'Unfortunately, I cannot prepare my daughters for the world to come'. Presenter Art Rooijakkers wrote a book about the future for his twins

His daughters, 3-year-old twins, will probably make it to the year 2100. But he is very unlikely to live to see that himself. Art Rooijakkers (46) sighs - he already finds it a terrible thought. What kind of world will Puk and Keesje soon live in, he wondered. Will they have to wear mouth caps permanently or get injected with fillers? Will they still write or just type and swipe? Will they still need to work 40 hours a week or will robots take over most of the work? And what will soon be the state of nature?

Rooijakkers talked about it with all kinds of scientists and experts, and devoted a series of columns to it in The Parool, which he rewrote, supplemented and expanded with new chapters during the lockdown. The result: My daughters' century. What our world will soon look like. 'I love fatherhood, but it has also given me a whole tray of worries. This book is my attempt to get a grip on the future and thus a grip on their future.'

Has fatherhood changed you?

'Yes, I look at life very differently than I used to. Then I was with a lot of sturm und drang moving forward and I still felt almost immortal. Not any more; I have lost friends and family members and am experiencing how fast life flies by. Bruce Springsteen said at one of the last gigs I attended: "The older you get, the more it means". That moved me deeply, because it is SO true. In this year when everything stands still, I have learned to look more at what is close by, at what really matters: my family and friends. I realised this all the more by writing this book, but also because my own father disappeared in hospital at the height of the pandemic. He is a heart patient and had to be admitted. Because of corona, we could barely get to him, which was intense. Fortunately, he is still alive. But a good friend of mine, campaign strategist Erik van Bruggen, died this spring and that literally and figuratively punched a hole. He had two young children.'

How confronting is that? Are you afraid that the same might happen to you?

'Sometimes I do. My father's heart problems are genetic, so I've been taking cholesterol medication for several years. That's something for older people, I always thought, but no - I have to too. No matter how healthy I eat, if I don't take medication, my veins might clog up. As a Brabander, I would rather eat a sausage roll than a salad, but I would like to guide my two children into adulthood if at all possible. Now it may sound like I am daily weighed down by the fear of death. That is not the case, of course, but I have become much more aware of my mortality.'

Is your anxiety greater because you became a father relatively late, when you were already almost 43?

'Maybe that subconsciously plays a role. If at my 20^e had had children, I probably would have had more time with them. My girlfriend Andrea and I had been together for a long time, but I was too busy conquering the world. It's that cliché. Too busy with my...'

Rooijakkers hesitates and falls silent.

Too busy with your career?

'Um... I don't know if I have a career. Anyway, I was busy with my own development.'

You've been working in television for 20 years. Why shouldn't that be called a career?

'People in business have careers. Or a lawyer or accountant, moving up to partner. I stumble from one programme and project into another. There is no line in it, it is a series of interlocking coincidences.'

Mister The Mole

The list of programmes Art Rooijakkers has worked on is long. Yet he is still best known to the public for being the figurehead of the popular programme Who is the mole? 'I still get asked about the programme, people ask me if I don't miss it. No, it's a wonderful programme, but after seven years I thought it was time for a breath of fresh air. Whether I find it annoying that others still bring it up? Not at all. In the words of Gerard Reve: it has been seen, it has not gone unnoticed.'

As a presenter, Rooijakkers is cheerful, friendly and engaging, but not very outspoken. He is simply not a man of strong opinions, he says. I don't know whether that is typically Brabant or just something from our family, but at home we were very much into the harmony model. That has a beautiful side, but has also made me feel less strongly what I think or want myself. I find it fascinating when someone has very firm opinions. For me, it feels almost unnatural to be firm about something.'

At de Volkskrant last year, your image was described as 'mannequin-like'. That sounds like: a bit faceless, colourless.

'That article appeared a few days before Summer with Art began. I was in a pressure cooker and didn't read it at the time, as I didn't want to be too aware of myself when shooting, but wanted to make a fun programme uninhibitedly. Television is like a laughing mirror. It puts a magnifying glass on your character, magnifies your traits and thus makes a flat picture of you. The depth of your personality doesn't come across at all on TV. An everyman's friend I am not, but by nature I am indeed not a polemic figure, nor will I ever be. A colleague once described me as a 'chemistry slut'.'

 A chemistry slut?

Rooijakkers has to laugh heartily about it. 'By that she meant that many people quickly feel a click with me. I think this is because I am interested in the other person's ideas and motives. And instead of emphasising the differences, I look for the similarities. I am the polder model incarnate.'

Where did that come from?

'It will have to do with my character and the nest I come from, but maybe also with the fact that I was bullied in primary school. Unlike the other boys in my class, I didn't have much talent for football, but could learn well. Our teacher would quiz us on forty proverbs every week. He kept track of our score on the board as if it were the premier league. Not very pedagogical for the kids at the bottom and top of the list. I was at the top.'

'Maybe the bullying would have decreased if I had tried a little less, but I was too proud for that. I couldn't manage to give wrong answers and get bad marks on purpose. Then the bullies won, I thought, and I didn't begrudge them that. And on the other hand, it left me with an insane knowledge of proverbs and sayings. Well, I don't want to shoot bacon, but it's better than knowing neither jack nor aim.'

Were you scolded or beaten?

'Both. In the playground, we used to play the game of 'overrun': you had to run from one side of the square to the other and children in the middle had to tap you; then you were finished. I was not tapped, but kicked under. Hup, another stitch in my chin. A boy at another school who did stick karate had to have me too. And so I walked to school with a diversion to avoid confrontation. Maybe that shaped me and made me conflict-averse. I don't go through life like a Buddha, but I don't seek confrontation either. Fortunately, the bullying stopped when I went to secondary school in Eindhoven. There I was able to reinvent myself and leave the ghosts of the past behind me.'

Too many opinions

Actually, the profession of television presenter is not so obvious with his character, says Rooijakkers. But there is also something in me that wants to be seen and heard.' Yet he does not want to be the umpteenth television personality who has to have an opinion about anything and everything. 'As far as I am concerned, there are already too many people with an opinion on TV. It's just moving air from left to right, but hours are filled with it. I'd rather talk to people who can or know something than to people who think something.'

Why do you choose entertainment programmes? Does your content side come out adequately there?

'I don't think my serious side is too invisible. For a few weeks now, I have been presenting at BNR The Big Five, a daily interview programme in which I go into depth with someone for an hour on a particular topic. I wrote columns in The Parool and last year I made a music documentary about Van Dik Hout. A programme like Talk Dutch to me may not be the same as the Grand dictation of the Dutch language, but has content. So I dare to say - yes, even an opinion - that I make entertainment with substance.'

You have also been an ambassador for the Refugee Foundation for many years. Can you share that story somewhere?

'Since 2015, the wind has become more bleak, I notice. From that year onwards, more and more boats carrying refugees came to Europe, and reactions turned 180 degrees. It used to be that if I had visited a refugee camp and shared something about it on social media or in a talk show, people were struck by that human suffering. But in recent years, the word "refugee" acts like a red rag on a bull and I sometimes get stiffed. The Refugee Foundation provides tents, drinking water and medicine for people who are victims of natural disaster or war.'

'Whatever your political beliefs, I really sincerely cannot imagine why you would be against it. Some 80 million people in this world are refugees. I find that indigestible. In Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, I spoke to a man who had been a municipal civil servant. He had fled the corrupt government and his wife and he were living on the streets. They slept in rotation so that their daughter could not be kidnapped for sex. They had planned to go to a cousin hundreds of kilometres away, for which they would have to cross high mountain passes.'

Privilege

'Because of everything I have seen, I realise even more strongly what a privilege it is that I have a safe, homely place to go, where my girlfriend, children and friends are. Millions of people are unlucky not to have that.'

Rooijakkers looks straight ahead and wipes the tears from his cheeks. 'I do take an experience like that home with me. It's all bad luck and randomness.'

Are you still hopeful about the future for your daughters?

'Optimism is our moral duty. If you let go of that, what is left? My daughters' birth cards said 'fortune seekers', because I like that word. Now it's a swear word, but aren't we all fortune hunters? I had considered making it 'lucky people', because that's what you are too, when you are born in one of the safest and most stable countries in the world. We are so lucky here. The world my children are growing up in is more unsettled than it has ever been. On the other hand, I believe in the power of science, and I hope some brilliant mind will rise up and find a solution to the consequences of climate change. The more people, the more likely it is that there will be a genius among them.'

What do you worry about most?

'Climate and nature. There are almost 8 billion of us now, and by the end of this century there will be 11 billion. Man is demanding too much space, and we are destroying our landscape. Will there still be meadows soon, will my daughters still be able to see wild animals in real life? Will there be a new world war? Such worries every parent has, but I think previous generations did have the idea that their children would have it better than they did. That obviousness is gone.'

What do you want to give them for their lives?

'Writing this book made me realise that I cannot prepare my children for the world in which they will be adults. I cannot teach them now what they will need later in a society that does not yet exist. What I do know is that the world has started spinning faster on its axis. Changes are happening faster than before. So what I mainly want to teach them is flexibility and the ability to deal with change. I hope to give them so much self-confidence that they can face the world with an open mind.'

The century of my daughters is published by Balans, €19.99