Many thanks to everyone at the Cambridge Literary Festival for hosting me and The World in A Phrase on April 25. And thanks to everyone who came out to juggle words, ideas, and balls. There was a blank sheet selected from the globe, and the topic was “agriculture.” I offered philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon’s aphorism:

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Though Bacon coined this phrase in medieval times, it goes some way to explaining our current climate crisis. We have for generations been disobeying fundamental laws of nature, and as a result we now can’t command or control the extreme weather to which we’re subject.

The person who picked the blank sheet from the globe, the son of a farmer, offered an aphorism from his father:

The best manure is the farmer’s boots.

A lovely evocation of the need to get your hands — and your boots — dirty if you want to make something grow.

You can check out my talk on the Festival’s CLF Player.