Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Ep 7: Sammy Leslie - Castle Leslie, IRE

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Ep 7: Sammy Leslie - Castle Leslie, IRE · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
• 0:04
  have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
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  got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
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  How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
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  and most importantly, find joy.
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  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
• 0:31
  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
• 0:37
  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free, where we talk to people who.
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  Are living and have lived, and continue to live self-actualized lives.
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  what can we learn from them?
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  How do they do it?
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  how can they mentor us?
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  how can we do it?
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  It's always worth, giving it up to the mentors.
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  , we have one today.
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  someone Rather Extraordinary.
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  We've got Sammy Leslie.
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  You probably dunno who Sammy Leslie is because Sammy Leslie is one of
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  those people who likes to do it from behind the scenes, and I had
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  to kind of put a lasu around her and pull her a little bit forward.
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  She's now sitting in her garden to talk to us.
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  We're very lucky to have her.
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  , Sammy runs, castle Leslie Castle.
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  Leslie is on the face of it, a luxury, super luxury
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  resort, hotel experience thing.
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  Legendary thing really in Ireland, which the great and the good and the celebs of
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  this world go to, and also equestrians and also, ordinary people like you and I.
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  and it seems to run flawlessly.
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  It seems that you arrive at this place and you suddenly get to kind
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  of live the baronial life, at least for an hour or two or a day or
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  two or a month or a week or two.
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  it's Sammy who makes this experience possible.
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  Sammy, Leslie.
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  It's not easy.
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  Sammy has had all kinds of challenges in her life and yet manages to
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  present a dream of how life should be to, anyone who walks or drives
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  through the gates of Castle Les.
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  And it doesn't matter whether they're coming in with a lot of money,
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  it doesn't matter if they're just coming in for a drink at the bar.
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  Everyone is treated the same.
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  Everyone is treated like a Lord or a lady.
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  It's a, an extraordinary experience.
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  it takes an enormous amount of skill to put this together.
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  and it's something that sort of sets people free.
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  I think anyone I've spoken to has come away from an experience that Castle has
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  said this was a seminal experience in inspiration and how the relationship
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  between human and landscape and history and mythology and all of these
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  things have been sort of rolled into one experience seemingly seamlessly.
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  And it's really all down to one person.
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  Sammy Leslie.
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  So I want to know how she does it.
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  , and I want to know how we can learn to do similar things in our lives.
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  So, buckle up because this is a treat.
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  Sammy, welcome to Live
• 3:13
  Sammie Leslie: Free Ride Free.
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  Thank you.
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  Lovely to hear you.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Can you tell us who you are and.
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  Why you are in this position doing this
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  Sammie Leslie: stuff?
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  That's always the most terrible question.
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  I have no idea who, who I am or what I do.
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  I just grew up at with a, you know, very simple ethos is of all you
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  can do in life is the best of what you have and by those around you.
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  and it doesn't matter if all you got is in life is, you know, one
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  bucket of water that which could save somebody's life or grow some very
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  valuable food or, or you've got a lot.
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  It's, it's just about understanding what you have and how you do the best.
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  You know, we're, we live in a very interconnected world, or we should
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  live in a very interconnected world.
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  And over the last couple of decades it's just become so siloed.
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  You know, nature's over there and you know, people are over there and
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  buildings are over here and history's over there and smart's over there.
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  And, and.
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  You know, climate change is something we don't even talk about.
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  And I mean, here we really talk about two things are fascinated by two things,
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  biodiversity, which is the wonderful, complex, interwoven, relationships
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  of nature and neurodiversity in the fact that we all have brains and we
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  all process information differently.
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  And, you know, same thing, a whole series of wonderful,
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  interwoven complex relationships.
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  I, I don't think you can silo, you know, people and place and nature and
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  planet without detrimental effect.
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  So yeah, I suppose my part of my family are American.
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  and through the Jeromes and the eyes, they're supposed to be Sue and IO descent.
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  And when we were children, we grew up very much on side of First Nation or
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  native or indigenous American people.
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  And we just wanted to kick the shit outta the Cowboys.
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  sorry, I'm not allowed to say that probably.
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  So we were always told to think a bit deeper and look a bit further
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  and gently question everything because life is not the series
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  of black and white binary boxes.
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  We're trying to put it into.
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  And it's not working as we can tell.
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  So you, you are coming
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  Rupert Isaacson: out of a background, with some roots in
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  Native America, yet there you are sitting in County Monaghan in Ireland.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  on the border with between North and Southern Ireland, running this
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  fast state, and shouldering all the responsibilities that come with
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  it, because it's, it's a working estate and, it's a hotel and it's a
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  farm, and it's all of these things.
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  As far as I know, you weren't supposed to be in this position.
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  No.
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  I'm, tell us the story.
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  How, where were you born?
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  How were you born?
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  How'd you end up
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  Sammie Leslie: doing this?
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  I am the, the mistress is a legitimate child.
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  If you want to put labels on people, I'm very proud of it.
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  You know, my mom and dad, absolutely fell in love.
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  My dad had an amazing first, wife, Agnes Burnell Hungarian, German
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  j who with her mom fled Berlin.
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  just about one of the last sort of trains to get out before things got really closed
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  down and an awful lot of their family, it didn't get down, it didn't get out.
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  So, always grew up with that sort of understanding of the desperate
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  cruelty that humans can reflect or can inflict on fellow human beings.
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  And my mom and dad were not supposed to be, and I wasn't supposed to be either.
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  And, , dad went to see a psychic, with mum and the psychic
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  turned around and went, ah, Mr.
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  Leslie.
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  Yeah, little, another child on the way.
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  Little brown.
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  I had brown girl.
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  And, mum was blonde and blue eyed and dad was like, oh, please, is it my
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  wife or my mistress that are pregnant?
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  What's happening here?
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  and I came along.
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  so certainly a child that wasn't supposed to, wasn't supposed to be, but I can
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  totally understand if my, if my mother had made other choices, I've always
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  been too terrified to have children thought absolutely terrifies me.
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  so yes, I was not the expected one, to do this, and I just fell in love with place.
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  Here it is one of the most magical places on, you know, on the planet.
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  There's this amazing little corner of Ireland that was carved out
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  by the glaciers with glittering lakes and wonderful woodlands.
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  And as children, we were feral children.
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  I mean, as we left in the morning and we, we probably grabbed a head collar or
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  a bridle, and grabbed a pony, which was normally a scruffy rescue from somewhere.
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  and we probably had a bit of a packed lunch somewhere, and
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  we literally just disappeared.
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  And as long as we were home before dark and there was not too many, too much
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  blood and preferably no broken bones.
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  nobody really noticed or, or probably cared.
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  it was, it was an absolute idyllic childhood being allowed
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  to be that free range in nature.
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  And I think that's one of, now that,
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  Rupert Isaacson: that, that wasn't normal for the, children of the Land Gentry.
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  what, what one knows of that background is that one was required usually to
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  have a, a loyalty first to cast, to clan and then after that to family and then
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  after, you know, personal relationships.
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  No, not so much.
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  You seem to have come outta something very, very different
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  Sammie Leslie: there.
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  well, my.
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  My dad is probably, he is the third, but he's actually the fourth child.
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  The third child was still born and is buried under a tree in
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  Tolbert Great Park in London.
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  because he was un, he was un baptized, so therefore there was nowhere to bury him.
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  so he again, grew up quite free range as such.
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  I think his father had sort of given up, and he was handed over to a
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  series of nannies, and his hair was dyed blonde until he was about five,
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  and nobody noticed, because if you were a nanny in Hyde Park, you were
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  much, it was much higher status.
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  Well, first to have the eldest boy, preferably blonde as well.
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  and if you couldn't have that, you, you had a blonde child and literally
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  dad's hair was, died blonde for the first five years of his life.
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  Nobody noticed.
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  So, and that was in London and yeah, he, he grew up, he was born in 1921, so
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  it was just after the first World war.
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  and I think he had a little bit of free range childhood in, in many ways as
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  well, because, you know, the grownups were tired and busy at that point.
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  Remember, our, our, in our world, you know, of, of big old houses,
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  having a relationship with your child before there's seven can hold a
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  conversation, mix a, a folded lettuce, leave with one, try this again.
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  Having a relationship with a child before the age of seven when they're
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  supposed to be able to, you know, read the newspaper folded lettuce, leave
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  with a fork and mix a good dry martini.
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  It wasn't something that one did really.
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  No.
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  You know, they were kinda brought up with nannies until that point, and,
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  and they could be amazing, kind, wonderful people who desperately cruel.
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  And one of dad's was quite cruel for her potty training was tying if he, if he we
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  himself, she would tie the white nappy to his face and make him stand in the corner.
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  but that was sort as improving and Charact a good thing.
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  Yeah.
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  That was his mother.
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  That was your grandmother?
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  No, that was his nanny.
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  Oh, that was his
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  Rupert Isaacson: nanny.
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  Gosh.
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  Ouch.
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  Sammie Leslie: Yeah, his mother was, and you know, it's the type of
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  thing somebody be in jail for now.
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  Indeed.
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  No, absolutely indeed.
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  But then character building as you quite rightly say.
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  , so go ahead.
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  Expect.
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  So how, how did that, how did, how did he
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  Rupert Isaacson: then translate from this neglected, rather abusive,
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  upbringing in London, to this extraordinary wild and magical estate in
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  Sammie Leslie: Ireland?
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  Well, this was where they came in the summer.
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  It was too cold really, in the winter.
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  and they came here for summer and holidays and he absolutely loved it.
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  And, and again, kind of just went fairwell and disappeared off into the
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  woods and out in the lake fishing and out swimming and up trees and, you
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  know, on ponies and down to the farm.
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  And, you know, Very much outside and, and, and a nature lover and
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  really connected with the nature.
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  And I think that's when he really fell in love with spiritualism and that
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  sort of, um, you know, through the American side of the family that sort
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  of, you know, first nation spiritualism and connecting connection to land.
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  So your father,
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  Rupert Isaacson: well, at what point did he then decide to
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  just live at Castle Leslie and immerse himself in that landscape?
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  And then how did you come along?
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  Sammie Leslie: Well, if you go back to 1914 when the eldest boy was
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  shot, the second boy didn't want it.
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  He wanted to become a priest.
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  the third boy, had had polio.
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  So then it was sort of put into a, an estate company to try and protect it.
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  And then the next generation, my aunt was born 1912, but she was a girl and
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  I was in my forties before I realized she was the eldest child because
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  the next one, uncle Jack was a boy.
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  So I assumed he was the eldest, but he'd been a prisoner of war for five
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  years and really couldn't cope with the sort of stresses of running the place.
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  and it was just known as the hot potato cuz nobody really wanted it.
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  So then it went to, my dad picked up the pieces and said, I'll take it on.
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  and then I'm the fifth of six kids and while everybody loves and adores it,
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  you know, the reality of four letter words, like work and bill and, you
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  know, roof, and, you know, things that need to be scare me now with these
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  Rupert Isaacson: words.
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  Sammie Leslie: So, I love four letter words.
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  there's lots of good ones.
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  and, but see, at the end of the day, people should follow their passion in
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  life and their career and what they want to do and, and not do what the
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  world tells 'em they should do because they're just gonna be miserable for life.
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  So did your,
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  Rupert Isaacson: did your dad, it sounds like he managed to break free
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  from that kind of, tying diapers to your face type, stringent upbringing,
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  and he didn't inflict that on you or his other children, it seems.
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  Can you describe, what the culture at Castle Leslie was
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  when you were a girl growing up?
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  How, how was it, what was going
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  Sammie Leslie: on there?
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  Well, dad had, I suppose he found his, his wings literally when he went into
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  the RF at 19 and got away, you know, went through the war and got away from
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  the constraints of, of family as such.
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  And then he went off and became a filmmaker and music maker in London.
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  And then he came home and took over and he started nightclub here in the
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  sixties and then a hippie colony.
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  So some of my nannies growing up Baner and, you know, would've
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  been part of the hippie colony.
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  So it was quite sort of free thinking in a very, you know, the, the, the Catholic
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  church in Ireland was not a kind church.
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  and as we know, so many horror stories are unfolding all the time.
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  and he stayed a million miles away from organized religion
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  and, just was quite a free spirit.
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  And most importantly, he absolutely loved his horses.
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  Okay.
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  Tell us
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  Rupert Isaacson: about the relationship with Castle Leslie and
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  Sammie Leslie: horses.
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  Oh, they've always, you know, since we, rescued Mark Queen of Scott's in
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  the 10 hundreds on the back of a horse, which is how we ended up from Hungary
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  into Scotland, and eventually here.
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  Whoa,
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  Rupert Isaacson: say that again.
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  Slowly.
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  Sammie Leslie: Both me, Leslie came over as a mercenary to bring a young girl
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  over to Mary King Malcolm of Scotland.
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  her name was Margaret, and at some point he had to rescue her from
• 14:47
  a castle that was being besieged.
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  And he made a belt with three buckles, and he threw her on the back of the horse.
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  And he shied a grip past the buckle and buggered off cross countryside.
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  And when she became queen, she gave us a crest with three buckles, and then granted
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  him all the land for a mile around where his horse needed to stop to, to rest.
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  And he rode West.
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  I think he exhausted five horses.
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  And she became,
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  Rupert Isaacson: she became Queen of Scotland.
• 15:13
  Yeah.
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  But, and then allotted him land in Northern Ireland?
• 15:16
  Sammie Leslie: No, in Scotland.
• 15:17
  In Scotland.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 15:19
  How did, okay.
• 15:20
  Okay.
• 15:20
  Keep going.
• 15:21
  Sammie Leslie: Well, in those days, and then in the 16 hundreds, one of them
• 15:25
  was a bishop and he was a bit feisty, and they kept moving him, ran the place
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  he lived to the grand old age of, it was in his hundredth year when he died.
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  And, he got moved over here and he fought Cromwell and then rode
• 15:37
  to the restoration of the king.
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  And when, he was offered the Archbishop of Canterbury as, as,
• 15:43
  as a reward, he went, no, no, no.
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  There's an old church and a lake in my, the edge of my diocese.
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  I just want to settle there.
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  So he fell in love in the 1660s with, with here and that incredible
• 15:54
  light over that beautiful lake.
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  And, bought the estate of Ridgeways for 2000 pounds.
• 16:01
  That's a lot of money.
• 16:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 16:02
  In those days.
• 16:03
  an unthinkable amount of money.
• 16:05
  okay.
• 16:05
  So you grew up, as a, the child of a hippie commune, run by, an aristo who
• 16:14
  had a mistress who didn't quite mean to get pregnant, but did, and then you came
• 16:19
  along and managed to grow up Ferrell in this amazing place with all this history.
• 16:26
  did you ever imagine you'd end up having to run the show?
• 16:31
  I I, that you must have seen as you grew up, despite it being feral, despite
• 16:36
  being able to take ponies and sprinters?
• 16:38
  You must have seen it was a lot of work to run
• 16:40
  Sammie Leslie: a place like that.
• 16:41
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:42
  So there was this sort of wonderful freedom of being feral around the estate.
• 16:47
  There was the incredible and probably the most amazing
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  privilege of the kitchen table.
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  And, you know, we were encouraged to sit and talk and ask questions
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  to anybody that was there.
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  And the kitchen table was always this amazing mix of
• 16:58
  people from all walks of life.
• 17:00
  and what was the question?
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  The
• 17:03
  Rupert Isaacson: question was, did you ever, as you were a kid, imagine that
• 17:06
  you would end up running the place and did you have a sense of, as a kid,
• 17:11
  just the sheer amount of effort it
• 17:13
  Sammie Leslie: takes to run a place like that?
• 17:14
  Well, so, so you know, there was the, the feral childhood, the incredible.
• 17:19
  Privilege, the kitchen table and anybody and everybody that you met.
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  And, you were allowed to ask questions and, you know, to ask people about
• 17:26
  different religions and view viewpoints.
• 17:29
  And on the outside, you know, while inside the house was very open-minded, outside
• 17:34
  the troubles were picking up speed.
• 17:37
  Okay.
• 17:38
  And that other sort of 30 something years.
• 17:40
  So no, I just always loved the place and wanted to do it, but, and nobody
• 17:44
  else really seemed that interested.
• 17:47
  I mean, there's interest, but there's rolling up your sleeves
• 17:50
  and doing the four letter word.
• 17:51
  But now tell us, tell us about the
• 17:54
  Rupert Isaacson: troubles.
• 17:55
  So not everyone who's listening to this, knows what the troubles were.
• 17:58
  We, we did interview over on our, equine assisted world, podcast, , Terry
• 18:02
  Brosnan, who also grew up in the Troubles.
• 18:05
  Yes.
• 18:05
  tell us about the troubles.
• 18:07
  What were the troubles and how did they affect your
• 18:09
  Sammie Leslie: place?
• 18:10
  It started out as, as civil rights and because it was a
• 18:14
  very, a very unfair society.
• 18:16
  You know, Catholics were second right citizens, and it was very unbalanced.
• 18:22
  and then it grew legs and violence became the normal way of dealing with things.
• 18:29
  And, you know, and tit fort and became very divisive and, and divided
• 18:33
  people in communities and, you know, rage for about 30 something
• 18:38
  years with the loss of about three.
• 18:43
  You know, probably 10, 20 times of that pupil.
• 18:46
  Seriously, androgen, traumatized.
• 18:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 18:49
  So you, you were, you were living growing up in this beautiful
• 18:53
  place, but right on the border of Northern and Southern Ireland there.
• 18:57
  How did the troubles, the Protestant Catholic troubles seep into that magical
• 19:03
  Sammie Leslie: world?
• 19:04
  Your, it was very funny cause I, you know, I'm from a family of eight faith
• 19:07
  and probably as many nationalities, there's still a few question marks.
• 19:11
  so we grew up in a world that was very open and eclectic and, and you
• 19:16
  know, multi-faced, multiracial.
• 19:19
  And then you walked out the door and you went, are they gonna like me cuz
• 19:22
  they think I'm Catholic and hate me cuz they think I'm English Protestant or
• 19:25
  are they're gonna love me because of the Churchill Wellington connection and
• 19:28
  they think I'm English Protestant and hate me cuz they think I'm Catholic.
• 19:32
  in fact, I'm neither of the above.
• 19:34
  so you're always doing this dance trying to figure out you to be
• 19:37
  incredibly careful about what you said to who and cuz somebody would
• 19:40
  pigeonhole you in one side or the other.
• 19:43
  so it was a, it was a, it was an interesting time.
• 19:48
  Yeah.
• 19:48
  Bias.
• 19:49
  Did, did, did violence creep onto the estate itself?
• 19:52
  not really.
• 19:52
  We were very lucky.
• 19:54
  I mean, there were definitely neighbors where, you know, there
• 19:57
  were horrendous murders and houses burned and bombs and, yeah.
• 20:03
  Very unpleasant things.
• 20:04
  But
• 20:05
  Rupert Isaacson: what do you think, what do you think made.
• 20:08
  Castle, Leslie Haven.
• 20:10
  Why didn't the trouble spill
• 20:11
  Sammie Leslie: onto the estate?
• 20:12
  I think cuz over the generations, they've just, they've always matter.
• 20:16
  A, a really interesting, women over the years, you know, not the dominion
• 20:21
  of long eggs, but long legs, fresh eggs, need ply, you know, breeding machines.
• 20:26
  so Christina Leslie was a widow in 1940 and with children from her husband's
• 20:32
  first marriage and their marriage.
• 20:35
  So I think she had seven or nine children under the age of 16.
• 20:39
  And, she ran the estate and she did an awful lot of good work.
• 20:42
  And she did the best she could in really desperate circumstances, you know, and
• 20:47
  there were desperate landowners and people who just never even came to wineland.
• 20:51
  They had no understanding of, the land.
• 20:53
  They had no understanding of the poverty and the hunger.
• 20:56
  and about a third of the states went bankrupt.
• 20:58
  About a third of the states didn't care.
• 20:59
  And then there was a cohort of them that really wanted to
• 21:02
  try and do the right thing.
• 21:04
  And she was certainly up there with them.
• 21:06
  And we've done a lot of research into, you know, her life and her work.
• 21:11
  And she was an incredible person.
• 21:14
  I mean, this is back to the terrible dangers of monocultures.
• 21:18
  You know, potato was the monoculture.
• 21:20
  It was an incredible food, and potatoes and buttermilk are a perfect protein.
• 21:23
  You know, it was the highest food value per acre of anything grown.
• 21:28
  It made a lot of sense in so many ways, but monoculture
• 21:31
  leaves you very vulnerable.
• 21:32
  So you are saying if
• 21:34
  Rupert Isaacson: I, if I'm getting my history right, that there was a
• 21:39
  history in the estate of when troubled times happened, like the Irish potato
• 21:44
  famine, the, people of Car Castle Leslie in particular, the women of
• 21:48
  Castle Leslie were seen to have stepped up to help the community did that.
• 21:55
  But that was, you know, a good a hundred years or 120 years before
• 22:01
  the troubles, you know, of, of the 1970s to eighties and so on.
• 22:05
  why would the good works of, of a previous generation, several
• 22:10
  generations back, matter to the generation fighting and the troubles?
• 22:16
  What,
• 22:17
  Sammie Leslie: because it was recent history in so many ways.
• 22:20
  It, you know, it so changed the country in so many ways.
• 22:23
  Not desperate, loss of life, desperate immigration, awful things
• 22:28
  happened in so many different ways.
• 22:31
  so no, it's, it was very recent history in so many ways.
• 22:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so, so, so p people were, were still feeling mm-hmm.
• 22:39
  The potato famine 120 years later and saying, well, because the Leslie
• 22:43
  family did the right thing and fed people, we're not gonna go there
• 22:49
  and burn that house down, basically.
• 22:50
  Is, is that more or less what it was, or
• 22:52
  Sammie Leslie: first?
• 22:52
  Well, the first time houses were burned was the 1920s
• 22:57
  after Ireland got independence.
• 22:59
  so they had a whole space of burning.
• 23:00
  They burned about 400 houses.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  And.
• 23:03
  Stopped.
• 23:03
  People came to burn it and people were stopped burning it.
• 23:06
  so yeah, it would, it would've been part of it.
• 23:08
  Also, my grandfather had become a Catholic.
• 23:10
  He'd stood for the national seat and dairy and spoke Gail Gory, spoke fluent
• 23:14
  Irish party, Irish Language Commission.
• 23:16
  so, but his first cousin was Winston Churchill.
• 23:19
  So you had this real sort of dichotomy of lots of people on different sides.
• 23:24
  so I would hope to think, cause obviously I wasn't around at the time that, you
• 23:28
  know, it's cuz they were reasonable people and tried to do the right thing
• 23:31
  in the 1890s, or sorry, 1790s with a thing called the Act of Union, which was
• 23:36
  trying to get rid of the Irish Parliament because it was becoming too powerful.
• 23:41
  So we did two things.
• 23:42
  We tried to put a bill to parliament that absentee landlords pay higher taxes.
• 23:46
  If they weren't gonna live in Ireland and work their land and be part of it,
• 23:50
  they should make, pay a much higher tax.
• 23:51
  That stayed in Ireland that went down a fart space suit.
• 23:55
  And then in the active union, they were offered, 10,000 pounds in an earldom to
• 23:58
  vote to get rid of the Irish Parliament.
• 24:00
  And they went no stuff it.
• 24:02
  so I think in their own way they've tried to, you know, do the
• 24:06
  right thing by those around them.
• 24:08
  and, and by here it would've been very easy to take.
• 24:11
  And there's, you know, there's a whole.
• 24:12
  Series of a lot of research on what they call the castle ray bribes and who took
• 24:16
  the bribes and, you know, politics at the time was, was, you know, who could, who
• 24:21
  could pay the, who could bribe who, yeah.
• 24:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 24:24
  Yeah.
• 24:24
  That, that was Georgian politics.
• 24:26
  I, I, I don't think much has changed, but, so basically it seems that the
• 24:30
  Leslie family then seems to have had an unusually good relationship
• 24:37
  through massive political upheavals and violence with Yeah, I think
• 24:42
  Sammie Leslie: the local community, yeah.
• 24:44
  I think if you look at the original states that are still here, and there's
• 24:46
  probably only 12 or 15 sort of on this sort of scale, they probably were all
• 24:51
  here because they wanted to do the right thing through, through the generations.
• 24:56
  yeah, I mean, it would, you know, even, you know, the last round, it
• 24:59
  would be easier to sort of sell and bugger off, but that would be, that
• 25:03
  just wouldn't be the right thing to do.
• 25:05
  Rupert Isaacson: So how aware of all that, were you growing up as a, as
• 25:08
  a child in the, did you must have learned, did you learn all this later
• 25:12
  or was all this history imparted to you as part of your feral childhood?
• 25:17
  You sort of, yeah,
• 25:20
  Sammie Leslie: it was a real dichotomy and yes.
• 25:22
  You learned, we used to do tourists at the house.
• 25:24
  You got money off tourists if you did it.
• 25:26
  and, but you learned all the history and you learned all the paintings.
• 25:29
  You learned who everybody was and yeah.
• 25:33
  That you we're all just fellow human beings on this planet.
• 25:36
  Yeah.
• 25:39
  Yeah.
• 25:40
  All trying to, yeah, no, it, it,
• 25:43
  Rupert Isaacson: it, it's an extraordinary, it's an extraordinary
• 25:46
  corner of the world in so many ways because it's, it's so magical,
• 25:50
  it's so beautiful, it's so wild.
• 25:52
  And at the same time, it's so steeped in the, messiness of the realities of
• 25:58
  what humans get into with each other.
• 26:01
  And yet there, the estate has stood and there it still is.
• 26:05
  something I know about estates is that they generally don't make
• 26:10
  money and often end up getting sold.
• 26:14
  You, your dad was a hippie.
• 26:17
  He had the hippie commune, as you said, the four letter worked
• 26:21
  work bills, that sort of thing, not perhaps the most popular.
• 26:26
  Sammie Leslie: Oh, he, he worked, he paid bills and he tried to keep the roof on.
• 26:29
  but you know, he had, was quite visionary in what he wanted to do was
• 26:32
  an amazing, very beautifully designed sort of hotel that looked like the
• 26:36
  hanging gardens of Babylon and amazing golf course and all of the rest.
• 26:40
  And he had all sorts of bikes and plans down and was sort of heading off down
• 26:44
  that road when, when the travels hit, they were, bulldozing the land for the
• 26:49
  foundations for different buildings.
• 26:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 26:52
  So your dad actually had the idea?
• 26:55
  Yes.
• 26:55
  So you'd get into tourism and then the troubles hit and put the kibosh
• 26:58
  Sammie Leslie: on that.
• 26:59
  Yeah.
• 26:59
  Two things.
• 27:00
  tourism and, nature reserves as they were called in those days.
• 27:04
  Okay.
• 27:04
  Which of course, why do you wanna protect nature?
• 27:09
  There's so much, but there's, it's doesn't really make a difference.
• 27:12
  so yeah.
• 27:13
  So, you know, he had an awful lot of vision.
• 27:15
  I mean, he didn't have the sort of business skills, but, necessary
• 27:19
  that, you know, that we would now.
• 27:20
  But where did you learn them?
• 27:22
  You remember?
• 27:22
  They had no education.
• 27:23
  He had a, a year in university and then after the r a f and got music.
• 27:28
  It was, you know, the world.
• 27:29
  We, the amount of courses and support we have to nurture young businesses
• 27:35
  and entrepreneurs now is fabulous.
• 27:37
  In his day, there was absolutely nothing and everybody was out to try and Felicia.
• 27:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 27:45
  So, so, so he comes up with this vision, he's about to get going on it.
• 27:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:50
  He finds backers, then the troubles hit, and now nobody wants
• 27:53
  to go to this part of Ireland.
• 27:54
  Why doesn't the estate go down?
• 27:56
  what keeps it above water?
• 27:58
  Sammie Leslie: Two things.
• 27:59
  selling land, furniture, paintings.
• 28:01
  And also he started a business round, equestrian riding holidays because,
• 28:06
  you know, some of the bravest people are people that ride and especially,
• 28:10
  you know, from Northern Ireland because they're so used to, Being ballsy.
• 28:13
  and we had a lot of Swiss riders as well through a Swiss agent, that
• 28:18
  all, so I grew up with the equestrian center and lots of people coming
• 28:22
  here, to ride horses and because of the beautiful land here, and there's
• 28:26
  this sort of amazing amount of timber and huge amounts of cross country.
• 28:29
  and the days before insurance got silly.
• 28:32
  Lots of people used to come here for, you know, riding and
• 28:35
  hacking and, and cross country.
• 28:37
  You know,
• 28:37
  Rupert Isaacson: it's, I I grew up, , in the UK riding and so yeah,
• 28:41
  I remember seeing the adverts for Castle Leslie in the, equestrian
• 28:47
  magazines as a boy and, and, and thinking, oh God, that looks amazing.
• 28:51
  I'd love to go there.
• 28:52
  These sweeping, you know, views and people jumping cross country jumps
• 28:56
  and it just all looking so amazing and so perfect and thinking, oh,
• 29:00
  I'd really like to go there one day.
• 29:01
  And I sort of, it, it had always been kind of in the back of my mind.
• 29:04
  Yeah.
• 29:05
  Castle Leslie.
• 29:06
  And then, so it is amazing to me to end up there, with you last year, , ago actually.
• 29:11
  There's that little boy in me, you know, that was looking at that ad,
• 29:15
  you know, back in the 1980s going, yes, I made it there, as you say.
• 29:20
  , that was before the days of, insurance and liability and people suing
• 29:26
  each other and that sort of thing.
• 29:28
  Taking people for cross country riding holidays isn't exactly
• 29:31
  the safest business bet.
• 29:33
  In the world, cause people are gonna fall off and they are gonna get hurt.
• 29:36
  It's just, there's gravity.
• 29:37
  It's just the nature of the beast.
• 29:39
  your dad started this equestrian center specializing in this, what happened to
• 29:44
  it because it seemed on the outside, very successful to me as a boy, seeing the
• 29:48
  ads, you know, and, and wanting to go.
• 29:51
  Sammie Leslie: Absolutely.
• 29:52
  by, , where are we?
• 29:54
  84.
• 29:56
  , I was in England training.
• 29:57
  I got my AI and then got my eye eye in talent and I phoned home to say I got
• 30:02
  my eye at 18, which, was quite young.
• 30:05
  And he said, oh, but I'm really sorry I've had to sell the equestrian center.
• 30:10
  So I thought, well, I will buy that back.
• 30:12
  And it took me 20 years to, to buy it back.
• 30:15
  and they were really gracious about it.
• 30:17
  And then we built the new hotel wrapped rider and the new
• 30:21
  yard that, that you've seen.
• 30:22
  We got some support from our tourist board for the indoor arena and the, and the
• 30:26
  yard, which meant we could build a sort of a four, five star facility that normally
• 30:31
  in those days, only people, you know, in top competition yards managed to get into.
• 30:35
  We just wanted to make a really good yard accessible for everybody.
• 30:40
  Now whether it's
• 30:40
  Rupert Isaacson: you, you, you threw out some acronyms there, which not
• 30:44
  everyone listening will will know.
• 30:45
  So I just want to just for the, the listeners who dunno
• 30:49
  quite what that language meant.
• 30:52
  Okay.
• 30:52
  So, The equestrian professional world in the uk, most people get what's called a
• 30:58
  bhs, British Horse Society AI assistant instructor as a sort of basic, and then
• 31:04
  there's an ii, intermediate instructor and then there's an I instructor and
• 31:09
  there aren't many BHS eyes out there.
• 31:11
  To be a BHS eyes is like a big deal.
• 31:13
  and you got yours at what?
• 31:17
  Sammie Leslie: No.
• 31:18
  Well, I got my AI at 17 and my eye eye at 18 and I wanted my eye by 21 and I
• 31:24
  wanted to be a fellow before I was 30.
• 31:26
  but I had, I came, plans changed.
• 31:29
  I came instead of going to Germany to train at 18, I
• 31:32
  came home and started a yard.
• 31:34
  Cuz I just knew that if I didn't come home and state my claim,
• 31:38
  probably more would've got sold.
• 31:39
  And I didn't want to be in a situation where, I find out about it through
• 31:44
  a phone call after it had happened.
• 31:46
  Rupert Isaacson: So.
• 31:47
  All right.
• 31:47
  So you get your ii which is a, a major deal at 18.
• 31:50
  Yes.
• 31:50
  I I, I remember there was maybe a few I eyes in the part of England that I grew up
• 31:56
  in, and they were all fearsome, ironclad, English horsey women, bellowing
• 32:01
  to each other as Macedon Bellows.
• 32:04
  Toon, exactly.
• 32:05
  Across the Primeval Swamp and Yeah.
• 32:07
  , and they were all, you know, it had taken them into their, into their
• 32:10
  thirties or forties to get there.
• 32:11
  It's obviously it was a major achievement.
• 32:14
  Sammie Leslie: Get that.
• 32:15
  Go ahead.
• 32:15
  Tale is an incredible school.
• 32:18
  I mean, Talend, the Equestrian Center Tale is, is phenomenal.
• 32:22
  So, Talend Talend, so Pam Ands and Molly Siv Wright's Equestrian Center.
• 32:29
  So I was there for four months and you know, it's an amazing bootcamp.
• 32:35
  and they produced incredible riders, one after the other.
• 32:38
  I'm not one of them, so, but, you know, horses were never going be able
• 32:43
  to take, make the sort of money that I needed to put the place back together.
• 32:47
  So it was always horses, hospitality, and heritage.
• 32:51
  What
• 32:51
  Rupert Isaacson: made you feel, I mean, the hospitality industry
• 32:54
  is notoriously, demanding.
• 32:58
  it grinds people down.
• 33:00
  I've had lots of friends who were chefs, hotelier, that sort
• 33:04
  of thing, and it took a toll.
• 33:06
  and, the, the world of horses, the equestrian world,
• 33:08
  similarly, you get bashed up.
• 33:10
  You it, it looks glamorous from the outside, but we know that it's, it's a
• 33:15
  lot of shit shoveling and falling off and getting trodden on and so forth,
• 33:19
  and there's massive financial overheads.
• 33:23
  So to come in at 1819 and say, okay, I'm gonna get this equestrian
• 33:30
  center that's just been sold, I.
• 33:36
  How did you, how did you let alone going into hotel man, you know, making a hotel?
• 33:40
  Sammie Leslie: How did you begin?
• 33:41
  Oh, the wonderful thing about Young is being f was young and Fool Hardy.
• 33:46
  , so at 18 there was another stable yard in the back of the estate, which has
• 33:49
  been the sort of working horse yard.
• 33:51
  , the one where the equestrian center was, was the agent's yard for his horses.
• 33:56
  Then there was a second yard for the carriage horses.
• 33:59
  , and then the third yard was the hunters and the working horses.
• 34:03
  So I took the old third yard on the back of the estate and, and, and started there.
• 34:10
  , and I got a grant, , from the County Enterprise Board.
• 34:13
  I didn't actually, I got a, , an ANCO grant for about 1200 quid, , and started
• 34:18
  the yard and worked up from there.
• 34:20
  So how did
• 34:23
  Rupert Isaacson: you find your clientele?
• 34:24
  How did you find your, your stuff?
• 34:26
  How did you, how did you run a team as just a
• 34:28
  Sammie Leslie: kid like that?
• 34:29
  When I, I've been outta school five years, four years at that stage.
• 34:33
  So in my head I wasn't a, I wasn't a kid school at 15.
• 34:37
  , So, , teaching, so teaching was something I'd always loved and, and did quite well.
• 34:42
  And also, flat work and, and schooling and, and breaking horses
• 34:46
  that everybody had marked up.
• 34:48
  , and ended up having some nice horses through.
• 34:51
  And then I sold a horse out to Canada.
• 34:53
  , and at 21 I just knew I needed to get away and travel.
• 34:56
  I always wanted to come home.
• 34:58
  so I went out to Canada after pk, the little bay mayor that went out and
• 35:03
  worked in Canada for a while, and then Virginia and then San Francisco and out
• 35:07
  to Australia and traveled and worked and traveled work for about three years.
• 35:11
  Why wasn't
• 35:12
  Rupert Isaacson: the, lump the, the financially troubled estate sold out
• 35:16
  from under you while you, while you were doing that, how did you, or did you
• 35:20
  take a risk that it might, it might just not have been there to come back to?
• 35:22
  No.
• 35:23
  Sammie Leslie: I knew that I needed to get away and travel.
• 35:25
  I mean, he must have sold something quite well to be able to
• 35:28
  survive for a couple more years.
• 35:30
  and then, , he actually did sold something that sold.
• 35:33
  Okay.
• 35:34
  And then I got to go to hotel school in Switzerland.
• 35:37
  My sister got to film school and my other sister got to university.
• 35:41
  and then, , back into financial trouble.
• 35:44
  And he got a big offer from a Japanese corporation, , to become, I think their
• 35:49
  cultural liaison center for Europe.
• 35:51
  And I, I shortened my course in Switzerland.
• 35:55
  so I doubled my hours.
• 35:56
  I was doing 60 hours a week study.
• 35:58
  And then, I remember I was down in the FR fridges downstairs and, I
• 36:04
  can't remember what I was getting.
• 36:05
  And the phone call came in and he said, are you coming home?
• 36:08
  And I said, just give me six months.
• 36:09
  This was November, December, or maybe January.
• 36:12
  I said, just gimme six months to December and I'll be home.
• 36:15
  And I came home when I was 24.
• 36:17
  Ok.
• 36:17
  Ancient.
• 36:18
  I work.
• 36:19
  Rupert Isaacson: And you got Yeah.
• 36:21
  Really?
• 36:21
  In, in, in the old days in Ireland, you'd been an old mate.
• 36:23
  what, so did you get, did you get to work alongside your dad?
• 36:27
  no.
• 36:27
  He had pulling it up again and putting, getting
• 36:30
  Sammie Leslie: it back on it feet.
• 36:32
  Not really.
• 36:33
  I mean, dad was 48 when I was born.
• 36:36
  So what age was he at that point?
• 36:39
  I was 24.
• 36:40
  So he was sort of early seventies.
• 36:43
  And am I right?
• 36:45
  Late sixties?
• 36:47
  Rupert Isaacson: you were talking to the wrong person
• 36:48
  Sammie Leslie: for maths.
• 36:48
  Yeah.
• 36:51
  48 60.
• 36:52
  Yeah.
• 36:52
  He was early, early seventies.
• 36:55
  And it was, cause I remember doing his 70th birthday.
• 36:58
  and he also, when he'd smoked, which, if you've got, you know,
• 37:03
  weaker lungs is, is not the cleverest.
• 37:06
  He nearly died when we were children from double pneumonia.
• 37:08
  And they, you know, doctor said you'd continue to smoke
• 37:11
  and you've got six months.
• 37:12
  He'd also, you know, always had asthma.
• 37:15
  and then he got em emphysema and he lost about a third of his lung capacity.
• 37:18
  So big damp, cold house.
• 37:20
  I mean, the problem with damper is there's less oxygen in it
• 37:23
  and it's much harder to breathe.
• 37:27
  And he really couldn't cope with winters here.
• 37:28
  So he was around my first winter and in his ski suit, he literally
• 37:32
  got into a Red Sea scoot and lived into, lived in it for the winter.
• 37:36
  your body self cleans after a while.
• 37:38
  And then, he'd come home for a bit in the summers.
• 37:42
  So he died in 2 0 1, so I was 34.
• 37:46
  He'd just been home 10 years at that stage.
• 37:49
  so yeah.
• 37:51
  So you, you found
• 37:53
  Rupert Isaacson: yourself at 24?
• 37:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:58
  Saying, okay, I'm going to take this huge lumbering place, which is very
• 38:04
  beautiful, and I'm gonna make a worldclass hotel and question center out it.
• 38:12
  Sammie Leslie: How'd you even begin?
• 38:14
  I was a lovely old saying that the best way to eat an
• 38:17
  elephant is one bite at a time.
• 38:20
  so you just do little bits.
• 38:21
  So I started with horses the first winter, and then I did, t runs.
• 38:26
  I got a grant for 5,000 for the town enterprise board.
• 38:29
  And then I sold my dad's card for the other five grand.
• 38:32
  And then bit by bit, he left a five of us.
• 38:35
  So I got an agreement with the rest of the family, and then I started
• 38:39
  six bedrooms, and then I bought out all the freehold from everybody.
• 38:43
  And then just bit by bit, you just keep picking away.
• 38:46
  That's all you can.
• 38:47
  How did you, how did
• 38:47
  Rupert Isaacson: you find the guests?
• 38:48
  How did you, how'd you find the staff?
• 38:49
  How did you find the team?
• 38:50
  How did you run that?
• 38:51
  You make it sound so
• 38:52
  Sammie Leslie: easy.
• 38:52
  It couldn't have been.
• 38:54
  It's always listen, having children, I wasn't brave enough to do that.
• 38:59
  in all wonderful forms that they, that they come in, and they, there's
• 39:05
  wonderful proof of local, people who came to work from, I mean,
• 39:08
  some of our team were 14 when they started, still in contact with them.
• 39:13
  and they're mothers now, which is wonderful to see.
• 39:16
  and yeah, we remember we were in an area where there weren't an
• 39:19
  awful lot of jobs at that time.
• 39:22
  And just built it up.
• 39:23
  but, you know, I, I don't make it all look wonderful.
• 39:25
  Now I have incredible CEO who's, who's been here 15 years at this point.
• 39:30
  It's his birthday tomorrow, and there's a team of probably 200 on the estates.
• 39:35
  So they're the ones that really make it look fabulous and seamless
• 39:38
  and, and wonderful, not me.
• 39:40
  How, how, how
• 39:40
  Rupert Isaacson: many people were working on the estate when you began to put
• 39:44
  Sammie Leslie: it all together?
• 39:44
  Bridget Earl Housekeeper still lived here, who's been retired twice, but kept
• 39:49
  coming back cause the house was very much her life and I very much understand that.
• 39:54
  who else was here?
• 39:55
  Jack Heini, one of the old foresters was a wonderful character.
• 39:59
  Eugene Dinkin, the old head gardener's son was rounding about Mrs.
• 40:03
  Dinkin.
• 40:03
  His mom was on the back, in the back gate Lodge.
• 40:06
  Harry was retired from, manager.
• 40:09
  He was in one of the gate lodges, the wonderful Gourney clan
• 40:14
  where Jackie started in the yard.
• 40:15
  She's been here since I was 12, very much part parcel.
• 40:19
  and she's in the stewards in the dairy house, and that's theirs.
• 40:23
  so yeah, there were people scattered around the gate lodges and, me.
• 40:28
  Okay.
• 40:29
  And you built it
• 40:29
  Rupert Isaacson: up to 200.
• 40:30
  Incredible.
• 40:31
  I know that you, I know that you battled some,
• 40:34
  Sammie Leslie: oh, it's not me.
• 40:36
  Say that again.
• 40:37
  It's a huge team effort.
• 40:39
  It's not just me.
• 40:40
  Yeah.
• 40:40
  But
• 40:41
  Rupert Isaacson: on I know, I know what you're saying.
• 40:43
  And you're very modest at the same time.
• 40:45
  It's, it's, it's, it's, it's been grown and coaxed and nurtured.
• 40:49
  . So, you, , you pulled
• 40:50
  this estate, this sort of all basically bankrupt estate up by its bootstraps.
• 40:55
  You managed to, at beginning age 24, begin with a hotel and equestrian
• 41:01
  center, which is not an easy thing.
• 41:03
  You mentioned that you left school at 15.
• 41:06
  I know that you, you've, you've talked to me about your struggles with dyslexia.
• 41:10
  Mm.
• 41:11
  Can talk to us about that and, and how did that inform your self perception and your,
• 41:19
  feeling of yourself as an entrepreneur?
• 41:21
  And
• 41:22
  Sammie Leslie: you know, what's really funny is really interesting
• 41:24
  is, you know, I love the now the fact we can talk about neurodiversity and
• 41:28
  that we, the human mind process this information in so many different ways.
• 41:33
  And, and we're starting to, starting to understand some of them, the m
• 41:37
  part of an entrepreneur, cohort.
• 41:39
  And, they were looking at, there's a lot of research being done into sort of
• 41:42
  the percentile, with the people that think differently in whatever the norm
• 41:48
  is supposed to be in the first place.
• 41:49
  But the entrepreneur brain and that sort of, Thinking differently
• 41:54
  is, is is huge correlation.
• 41:57
  You know, I don't, you know, people talk about thinking outside the box.
• 42:03
  I've never found the box.
• 42:05
  I don't know what the box looks like.
• 42:06
  It's just, so when you go through school and you come from a house like this,
• 42:10
  it's not easy because they go here.
• 42:13
  The fact you think you are, you, you know, you're from the big house.
• 42:16
  Do you think you're special?
• 42:17
  You know, Dean Swift, the great writer in the 17 hundreds, complained that our
• 42:23
  house has loads and loads of shelves upon which it many were books written
• 42:26
  by the Leslie's all about themselves.
• 42:28
  you know, and they went on to write notes, 200 books after that.
• 42:30
  So, to come from a very literary family, and not be able to read and write the same
• 42:36
  way everybody else does, wasn't easy.
• 42:38
  And there was, you know, you tried to say your dyslexic and then people just
• 42:42
  said, oh, you thought you were special.
• 42:43
  And so, no, it wasn't, it certainly wasn't the easiest time.
• 42:46
  But then you went home into this wonderful freethinking world
• 42:51
  where anything was possible, and then you just got the ponies.
• 42:54
  And the great thing about horses is they don't read and write
• 42:56
  and they don't speak English.
• 42:57
  And, you know, they see pictor really, and they see shapes and
• 43:00
  textures and ratios and, you know, they think in a, you know, they don't
• 43:04
  need to do the academic bollocks.
• 43:07
  I mean, look at, just watch any, you know, horse going, you know, cross country
• 43:12
  at a high level or dressage at a high level, or show jumping or you know, at
• 43:17
  at barrel racing, any of the, the sports.
• 43:20
  And you go, God, you know, their brain function is incredible.
• 43:22
  Their, because their brain controls their body.
• 43:25
  I mean, they're amazing.
• 43:26
  they process so much information at such high speed and they don't read and
• 43:31
  write and they don't speak English and
• 43:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 43:35
  But they're also not expected to run businesses though, are they?
• 43:38
  I mean, so, so
• 43:39
  Sammie Leslie: no, they do.
• 43:41
  They probably, but no, so I think it was that perception, that
• 43:44
  ridiculous perception of what we understand, intelligence to be,
• 43:50
  you know, there's this, so this whole thing about intelligence
• 43:53
  and you have to be intelligent and intelligence was linked to academia.
• 43:57
  there we're now understanding there is so many different forms of intelligence.
• 44:01
  and I think the absolute hard reached ness of intelligence equaled academia in school
• 44:08
  was very damaging for a lot of kids.
• 44:11
  I could see how,
• 44:12
  Rupert Isaacson: coming back from a school where you've basically been
• 44:13
  told you're stupid, you know, and I remember when I was a boy at school, mm.
• 44:17
  Dyslexia was considered to be, by a lot of teachers stupidity.
• 44:22
  And now we know it's actually sort of part of genius syndrome.
• 44:26
  but.
• 44:27
  Of course it, it wasn't looked at that way.
• 44:29
  And I could see how coming back to this, you know, fairy world, with
• 44:34
  the, with ponies and hippies and amazing, could give you a safe haven.
• 44:38
  But then of course you had to go out and, you know, cope with,
• 44:41
  even with the horse world, sitting exams, doing that sort of thing.
• 44:45
  And then of course you go off to, to Switzerland and
• 44:47
  you go to, catering school.
• 44:49
  how did you, how did you function
• 44:51
  Sammie Leslie: there?
• 44:52
  Well, I think with the equestrian in my day, it was all oral or
• 44:56
  practical, which was great.
• 44:57
  Or teaching.
• 44:58
  And so you didn't have to do the written.
• 45:01
  it was brilliant.
• 45:01
  So even in high level was, I don't think in my day there was any written papers.
• 45:05
  and in hotel management, a lot of, at the beginning was practical, but I learned
• 45:10
  all the work rounds and I learned how to, they didn't mark you on your reading
• 45:15
  and write, you know, your writing skills.
• 45:17
  but I learned how to, to learn as such in the way that was needed.
• 45:21
  And I got a 5.8 average outta six, by year three, which was not bad.
• 45:27
  The language has tripped me up.
• 45:29
  my language has brought my scores down cause I just, what people
• 45:34
  forget is just, I, this is my theory and I'm sticking to it.
• 45:39
  His dyslexics brains are very logical and that they're always
• 45:43
  looking, taking vast amounts of data.
• 45:46
  Most other people don't even see, when they look at something, you know,
• 45:50
  whether it shape, color, texture, size, and they're always trying
• 45:55
  to process it into a form of logic.
• 45:59
  And we, there's so many different logics that you can take outta a series of data.
• 46:05
  as we know from data mining now, is that, that's my theory, that that's
• 46:09
  what we're always trying to do.
• 46:10
  And then that makes the place a sort of a safe and a calm place because
• 46:16
  you can put things in an order that they're supposed to be and you know,
• 46:21
  that the world says they should be.
• 46:23
  And language is no, language is no logic to it.
• 46:27
  It's other than German.
• 46:29
  Right,
• 46:29
  Rupert Isaacson: exactly.
• 46:30
  Which is what I'm struggling with right now.
• 46:32
  but e exactly.
• 46:33
  So you, you go off to Switzerland, , dyslexic and then you're expected
• 46:37
  to do stuff in other languages and you're juxtaposing letters and so on.
• 46:41
  Cause you're taking in all this information and yet you achieved
• 46:43
  this high grade point average.
• 46:45
  how,
• 46:47
  Sammie Leslie: I just studied, I mean we had 48 hours of lectures and practical a
• 46:51
  week and then I doubled my course and did 60 and then, in a start, eight in the
• 46:55
  morning and then two hour lunch break.
• 46:57
  But I did library for lunch and you know, took a sandwich in and studied.
• 47:00
  You just work.
• 47:02
  And then I'd work till sort of six o'clock in a Saturday night or eight
• 47:05
  o'clock in a Saturday night, go out for dinner, go clubbing, sleep or
• 47:08
  ski the next day and start again.
• 47:10
  So, you know, you were doing 80, a hundred hours a week, between classes and study,
• 47:14
  but that's, but that's what it took.
• 47:16
  I mean, that's what, what you'd do in horses and that's what you do
• 47:19
  in hospitality in the early days.
• 47:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
• 47:22
  at what point did you find though, that the dyslexia was no longer
• 47:27
  tripping you up in any way?
• 47:28
  was not impeding you?
• 47:29
  Was there a, a point where you were like, actually it's just not even an issue.
• 47:33
  I've been told this is, or or was it a slow thing was more
• 47:38
  Sammie Leslie: No, no.
• 47:38
  Oh, definitely.
• 47:39
  It's always there.
• 47:39
  You learn work rounds.
• 47:41
  I mean, I've got my own email language and my own written language.
• 47:44
  Everybody on my team knows that.
• 47:46
  because I read by shape, recognition and placement of word.
• 47:49
  And if you don't give me the context at the beginning of a document Yeah.
• 47:54
  Can get me.
• 47:56
  So once there's context, then say it says cat at the top of a
• 48:00
  document, you know, all those shapes are going to be related to cat.
• 48:04
  So then your brain recognizes all, all of the words and that relate to cat or
• 48:09
  what a cat might get up to, and therefore it figures out the shapes of the words.
• 48:13
  And then it puts them in so they, you know, there you can see words
• 48:16
  that are similar shapes, there could be lots of things, but I
• 48:19
  know they're related to cats.
• 48:20
  So it could be only one of 20 words.
• 48:24
  And I know the context, so I'll work out what's actually on the paper.
• 48:29
  So, no, we, we don't read by letters on a page.
• 48:33
  I mean, how ridiculous would that be?
• 48:35
  Seriously?
• 48:37
  Rupert Isaacson: unimaginative.
• 48:38
  Indeed.
• 48:39
  what about numbers?
• 48:40
  did your dyslexia, go to numbers as well?
• 48:42
  And, and
• 48:43
  Sammie Leslie: No.
• 48:43
  Cause I learned, I learned early on that numbers are ratios.
• 48:46
  There's 10, you know, one to 10, one to 12.
• 48:49
  After that everything is a ratio within that.
• 48:52
  Mm.
• 48:52
  So, you learn all the ways of quick multiplication and division and all
• 48:56
  the rest, which of course you lose once you start using calculators.
• 49:00
  but numbers are highly logical.
• 49:02
  Okay.
• 49:03
  Two plus two will always be four.
• 49:06
  Depends on your accountant, but yeah, depends on your accountant.
• 49:10
  I have.
• 49:10
  And two.
• 49:11
  And two and two could be 22, but two letters beside each other
• 49:16
  could be a whole load of things.
• 49:17
  Right.
• 49:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you find, or did you find then the same difficulty in
• 49:23
  reading and understanding nuance, emotion, sarcasm, that sort of thing with you?
• 49:30
  Or is that never a
• 49:30
  Sammie Leslie: problem?
• 49:31
  Oh, absolutely.
• 49:32
  It depends on the writer.
• 49:33
  I've just finished reading Ben Goldsmith.
• 49:37
  God is an Octopus and it is one of the most magical supplying
• 49:41
  books I think I've ever read.
• 49:43
  Because of his ability to portray incredibly complex situations like
• 49:49
  the death of his very fabulous and.
• 49:51
  Wonderful daughter at 15 in a farm accident to his, going through the
• 49:58
  desperate grief and really falling in love with an understanding
• 50:03
  nature and, and rewilding.
• 50:06
  And he ended up, you know, in Deborah, the department of, food and Agriculture
• 50:09
  in, in the UK for five years.
• 50:11
  But because his English is so low, I don't know, it's just so easy to read.
• 50:18
  So you really get the highs and the lows.
• 50:21
  there are other writers that try and write simple stories, but use
• 50:25
  complicated English, and you're sitting there going, why is that word there?
• 50:30
  What does that mean?
• 50:31
  You know?
• 50:31
  And, and the words just, I I I don't understand their flow of English.
• 50:36
  So, God give me, I would, I think I just pull my tail toenails out if you ask
• 50:41
  me to read Shakespeare or old English.
• 50:44
  yeah, I love his works and it play because you can figure out what they're
• 50:48
  trying to say because of the body language and the setting and the costume
• 50:51
  and, there's lots of other ways to read the emotion within a play that
• 50:56
  you just can't read in a, in a book.
• 51:00
  And that's
• 51:00
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting because I know, I know you to be a reader.
• 51:03
  and yet there you are with dyslexia.
• 51:06
  was there a point where reading kicked in as a pleasure?
• 51:09
  Sammie Leslie: studying veterinary notes for, it was veterinary notes
• 51:12
  for horse owners, write, reading all the, the manuals for anatomy and
• 51:16
  veterinary and stuff for teaching.
• 51:18
  They're all very logical.
• 51:20
  I think, you know, somebody like for me, Patricia Cromwell, the, the
• 51:22
  crime writer again, writes in a, a language that makes sense to me.
• 51:27
  So, but there are other writers, I just cannot get beyond sort of page
• 51:31
  three because I can't make sense of the, the, the order of the, that they
• 51:36
  use words a big words ade marmalade.
• 51:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 51:41
  That's a, that's a, it's a big word.
• 51:43
  It's a word that makes me, it's, it's a, it's word for a cat, isn't it?
• 51:45
  I think that's, yeah.
• 51:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:47
  Sammie Leslie: yeah.
• 51:47
  Marad Duke and Marmalade, they're both types of cats.
• 51:50
  Did you,
• 51:51
  Rupert Isaacson: is Marad Duke a a dog?
• 51:52
  Yeah.
• 51:52
  Marad.
• 51:53
  Duke's a a Great Dane, I think, isn't it?
• 51:54
  but maybe a great Dane that eats cats and therefore they taste like marmalade.
• 51:57
  yes, exactly.
• 52:00
  When you were a kid growing up, feral, , in the woods there, were you
• 52:05
  reading then, or did it, did it kick in
• 52:07
  Sammie Leslie: later?
• 52:07
  No, no.
• 52:08
  Later.
• 52:09
  Oh.
• 52:11
  I think it was always, oh God.
• 52:12
  I was always reading books on horse training for the first
• 52:16
  number of years of my life.
• 52:16
  And then, when I was traveling, you probably started
• 52:19
  to read more for pleasure.
• 52:21
  Okay.
• 52:22
  especially a long train journey or somewhere, or sitting in
• 52:26
  a train station or backpack.
• 52:27
  You know, backpacking can be a very slow moving.
• 52:31
  So definitely started to read more there and wanting to read
• 52:34
  books about the country and the culture that I was going to see.
• 52:39
  Right.
• 52:40
  I made the reading shogun before I backpacked around Asia.
• 52:44
  Okay.
• 52:44
  Rupert Isaacson: so it kicked in for you sort of more in your twenties.
• 52:47
  That's the dyslexia side.
• 52:48
  Now, I know that you also battled cancer, and that's a
• 52:53
  difficult thing in any context.
• 52:56
  but when you've got the weight of a large business on you and, the livelihoods
• 53:03
  of lots of people, and the well and, and, and the land because it's, it's not
• 53:08
  just a business as in people and money.
• 53:11
  You're, you are looking after landscape, you're looking after woodland,
• 53:13
  you're looking after livestock.
• 53:15
  You're, talk us through that.
• 53:19
  Sammie Leslie: Well, I, I've been in and outta hospital since my 20, late twenties
• 53:23
  with, some form of extreme exhaustion.
• 53:26
  And then in my, early forties I did an amazing thing called the Hoffman
• 53:31
  process, which is probably, but for me, definitely it's a sort of week long course
• 53:36
  and you just literally get stuck into understanding how your behavior works
• 53:41
  and the things that you've learned and what serves you and what trips you up
• 53:45
  and, and you know, sort of how your brain makes sense of things that are confusing.
• 53:51
  and I think that helped me let go of a lot of the sort of confusion of,
• 53:54
  you know, the, when I was younger.
• 53:56
  so funny enough, when I got a diagnosis with cancer, breast cancer, I think it
• 54:00
  was also a bit like, cuz I've done so much veterinary, it's just like, well, this
• 54:04
  is just something we need to deal with.
• 54:06
  and it hadn't started to spread, although I found the lump in June, went to the
• 54:11
  doctor 10 days to get an appointment.
• 54:14
  I had a, I had problem with the gro now that was really annoying and
• 54:19
  very painful and something else.
• 54:22
  And I actually forgot to say about the lump.
• 54:24
  And then in November I was, seeing somebody in New York at the time
• 54:30
  and he said, look, we can't, I just, he did, couldn't do the
• 54:34
  long distance bit and other bits.
• 54:35
  And he said, oh, I meant to say, by the way, as he was walking out the
• 54:39
  door, there was a bit of a lump.
• 54:40
  I think maybe you should get it checked.
• 54:42
  And I went, Oh, fuck, that's lump.
• 54:44
  I should have got, I meant to get checked in June and it was quite a bit bigger.
• 54:48
  So, I went home and, I just didn't tell anybody until one person, because
• 54:54
  I can't do all the faffing about it.
• 54:55
  And I went through surgery and came out and 24th of December and ran
• 54:59
  a Christmas drinks party here for a hundred something people, which
• 55:03
  started the annual Christmas drinks PE party for everybody locally.
• 55:06
  And, then a few days later a friend hugged me and burst
• 55:09
  my stitches at a party.
• 55:11
  That was, was, I'm still not trying to tell anybody, but, I
• 55:16
  ended up back in hospital.
• 55:17
  No, it was fine.
• 55:18
  I mean, the, the, the, it's a very guided process, you know, surgery,
• 55:22
  chemo, and radio and, and the different drugs and you come out the other end.
• 55:27
  And I hate to say I loved Wringle.
• 55:29
  I mean, I, I struggle with long hair and I've always got my hair tied
• 55:34
  up and had always very hairy legs and stuff, so somebody said Me too.
• 55:39
  Yeah.
• 55:40
  Yeah.
• 55:40
  But yours are supposed to be, somebody said if you wax your legs the couple
• 55:45
  of days before each chemo session, you'll end up with no leg hair because
• 55:48
  they're, they're too weak to grow back.
• 55:50
  So that, that was an upside.
• 55:52
  but then, a year later I was diagnosed with ms.
• 55:55
  multiple sclerosis and that was a bit more annoying because that's a
• 55:58
  bit more shadow box and you never quite know what tricks it's going to.
• 56:03
  To pull on you.
• 56:04
  so, and, and it's for life.
• 56:06
  I mean, there's no, as yet, there's not no sort of, you know,
• 56:10
  I'm 12 years after breast cancer now, so I don't even think of it.
• 56:14
  MS is a little bit more annoying.
• 56:16
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 56:17
  So Ms.
• 56:18
  it's in my family.
• 56:19
  and I know the, exhaustion factor as well as the other things.
• 56:24
  And I also know the exhaustion factor of, of, of being an entrepreneur and
• 56:28
  working in hospitality, let alone at the scale that you're doing it there.
• 56:34
  how do you possibly cope?
• 56:37
  I was three.
• 56:39
  Sammie Leslie: I slept for three and a half months last year.
• 56:41
  That worked really well.
• 56:42
  And then I moved my office home to my garden shed.
• 56:44
  Do you like my sky?
• 56:46
  I
• 56:46
  Rupert Isaacson: do like your sky.
• 56:46
  Yes.
• 56:47
  I wish, I wish the, I wish the, listeners could see it.
• 56:50
  There's a sky painted, she's Sammy's sitting in her garden shed, which is her
• 56:53
  office, and she has the sky painted on the ceiling and the painted on the wall.
• 56:57
  It's
• 56:57
  Sammie Leslie: wonderful.
• 56:58
  Well, it's wall the wall's wallpaper and then the sky.
• 57:01
  Yeah.
• 57:01
  For blue sky thinking.
• 57:02
  so you do, yeah, I moved home, my office home, which is great.
• 57:06
  and my kitchen or a garden table became the boardroom during our
• 57:10
  outside boardroom, during covid.
• 57:12
  But I do have to be a little bit careful cause I could go kitchen, office
• 57:16
  garden, kitchen bed, kitchen office for a week and then realize I actually
• 57:21
  haven't left the premises for a week.
• 57:24
  so yeah, but it, it's, it's, it's
• 57:27
  Rupert Isaacson: a flippant thing to say though, to say, well, I
• 57:28
  slept for three and a half months.
• 57:29
  You, you, you and I, Beth know you can't do that because of the demands
• 57:33
  and pressures of, of the job and running everything that has to be run.
• 57:36
  Sammie Leslie: How do you No, I didn't, Amanda.
• 57:38
  I did.
• 57:38
  And there was no,
• 57:40
  Rupert Isaacson: how how did you manage to achieve that though?
• 57:42
  given, and there must be listeners who are battling with this right now.
• 57:45
  Sammie Leslie: No, I, I've got, I've, I have an amazing team and they've
• 57:48
  really got my back and I have an amazing person who helps me, in my house.
• 57:52
  And, and you know, they must have
• 57:54
  Rupert Isaacson: needed decisions from you.
• 57:55
  They must have needed.
• 57:57
  Really?
• 57:58
  Sammie Leslie: No, it could run at that point.
• 58:00
  Very rarely.
• 58:01
  It wasn't three and a half months in a row.
• 58:02
  It was, you know, a day here, a week there.
• 58:05
  Right.
• 58:05
  you know, it was, it was in and out.
• 58:07
  and they kind of also tend to know when I'm getting a bit wobbly.
• 58:10
  So, you know, the, those sort of front load stuff.
• 58:13
  So yeah.
• 58:14
  Even yesterday I was on the computer and my eyesight shattered.
• 58:17
  So it's like a clear kaleidoscope and everything moves around the place.
• 58:20
  Mm mm Right.
• 58:21
  I can't.
• 58:21
  I can't.
• 58:22
  And I was, I was, I was proofreading a, a, a spreadsheet of figures.
• 58:27
  I was like, this just isn't working, cuz they're all moving all over the place, so
• 58:32
  just go to bed and I got it done today.
• 58:33
  So, yeah.
• 58:35
  What would you say, I
• 58:36
  Rupert Isaacson: mean there, there, there will be listeners, who are facing cancer,
• 58:40
  MS and other, fairly serious challenges who are trying to keep businesses,
• 58:44
  jobs, families, and so on together.
• 58:46
  as someone who's made go of that, what's, what are your
• 58:50
  Sammie Leslie: tips?
• 58:51
  I think there's all, you know, if, if you've been a half decent
• 58:55
  person in life, I think there's always a lot more people around you
• 58:59
  that want to help than you think.
• 59:02
  And sometimes you need to ask and sometimes you need to let people help.
• 59:06
  sometimes you need to show your vulnerability and just go, you
• 59:10
  know, my team know that if they hear me, my voice goes to certain.
• 59:15
  Level.
• 59:15
  Level.
• 59:15
  And I'm slow and I'm starting to not be able to complete a sentence
• 59:19
  and I'm trying to fight through it.
• 59:22
  because I, you know, you just, you, you do fight through.
• 59:24
  I've got work to do.
• 59:25
  I need to keep going.
• 59:26
  Somebody will quietly say, maybe would, you know, we'd like a cap.
• 59:29
  You need to take a break or fuck off.
• 59:33
  Useless.
• 59:36
  isn't now at some point, you know, and I now start, I just know you, you,
• 59:41
  you can't fight extreme exhaustion.
• 59:43
  You just end up being a cranky cow.
• 59:45
  And I apologize for everybody out there.
• 59:46
  I've ever been ultra cranky too when I'm too tired because I'm a
• 59:50
  thundering bitch when I'm exhausted.
• 59:52
  But it's normally because, you know, to actually be able to, you know, last year
• 59:58
  I had a, a week where it took me five, four days to get from my kitchen as far my
• 1:00:03
  bedroom to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
• 1:00:05
  you know, I found a couple of coffee sweets in the bathroom on
• 1:00:09
  day three, and that was kind of the first thing I'd eaten in three days.
• 1:00:12
  so that's just, when it hits like that, there's just,
• 1:00:15
  there's no point in fighting it.
• 1:00:17
  And you just have to roll up and go to bed.
• 1:00:19
  I mean, that, that's
• 1:00:20
  Rupert Isaacson: an interesting thing that you say, ask for help
• 1:00:22
  and allow your vulnerability to show.
• 1:00:25
  Because, you know, you, we, we, all of us who grew up in, in our generation, were
• 1:00:31
  brought up with a stoic, Value system and
• 1:00:34
  Sammie Leslie: stiff lip
• 1:00:35
  Rupert Isaacson: in, in it.
• 1:00:36
  Rich, it's very much stiff upper lip.
• 1:00:38
  pull your socks up.
• 1:00:39
  and you know, it, it doesn't come easy to do that.
• 1:00:44
  and definitely also when we were younger, we would've actually
• 1:00:47
  been penalized for that.
• 1:00:48
  at what, and so I think there's a lot of people who'd be listening who like
• 1:00:54
  us would struggle with asking for help.
• 1:00:57
  At what point did you manage to sort of give up that rugged individualist thing
• 1:01:06
  and say, okay, I'm just gonna fuck it.
• 1:01:08
  I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna
• 1:01:09
  Sammie Leslie: ask.
• 1:01:10
  I think, well, with breast cancer I certainly had to back off and,
• 1:01:14
  and, you know, let my team do more.
• 1:01:17
  And you know what, they're all way more talented than me and
• 1:01:19
  much better at the job than I was.
• 1:01:20
  And you know, they've always shown and grown and it's wonderful.
• 1:01:23
  it's wonderful to see.
• 1:01:25
  MS has been a bit more of a struggle, I think, cuz the extreme
• 1:01:28
  exhaustion is quite insidious.
• 1:01:31
  And there are times you push through it and you get, and, and it lifts and
• 1:01:34
  you're like, oh, I can keep going.
• 1:01:36
  I can get to that meeting, I can get to that party, I can get to the shops, I can.
• 1:01:41
  And then there's other times there's just absolutely no point whatsoever.
• 1:01:47
  Just, and then I got a thing called Noro ring that tracks my, sleep and activity
• 1:01:51
  and heart rate and all of the rest.
• 1:01:54
  So I can, it starts to tell me when I'm starting to dip, and that's when I go,
• 1:01:59
  okay, I'm not recovering as I should.
• 1:02:03
  I, I'm, I've just slept 14 hours and I'm still exhausted, so I
• 1:02:09
  need to be a bit more careful.
• 1:02:10
  So certainly being able to, and then you can flick back through, you
• 1:02:13
  know, the last two or three weeks or last month, or eight weeks and
• 1:02:16
  you kind of go, yeah, okay, I need to be a bit more sensible here.
• 1:02:19
  So, wearable technology, the, the, the, the joys of bio.
• 1:02:23
  What's the, , is it bio electronics?
• 1:02:25
  Yeah, bio feedback.
• 1:02:26
  Is it, is it biofeedback where they use electrical pulses to
• 1:02:32
  measure the chemical reactions that are happening with your Right.
• 1:02:35
  I remember big words like marmalade.
• 1:02:38
  That, that, that's it.
• 1:02:39
  And you know, it's, it's, it's been great in, you know, monitoring and
• 1:02:45
  times you think, I've got a really good night's sleep and you're
• 1:02:47
  looking and it goes, no, you didn't.
• 1:02:50
  And then by lunchtime you're going, no, I didn't.
• 1:02:52
  Yeah, you're right.
• 1:02:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 1:02:54
  Do, do, I mean, I, I think that's, there's probably a lot of people
• 1:02:59
  listening now go, actually, that.
• 1:03:01
  That's me.
• 1:03:01
  I often wake up exhausted.
• 1:03:03
  Why do I wake up exhausted?
• 1:03:05
  what is going
• 1:03:06
  Sammie Leslie: when?
• 1:03:06
  There are great things, there are great things that very unobtrusively measure
• 1:03:10
  what's happening when you're asleep because we go through this whole cycle
• 1:03:14
  of different sleep types and, you know, you can get a great night's sleep, but
• 1:03:18
  your alarm wakes you up in the middle of deep sleep and you feel like, you
• 1:03:21
  know, being hit in the head by a mallet is just, you've woken up the wrong point
• 1:03:24
  in your sleep cycle and you know, it tells you when your midpoint is and your
• 1:03:28
  heart rate and your body rate and your body temperature and oxygen saturations
• 1:03:33
  and, in a very, very simple way.
• 1:03:35
  And then you can start to see the sort of patterns and I inject
• 1:03:38
  with interferon every two weeks.
• 1:03:40
  And it is interesting to, to watch what it says.
• 1:03:44
  and you're going, yeah, I feel like I'm been hit by a bus and just
• 1:03:47
  cause I have been hit by a bus, it's okay to just go, yeah, my body's
• 1:03:54
  struggling for the next two days.
• 1:03:57
  Would, would
• 1:03:57
  Rupert Isaacson: your, would you say that your main, strategy for keeping up with
• 1:04:05
  work while having MS is, managing sleep, managing exhaustion, managing tiredness,
• 1:04:11
  Sammie Leslie: managing sleep?
• 1:04:13
  I do a lot of juicing.
• 1:04:14
  So, I hate cleaning my juicer.
• 1:04:17
  So do it probably every two weeks, and then freeze it, which is fantastic,
• 1:04:22
  and then have to remember to take it outta freezer, but I do most days.
• 1:04:25
  so just trying to always make sure I, I get, you know, lots of good micronutrients
• 1:04:30
  and looking after gut health.
• 1:04:32
  You know, it's a little bit like soil health.
• 1:04:34
  We're starting to realize how complex it is and, and how important
• 1:04:38
  it is for, you know, for our body health and our brain health.
• 1:04:41
  Beyond
• 1:04:41
  Rupert Isaacson: taking probiotics then, what, what do you do for your gut health?
• 1:04:45
  What tips have you got
• 1:04:46
  Sammie Leslie: for the rest of oh, well I've on a new one now that's around
• 1:04:49
  repairing gut, cuz I've definitely got leaky gut then, you know, it depends.
• 1:04:54
  It's really good liquid pro, probiotics that are survive getting into your gut,
• 1:05:00
  lots of fiber because your gut needs it and listening to your body and just
• 1:05:05
  seeing what foods work and don't work.
• 1:05:08
  Rupert Isaacson: So what, what foods do you find don't work for you?
• 1:05:11
  What would, would you say that there's foods that
• 1:05:15
  Sammie Leslie: I don't.
• 1:05:16
  Yeah, modern gluten.
• 1:05:17
  we forget that wheat has been systematically bred for a long time to
• 1:05:23
  have a higher and higher gluten level.
• 1:05:25
  The breads, when we baked it in the old days, had a, you
• 1:05:28
  know, eight to 12 hour proof.
• 1:05:29
  So, you know, the yeast reacted with the gluten differently and you
• 1:05:33
  know, actually and stretched it.
• 1:05:35
  so modern bread, commercial bread's a one hour proof.
• 1:05:38
  There's an awful lot of chemicals in it.
• 1:05:40
  The gluten is very high.
• 1:05:43
  You can often get a gano phosphate sprayed on the, the bread before
• 1:05:46
  they, because if you do in the small levels, the wheat thinks it's dying.
• 1:05:50
  So it shoves all of the nutrients up into the grain head.
• 1:05:52
  So you get a bigger grain head and a, a bigger yield.
• 1:05:56
  and that's legal in some countries.
• 1:05:57
  And you don't know where your bread, your breads actually come from.
• 1:06:01
  So, you know, what was one of the most magical, purest things and
• 1:06:06
  the most delicious things that man developed over the years, which was
• 1:06:11
  breads, which was water and yeast and bread and flour and tiny bit of salt.
• 1:06:16
  Or it mightn't even have yeast.
• 1:06:17
  I mean, look at all the magical birds around the world and, you know, we've
• 1:06:22
  turned it into this monster substance that so many additives and things in it.
• 1:06:27
  And I think for a lot of people, if you've got delicate gut health, whether,
• 1:06:31
  you know, we just don't digest it.
• 1:06:32
  I certainly don't digest it.
• 1:06:34
  It
• 1:06:35
  Rupert Isaacson: seems to be a growing thing.
• 1:06:36
  I mean, I live here in Germany and obviously bread is a massive,
• 1:06:39
  massive part of the culture.
• 1:06:41
  Breads, cakes, you know, baked goods and brutal people.
• 1:06:45
  Proud.
• 1:06:45
  You know, it, it's, part of the national pride and more and more people
• 1:06:50
  are showing up gluten intolerant.
• 1:06:51
  And it happened to my wife, and I remember for a while
• 1:06:55
  we like, can't be, can't be.
• 1:06:56
  And it's like, oh no, it really looks like it is.
• 1:06:58
  And then all of the pushback is very interesting from the older
• 1:07:02
  generation saying, oh, that's just all, you know, hip, hip,
• 1:07:06
  hippie, bullshit, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:07:07
  But you see so many people now, who were not, intolerant
• 1:07:12
  10 years ago, 20 years ago.
• 1:07:13
  And as you say, it really does seem as though the process of bread making
• 1:07:18
  has become as effectively turned it into a toxic substance unless you're
• 1:07:21
  getting, you know, very artisanal,
• 1:07:24
  Sammie Leslie: you know?
• 1:07:24
  Yeah.
• 1:07:24
  So it's, I think it's a balance between gut health and unhealthy bread as such.
• 1:07:30
  Now I do some work in southern Italy, and, you know, it's locally grown.
• 1:07:34
  We, it goes down to the mill.
• 1:07:35
  It's mill that day.
• 1:07:36
  It's a 12 hour proof.
• 1:07:38
  It's slow coaching, big old ovens.
• 1:07:40
  It comes up out, you know, loaf the size of a car wheel, you know, in the
• 1:07:44
  supermarket you get, you know, you buy a quarter of a loaf or half a loaf and
• 1:07:49
  it doesn't go off for days, and then you just toast it and it's magical and, you
• 1:07:54
  know, the bread kind of lasts a week and I don't have, you know, I can eat quite a
• 1:07:58
  lot of that without getting into trouble.
• 1:08:00
  Gimme a slice of, you know, white pan toast here and you
• 1:08:05
  know, I'll be on the floor.
• 1:08:06
  but this is, it's just getting so hard because, you know, I, I work with
• 1:08:11
  food and I also work in a, a county that produces a huge amount of food,
• 1:08:15
  and I'm fascinated by ingredients.
• 1:08:18
  But even the most simple thing that we made, so in southern Italy, you know,
• 1:08:23
  you buy the local wine for when you're 52 years in the supermarket, and that's
• 1:08:27
  the best wine because when they're making it at that price, one, it's
• 1:08:29
  local, and two, they haven't put any additives in it because they, you know,
• 1:08:35
  they can't afford to and sell price.
• 1:08:36
  So for export, right, right.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah.
• 1:08:39
  It's not traveling.
• 1:08:39
  So you can put 16 different substances in wine, in small
• 1:08:43
  amounts and not put it on the label.
• 1:08:46
  Ok.
• 1:08:47
  Wine should be grape juice and yeast.
• 1:08:54
  Yes.
• 1:08:54
  Where, and the sulfur is normally burnt off on the top of a big fat to take the
• 1:08:58
  air out to stop the fermentation process.
• 1:09:01
  And I, it's so hard.
• 1:09:04
  I mean, I, yeah, listen, you've got me, you've got me, you've got me on a, on a
• 1:09:09
  rant, but I just wonder how many people are, are going through all sorts of
• 1:09:14
  things that they just don't realize that, you know, that's coming from our food.
• 1:09:18
  And also quite often because our soil is so depleted, a lot of our food doesn't
• 1:09:23
  really have very much nutrient in it.
• 1:09:26
  Well, you
• 1:09:26
  Rupert Isaacson: are in the hospitality business and I've eaten a castle,
• 1:09:29
  castle, Leslie, and the food's amazing.
• 1:09:31
  you, you need to, look after your own health for this.
• 1:09:34
  I know that you take a lot of care, with the food that you serve there,
• 1:09:37
  and you're, and you're serving, you're serving it in industrial sized quantities.
• 1:09:41
  I mean, you, you've got a lot of guests.
• 1:09:42
  You can have hundreds of guests that mm-hmm.
• 1:09:44
  how do you manage to dance that dance of making sure that all those
• 1:09:49
  people don't end up eating the
• 1:09:50
  Sammie Leslie: poisons too?
• 1:09:52
  We do.
• 1:09:52
  We do the best we can.
• 1:09:54
  I mean, there's a lot more we'd like to do, and, you know, there's certain
• 1:09:57
  things, you know, I would love to find a really good, you know, free
• 1:10:01
  range producer of pork at scale, but we, you know, we can't find one.
• 1:10:06
  but it is changing.
• 1:10:07
  And more and more we do.
• 1:10:08
  I mean, things like the venison oil just comes off the estate.
• 1:10:11
  I mean, that's as wild and as healthy as you can get.
• 1:10:14
  And it's us mimicing nature and doing what nature would've done in taking out,
• 1:10:19
  you know, the, the old and the weak, that, that nature would've taken out.
• 1:10:24
  so, you know, that's, that's really healthy meat.
• 1:10:28
  I mean, if I had a magic wand, but then, you know, I'm an oddity in terms of food.
• 1:10:32
  Most people eat what they, what tastes fabulous.
• 1:10:36
  And, you know, our taste buds are designed.
• 1:10:39
  For, salt because we need it.
• 1:10:41
  We can only taste five things.
• 1:10:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:43
  Sour and that our taste buds going, oh, don't eat it yet.
• 1:10:46
  Plant's been very clever and gone.
• 1:10:48
  No, don't eat us yet because our seeds aren't ready.
• 1:10:51
  You know, there's a brilliant vocal called botany of desire that that, really
• 1:10:55
  explains how Mother nature's tricked us into doing what she needed us to
• 1:10:59
  do, to continue to move seeds around the place when they were ready and
• 1:11:03
  drop them in other places to continue the species, you know, the, the, the
• 1:11:07
  advancement of the, of the plant species.
• 1:11:09
  You know, we think we're in control.
• 1:11:11
  We're really not.
• 1:11:12
  So nature has sour to go, don't eat us yet.
• 1:11:15
  Cause the seeds aren't ready.
• 1:11:18
  and it's got sweet to go, oh, do eat us now because we are ready.
• 1:11:23
  So we eat it, we eat the seed, it passes through our gut, we drop it somewhere
• 1:11:27
  else, you know, nicely wrapped in a little bit of poo as a natural fertilizer.
• 1:11:31
  And, and all animals do this.
• 1:11:33
  And that gets, you know, nature gets us to spread the seeds around us.
• 1:11:37
  And bitter is, please don't eat me.
• 1:11:39
  I'm poisonous.
• 1:11:41
  I really don't want you to eat this seed.
• 1:11:43
  And that bitter poison, our brain's gone.
• 1:11:46
  No, no, I'm not going to to do that.
• 1:11:47
  And that's the four things.
• 1:11:48
  Our brain tongues, taste and umami, which is that, mushroom meat one.
• 1:11:55
  but apart from that, everything else is smell.
• 1:11:58
  All our other flavors are smell.
• 1:12:01
  And our brains, our, we, our brains confuse the two.
• 1:12:04
  We're so convinced that so much what we taste is what we taste.
• 1:12:08
  It's not, it's what we smell.
• 1:12:10
  That's why when you have a cold, you lose your appetite cuz nothing tastes
• 1:12:14
  food still tastes when you have chemo.
• 1:12:16
  The two things, you don't lose our lemon for some reason.
• 1:12:20
  And ginger, they're the two flavors that you can still,
• 1:12:24
  they're the last flavors to go.
• 1:12:26
  Interesting.
• 1:12:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Wonder why that might be interesting that that's, it's
• 1:12:32
  because they're basically medicinal.
• 1:12:34
  Do you think?
• 1:12:35
  Or that's your word?
• 1:12:37
  Sammie Leslie: I I maybe came as such an unusual, you know, it's such an unnatural
• 1:12:42
  thing that they're just by chance the last things that, the last things that go.
• 1:12:47
  but it is, yes.
• 1:12:47
  One of the chemo tricks definitely with breast cancer, remember all
• 1:12:50
  chemo drugs are different, but, they're the two, the two flavors
• 1:12:53
  that you can, the, you can get.
• 1:12:55
  But the food industry has figured out what's known as the unholy trinity
• 1:12:59
  was the salt, fat sugar ratio.
• 1:13:01
  Cuz you would never get salt and fat and sweet, sorry.
• 1:13:05
  salt sugar and sweet salt, sugar fat together in nature.
• 1:13:10
  You wouldn't get salt sweet together, salt offy caramel.
• 1:13:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:14
  And you get that.
• 1:13:17
  And, and there are foods that will hit the bliss point to tomato catchup.
• 1:13:20
  You put eat te tomato catchup and do a brain scan.
• 1:13:23
  It hit the, hits the bliss point.
• 1:13:25
  And so much of our food is designed to hit the bliss point.
• 1:13:27
  And, and you just want more of it.
• 1:13:30
  but it's not designed for nutrition and it's not designed for fo soil health, and
• 1:13:34
  it's not designed for gut, gut health.
• 1:13:37
  And then we wonder where we've gone wrong.
• 1:13:39
  Rupert Isaacson: So talk to me about food production and soil health.
• 1:13:42
  You are, you are actually involved in the production of food there, on the estate.
• 1:13:46
  what do you guys do on there for
• 1:13:48
  Sammie Leslie: that?
• 1:13:50
  Well, of course that keeps soils healthy.
• 1:13:53
  Oh, well, we're by, we've a whole strategy done to start doing some
• 1:13:58
  major rewilding regenerative farming and biodiversity friendly gardens.
• 1:14:02
  So in September, October this year, we have to be able to really step it up, but
• 1:14:09
  do it in a way that it's monitored so that we can show what's actually happening.
• 1:14:14
  because, you know, the whole rewilding or, you know, nature regenerative, sorry,
• 1:14:19
  there's something banging on my roof.
• 1:14:21
  that, that whole nature led regeneration, is not always that well
• 1:14:26
  ma measured and monitored to be able to show the, the real impacts of it.
• 1:14:31
  So yeah, that's what we'd love.
• 1:14:33
  Rupert Isaacson: What, what are you do, what are you doing to, to,
• 1:14:36
  to measure what, what, what, okay.
• 1:14:38
  What, what are you doing to measure and mon monitor it and what sort
• 1:14:40
  of scale are you doing it on?
• 1:14:42
  Sammie Leslie: Uh, we hope to do a good few hundred acres.
• 1:14:47
  There's new technology out, uh, where you can constantly monitor the carbon
• 1:14:51
  in the soil, both the available carbon and the inherent carbon.
• 1:14:55
  It's looking at air quality and water quality.
• 1:14:58
  Um, it's looking at, at, um, the, we've done all our baselines
• 1:15:03
  on all our different species.
• 1:15:05
  So to have a look at as its changes what species come back.
• 1:15:09
  Because about 30% of climate change, they reckon is linked to loss of biodiversity.
• 1:15:15
  Well, kinda the worst countries in Northern Europe or Ireland and the
• 1:15:19
  uk in terms of biodiversity loss.
• 1:15:21
  We've just, that Ireland.
• 1:15:22
  Why is that?
• 1:15:23
  Why is that, do you think?
• 1:15:26
  We didn't notice.
• 1:15:28
  I mean, I went to Scotland last year to look at a Rewilding project, and
• 1:15:33
  I find the Highlands so beautiful.
• 1:15:36
  And I'd known about the clearances, the human clearances, which
• 1:15:40
  were unbelievably horrendous.
• 1:15:43
  I didn't realize that they just cut all the trees down and put sheep in.
• 1:15:47
  So all those wonderful wild Heather Moores, which were wonderful for deer
• 1:15:51
  stalking for, you know, a handful of the, the, you know, the wealthy elite
• 1:15:55
  actually just denuded late nature.
• 1:15:57
  I mean, the salmon population is about to collapse.
• 1:16:00
  And Scotland, you know, and that's their native.
• 1:16:04
  Ish.
• 1:16:05
  You know, it's just getting, we are, we've, as somebody wants.
• 1:16:08
  Well, two things.
• 1:16:09
  , somebody said it's a bit like flying a plane and throwing bits out the window
• 1:16:12
  that you've no idea what they were wondering why suddenly, you know, at some
• 1:16:15
  point the blank brushes, , and the other one, somebody said the other day, you
• 1:16:19
  know, even if parasite is clever enough to know not to, to bleed its host dry.
• 1:16:25
  And in Ireland we wiped out our entire genetic stock of pigs.
• 1:16:32
  Every small holding in how Ireland had a pig.
• 1:16:35
  They were just part and parcel pigs are nature's plows.
• 1:16:39
  They root all the time.
• 1:16:40
  They're always turning soil over, which allows seed to get in and
• 1:16:43
  all that natural regeneration.
• 1:16:45
  And somewhere in the seventies and eighties, because we didn't think
• 1:16:48
  there were of any value, and we wanted to breed the Dutch, you know,
• 1:16:53
  the big fat white dutch pigs that are, are produced meat at high speed.
• 1:16:58
  We wiped that entire species and nobody noticed.
• 1:17:03
  You know,
• 1:17:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean, cause when you go to Ireland, you look around and go,
• 1:17:08
  wow, it's beautiful, it's countryside, it's green, it's, it's it's nature.
• 1:17:11
  There's hedges and woods and birds.
• 1:17:14
  And you, you don't, you don't go to Ireland and think
• 1:17:18
  biodiversity loss when you look
• 1:17:19
  Sammie Leslie: around.
• 1:17:20
  Huge, horrendous.
• 1:17:22
  So in our county alone, we, the last 10 years, we've lost 1% of our heteros beer.
• 1:17:26
  That's 10% of our heteros gone in one decade.
• 1:17:31
  You know, our air quality is not great with our intensive,
• 1:17:35
  , with our intense farming.
• 1:17:37
  We have monoculture grass cuz we've got one species of grass.
• 1:17:41
  So, you know, you, you our, you know, our b population is,
• 1:17:46
  you know, on getting critical.
• 1:17:49
  I mean, it's just thing after thing.
• 1:17:50
  But cause we look so green and virden, we think we're okay.
• 1:17:55
  We're not, you know, we're, we're went down to less than 1% native
• 1:18:01
  woodland in this country, , in the fifties in this, because we just
• 1:18:05
  cut down all of our native woodland.
• 1:18:08
  Anything that we had just got chopped up and burnt.
• 1:18:10
  We put a, we wanted to put a tax on standing timber, native standing timber.
• 1:18:15
  My dad was part of the campaign to go, this is ridiculous.
• 1:18:20
  You know, we need our trees.
• 1:18:22
  And then we plant 7% of our island with Norway and Sitka, which is a, not
• 1:18:26
  an a non-native commercial forestry.
• 1:18:29
  And just because it looks beautiful, it doesn't mean it's, it's biodiverse rich.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah.
• 1:18:37
  And we reckon, I mean, the world, oh, there's so many statistic globally that
• 1:18:41
  we probably only have between 50 and 60 years of crops left because we've.
• 1:18:47
  When we started to manage to, , harvest nitrogen into a stable form to be
• 1:18:52
  able to sell us nit nitrogen based fertilizer, it's too toxic for
• 1:18:56
  our soil and it's killing all the mycelium, and it's killing all the
• 1:18:58
  living, , microbiology in the soil.
• 1:19:01
  So slowly all our soil is dying.
• 1:19:04
  And that's
• 1:19:05
  Rupert Isaacson: an interesting connection, which I, I haven't
• 1:19:07
  heard put so directly before.
• 1:19:09
  It's, I just wanna back up there for some of the listeners.
• 1:19:11
  So what we hear a lot about depleted soil health, and we hear a lot about,
• 1:19:16
  , loss of fertility, but it tends to get said rather than explained.
• 1:19:21
  That's very interesting.
• 1:19:22
  I hadn't heard anyone before now
• 1:19:26
  Sammie Leslie: just used, there's an amazing iron company called Super
• 1:19:28
  Soil, and they've got a great video that that sort of sh that explains it.
• 1:19:32
  So I've cogged it, I, I've cogged some of it from, from their video.
• 1:19:37
  But basically over every acre of land, there's about 30
• 1:19:41
  tons of nitrogen in the air.
• 1:19:43
  And all the microflora and microbiology, sorry, in the soil would draw
• 1:19:47
  that down and feed it to the plant roots, and that kills the mycelium.
• 1:19:53
  And then you've got the no, well, then you have this, no, in
• 1:19:55
  nature, that's what it would do.
• 1:19:56
  And this, you have this amazing web underneath of mycelium, which kind
• 1:20:00
  of, they call it the wood wide wire, but you know, it was sort of nature's
• 1:20:03
  highly intelligent system that it knew where to move water and where
• 1:20:06
  to move nutrients around the soil.
• 1:20:09
  Um, but the, the, the microflora would pull the ox, the nitrogen,
• 1:20:14
  basically outta the air.
• 1:20:15
  So a scientist, I think Uber realized how this worked and they went, oh my
• 1:20:19
  God, if we can capture nitrogen and put it in a stable form and put it into bags
• 1:20:25
  that we can sell to farmers, they can up the nitrogen value in their soil,
• 1:20:30
  which you do, but it's quite harsh.
• 1:20:33
  So it slowly kills the natural process within the soil, and you become reliant
• 1:20:39
  on constantly putting in nitrogen that then starts to deplete the soil further.
• 1:20:45
  , so an Irish companies come up with an amazing product called Super Soil,
• 1:20:48
  which feeds a micro, a micro flora.
• 1:20:52
  I've got microorganisms to then start to naturally draw down the
• 1:20:57
  nitrogen out of the soil, almost
• 1:21:00
  Rupert Isaacson: treat treating the soil like the gut, like almost
• 1:21:02
  like, probiotics in the gut.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah, microorganisms
• 1:21:05
  Sammie Leslie: for the soil.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah.
• 1:21:07
  I mean, you look at the number of microorganisms that we have in on
• 1:21:10
  our body and in our gut, and it's, you know, it's in the thousands,
• 1:21:15
  half of which we have no idea of what they're and what they actually do.
• 1:21:20
  And it's the same with our soil.
• 1:21:21
  So these, a lot of money outta selling nitrogen, right?
• 1:21:25
  The
• 1:21:25
  Rupert Isaacson: now these, these regenerative, farming, practices that
• 1:21:28
  you're starting to do on the estate and for food production and so on.
• 1:21:31
  And, taking that into the commercial side cuz you're obviously feeding it
• 1:21:35
  to people in the restaurants, as many restaurants on, on the estate and so on.
• 1:21:39
  Mm.
• 1:21:39
  how much education are you giving the guests and the punters
• 1:21:45
  who show up on to the estate?
• 1:21:47
  How, how much are they
• 1:21:48
  Sammie Leslie: aware of this?
• 1:21:49
  Not much.
• 1:21:49
  In two or three years time, we hope to have an amazing exhibition space.
• 1:21:54
  and there will always be a need for intensive farming as such, but whether
• 1:21:57
  it is lab grown meats, whether it is black, so fly larva as a, as a protein
• 1:22:04
  source, whether it's vertical farming, but one where we manage to get all the
• 1:22:08
  micronutrients into, into the plants, you know, food is going to change.
• 1:22:13
  Absolutely.
• 1:22:14
  Massively.
• 1:22:16
  Tell us about
• 1:22:16
  Rupert Isaacson: this, this exhibition space that you are, you
• 1:22:18
  are putting into the, to the estate.
• 1:22:21
  What's going on with that?
• 1:22:21
  What, what is that?
• 1:22:23
  Sammie Leslie: we.
• 1:22:25
  Want to do a really interesting space to tell our story of our
• 1:22:28
  relationship with people and planet.
• 1:22:30
  and also the understanding the human body in a really fun way that, you
• 1:22:35
  know, can work for school kids and it can work for neuroscientists.
• 1:22:40
  and that's all I can tell you at this point.
• 1:22:42
  Otherwise, I would have to kill you and Eliana would not be happy.
• 1:22:46
  Give us, give us
• 1:22:47
  Rupert Isaacson: a little bit, a tiny t a tiny tidbit more what, what, what is it,
• 1:22:51
  what, what is the mission of the estate with this, in the ne in the coming years?
• 1:22:56
  What, what is it you want
• 1:22:57
  Sammie Leslie: to achieve?
• 1:22:58
  I think the irony is that this estate was always very innovative.
• 1:23:02
  And, you know, you had amazing women and you had a whole
• 1:23:06
  series of very innovative men.
• 1:23:08
  And then of course you got the odd generation that, would just enjoyed life.
• 1:23:13
  but in general, you know, they were innovative and, and funk differently.
• 1:23:17
  and I don't know, what about you with the dyslexic brain?
• 1:23:21
  It doesn't really stop.
• 1:23:22
  You're always going, what if, and if I did this and if I did that and turn that
• 1:23:25
  upside down and we put that over there and, you know, it's, it's, it's just so
• 1:23:32
  back to how can you do the best with what you have and by those around you, right?
• 1:23:37
  Rupert Isaacson: But what, what is it that you, you want to, is, is would this
• 1:23:40
  be an a sort of ecological, educational.
• 1:23:44
  Yeah.
• 1:23:44
  We space.
• 1:23:44
  Similar to say Eden in the UK or something like
• 1:23:48
  Sammie Leslie: that, or, yeah.
• 1:23:49
  Well we, we've been, and I think Tim Schmidt's amazing and, and we've been
• 1:23:53
  talking, it's how do you tell the story in a fun way for people that just
• 1:23:58
  kind of want to float along the top?
• 1:24:00
  And how can you tell it in an educational way from children through to academics?
• 1:24:05
  How can you share research?
• 1:24:06
  How can you do food schools and, and the learning right the way through, you know,
• 1:24:12
  the different, the different levels again, you know, from I said fun and easy to,
• 1:24:17
  you know, to to, to serious food and, and, and, in gut health and how can you do
• 1:24:23
  that in, in, in a, in a series of spaces.
• 1:24:27
  And technology allows us to do that now quite easily.
• 1:24:31
  So
• 1:24:31
  Rupert Isaacson: in the next, in the next few years, we can come to Castle Leslie,
• 1:24:35
  not just to experience beautiful nature, ride horses, eat amazing food, and look
• 1:24:40
  at incredible art and history on the walls of the stately home, but also to
• 1:24:44
  learn about, soil health, ecology and
• 1:24:49
  Sammie Leslie: the land.
• 1:24:50
  Absolutely.
• 1:24:51
  And our relationship, cuz I don't know about you, but, last year
• 1:24:55
  with the hot summers, you know, really started to get scary.
• 1:24:59
  We're really starting.
• 1:25:01
  To see it.
• 1:25:02
  And you know, one of the stats is that by 20, if things continue as they are,
• 1:25:08
  by 2050, 80 million people will be on the move every year through climate change.
• 1:25:15
  Yeah.
• 1:25:15
  And when you start to get into the conversation around climate justice
• 1:25:19
  and, you know, we're on 12 tons of carbon roughly per head in Ireland,
• 1:25:24
  and my unofficial goddaughter Somali, her mother's an for African Met, is an
• 1:25:29
  amazing human rights campaign around fgm.
• 1:25:32
  And you know, Somalia is going into its sixth year of, of desperate trash.
• 1:25:38
  You know, there's parts of that country that you just wonder,
• 1:25:40
  will they ever be livable again?
• 1:25:42
  You know, it's, it's, you know, it's parts of the world that are flooding.
• 1:25:45
  More and more of the world is becoming inhospitable and people have to move.
• 1:25:52
  What's fgm?
• 1:25:53
  Rupert Isaacson: You said?
• 1:25:54
  Fgm.
• 1:25:54
  Sammie Leslie: Oh, you're a boy.
• 1:25:57
  female genital mu mutilation.
• 1:25:59
  Okay.
• 1:26:00
  , yeah, Google it, it it is.
• 1:26:02
  I know.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:03
  Probably the biggest killer of children at worldwide that is totally preventable.
• 1:26:10
  You know, disease and war famine are horrendous.
• 1:26:14
  The human imagination
• 1:26:15
  Rupert Isaacson: of all the things that one could come up with to pointlessly
• 1:26:20
  do that is one of the ones that.
• 1:26:24
  But mystifies me that, that someone, you have someone sitting around going,
• 1:26:29
  you know, what should we do this year?
• 1:26:30
  Oh yeah.
• 1:26:30
  Well, maybe we should invent
• 1:26:33
  Sammie Leslie: this thing called female genital mutilation.
• 1:26:34
  Is that, how does one even come up with that subjugation of women?
• 1:26:39
  But that's a whole other indeed subject.
• 1:26:41
  And, you know, it's, it's part, you can say it's part of a culture, and of
• 1:26:48
  course it is, but it's also how did it become part of that culture, you know?
• 1:26:55
  And it, it was something that was sort of started by the Egyptians and
• 1:26:59
  spread into surrounding countries.
• 1:27:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:27:02
  But yeah, what, I mean, we all grew up with, you know, institutionalized
• 1:27:06
  suffering that was sold to us at Exactly.
• 1:27:10
  We found, we went to, as we were beaten and that sort of thing,
• 1:27:12
  saying, well, this is the culture.
• 1:27:13
  And I think we all said, well, actually that's not a culture I
• 1:27:16
  particularly want to, to participate in.
• 1:27:19
  You're just making me participate
• 1:27:20
  Sammie Leslie: in it.
• 1:27:20
  And, you know, and, and you know, and as people in the western world, we
• 1:27:23
  can't sit there and wag the finger and go, you know, that's wrong.
• 1:27:27
  all we do in the, in the first foundation is help people on the
• 1:27:32
  ground who want to make a difference and support them and what they, and,
• 1:27:36
  you know, understand the ways they want to change their own culture.
• 1:27:40
  You know, this western thing of going in and going, you know, we're white, we know
• 1:27:44
  better than anybody else is, is a load of.
• 1:27:48
  Well, sure.
• 1:27:48
  It doesn't
• 1:27:48
  Rupert Isaacson: work.
• 1:27:49
  It just doesn.
• 1:27:49
  It just doesn't work.
• 1:27:50
  I mean, yes.
• 1:27:51
  I, I, I, from my years in human rights, it's, it, it, for sure.
• 1:27:56
  And, and at the same time, I, I feel, and I think everyone knows
• 1:28:00
  that there are things that go beyond culture that are just purely human.
• 1:28:03
  but it's very easy to hide behind culture and say, oh, this thing is a,
• 1:28:08
  is a valuable cultural practice, even though, you know, it kills people.
• 1:28:12
  and you know, therefore, you know, so, and it's, it's a dance one has to do.
• 1:28:17
  It's, it, it, this is something that you are involved in, in, in, in,
• 1:28:20
  in the large degree in your life.
• 1:28:22
  Is it?
• 1:28:22
  I miss human rights
• 1:28:24
  Sammie Leslie: work.
• 1:28:24
  Well, I met them an amazing girl trip called if Met when her, the, her
• 1:28:30
  the life story of her film, sorry.
• 1:28:32
  When the film of her live story was being made, it's an amazing
• 1:28:35
  film called A Girl From Mogadishu.
• 1:28:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:28:38
  And I said, how can I help?
• 1:28:40
  And I asked about her, did she have a, a charity or a foundation?
• 1:28:44
  And she said she did, but it was sort of very much a Facebook page.
• 1:28:48
  And she's an incredible campaigner who's done amazing things.
• 1:28:51
  So I just helped set up the sort of formal legal structure behind the foundation.
• 1:28:56
  got about eight, 10 years ago so that the structure was there to really
• 1:29:00
  allow her to do her work and get the sport behind her that she needed
• 1:29:04
  and the fundraising that she needed.
• 1:29:07
  and also, you know, the little bit of governance and measurement to be able,
• 1:29:11
  you know, to, to, to go to the bigger funders and go, this, this works.
• 1:29:16
  So she came up with this amazing campaign called Dear Daughter, where
• 1:29:21
  parents, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles pledge not to cut their child.
• 1:29:28
  And that's been incredibly powerful, giving people, the power
• 1:29:34
  to say, as an individual, say, no, I don't want my child cut.
• 1:29:37
  I don't want my niece or my nephew cut who you know, I'm looking after, cuz they're,
• 1:29:42
  no, their parents aren't here anymore.
• 1:29:44
  and it's very ground roots and, you know, it's very much her campaign.
• 1:29:49
  and it's really starting to take traction.
• 1:29:51
  What's the name of her organization?
• 1:29:54
  IRA Foundation, I F r I f, sorry, I f r A H.
• 1:30:01
  And her name is Ra,
• 1:30:02
  Rupert Isaacson: r a h, IFA.
• 1:30:03
  F r a h.
• 1:30:05
  Yeah.
• 1:30:05
  Sammie Leslie: Foundation Ra.
• 1:30:07
  And, I Raed.
• 1:30:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:30:11
  And it's called the IFRA Foundation.
• 1:30:14
  And, she was trafficked, long story, horrendous story.
• 1:30:19
  And she was trafficked into Ireland around probably 15 or 16 years old.
• 1:30:23
  And she actually ended up having the legislation.
• 1:30:27
  The law changed here and the legislation enacted before
• 1:30:30
  she even got her citizenship.
• 1:30:31
  She is one of the most phenomenal human beings I've ever met.
• 1:30:34
  And when she was on the campaign trail, and back in Ireland,
• 1:30:37
  she used to live with me.
• 1:30:39
  And I never, ever heard her once go pour me.
• 1:30:45
  The world is a terrible place.
• 1:30:47
  She's just like, be a voice, not a victim.
• 1:30:50
  it needs changing, so how do we change it?
• 1:30:53
  And lots of amazing people got on board and in behind the foundation
• 1:30:57
  room, a fabulous ceo, an incredible chair, somebody who's very senior
• 1:31:01
  in obstetrician who's just retired and from work and come on board.
• 1:31:06
  And just slowly bit by bit giving people the, the voice to say, no,
• 1:31:12
  this is the change that we want.
• 1:31:16
  Do you, do you, do
• 1:31:17
  Rupert Isaacson: you harness the, clientele of Castle Leslie
• 1:31:21
  in the educational and funding
• 1:31:22
  Sammie Leslie: process?
• 1:31:23
  No, because people come here on respite and there's that balance between using
• 1:31:28
  the platform you have and, and you know, and, and take, you know, and I'll be
• 1:31:34
  using it for the want of a better word.
• 1:31:36
  So, on either World Women's Day or World FGM Day, which is the 6th of
• 1:31:41
  February, we will celebrate ifra.
• 1:31:44
  but
• 1:31:45
  Rupert Isaacson: just writing this down world, FGM day is the sixth of bed.
• 1:31:49
  Sammie Leslie: Yeah.
• 1:31:49
  I mean, IFRA got FGM onto the charter for human rights, you know, before she was 30.
• 1:31:57
  Good Lord, she, 28 when her biopic was made.
• 1:32:00
  Rupert Isaacson: And she is someone who's also found resilience at Castle
• 1:32:08
  Leslie, as, as so many have interesting.
• 1:32:10
  Sammie Leslie: no, well, not re not resilience.
• 1:32:12
  Respite, so, right.
• 1:32:14
  Usually, yeah.
• 1:32:15
  She, and the only reason she moved out 10 days before, before she had a baby,
• 1:32:22
  which turned out to be about four weeks before Covid lockdown, because she
• 1:32:27
  needed her own house and her own space.
• 1:32:29
  I have a, a one and a half bedroom house, so, it, it worked out well.
• 1:32:34
  And Sarah is amazing.
• 1:32:36
  Sarah's her daughter who's.
• 1:32:38
  She will be four at this point.
• 1:32:41
  And the IFRA Foundation
• 1:32:42
  Rupert Isaacson: is operating out of Ireland, is that right?
• 1:32:44
  Yes.
• 1:32:45
  Okay.
• 1:32:45
  Yeah.
• 1:32:46
  how interesting.
• 1:32:47
  Yeah, it's interesting you say it got one and a half bedroom house.
• 1:32:49
  People assume when you drive up to Castle Leslie and you see the castle
• 1:32:53
  and you see the lodge and you see all the other buildings in which
• 1:32:57
  things happen, you think, well, that must be where Sammy Leslie lives.
• 1:33:00
  And then of course, we find out where you actually live, is in Narnia.
• 1:33:03
  that's one of the best things I've ever seen.
• 1:33:05
  for those, maybe I sh I, I should probably shouldn't disclose how
• 1:33:08
  you get to Nia because that's a bit of a secret within the castle.
• 1:33:11
  But suffice to say that you live in a very tiny sliver of the whole thing.
• 1:33:17
  the, the rest of it is, is, is, is given over to the enterprise.
• 1:33:21
  Sammie Leslie: yeah.
• 1:33:21
  Well, I live in amazing little corner.
• 1:33:23
  I mean, it's small, but it's a fact.
• 1:33:24
  This little corner of the house.
• 1:33:25
  But, you know, my bedroom was an artist's studio, so it's got windows on four sides.
• 1:33:30
  and is is quite an amazing space to, to hold up in, hold up in.
• 1:33:33
  But no, I've never lived in a normal, anyone in my life.
• 1:33:36
  I've either lived in lorries in Australia with the horses or an old
• 1:33:40
  cattle shed in, in Dublin, or slept in stables in Sydney at the show.
• 1:33:44
  I've never or lived at work.
• 1:33:47
  I've never lived in like a normal house with a front door and a back
• 1:33:51
  door and, you know, not attached to anything else or even a row of houses.
• 1:33:56
  I've never lived in a normal house.
• 1:34:00
  I wouldn't know what to do.
• 1:34:02
  well,
• 1:34:03
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:34:03
  probably go look for, go into the garden and, and move into
• 1:34:05
  the shed like you've done.
• 1:34:07
  yeah, the, I I know that, you also have an interest in special needs.
• 1:34:13
  absolutely.
• 1:34:13
  And, I know that you are beginning to think towards this with, with
• 1:34:20
  the Castle Leslie Estate as well.
• 1:34:22
  Talk us through what, what your ideas are there and, and, and
• 1:34:25
  what's happening with that.
• 1:34:27
  Sammie Leslie: Well, while back, , I started here about this, , guy
• 1:34:33
  that had come up with this amazing thing called the Horse Boy Method.
• 1:34:36
  and it just absolutely fascinated me at the healing power of, of horses.
• 1:34:41
  And we've got lots of land and lots of space and lots of horses.
• 1:34:45
  And I think when you grow up learning slightly differently, you
• 1:34:49
  know, and, and, and you realize that we know so little about how.
• 1:34:56
  The brain grows and functions and, and works.
• 1:34:59
  and it was anything that I can, it's back to, you know, all you
• 1:35:03
  can do in life is best with what you have and by this around you.
• 1:35:05
  If we've got all these incredible things here, and then one day go by chance,
• 1:35:11
  I got locked behind a door with you.
• 1:35:15
  and, at a, an event for autism that somebody asked me to go to.
• 1:35:20
  So that's, I suppose when the conversation really ramped up.
• 1:35:24
  and I started to know more and more people whose children have been diagnosed,
• 1:35:29
  going, if I can help in any way, it's the least I can, it's the least I can do.
• 1:35:36
  What would you, what, what's, what's
• 1:35:37
  Rupert Isaacson: your vision, when it comes to the estate with autism?
• 1:35:42
  What, what in your perfect world do you think will Oh,
• 1:35:46
  Sammie Leslie: absolutely.
• 1:35:46
  What will happen?
• 1:35:47
  Hopefully.
• 1:35:48
  we're lucky that they built three stable yards on the estate.
• 1:35:51
  So the yard behind the lodge, would stay pretty much as it is.
• 1:35:57
  The second yards become self occasional accommodation and the
• 1:36:01
  third yard on the back of the estate.
• 1:36:04
  I think that's where we were going.
• 1:36:06
  We could create magical spaces.
• 1:36:08
  You introduced me to the incredible David Doyle went.
• 1:36:11
  We went down to Liz Kennet and looked at all the amazing things that he's achieved,
• 1:36:16
  and he's been up to us as well going, okay, we have the space, we have the
• 1:36:20
  want, we have the, we hope also the way to start to tell the, the stories about,
• 1:36:27
  you know, how we learn and also how EQU based therapies, movement therapies,
• 1:36:32
  nature-based therapies can really work.
• 1:36:36
  So it's a huge learning care for me.
• 1:36:38
  I know I'm an absolute novice in this field, but I just know that we've got
• 1:36:44
  the bits to be able to put together, hopefully to do something magical
• 1:36:48
  and, and to, to really help people.
• 1:36:50
  It's funny,
• 1:36:50
  Rupert Isaacson: you, me, you mentioned David Doyle.
• 1:36:53
  I, I, would I say I want to get David Doyle on this podcast?
• 1:36:55
  He flatly refuses.
• 1:36:56
  He will not, he will not speak.
• 1:36:58
  so I need, which
• 1:37:00
  Sammie Leslie: chime down on Friday and why won't he speak?
• 1:37:03
  He
• 1:37:03
  Rupert Isaacson: is the, the most strangely modest man, as you know.
• 1:37:11
  So I want to just let listeners who might not know who David Doyle is, let's
• 1:37:18
  just say, tell you who David Doyle is.
• 1:37:19
  David Doyle, is the current, incarnation of the Wizard Merlin.
• 1:37:25
  I met David Doyle, in 2012.
• 1:37:28
  I did a, a demo of Horse Boy Method in Limerick.
• 1:37:32
  And I got an email three years later saying, oh, you won't remember me.
• 1:37:37
  I was at that thing.
• 1:37:39
  I took your website to the Irish Parliament and got 3 million
• 1:37:43
  Euro and we were just building a state-of-the-art horse boy center.
• 1:37:46
  Did you wanna come look at it?
• 1:37:47
  Like I, I'm sorry, what did you say?
• 1:37:50
  And I went there and I looked, I, and I said, David, how did you do this?
• 1:37:54
  And as you know, David, he's one of these, he, he, he speaks very softly.
• 1:37:57
  He, oh, you know, I just talked to these people.
• 1:38:00
  And subsequently he started all these extraordinary autism, centers.
• 1:38:04
  His daughter has very severe autism and also had a very good reaction
• 1:38:10
  through horses, as did my son Rowan.
• 1:38:13
  And he's created an, an entire paradigm shift in, I would say, in the,
• 1:38:19
  mental health culture, in Ireland.
• 1:38:22
  It's now creeping into Europe.
• 1:38:24
  so the fact that you are working with David Doyle makes me as an
• 1:38:27
  autism dad, so incredibly happy.
• 1:38:30
  and I wish, ok,
• 1:38:31
  Sammie Leslie: it's up to you.
• 1:38:32
  I mean, I wouldn't have, wouldn't have met him if it wasn't for you.
• 1:38:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Anyone who's listening, check out David Doyle.
• 1:38:39
  St.
• 1:38:40
  Joseph's Foundation.
• 1:38:41
  it's in Charleville in, county Cork.
• 1:38:45
  you ever meet that man?
• 1:38:46
  It will be a tree, but yes.
• 1:38:48
  You know, th this idea that you, an estate, it's, it's very interesting to
• 1:38:52
  me because you, you drive, you know, you drive into Castle Leslie, and you can feel
• 1:38:58
  as you drive in a shift in the atmosphere.
• 1:39:02
  And it seems to me that there is some sort of healing spirit to the land.
• 1:39:06
  It's, it seems to me, is no, no coincidence that the Leslie family
• 1:39:11
  coming out of the explosive reformation, renaissance history of Scotland and
• 1:39:19
  England, then one bishop finds himself there by this beautiful lake and in the
• 1:39:27
  17th century, and no matter what craziness goes on in the rest of the country, and
• 1:39:33
  in fact right there, you know, the, the, the, the Cromwell and the English coming
• 1:39:38
  in and killing everybody, and then all the risings against the English, and then the
• 1:39:43
  tr the first round of troubles, and then the second round of troubles and, and the
• 1:39:46
  potato famine and all of these things.
• 1:39:49
  So many estates burned, were attacked, were hated, you know,
• 1:39:54
  with, with good reason by the lo not Castle, Leslie Castle.
• 1:39:58
  Leslie always stood.
• 1:39:59
  And as you say, the, the people there always seemed to have been interested,
• 1:40:04
  un unusually for their historical time, in doing the right thing.
• 1:40:08
  And there you are.
• 1:40:10
  you weren't even supposed to inherit this day and then you put
• 1:40:14
  Sammie Leslie: back on, didn't date.
• 1:40:16
  Okay.
• 1:40:18
  I bought it
• 1:40:21
  Rupert Isaacson: even more, you know, that there you were
• 1:40:24
  and you had to buy the thing.
• 1:40:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:40:26
  and get it back on its feet.
• 1:40:28
  And, and it seems to have always the, the, the, and now you're getting it, you
• 1:40:32
  know, from, okay, it's a luxury hotel and yes, there's any question center.
• 1:40:36
  It's all fabulous.
• 1:40:37
  It's all fantastic.
• 1:40:38
  And at the same time, the restoration of soil, sustainable agriculture, rewilding,
• 1:40:43
  and now human rights, special needs.
• 1:40:48
  You can feel it when you drive in.
• 1:40:50
  What do you think is the sacred nature of that land?
• 1:40:55
  I'm very happy to get as woowoo as you want.
• 1:40:57
  I'm all about that.
• 1:40:58
  I dunno, what is it?
• 1:40:59
  What is it?
• 1:41:00
  Are there sacred?
• 1:41:02
  Are there sacred sites on
• 1:41:04
  Sammie Leslie: there?
• 1:41:04
  there's huge Iron Age for behind us.
• 1:41:07
  Naven Fork sees the hikings of Sters about 10 miles from us, but I don't know.
• 1:41:13
  I, the lake is 70 feet deep, but I don't know.
• 1:41:17
  And I, I saw something the other day on Instagram where a guy put
• 1:41:21
  a electrode into the soil and on a little meter nothing showed.
• 1:41:25
  he put, he held one piece in his hand.
• 1:41:29
  He had flip-flops on.
• 1:41:30
  Nothing happened.
• 1:41:31
  He took his flip-flops off and you could see the electric current shoot up.
• 1:41:38
  I would love to measure the electromagnetics here.
• 1:41:41
  I don't know what it is.
• 1:41:42
  It is a very special place.
• 1:41:44
  Maybe it's the light off the water.
• 1:41:46
  It does have a very, it has an energy all of its own.
• 1:41:50
  and it is a place all of its own, you know, I, you know, do what
• 1:41:53
  I can and, and whole team to.
• 1:41:56
  but it is a living, breathing thing.
• 1:41:58
  Mm.
• 1:41:59
  And you, it, it, it seems to be a place
• 1:42:02
  Rupert Isaacson: that has encouraged people, strangely, generation
• 1:42:06
  after generation after generation, through a violent history.
• 1:42:10
  to, to sort of step up to their higher self.
• 1:42:12
  so it's, it's hard not to ask, are there ancient pilgrimage sites?
• 1:42:19
  Are there ancient Druidic sites?
• 1:42:20
  Is there ancient?
• 1:42:21
  Is there, is there, are there old
• 1:42:22
  Sammie Leslie: stories?
• 1:42:23
  not, well, there's Crown Oaks on the top lake, but they would've been inhabitation.
• 1:42:28
  Not that we, no, I mean, there is one small ancient site on Kilty
• 1:42:33
  bags, but a small wrath that got bulldozed out in the late 18 hundreds.
• 1:42:40
  I've seen it on an old map.
• 1:42:43
  but I haven't found a very sacred site,
• 1:42:47
  Rupert Isaacson: no.
• 1:42:47
  On stories about saints.
• 1:42:49
  No fairy rings, no
• 1:42:51
  Sammie Leslie: occult, , I mean the small stuff.
• 1:42:52
  St.
• 1:42:53
  Patrick came to this village and so Vikings came here.
• 1:42:56
  The Iron Age, settlements were here.
• 1:42:58
  The Vikings came here.
• 1:42:59
  St.
• 1:43:00
  Patrick came here.
• 1:43:01
  he built small church here.
• 1:43:03
  I, not that I find, but it doesn't mean there isn't, because Christian faith was
• 1:43:08
  very good at wiping out earlier things.
• 1:43:13
  I don't know.
• 1:43:14
  But it is, it certainly is a magical place and it gets most people.
• 1:43:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:43:21
  Yeah.
• 1:43:21
  It's definitely a place where you come to here.
• 1:43:23
  I've stayed there with my son and, the adorable run.
• 1:43:26
  The adorable run.
• 1:43:27
  And, he is hilarious cuz you, you so can he put him up in
• 1:43:32
  one of the rooms in the cast?
• 1:43:34
  And he, I went to check him.
• 1:43:35
  He said, I feel like Henry VII in here.
• 1:43:37
  And
• 1:43:40
  Sammie Leslie: he said, I just need to, I just need to, I
• 1:43:41
  Rupert Isaacson: just need to lay on this, on this bed with this canopy.
• 1:43:44
  Cause it makes me feel royal.
• 1:43:46
  but that he came away saying, because, you know, he, he's autistic and he's sort of
• 1:43:51
  ultrasensitive and ultra authentic always.
• 1:43:54
  He says, he said, dad, there's, there's something healing about that place.
• 1:43:57
  I want to go back there.
• 1:43:58
  There's something healing.
• 1:44:00
  He said, it makes me feel better in my head.
• 1:44:03
  Sammie Leslie: that's, you know, it's wonderful.
• 1:44:06
  We can talk about stuff cuz in the old days it would be, oh, you know, it's all
• 1:44:08
  woowoo and fluffy and all of the rest.
• 1:44:10
  But I think more and more, you know, we're starting to show our, our connection
• 1:44:15
  of nature, our loss of connection with nature, is, is hugely de detrimental.
• 1:44:20
  you know, that getting into water, it's walking in mud, in
• 1:44:23
  the marshes, it's, you know, it's sitting on trees and under trees.
• 1:44:27
  It's just being immersed in nature, which of course is our natural place of being.
• 1:44:32
  I mean, it takes this wreck, something like 10,000 years for
• 1:44:35
  one genetic change to, to happen.
• 1:44:39
  you know, in a, in a species.
• 1:44:41
  And we've gone, we've shifted so fast in the last few hundred years to, being
• 1:44:47
  totally disconnected from nature.
• 1:44:49
  and I'm not sure that's healthy.
• 1:44:51
  So the more we can do to help people get reers into nature in, in different ways,
• 1:44:57
  yeah, that's what we want to look at.
• 1:44:59
  And it's just how can create a healing place?
• 1:45:01
  How can we create respite, you know, how can we create respite for families with
• 1:45:05
  children, you know, with autism and other, what's, what word am I allowed to use?
• 1:45:11
  You can't say issues.
• 1:45:11
  Difficulties.
• 1:45:13
  Oh gosh.
• 1:45:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Conditions I think is probably the, yes.
• 1:45:16
  Yeah.
• 1:45:16
  Yeah.
• 1:45:16
  I mean, yeah, sorry.
• 1:45:17
  Well that's, it's so interesting, you know, that the
• 1:45:19
  whole politic correct thing.
• 1:45:20
  I often ask Rowan, you know, do you have a.
• 1:45:23
  Word that you want me to use?
• 1:45:25
  Like someone with autism, what the said dad, I'm autistic.
• 1:45:28
  You know?
• 1:45:29
  Yeah, just, just, just say it.
• 1:45:31
  Just use
• 1:45:31
  Sammie Leslie: the word just, yeah, exactly.
• 1:45:34
  So yes, it's, you know, my dad did sort of things here during the
• 1:45:38
  troubles to bring kids from inner city communities in Belfast, from opposite
• 1:45:42
  sides together, and a sort of camping summer holidays and, and just give
• 1:45:47
  them some proper outdoor fun and, and forget about, you know, the troubles.
• 1:45:52
  And, , he did for a summer or two and then he got a phone call to tell 'em to stop.
• 1:45:57
  When you got those phone calls, you didn't not listen to them.
• 1:46:01
  So it is a very, very magical place.
• 1:46:05
  It absolutely is.
• 1:46:06
  And it's this sort of real little bubble, especially in this ever faster
• 1:46:10
  growing digital world where we are bombarded it constantly with information
• 1:46:18
  and lots of stuff that's designed to, you know, do that four minute dopamine
• 1:46:22
  hit that just becomes addictive.
• 1:46:24
  and it's rewiring our brains and, and most people don't notice.
• 1:46:29
  So it's the, you know, the deconnect disconnect and the unplug and do
• 1:46:32
  strange things like talk to the person you came away for the weekend with.
• 1:46:37
  Yeah.
• 1:46:37
  We've no television from the castle, just.
• 1:46:41
  refuse to have them, you know, there's one wing that does, but they're, they either
• 1:46:46
  look like mirrors or pictures and actually they're, because normally that sort of
• 1:46:50
  black hole of a television calls you when you come into the room to, to turn it on.
• 1:46:55
  no.
• 1:46:55
  It's just being able to disconnect and reconnect with nature.
• 1:47:00
  And I think over the coming decade we will learn more and more
• 1:47:03
  and more about the, the healing powers of connecting with nature.
• 1:47:06
  And I think we'll do it in a scientific way so that we can explain, to, I was
• 1:47:12
  gonna say the numpties, the powers, the be that we need that connect.
• 1:47:16
  I was in Singapore recently and they are very strong on their biophilic
• 1:47:21
  architecture, which is that whole thing of growing plants in and on buildings.
• 1:47:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:47:27
  And it, you know, reduces the air conditioning.
• 1:47:30
  It cools, you know, it, the de-stresses it, mental health, it cleans the air.
• 1:47:36
  It has so many positives.
• 1:47:39
  and that's a small island with 1% of our landmass with the
• 1:47:44
  same population as Ireland.
• 1:47:46
  And you just smiled everywhere.
• 1:47:48
  You just kind of fell in love with the city cuz it is so green,
• 1:47:52
  it's just greenery everywhere.
• 1:47:53
  They've been greening it's, you know, from the fifties.
• 1:47:56
  cuz they had quite visionary, you know, Paris at bay at the time.
• 1:47:59
  yeah, there's.
• 1:48:01
  Rupert Isaacson: I just wanna talk about that for a moment actually.
• 1:48:03
  the greening of buildings.
• 1:48:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:48:06
  I'm a great proponent of it.
• 1:48:08
  and it's interesting how when people talk about carbon sinks and that sort of thing,
• 1:48:13
  people, and people talk about forest and all the things which we should happen.
• 1:48:16
  No one talks about ivy growing up buildings, or, I know there's a,
• 1:48:20
  a, a company in Spain, for example, that's doing moss clad walls.
• 1:48:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:48:25
  and they, I, I read somewhere that a, a concrete bench covered
• 1:48:30
  in moss actually absorbs more carbon than your average tree.
• 1:48:34
  These things I didn't know, but yet you see so few people doing it.
• 1:48:37
  And like here in Germany, I know that the moment I start to try and grow creeper
• 1:48:41
  up my wall, all my neighbors go, oh, oh, it's gonna do this, it's gonna do that.
• 1:48:45
  It's gonna, and, and then I'm thinking, yeah, but I grew up, you know, in houses
• 1:48:48
  that had ivy on the walls and the, the, the house didn't seem to go anywhere.
• 1:48:52
  and, and the wall didn't fall off.
• 1:48:54
  where, where's this, this, this come from this,
• 1:48:57
  Sammie Leslie: this, it depends on, it depends on the wall.
• 1:48:59
  Ivy is an incredible plant and in so many ways, but if you've got
• 1:49:04
  soft water like lime water mm-hmm.
• 1:49:07
  It will actually get in between the stones and start to pull it apart.
• 1:49:10
  I mean, there's lots of creepers.
• 1:49:12
  I mean, we've won cold Virginia creep in a building that's probably 150 years
• 1:49:15
  old and it won't get into the Mosher.
• 1:49:18
  so some will, some will, attack buildings and others won't.
• 1:49:22
  But Moss is an incredible substance.
• 1:49:25
  Moss lives on two things, especially spam moss.
• 1:49:29
  It lives on water and carbon and it literally sucks carbon out of the
• 1:49:34
  air and uses it as its food source.
• 1:49:37
  Mm.
• 1:49:38
  , and that's why, you know, having a lawn that's moss rather than monoculture
• 1:49:42
  grass is so much healthier in, in so many ways, and coaching lots of things
• 1:49:47
  in, in moss Absolutely cleans the air.
• 1:49:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:49:53
  I, I kind of want to do it on the side of my, my house here.
• 1:49:56
  I'm sort of, I'm, I'm campaigning for it.
• 1:49:58
  and I, I hope to be successful in my campaign with my neighbors.
• 1:50:01
  but it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting to me that there's
• 1:50:03
  this idea of the clean wall, the clean building, the clean, you know, well
• 1:50:08
  Sammie Leslie: look at, look at biophilic.
• 1:50:09
  I mean, it's a whole science.
• 1:50:12
  I mean, there are certain plants that will break up, walls of sycamore
• 1:50:15
  tree plant near building will break up concrete, you know, will break,
• 1:50:19
  break up concrete, whereas other plants will, or all their roots will
• 1:50:24
  just sort of wrap around things.
• 1:50:26
  But biophilic, it's a, it's a whole science.
• 1:50:28
  And do you have a particular book that you would, recommend us on that.
• 1:50:33
  Bio, is that anything that's on bio biophilic architecture?
• 1:50:36
  Mm.
• 1:50:37
  not off the top of my head.
• 1:50:39
  Ok.
• 1:50:40
  Well, I should go a look at up and it, and it, and it changes from place to
• 1:50:44
  place because, there are things that grow well in different climates and there's
• 1:50:48
  lots of different micro climates as well, and lots of different reading mat
• 1:50:51
  or lots of different building materials.
• 1:50:54
  So you would want to do it specific to the building materials used in, in your
• 1:50:58
  area and the plants that grow happily in
• 1:51:00
  Rupert Isaacson: your area.
• 1:51:01
  What are you doing at Castle Leslie with that
• 1:51:03
  Sammie Leslie: out interest?
• 1:51:04
  With the new building, the new exhibition space, we want it
• 1:51:07
  to be as biophilic as possible.
• 1:51:09
  so yeah.
• 1:51:11
  So
• 1:51:11
  Rupert Isaacson: what would you, what would you do?
• 1:51:13
  What, what, what, what can you disclose?
• 1:51:14
  What, what, what are you gonna,
• 1:51:17
  Sammie Leslie: I don't know yet.
• 1:51:17
  It's at concept level.
• 1:51:19
  so we haven't got into the design detail at this point.
• 1:51:23
  That starts, I think in September this year.
• 1:51:26
  cause we're working in conjunction with our tourist board and our county council.
• 1:51:32
  and we want to do something that just hasn't been done here before,
• 1:51:35
  but that's normal on the estate.
• 1:51:37
  The estate built, you know, one of the first pumped water systems where an estate
• 1:51:40
  and a village, there was steam driven.
• 1:51:42
  So you turned on pumps and the water just popped out.
• 1:51:45
  And, you know, we did integration rebred integrated wetlands for sewage, where
• 1:51:51
  it's not just reeds, but it's 22 species of plant that eat all of the, you know,
• 1:51:56
  the phages and the slime eat all the bacteria in the water and the water's got
• 1:52:00
  half the nitrates and half the phosphates of the water already in the river.
• 1:52:04
  so, you know, nature is an awful lot of innovative solutions and I,
• 1:52:09
  and, you know, nature as an answer to na, as a nature, as a solution
• 1:52:13
  to every one of nature's problems.
• 1:52:15
  Cuz if it didn't, it would've silted up long ago.
• 1:52:20
  You know.
• 1:52:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I, I've seen that, that that serious treatment plant on your,
• 1:52:24
  on your estate, and it it does Is it, does it do the whole village or is it, is it
• 1:52:28
  Sammie Leslie: just the It does, it does up, no, it does.
• 1:52:30
  Up to the equivalent to 2000 people.
• 1:52:32
  Yeah.
• 1:52:33
  It's amazing.
• 1:52:33
  And it looks like it's water garden and the biodiversity,
• 1:52:36
  and it is unbelievably high.
• 1:52:38
  Yeah.
• 1:52:38
  It's a water meadows.
• 1:52:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:52:41
  How long has that been in?
• 1:52:42
  Did you, did you plant that?
• 1:52:43
  Did you put that in deliberately Two
• 1:52:45
  Sammie Leslie: years?
• 1:52:45
  Yeah.
• 1:52:45
  No, that was worked with Amazing.
• 1:52:47
  Was we very open-minded county council and worked with an amazing designer
• 1:52:51
  called Rory Harrington who designed it.
• 1:52:55
  and we worked with them, and went, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:52:57
  Let's test bed.
• 1:52:58
  It, let's, let's be the first to build one of these in, you know, in a historic
• 1:53:03
  setting for, in a village and an estate.
• 1:53:06
  and that, that's what we just want to do more of and trialing
• 1:53:09
  and test bedding stuff as well.
• 1:53:10
  And we won't get everything right, but That's right.
• 1:53:13
  You know, then you share what works and what didn't work and somebody else might
• 1:53:16
  go, oh, well actually if I turn that around and flip that upside down and
• 1:53:19
  put that over there, that might work.
• 1:53:21
  And then, you know, somebody has to be brave and be quite
• 1:53:26
  happy to make all the mistakes.
• 1:53:28
  We've just ended up in this world where everything has to be perfect and
• 1:53:34
  research the nth degree before we do it.
• 1:53:36
  And I mean, I think one of the, the saddest things in our world is how
• 1:53:42
  insurance is just starting to rule the world is just stopping, , creativity.
• 1:53:49
  It's stopping people taking chances.
• 1:53:51
  It's stopping people experimenting, because of the fear of not
• 1:53:56
  getting it right and getting sued if you don't get it right.
• 1:53:59
  Mm.
• 1:53:59
  You know, the downside of not trying in the first place is starting to bite, weigh
• 1:54:05
  the downside of something going wrong.
• 1:54:08
  Rupert Isaacson: How do you cope with that?
• 1:54:09
  Because you're, you're dealing with a high risk, thing at Castle Lessi.
• 1:54:12
  You, you still have an equestrian center that specializes in cross country riding.
• 1:54:16
  Cross country riding, innately dangerous activity.
• 1:54:19
  Yeah.
• 1:54:20
  How do you deal with this insurance issue?
• 1:54:23
  Sammie Leslie: we make sure it's as safe as possible.
• 1:54:24
  The jumps are designed to be as safe as possible.
• 1:54:26
  They're all under, you know, a certain height or the landing.
• 1:54:29
  The takeoffs are kept in really good condition.
• 1:54:33
  You know, the horses are, oh, there's my wild cat.
• 1:54:36
  The horses are, highly selected to be able to make sure that there
• 1:54:40
  is, you know, as safe as possible.
• 1:54:43
  And still most people who come riding except that there is some risk.
• 1:54:49
  but, you know, 1.35 million people die in car accidents globally a year.
• 1:54:55
  Yeah.
• 1:54:56
  And we still drive.
• 1:54:57
  And what's amazing is we teach people, we don't teach people to drive very well,
• 1:55:01
  and we don't do the continuous upskilling.
• 1:55:04
  and I think we could do an awful lot more in road safety.
• 1:55:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:55:07
  But because it's still, you know, profitable for the insurance industry,
• 1:55:12
  nobody's really got stuck in to make it as safe as it could be.
• 1:55:16
  I mean, I did my regular license and then I did a class one HTV license for
• 1:55:21
  40 foot trucks and sitting in a week in a, for a week in a cab with one dri other
• 1:55:27
  driver and an instructor between us either driving or wa watching and listening.
• 1:55:32
  I mean, I learned so much compared to what I learned in my regular driving
• 1:55:37
  license, which I did 40 years ago.
• 1:55:39
  And nobody ever has checked whether I drive well or not.
• 1:55:42
  You know, you sh we should do our driving license and come back a
• 1:55:46
  year later and do another bit and then at next year do another bit.
• 1:55:49
  And over the first sort of five years have, have continuous improvement and
• 1:55:53
  then come back in every five years for a chop up because we learned bad habits.
• 1:55:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Why did you learn to become a truck driver?
• 1:56:02
  Sammie Leslie: To drive a truck?
• 1:56:03
  Yeah.
• 1:56:06
  I'm sorry, horses.
• 1:56:07
  Of course, if you're going to transport horses around the place, you need to
• 1:56:10
  be able to drive a truck and you could do in the south a rigid license and
• 1:56:15
  then an Arctic license, c n d license.
• 1:56:19
  Or you could go up north and for the same amount of time, an effort,
• 1:56:21
  you could learn to drive a 40 foot.
• 1:56:23
  And I hate to say they are fabulous to drive.
• 1:56:27
  You still drive a truck?
• 1:56:29
  No, I'm you.
• 1:56:30
  You need to keep all your driving up.
• 1:56:32
  And, also cyclists terrify me now.
• 1:56:36
  Yes.
• 1:56:36
  I mean, in the old days you didn't have to watch out for as many people
• 1:56:41
  in your blind spot and cyclists that come up both sides of you, it's humanly
• 1:56:47
  impossible to be able to watch your left and your right mirror at the same time.
• 1:56:52
  As well as look at your windscreen.
• 1:56:55
  You're, you know, at some point you will miss somebody on one side or
• 1:56:58
  the other because they're everywhere.
• 1:57:00
  I don't know how they drive through towns.
• 1:57:04
  I really don't take my hat off to, to guys who drive 40 foot.
• 1:57:08
  Anybody that drives 40 foot.
• 1:57:10
  Rupert Isaacson: It's it's, it's amazing.
• 1:57:11
  One thing I didn't expect to come out this interview is that, was that
• 1:57:14
  Sammy Leslie is a truck driving ma.
• 1:57:17
  I love it when I
• 1:57:18
  Sammie Leslie: go to get my hire car and they kinda look at the section on your
• 1:57:21
  license to see, have you got a driving?
• 1:57:23
  And they're like, oh.
• 1:57:25
  no.
• 1:57:26
  It's, it's, it, it's good.
• 1:57:27
  But you know, it's back to continuous improvement and upskilling.
• 1:57:32
  and we don't have it in, in driving.
• 1:57:35
  So, listen, I've,
• 1:57:36
  Rupert Isaacson: I've learned a lot on this, on this interview.
• 1:57:39
  I'm gonna go off and look at biophilic architecture.
• 1:57:42
  I'm gonna go and look at Super Soil.
• 1:57:45
  Sammie Leslie: Is that Yeah, super Soil's, the Irish company,
• 1:57:48
  they're not that far from here.
• 1:57:49
  That is looking at feeding the soil and making the soil healthy
• 1:57:53
  so it can draw down the nutrients that it needs rather than,
• 1:57:58
  Rupert Isaacson: and getting away from the nitrogen, the harsh
• 1:58:01
  nitrogen, that's killing the mycelium.
• 1:58:04
  Right?
• 1:58:04
  Yeah.
• 1:58:05
  Sammie Leslie: And the micro within, within the soil.
• 1:58:08
  you mentioned a book so Becomes Dead rather than having, you
• 1:58:11
  know, a living soil, it literally just becomes a dead substance.
• 1:58:15
  Rupert Isaacson: you mentioned a book, you mentioned two books
• 1:58:17
  earlier on, which I want to just, draw people's attention back to.
• 1:58:20
  You mentioned a book called The Botany of Desire.
• 1:58:23
  Is that
• 1:58:23
  Sammie Leslie: correct?
• 1:58:24
  Oh, botany The Botany of Desire by Michael Poland.
• 1:58:29
  Tell us a little bit more about that.
• 1:58:32
  And he wrote another book that he was very famous for.
• 1:58:35
  Which I can't remember.
• 1:58:37
  and bot the botany of desire is basically one of the principles behind Rewilding.
• 1:58:46
  Except it's what the botany, what how we behaved, and it's how nature taught
• 1:58:54
  us to do the things it wanted us to do to move seed round in different places
• 1:59:01
  so plants could continue to, to move.
• 1:59:03
  Because if seeds just fall beside the mother plant all the time, you
• 1:59:08
  just get this clump that's always fighting for the same nutrients.
• 1:59:11
  But if, you know, if a peach tree could get you to eat the peach seed and all,
• 1:59:18
  and then poo the seed out half a mile away, that peach tree had much more
• 1:59:22
  chance of surviving because it wasn't falling on the roots of, of its parents
• 1:59:29
  and fighting for the same nutrients.
• 1:59:32
  And that's why we taste in the way that we do, which is, Sarah, don't eat me.
• 1:59:38
  I'm not ready.
• 1:59:39
  Sweet.
• 1:59:39
  Please eat me now.
• 1:59:40
  bitter.
• 1:59:41
  Don't eat me.
• 1:59:42
  I'm poisonous and I don't want you to to eat me.
• 1:59:45
  And, salt is our body's need to look for, I was gonna say isotopes.
• 1:59:50
  No electrolytes.
• 1:59:52
  Electrolytes.
• 1:59:53
  Thank you.
• 1:59:54
  Rupert Isaacson: so this is basically how plants have domesticated
• 1:59:57
  Sammie Leslie: humans.
• 1:59:58
  Exactly, and it's back to our arrogance of humans, thinking.
• 2:00:03
  I'm gonna see what Michael put.
• 2:00:05
  Oh, the Omnivores dilemma, which is about, eating plants for meat.
• 2:00:09
  but the botany of desire, it's very small little book is just real reminder
• 2:00:14
  of we are so deluded in thinking that we are in control of this planet and
• 2:00:21
  we are in control of Mother Nature.
• 2:00:23
  We will be the fifth race of humanoids to wipe ourselves off this planet.
• 2:00:27
  And nature will continue.
• 2:00:29
  Hey, why break this tradition?
• 2:00:31
  You know?
• 2:00:33
  Cause it's painful.
• 2:00:34
  It's a lot of unnecessary suffering.
• 2:00:36
  indeed, indeed.
• 2:00:38
  And that ability for nature to make us do what it needs is, it's also
• 2:00:42
  what it does to the rest of nature.
• 2:00:45
  You know, it's not just us, the same rules behave, you know, apply.
• 2:00:49
  but yeah, nature's very clever.
• 2:00:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Then you also mentioned a book, God is an optimist, Ben
• 2:00:57
  Sammie Leslie: Goldsmith.
• 2:00:58
  Oh, an Optimist.
• 2:00:58
  Please tell us a bit more about that.
• 2:01:01
  Oh, it's such a beautiful book and I've just finished reading it.
• 2:01:04
  he's an amazing environmentalist, an amazing human being, and
• 2:01:08
  they is very sadly lost Irish, their 15 year old daughter in.
• 2:01:13
  a freak farm accident.
• 2:01:15
  and it is his incredible love for, family, for his
• 2:01:20
  daughter, the grieving process.
• 2:01:23
  I do not know how any human being deals with the loss of a child.
• 2:01:29
  and have you found healing in nature and went on to become an incredible
• 2:01:34
  campaigner for, rewilding and nature led restoration reject.
• 2:01:39
  and it's his journey, but it's just written in a such a beautiful way.
• 2:01:45
  I've been asked to biography and I'm going, oh my God, if
• 2:01:47
  only I could write like him.
• 2:01:50
  Rupert Isaacson: it is on the list.
• 2:01:51
  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna get God is an Octopus Ben Goldsmith.
• 2:01:54
  Yeah.
• 2:01:54
  The bot desire Michael Poland.
• 2:01:57
  Okay.
• 2:01:58
  Sammie Leslie: Yeah.
• 2:01:59
  And then yes.
• 2:02:00
  And then Wilding by Isabella Tree is a seminal book on letting nature,
• 2:02:06
  again, nature led regeneration.
• 2:02:08
  And they've just done a book called Wilding, which is the how to manual
• 2:02:13
  of wilding, large and small in regenerating Nature to be able to give
• 2:02:18
  it its place and space that it needs.
• 2:02:22
  Wilding by Isabella Tree.
• 2:02:25
  Tree.
• 2:02:26
  Yeah.
• 2:02:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:02:27
  Great name.
• 2:02:28
  okay,
• 2:02:29
  Sammie Leslie: so Rewilding was the first book, and then wilding
• 2:02:32
  is the manual on how to do it.
• 2:02:34
  Okay.
• 2:02:34
  And it's just written in a very lovely language, very simple and easy to, to do.
• 2:02:42
  And, and
• 2:02:43
  Rupert Isaacson: is that something that people who just have a backyard regular?
• 2:02:48
  Absolutely.
• 2:02:48
  Good benefit.
• 2:02:49
  Okay.
• 2:02:49
  Sammie Leslie: Fantastic.
• 2:02:50
  Yeah.
• 2:02:50
  I'm, yeah.
• 2:02:53
  Backyard or a big space doesn't
• 2:02:56
  Rupert Isaacson: have to be cause of estate.
• 2:02:59
  Sammie Leslie: No.
• 2:02:59
  It can be your balcony.
• 2:03:01
  Fantastic.
• 2:03:02
  Can be anything.
• 2:03:05
  And then finally,
• 2:03:07
  Rupert Isaacson: dear daughter, the IFRA Foundation, I f r A H.
• 2:03:12
  Yeah.
• 2:03:12
  fgm, female genital mutilation.
• 2:03:15
  people should look up that.
• 2:03:18
  Sammie Leslie: absolutely.
• 2:03:18
  And there's absolutely, there's lots of ways, to get involved
• 2:03:22
  or to support, support.
• 2:03:24
  the Dear Daughter campaign is people, a mother or a father or an aunt,
• 2:03:28
  or an uncle or a guardian camp, committing not to cut their child.
• 2:03:36
  and
• 2:03:38
  Rupert Isaacson: then if people want to, get in touch with you or get
• 2:03:43
  involved in some of the initiatives that.
• 2:03:46
  Castle Leslie's involved in, and I know obviously if they want to just come
• 2:03:49
  and stay in the hotel, they can Yeah.
• 2:03:51
  Look up Castle Leslie online and book.
• 2:03:53
  but if, if people wanted to get involved in the, the Rewilding side,
• 2:03:56
  the so regenerative side, the, the special needs side, the human rights
• 2:04:00
  side, what, what's their best way?
• 2:04:02
  Should they contact
• 2:04:03
  Sammie Leslie: you?
• 2:04:03
  What should they be?
• 2:04:04
  with the Leslie Foundation, which we've set up a newly fledged charity, amazing
• 2:04:10
  board of people and people coming on board, or, you'll find me there as well.
• 2:04:16
  So, yes.
• 2:04:18
  The Leslie
• 2:04:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Foundation.
• 2:04:20
  Yeah.
• 2:04:21
  Is that.org, is that
• 2:04:22
  Sammie Leslie: a.net?
• 2:04:24
  dot org and then also through the main website, through Castle Leslie.
• 2:04:28
  And, and is that Castle?
• 2:04:29
  Rupert Isaacson: leslie.com.
• 2:04:31
  Dot com.
• 2:04:32
  Castle leslie.com.
• 2:04:35
  And Leslie with an
• 2:04:37
  Sammie Leslie: ie.
• 2:04:38
  Family with a y and Leslie with an ie.
• 2:04:43
  Castle
• 2:04:44
  Rupert Isaacson: leslie.com.
• 2:04:45
  And the Leslie Foundation, is that, is it one word?
• 2:04:50
  The Leslie Foundation?
• 2:04:51
  Sorry, is it, is it, is it the, is it the Leslie Foundation?
• 2:04:56
  org.
• 2:04:57
  Sammie Leslie: I'm funny feeling it's do ie.
• 2:04:59
  Rather.
• 2:05:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Ok.
• 2:05:00
  Let me, I'm gonna look it up here on my phone just so we
• 2:05:02
  get the Leslie Foundation.
• 2:05:05
  Let's see.
• 2:05:05
  Sammie Leslie: I should know.
• 2:05:10
  Rupert Isaacson: God forbid one should no one's own website.
• 2:05:12
  I know.
• 2:05:14
  Foundation, let's see.
• 2:05:20
  It is, you've got castle leslie.com that we know.
• 2:05:25
  let's see.
• 2:05:26
  The Leslie Foundation accept the cookies.
• 2:05:30
  Yes, I will accept the cookies
• 2:05:40
  here.
• 2:05:41
  I see info at, you're right.
• 2:05:43
  It's i e info at Leslie Foundation, ie.
• 2:05:50
  Info at Leslie with an i e l e s l, ie.
• 2:05:54
  Foundation dot i ie.
• 2:05:57
  So confusing me two ie.
• 2:05:59
  Sammie Leslie: Within the same.
• 2:05:59
  It's terrible.
• 2:06:02
  How often do you, how often do you do your own website, you know?
• 2:06:07
  No, exactly.
• 2:06:08
  Exactly.
• 2:06:08
  Do you mean you don't spend days googling yourself?
• 2:06:11
  Did I've gone all red.
• 2:06:12
  Must be the light.
• 2:06:13
  Rupert Isaacson: I think I did that last in 2000 or something like that.
• 2:06:20
  And then I sudden I realized that I was profoundly uninterested in myself, but
• 2:06:24
  I was very interested in other people.
• 2:06:27
  Yeah.
• 2:06:27
  , and that's sort of been how it's gone ever since.
• 2:06:29
  I find myself rather boring.
• 2:06:31
  , but I find.
• 2:06:33
  Sammie Leslie: I would agree with that.
• 2:06:33
  People like you Absolutely fascinating.
• 2:06:36
  I'm really boring, honestly.
• 2:06:39
  Well, I think you just,
• 2:06:40
  Rupert Isaacson: you just put the light to that.
• 2:06:41
  , Sammy, it's been, it's been a treat.
• 2:06:44
  Thank you for letting us into the world at Castle Leslie.
• 2:06:47
  , I, I would, I would strongly urge anybody listening, put it on the bucket list.
• 2:06:53
  Get your ass to Castle Leslie at some point, even if it's just
• 2:06:57
  to go have a bit of food and walk around that piece of magic.
• 2:07:01
  It's an extraordinary, extraordinary, extraordinary, landscape.
• 2:07:05
  And it's one of the few that is really sort of open, to
• 2:07:08
  people, but it's so undiscovered.
• 2:07:10
  , and you, you, there is a sense of freedom there.
• 2:07:14
  , I remember my son and I walking across one of the bogs by the Lake Barefoot and,
• 2:07:21
  , feeling in the oc feeling the October mud coming up through our toes and just
• 2:07:26
  reveling in the sound of the bird song and the deer on the hill, and to know that
• 2:07:31
  all this amazing work is being done there.
• 2:07:33
  Sammy, incredible.
• 2:07:35
  So thank
• 2:07:35
  Sammie Leslie: you.
• 2:07:36
  There's, there's, there's, there's lots more to do.
• 2:07:38
  we're only just starting.
• 2:07:40
  I
• 2:07:40
  Rupert Isaacson: can't wait.
• 2:07:41
  I can't wait to be back.
• 2:07:42
  I will be back as quickly as I can.
• 2:07:44
  and hopefully the crowds after people listening to this podcast,
• 2:07:48
  I still get first dibs at the door if you see me showing up.
• 2:07:51
  I got there first, so I'm sorry.
• 2:07:53
  You have to let me in first.
• 2:07:55
  thank you.
• 2:07:55
  Thank you.
• 2:07:56
  Thank you, Sammy, for your time and giving us a bit of a
• 2:07:59
  glimpse of this magical kingdom.
• 2:08:03
  Sammie Leslie: Well, you're very welcome.
• 2:08:04
  And it, and it's going to be an amazing journey over the next few years and
• 2:08:08
  have lots of people come on board.
• 2:08:09
  Absolutely.
• 2:08:10
  Well, thank you for having,
• 2:08:10
  Rupert Isaacson: I I cannot wait to see what you're doing, what you
• 2:08:12
  do with the, with the, ecological, educational center, what you
• 2:08:16
  do with, the autism projects.
• 2:08:19
  It's gonna be, it's, it's gonna be
• 2:08:21
  Sammie Leslie: fascinating.
• 2:08:22
  And I'm just sorry you're not here on Friday with, when we,
• 2:08:25
  when the architects are here.
• 2:08:27
  Rupert Isaacson: I no particularly is one of those architects is a mate of mine.
• 2:08:30
  And I do not get to raise a glass with you too.
• 2:08:32
  But I will, I will hold it in credit, for the
• 2:08:35
  Sammie Leslie: next time I'm there.
• 2:08:36
  It's only the beginning.
• 2:08:38
  Yeah, no, thank you for sending two more away.
• 2:08:41
  Thank you.
• 2:08:41
  Sleep
• 2:08:42
  Rupert Isaacson: well, rest Well, I will.
• 2:08:44
  Sammie Leslie: Okay, I'll Bye-Bye.
• 2:08:46
  Bye.
• 2:08:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank you for joining us.
• 2:08:48
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• 2:08:50
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  bring you and your horse joy.
• 2:09:21
  For an overview of all shows and programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.
• 2:09:26
  See you on the next show.
• 2:09:28
  And please remember to press, subscribe and share.