Thank you very much for having me.

Yes. Yeah. Actually, I think, I am the kind of, professional profile that, could be described as an hybrid, profile, which is not necessarily always a good thing. Sometimes, you know, you feel you don't belong professionally to a specific field. But I I really think it's the, my, it's not just mine, but, I mean, it's it's my trademark, combining different sectors. And these sectors are, technological innovation, or if you prefer digital transition, democratic, participation, and, interest representation as well, in a global sphere. And so the I I, told you this because the, interest in technology, academically speaking, came a little later compared with my interest into, democracy. I, am a lawyer, by education. So I have a degree in, law and one in, political sciences or science of public administration, to be, precise. And then I, enrolled in a PhD in public and administrative law. And my PhD thesis was about, participatory models across, different legal systems. Italy, a few European state European states. Yes. The European Union and, The United States. So I compared how different systems are consulting citizens and are engaging them into policy making. And my PhD was done in between February, '7 and February, yeah, '10, roughly. So technologies, of course, were already there. But if I go back and I read my thesis, actually, my my my thesis was then, published as a book. My focus is on, is not on technology. Technology is there. There is a little bit of it, but the the focus is about the globalization of democracy. The title of the book is is is an Italian book, is, experiments with global democracy, in, in Italian. So I was interested in that. And then little by little after that, so after 02/2010, I realized that I was exploring, more and more the, implant of digital technology within administrative procedures meant to consult citizens. And and so the the the, the the balance between the interest in democracy and the interest in technology, changed. And I can say that now I am still interested in both, but I'm starting more from observing the technology and how this technology is changing, the democratic sphere. So over the years, technology has become more relevant as an element of my analysis. And so artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and and so on.

Correct. So, yes, I'm, so, again, I don't want to, make, too many distinctions. But, you know, when when you study democracy, when you look at democracy, you at least learn to distinguish between the participatory democracy and the representative democracy. Both are, touched by the relevance of, technology, of course. But, what I'm interested in looking at is, in particular, participatory democracy. And I think both participatory democracy and representative democracy, so the elections in the latter case, are interested by the same, critical elements. And one of these critical elements is the fact that, people are less engaged. People are, going to vote, in lower numbers compared with the past. And, they just they are just not interested. And and that applies also to how we as citizens engage into the decisions of our administrations, what I will call more exactly participatory democracy. So this is a very common problem. This is something that has been acknowledged already, a few years ago. But the interesting thing is that when technology, digital technology became overspread, across, Western, governments, there was a clear moment in which many scholars and politicians and practitioners thought that this technological implant could be used to solve the problem of participation. In other words, since we have now a digital tool to interact, it will be much easier for me to be interested and for the policymakers to listen to what citizens have to say. But that, unfortunately, did not happen. We have plenty of very good examples. And in this podcast, we heard about a lot of very nice, what will be called best practices. On the other hand, I think that the problem remains. And it's even more striking, this problem, because, it's true that digital technology help people in principle to be in touch without without much affords. And so you mentioned, gamification. It's, something I've been studying for a while. And as you said, something I've been publishing about. And the idea is quite simple. I'll just summarize it, and then, of course, if you want to know more, we can dig into it a little more. The idea is that, we can u we can design. This is another word that I really like, design. We can design participatory spaces, with some game elements. So some elements that are resembling a game, not a pure game, something that is resembling a game. And that, ideally, I I want to be precise, ideally should help citizens to be more motivated because we all like to play. It's something that is part of our learning experience. We, as child, learn things by playing. And so the the the the use of games, it's something that we as humans use for a long part of our life in order to learn things. And that there is a moment in which we think that gaming is trivial and it's not, for all those any longer. But, actually, there is a lot of game design in many things that we do like, in marketing strategies, for example. Now the idea is that we could engage citizens more by offering them a gamified environment. Now if you ask me, is this working or not? My answer would be, it depends. It's not the solution to the problem. And we have some very nice examples to tell. But on the other hand, we have many examples that didn't work.

Yeah. Well, that's an excellent question because it's actually the, the the picture of the problem. As you said, we have many examples when, when I publish the book and also occasionally when I still write on the topic, it's always nice to have a list of examples there. Again, there's plenty of them, at all levels from the the very local level to the national level, even some supranational example that work very well. In order to answer your question, I need to make a step back to how game design works in order to, then give a possible explanation of why the gamification didn't work, so far, in all participatory experiments. And so game design basically, reproposes, as I said before, the elements of a game within participatory processes, which means that you have basically three elements. You have a set of rules. You have a competition. The competition could be against other people or can be could be against yourself. It doesn't doesn't really matter. And third, you'll have a reward. And, again, don't think necessarily about money or something tangible. Can be anything like passing to another level or being acknowledged to have succeeded in something. So the reward is, let's say, the the conclusion of your journey, and maybe the beginning of a new, step. Now all these elements, if are well combined, well designed within a participatory processes, as we said again, could work very well. What is the problem? It's another concept that is very familiar to all those who study game, gaming or, video gaming or any of these fields. And this is called the cure of, engagement, which it's it really looks like a cure. And I I like you to think at any game you might have played over the last few years. Could be anything from something very simple on your mobile phone or maybe if you are into video gaming, anything that is related with, a console gaming, and and any of that or a board game if you like. And you see, we have this cube that goes up because if the game is well designed, it looks interesting. It looks fascinating. We want to spend more time with it. And the the complexity of the game is is well balanced. So we see that if we play, maybe we fail, but we can improve. And so next time, we will defeat, for example, the, the boss of the level, and we scale up to the next level. So it's it's actually increasing. And then there is a moment, sooner or later, we even with the best possible game, there is a moment in which either you feel that it's too complicated or you don't have time to, to to play that game in order to progress, or instead, you become so good that it's a little boring. And so the cure start to descend and be and you are less engaged. Now this is in the impure gaming. Okay? But the same metrics, as I said, could be implanted in a participatory process. So you could you well, obviously, you have a set of rules, but you can have incentives, and you have a sort of competition between participants, and you have a sort of reward. And that's the problem. It is not meant to last for too long. You have to reinvent the system in order to reengage the participants. You don't have a single solution that will work forever. There is no video game, even Super Mario. Super Mario I think everybody played Super Mario. After more than thirty years, we have still new versions of Super Mario, and the concept is similar. And I still enjoy going back to Super Mario and play it a little bit. But even Super Mario, the a classic, has a curve. After a while, it's too complex. I don't have time. Or it's too easy. I'm bored. I'm changing. And so the same applies to game design into participatory processes. And so that explains why, we have a lot of single shot grade examples. Some of them lasted a little longer, but nothing that we could say, okay, this is the benchmark. This is how you design gaming into participation, democratic participation, because it it, returns great results. There's nothing like that. And the reason is that, as in any other game, people, participants in this case, need to be stimulated in a different way.

Yeah. I think, I will answer this second remark first. I think you can cooperate. You can collaborate, in order to achieve something. And that is a sort of competition. The the concept of competition has to be understood in a very broad way. So it doesn't necessarily mean me against you or me and you against x and x and zed or something like that. Could be something like that, but could also be me and you, we have to cooperate in order to achieve a certain result. There is I I'm gonna get I'm giving you an example. There is a very nice experiment that was, done, few years ago by a municipality in The United States. The idea of the municipality was we are expanding over the years, and so social bonds have been depleting. And we want the our local population. We are still a small municipality, but again, growing up in numbers. And so we want to try to have social bonds reestablished between different communities that are living in in same urban area. And so they basically created this, virtual money. It was called Macon money. The municipality was called Macon. I don't remember in which state of The United States it is. So, but the name of the municipality is Macon or Macon. So they they basically created this virtual currency, and they distributed tasks, among citizens that would participate in this, sort of competition in order to find the other half of the currency and create a bond, a social bond. So you see, in this case, there was a clear cooperation aim, but there was a competition as well. And and so, absolutely, you can cooperate, and that could also be a sort of competition against yourself in order to achieve another, another level. And it also resembles education or schooling system in a way. There are a lot of theories that, suggest to have gamification, used as a learning system. Actually, many of the platforms that provide, online learning are based on, gamification, dynamics. You can think about the very famous Duolingo platform, the the one that is meant to teach you a language. Or you can also go on this very big platform like Coursera in which you basically access to, learning in different subjects. All of them are based on, a very clear, gamification dynamics. So you have a progress. You are awarded, I don't know, points or stars or levels, whatever it is, and you progress, and so you achieve other credits. It's it's a very simple metric that, can work very well in education.

Oh, yeah. Sure. Many many of those. One very interesting example, which has a story behind it, right, which is worth to to be known is, the story of, Evoque, that was, created by the World Bank. So we're talking of a very important, international institutions. For those who don't know it, the the World Bank, is, yes, an international institution that was created, after the Bretton Woods agreements in order to regulate, not regulate the the global finance, but actually in order to loan money to countries that will get this money and in exchange would apply, democratic reforms. And that is still the role of the World Bank and also of the International Monetary Fund, which is the sister, organization, that, was also created in the same period. Now, very so the if you go on the website of the World Bank, it's an incredible source of information. They have, very highly profiled professionals that are producing very interesting, datasets, for example, about a lot of topics, really a lot of topics. It's very broad, and it's a truly incredible source of information. A few years ago, and so and all this information is actually available for free. It's it's it's just there. You you go online and you can download the papers and you have the, the the reports. It's it's plenty of those. And so a few years ago, the the World Bank did, an a sort of internal investigation, and the aim was to see what was the reaction by the the general, public. So what people would, take of all this material? And the result I don't remember the exact numbers, but the result was striking. Just a very tiny percent of the whole amount of documents that were published by the World Bank. When I say tiny, I mean, like one or 2%, something like that had been pub been downloaded at least once. And a part of these downloads was done by people working at the World Bank. So what was the result? We have this incredible amount of information, which nobody nobody knows, nobody uses. And people, in the best case scenario, think that we are the technocrats that are imposing the draconian measures on, national economies. That that that was the very, the the the the best case scenario of people knowing something, actually not knowing something about the the World Bank. And so the the the institution tried to make, something, an initiative that could bring people into knowing the institution, and they created this Evoque. Evoque was, a sort of, a board game that was played globally. Okay? And every week, you will have a mission. And so and this mission consisted of different tasks. The idea was the world is on the verge of, global crisis, very hard global crisis. And we have to intervene doing something. So what should we do? What we are supposed to do? Famine, disruption of, chains of production, this kind of stuff. And so people would, engage in different tasks on a weekly basis. They will go through, a process that obviously was meant to teach people what the World Bank does because these are typical tasks that people at the World Bank handled handle in their daily job. And the final the final task, the so called evocation was to find an original idea, to be possibly implemented by the World Bank. And the the best idea will be, call to Washington DC where the World Bank is located, the headquarters, and be awarded, a cash prize, I think. In that case, was was like a a small amount of money. What was the aim? Obviously, the World Bank doesn't need, just, you know, people suggesting ideas. That was part of the the the game design, but it wasn't the main goal. The main goal was to have as many people as possible sharing inform learning about the World Bank, sharing information with other contacts, and increasing the interest in the, in the institution. And there is also another thing that I discussed in, in a few publications in which I describe this example. Because, one possible question is, okay. So how many people participated? It was this something that, attracted 100 of thousands of participants? No. I think the whole number of participants was in the number of a few thousands globally. So you realize quite a tiny number. But the question that I think it's important to ask is not just how many, but how engaged these people were. If you look at the pure volume, again, you don't have, an incredible response by, citizens. But if you look at the interest of these people, you might have a different, different, results. So you could see that these people were actually quite engaged in the, in the experiment. So it was, in that sense, quite successful.

What do you mean exactly? Can can help me to clarify that.

Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Okay. I get your question, and it's it brings us back to the reason of gamification, which is one possible solution again. And also brings back to our, the the first question you asked. So the technology and what is the reason why technology is now so interesting to analyze for someone who has an interest in democracy, as a possible solution, but also a crisis. So the principle is that, for many people participating, in the democratic processes is not perceived as a a solution any longer. So if you look at the civic engagement in all its forms, so, electoral participation, engaging in in a charity, for example, donating money for a civic cause, or any other, any other, activity that we will consider part of a democratic civic sphere. If you look at what our parents and grandparents, so I'm talking of the, the seventies, the sixties, and before, were doing compared with what, people do now, you would probably agree with saying that the whole civic capital has, been shrinking over time. So the people are spending less time in these civic activities. We said it before. They go they less people go to vote. If you look at, for example, let's take a a country like Italy. It it depends on the country, of course. But in a country like Italy, in the seventies, there was million of Italians who had, an official subscription to a political party. And now political parties have very low number of people. It's it's very tiny. It's like less than 7070% less than, twenty or thirty years ago. So the principle is it's not appealing anymore. And for the a lot of reasons, really a lot of reasons that are related with the crisis of democracy, the lack of social mobility, the fact that, we feel there are less opportunities, and also the fact that technologies have capitalized much of the attention of people. Okay? So all these reasons are contributing. And now we go to the game design. You mentioned the financial incentive. Let me say that it's not necessarily financial incentive. That is one possibility. It can work very well, but it can also be something completely unrelated with giving you money. It could be having your name mentioned on the first, play in the first place of, ranking. And I'm gonna give you an example in a second. So it's another very interesting example. But before that, and that's the potential of game design. The potential is what if I give you a framework that will make the experience more appealing? So it's not just the fact that we could win, I don't know, €10. But there's also the fact that maybe we and you, we could spend one hour together thinking about how to solve a problem, and maybe you have a resource. I have a contact, and maybe we can, like, get close to that result. And we can do that in an engaging way. Maybe maybe in the at least in the short term, let's remember the the short termism of this kind of experiment. But maybe in the short term, this is resulting into, some interest. So in other words, people need to be stimulated in order to find interest in a participatory experiment. And I'm not this is not original. I'm, just quoting the the very basic idea of behavioral sciences. All the theory of nudge and, you know, Richard Taylor, Cas, Sunstein, all these theory is precisely that. You can create a framework in which you push people. You give, sort of push to people in order to find more interesting an example. And if you allow me, I'm I'm gonna mention another very interesting case, which it did not include a financial, incentive. It was gamified and resulted in into a very interesting, outcome. Now we are, in Latin America. We are in Peru and more precisely in the capital city of Peru, Lima, which is, was at least one of the most polluted cities in the world. And one of the reasons of this pollution was the fact that, the city is very large, and it has a number of, places where people just throw their garbage, and these places are not controlled. So as you can imagine, this is con contributing to air pollution and environmental pollution and causing a lot of troubles. But the municipality didn't have the resources, to, make more controls to hire people that will control how, the the the the the garbage was, was treated by the population. So what the municipality decides to do is to create this participatory experiment. They call it Gallinaso a Visa, which is the voters are, checking. They train, I think it was 10 belters, this animal that live in that area of the world, in in order to, and this this this animal eats, garbage. So they enjoy finding places where they can, you know, find food. And they put a GoPro camera on the bodies of these, vultures. So when they fly, they actually record the the the area. And then what what the municipality does is to take these videos and upload it on a website and ask the citizens, can you help us watch these videos? We don't have the capacity. But if you can help us, it was hours of videos. And you can spot an illegal site, within the city. You can actually tell us, and we will at least try to intervene. And it's a huge success. And the reward was that the names of those who had spent hours watching these videos were mentioned in the on the official website. It was so successful that at a certain point, there were citizens who were taking with their mobile phones videos, and they were sending it to the municipality to say, this is also where you should intervene. And, again, an example, in this case, no money given, but the fact that it was so watching a a very boring two or three hours footage of, you know, an air vision of the city resulted into something helpful for the municipality that could intervene, on the illegal sides.

No. No. It it probably that that is another problem. The the, let's say, the intangible assets that you need in order to participate could make the difference between types of participants. I'm I explained myself. Time is an intangible asset. So let's say you in your life, there are moments in which you feel you have more time and moment in which moments in which you feel your time is limited. Typically, when you are younger and you are in your school age, you feel you have a plenty of time, so you have time, you know, to to dedicate yourself to whatever you like. And then maybe you grow up and, you have family at work, and so most of your time is used into is compartmentalized. And so the feeling of the time that you have is is is low. But in order to participate, you need some time, as you said. So for example, I need to, have the time to connect online and listen to the, meeting and maybe do my interventions, share what I want, and then I have to do the follow-up. And that can discriminate between certain types. That's why that's another reason why, in participatory experiments online, we typically have certain categories that are more represented than others. And these categories that are overrepresented are people aged over 55 or even 65 for a clear reason. That is the age of your life in which you return to have more free time for yourself. It's also possible that you are more civically engaged. You start feeling the need to give a contribution or, you know, to think about the future generation. There's many reasons. But one reason is also that you have more time that you used to have ten years before, and also men compared with women because, unfortunately, in many social systems is the woman who is taking care of the family. And so you can imagine if you're a mother, you have to take care of the babies and the family. You don't have you don't have the time to do this. And then there are other categories. So the reason of time, I think, is relevant. It is an explanation not of why people don't participate or at least it's a partial explanation of why people are not participate, but more of the fact that there are certain participants that are overrepresented and other participants that are underrepresented. But in general, I think that the lack of participation, it's explainable in a missing link between what am I achieving by participating and what is the effort that I need to take in order to participate. And it's never a pure trade off. Right? It's never like I pay a ticket and I watch a movie. It's not like that. But it's also true that if I have a feeling that even if I am contributing, it's not really changing anything, I will probably lose the interest. And my interest is also attracted by other stuff. There's always a chance to, do something engaging by watching a movie, surfing the web, or, yeah, playing a video game or stuff like that.

Yeah. And, the subtitle is also important because it says the technologies that are changing power. So we return to the, to the original, point. Okay. Obviously, I don't have the the receipts for solving the problems of democracy. I think it's part of the debate. People, scholars, practitioners, politicians are debating the crisis of democracy, and there's many possible solutions. A word that I'm really interested is not in this I mean, it's in the book, not in the title, but a word that I'm really, that I really think is key is the word design, which I mentioned in the beginning. And I think it it's nice to to mention it. How do we want to design our digital interactions? So this, in brackets, solution implies as a precondition the fact that we accept that most of the democratic democratic participation will be happening in, on digital platforms. Right? Okay. How do we want to design these platforms? And I think it's a number of elements that could help citizens to, engage a little more. One is the topic we've been discussing for, most part of this interview, making the participation more entertaining. So including elements that could engage people and, obviously, the game design is is the the the main idea. But it's not the only one. The other one is how do we narrate the participatory process? I think that a good storytelling of the participatory process is very important. And I think even if I don't believe it was a successful case, the conference on the future of Europe, I think that storytelling behind it was quite powerful. The idea was I'm giving you, European citizen, the possibility to tell me, you, policymaker, what is the future of Europe that you want to imagine? What what would you like to what Europe would you like to live, in ten years from now? It was very well constructed. It was powerful. It came, well, it was designed before the pandemic, but it actually came during the pandemic. So it was a moment in which we were all, in a way, facing this idea of, okay, what's gonna happen next? What's how the world is will be changing after this if there will be enough there. So it it was a very nice storytelling. And third element, which is probably the most important, is this. The narration of democracy should retake onboard the concept of complexity. And I'm giving you a one minute explanation, which is something I've been, researching and writing about for quite a long time now. The design of technology, commercial technology is, based on very simple elements. One is the simplicity, another one is the speed of service, and the third one is the, tailorization of the services. So we have very simple, to use, digital devices. We have devices that are, trying to give us to sell us the idea of very fast service and that are also tailored on your needs. Now all these elements are what we expect when we engage digitally with anything. But in democratic participation, this is, not possible. Decision making takes time. It implies a high level of failure of at least one part or one opinion, and it is time consuming going back to time. So a good way to have people at least aware and not disappointed of what participatory processes online in digital formats would imply is to bring back the concept of complexity, not selling out the idea that by clicking it, which was very popular when digitalization came into democracy, You just click on it, and you are participating in democracy. Because that type of narration made the disappointed citizens that we are, dealing with right now. People that don't see any actual change when they, when they, actually see the the, the the results of the participation.

Sure.

Well, I'm a I'm a very, I'm very I'm really fascinated by, futures, and it's a very interesting, field of, debate. I'm this very moment, I'm I'm reading a book on the history of future thinking. So how thinking about future has changed over the the years. And so it it went through different stages. And, well, today, we have actually a science for that. We have foresight, which is the scientific approach to thinking strategically about the future. So quite interesting, element. So I believe that, we will have to face, a situation in which, we will probably have more time for, ourselves. And this more time will be, the result of the use of technology. I know that what I just said has a lot of exceptions, and it's probably very western focused. I know that it's it's not a global, way of thinking. So I'm now looking more at the situation to which I'm more familiar, which is, the West of the world. In the West of the world, the technology will give us more time to do things. Think about artificial intelligence and how quick you can have certain results, compared with the with the past. Now what may what use do we, make of this extra time? That is quite a problem that we need to think about. I'm not just talking of the, labor related aspects. I'm also thinking of what do you do when you start thinking of a society in which not all of your time is spent on working on in an office or in a factory, which is the model we've been part of over the last fifty years. So from the last fifty years, the idea the broad idea is that once you finish to study, you enter into work, and the the most of your life will be spent well, you you do a lot of stuff, but most of the time you are at work. What happens when you don't have that necessity any longer? That will have very interesting democratic, implication. So it's not exactly a description of the future world that I imagine, but I think it's one crucial challenge that we will have in a not so far future. The gain of time, a very bad use of this gain of time is to be more engaged into trivial uses of our digital tools by scrolling and, you know, watching, content, ephemeral content. That will be a very bad way of using it. A better way could be maybe reengaging in social spaces. And that's why I describe it as as a challenge.

Sure. Absolutely. I think I am the the typical, middle class. I was born in a typical middle class family. I am very aware on not using the word normal because, there is a very interesting book about this. The word normal, it's has very different meanings wherever you apply it. So it's very misleading. What is normal? What is normality? In the in Italy, I was born in '76. So at the end of the seventies let's say I was a child in the eighties. It's, it was in in Rome, the the capital city. Both my parents were working in the private sector, and I have a brother. So, I will describe myself as a quite ordinary middle class family, living in a big city. And my if I have to remember something of my childhood, I think, books were an important part of it. I was, this is something I'm doing with my daughters now. I've been, thought to like books. My house was full of books, and, you know, I there was a moment in which, you know, in the summertime, when you have a lot of time and you are bored because you don't know what to do, I started to enjoy taking a book and reading reading it. That was an enjoyment that I remember very well. And I also remember that my mother well, both my parents, but my father was working, full time. My mother was taking care of us, so she was working part time. So my afternoons were with my mother and my brother. We were they were very strict with with the use of television we could make. In my generation, the destruction was television. We didn't have digital, mobile phones, of course, or stuff like that. So, we could watch one hour. We could choose one hour to watch the TV in the afternoon. That was a very popular TV show, back then, which was cartoons and, a little entertainment. And once that was finished, we had to turn off the TV and do something else. We were lucky because, despite living in a big city, we were living in a place in which we had some internal gardens. So, when the weather was nice, we would go out and play with other kids and so so on. Or we could engage in readings or drawing stuff. And, again, this is something that I'm also using with my daughters right now. They can they have a little time. They can use the, digital devices. I'm not against, prohibiting them to use it at all. They are still young. So, I'm I'm mentioning the gaming with with digital tools, but only for a limited time. The rest of the time, they have to do some other stuff. And that's a that was a very important part of my education. I I'm not saying that I'm fully safe from, digital dependencies in the sense that as many of us, I am attached to my mobile phone, and I I sometimes feel the FOMO syndrome, when I don't have live mobile phones. So I'm not saying that this saved me from not being polluted by digital tools, but it gave me some elements to, train my brain. And I still like to read books in a paper format, for example. I I really love the books and stuff like that. So, this is what I remember from my from my childhood days, and it was a very, how to say, quiet, quiet, childhood. Last very last thing, it's something I I, am passionate about. I, I'm very passionate about fantasy and, you know, everything. And so I still play Dungeons and Dragons. It's something that I really love. So everything that is related with, you know, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, and fantasy like that in movie, in games, or in board games. It's something that I still enjoy to do, and, and that also came from when I was a teenager.

That's true. That's true. I was a dungeon master. I was the dungeon master, so the one who was telling the story to the others. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what? Okay. I have a couple of books that I really remember, were, an eye opening. One is a classic. I I think when I turned 10, a friend of mine gave me so the present, was The Hobbit from Tolkien. And I remember in the I didn't read the book immediately. I probably thought it was not interesting, so I didn't read right after that. Maybe I don't remember. Maybe one or two years later, I went back to that book, and it was mind blowing. So it was precisely the type of story that I would like. Fantasy, dwarves, the well, the hobbits, the dragon, the the the the classic. And then, obviously, the Lord of the Rings that came later. So that that is one. I would say everything that Tolkien has produced, but if then I had to find a book, I will say doubt it. The other one is the lord of the flies, which is a book, which I read, by chance. I think maybe it was in the house of my uncle where I will spend the summertime, maybe. And I really enjoyed the the dark side of the the book. No? For I I hope you you read it. It's a it's a it's another classic. And so you see how human dynamics work and, and even with child, how the power balances are established to the point that things are falling out of control of these, young, young people. So that was also something that I really remember. I, I enjoyed, and I, and I thought it was, it was a very nice reading.

It's a very, very, very nice, very nice book. It's it's a narration of human society, basically. So, the story looks like a child story, but it's not. So it's it's really worth actually, there is also a movie. It's quite old, but I will suggest to read a book.

Yeah. Well, what I what I think is that, it, so what I would like to see more, let's put this way, what I would like to see more is, cross pollination of different disciplines. It happens to a certain extent. However, I still see there are, a little bit of silos, between people working the field. So for example, urbanists are very engaged into participation. It's really part of the the people studying, urban landscapes. But these people do not talk much with, for example, European policymakers or at least with people interested in supranational policy making. Then on the same side, people looking at global dynamics, they tend to ignore or consider less relevant the what is happening, in, in certain fields. And then lawyers and political scientists and sociologists, they they don't and designers. So it's now more, more frequent to find this type of cross pollination. I am, for example, contributing to a pro, a project in which we are, where there are, like, lawyers and political sciences, scientists like me, but also, designers. So we we try to compare with different perspectives. I think that it would be nice to have more more of that that, more, because sometimes you feel you're not talking the same language, and, obviously, you see the word from different angles. But it's actually what when you find a common point, it's a very strong one because it means it's a valid point from different perspectives. And so it's more, difficult to achieve, but it's also more rewarding to achieve.

Thank you very much. It was very, very nice to to be part of this, podcast. Very good luck with your next episodes. And I'm, and and now that I'm a subscriber to the podcast, I'm following the the the new episodes every time, you publish that.

Good. Bye. Bye. Bye.