent me Gangstar, Mostly the Voice. Yes. Why'd you send me that?

So I sent that because for me, that sums up the idea of this style of singing, which I've just been describing how that animates hip hop. So this is Gangstar, a 90s classic of 90s US rap with DJ Premier as the producer, the DJ, and Guru as the rapper. And this song from 1994, Mostly the Voice, you have Guru basically saying that rap music is mostly about the voice that you're listening to it.

because of the rapper. And the rapper has to be good for you to want to listen to it. Let me set it straight. It's the voice that gets you up. And mostly the voice that gets you...

So Ludo, I can't decide whether to ask you what are a few, who are a few artists that you would recommend to Robin or who are your favorite rappers? So I'll ask you to answer whichever one you prefer. Well, I think that for, I suppose, I mean, I'm at risk of showing my age by choosing a whole lot of 1990s acts, but I would say that a tribe called Quest, I would recommend. I just love to be on the set of the show.

As a group to listen to who are sort of... There's a strong musicality in their songs. You can sort of sense this linkage to jazz, I suppose, as this sort of previous great African-American art form. And also the words there, they're just great. Totally. The words happen. My own sort of favourite ones, well, my own entry into jazz

rap music was a it was a gosh it was a long time ago uh it would be like so public enemy i think yo bum rush the show public enemies first album came out in 1987 and i remember coming across that and it was completely novel to me this style of music was totally new to me i was like a sort of indie indie music listener a guitar listener and this type of music was very instantly sort of appealing and striking and different um so i

Yeah. I fell in love with rap with Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid, Mad City in 2012. I mean, I always listened to it, but I just like actually kind of fell in love with it and went to see him. And what did you like about it? I liked that you could listen to the lyrics like a thousand times and hear something new every time you did. I liked that...

that it felt like cinematic sort of. I liked that. Like some of the songs sounded like they were like upbeat and, and exciting, but actually it was making fun of the idea that it was supposed to be upbeat and exciting. Like it was just clever. And I liked that you could not listen to the lyrics and just have it on. And it also felt good. I just like, I just love him. Yeah. And then the,

When you get into rap, like everything opens up to you. The sort of like rap beef of 2024 opens up to you. Yes. So many good stories open up to you. I would suggest on the grounds of just like the way that the voice, the voice in rap songs works. I would also suggest to Robin, Migos, the rap trio, Migos, who they went and pioneered a

a new way of rapping, a sort of triplet flow it was called, where these three voices, they would have a triplet way in which these bars would unfold. Which was a change to how the flow of rap had been done before. So when you listen to the songs, I mean, they're really actually, the sort of lyrical content could be quite raw and not necessarily very pleasant and can also be very, very...

monotonous in terms of the subjects that have been rapped about, but the actual style of the rapping and the way that the voices cover every space in their song, it's all over. They are both rhythms. They're used almost like scatting. They get chopped up in the background and you hear this incredibly sophisticated way in which the voice is being used.

in their songs, which so I would I would I would recommend them as a way to hear the way that the human voice is just like boom goes out there. And it's just like both a musical instrument and the instrument of something which is delivering the text, the words they join together. It's it's really. And I think that once you hear that, you have you can listen to the words and what they're saying. You can also actually kind of tune out of that and just listen to the cadence, you know, the musicality of them.

Ludo, I'm curious sort of what your thoughts are on this sort of like bigger question that this implies, which is if there's a genre of music that you're struggling to kind of penetrate, but you want to, how should we think about it? I think if somebody is trying to get into a genre of music and kind of can't and can't ask you to help them get and penetrate it, I think really asking someone who loves that genre is a good first step. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. Give them, give you their favorite music, have them give you their overview of why they love it. And you know, the way the history connected to them. I think that's right. And you don't have to, obviously you can't beat yourself up for not liking something. I mean, the time to beat yourself up is if you don't like something, not having given it any opportunity to appeal to you. Totally. If you make that effort and you do that, then you shouldn't beat yourself up for not liking it. And I completely agree that an enthusiast,

for a genre is indeed the person who should be able to go and open it up for you. I did that with jazz. I never understood jazz at all. I'm

I couldn't bear it back in the old days. And then I asked a friend who's a jazz, real jazz head, just like, what's 10 albums to get into jazz? Totally. 10 basic albums. What are the building blocks here? And he gave me a nice list of people like Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane and all of these things. And I bought those 10 albums. And lo and behold, I was on the slippery slope. And now, you know, I'm surrounded by jazz. Yes, I love that. Ludo, thank you so much. This was really fun. My pleasure, Lila. It's great to speak with you. You too.

We received a number of questions about home. And for those, I immediately thought of the brilliant writer, lecturer, and curator, Inuma Okoro, who writes the FT Weekend column, The Art of Life. She's with me right now. Inuma, welcome. Thank you for joining. Thank you for having me. It's great to be on the podcast.

I'm so happy to have you. And I'm excited to have you on about this because you were on towards the very start of the show to talk about home. And I think about that conversation all the time. So before I read these questions, I just want to ask you the places that you have considered home in your life, the cities maybe or countries that you've considered home. That's such a hard one.

That's such a hard one, just simply because of my own upbringing. I think you know this about me. I was raised in several different countries and a few different continents, and I also have just lived in a few different cities. So home is such a, it is both a broad and a deep concept for me. And I find that

it is often shifting and expanding, but I think the most central thing is how I have learned over the years to kind of carry home within me. Like, what is that saying? You take yourself wherever you go. Right. And it's taken me several years through my own life to recognize that

you are your own homiest place. That's the way I think I could say it. It's like, you are home. You have to, at least I believe, you have to come to a place of really understanding yourself and the body you live in as your first home. And then, you know, we can think about all the other things. But I would say, to get less esoteric for you, some of the places I've called home, well, definitely Nigeria, which is where I'm from and where my ancestors are from.

New York, which is where I was born and where I live and repeatedly go back and forth from. London. Well, actually, Oxford, because I went to I went to high school in Oxford. And then many places where I did graduate school. Right. Chicago, North Carolina, Chicago.

um, places I've lived, you know, in my earlier adult life, Seattle, um, Minneapolis, where I went to college, you know, I've had so many, so many homes increasingly now, um, in Europe, Berlin. Um, yeah. So home for me has many, you know, it really has many connotations.

Yeah, that's interesting. I was thinking about that, too, about like the places that I've lived are homes, Boston, around Boston, where I grew up and New York and London. But then also there are places that feel like home when you go to them that I've never lived in. Like my dad is from Thessaloniki in Greece, and we went every year when we were kids. And that feels like a home and home.

I went to Armenia for the first time. I've been twice. And in a funny way, that felt like a home because I'm Armenian, even though I've never been there. Yeah. Something familiar about it. And

Yeah, it's an amazing thing. Okay, so let me actually ask the question, which is from from Ina Amasheva from Bulgaria. She's based in Frankfurt. She said,

Is it a place, people, memories that keeps us coming back and yearning to find it? What do you think of? I think, you know, when I think about that question in particular, like what is home? Is it a place? One of the things I think home is a place, at least in my understanding, I think home is a place we feel safe. That's one element of what makes home.

a space, a home, right? And I think that's a big distinction between a house, right? Or a shelter or a dwelling. And many people, even in their families of origin, grow up in houses and dwellings, but they are not necessarily homes, right? So I think of home as a place where one feels safe. But I also think of it as a place where one has the freedom to expand and grow, right?

which is why I can also think of cities as homes as well as actual places of habitation. And I think every place almost...

Just as like with every relationship that you move through, right? Because very few relationships are forever. Every relationship you move through, you have a piece, you hold a piece of that relationship and have that person with you. I think it is the same thing with places, whether they're countries, cities, or homes. I also think certain countries bring out different parts of us. Yes. Right? And so there may be elements of different...

different countries or cities, like you were saying, Laila, that feel like home, even though you're not very familiar with it or you've left it? Yeah, that's interesting. I was thinking about how a lot of my friends have never seen like the life that I have experienced through my life in Greece. And I feel like they would see a different part of me if they did. And I think there's also something about that sort of part of the reason why there's a yearning

especially if you feel like you've had different homes is because you can't have all of them at once. Yeah. Um, and maybe that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. And I also, you know, the part of me that, that, um,

I don't know, maybe just a few people, people are very close to me. No, it's the, I have a, I have such a sense of spiritual grounding. So there's a part of me that also thinks that we will always be longing for a much more sort of soulful home, right? Like there's a longing and a yearning that isn't, I don't think is ever satisfied. Yes. Because I think our spirits and souls are always longing for, for more than what is possible in one lifetime. So there's that element of home. I sort of always keep in my mind that,

That's helpful. I find myself constantly longing for something. I don't know what it is. Well, I think it's part of the human condition. Totally. So give yourself some grace. Yeah, I'll take a break. That's good. That's good. That's nice.

Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. I want to ask also this other question from Divya Babu from London. She said, I'm currently on holiday and I always ask myself everywhere I visit, could I see myself moving and living here? I'm currently in Singapore and it's an incredibly livable city, so organized and seamless, but I miss the type of diversity London has. Hmm.

Do you ask yourselves these questions while on holiday? And what criteria would you use to rate a city as livable to you? What a great question. First, I want to say I wish I had more holidays to be able to ask this question. But...

But I do travel a lot. And so, you know, and I think, you know, some of the things we've said about the last question could pertain to this one. Definitely. That different cities make you feel different things. But I really love the distinction she makes between, you know, noting what she likes about Singapore where she is now, but also recognizing the things that she would miss there.

And I think that that second piece, what she would miss is really important for all of us to at least ask ourselves honestly, because I think you can miss things even when it's time to move on from them, right? Or when it's time to explore something different.

those two things can be true at once, but really having a clear sense of what your non-negotiables are where it comes to moving to a new place. I think she mentioned diversity. I think that might be a deal breaker for many people, but I also think there's a beautiful thing about also listening to how life is inviting you, where life is inviting you to. And I have this sense, my love, that, you know, I always say maps are fictional, right? Like maps borders are fictional. So who knows where,

who knows where any of our ancestors, the different places in which our ancestors moved, right? On this, this, the earth that we call the world, right? So I have this, this sense or this belief that, that geographical spaces can call us to them. And some of that calling could be related to ancestral calling. And some of it could be, could be related to being,

being called to discover a new part of yourself in that place, but also being called to give to that place in a way that only you can. I think that's great. You know, I wonder about if you ever have the experience of going to a place where you feel a calling to when it's not what you expected. Are you kidding me? Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. I have this sort of, yeah. Um, I have this sort of, uh, kind of ancestral calling to this, uh, region, Anatolia and Eastern Turkey, where all of my ancestors are from, you know, thousands of years back. Um, but it's in Eastern Turkey and a lot of their history has been destroyed. And I'm a little nervous to go back, um, partially because I'm afraid that when I go there, uh, what I'm looking for won't quite be there. Um, and, uh,

And yet, you know, who knows? Maybe the air will feel a certain way. Maybe the mountains will look a certain way. Maybe my skin will like it. You know what I mean? It's been a funny question about home that I've been thinking a lot about. Well, my question with that is, what are you looking for? Like, how do you know what you're looking? You know, you said part of your fear is when you go, you may not find what you're looking for. But if it's a place that you feel is calling you towards it...

Mm hmm. How do you know what you're looking for until you get there? I think that's right. I don't think I have the answer yet. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's a little bit of a rhetorical question, but also one to kind of to think of this more expansively. Right. It's like when there's an invitation, we don't always know what we're being invited into. But I think that's where.

the courage comes in, right? There's always so much beauty in invitation, but there's also often, there can be so much fear as well, right? With saying yes to an invitation, but how beautiful, Laila, to think of that home can shift for us though, that there are many places that are waiting to welcome us. If we all thought that way a bit more, maybe we would be less

disjointed and segregated as people and as nations and cultures. I totally, I totally agree. Yeah, yeah. Inuma, my last question for you is just related to home. We've been watching really terrible news over the past few years, like watching people be displaced from their homes in Gaza and now watching these fires in California and people sort of leaving. What does that make you think about

I mean, I just keep reflecting on like how precarious it is. Yeah. How precarious it is. Yeah. How precarious it is and also how many different people can feel entitled to the same place. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Which then begets the question of what makes a home a home and what makes a home a place that belongs to one or the other. Right. Precarity of land. Right.

And I think we often forget as much as we are spiritual beings, we are embodied human beings of the earth and to be connected to one's own land, I think is such a profound way of knowing oneself. So when I think about this, you know, the last question you post, I think about how much is lost when people are forcibly displaced or when people are

forced to migrate or when people even move voluntarily, right? So again, taking it back to the last question by one of your listeners about the things that they would miss, recognizing that even when we say yes to places, leaving what one has known and what one feels pulled to

None of these moves are easy. I'm thinking, like you said, most readily with what is happening right now in California, right? Yes, they are just material things in some sense, of course, right? And the biggest gratitude is that

lives are saved and spared but there is something to be said about losing the place where you do feel safe right right losing the place that contains your memories and gives you a sense of who you are and who your family has been um yeah yeah you know that idea that home is that you started with that like home is inside of you um that is true and i think that's something that

is good to lean on in times like this. When also, I mean, feeling that the other thing is true too, that like to lose a home is, can be one of the hardest. Absolutely. One of the hardest losses. Because I also, I mean, I can't, when you, as we're talking about this, how can I,

How can I not think of people who live consistently without homes, even in the various cities you and I live in? Totally. Yeah. So I just love that listeners have asked this question in the ways that they have. I know, me too. Yeah. Well, may we be grateful for the homes we have. Yeah. And I'm really grateful for you taking the time. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for having me on.

Our final question for this episode is for me, because a lot of you have asked me what I'm doing next. I'll read Laura Karpuskas from Brazil. She said, I want to know what you are going to be doing. She also said, I want to know more about you. Where have you been? What do you want?

So the most concrete answer that I can give to this question is that I'm not going far. I will be at the Financial Times as the U.S. editor of Globetrotter starting on Monday. We've had the editors of Globetrotter on before. They're absolutely brilliant. They lead our culture and travel guides to cities around the world. And I'll be taking on America. I'm expanding the city guides across the U.S., building out New York's and Miami's, and I will launch new ones in places that you all visit the most.

So that means that I'll still be doing culture and food journalism through the lens of cities. And that means that I still will need to talk to all of you all the time. I'm going to be trying to put my finger on the spirit of these cities. I'll be recommending places. I'll be asking for your recommendations for places. So please stay along for the ride. You can follow me on Instagram at Lila Rap. That's L-I-L-A-H-R-A-P.

You can check out Globetrotter if you haven't read it before at ft.com slash globetrotter and on Instagram. And if you prefer just getting an occasional update, find me on Substack, obviously free. I will just be posting once in a while amusing and links to what I'm working on. And I've shared all of that in the show notes. Okay, the more esoteric question of what do you want, I will also answer and I'll leave you with this because there is one thing that I want.

You know, a lot of the kind notes that you all sent me over the past few weeks said that I had a spirit.

And I'm very moved by that, that whatever spirit I have has drawn you to the show and kept us here. And I've been trying to think about what that spirit is because I think most of you have it too. And where I've landed is that I think that the spirit is mostly a choice to live life open instead of closed.

I think about trying to live life open every day. And I felt that spirit pushing through your questions. You know, like maybe you don't feel like you can wear that or move there or change careers, but you want to and you want to explore it. And so I just want to encourage you to do that, to explore it, you know, to like not live by reviews of things and only try things that are five stars, right?

to not get so overwhelmed by your emails that you don't notice that the stranger next to you is wearing really cool shoes and instead to just like notice and tell them that you love their shoes. Yeah, like take a class or buy 10 rap albums because Ludo inspired you to. Go to a movie theater and get a ticket to a movie that sucks. Yeah.

I guess that's it. That's what I want from you and what I want to leave you all with. Try not to optimize. Try not to say you can't. Stay open. It's the best chance that the life that you're looking for will open up to you. Okay. You know I'm not an expert. No one is on this. But after hundreds of conversations, all circling around some of these themes, that's where I've landed. I love you all.

Thank you for an indescribable five years. And that's the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. In the show notes, you will find all the places you can stay in touch with me online and a final discount to a subscription to the Financial Times.

I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and here is my world-class team. If you love this show, you love their spirit too. Katya Kamkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smith is our producer. Our sound engineers are Joe Salcedo, Samantha Jovinko, and Breen Turner with Original Music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forges is our executive producer, and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.

Have a wonderful week, and we'll find each other again on the internet or on the page very soon. Whoa, okay.