Latest / The Morning Edition / David Attenborough is 100. His legacy may be very different than you think

Transcript

David Attenborough is 100. His legacy may be very different than you think · The Morning Edition

• 0:06
  S1: For millions of people. David Attenborough was the man who
• 0:10
  S1: introduced us to the wonders of the natural world, which
• 0:13
  S1: were often hidden from the naked eye.
• 0:16
  S2: This magnificent creature preparing to lay her eggs is the
• 0:21
  S2: largest of all turtles, a leatherback.
• 0:26
  S1: But with Attenborough turning 100 on Friday, some are rethinking
• 0:29
  S1: his legacy and realising that his biggest achievement might have
• 0:33
  S1: been missed entirely. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris and you're listening
• 0:38
  S1: to The Morning Edition from The Age and The Sydney
• 0:40
  S1: Morning Herald. Today, environment editor Nick O'Malley and former BBC
• 0:45
  S1: arts director Jonty Claypole on how the world's most famous
• 0:49
  S1: naturalist changed our culture. It's May the 6th. Welcome, Nick
• 0:58
  S1: and Jonty to the podcast.
• 1:00
  S3: Thank you. Hi.
• 1:01
  S1: Nick, I'm going to start with you because I think
• 1:03
  S1: in your latest feature, you upend what most of us
• 1:06
  S1: think of when we think of David Attenborough's influence on
• 1:09
  S1: all of us. So let's start off with, why do
• 1:12
  S1: we think of him as Mr. Nature? Like, are there
• 1:14
  S1: certain famous moments that come to mind?
• 1:16
  S3: Well, we should think of David Attenborough as Mr. Nature.
• 1:19
  S3: He brought nature to us all. And he's not only
• 1:23
  S3: an avid naturalist and a man who passionately borders nature.
• 1:28
  S3: He was first a media executive and as a media
• 1:32
  S3: executive he commissioned far more than nature programming. So he
• 1:36
  S3: had this insight into what he believed would work in
• 1:39
  S3: in modern mass media. And he was very good at
• 1:42
  S3: his job beyond being this naturalist that we all know.
• 1:45
  S1: Okay, Jonty, so I want to turn to you so
• 1:47
  S1: you can take us through this. You know, like what
• 1:49
  S1: Nick was saying, we think of him as Mr. Nature. There's,
• 1:52
  S1: you know, famous clips of him online, of course, you know,
• 1:54
  S1: cavorting with Gorilla and Rwanda. You know, he's the one
• 1:57
  S1: who introduced us to, you know, bizarre flora and fauna
• 2:00
  S1: from Namibia. And where else? But you tell me, Jonty,
• 2:03
  S1: what is his biggest contribution, do you think, in terms
• 2:07
  S1: of his influence? Like, what is it really?
• 2:09
  S4: Well, I worked for the BBC for 18 years and
• 2:14
  S4: I worked in arts programming, arts documentaries. And so funnily enough,
• 2:19
  S4: while for many people, Attenborough is, as we've been saying, Mr. Nature,
• 2:24
  S4: certainly in my world of arts documentary making, his reputation
• 2:28
  S4: and profile and legacy was just as significant there as
• 2:31
  S4: it was for nature programming. He was the commissioner when
• 2:35
  S4: he was controller of BBC two, which was the BBC's
• 2:39
  S4: channel of intelligent programming and still is. When he was controller,
• 2:44
  S4: he commissioned the most famous and ambitious arts documentary series
• 2:49
  S4: of all time called civilisation, which was hosted by Kenneth Clark,
• 2:53
  S4: the art historian.
• 2:56
  S5: Looking at those great works of Western man and remembering
• 3:00
  S5: all that he's achieved in philosophy, poetry, science, law making,
• 3:05
  S5: it does seem hard to believe that European civilization can
• 3:08
  S5: ever vanish. And yet, you know, it has happened once.
• 3:13
  S4: But the idea of it was very much Attenborough's who
• 3:17
  S4: brought it to Clark and asked him to to do it.
• 3:20
  S4: So for anyone making arts television programmes as I was,
• 3:25
  S4: it was. Attenborough again, was the kind of towering, godlike
• 3:29
  S4: figure hanging over everything. And it sort of brings me
• 3:32
  S4: to to the broader point that that Nick's raised, that,
• 3:36
  S4: you know, Attenborough's contribution to to television, to the media
• 3:42
  S4: was bigger than, than nature programming. I think that in
• 3:45
  S4: the 1960s, when he was controller of BBC two, his
• 3:50
  S4: vision was for the idea that television could be an
• 3:56
  S4: educational but also entertaining presence in people's living rooms that
• 4:02
  S4: you could come home and you could watch programs that
• 4:05
  S4: would both educate and inform and entertain you. And he
• 4:10
  S4: had a personal interest in the natural history programs and
• 4:14
  S4: presented many of those. But as a as a commissioner
• 4:17
  S4: and as a program, he was just as interested in
• 4:21
  S4: cultural programming, in satire, in comedy, in, in music. And
• 4:27
  S4: so his his cultural contribution is, Nick is saying, sort
• 4:31
  S4: of goes beyond nature itself to the idea of intelligent
• 4:36
  S4: programming inside of people's living rooms immediately accessible to everyone.
• 4:41
  S6: Well, Nick, I wanted to ask.
• 4:42
  S1: You about that because in your feature, you say that,
• 4:45
  S1: you know, civilization and some of the other cultural documentaries
• 4:48
  S1: that Attenborough was sort of, you know, the man behind them,
• 4:51
  S1: you said it proved that Attenborough's sense that if complicated
• 4:55
  S1: ideas were presented. Well, they would prove as transfixing for
• 4:58
  S1: a mass audience as they were within Britain's grand institutions,
• 5:02
  S1: within the confines of public schools, ancient universities and learned societies.
• 5:07
  S1: So I guess, was it his intention to educate the masses?
• 5:11
  S1: And just how niche were these programmes that he pitched? Like,
• 5:13
  S1: what sort of stuff was he showing to the masses
• 5:16
  S1: that maybe they weren't getting before?
• 5:18
  S3: I think it was absolutely intentional. And civilization is long form.
• 5:23
  S3: It's it's what, 13 episodes? Jonty. I think, uh, about
• 5:27
  S3: its topic is civilisation. It's a very Eurocentric or Western
• 5:31
  S3: centric view of the world. Obviously, it's an artifact of
• 5:33
  S3: its time, but it but it began a thousand or
• 5:37
  S3: thousands of years ago and ended at World War One,
• 5:39
  S3: the story of the evolution of civilisation, of architecture and
• 5:43
  S3: art and philosophy. So of course, they're big ideas. And
• 5:46
  S3: then he, he created this and he proved that it worked,
• 5:49
  S3: which not only opened the door to life on earth again,
• 5:53
  S3: a long, ambitious, very beautiful explanation. Explication of the evolution
• 6:00
  S3: of life on the planet.
• 6:01
  S2: White storks. If you wanted to pick one bird as
• 6:05
  S2: a representative of all the birds in the world, you
• 6:08
  S2: could do worse than pick the white stork. It's a
• 6:11
  S2: marvelous flier.
• 6:13
  S3: But it also opened the door for this whole series
• 6:15
  S3: of what we would call blockbuster. What I think I've
• 6:18
  S3: read the BBC referred to as sledgehammer documentaries. So I
• 6:23
  S3: grew up watching. Apart from those two series, I grew
• 6:26
  S3: up watching The Shock of the new, and that was
• 6:28
  S3: where an Australian audience heard Robert Hughes, an Australian art historian,
• 6:33
  S3: tell the story of modern art.
• 6:36
  S7: The key word of the new century was modernity. Modernity
• 6:40
  S7: meant believing in technology and not craft in human perfectibility,
• 6:45
  S7: not original sin, and above all, in a ceaseless consumption
• 6:49
  S7: of things and the images of things. If you were
• 6:53
  S7: a Parisian.
• 6:53
  S3: That elevated him not only in Europe but in the
• 6:56
  S3: United States. He became very famous for that. And I
• 7:00
  S3: think that was Attenborough's chief success. He said, we can
• 7:03
  S3: bring these really sophisticated, complicated, long stories to people. We
• 7:08
  S3: can elevate them, we can educate them and entertain them.
• 7:12
  S3: In my conversation with Jonty, he used the word or
• 7:15
  S3: he explained to me that in the BBC they used
• 7:17
  S3: the word middlebrow, which I think we might have thought
• 7:20
  S3: of as pejorative. But. But I don't think it was there.
• 7:23
  S3: Is that the case?
• 7:24
  S4: Yeah. The vision for public Service Broadcasting when the BBC
• 7:27
  S4: started in the 1920s, doing obviously just radio at the start,
• 7:32
  S4: but middlebrow as a concept was a word created to
• 7:37
  S4: apply to what the BBC wanted to do. It wanted
• 7:40
  S4: to be neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but accessible and middlebrow,
• 7:44
  S4: so accessible intelligence. So, yes, when I was in the BBC,
• 7:48
  S4: middlebrow was not a word of insult. It was a
• 7:52
  S4: it was a compliment. Hey, you made a middlebrow program.
• 7:56
  S1: That's so interesting there. I thought, you know, I was
• 7:58
  S1: being defensive for decades, thinking I've been slagged off by
• 8:00
  S1: the British.
• 8:02
  S3: No, you're never entirely sure if that's the case, though,
• 8:05
  S3: to be fair.
• 8:05
  S1: I mean, you are never entirely sure. And so, Jonty,
• 8:08
  S1: I wanted to ask you because it's interesting. We talked
• 8:10
  S1: about life on earth, which of course is Attenborough's masterpiece.
• 8:14
  S1: And I think some of the episodes maybe cost about
• 8:16
  S1: $1 million or something to produce £1 million each. And
• 8:20
  S1: it was like close ups of frogs spitting and like
• 8:23
  S1: incredible vision. And you mentioned the shock of the new,
• 8:26
  S1: which was that 1980 documentary with Robert Hughes. But then
• 8:30
  S1: he also commissioned a series song Hunter, um, which saw
• 8:35
  S1: the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax tracking down traditional folk musicians across
• 8:39
  S1: Britain and Ireland in order to preserve that culture that
• 8:41
  S1: was being lost. So, Jonty, I'm just curious from the
• 8:44
  S1: British perspective, like how big a deal was it that,
• 8:48
  S1: you know, Attenborough and therefore the BBC were educating the
• 8:51
  S1: masses in this way? Like, was this a huge departure
• 8:53
  S1: from the way, you know, it used to be thought
• 8:56
  S1: that middle classes, you know, the sort of material that
• 8:59
  S1: would have been appropriate for them, like, was this just
• 9:01
  S1: a massive departure?
• 9:02
  S4: So the mission of the BBC, when it was founded
• 9:06
  S4: in the 1920s was inform, educate and entertain. And I mean,
• 9:10
  S4: I think now you wouldn't necessarily choose those words. There's
• 9:13
  S4: a slightly sort of patriarchal sort of handing down element
• 9:18
  S4: to it, but actually in sort of practical terms, that
• 9:21
  S4: idea of what we're making is content that isn't just
• 9:24
  S4: to entertain. It should also educate and inform. And the
• 9:28
  S4: educational or in information content we're making should also be
• 9:32
  S4: entertaining was a very powerful combination of words. I think
• 9:36
  S4: Attenborough's genius wasn't in formulating the mission of the BBC.
• 9:43
  S4: It was, I think, in articulating it better than almost
• 9:48
  S4: any other individual had done in the BBC's history. What
• 9:52
  S4: he did with BBC two and those programmes sort of
• 9:56
  S4: became a benchmark that every future controller referred back to.
• 10:00
  S4: You know, in those couple of years when he was
• 10:02
  S4: running BBC two in the late 60s, having his own
• 10:05
  S4: interest in nature programmes, commissioning civilisation. He also commissioned Monty Python.
• 10:10
  S4: He commissioned the greatest satirical comedy of all time. You know,
• 10:14
  S4: he understood that that television could be, you know, particularly
• 10:19
  S4: as colour came in. It could be spectacular, it could
• 10:22
  S4: be accessible. And so it's it's the way he interpreted it.
• 10:27
  S4: I think that is so significant.
• 10:30
  S3: Don't forget he also made tennis balls yellow.
• 10:32
  S8: Yeah. That's right. You said you said tell.
• 10:34
  S1: Us about this.
• 10:35
  S3: Well he well as Jonty was saying, he was very
• 10:38
  S3: aware of the possibilities of colour. Tennis was being broadcast
• 10:42
  S3: on colour. Balls were normally white at Wimbledon. They couldn't
• 10:45
  S3: be seen crossing the line. Apparently. I've read that it
• 10:49
  S3: was his idea. Well, if they're yellow, you can see
• 10:50
  S3: them when they cross the line.
• 10:51
  S8: And and Jonty.
• 10:53
  S1: Now we have to mention, of course, that you were
• 10:57
  S1: a BBC arts director and you engaged with David Attenborough
• 11:01
  S1: because we've mentioned civilisations and you were tasked with, I guess,
• 11:05
  S1: what we'd call a revisitation of civilisation. So tell us
• 11:09
  S1: about that. And yeah, the conversations you had with David
• 11:12
  S1: Attenborough about that.
• 11:14
  S4: Yeah. So to cut a long story short, around 2014,
• 11:20
  S4: a new director general came into the BBC, a man
• 11:22
  S4: called Tony Hall, who had been CEO of the Royal
• 11:25
  S4: Opera House. And in a very early interview with a
• 11:28
  S4: member of the press, a journalist, he said that as
• 11:31
  S4: a child growing up in Liverpool from quite a working
• 11:33
  S4: class background, he had watched civilisation, Kenneth Clarke's civilisation as
• 11:38
  S4: commissioned by David Attenborough on TV and it had changed
• 11:41
  S4: his life. And he said that's the sort of programme
• 11:44
  S4: we ought to be doing. And somehow, over the course
• 11:46
  S4: of this interview, he ended up saying, and we're going
• 11:49
  S4: to make a new version of civilization. So having sort
• 11:53
  S4: of committed us as an organization to make this, Tony
• 11:57
  S4: tasked me and two other colleagues to actually make this thing.
• 12:02
  S4: So we went into, you know, a state of deep anxiety, like,
• 12:06
  S4: oh my God. I mean, it's like being asked to
• 12:08
  S4: remake Citizen Kane or something. You're just like, oh my God,
• 12:12
  S4: how are we possibly going to do this? So, so, uh,
• 12:16
  S4: we ended up making a very ambitious nine part series.
• 12:20
  S4: We called it civilizations, and it was going to have
• 12:24
  S4: a non-Western as well as a Western focus, a global focus.
• 12:28
  S4: But as we came close to launching the series in,
• 12:32
  S4: in 2017, you know, by that moment, it had been
• 12:35
  S4: talked to death in the media and journalists sharpening their
• 12:38
  S4: knives for years. And I knew if we were going
• 12:41
  S4: to get this thing off the ground, I needed to
• 12:43
  S4: get David Attenborough's, you know, seal of approval, his his imprimatur.
• 12:48
  S4: And so, um, Attenborough didn't do email, but he's famously
• 12:52
  S4: and we haven't said, you know, one of the great, uh,
• 12:55
  S4: joys of Attenborough is that all through his career, he
• 12:59
  S4: remained incredibly accessible. He was famously the only celebrity in
• 13:03
  S4: Britain who had his phone number in the Yellow Pages
• 13:06
  S4: in the phone directory. So he didn't do email. I
• 13:08
  S4: had to write to his address and said, look, this
• 13:10
  S4: is what we're doing. You may have seen something about it.
• 13:13
  S4: I would love to come and talk to you about
• 13:15
  S4: it and find out what you think. And he wrote
• 13:17
  S4: back and said, yes, come for tea. So I went
• 13:20
  S4: to his house in in Richmond. I told him what
• 13:23
  S4: we were doing and trying to do, and he said,
• 13:25
  S4: you know, that all sounds very good. And so, you know,
• 13:29
  S4: after this two hours, I said, you know, David, we're
• 13:32
  S4: having our launch at the British Library in a few
• 13:34
  S4: months time. Would you come to the launch and just
• 13:38
  S4: say a few words to give your approval to the endeavour?
• 13:42
  S4: And he he said, he said yes. So I was, uh,
• 13:46
  S4: from from that point on, I knew we were going
• 13:49
  S4: to be all right. We had David on our side,
• 13:51
  S4: and he came to the launch and he stood up
• 13:53
  S4: at the start and said, I think it's wonderful the
• 13:55
  S4: BBC is doing this. And I tell you, in that
• 13:58
  S4: moment in the auditorium with about a hundred journalists sitting
• 14:02
  S4: there waiting to watch the first clips, waiting to tear
• 14:05
  S4: it apart. Once David told them it was a good thing,
• 14:08
  S4: you could feel the the venom being sucked out of
• 14:12
  S4: the room in that moment because nobody's going to mess
• 14:15
  S4: with David Attenborough.
• 14:17
  S8: That's so interesting.
• 14:18
  S1: And I love your anecdote there about how his. He
• 14:20
  S1: was the only celebrity in Britain who had their number
• 14:23
  S1: in the in the Yellow Pages and therefore he'd, you know,
• 14:25
  S1: receive all these phone calls from people. I wonder if
• 14:27
  S1: that's almost like a personal embodiment of this sort of
• 14:29
  S1: democratic view that he had of both British people or
• 14:33
  S1: people broadly and what his role was. And so I
• 14:36
  S1: wanted to ask you, like, what are the main stories,
• 14:39
  S1: I guess, that David told in the original civilization that
• 14:42
  S1: you think people really hadn't known about before? And then
• 14:46
  S1: what did you include in your 2017 program, civilizations that that,
• 14:52
  S1: you know, Attenborough hadn't included or that you're particularly proud of?
• 14:56
  S4: Well, I mean, the first thing to say is that
• 14:58
  S4: he gave Kenneth Clarke the brief. I mean, David Attenborough,
• 15:02
  S4: he was a high concept man in this situation. He
• 15:06
  S4: had his lunch with Kenneth Clarke and he he basically said,
• 15:09
  S4: I'm wondering if he'll do a series. We've got this
• 15:11
  S4: new technology. It's called color. And it seems to me
• 15:14
  S4: there's a chance just to show the great creations of
• 15:18
  S4: art and architecture in people's rooms so that, so that
• 15:22
  S4: and this idea that we could bring the world, the
• 15:25
  S4: world of great art into people's rooms in glorious Technicolor.
• 15:29
  S4: I'd like you to do it, Kenneth, because, you know,
• 15:31
  S4: you're one of the great art historians, and I think
• 15:34
  S4: we should call it civilization. And that was sort of it.
• 15:36
  S4: And what happened then was Kenneth Clarke went off and
• 15:39
  S4: made the series. He he did. What Kenneth Clarke did
• 15:42
  S4: was that he realized that at that time it was
• 15:45
  S4: going to be too difficult for him to try and
• 15:47
  S4: do a kind of global history. He decided to focus
• 15:50
  S4: on Western Europe, essentially, and tell the story of Western
• 15:55
  S4: Europe from when the Romans, from when the Roman Empire collapsed,
• 15:59
  S4: when what he said was almost all of European civilization
• 16:03
  S4: was lost to to, to the barbarians. So the first
• 16:07
  S4: episode was called skin of Our Teeth. It was how
• 16:10
  S4: Rome collapsed. And we managed to hang on to civilization
• 16:13
  S4: by the skin of our teeth. It's a European story
• 16:16
  S4: from about 500 A.D. through to the kind of 1960s.
• 16:20
  S4: So when we did our series, we just thought, look,
• 16:23
  S4: obviously in the 21st century, this is a chance to
• 16:26
  S4: take a global view. And actually it's easier to travel now.
• 16:30
  S4: So we made a series that looked at the art
• 16:34
  S4: and architecture of civilizations and societies from right across the world.
• 16:38
  S4: That was the sort of main difference. It was the
• 16:40
  S4: global purview.
• 16:44
  S1: After the break.
• 16:46
  S3: There are a handful of significant voices in the climate
• 16:49
  S3: movement who say that having created this awesomely effective tool
• 16:55
  S3: for communicating the beauty, but also the significance and the
• 16:59
  S3: fragility of our natural world. He then failed to use
• 17:03
  S3: it to illustrate the two crises that have challenged the
• 17:07
  S3: natural world, the first being.
• 17:15
  S1: Now, we would be remiss if we didn't mention what
• 17:18
  S1: was something of a black mark that you feature in
• 17:20
  S1: your feature, Nick, which is the criticism that David Attenborough
• 17:25
  S1: has faced for a very long time with regards to
• 17:27
  S1: what his role has or hasn't been when it comes
• 17:30
  S1: to climate change. So, Nick, can you just run us across?
• 17:33
  S1: Why have people been so critical of David Attenborough?
• 17:35
  S3: There are a handful of significant voices in the climate
• 17:39
  S3: movement who say that having created this awesomely effective tool
• 17:45
  S3: for communicating the beauty, but also the significance and the
• 17:49
  S3: fragility of our natural world. He then failed to use
• 17:53
  S3: it to to illustrate the two crises that have that
• 17:58
  S3: have challenged the natural world, the first being just the
• 18:02
  S3: sheer destruction of natural world through our resource extraction, through
• 18:06
  S3: the expansion of our of our towns and cities and
• 18:08
  S3: our gathering of energy. And that has led to an
• 18:11
  S3: extinction crisis. And then secondly, and more more recently, the
• 18:15
  S3: climate crisis. They say that having built this enormous audience,
• 18:20
  S3: having built up God likes not fair, but having built
• 18:25
  S3: this staggering reputation and won the trust of people across
• 18:29
  S3: the world, he then should have deployed it faster and
• 18:32
  S3: harder to defend the natural world. George Monbiot, who is
• 18:36
  S3: a famous, uh, environmentalist and a writer for The Guardian,
• 18:40
  S3: he said that it was a betrayal. Now there are those.
• 18:43
  S3: Not everyone agrees. Obviously. I spoke at length for this
• 18:46
  S3: story with Tim Flannery, who has known, uh, Attenborough himself
• 18:51
  S3: for 40 years, having run into him at Sydney Airport, famously, um,
• 18:55
  S3: and introduced himself and then become friends. And he makes
• 18:59
  S3: the case that in simply illustrating the natural world, the
• 19:04
  S3: pristine natural environment to us, he made it possible for
• 19:07
  S3: us to conceive of it and therefore an imperative to
• 19:10
  S3: defend it. He didn't need to, uh, buy this argument.
• 19:14
  S3: He didn't need to come out and articulate. We must
• 19:16
  S3: save this. Uh, he made it imperative. He demonstrated its
• 19:20
  S3: inherent value. I spoke with Bob Carr. I didn't mention
• 19:23
  S3: this in the story. And Bob Carr, he didn't go
• 19:26
  S3: that far. But he did say that in bringing the
• 19:28
  S3: natural world into our rooms, you know, in showing people
• 19:32
  S3: what a complicated web of life a rainforest was, he
• 19:37
  S3: made it far easier for environmentalists to then to go
• 19:39
  S3: and bang on the door of people like Bob Carr
• 19:42
  S3: and say, we need to protect this, because half the
• 19:45
  S3: argument had already been one. People knew people culturally knew
• 19:48
  S3: in their blood what a rainforest was and why it
• 19:52
  S3: was valuable. So there has been that debate over the years.
• 19:56
  S3: I would say, though, that his well, I know he's
• 19:59
  S3: got a new a new series out on Netflix at
• 20:01
  S3: the moment, which I have not yet seen. But last
• 20:03
  S3: year his last film came out called ocean. And I
• 20:06
  S3: went to its Australian launch at the Orpheum here. Weirdly enough,
• 20:12
  S3: for a nature documentary made by a 99 year old,
• 20:15
  S3: there were queues out the door. It looked like a
• 20:18
  S3: red carpet event for a blockbuster. And in that, he
• 20:21
  S3: made this very fierce defence of the oceans against, uh,
• 20:27
  S3: against really damaging industrial fishing. And after that came out,
• 20:32
  S3: George Monbiot wrote, this is the documentary I've been waiting
• 20:35
  S3: for all my professional life.
• 20:37
  S1: Interesting. And also, you make the point in your piece
• 20:39
  S1: that those who have been sort of slammed in the documentary,
• 20:43
  S1: that they didn't they didn't sort of clap back, did they,
• 20:46
  S1: because it's David Attenborough.
• 20:47
  S3: Well, no, going back to the point that Jonty was
• 20:49
  S3: making about the venom leaching from the room that day in,
• 20:53
  S3: in at the British Museum Library. Um, you can't really
• 20:58
  S3: it is a very difficult thing to do to challenge
• 21:01
  S3: a man like David Attenborough. His voice is so trusted
• 21:03
  S3: that no matter how powerful you are, it makes more
• 21:06
  S3: sense really, just to zip it and step back and
• 21:09
  S3: and there are people when I you know, I discussed
• 21:12
  S3: this criticism with quite a few people who have worked
• 21:14
  S3: with David over the years or worked in the environment
• 21:17
  S3: over the years. And I think Scally was another person
• 21:20
  S3: who made that point, that it was, in his view,
• 21:23
  S3: not an accident that Attenborough didn't engage in political debate
• 21:27
  S3: because he wanted to protect that voice. He wanted to
• 21:30
  S3: elevate himself above the political fray. Now, I can't know
• 21:34
  S3: if that's true. I haven't spoken with David. Yeah, but
• 21:37
  S3: it is clear that in making his voice above reproach,
• 21:42
  S3: it has. In more recent years he has used it
• 21:46
  S3: as a very effectively in defense of the natural world.
• 21:49
  S1: Right. Well, I guess just to wrap up then, I
• 21:52
  S1: wanted to ask you both about something, Nick, that you
• 21:54
  S1: wrote because you said that we're living in an age
• 21:56
  S1: of cynicism, but Attenborough has become the face of unvarnished enthusiasm.
• 22:01
  S1: So I want to put it to you both, you know,
• 22:02
  S1: do we need him now more than ever, to perhaps
• 22:05
  S1: be inspired, to turn, to wonder at our culture, at
• 22:08
  S1: our natural world instead of, say, you know, pitting each
• 22:10
  S1: other against each other and.
• 22:13
  S3: Yeah, I would say absolutely, yes. I, I think and
• 22:17
  S3: I think that is what draws people to him. Uh, that, that,
• 22:23
  S3: as I said earlier, it is performative in that it
• 22:25
  S3: is done deliberately. But his passion is real, his passion
• 22:28
  S3: for the things that he finds beautiful to have inherent value.
• 22:32
  S3: And his passion in describing them and bringing them to
• 22:35
  S3: us is so real that I do. I think it's
• 22:38
  S3: a rare, um, a rare tonic in this current atomized
• 22:43
  S3: cultural moment. I, I think we need more of him.
• 22:46
  S3: I think I would love to see other voices seek
• 22:50
  S3: to communicate the way he does.
• 22:52
  S4: A lot of people criticize Attenborough for not coming out, um,
• 22:56
  S4: guns blazing on the climate crisis earlier than he did.
• 23:01
  S4: He knew about it for decades. What I would say
• 23:04
  S4: is that he when he did in the late teens,
• 23:08
  S4: around 2018, 2019, began to do those stories in the
• 23:12
  S4: programs he was making. You know, the fish in the
• 23:15
  S4: oceans that were dying on, on, on plastic. The impact
• 23:20
  S4: of those moments, I believe, had far more impact on
• 23:24
  S4: a shift in popular perception and awareness of the climate
• 23:29
  S4: crisis than anything else up until that moment. So although
• 23:33
  S4: he's criticized for not doing it sooner, what I think
• 23:36
  S4: is so extraordinary about Attenborough is that he speaks to
• 23:40
  S4: a vast, vast audience. He is trusted by what used
• 23:45
  S4: to be called Middle England, and I think Middle Australia
• 23:48
  S4: as an authority on the natural world, on the world
• 23:52
  S4: in general, in the way that very few people are.
• 23:56
  S4: That meant that he was not he didn't want to
• 23:58
  S4: be perceived as an activist. He waited, I believe, strategically
• 24:02
  S4: for the right moment, to push that message. And he
• 24:05
  S4: turned the dial. Now, I think what we need more
• 24:08
  S4: than ever, as Nick saying, are people who who have
• 24:12
  S4: that trust. You know, we are in an age of
• 24:15
  S4: deep polarization where everybody's, you know, getting their news from partial,
• 24:21
  S4: partial sources. There is no sort of truth anymore. We
• 24:25
  S4: talk about being a post-truth age. I think Attenborough is
• 24:28
  S4: one of the few figures who cuts through that. And
• 24:31
  S4: that is why there is not only a reverence for him, but,
• 24:34
  S4: you know, as he's turning 100, a kind of nostalgia
• 24:37
  S4: for something that is going to be gone before too
• 24:40
  S4: long as well. And who's going to replace that? Who's
• 24:43
  S4: going to replace that? Be the be the figure who
• 24:46
  S4: we who is a force for good? Who everyone across
• 24:50
  S4: the political divide trusts. I mean, think about it. He
• 24:53
  S4: is somebody who, whether you're, you know, sort of far
• 24:57
  S4: left or alt right, he brings you joy and you
• 25:00
  S4: may criticize the way he's gone about certain things, but
• 25:03
  S4: ultimately he is trusted. And who else is there like
• 25:06
  S4: that at the moment?
• 25:08
  S1: Well, thank you so much, both of you, for the discussion.
• 25:11
  S1: I really appreciate your time.
• 25:13
  S3: Thank you.
• 25:14
  S4: Thanks so much.
• 25:26
  S1: In other news today, mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has urged
• 25:30
  S1: the federal government to stop micromanaging Australia's energy transition and
• 25:34
  S1: use the upheaval caused by conflict in the Middle East
• 25:37
  S1: and its political capital to accelerate the electrification of the economy.
• 25:43
  S1: The fight to vanquish malaria has led an Australian scientist
• 25:46
  S1: to discover an infertility gene and understand the mystery of
• 25:50
  S1: male infertility better. And a generous tax break for high
• 25:55
  S1: end electric vehicles will be wound back from next year,
• 25:59
  S1: as the federal government swings the axe on cost blowouts
• 26:02
  S1: ahead of a pivotal budget to be handed down next week.
• 26:06
  S1: You can read more at the age.com.au or smh.com.au. Today's
• 26:13
  S1: episode was produced by Kai Wong. Our executive producer is
• 26:17
  S1: Tammy Mills, and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy
• 26:20
  S1: and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow The
• 26:24
  S1: Morning Edition and leave a review for us on Apple
• 26:26
  S1: or Spotify. Thanks for listening.