Transcript
debatablediscussions: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast. Today you join us for another exciting episode as we are joined by Tom Godfrey, a return guest to the podcast.
df: Yeah, so we interviewed Tom. two years ago. in the 2024 summer. back when I think he was our second or third guest on the podcast. and back when he was still living in Italy in Turin.
df: Now Tom has moved back to the UK, studying a PhD at the University of Cambridge, which we'll talk about. he's published a book which we'll also talk about and runs a company helping students.
df: access top institutions for their university. careers. Tom, it's great to see you again. I think it's fair to say that we've had a very eventful two years, both of us.
df: I think last time... We met, there was definitely, number one, we were in very different software than what we're in now.
df: But also, I think we're at a different point in our lives. My first question is why did you decide that after living in Italy? come back and... enter the sort of PhD world. What prompted you to make that choice? as well why Cambridge and why your subject.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be back. Thank you for having me. As you say. Two years have gone by and quite a lot has happened for all three of us. In that time, I suppose I'm now...
T_ R_ Godfrey: entering the third year of my PhD which is Quite crazy to think about. I decided to do a PhD at... I suppose at the time because it's something that I realized.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Quite simply, I really wanted to do. It was almost something that was calling at that time. Now, that's not to say that it had always been the case. When I... Did my masters back in...
T_ R_ Godfrey: 2022 2023 It had been my intention to do a masters, but I'd never really considered. going beyond that. Not because I didn't want to, but because it just hadn't really crossed my mind.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Then when I was doing my masters, Everybody around me was either doing a PhD Oh. intending to do a PhD. So it's sort of... got me thinking about that as a possibility.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But... I first of all didn't want to make that decision just because everybody else was doing it. And secondly, In Oxford, you have to apply for... a PhD in sort of January.
T_ R_ Godfrey: sometimes earlier, December. And by that stage, I didn't really have a plan of what I was going to do for my master's thesis. Never mind. a PhD thesis so I decided to take a year out.
T_ R_ Godfrey: want to think about what I would do. should I do a PhD and secondly to decide whether or not doing a PhD was my own decision. or if I was just sort of being a sheep following everybody else. I went to Turin and... taught at a high school for a year which is when we last spoke And.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Absolutely loved it. Had a great time. Would love to go back to Italy in the future. Brexit permitting I suppose. but at this stage I knew during that year of teaching that as much as I love teaching As much as I enjoyed the experience of teaching sort of 14 to 19 year olds.
T_ R_ Godfrey: I wanted to go and do a PhD. That year gave me that awareness. Since having done it, I've not regretted it one bit. i love the research i love the teaching i have a few teaching commitments a few times a week and also the community here it's a really exciting place to be lots of Wonderful people. You asked why Cambridge.
T_ R_ Godfrey: I applied to a handful of programs or universities. And. Cambridge One has a wonderful department. It's one of the... better ones in the uk for italian secondly uh i love the collegiate lifestyle where you're sort of... living with other people in a college.
T_ R_ Godfrey: it's not like undergrad where you study in the college but it shares a lot of the things in common and also there's just such exciting people here It's a really, really fun place to be.
debatablediscussions: And Tom, I suppose perhaps the most important thing about your PhD is the topic of it. So can you explain to us and our listeners, what is your PhD about and what sort of academic journey, I suppose, has it led you on?
T_ R_ Godfrey: Okay, yeah, that's an interesting topic as well, because for those who don't know, when you apply for a PhD, in humanities at least, you... pitch an idea, you say what you're going to do. And when I started, my intention was to work on Dante, the... poet 13th century 14th century poet.
T_ R_ Godfrey: and especially looking at visual responses to Dante. Then... In the course of the PhD, and people have told me this a lot, or people had told me this a lot before starting, that your ideas change quite drastically and that...
T_ R_ Godfrey: the starting point will be very different to the end point. And I sort of... acknowledged that but thought no i quite like what i'm doing But sure enough, they're right. And I'm not even looking at the same author now. I'm not looking at the same person. I'm looking at Petrarch, a 14th century poet and scholar.
T_ R_ Godfrey: who came after... Dante, his father also in exile knew Dante. But Petrarch... came into my life. Literally in the first year of my PhD, I'd...
T_ R_ Godfrey: heard of him before I'd sort of come across his writing Bye. virtue of the fact that I do Italian literature. but I hadn't really engaged with it at all. And... I'm essentially looking at one of his... One of his treaties is a sort of... springboard for looking at a wider discussion. I would call it essentially what I'm doing is now intellectual history at the way in which he...
T_ R_ Godfrey: conceptualizes solitude and leisure. Now... That seems... but broad concept to us now in the 21st century but in the middle ages It was something that...
T_ R_ Godfrey: I suppose wasn't given a great deal of attention, not least because leisure wasn't really something that was to be experienced. when i say leisure the the buzzword that we use in this period is otium, the sort of ancient Roman concept of retirement or Again, leisure, privacy, retreat.
T_ R_ Godfrey: And I think what's really interesting about Petrarch, and we'll go into the wide discussion of all of the things that he does, but... He... essentially is known as being the first modern man that's what he's called by Burkhardt who wrote basically the first main work on the Renaissance. and the reason he was the first modern man I suppose is because He was...
T_ R_ Godfrey: Essentially, the early humanist, which gave rise to the Renaissance. And what he was doing was... really engaging with ancient Roman and ancient Greek texts, so engaging with antiquity.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But... This is interesting too, because a lot of... the middle ages basically existed without direct connection to ancient greek Uh, in Italy on the peninsula, there wasn't...
T_ R_ Godfrey: the sort of translations into latin of homer and aristotle and things like that so they knew the concepts they just didn't really have the direct material, and Petrarch, who wasn't a Greek speaker. He tried.
T_ R_ Godfrey: but sort of failed. He hired a translator to come over from Constantinople. And... among other things that he did such as discovering cicero's letters to atticus which was a really big discovery in Verona, which... essentially was the first time that people saw Cicero as a man rather than an idol. he starts to humanize the sort of... ancient authors. And whilst also doing this, he's engaging with his own...
T_ R_ Godfrey: religious beliefs so he starts to blend antiquity with christianity and creates this sort of weird Cocktail so to speak of ideas And that... is what is able to give rise to the Renaissance. Now, I'm not saying that... Petrog alone. did all this, I mean he wouldn't have been able to do any of this without the ideas that came before him and the
T_ R_ Godfrey: context in which he was living, which was a fraught context. Italy was Petrarch wasn't even living in Italy for most of his life, he was living in Avignon where the papacy had moved and this infuriated him too because he wanted it to be back in Rome. because he believed in the glory of Rome. And I could keep talking about this for ages and ages and ages, but...
T_ R_ Godfrey: I think Petrarch... is somebody that... deserves a lot of attention. uh doesn't really get it in the sort of context of Listen.
T_ R_ Godfrey: english -speaking world in italy everybody will know petrarch outside of italy Compared to Dante, as an example, he's Sort of a bit invisible But yeah, I've really enjoyed getting to know him. You asked sort of how it's changed my ideas and things like that.
T_ R_ Godfrey: By engaging with Petrarch, I've essentially engaged a lot more with classical antiquity than I would have ever expected to have done. I don't consider myself a classicist. But at times during this PhD...
T_ R_ Godfrey: I found... that most of the work I'm doing revolves around Seneca, Cicero and writers such as that.
df: So... I just wanna - go back a bit. Could you tell us how you first developed this sort of... relationship with Italy and And how you're... decided i think you know undergrad and a master's level to keep going in this direction
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah, it's Definitely an interesting question because it's not... One, modern languages are sort of... given little attention in the UK. So modern languages as a start is an interesting choice for a degree. Italian too, it's not as if...
T_ R_ Godfrey: you know a lot of people go into degrees choosing it for employability which i could talk about at length, maybe we can talk about another stage, which isn't a bad thing at all but sometimes it can be limiting for other reasons.
T_ R_ Godfrey: I chose my degree. At the age of 18, not really thinking about future. prospect. I knew that I enjoyed Italian and French and so I wanted to do that. The reason for... italian to answer your question more specifically is I've always grown up what...
T_ R_ Godfrey: is called an Italophile, so somebody who loves Italy. And I guess there are a few... primary reasons for that one is for whatever reason and i have no idea why Bye.
T_ R_ Godfrey: primary school and going into secondary school. My two best friends were Italian. Now, my hometown doesn't have Italian... population a huge italian population But for some reason in my class...
T_ R_ Godfrey: alone there were two italian students and so they became my best friends quite quickly just by chance
T_ R_ Godfrey: And that... exposed me whilst going to their houses to Italian food, to the Italian language. to all sorts of exciting things which were just... different to what I knew growing up in an English household. So that... Definitely helped.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Add to that the fact that my... grandparents, and my uncle are sort of really engaged in the arts. My uncle is a stonemason at the York Minster. grandparents.
T_ R_ Godfrey: aren't artists by trade, but... when we were growing up. always when they would sort of come over to our house would Teach me and my brother how to draw. talk to us about the artists of the past. And so from a very early age, I was.
T_ R_ Godfrey: hearing the names Michelangelo and Da Vinci and things like that. and getting really curious about that. So... over time with this sort of friendship connection and with the connection to art and also family holidays to Italy. And I think there's something to be said about the importance of family holidays, if you can go on them. They do expose children to...
T_ R_ Godfrey: a great deal of things that You know. can change them quite drastically. Some people say that you shouldn't take children to really nice places because they won't remember it. I disagree, I think that early exposure can be really fruitful But over time, that really developed into a love for Italy. And when it came to applying for a degree,
T_ R_ Godfrey: I'd had the chance at school to study Italian, which is... Quite rare, not a lot of schools offer Italian, but... Thankfully mine did. And I... I didn't really think about it. I went for Italian and French. I knew I wanted to do that.
T_ R_ Godfrey: If I look back, If I'd spent more time, it could have been possible that I might have ended up doing something like History and Italian or History of Art and Italian. But that would have then disregarded the French, which, although not...
T_ R_ Godfrey: a big part of my personality like my love for Italy. I do nonetheless have a love for the French language, for France. It's a beautiful country too. And the ideas that I engaged with in the French side of my undergraduate were... sort of indispensable for going forward especially in the philosophical side of things I know that... Both of you were quite... interested in philosophy and french philosophy of the 20th century is Remarkably exciting. So.
debatablediscussions: Oh, I was going to say you touched on it there, but it was... about this sort of evolving world i suppose of sort of employability and ai
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
debatablediscussions: I have a personal belief that sort of humanities degrees will become sort of even more important amidst AI. I was going to say, do you agree? How do you think sort of AI and this sort of constant, I suppose.
debatablediscussions: recurring sound of the employment market, how will they change do you think the academic landscape?
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah. I mean you've asked me a question just now that I've been asking a lot of friends. it's sort of quite a hot topic Especially among PhD students. I think a few years ago... If I'd been speaking to my friends who were doing...
T_ R_ Godfrey: At the moment, PhDs in maths and computer science and things like that, they would have sort of been... laughing at us doing humanities in a way. Now, I'm not saying we're laughing at them because I don't think anybody's laughing right now, but the... position is nowhere near as stable as they thought it would be i mean if you were doing computer science In 2018, you were set up to be... quite.
T_ R_ Godfrey: well off in the future.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Now, unless you're at the height of computer science, it's actually quite a risky degree to take again i don't think that that should put people off doing the degree because the skills you learn and things like that are really exciting but What?
T_ R_ Godfrey: you asked about humanities is really interesting because For the first time in a while... I mean I've always defended the humanities, I've always thought they were important, but for the first time in a while I'm seeing things online which are suggesting that a degree in something like philosophy or history or anything. critical that probably uses humanities as a springboard.
T_ R_ Godfrey: is going to be really useful. Uh... One reason for that is if you want to directly work in AI. They need... philosophers, for example. I mean a few years ago at the sort of dawn of the self -driving car MIT did this really interesting experiment Were they...
T_ R_ Godfrey: put out. different possibilities of a car driving and on one side of the road. I mean, it was sort of an improbable scenario, but on one side of the road is like a pregnant woman crossing a red light and on the other side is a homeless man crossing a green light.
T_ R_ Godfrey: which way should the car go? And they sent it out all over the world. and different cultures. responded differently so to take an example if i'm not mistaken Japan almost routinely said if you're crossing the red light... It's your own fault. You go. Whereas other cultures were saying, you know.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Save the... save the pregnant woman even though she's crossing on a red light now i know these things come with all sorts of different nuances. uh but the point of that was that the philosophy of ai and ethics more more sort of specifically. are really really difficult. And if you want to work directly in AI, I suppose having a humanities degree can be really good for that side of things.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But... Stepping away from AI and thinking about what can a humanities degree do moreover. I was in a meeting of... A couple of weeks ago, I do... tutoring of this company called art history abroad which Is this...
T_ R_ Godfrey: wonderful company that takes students to different countries, primarily Italy and France, and teaches them about art history, but in situ, using the Socratic method of asking them questions to draw out the answers.
T_ R_ Godfrey: And we were talking about... how this company works going forward. And I think we all came to an agreement. perhaps because it suited us. The... man -made or sort of... personalized things, not made by machine.
T_ R_ Godfrey: are probably going to become... more desirable. Sort of. boutique in a way, and... On a small business front, if you're offering somebody something that...
T_ R_ Godfrey: You made... Done it. It... is more precious uh if people are putting time into making something people are going to put time into using it. Think for example about AI art.
T_ R_ Godfrey: probably not going to be as interested in buying an AI painting.
T_ R_ Godfrey: knowing that it was maybe made in... two seconds and I would buying something that was made with attention and care. And then I'll wrap up. I do think that the skills that... AI is threatening.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Although it could grow and grow and grow and threaten more and more skills, I do think critical thinking is one of the ones which is innately... and inherently human so if you train that through your degree or through any other form of practice. It doesn't have to be a university degree. I do think engagement with the humanities is... really important and Going back to Petrarch just quickly.
T_ R_ Godfrey: He was living in a time where he... termed the he gave the term the dark ages that was his idea and he was living in a time that he felt...
T_ R_ Godfrey: was disconnected from antiquity and not really quite connected with the future.
T_ R_ Godfrey: It was sort of this dislocated period.
T_ R_ Godfrey: but he was able to sort of draw from the ideas of the past and take them forward to the future to sort of create this more continuous chronology. And I think... People who are doing...
T_ R_ Godfrey: critical thinking through the humanities can draw from the past easier. to think about, I mean, AI is... unique. But the problems that it's posing... It's not the first time in humanity that we've had an existential crisis because of something like this. So people who are engaging with the past or with philosophy, with politics, you name it. I think, have those tools at their disposal to...
T_ R_ Godfrey: I don't want to say fight and create a counterculture against AI because there are virtues of AI too, but to at least critically think about... What? aspects of it need to be used for the flourishing of human society and which aspects of it should be...
T_ R_ Godfrey: you know Cut and hold a little bit.
df: You mentioned your work with this company and I want to ask, you've also started your own company. helping students. international students but I think also some UK students.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
df: uh in reaching top universities so can you tell us sort of why you started also the work you do and
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
df: And perhaps why someone should. reach out for your services.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Absolutely. So I started this with one of my friends during my masters. We were at the Bear in Oxford, which I'm sure you'll go to in a couple of weeks. It's a really lovely pub. And... He's French and we were having a good time and then...
T_ R_ Godfrey: sort of stop for a moment to... talk about the fact that... Despite Oxford being a very international university, probably more international than most... Well. It's a very international university. But nonetheless...
T_ R_ Godfrey: We... We're talking about the fact that his friends back in Paris thought he was sort of mad for applying when he applied. One, because they believed that it was for English people only. Two, they believed it was for English people of a certain...
T_ R_ Godfrey: background and three they didn't think that he would have the background, the sort of... academic CV to be able to get in. Now, he did get in, and he did so on his own.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But we talked about the fact that it would have been far easier for him to get in. had he known the system, because it's completely different to his academic system. And two, we're talking about the fact that a lot of the people that were criticizing his decision would have also got in themselves if they'd known what they were doing. So a lot of international students and at home students, too.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Dispel the idea of going to a top university because they are... surrounded by myth. And we basically wanted to... debug those myths. Bye. guiding students through the process.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Of course, some of the myths do exist for a reason, but nonetheless... A lot of international students are basically scared of applying, or they're not even scared of applying, they just don't even... consider applying because it just doesn't make sense.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Recently had a friend from Italy who... I encourage you to apply. and she was like well italians don't go to england for university they don't get accepted Sure enough, she's now going to Cambridge.
T_ R_ Godfrey: And it just, I think the first step is accepting that... You can do it. Top universities are accessible to... students not from the UK.
T_ R_ Godfrey: In terms of what we do it depends on if it's an undergraduate or a graduate student. For undergraduate students, it's a lot more hands -on with the whole procedure. By that I mean... UCAS that to a non -English student and even to English students UCAS is a bit of a roller coaster if you don't have a teacher at your school sort of helping you through it.
df: Yeah.
T_ R_ Godfrey: so imagine A random French student who's... wanting to apply to Exeter or Durham and they've never heard the word UCAS. I mean... it's completely alien to them. So we help them through that, walk them through every stage of that.
T_ R_ Godfrey: We... Help them with their personal statements because, I mean, it's a bit nicer now than it used to be until far as they give you three questions. in some ways that also makes it worse but that's a discussion for another time But for the purposes of a French student who has no idea...
df: Yeah.
T_ R_ Godfrey: how to write an English statement, those three questions do make it a little bit easier. We help them through that. If they have to do interviews or exams, That too.
T_ R_ Godfrey: I mean... The vast majority of universities for undergrads don't require... interviews. Quite a lot now do require exams. especially for STEM. So we have tutors who are specialised in that usually. graduates of the universities to which they're applying.
T_ R_ Godfrey: uh And then for the... with the undergrad system that basically means we help them from a to z we just keep them up to date with everything and basically hold the hand because It's...
T_ R_ Godfrey: confusing for it.
df: Yeah.
T_ R_ Godfrey: 17 year old who doesn't know the system and it's also very stressful for their parents because at least with English parents or parents of students at an English school all of the other parents around them are in the same boat, so they can talk to each other about it. I think it's easy to forget that the university application system can be stressful for your parents too. on your own mind that you forget about the fact that others around you care as well.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But I've noticed through doing this that these... international students parents are really quite stressed. for graduate students. Really? It depends on what they want. by and large,
T_ R_ Godfrey: graduates applying for a PhD won't be needing help for. applications because you you have your own idea of what you want to do There are, however, some students who do need help because even though they have a very good PhD topic, they have a very good idea.
T_ R_ Godfrey: uh there's still Entirely confused by the system of applying so with these it's not so much that you're helping them write the application. That's usually their their job. because a PhD thesis has to be so personal and it has to be researched by an expert that...
T_ R_ Godfrey: You have to do that yourself, essentially. But we can help them through the system because... It is different even for, let's say, Americans. The process of applying for a PhD in America compared to the UK is worlds apart. So sometimes helping them through the bureaucracy is the main thing they need. And then for Masters, it's a bit like the undergrad.
T_ R_ Godfrey: because a lot of master's courses being taught. you don't necessarily need to have like this really brilliant idea to take forward like a PhD. So it might be that you also need a little bit of help on thinking about... how to word your application, all these small details which...
T_ R_ Godfrey: If you're not... Part of the academic system, it seems really intimidating. But... Sometimes all you need is a helping hand to guide you through the process. And just to add one more thing, we also...
T_ R_ Godfrey: offer language language tuition because For... international students who didn't go to an english -speaking school or you know grow up speaking English bilingually they need to do what's called the IELTS paper the odds exam and You have some students who are absolutely fluent in English.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But the IELTS exam is... just done in such a way that even if you are fluent in English, The three of us could... do quite poorly on it because of the way in which you have to know what they're looking for.
df: Yeah.
T_ R_ Godfrey: It's a bit like an A -level paper. Sometimes you might be really good at the subject. But if you don't know the spec, then you could... really sort of get it wrong so we hope that we've got a teacher an english teacher of sort of 15 years of teaching english who teaches at universities who uh leads that team So to keep it short...
T_ R_ Godfrey: The idea of college prep is to guide people through every aspect of the system that they need help with. uh some people will tell you that they don't need much help they just want this checked or that checked others will say we need you from start to finish so it's quite a personalized system.
debatablediscussions: And I think a nice final question. uh to follow on from that it's almost thinking about the future and your book, Tom, that's soon to be released after pre -order to sort of everyone, I suppose, to order freely.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
debatablediscussions: So can you please explain that and perhaps... perhaps a pitch to our listeners to buy it as well.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's still bizarre to me that a book is coming out with my name. on the front. I...
T_ R_ Godfrey: wrote it well I sort of It gathers up a lot of the notes that I've been taking over the past few years. I journal... uh quite a lot And I guess thanks for that. my memory of some of the things that have happened over the past couple of years sort of remained.
T_ R_ Godfrey: and I basically... with that in mind, accidentally been writing it for a few years, but... The actual project itself started... About a year ago when I was... in contact with a French publishing house that wanted me to write this.
T_ R_ Godfrey: It's essentially... for use of better words because attaching a genre to it is interesting. I would say it's a memoir. of sorts and essentially it's a collection of short stories i suppose vignettes essay -like reflections on what it's like to Be in Italy.
T_ R_ Godfrey: as an Englishman, particularly an Englishman who is so deeply obsessed and... engaged with Italian culture. a lot it's based on two cities so the first part of the book is my time in Turin.
debatablediscussions: i don't think
T_ R_ Godfrey: The second part of the book is my time in Venice. And when I first started, it could have been about all of the Italian experiences I've had. everywhere uh i almost thought about doing that.
T_ R_ Godfrey: But then I realized that. These two cities are two cities that I know very well having lived in both to in for longer than venice but uh they reflect two very different sides of Bye. life as an Englishman in Italy. So in Turin I...
T_ R_ Godfrey: felt that I was essentially one of the only Englishmen in the city. It's not a place that... tourists go to, generally speaking, never mind... you know, English expats. So I felt like my life there was very much attached to small Italian social groups.
T_ R_ Godfrey: And it's also quite a bohemian city. So I was... For the first time in my life, hanging out with sort of What I would describe as artless artists, people who...
T_ R_ Godfrey: purportedly are painters or actors or musicians, but they're always drinking at bars so they never have time to engage in their craft.
df: Okay.
T_ R_ Godfrey: So they're always complaining to you about how they... how their life sucks because they can't. paint. but that's because they're living a nocturnal life. And they basically gave little attention to the fact that I was English and foreign. And that was...
T_ R_ Godfrey: On one hand, that sort of brought you into their group very nicely because you were sort of welcomed in without questions. But on the other... You were sort of questioning, well... Am I not English? And it sort of, it creates all these questions in your head about your own identity. So that was an interesting city to live in because
T_ R_ Godfrey: It was just quite confusing in all sorts of different ways. Then Venice is what I would say is a city that... all English people go to. I mean... uh in history basically every great English writer or sort of...
T_ R_ Godfrey: What? Everyone's gone to Venice for something, art historians, all the rest. And when you arrive in Venice, not... Withstanding all the tourists, which are everywhere. You also come across a lot of English expats who are living there.
T_ R_ Godfrey: And... I was working in an English speaking gallery, the Peggy Guggenheim, which admittedly is American as opposed to English, but My life there. It became very easy to be...
T_ R_ Godfrey: an English speaker in that city. I did have Italian friends with whom I was speaking Italian, but a lot of my day to day... was just by nature of the fact that that city is...
T_ R_ Godfrey: full of English -speaking people was quite English. And so it was weird to be in a city. in Italy that felt... all too easy to live in, in a way. But then to make things a little bit difficult you sort of start... going to these crazy balls that...
T_ R_ Godfrey: unlike anything you've been to you know masked balls and things like that uh you start seeing this sort of side of venice that is very mysterious and i suppose a lot of it
debatablediscussions: oh yeah
T_ R_ Godfrey: plays into stereotype a little bit but when you're an outsider coming in stereotypes are something that you latch on to uh for right or for wrong And I guess the book... in some is a collection of these stories of navigating.
T_ R_ Godfrey: My experience is that there's not some grand... conclusion at the end which nicely Sort of. irons out all of the problems that I faced. I think being somebody who might end up being an expat in the future is a lifelong journey where you're never going to feel fully immersed in the country. that you're sort of...
T_ R_ Godfrey: Going to... If you ever end up living abroad, whether that be for a year abroad at university or for work or something like that. I think you're always going to feel attached to the country that you're from. but you're also going to try and develop a relationship to the country that you're in. And that relationship... sort of it has ebbs and flows and i think that's sort of what the book looks like there are some high moments There were some low moments. characters that I engage with are Some of them deeply bohemian, some of them.
T_ R_ Godfrey: the other end of the spectrum. And it's the excitement of engaging with... all sorts of life, really. A lot of different forms.
df: Yeah, thank you Tom. It's very interesting. talking to now two years. after a very different conversation i think from
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
df: when we first spoke. But. definitely do go back to that episode if you've enjoyed this one we've talked more about Art. Italy.
df: Caravaggio. the political state of Italy at the time. So do go back there, but also check Tom out on Instagram. And if you've enjoyed the sort of soundbite of his book, it's now available to pre -order.
df: It's... If I'm not wrong from your Instagram page, there's a link.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Yeah.
df: It's quite easy to access.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Goodbye.
df: And... This is all from us. See you next week.
debatablediscussions: See you then.
T_ R_ Godfrey: Thank you.
