30 With Guyon: Nigel Latta says ‘It’s okay to be average’

For the full, uncut conversation with Nigel Latta, watch 30 with Guyon Espiner. Subscribe to the podcast feed now to get every episode of 30 on your phone when it lands on Spotify. iHeartRadio and Apple podcasts.

Nigel Latta was diagnosed with cancer last year and told he might have just six to 12 months to live. That kind of news rearranges your priorities.

For Latta, who has spent decades talking about resilience, whether in criminal psychology, family life, or health, it was a moment of reckoning - a true test of his philosophy.

“I’ve basically spent 30 years talking about resilience in one form or another,” he says. “And then this thing comes along and it goes, ‘okay, let’s see how good you are’.”

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Now responding well to treatment and a new generation of so-called “wonder drugs,” Latta is firmly focused on what really matters. Not algorithms, not outrage. But optimism.

“You’ve gotta keep pushing back into that optimistic space,” he says. “Because optimism really is a superpower. It really does help.”

He’s not just being chirpy for the sake of it. “A number of cancer specialists have talked about the fact that if you’re relaxed, if you think the world is a pretty good place, and you’re optimistic, your T-cells are more active than if you’re pessimistic.”

There’s something especially grounded about Latta’s perspective. Even when he’s talking about life-and-death stakes, he's calm, wry, and he hasn’t suddenly changed his worldview.

“It affirmed all the things I believed in before,” he says, “but now I have a new sense of how important they are, and the things that make it hard.”

One of those values is faith in people. “I spent 30 years working with people in all sorts of situations and you see how amazing people are. Kids can go through terrible stuff, and then they pick themselves up. They move on with their life.”

Children and families have long been a specialty for Latta. He’s written best-selling books like Politically Incorrect Parenting and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers, and he’s still very much in that space.

“I still believe the things I’ve always thought about parenting,” he says. But he worries about the rise of fringe theories, especially when amplified on social media.

“There’s some modern silliness around,” he says. “There’s a thing called ‘respectful parenting’ which looks to me like something from Monty Python. Like, if you’re changing a nappy, you have to ask the baby’s permission: ‘Look, son, your nappies are dirty. I don’t wanna shame you, but would it be all right if I change your nappy?’”

He laughs, although his frustration is real. “Some of that stuff, this idea that kids must never feel bad about anything, and parents must never use consequences, I just don’t know how you raise a child like that.”

Latta is particularly concerned about how social media distorts parenting culture.

“It’s hard for people to know what information they can trust, because everybody sounds like they’re speaking facts. But if you dig into the evidence base underneath some of it, it’s just not there.”

More worrying still, he says, is the way children are used as online props to boost their parents’ egos.

“I’ve never put pictures of my kids up on social media, because I know there are bad people scraping children’s pictures off the internet. I don’t want my kids’ photos up there at all. That’s something they can decide when they’re adults. Don’t put this stuff up there when they’re kids.”

Latta has little time for social media bragging, either. “All that super-competitive parenting - ‘here’s little Johnny who’s a national band champion’ - like, no one cares. The only people liking it are mocking you anyway.”

It’s an uncompromising view, especially from someone who’s had to look death in the eye, and chosen how to live - optimistically, realistically, and without the nonsense.

“It’s okay to be average,” he says. “That’s what we’ve forgotten.”