Harm is now 63, and all his life he has been affected by the state of the world. “As a child, I saw on television a starving boy in Biafra, then the carpet bombings in Vietnam, the report The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome, and later, as a television maker, the melting glaciers on Spitsbergen. It is particularly that experience which made me devote most of my daily work to creating a better, more sustainable world. But lately I increasingly find myself thinking: things are only getting crazier in the world. We are consuming ourselves into exhaustion, we insult each other on X, we are shifting to the right and becoming harsher, we are granting each other less and less, people are being replaced by AI, while AI is further destroying the world because of its high energy consumption.”

This is what Harm wants to discuss with the audience. “Do you really need that air fryer, Henk? You already have three winter coats, Josien — do you really need a fourth?” In an upbeat tone and with a great deal of humour, Harm takes the audience through the absurdity of our collective behaviour and shows how things can be done differently and better, without losing the sense of enjoyment.

Because that is at the core of Harm’s existence: do everything with joy. “I grew up in a joyless family, where nothing was celebrated, nothing was enjoyed, where humour did not exist and where I was not seen. These experiences have shaped me into who I am as well: someone who approaches the absurdity of life with a great deal of humour, remains optimistic (most of the time) and enjoys things as much as possible. That is also why I speak about that formative side of my life.”

• text Harm Edens direction Erik van Muiswinkel