'The Legend of the Origin of the Tao Te Ching on Lao Tsu's Road into exile' is a short poem by Bertolt Brecht whose protagonist, Lao Tsu attempts to distil his learning down into 81 Sayings. It served as a creative impulse for 81 authors from all over the world who came together after the Covid-19 pandemic to reimagine what these 81 Sayings could have been. In the podcast, Sukhesh Arora speaks to some of the authors who make visible the rigidity in our volatile world, and also make more tangible how such hardening may be overcome.