Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Andrew Denton

Transcript

Andrew Denton · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans of all the conversations we have, which is more difficult than the conversation
• 0:06
  around death. Not just other people's death, that's hard enough. Why about your own death?
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  Have you talked to people about it? About how you'd like to die? I mean, even the very idea
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  of having some say in how you die is both a luxury and perhaps a little bit of a perversion of
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  the way of nature. I mean, if you're a religious person, you probably don't think these are
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  things that people should be dabbling in at all. And yet increasingly, as we're able to,
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  as we're living longer and longer, as we're coming up with medical solutions that improve our
• 0:43
  longevity, but not necessarily our mental capacity. If you found yourself in a situation where life
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  was no longer worth living either because you were riddled with dementia or some degenerative disease,
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  would you want to have some control over that? Would it even be legal to have some control over that?
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  These are subjects we shy away from, because it always seems weird to bring them up.
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  But in reality, that only makes them more pressing. Choosing how to live a flourishing life,
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  and how to end it on your terms is a conversation that may seem far off, but it's no less important,
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  that's no less uncomfortable.
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  On the program today, an amazing conversation with an amazing man, one of Australia's most famous
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  and most respected creative minds. He's had an incredible career in television and radio. He's been
• 1:43
  a top rating FM breakfast radio presenter. He's a producer, a writer, former TV host. He created
• 1:52
  well-known television shows like Gruen and Hungry Beast. He hosted his own long-running
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  interview show on the ABC called Enough Rope. And funnily enough, he now spends much of his time
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  as an advocate for voluntary assisted dying laws or euthanasia. He has a podcast about that,
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  which is called Better Off Dead. He has an organization devoted to it called Go Gentle.
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  And that's the pretext for this conversation. We don't stick only to that subject. In fact,
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  we get to that a little later on, because there's so much to talk to him about, about the culture
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  wars, about the way that we are stifling creativity at the moment, about cancel culture,
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  about all the things that he hasn't had an opportunity to chime in on, because he hasn't had a show
• 2:35
  lately. But I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did with the one. And only
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  tighten the Australian media. And we're done too.
• 2:54
  What did you want to do when you were a kid? What were your aspirations?
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  I think I wanted to be half-backed for South Sydney Rugby League football team.
• 3:00
  I'm pretty sure that's what I wanted to be. I had a, I've stood the longest live piece of clothing
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  I have as a pair of South Sydney socks. I was given I was about nine, which came up to my
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  forehead. And I would spend most afternoons, or whenever I could out in the backyard and the
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  blue mountains, having a one-man game of rugby league. I kick and I tackle myself. And that's
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  what I wanted to be. And it was tragic because I couldn't tackle, which actually would have made
• 3:28
  me eligible for South for many of those games. Yeah, you're right. Well, I've all the sports that
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  you don't want to do solo. And say rugby league is probably number one. Yeah. Boxings and other
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  ones. Boxings and other ones. Although, although you do tend to win those bouts. That's true.
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  It's very successful. And so, at what point did you realise that that wasn't going to happen?
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  That you weren't going to be a, or are you still holding out hope? Oh, yeah. Look, I, I know the
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  club I do occasionally put myself forward. No, look, I knew simultaneously that wasn't going to happen,
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  although it became concrete to me when I went to college out at Bathurst. And I was a very
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  good touch footballer. I had a really good side. It's their pretty good pass. And I was approached
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  to try out for the rugby league team. And I thought, I don't know, because I'm a lover not a fighter,
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  or I'm not a physical guy. But anyway, I had a go. And when the game is over, the prop forward for
• 4:17
  the team came up to me and said sympathetically, empathetically, that was the bravest thing I've ever seen.
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  And I thought, no, I'm not cut out for this. Like, that's a very kind thing for you to say.
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  It tells me more than I need to know about my prospects in this game. And did you have heroes
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  who were in entertainment, or the media, or who were comics, or interviewers, or anything? Where did
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  that come from? Oh, look, I had, you know, yeah, plenty of heroes. Certainly in an Australian sense,
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  the moment where Australian television took off for me was Norman Gunston. That was the first
• 4:49
  thing that really spoke to me that was made locally. It was just so. It went to non-Australians who
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  Norman Gunston was. It took non-Australians. Norman Gunston was... What are people under the age of
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  30, I suppose? He was the grandfather of Alley G, and all of those kind of joke figures. But Australian
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  television, as I saw growing up, was pretty cringeworthy. It was, you know, low-talent, high-ego,
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  the same people talking to the same people, talking to the same people on the same channels. Not sure
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  that Gary McDonald would say that Norman Gunston wasn't cringeworthy and ego-driven. That's
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  exactly right, but that was the point. He was a complete piss-take of that, and his show was so
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  deliberately low-rent and ridiculous, and he asked extraordinary questions of extraordinary people,
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  you know. And he had, in those days, he got everybody, you know, he went and spoke to Muhammad Ali,
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  and his producer who I worked with many years later told me that he literally, if you look carefully,
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  you can literally see his, the producer's hand, on Gary McDonald's back, sort of pushing him
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  towards Muhammad Ali. But I mean, he asked Paul McCartney at a press conference, is it true that
• 5:59
  you're dead? And he, of course, had one of the great moments in Australian broadcasting history,
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  the day that Gough Whitman was sacked, still the most tumultuous day in the history of Australian
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  politics. Our Prime Minister was sacked by the representative of the Queen, never happened before
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  or since. There was near to a revolution on the Steps of Parliament House, huge crowds had
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  turned up. The Prime Minister Gough Whitman was standing there, claiming, you know, the injustice
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  that had been done. And in the middle of that was this ridiculous figure, Norman Gunston, and to
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  describing me, had this kind of blue, almost formal jacket with ill-fitting dark pants,
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  the worst comb over slipped back that you've ever seen, and little bits of toilet paper on his
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  face from shaving cuts. And in fact, when he interviewed the actress Sally Struthers, and she said,
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  why don't you use an electric shaver? He said, I do. And she laughed so much she couldn't continue
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  the interview. Anyway, I digress. So there he was, this ridiculous figure. And he actually grabbed
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  the man who became Australia's Prime Minister some years later, Bob Hawke, who was a very major
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  figure in Australian politics. And he started to ask him a question. There was this lunatic figure
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  standing there. It was like having a clown at the French Revolution. And Bob Hawke interrupted
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  him and said, ah, no, Norman, this is too serious. And Norman Gunston just turns to the camera and
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  goes, you're right, this is too serious. And it was this insane moment. So he was, that's when
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  the light went on from me. I thought that is such a great, everything he did was such a great
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  critique of the ordinaryness of Australian television. He elevated ordinaryness to a brilliant piece
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  of entertainment. Did you want to do that? I didn't want to do what he did because he was doing it
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  so well. But I did like the idea of subversion. That appealed to me a lot. And subverting what I saw
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  as stuff that required subverting that was self-satisfied and tedious and unpredictable.
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  What requires subverting today? Today. That's a hard question because if you want subversion,
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  turn on your phone any time and go to any particular stream of social media that works for you.
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  What requires subverting today? In a satirical sense, I'm not sure that anything much works
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  anymore. You know, I look at all those very brilliantly made shows in America, look at someone
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  like Samantha B for example, Stephen Colbert and I think I'm not sure you're contributing in a way
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  that helps now. Louis Benel, the artist or Louis Bonel, as it was explained to me by
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  I wasn't going to correct you. No, obviously. But I'm an Australian. Louis? Louis B.
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  His mates were Salvador D and that lot of Salvi. Louis, he said, an artist cannot hope to change
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  anyone's mind. An artist's responsibility is to remind those in power that not everyone agrees
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  with them. I think the value of satire when it's done well is it doesn't change the minds of
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  anyone in power. Peter Cook when he started the establishment club was famously asked,
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  do you think this will change anything? He said, yes, I'm sure it will in the same way as Cabaret
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  undead Hitler. But it does, I think the value of satire is it shows other people and particularly
• 9:34
  people coming through in the generation behind you, critical ways of thinking. Here's a way to
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  deconstruct this problem and I think that's very valuable. When you talk about the challenges
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  of satire at the moment and sight people like Colbert and Samantha B, that makes me wonder if
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  the challenge isn't just that it's harder now to do good satire because I don't know about you,
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  but I've been a little bit disappointed with Colbert who was a huge hero of mine when he was doing
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  the Colbert rapport and was so sharp in his satirical take on people who deserved it, who were in
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  power in the noughties in the first decade of this century. There's something about the preaching
• 10:15
  to the choir. There's something about the smugness that can come across on both sides of politics
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  now that strikes me as uninventive or unfresh. I'm talking about you in the Trump administration,
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  obviously I haven't been watching since Biden took over, but you could always tell where the
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  gag was going. Sure, and that's, you know, America is poisonously divided. I fear to a
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  point of eventual civil war. I genuinely think that is the way that country is heading.
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  And unfortunately, I don't like the word smug, but unfortunately I think
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  those satirical shows which are almost always at the left and there is a reason for that.
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  They're just part of one side of that poisonous divide. What I used to love about John Stuart,
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  which is where Stephen Colbert first appeared and John Stuart is a genuine hero of mine,
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  someone I deeply admire, is that he used to find a way to speak to both sides of the aisle
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  with equal curiosity, fairness and ability to take the piss. And that took an enormous
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  discipline. And he stepped aside eventually when he realized that the endless machine of
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  what he viewed as Fox propaganda was actually pushing him too far to the left. And I thought
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  that showed great intelligence to go, I can no longer do this. Not only could he no longer do it
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  emotionally, but I think he realized that he could no longer do it effectively.
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  Do you remember, he was also just smart. I mean, so not that Colbert isn't Colbert's
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  genius, but I think Colbert is allowing himself to be guided by the intellectual level of the
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  mainstream American audience, whereas it felt like Stuart and Colbert both didn't really give a
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  rat's ass who got the joke and who didn't. They were pitching as high as they wanted to pitch.
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  You're just reminding me, I don't know why it popped into my head of a moment when Megan Kelly
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  was on Fox News. And there was, and someone on her panel, this was just, I think she had a 10 PM
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  show. So it was at 10.30 at night suggested that they were talking about Santa Claus was being
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  portrayed as an African American in some, you know, in a city school and everyone was outraged.
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  Right. And John Stuart. And she turned to the camera and she said, kids, Santa Claus is white.
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  And it cut back to John Stuart. And he said, who is old enough to be watching TV at 10.30 at night,
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  conservative enough to, to, to be watching Fox News, young enough to still believe in Santa
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  Claus and racist enough to care. That's a beautiful analysis. I'm probably mangling it, but you know,
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  I was just like hats off to you. Can I share one of my favorite John Stuart moments? I was in,
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  I happened to be in New York when Obama won the second election, which is, I love you as
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  elections. I always have believed they should be put on ice and too, they are so amazing.
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  Anyway, it was obviously a catastrophe for the Republicans who had lost. And he played a
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  bit of Karl Rove, who was, you know, one of the, the neighbors of the Republican Party from
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  the night before, where in an eerie echo of the election that just happened, it must have
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  been Fox called Ohio for the Democrats. And Karl was sitting on the panel going, well, I don't
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  think that's right. What's the, you know, what are you basing that on? I don't think that's right.
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  So they did, they, they then cut to their number crunches in the back rooms. And they said, well,
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  explain Ohio to us. And the guy said, well, you know, we look at this county, in this county,
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  in this county. And, and really, you know, when you, and you look at the history of it and you
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  look at the numbers and you know what the booze still are, there's a 95% chance that Obama's
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  going to win this. And it cuts back to John Stuart, just looking at the camera going, so you're
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  saying there's still a chance. That's so good. Yes. Okay. So let's just continue on with your
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  life trajectory. And then we'll get to the present, to the present day. How did you think you were,
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  you were going to be most useful achieving that, that, as they say, we were talking, you were talking
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  about your perfect pronunciation of names. To puncture the, the pretensions of the, of the middle class,
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  if that's what you were trying to do. I didn't think of it. It's going to be anything. I didn't have
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  a plan. I, what I got was an opportunity. And I got an opportunity with the right people in the
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  right place, in the right frame of mind. And that was basically, I lucked my way into theatre sports
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  and out of theatre sports. They made a, a Miss Begotten TV series in which you'll see myself
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  and Sean McCullough and Glenn Robbins making our concurrent day booze. And Sean was the standout
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  of that whole thing for mine. And through that, I got offered a chance to audition for a new late night
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  weird show aimed at younger people, which ended up ended up in blah, blah, blah. And I happened to
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  be working with a producer called Mark Fitzgerald, who created Rage and a director called Martin
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  Coombs, who was essentially a Warner Brothers cartoon that borks the earth. And, and a series,
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  a researchical Andy Neal, who is one of the unsung heroes of public broadcasting deeply committed
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  to what the public broadcaster is therefore. And I happened to be in my late 20s filled with an
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  attitude about what what I was describing before what I thought Australian television was
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  and completely fearless and working with people who said, well, let's try everything. So
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  it was just opportunity. And the very first show we made, which was, each show was about something,
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  was about AIDS and safe sex. Because that was a big issue. This is 1988. A big issue, people were
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  dying of it. And the very first show we had on this extraordinary doctor who himself passed away
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  of AIDS called Peter Steiner from the cross. We got the audience to demonstrate how to put
• 16:21
  condoms on by putting them on vegetables. We had Deb Conway and Dolan Bray from Do Ray Meme. We had
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  a whole thing was to have very frank conversations. We weren't going to use euphemisms to
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  light. It was complained about in federal parliament the next day. And the show, I don't think,
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  ever-rated more than four. It was in asterisk territory. But we all felt, and I certainly felt
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  very strongly, this doesn't matter. It doesn't matter the size of the pond, what matters is where
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  the ripples go. And so we were doing what I felt was a valuable thing to do, which was
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  show another way of thinking and another way of addressing what was going on.
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  And there's a point when you're starting out your career in media and don't particularly know
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  exactly what you're doing in terms of what box to check that you sort of have to fill in the form
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  on the airline immigration card on the plane that says, what do you do for living? And you scratch
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  your head a little bit and go, what do I write? You know what I write? I write personality.
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  Every now and then I'll get a look from someone like, what?
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  What? But, yeah, that's good. Personality's good.
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  I love it because I love the thought that, that somebody is professionally a personality like
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  everybody else's amateur's at it. You know, you're a citizen. I know you have a personality,
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  but you don't really know how to do it. I'm a professional. I remember when I was entering the
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  States once and I had an O1 visa, which is an extraordinary talent visa, which is, it sounds
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  really professional, but I bet you drop this into every interview. I wish that they would tattoo
• 18:00
  it across your forehead when you get it so that you, you, you, everyone knows who they're talking to.
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  But it's, it's basically just the visa that sports people and scientists and entertainers get
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  when they need to pop into the States and do some, it's, the visa Russell Crowe would go to do a
• 18:13
  movie. Sure. Yeah. And I was working in New York for a while and it was usually pretty casual and
• 18:19
  pro forma going through immigration because it's a, it's a rare visa. So it's, it's one that they
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  just stamp and wave you through, but one guy looks at it and he sees O1 and he looks at me.
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  This is the immigration guy at the, at the desk as I'm landing. And he goes extraordinary talent,
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  huh? He goes, what do you, a juggle? That is so good.
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  A thick way to cut me down the side. That is so good. So yeah, personality is good. So sometimes I
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  just write media, which is sufficiently vague that it's neither a profession nor a person,
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  yeah, nor even a job. Yeah, and increasingly all those things are true. Yeah, that's right.
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  Yeah, that's right. And so when you were writing personality, did you have any sense of the
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  trajectory or arc that you wanted your career to take? No idea. Right. The only time I began to,
• 19:06
  I guess, take control of that arc was I did a show at Channel 7 for a couple of years,
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  a really interesting show, but it kind of burnt me out and twisted me out of shape a bit.
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  And I realized I took time away after that. And I thought I pretty much provided all the ideas
• 19:25
  for that and pulled a lot of the team together. I worked with a really good producer, but I took all
• 19:29
  the ideas and basically gave him the show to make. And I thought, no, I should be in control of that.
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  I should run my own business. So that was the moment where I just determined to set up my own
• 19:40
  company and control my own projects. And as you do, my company started with the first thing I did
• 19:47
  was print up a business card. And I had this beautiful woman that's worked with me for many years,
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  Ursula Mellow, Angel, anyone listening to this who knows it will know why I'm saying that.
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  And she was my assistant and I sat there with this business card and I said to her,
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  I wonder what I do next. But that's what you do. You put yourself in play. You take the first step
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  and you see what the second step might look like. Speaking of 7, what happened to your 7 show last
• 20:17
  year? You did two seasons of a new interview show. Then walked away from it. It doesn't seem to have
• 20:22
  been cancelled. The ratings don't seem to have been bad. The ratings were, you know, sufficient.
• 20:26
  No, it was just, you know, it was enough. And I don't think really, there was a,
• 20:34
  I think it was almost a 10-year gap between that and an off-rope. Which was a very successful
• 20:39
  ABC interview show that you did. And enormous changes in who it was possible to get.
• 20:46
  Various reasons for that. Because of there's juggernaut's, like the Graham Norton show and
• 20:53
  Jimmy Kimmel or whoever in America, the big stars don't come here anymore. But probably more
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  relevantly, social media means people are afraid to have a candid conversation because a lot of
• 21:08
  one comment blows up. And so the sorts of conversations I like to have, it was harder to get people
• 21:14
  willing to have them. And so after two years, you know, we had some great conversations and some great
• 21:20
  people, but I looked at the people I worked with and we said, I don't think this has leaked.
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  So we went to Channel 7 who were really excellent. They're given us great support and said,
• 21:30
  we think we should pull a pin. They said, well, if that's what you think, sure.
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  Does it sadden you that the changes to the media landscape make it impossible to do a show like
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  that? Me personally, no. And I will say there was a third reason. And it's you, not you personally,
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  you as representative of something I love, which is there are so much good conversation happening
• 21:54
  on podcasting now. I'm a big consumer of podcasts. And that's where a lot of conversations gravitated.
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  It doesn't have the impact. Obviously, this was the Everest, or the 100 pound gorilla of
• 22:07
  interviews, Oprah and Harry and Meghan. You can never get that scale, but you can still do
• 22:12
  something really good. You can. There's something though about the shared experience of broadcasting.
• 22:18
  That I quite like. Obviously, the you like as well, because we spent your life doing it both in
• 22:23
  radio and in television. And when I was a kid, I loved John Stuart. I loved Dave Letterman.
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  I loved the appointment viewing. I became sort of friends with Dick Cavitt when I was in New
• 22:35
  York. Really? He was just. Yes. People like like, have you got the DVDs of his old shows?
• 22:41
  You will. I have them on YouTube. So you can see a lot of. Oh, shit. You can see a lot of.
• 22:44
  How old fashioned am I? Do you have the VHS? Do you have the beta max?
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  I've got a DVD of YouTube, but I must watch it.
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  So like, there's amazing, you know, and the era when the, when a broadcast network could be brave
• 22:58
  enough to get Dick to give Dick Cavitt 90 minutes with, you know, you mentioned Muhammad Ali. I'm
• 23:05
  sure he did. Muhammad Ali for probably 60 or 60 minutes or so. And just to have them sitting
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  there, smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey in prime time is something that whilst obviously
• 23:17
  I am a product of the new media generation. I'm grateful to be able to do a podcast. And I love
• 23:22
  the fact that there are so many voices and that it's not just Walter Cronkite saying, that's
• 23:26
  the way things are or that's the way it is. And yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all there is.
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  There was something intoxicating about the sense that everyone is watching this thing that we're
• 23:35
  being told is worth watching by people who know what they're doing.
• 23:39
  Well, for sure. And, you know, enough rope for most of its six years was pulling a million viewers.
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  That's a lot of Australia. That's a lot. You know, we got a population of 26 million, I think it is.
• 23:52
  So that is a lot. And there was a, it was exciting. It was exciting to know that a really good conversation,
• 23:59
  they were all good, was going to reach that many people. And I hear it back. In fact,
• 24:05
  I heard about just the other day through a friend. And this is very gratifying. Somebody had
• 24:12
  volunteered to them that they used to watch enough rope with their family and the way those
• 24:18
  conversations were conducted has helped guide them in how they go about their conversations. So I
• 24:23
  think that's a, that's a really good thing, which goes back to what I was saying before
• 24:28
  to do a satire, to do with the national broadcaster generally. I think it's about modeling ways of
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  thinking and ways of deconstructing and constructing a conversation. I think that's the true value.
• 24:40
  It's not about a particular ratings point or certainly not about one political viewpoint or another.
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  I mean, one of the things that I try to do throughout all of my career and my interviewing,
• 24:50
  I suppose, is to have a maximally generous interpretation of what people who I disagree with
• 24:57
  are trying to articulate. That's something that I can smell through, running through your work
• 25:03
  to not score cheap points. If you're going to score a point, make it a good one.
• 25:10
  And my background was in being sharp and funny and, you know, barbed and all of that. And I
• 25:15
  could certainly do that. And it was a real discipline to pull back from that. I was talking to,
• 25:22
  I was being interviewed by Michael Robotham at the Sydney Riders Festival. And I was intrigued. I
• 25:26
  didn't pick him up on it actually, but he referred to the interview with Paul Enhancin as amongst
• 25:30
  the series of controversial interviews. I don't think that's a controversial interview. I think
• 25:34
  that's exactly the kind of interview the ABC should be doing. Not to cast heat, but to cast light.
• 25:40
  I do think that is going back to what I was saying before about the poisonous partisan divide.
• 25:47
  I think that is greatly missing. The willingness and the discipline to sit and listen to people
• 25:54
  with whom you disagree to at least try and understand. You know, when Sarah Ferguson
• 25:58
  interviewed Steve Bannon on the ABC three or four years ago and there was a fuel amongst the staff
• 26:06
  or elements of the staff, had I been running news and counterfears, I would have got everybody
• 26:12
  in a room and said, anyone that's got a problem with this is working in the wrong place. Our job is
• 26:16
  not to determine who is right and who is wrong for the public to hear. Whether or not you agree with
• 26:23
  this man, what he represents is a very powerful moment in our contemporary history. Trumpism,
• 26:32
  populism, the rise of, you know, if you look at Steve Bannon, he came from that internet
• 26:44
  Gamergate culture. He tapped into what Trump tapped into, which is this very angry undercurrent that
• 26:50
  was in America. So he was a significant figure. And of course, he should be spoken of. Of course,
• 26:56
  he should be listened to at length. And I'd like to see the ABC do more of that. That's the ABC's
• 27:01
  job for mine. I mean, the idea that your own side of politics is going to be more robust if you
• 27:06
  have no idea what people who disagree with you actually think is what's insane to me. Like, why
• 27:11
  would you not listen to Steve Bannon and thereby think that you're better equipped to withstand him?
• 27:16
  Well, yeah, I think strategically that makes sense. If that person is your opponent or even your
• 27:21
  enemy, then the more you know about your opponent's weapons, the better. But also one of my favorite
• 27:28
  stories. When I started Hungry Beast, I'd related the, in fact, to became the instruction to that
• 27:35
  young team of digital natives that we recruited to make a show from the ground up. And it came from
• 27:42
  Jack Nicholson who was a famous liberal Hollywood star and who I once had the joy of interviewing by
• 27:48
  the way. And he was being interviewed and he was asked, well, what are you reading right now?
• 27:55
  He said, Anne Coulter now for those who've forgotten her. She was one of the early ripe wing
• 28:01
  flaming antagonists. That is the most offensive thing that you could ever say about
• 28:06
  Anne Coulter. If she ever heard you say that, that would be a dagger to the heart. Forgetting
• 28:10
  Anne Coulter. Oh, I see. Right. Well, anyway, so the journalist who was obviously of the liberal left
• 28:15
  was kind of shocked. Why would you be reading Anne Coulter? And Jack Nicholson said beautifully.
• 28:19
  He said, I already know what all my friends think. Tell me something I don't know. And that became
• 28:23
  the instruction to the hunger of his team. Tell me something I don't know. Yeah, that's good.
• 28:27
  What was the interview with Jack Nicholson? Great. It was really, really good. He
• 28:35
  a couple of moments. I said, do you remember the first time, okay, I'll go back one. How I prepare
• 28:42
  for an interview as for someone like that? I think you've been interviewed by a zillion people.
• 28:47
  I'm going to ask you about your craft because because my theory is to make someone
• 28:52
  interesting. You make them interested. So I thought this is going to interest you. So I spoke a
• 28:58
  lot about his craft. Now, I said, do you remember the first time you saw yourself up on the screen?
• 29:02
  He said, I was, I was actually, it was in a cinema. It was a big grade movie. It was in the cinema
• 29:08
  across the road from the pool hall where I was also hustling for money. And I've a whole lot of
• 29:13
  my friends there and other people. And I'm with my mother. And everybody's talking through the movie.
• 29:18
  And to my horror, my mother stands up and say, will you be quiet? My son's in this film.
• 29:25
  But, you know, one of the, I've got it somewhere, probably on a VHS or cassette tape. I'll check
• 29:32
  you, Jim. Thank you. I was working a trip at the time. And I knew this is not the stuff we did,
• 29:39
  but the interview went well. And we had a really great conversation. And I said at the end,
• 29:45
  and I'd written them. I said, would you do a couple of little primates for me?
• 29:48
  I said, sure. So I've got Jack Nicholson going, is Andy?
• 29:58
  Wow. And when I went on buried, hopefully I'll be dead at the time, but when I'm buried,
• 30:04
  I want that played as I go out. Yeah, that's good. Or as I come in maybe.
• 30:09
  So thinking about understanding the ideas that you don't necessarily agree with and
• 30:14
  surrounding yourself with notions that your friends don't articulate, what do you make of,
• 30:20
  I suppose, broadly, the left at the moment and the criticisms of the left that it is more
• 30:27
  sensorious, more closed-minded, less open to having conversations that are difficult to hear
• 30:36
  and that might trigger some tripwires on cultural war issues.
• 30:42
  It worries me greatly. I think Zalatory, wherever it is, left or right, is problematic.
• 30:52
  In the centre, I think it's fine. I am trying to form a group of fundamentalist moderates
• 30:57
  slaughter anyone that won't be, but see both sides of the argument. It is true if you look at that
• 31:07
  much despised phrase, cancel culture, which is now more prominent, I guess, from the left.
• 31:14
  As has been pointed out, this is in many ways the left's response to the right. You know, cancel
• 31:19
  culture goes back a long way. I think one of the most prominent examples of cancel culture in
• 31:25
  this country and still one of the most disturbing was the way News Limited effectively drove
• 31:31
  Yasmin Abdelmage out of the country for a comment she made in private on a Facebook page,
• 31:36
  not in private, but it was a personal comment. That was as near to canceling a person in a society
• 31:44
  as I've seen and very dangerous it was. And just to articulate for people who don't know that,
• 31:49
  Yasmin is a Muslim Australian media commentator. She'll commentator writer, I suppose. She wrote
• 31:55
  on Anzac Day where the Anzac Day is sort of our remembrance day. Lest we forget the people in
• 32:01
  Nauru and Manus Island, the people who we mistreat. And this was regarded as being in poor taste on
• 32:09
  the day when we're supposed to be remembering fallen soldiers. And she was there was such a
• 32:13
  fueler from the right wing. Well, I'm also not controlled pressed. The disproportionate response
• 32:18
  in that who has was a comment on on a Facebook page. As I said, her Facebook page which ended up
• 32:24
  all over the front pages of newspapers and went on for days. And you wonder why celebrities don't
• 32:30
  want to sit down for 30 minutes on the guarded interface. It was very ugly. So that was that was an
• 32:34
  example. So cancel culture is not new. But I find this idea of we we simply can't listen to an
• 32:44
  idea that may cause us offence. I think that way or well in terror lies because well,
• 32:53
  that line just keeps moving and moving doesn't it? And who gets to decide what is not appropriate
• 32:58
  to be listened to? And it may be fine for you, Josh, to say, I don't want you to talk to me
• 33:05
  about coal mining because it triggers me. Until one day somebody says, I don't want Josh to talk
• 33:12
  to me about being an extraordinary talented alien because it triggers me. You know, who decides
• 33:20
  that line? I think there are the the lifeblood of Western democracy is information and open
• 33:27
  discussion. Now, I think there are there are very few places where that line I think is correctly
• 33:35
  drawn and holocaust and I, I believe, is one. And that has been but that isn't an exceptional
• 33:43
  case in a public discourse and it's viewed as such by courts and parliaments. I think anything
• 33:50
  that closes down what is the lifeblood of Western democracy is problematic. And for me personally,
• 33:59
  it's not such a big issue. I've cancelled myself. I've stepped out of the media. I'm not really,
• 34:06
  I'm not on social media. It's just not my thing. But I really worry for the generation coming through
• 34:12
  and you know, I had a friend who's much younger than me who's very much at the digital generation
• 34:23
  who texted me about 14 months ago, terrified saying, I'm about to be cancelled. And it was because
• 34:31
  of something he'd made when Whitwood together many years earlier. And what became clear to me is that
• 34:43
  cancer didn't just mean, oh, people are going to say bad things about me. He was afraid he was
• 34:49
  going to lose his living because he said, you know, a lot of the work I do, it comes from publicly
• 34:55
  funded institutions, one way or another. And if I've got the wrong mark against my name,
• 35:01
  that's going to dry up. Now, I think that's a terrifying prospect for anyone. And I don't think,
• 35:10
  I don't think it benefits people to chill conversation. I think we should be able to, I don't
• 35:16
  like seeing people de-platformed at universities. Isn't the whole idea of universities to consider
• 35:23
  ideas and to educate yourself as to how the world works and different ways of looking at the world?
• 35:30
  Yeah, I'm not in favour. And I know as I'm saying this, there's a whole lot of people going, well,
• 35:35
  that's, you know, that is just, that is really wrong. We can't allow x idea or y idea. Of course,
• 35:41
  we can allow x idea or y idea. Well, they probably think that they agree with you actually.
• 35:46
  When you talk to people who are pro-cancel culture, they never think of themselves as being that.
• 35:51
  They would take your, what you just articulated and they'd say, yes, we want to sustain the
• 35:57
  lifeblood of Western civilization and the lifeblood of Western civilization is the arc of justice
• 36:03
  that bends towards justice or whatever it was that Obama talked about and the empowerment of
• 36:08
  minorities to no longer be shat on by a patriarchal white supremacist regime. All of which I
• 36:14
  think is absolutely a process. So they would interpret, I mean, you know, when you talk about specific
• 36:20
  things like Holocaust denial, some, so you can say Holocaust denial is beyond the pale. Another
• 36:26
  person can say that saying that Muslim immigration into Australia is incompatible with Western
• 36:31
  civilization is beyond the pale. That's something that Paul Enhance and another right-wing
• 36:36
  politicians would say. Israel forgot the famous footballer saying that homosexuals are fornicators
• 36:43
  who are going to go to hell. I mean, I'm with you, but I'm just pointing out that you sort of have
• 36:49
  to defend them all in a way in order to have a leak to stand on because people will always say,
• 36:56
  yes, but hate speech is excluded. Yes, I agree with your vision, Andrew. I agree with all of that,
• 37:00
  but hate speech and vilification are not something we want to allow. And then the basket of things
• 37:07
  that are considered hate speech gets growing and growing. That's right. And look, I believe in
• 37:12
  free speech, but that doesn't mean I believe in speech free of consequence. And Israel for
• 37:16
  hours a good case in point. He had a perfect right, as everybody said, and I was disappointed to see
• 37:23
  that Australian rugby ended up almost being penalized for what I felt was a perfect right to defend
• 37:31
  the interests of their business and their product, if you like, to say your comments are causing
• 37:37
  us to lose our sponsors. And therefore you've damaged our business and therefore you have broken
• 37:43
  your contract with us. So I think speech does have consequence and should have consequence.
• 37:50
  That doesn't mean speech should be stopped. Why am I making the distinction with Holocaust
• 37:55
  denial? Because that is an undeniable event, which cost about six million lives. And there is a
• 38:07
  clear and present danger still, as we see the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe and in other
• 38:14
  places, to allowing that denial to be magnified in any way. Now, in social media on the internet,
• 38:23
  you can find it if you want it. You can go to Stormfront or any of those. But in terms of allowing
• 38:29
  people, that's why David Irving wasn't allowed into this country, in terms of allowing people
• 38:33
  into this country to speak publicly about it, I think that is an appropriate thing to go.
• 38:38
  No. And I think that is in the same way, it's that old thing of Don't Cry Fire and a Crowded
• 38:45
  Cinema. If there's a, as I think there is in the case of Holocaust denial, a clear line between
• 38:55
  and a really clear line and the most murderous line in the history of the world between
• 39:02
  those expressed thoughts and the actions that are then going to follow. Now again, you could say,
• 39:06
  of course, anti-Muslim rhetoric, for example, from people like Paul in Hanson, provokes hate.
• 39:17
  But I think it's a question of scale, I'm sorry to say, and I think the scale of the Holocaust
• 39:23
  was so vast and still echoes and will echo through history, I think for all time, that it is
• 39:31
  appropriate to address that. When we say that speech has consequences, that also irritates me a bit,
• 39:37
  because it's often what gets used by, kept by pro-cancel culture, people to say, look, I mean, you're
• 39:42
  allowed to say whatever you want to be, and I'm allowed to say what you want with free from
• 39:44
  consequences as they string people up by the balls for using the wrong transgender pronoun or
• 39:49
  other thing, if they have balls in that particular case. And I think what comes down to is who is
• 39:55
  doing the canceling and on what basis for me a lot as well. And it's the haste of the public shaming
• 40:02
  that's happening at the moment. So, like, does the government want to make a thoughtful decision
• 40:08
  to ban a Holocaust denying history and from entering the country after due process has been given
• 40:13
  has been given to him? Yeah, I think that's probably okay, because at least there's some process.
• 40:17
  Yes. I was less comfortable with Israel for our footballer being sacked because I felt like
• 40:25
  do you, even though I disagree with them, I mean, I am one of the homosexual foreigners.
• 40:29
  He's talking about when he talks about how I'm going to hell. Do I want big wealthy corporations,
• 40:37
  including in their contracts, what people are allowed to believe and say that they believe?
• 40:43
  I mean, from the perspective of a devoutly Christian person, there are certain principles that they
• 40:49
  would be betraying the most important values that they hold if they were to not articulate.
• 40:55
  I agree. I absolutely agree that no corporation or entity, pardon me, should say to somebody
• 41:03
  what you can and can't believe or even what you can and can't talk about. However, in this instance,
• 41:09
  he had made an undertaking not to damage the brand by talking about this in a public forum.
• 41:17
  And he broke that undertaking. And I do, you know, if you work at the ABC,
• 41:26
  Josh, understanding that it's the national broadcaster, it's paid for by the taxpayers,
• 41:30
  it's an extremely valuable and valued institution. If you decided to use your time on air,
• 41:36
  to suddenly start screaming of senators about whatever Hindus,
• 41:43
  that organization would have a right to say you've damaged us and we don't want you to work here.
• 41:52
  And I don't think that's about free speech. I think that's about acting fairly and responsibly
• 41:58
  when you have made an undertaking with the organization with which you're working.
• 42:02
  So I should cancel my new podcast of vilifying Hindus is what you're saying.
• 42:06
  Yeah, I think, you know, Hindu hell razor, you know, podcasts is is definitely not one.
• 42:12
  Yeah, I mean, again, yes, I think you're right. I mean, it comes down to the methodology,
• 42:15
  doesn't it? If I were to sign a contract saying I happen to believe in, I won't even, let's,
• 42:24
  let's say there's the theory of the flat earth theory, but I'm not going to articulate that
• 42:28
  on the air because that's going to damage the ABC brand and then I do it. Then I suppose that's
• 42:33
  one thing. The concern is that having conversations like these on my podcast,
• 42:40
  there is a very real threat that if I just have open unguarded conversations where in order to arrive
• 42:46
  at at interesting ideas, we wander off into the brambles and kind of get poked by thorns occasionally.
• 42:53
  Yeah, in the process of doing that, I could lose my job at the ABC because inadvertently,
• 42:59
  you know, stepping on a landmine that we didn't even really know was there, but in four years time,
• 43:03
  everyone understands that that landmine is not something that you're allowed to step on.
• 43:07
  So someone goes back and listens to it and the outrage archaeologists have a field day.
• 43:11
  That's a nice expression, outrage archaeology. I think it's a great expression and that's one
• 43:16
  of the things I really struggle with in that this person I was talking about who nearly got cancelled.
• 43:20
  The thing that he made, you could look back at it after 10 years and go, yeah, that doesn't sit well now,
• 43:30
  but first of all, where was it coming from? It was a piece of satire. And secondly, as I said to
• 43:36
  somebody that was upset about it, I said, well, if you can show me, because the inference was that
• 43:44
  he was racist, if you can show me that for the last, for the 10 years, since his behavior supports
• 43:51
  that, I mean, our lives in our careers are a river. And if you just take a photograph of one
• 43:56
  section of the river and say, that's it, that's not the river. That's, that is a frozen moment.
• 44:01
  And I think it is, it's the problem with, as you said, the instant condemnation that happens,
• 44:11
  people fixate on a single moment, rather than the bigger picture. And what it reminds me of,
• 44:16
  I don't know if you've ever read that beautiful book Wild Swans about, about the cultural revolution
• 44:22
  in China. And what I see happening on Twitter reminds me totally of that, which is in the cultural
• 44:28
  revolution in villages. And it was usually the younger generation against the older generation. So
• 44:33
  Mao's cultural revolution in China was to drive out the bourgeoisie. And so it will be decided
• 44:41
  somewhere in that village that Mr. and Mrs. X, who might be run the local market, they were
• 44:49
  bourgeoisie. So they would be accused of something brought into the public square, surrounded,
• 44:57
  forced to apologize for their actions, shamed, forced to apologize for their actions,
• 45:02
  often had their head shaved and then cast out. And it was a very physical and millions,
• 45:07
  this happened to millions of people in the cultural revolution. And I see it's equivalent happening
• 45:11
  today. And I don't believe that's a healthy society. Let's talk about voluntary assisted dying,
• 45:19
  the subject of your podcast, speaking of podcasts. What happened to your dad?
• 45:25
  My dad was, had been probably for the last seven or eight years of his life,
• 45:30
  or longer probably the last decade, very unwell. He had heart attack, he had heart surgery,
• 45:36
  he had lots of stuff going on. And eventually his body really packed in and he went into our local
• 45:44
  hospital, which is fine, they did all the right things. But it was congestive heart failure.
• 45:51
  And as another doctor described it to me many years later, it's a bit like being water-borted.
• 45:57
  It's a pretty nasty way to go. And he was given pump full of all the drugs. But
• 46:04
  my sister's and I, we didn't talk about it for many years, but we've talked about it since and
• 46:08
  all I can see as I speak now is him lying there and just moaning and spasms of pain and twitching.
• 46:16
  And it was very shocking to see. And you walk out of that, you don't think, well that was wrong,
• 46:27
  you think, well that's how it goes. And that's a hospital, and they know what they're doing.
• 46:33
  And I'm sure they did the best they could. You're so, because dying, and particularly when it's
• 46:41
  you're parent and in my case it was the first death I've been up close to, because it's such a
• 46:46
  profoundly shocking thing. And you find it very hard to process and you're utterly disempowered
• 46:54
  in that situation. So yeah, watching Dad die will always be with me and my sister's. And
• 47:05
  it was, it was not good. And it could have been better, I now know. Hell. Well,
• 47:13
  funnily enough, I was being interviewed by 60 minutes some years ago, Liz Hayes. And she asked
• 47:20
  about my dad and she said, what did he think about you, then? I said, I don't recall us talking
• 47:28
  about it at length, but I would imagine her supportive. She said he was. I interviewed him on the
• 47:32
  today show back in 1986 and here's a tape of it. Oh, wow. Was it a beta max or a DVD, a YouTube clip?
• 47:39
  No, it was actually, it was, it was pigeons before me. The tiny pigeon there. That's right. No,
• 47:47
  it was, it was a cave painting with a tiktik tiktik underneath it. And yeah, Dad,
• 47:55
  um, Dad, who is a very, uh, well-educated man who knew his own mind, uh, put it really well.
• 48:05
  He's very articulate. He said, you know, what does Euthanasia mean? It's two Greek words. And
• 48:12
  which together mean good death. And it means not dying in a welfare pain. And, you know,
• 48:18
  I wish that could have been extended for my father. I think if voluntary assisted dying,
• 48:23
  which is for those that don't know what it is, it's a law which enables people who are
• 48:28
  eternally ill. If they meet certain criteria, which is having six months or less to live,
• 48:35
  or 12 months, if it's a neurodegenerative disease, like motor neurodegenerative disease,
• 48:41
  you can legally be prescribed a life-ending draft, which you can choose to drink. And if you
• 48:47
  do drink that, then you will die peacefully and quickly at a time if you're choosing with the
• 48:54
  people you want around you, which is different to how my father died, which was in pain,
• 49:00
  drugged up in a hospital with us watching. Mm-hmm. Have you read a Tugawanda's book Being Mortal?
• 49:06
  Yeah. Where, which is a, he's a physician and writer and, uh, in the States. And it's a beautiful
• 49:13
  meditation on how screwy our Western relationship to death is. It's not specifically about
• 49:20
  euthanasia, but about the entire medicalization of the process around dying and the, the detachment
• 49:25
  that we have from the sort of gritty, organic, familial reality of the way that death has traditionally
• 49:32
  been experienced. Do you incorporate that into your thinking about euthanasia? This broader question
• 49:38
  of what we're doing when we're dying. Yes, in as much as, I mean, not in that spiritual sense,
• 49:45
  although it doesn't mind me, what somebody said to me a couple of years back, which is in Victorian times,
• 49:52
  they talked about death all the time and never about sex and now it's the other way around.
• 49:58
  In as much as, and I know this to be true from so many people who I have got to know who've
• 50:04
  gone through this process, uh, that, and look, it's one of the things, the Catholic church,
• 50:10
  which attempts to own dying, who are the, who are the significant opponents of assisted dying,
• 50:15
  they paint this picture that the right way to die as a natural death surrounded by a Christian
• 50:21
  love and, and what they refer to as supernatural warmth, which is a hell of an expression. And, uh,
• 50:26
  maybe hell is in the right word. Um, and that of, and that is, I remember Geraldine Duke, um,
• 50:32
  who's fairly religious and she used to, I went on campus and she talked to me about,
• 50:38
  you know, do you think there's, there are certain rights around dying? I said,
• 50:41
  absolutely, there are. And some of them, you know, whatever gets you through the night is
• 50:45
  John Lennon used to say, I think those, that Christian view of dying, that's, that it's a time
• 50:50
  of spiritual growth, is very important to those people. What I've seen with voluntary assisted
• 50:55
  dying is that there's no less of that, uh, that those last moments, those farewells, the ability to
• 51:03
  be truly in that moment with the person you love, uh, is very, very powerful. And, and people go
• 51:11
  to it their own way. Um, one man in Victoria who, uh, chose voluntary assisted dying, did something
• 51:20
  which perhaps you or I would find counterintuitive, he didn't want his family there when he died.
• 51:29
  And he said, I don't want their love holding me back. It's such a hard thing to do. It's so hard
• 51:37
  to do. And in this podcast, um, there's one episode where I interview three people who each have
• 51:43
  the medication. And one of them, uh, his name is Peter Jones. And he was a musician, a professional
• 51:50
  musician, very dry sense of humor. Um, and when I was talking to him, I was keenly aware he'd set the
• 51:59
  date. And it was about 500 hours hints from when we were going to talk. It was only a couple of weeks.
• 52:05
  And I'm glad you did the maths there because I was thinking 500 divided by 24. I didn't listen to
• 52:10
  the next 30 seconds. And in the course of our conversation, I only realized afterwards that he,
• 52:20
  there was something that he really needed to talk about. And he asked me a question. And this is
• 52:25
  burnt into my soul. Um, he said he had one daughter who was the love of his life. And he said, I,
• 52:36
  I read about assisted dying and how it's described as this kind of come by our moment. And it's
• 52:41
  all very lovely. He said, but I, I'm not so sure. I think it's, I think it's something darker than
• 52:46
  that. And how, and he basically said, how am I going to say goodbye to my daughter? Because she's,
• 52:50
  I love her more than anything. And she's going to lose me. I'm going to lose her. And we had to
• 52:56
  do it by Zoom. And I just wanted to reach through the screen and hug him because I got the pain.
• 53:03
  I got the pain. And, um, you know, it was many years after Dad died that this thought suddenly
• 53:10
  came into my head. I thought, gee, that was hard for us. But what was it like for him to know,
• 53:15
  as we all must, to know that you are going to say goodbye to everything you know and everything
• 53:22
  you love. And I remember walking out of the hospital when Dad died. It was a perfect blue mountains
• 53:28
  autumn day, the kind of day he and I lived for. I remember distinctly thinking the words,
• 53:36
  I spoke them to myself. I looked at this blue sky and I thought, you don't get this anymore,
• 53:42
  you don't get the sky, you don't get the sun, you don't get the grass, you don't get to play anymore.
• 53:48
  And, um, so to go back to this, uh, to Peter Jones, um, I think everybody
• 53:57
  reaches the moment, particularly when you know when the moment's going to be in their own way.
• 54:02
  For some, it's deeply spiritual. And for others, it's, I don't want the family there because I don't
• 54:07
  want their love holding me back. It's hard. So part of the pushback to voluntary and sort of
• 54:14
  just to clarify the people, the first season of your podcast better off Dad was, um, about five
• 54:18
  years ago, and you were looking at some of the jurisdictions where these laws have been introduced
• 54:22
  like the Netherlands and Belgium and so on. And then the new season, which is, which is just being
• 54:26
  released now, is about Victoria's experience, which is a state in Australia that has, has legalised
• 54:31
  voluntary assisted dying. And I mean, part of the criticism of this is the slippery slope sort
• 54:38
  of argument about what about these edge cases? You just said when the person knows that it's their
• 54:43
  time. My dad's starting to get dementia. Uh, I, his sister is a doctor. You know, I'd be lying
• 54:53
  if I didn't sometimes think about his mother who ended up in a almost a vegetative state, just
• 54:59
  racked by Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and schizophrenia. And I suppose our conversations at the time
• 55:09
  were here long before he knew that he was going to end up with dementia. He was saying,
• 55:14
  that's not something that I want to end up living like. That's not a life that I think is worth
• 55:20
  living anymore. Now, he's not going to be in a position to make that decision at some point,
• 55:27
  but at the time he gets to that state, he's no longer, he would no longer be eligible under any,
• 55:32
  any realistic regime. And so the critics of these laws say, well, if not why not,
• 55:38
  and if so, then you're opening the gate to people who aren't really informed about what they're
• 55:42
  doing to take their own lives. And then you're normalizing suicide. Yeah. Well,
• 55:47
  God, there's many things there. First of all, I just want to address the, I, this expression
• 55:53
  in slippery slope, it is used in the same way as the expression fake news is used. It's,
• 55:58
  it's like a flame thrower. It's like, and it's essentially code for we don't want this to happen
• 56:06
  anywhere ever. You know, somebody who I've met in my travels and this, who I really liked is
• 56:10
  the Jesuit priest Frank Brennan, who's a very eminent thinker in this country. And we were on a
• 56:15
  panel together, and he sent me some of his writing afterwards about slippery slope. And this idea
• 56:21
  that, you know, once you start the law here, then it will inevitably expand. By the way, the last
• 56:29
  20 years has shown very little of that, but I'll come to that. And I remember thinking,
• 56:36
  you know, Frank, who's been such an admirable advocate for refugees. I remember thinking, I
• 56:40
  wonder how Frank would react if somebody said to him, well, Frank, it, you know, if you let in
• 56:46
  Vietnamese, then one day you're going to have to let him feed you. And I don't know if we want
• 56:50
  feed you. And he would have gone, but that the principle of this is we help people.
• 56:55
  The principle of assisted dying is you're trying to help people who medical science can't help.
• 57:02
  So to go back to the question of Alzheimer's, which is the number one, and dementia, the number one
• 57:07
  thing that's raised with me. And as you rightly pointed out, no law in Australia and few laws
• 57:13
  around the world will encompass Alzheimer's. And there is a really core reason for that, which is
• 57:21
  at the very center of these laws is you have to prove that this is your wish and that you are
• 57:26
  mentally competent, not just when you first asked for it, but all the way through the assessment
• 57:30
  process, which is quite testing as it should be. There is another reason, which is if somebody,
• 57:39
  and you know, there's a lot of debate about this overseas, well, if somebody with dementia puts it
• 57:44
  in an advanced care directive that when I reach x point, then I can be euthanized.
• 57:52
  That mechanism may well work, but you're still asking somebody to act on that who can't look
• 57:58
  that person in the eye, regardless of that advanced care directive, and no 100% that that's
• 58:05
  what they want. And I think that that's very difficult for that doctor who's in that position.
• 58:10
  So when I was in the Netherlands, one of the more fascinating conversations I had,
• 58:14
  they have a thing called, they've got the longest conversation about
• 58:19
  euthanasia and end of life of any country in the world. And they have developed a place called
• 58:25
  the life ending clinic, which deals with what you call fringe cases, what they call specialized
• 58:30
  cases. And the man that ran it is called Stephen Plyther. And we were talking about Alzheimer's
• 58:36
  cases. And concurrent to this, I interviewed a family whose mum had Alzheimer's and had gone
• 58:42
  through the assessment process and been legally had her life ended in the Netherlands.
• 58:48
  And they, the daughter described how the mum had been put through the hoops like all the way
• 58:56
  through. Do you know what this is you're asking for? Do you know that this is what you want?
• 59:02
  And she said, even even right to the night before I was unsure. I was unsure how does my mum really
• 59:08
  know? And then I overheard the nurse say to her on the night before you have a choice, you can
• 59:15
  drink a draft or you can be injected. And she said to the mother, what would you prefer? And the
• 59:22
  mother said, I will drink. I always know what it is I want to do. And the daughter heard this and
• 59:27
  my mother does know. So cut back to the man who runs the life ending clinic. And he talked about how
• 59:35
  with dementia, you got to make a choice. And the expression he used was you have to choose to
• 59:41
  leave the ball before midnight. So in other words, you still have to be able to show that this is
• 59:47
  your competent wish. So in effect, you have to make a choice to end your life before the dementia
• 59:52
  takes such hold that you can no longer express your wish, which means you won't live the full
• 59:57
  extent of your natural life. Or if you don't choose to leave the ball before midnight, then you'll
• 1:00:02
  go into that gray space, which I've witnessed too. And it's a terrible thing. People
• 1:00:08
  that talk about the slippery slope often raise this as, you know, this is where we're going to go.
• 1:00:13
  So I don't know what the answer to it is, but what I do know is that it is in our society and in
• 1:00:21
  most societies, one of the most pressing medical issues. The prevalence of Alzheimer's and dementia,
• 1:00:28
  I think it's one of, I think it's the second biggest killer of over 80s in Australia. It is a
• 1:00:34
  huge problem and many, many families are grappling with it. And if as a society through the parliamentary
• 1:00:40
  process, which the history of the assisted-dine debate in Australia shows us, is extreme and difficult.
• 1:00:46
  But if as a society, we devise and approve and our parliaments agree to a system whereby people
• 1:00:54
  with Alzheimer's can be assisted to die, then that is what our society wants. That is not a slippery
• 1:00:59
  slope. That is Western parliamentary democracy, representative democracy, working as it should.
• 1:01:06
  When we were just launching Half-Based Live, the streaming television network that I worked on in New York,
• 1:01:12
  one of my original pictures was to do a recurring segment called slippery slope, slippery
• 1:01:17
  schmope. What was that at an extraordinary time? What was your visa saying?
• 1:01:23
  Extraordinary talent. Extraordinary talent. Did you juggle?
• 1:01:28
  That's all I had left. Mr Denton all I had left. But yes, unfortunately that particular gem
• 1:01:35
  didn't get up. But I thought that there would be an endless reservoir of weekly debunkings of
• 1:01:41
  slippery slope claims that people are making about various things. You never got the schmope
• 1:01:47
  reshmope. I mean, I've heard so many in the assisted-dining space and it invariably gets to.
• 1:01:53
  It probably will again in the debates about to happen. Somebody invariably says,
• 1:01:57
  but look at Nazi Germany. The outstanding slippery slope is in my
• 1:02:03
  hood, but it's actually in the same sex marriage debate. You'll remember this, that people were
• 1:02:07
  going to end up marrying bridges and buildings. Yes, Bill O'Reilly said, what's next?
• 1:02:12
  You're going to marry a duck? That's an interesting thought. I was actually, yeah, now I even
• 1:02:16
  interviewed, who was Jeremy Ion's, Roland Half-Based Live, and I asked him about that because the
• 1:02:21
  gay marriage was imminent in the UK. Yes. And he said, could a father not marry his son?
• 1:02:32
  And I said, why would he? He said, you get around death duties. He said, if you
• 1:02:37
  interrogate your estate, then you could marry your son. You get around the death duties,
• 1:02:44
  because you're not inheriting it. You're giving it to your spouse.
• 1:02:48
  Was he proposing this? That's funny. So Colbert subsequently picked up my interview with Jeremy Ion,
• 1:02:55
  and played it, and showed a shot of Jeremy Ion's with his son, who I'll just pretend his name is
• 1:03:01
  William and I remember, but Colbert then saying, you've just made William a very happy man.
• 1:03:09
  This conversation must be cancelled right now, or we will. Let's just play then in the
• 1:03:18
  in the fringe there for a moment. What did you call it, special? This was the conditions,
• 1:03:22
  like the cases that are unusual already. In October, I'm moderating a series of events with Peter
• 1:03:30
  Singer, who is doing a Sydney and a Melbourne and a Brisbane, and I'll be in conversation with him,
• 1:03:35
  and he is well known for pushing the envelope on these kinds of questions and saying, look,
• 1:03:41
  if abortion is okay, there's no real reason why a severely handicapped two-month-old child
• 1:03:48
  who has no prospect for a flourishing life whatsoever, and is going to be living in pain for a
• 1:03:53
  short, abbreviated life. There are some conditions where there's no prospect of them living more than
• 1:03:57
  10 years, 15 years in agony. It should be legal to kill that child. Do you play in those waters?
• 1:04:06
  No, not so much. I'm certainly aware of those waters. In fact, I watched Peter Singer in a debate
• 1:04:11
  with Archbishop Anthony Fisher at Sydney Town Hall some years ago, and in fact a very emotional
• 1:04:20
  representative of the disability communities, with a particular former Spiner Biffett has
• 1:04:25
  stood up and said, I'm the sort of person you'd like to see dead, which I don't think is what Peter
• 1:04:29
  is saying, but no, I play in very centrist waters, and I do that for a very specific reason.
• 1:04:37
  On my side of the argument, there are many people well to the left of me who think that
• 1:04:42
  assisted dying laws should be open to more people, and there are powerful arguments for that I might
• 1:04:48
  add, but when I did that first podcast series, I spent almost a year traveling around talking to,
• 1:04:53
  I got the opportunity to speak to everyone, including fierce opponents, and what I
• 1:05:00
  realized, as I did my research, is that the reason these laws hadn't passed in Australia is that
• 1:05:07
  the political argument was not being well run, and that often people were trying to
• 1:05:13
  argue for something which wasn't ever going to get through an Australian parliament.
• 1:05:17
  Each, you know, often opponents to these laws will point to, well look what's happening in Canada,
• 1:05:22
  look what's happening in Belgium, it's like, no, that's not how it works, you know,
• 1:05:27
  Australia and America both have guns, but we have completely different approaches to how we do it.
• 1:05:32
  Each country makes its laws according to its culture and its traditions and its history,
• 1:05:37
  and what I've discovered because I've spent a lot of time, and it's often been fascinating,
• 1:05:42
  talking with politicians over the last five years, from all parties, from all points of view on
• 1:05:47
  this, is that our parliaments in this issue are conservative, and more than that, almost without
• 1:05:54
  exception politicians, because these are conscience votes so that you get to actually see their brains
• 1:05:59
  and hearts of work, when they stand up and talk about it, almost without exception, they will say,
• 1:06:04
  this is the most significant and the most difficult thing I will ever be asked to address in my career.
• 1:06:10
  So, I think my focus and the group I've set up, which is go gentle Australia, to advocate for
• 1:06:19
  this law reform, is to make sure there is law reform. And, you know, I've had some pretty
• 1:06:25
  willing arguments with some of the people on my side that would like us to be pushing for something
• 1:06:30
  wider or bigger or greater, and I say, look, I'm arguing for 80% of something rather than 100%
• 1:06:38
  and I have seen this born out in Victoria, which the law is conservative, and the conservative
• 1:06:44
  nature of the law has created some problems, but here's what I've seen. What I was invisible five
• 1:06:51
  years earlier, except for a very, a couple of very principal people, I've seen doctors,
• 1:06:56
  senior doctors, I've seen senior people in palliative care, stepping forward, and talking about things
• 1:07:03
  that were verboten to talk about three or four years ago, talking about, if we're saying that what
• 1:07:09
  we provide is patient-centered care, and then we're turning around and saying to patients,
• 1:07:14
  sure you can, if you're dying, you can refuse all treatment and you can, you know, spend two weeks
• 1:07:20
  letting your disease take its course and we'll look after you if we're saying that's okay,
• 1:07:24
  but you can't make that same choice and die quickly and painfully, that's not providing patient
• 1:07:28
  -centered care, that's us saying what we think you're allowed to do, and so whatever the limitations
• 1:07:35
  or the problems thrown up of Victoria's law, it has changed the conversation in Australia about
• 1:07:42
  what is medicine, what is patient-centered care, and what is the problem that needs to be addressed?
• 1:07:49
  Let's wrap up, when you think about the future and younger people who are coming up these days
• 1:07:58
  and trying to make it, not just in the creative arts, but in any industry, are you, are you bullish
• 1:08:04
  about Australia? I think Australia is still a pretty blessed place to be in many ways, but I think
• 1:08:12
  I think there are significant generational issues in terms of distribution of wealth,
• 1:08:16
  distribution of opportunity, you know, when I was growing up, it was conceivable that you would work
• 1:08:21
  and be able to get a mortgage and buy a place and establish itself. I'm trying to buy a house,
• 1:08:27
  so thanks for reminding me of that. Sure, my first house. Yeah, you know, if you've been working
• 1:08:32
  extraordinary talent, you probably would have on by now, but anyway, I'm not, not, not,
• 1:08:36
  Schmippery Schmoke was a great idea, I can't believe it never went anywhere. He's juggling as he says
• 1:08:41
  this. You can't see it, but he is. So in many ways, Australia is blessed, but I think
• 1:08:47
  I think anyone that there is an existential question hovering over us all, and particularly
• 1:08:53
  the generations coming through, which is the health of the planet, and that that overrides everything.
• 1:09:01
  You know, I am in that camp that absolutely believes that the intensity of the bushfires that we saw
• 1:09:08
  or 18 months ago was not one of those things. It was not something that's been happening in Australia
• 1:09:16
  for 100 years. It was not exploding cow manure. Someone say that. I think Barnaby Joyce is one
• 1:09:21
  of the people prosecuting that maybe Michael McCormack as well. He's a climate scientist, right?
• 1:09:26
  Barnaby Joyce. Well, I'm not a climate scientist. No, there's Barnaby Joyce. However,
• 1:09:31
  if you look at what the modeling was showing us many years earlier, the
• 1:09:37
  intensity of the climate events that we're seeing in Australia and around the world is exactly what
• 1:09:42
  they might. And yeah, that makes me anxious for future generations. I have a son who's 27,
• 1:09:52
  and one of my passions in life is Antarctica. I've been there multiple times.
• 1:09:59
  And if you look at what is happening to the eye shelf there, the last and be eye shelf,
• 1:10:05
  if you look at the size of the ice breaking off, it's an ice boot the size of Jamaica
• 1:10:13
  broke off not so long ago. These things are not normal. These things are not just part of
• 1:10:18
  the historical cycle in recorded history. Although that is one of those analogies that
• 1:10:22
  makes no sense, because I have no idea how big Jamaica is, but I take your point. It's probably
• 1:10:26
  large. It's bigger than you and it's smaller than the planet there. So just work it out from there.
• 1:10:32
  Jamaica is huge. It's like when I hear people say, you know, the ice chunk the size of Delaware,
• 1:10:38
  or has just, I'm like, what's Delaware? I don't know. Delaware is Delaware big. It's okay,
• 1:10:43
  but yes. Okay. Imagine all of the Sydney metropolitan area as a giant piece of ice. We're
• 1:10:50
  talking a hundred feet high, multiplied in size by eight or nine times at least. That's an
• 1:10:56
  enormous amount of ice. That's big. That's ice that shouldn't be floating north. That's kind of
• 1:11:04
  the point. The Antarctic ice cap, it's not just about ice breaking off and raising water levels.
• 1:11:14
  It actually regulates a lot of climate, the planet's climate, ocean currents.
• 1:11:23
  What happens in terms of, and I'm not a climate scientist, so forgive me, I'm not going to give
• 1:11:28
  a very technical description here, but what happens in terms of our weather? It's a very,
• 1:11:34
  I was speaking to a research scientist who'd done ice cord drilling in Antarctica. He said,
• 1:11:38
  from that, we're able to get a very accurate picture of exactly what the rainfall have been in
• 1:11:44
  Western Australia for centuries. What we could see from that is that the rainfall patterns have
• 1:11:48
  completely changed and that the rain that used to fall on the southwest of Western Australia now
• 1:11:53
  falls into southern ocean. I get very frustrated when I hear people sitting in studios, a bit like this,
• 1:12:06
  saying, talking about climate change and saying it's a beat up, it's alarmism, and I think, wow,
• 1:12:12
  you know, having had the good fortune to talk with ice co-scientists and ornithologists and
• 1:12:17
  biologists and people who spend their entire life just studying krill and those ecosystems,
• 1:12:22
  this is what they do for a living and many of them live in these places when you hear them say
• 1:12:29
  that everything we're seeing shows that this is falling apart. We should be paying attention to
• 1:12:35
  that. So that's my long-winded way of saying we're still a great country, but perhaps not living in
• 1:12:41
  a great time and a great planet. You've just made me want to avail myself of voluntary assisted dying
• 1:12:46
  right now, but you're not eligible. It's not that voluntary. Thank you Andrew, it's wonderful to
• 1:12:52
  talk to you. Lovely to meet you at last properly. The podcast is better off dead, available,
• 1:12:58
  we're all good podcasts and probably some bad podcasts. Especially with our podcast.
• 1:13:03
  Can I just say very quickly, when I did the first series, mostly got, you know, lovely responses,
• 1:13:07
  but somebody on Apple where they review them wrote this terrible blah, blah, blah, and he said,
• 1:13:14
  the guy can't even say podcast, he says podcast. And I thought, do you know what? You're right,
• 1:13:19
  I do say podcast. So I'd say to Jim, my wife now, I am one of Australia's most prominent
• 1:13:24
  podcasts. Podcasters. Yes. Prominent podcasts. Prominent and your
• 1:13:28
  personality as well. So when your customs form, you should write podcast and you should spell it
• 1:13:31
  P.O. Postrophe cast. P-O-G-C-A-S. Podcast. A podcast. Excellent. Thank you for being on my
• 1:13:36
  podcast. Thank you Josh and you can put the balls down.