Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / The Best Of Vol. 3: Kurt Fearnley, Me & Alice Dreger

Transcript

The Best Of Vol. 3: Kurt Fearnley, Me & Alice Dreger · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get A Humans Welcome to Uncomfortable Conversation for Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
• 0:09
  Let me ask you a simple question, have you ever sat your big fat ass in a pool of hot
• 0:17
  mud?
• 0:18
  It's a simple question because it's how I've spent the day and I figure a few of you
• 0:23
  must have surely, statistically, given the hundreds of billions of listeners that we have
• 0:28
  to this fine program.
• 0:30
  Some of you must have spent the day like me sitting your big fat ass in a giant bubbling
• 0:36
  pool of mud.
• 0:37
  I happen to be in Rotorua in New Zealand, Aotearoa, Kilora, means hello.
• 0:45
  And this is one of the hot beds of volcanic activity and geothermal and seismic something
• 0:51
  rather.
• 0:52
  And so we've brought the kids here for a summer holiday to look at the geysers unparalleled
• 0:58
  anywhere else in the world except for Iceland and Yellowstone National Park in those
• 1:06
  fine United States of America.
• 1:08
  And while we're here, middle of summer, it's a freezing cold and pouring with rain.
• 1:14
  They do call New Zealand the land of the long white cloud and let me tell you something.
• 1:19
  That long white cloud is looking pretty gray at the moment, ladies and gentlemen, be here
• 1:24
  all week, try the veal.
• 1:26
  So any who, this is one of those episodes that we've gathered together, my wonderful podcast
• 1:32
  producer, Stefan has done all the legwork here, isolating some of the best conversations
• 1:37
  that I've had with some of the most interesting people throughout the past 12 months.
• 1:42
  This is the third and final installment of the very best of uncomfortable conversations
• 1:48
  from the past year.
• 1:50
  After this, there'll be a lousy little episode.
• 1:54
  Is it a little good for not an episode with a nobody by the name of Sam Harris?
• 1:59
  So you can look forward to that next week.
• 2:02
  That'll be when we resume regular programming and the proper season of 2023.
• 2:06
  But don't think this is just a nothing burger of a show.
• 2:09
  This is a biggie.
• 2:10
  This is great.
• 2:11
  As I said, three of the best people we've spoken to throughout the entire past 12 months,
• 2:19
  one of whom is a Paralympian, winner of multiple international wheelchair marathons, media
• 2:26
  personality, disability advocate, Kurt Fernley.
• 2:31
  You also hear from Alistrager, who's a bioethicist and a historian, about some of the more scientific
• 2:39
  approaches to understanding human gender, sex and sexuality.
• 2:44
  She's a contributor to the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post.
• 2:47
  She was an advisor to the International Olympic Committee on gender in sports.
• 2:52
  Now, you'll only hear from her if you are a subscriber.
• 2:56
  Just go to uncomfortablecomestations.substac.com, slash subscribe.
• 3:01
  It doesn't cost you anything to just subscribe to an a free tier and until the end of January,
• 3:07
  you get everything for free.
• 3:08
  So no reason not to get your own dedicated podcast feed.
• 3:14
  And then the third amazing individual who you get to hear from today is Josh Zeppes
• 3:22
  talking to himself.
• 3:24
  This is an interesting one.
• 3:27
  This middle clip in today's show, available for everybody, is a clip from the episode
• 3:34
  of the show that is the most requested and the most talked about to this day.
• 3:41
  It happened after there was a mass shooting in the United States.
• 3:45
  And people in the US had frequently asked me what I felt about mass shootings, given
• 3:52
  that I come from the country that is perhaps most famous for having banned guns, which was
• 3:58
  not true.
• 3:59
  So they didn't ban guns after a mass shooting, but it did dramatically reform.
• 4:05
  This gun policy made it basically impossible to get a gun for no reason.
• 4:12
  And I sort of sat down and turned on the microphone armed with a lot of data and facts and
• 4:17
  figures and spent an hour trying to bridge the gap between the American and Australian
• 4:23
  ways of thinking about guns in a way that is maximally generous towards people on both
• 4:29
  sides.
• 4:30
  I hope, which is sort of if you know me kind of the mission of this entire show.
• 4:34
  So we're just bringing you about 20 minutes of that hour long rant, which is definitely
• 4:40
  worth listening to in its own right, if you would like to go back and listen to that as
• 4:45
  part of the archive last year.
• 4:47
  Nonetheless, without further ado, please enjoy Kurt Furnley, myself and Alice Reagan.
• 5:04
  There is this acceptance that we're going to go through a bit of difficulty to make
• 5:08
  sure that everybody gets to have a bit of a bit of an experience in life.
• 5:13
  And I know that that he's frustrating sometimes to be able to sit down and take on the complex
• 5:19
  world of disability, but when you get through that annoyance, it stops the absolute destruction
• 5:28
  of that person's entire life.
• 5:31
  A lot of frustration, it is an absolute disruption.
• 5:36
  If I turn up to a space and I can't get through, it's not an annoyance, it often means I've
• 5:43
  got to go home or if I turn up to a space and my children who are non-disabled, if they
• 5:49
  can enter into the space and I can't be a father past that point, then my life is not
• 5:55
  related to find to me, but it's to find to my kids that their father is less and my partner
• 6:02
  or if it is my coworker or if it is my junior in my workspace.
• 6:08
  So we are talking about things like regulation as a frustration and I completely understand
• 6:15
  that it is a frustration because there is this really complex thing that we're trying
• 6:20
  to create regulation to bring in and it does get messy in there, but again, we're not
• 6:28
  dealing with a frustration to help another person's frustration.
• 6:35
  We're doing it to stop somebody from completely being excluded from a life experience and
• 6:43
  I think a bit of frustration is actually worth doing to get through to that point.
• 6:47
  And once it's done, usually it's done.
• 6:50
  Like it is finished rather than it being a barrier forever, once you've invested the
• 6:58
  time and energy to create a space that is accessible to everyone, that's accessible
• 7:02
  to everyone forever.
• 7:05
  That particular space is but everything else that then subsequently needs to be done
• 7:09
  also needs to comply with the rules.
• 7:12
  Like I read a big piece, I think it was in Esquire or Vanity Fair about this couple
• 7:16
  who are the New Yorkers, there is a couple in California who have taken it upon themselves
• 7:22
  to be disability rights litigators and they will go around to call a place in advance
• 7:29
  and they will say, we have a unique needs, the place they will say, yep, of course we
• 7:33
  comply with the Emergency Disability Act and they go around, they are a married couple
• 7:39
  and they will show up at a place and then they will start measuring exactly how far
• 7:45
  it is.
• 7:46
  If it's a millimeter out, then they stage some sort of upset, one of them will fall over
• 7:53
  or one of them will drop a glass or something like that.
• 7:56
  Then they've got the same high flying lawyer and they sue these small businesses and the
• 8:00
  small business and they go around and they think they are doing God's work basically because
• 8:04
  they are making sure that compliance is up to scratch.
• 8:08
  But of course, small businesses are saying, if you need us to comply to the letter, then
• 8:14
  the regulator themselves should be doing spot checks and just helping us to make sure
• 8:19
  that we are complying because if you read the 100 pages of the legislation, we are not
• 8:24
  going to get every single little thing right.
• 8:26
  But instead of just giving a tap on the shoulder and say, how can you fix this, can you fix
• 8:29
  that?
• 8:30
  They are having to pay lawyers to go to court and they are ending up being bankrupted
• 8:34
  because then there are these $10 million payouts and all this sort of jazz from the emotional
• 8:38
  trauma from when the person dropped the cup because the thing was one millimeter out
• 8:43
  to code and the backlash then is from people saying, oh, this whole thing is bloody stupid.
• 8:52
  If you have special needs, then that is unfortunate but life sucks for everybody.
• 8:56
  Everybody has got particular challenges and if you can't do this, then I can't do that
• 9:00
  either.
• 9:01
  So you got to suck it up and pop it.
• 9:03
  Well, bring that on.
• 9:04
  Like, let's have that conversation and let's see who wins the battle in the court in
• 9:11
  that common square.
• 9:14
  And the point that you make is kind of like the point on everything that those two individuals
• 9:19
  say if they are gone around and they are measuring, millimeter by millimeter, they've probably
• 9:23
  seen a politician talking about how they want to reduce the disability discrimination
• 9:28
  act that we need to get rid of regulation and because they see somebody going to the
• 9:32
  far, the fringe on that way, we see this push towards the other direction and does that
• 9:41
  allow to be that to be, bring the middle closer to where it should be or does it just create
• 9:49
  a fight that will continue to go and just cause disruption and distrust and I personally
• 9:57
  think that we need people to push barriers.
• 10:01
  We need people to push in a direction and then allow people to go into the middle space
• 10:07
  and figure something out in there.
• 10:12
  How do you reckon that would go in Australia though?
• 10:14
  Like what do you think?
• 10:15
  Well, I mean, I think we're just generally thank goodness a bit less extreme on everything
• 10:20
  than Americans are.
• 10:21
  You know, you can take any measurement that you want and that has good upsides, you know,
• 10:26
  the civil rights movement of the 1960s with more fears in America and put an end to Jim
• 10:33
  Crow.
• 10:34
  The political system is more extreme, you know, someone like Obama could never have become
• 10:39
  the leader of a parliamentary democracy like Australia, but someone like Trump also couldn't.
• 10:45
  So you take the good with the bad and I just think they get, you know, the culture wars
• 10:50
  at the moment in terms of, you know, their cancel culture and their hysteria around gender
• 10:57
  pronouns or whatever it might be and then the backlash from the right on like banning school
• 11:01
  books that mentioned gay parents and stuff.
• 11:04
  There's just a lot more roiling kind of antagonism over there, which I think we don't have thankfully.
• 11:10
  But I think you're right that to put your finger on the fact that, you know, each extreme
• 11:15
  then empowers the other extreme.
• 11:16
  And I think when you're talking about your life and your ability as you say to be a father
• 11:21
  to your kids and your ability to just participate in civil society, then the last thing you want
• 11:27
  to do is turn that into a toxic, I mean, it's the same with like LGBTQI plus issues and
• 11:32
  stuff like that.
• 11:33
  And, you know, transgender, transgender people in sports and stuff like the more it becomes
• 11:37
  a political football for the bystanders to argue about the worst it sort of is for everybody.
• 11:44
  And if we can turn the temperature down a bit and just have have technocratic walks figure
• 11:48
  all this stuff out and remove us a host from the debate, then I think the better we end up
• 11:55
  being.
• 11:56
  See, part of me also wonders though, when it comes to particularly, if we're talking
• 11:59
  about small business, say, I think it was 1991 in Australia, we had a prime minister
• 12:06
  called Bob Hawke who said that every building will be accessible to every, every person,
• 12:11
  every child that wishes to enter it in 10 years.
• 12:14
  Now business could have started every, every business could have started putting money
• 12:21
  as money away to start to prepare for this regulation.
• 12:25
  Instead, nine years later, everyone was terrified and it was pushed out another 10 years.
• 12:30
  And then another 10 years.
• 12:32
  And now we're still sitting here going past places that are not accessible.
• 12:36
  Like when are we going to stop to stop fighting about all as if it's in the moment and start
• 12:40
  actually recognizing that this is something that we should have been doing for three decades
• 12:47
  for the day.
• 12:48
  All in our current, is there, I'm in part of my ignorance, but I assumed that there
• 12:52
  would now be some kind of public accommodations requirement that if you are a public, if you're
• 12:56
  open to the public that that has to be accessible to everybody, that not the case.
• 13:00
  Walk down the street and see how many shops that you pass that have steps in front of
• 13:04
  it.
• 13:05
  As soon as you start seeing, you start seeing it.
• 13:10
  And I think that it is like a company has to make reasonable adjustments and has to
• 13:17
  be the accountability side of that, just isn't there in Australia.
• 13:24
  So we do see in the US, we do see those far flung stories of just what seemed to be completely
• 13:33
  unreasonable interactions with community that did bloody God that makes my life easier.
• 13:42
  It's funny, isn't it?
• 13:43
  The Americans like to, again, this is almost like the flip side of the illusion that Australians
• 13:48
  have been able to export about themselves.
• 13:50
  Americans have been able to export this idea about themselves that they are capitalist
• 13:54
  and they're raw in tooth and claw and there are a place that is the least sort of socialistic
• 14:03
  of all the Western democracies.
• 14:05
  But in actual fact, when you live there, I mean, if you go to a post office, it feels
• 14:10
  like you're in the Soviet Union.
• 14:12
  If you go and try to get your drivers license from you, it feels like you're in Moscow
• 14:15
  in the 1950s.
• 14:16
  There is incredibly heavily unionized industries, especially government bureaucracies where
• 14:23
  people walk at the pace of an obese loft to go from one filing cabinet to another.
• 14:29
  And that's the downside of it and then on the upside of it, you do have these very strict
• 14:36
  rules about stuff like that that does make people's lives easier and here may be part
• 14:42
  of our sort of, I don't know, part of our attitude towards things.
• 14:45
  I can't really reconcile Australians' obedience with our lack of willingness to put rules
• 14:51
  in place to make the life of people like you easier.
• 14:56
  But certainly in America, it's not the case that America is just this freewheeling,
• 15:01
  let it go, business can do whatever it wants to, kind of corporate paradise.
• 15:06
  Yeah, it does my head in a little bit too.
• 15:09
  But I totally, I love that joint, that is, the US is so complicated and it's so just,
• 15:16
  it is so, it is such a, in Australia, we might paint a picture.
• 15:24
  It's like the US paint this picture and it is expanded on every edge where it so much
• 15:30
  just intensity in everything that it does.
• 15:35
  And the last couple of years, it's the first couple of years that haven't been there
• 15:39
  for since 1993.
• 15:42
  And yeah, there is just so much about that place that I think is entertaining and out there
• 15:51
  and full of energy.
• 15:52
  But there is also a hardship there that is like out of control as well.
• 15:56
  Yeah, totally, totally.
• 15:58
  I've seen poverty in the States for some like anything I've seen anywhere in the world,
• 16:04
  because in the developing world, at least everyone is sort of on the same,
• 16:08
  you know, you walk through a slum in Mumbai and at least everybody, that's their life
• 16:13
  and they're operating within a context, I mean, it's awful, but they're operating within a context
• 16:17
  in which things are set up for them to be able to function somewhat.
• 16:21
  Their community functions in that, you know, at that state of development and that state of resources.
• 16:28
  And their families still stay together and their lives still move on.
• 16:33
  But in places where Western civilization has just broken down altogether, like, I mean,
• 16:39
  I went through, I went on a drive through New Orleans not long after,
• 16:43
  it was demolished by the hurricane and, you know, about 18 months later.
• 16:49
  You know, there are people living in conditions where there's a total breakdown,
• 16:53
  a total breakdown of family, community, law and order, structure, it's chaos.
• 16:58
  It's like something, you know, it's like something I've never seen in Africa or Asia.
• 17:02
  But when ever you, whenever you, whenever you travel, I think the disability
• 17:08
  tells a really interesting story, like a really complicated story,
• 17:13
  like I've crawled into places where you have to crawl into getting there
• 17:17
  and the experience with disability is one of the most challenging things that I've ever seen.
• 17:22
  Right now, wherever you zoom into whatever part of the world,
• 17:25
  you go into the most, you know, hidden, challenging, tiny little village in some, you know,
• 17:37
  country that the tourist track misses, no matter how vulnerable a community gets,
• 17:42
  there's always a person with the disability there, exponentially more vulnerable sitting in the dirt.
• 17:48
  And we have this huge variation of existence now,
• 17:55
  the goal mental of the power of big games, where we are the third,
• 17:59
  the third biggest multi sport event in the world built over the last 60 years
• 18:04
  and then our community, well, two thirds of the world who require a wheelchair don't even have one, you know.
• 18:13
  So we have this really progressed community that is,
• 18:20
  that is kind of living in not alone behind.
• 18:25
  So it's a really challenging, it's a really challenging part of this world.
• 18:31
  What places have you crawled into?
• 18:34
  Right, I've crawled into the ones that I've crawled into
• 18:39
  and there's a township of community in, it's called Makuru,
• 18:44
  just on the outskirts of Nairobi.
• 18:48
  There's a couple of great schools in there where the Rubin Centre that educates 1800 children
• 18:55
  that has a lot of Australian and there were US donors.
• 19:00
  And I've got about 80 kids with disabilities in there in the Kurt Furley Centre
• 19:04
  and it was one of the, you know, like when the US, we saw foreign aid be cut in,
• 19:11
  I think it was 2017, you know, and months after that you see just the flower coming from US aid stop.
• 19:19
  You know, we see this tiny little percentage of our GDP reduced out of foreign aid
• 19:26
  and then you see 80 or 100 or 1800 children just stocked in the meal.
• 19:33
  I've crawled into PNG where, probably a New Guinea, which is,
• 19:38
  it's a three hour flight from Australia, but it's one of the most,
• 19:41
  it's one of the most, it's one of the hardest communities, you know, that I've seen.
• 19:48
  I've not crawled into but been invited into Yarmul Griffey GCamp in the years before it was flattened
• 19:58
  and met with teachers and principals to encourage the participation
• 20:04
  and to highlight the need to have all variation of child within their classroom,
• 20:10
  you know, that these children can't be isolated with mum and dad
• 20:14
  because an isolated child who means to an isolated and a life means to an early death
• 20:20
  means to a greater risk of marginalisation and predatory behaviour on them.
• 20:25
  And yeah, whatever kind of, whenever I try and whenever I find out about a programme
• 20:34
  that's doing great stuff in education or wanting to bring kids with disabilities into education,
• 20:39
  I try and do whatever I can to, if I can't play a part by will,
• 20:43
  I am a teacher, my high school teacher, and I grew up crawling around the bush in Carcola
• 20:50
  and it's right in the central part of New South Wales in Australia.
• 20:57
  And even in Australia, we have huge isolation.
• 21:02
  Like we talk about how the majority of people by far, what, 25 million people,
• 21:07
  do you say, 24 million of them are in metropolitan centres around the bush?
• 21:11
  If you go inside, like, I grew up, there was no concrete, you know, there was no,
• 21:16
  there was no asphalt or beach men, I grew up crawling for the first decade of my life.
• 21:21
  And I was valued and welcomed as I was, you know, like I was welcomed into the community.
• 21:26
  Crawling around my school, there was no hesitation, there was no awkward looks,
• 21:30
  I was in a school of 16 people and they were all my family and they loved me and they welcomed me
• 21:38
  and I felt like I could be who I was, but there was an isolation in the fact that my hands are in the dirt,
• 21:45
  my hands are in the dirt and everybody else was walking around.
• 21:50
  And still to this day, there are huge chunks of my community that are still in the dirt
• 21:57
  and will not be able to leave it unless there is just a complete,
• 22:03
  well, I actually, the reality is that when I go and work in these spaces is that I know I can't,
• 22:09
  it may not change for everybody and there may be people still crawling around in the dirt isolated
• 22:15
  in 100 or 200 years from now.
• 22:18
  But when you go into these spaces, you accept that you can do whatever you can do to change that one moment
• 22:27
  and I love that. That's been...
• 22:30
  When you say there are huge chunks of your community and use that term community,
• 22:36
  I'm interested in that because when did that sense of you being a representative of a community evolved?
• 22:44
  I always have difficulty with that community.
• 22:47
  I'm married to a guy and my husband will talk about the LGBTQI plus community
• 22:53
  and he'll be including in that some genderqueer person on the other side of the world
• 22:58
  who we've never met, who has nothing in common with us.
• 23:03
  I have much more in common with my straight work colleagues and my friends here than I do with that person.
• 23:10
  My grandparents were also Holocaust survivors and so they were very passionate about their Jewishness
• 23:15
  and about the legacy of oppression that our people have suffered for thousands of years.
• 23:20
  And I also think, you know what? I don't like what Israel has become.
• 23:23
  I don't like what they're doing. I don't really feel any affinity for the Jewish community.
• 23:28
  I mean, I'm ethnically Jewish, I guess, but I don't want to think about that community
• 23:33
  because I have much more in common, I think, with someone who's struggling in Palestine
• 23:38
  just emotionally, just empathically than I do with world jubilee.
• 23:44
  And so I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy about community.
• 23:49
  When it's used as a way of trying to force us into kind of tribes
• 23:54
  who are competing over the scraps of a finite pie,
• 23:57
  I much rather sort of think about us as individuals and trying to come together
• 24:02
  and have and find whatever common ground we can.
• 24:05
  But obviously there's a utility in people thinking about community
• 24:08
  because otherwise, you know, communities who suffer unique problems
• 24:12
  don't have anyone to speak on their behalf apart from people inside there.
• 24:15
  Quite, I'm quite community. When did you start using that term?
• 24:19
  How does it relate to you? A couple of, I guess,
• 24:24
  a couple of moments that I think enhanced it.
• 24:27
  One of them was when, so I grew up not seeing any other person with a disability
• 24:31
  until I was 12 or 13.
• 24:35
  There were no people in wheelchairs at my school.
• 24:38
  Like I said, I was in a school of 16 people for the first six years,
• 24:41
  seven years, and then high school, it was a two-school of 300 people
• 24:45
  but still I just did not see anyone in a chair unless I was at a hospital
• 24:49
  and then they were sick.
• 24:51
  And I thought, well, I must be the only person in a wheelchair that's not sick.
• 24:54
  And then I found the Paralympic world.
• 24:57
  And our first Paralympian, Australian Paralympian is Uncle Kevin Koo.
• 25:02
  He's an Indigenous guy.
• 25:06
  And we all know him as Uncle, and we knew all of the other first Paralympians
• 25:12
  as uncles and aunties, and they welcomed us into the community.
• 25:15
  And they just, they just, they builders, you know,
• 25:19
  like they taught me what it used to be a person in a wheelchair.
• 25:23
  I remember Michael Callahan and Michael Wood, he was a wheelchair basketball player
• 25:28
  for the Australian wheelchair basketball team.
• 25:31
  He saw me come out and he grabbed me chair and he said,
• 25:35
  get rid of those handlebars and get rid of those brakes.
• 25:38
  And I'm 12 and he says, nobody should push you.
• 25:41
  Only you choose where you go and how you go.
• 25:44
  And I went home and I hacked them off with a hacksaw.
• 25:47
  And then they, and then I get Jeff Adams, a wheelchair racer,
• 25:51
  well champion out of Canada.
• 25:53
  He allowed me to live in his house for a month on end
• 25:56
  to learn what it is to be a wheelchair racer.
• 25:58
  Louise Safari was Australia's greatest Paralympian.
• 26:01
  She would pick me up at the airport when I would fly on a regional airline
• 26:04
  down to Sydney, all the train station.
• 26:06
  She would feed me and she would just give me a taste of what the life was like
• 26:11
  that I was entering into.
• 26:13
  Shantel Petticoot from Canada, Tenegrae Thompson from the UK.
• 26:17
  If that's not community and family, I don't know what it is.
• 26:20
  And then when I started to work with, with disability in the developing world,
• 26:26
  I will crawl into that Macro township with two million people.
• 26:32
  And I will crawl past, you know, a thousand people.
• 26:35
  And I will sit in the house of a kid with disability who will look at me.
• 26:41
  And that child will have as much hunger and desire as I've ever had.
• 26:46
  And that kid sees me as their family because it's the first time that they've seen somebody
• 26:53
  in the world that looks like them.
• 26:56
  And I was there when I was 12 years old.
• 27:00
  So when I think about community, this is my family because there is as much care
• 27:06
  and love and support in that community as I have felt from my extremely loving
• 27:11
  and caring mother and father and brothers and sisters.
• 27:15
  And isn't that what we do without brothers and sisters?
• 27:19
  Like we look at them and we have a care and an understanding of where they want to be
• 27:25
  and who they want to be.
• 27:27
  And that is the exact same feeling that I felt when I was 12 with Uncle Kevin
• 27:33
  or 18 with Jeff Adams or 21 with Tenegrae Thompson
• 27:38
  who is the UK's greatest paralympian as well.
• 27:42
  Or when I was 29 sitting in one of the towns on the Cocoa track
• 27:47
  and looking at a kid that had the desire to have more in his life
• 27:51
  and saw it for the very first time when I was sitting next to him looking back.
• 27:56
  So if it's not community, I don't know.
• 28:00
  I don't know if there's a word there that better describe it.
• 28:06
  That was paralympian champion and all around awesome human being Kurt Fernley.
• 28:11
  Now a little bit of my episode talking about guns.
• 28:16
  Can you not see that there is an upside to registering guns short of full government confiscation?
• 28:21
  How would they even do it under the Second Amendment and we'll get to the Second Amendment in just a moment?
• 28:26
  I just want to make the point that there are all kinds of things that Australia did,
• 28:30
  short of the gun buy back and short of the gun ban.
• 28:33
  That were crucial in yielding the results that those reforms in the 1990s had
• 28:40
  and which America would be able to emulate.
• 28:43
  Here are two really important components.
• 28:47
  It became against the law to privately sell a gun.
• 28:51
  You had to go through a dealer and if you sold it privately, you needed to have the cops witness it.
• 28:57
  So it's all very well if you want to sell me a gun where neighbours, that's fine.
• 29:02
  But you've got to go down a local police station and say,
• 29:05
  mate, can you just sign this thing that says that you've witnessed that this actually took place?
• 29:10
  That means that there's always a paper trail of exactly who's got what gun wear and it's not to confiscate the gun.
• 29:16
  It's so that people take responsibility for their own firearms because they're deadly weapons.
• 29:21
  It's so that the nation isn't just a wash mysteriously in a way that nobody understands
• 29:27
  with high powered military style death machines.
• 29:32
  So you can go to the police and you can have the private sale witnessed
• 29:37
  or you can sell it to a dealer and the dealer can sell it to your mate.
• 29:40
  But you can't do what currently happens in the States which is get around the background checks
• 29:44
  which are already incredibly loose.
• 29:47
  I mean the background checks are it's voluntary for States to contribute the information about their background checks.
• 29:53
  So there's no reason for conservative Republican States to even bother participating in the background checks scheme
• 29:58
  and submitting the relevant information to the FBI because they don't frankly care.
• 30:03
  And more than three quarters of gun criminals didn't even get their guns via background checks.
• 30:08
  They were able to get them through what's called the gun show loophole
• 30:11
  which basically means that you can give a gun to anybody and there doesn't have to be any real record of it in the States.
• 30:16
  Why not just change that? Why do we keep talking about banning guns? Why do we keep talking?
• 30:20
  Why does the right keep saying they're coming for your guns? We're not coming for the guns.
• 30:24
  There are so many things that we could do that would change a little bit.
• 30:30
  Just a little bit.
• 30:32
  And the other second component that I thought was interesting when I was digging into this about the Australian reforms
• 30:38
  was that it made it a crime not to report the loss or theft of a gun.
• 30:44
  It's mandatory now in Australia to report the loss or theft of a gun.
• 30:49
  Doesn't mean that you're going to be punished for it. It's totally fine to lose something.
• 30:53
  It's totally fine to have your house broken into and your gun gets stolen.
• 30:56
  But that has to be on the register.
• 30:59
  We have to know.
• 31:01
  And simply in knowing, simply in understanding the pattern of gun ownership in Australia, law enforcement is so much better able to know who's got guns
• 31:11
  and to then keep them out of the hands of people that shouldn't have them.
• 31:15
  So background checks.
• 31:18
  Half of gun criminals, this is according to a study in the United States.
• 31:22
  Half of gun criminals would have passed their background check if they'd had them.
• 31:27
  They weren't bad guys before they did something bad with a gun.
• 31:31
  They weren't on mental health registries.
• 31:34
  They didn't have criminal records.
• 31:38
  The Las Vegas mass shooter would have passed a psychology exam.
• 31:41
  There's nothing obviously wrong with them.
• 31:45
  Not to mention the fact that two thirds of gun deaths are suicides.
• 31:49
  You're not going to prevent suicides by better background checks.
• 31:53
  So what are we concluding here?
• 31:55
  Small voluntary gun buybacks like the ones that the ones that American cities sometimes implement don't work.
• 32:02
  It has to be a widespread mandatory gun buyback.
• 32:06
  Australia's was the biggest gun buyback ever anywhere in the world.
• 32:10
  640,000 weapons in 12 months.
• 32:14
  What ended up happening?
• 32:17
  Okay, let's get to the facts about this.
• 32:21
  Well, the risk of dying by gunshot dropped by more than a half.
• 32:25
  That's including suicide and accidents.
• 32:28
  Australia's gun death rate is one-tenth the United States.
• 32:33
  In the 18 years prior to the changes in the law, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia.
• 32:40
  That's defined in Australia as an incident in which a gunman killed five or more people other than himself.
• 32:46
  That's actually a higher casualty count than is usually applied in the United States for Italian mass shootings.
• 32:50
  So even using the higher bar, it was 13 mass shootings in the 18 years prior.
• 32:56
  And you know since the poor Arthur massacre, touching lots of wood, zero.
• 33:02
  Not a single one.
• 33:05
  In the 20 years after the laws came into effect in 1996, gun-related homicides dropped by 59%.
• 33:14
  Gun-related suicides by 65%.
• 33:18
  Just stop thinking about these numbers and think about what this means in terms of lives.
• 33:24
  That's two thirds of the people who would otherwise have shot themselves in the head to end their lives who didn't.
• 33:33
  And even if you're crazy enough to think that the ease with which guns enable people to kill other people
• 33:41
  doesn't make them more likely to do so.
• 33:44
  And that a person who wants to kill someone will always find a way.
• 33:47
  They're going to say, use a gun, then they're going to use a knife.
• 33:49
  If they don't use a knife, then they're going to use a baseball bat.
• 33:51
  Even if you're stupid enough to think that the simplicity of pulling a trigger doesn't make it more likely that someone's going to be able to inflict serious injury
• 34:01
  than them having to hunt the person down with a baseball bat and smash their skull in.
• 34:06
  Think about suicide because there it really is obvious that a person who's drunk or high or who's incredibly depressed,
• 34:15
  who's boiling their eyes out in the darkest moment of their entire lives, could make a decision with a gun
• 34:23
  that they simply wouldn't do if they were trying to kill themselves with a stapler.
• 34:28
  It's too grizzly.
• 34:31
  And speaking of mental health, this is the talking point that you hear more often than anything else on Fox News and from the NRA and from Republicans
• 34:40
  who don't want to see any changes whatsoever to gun safety laws that we need to worry about mental health.
• 34:49
  These are the same people who cut investments in public health, who cut investments in mental health.
• 34:55
  Here's an article from NBC 15th of February 2018.
• 35:00
  The headline Trump signs bill revoking Obama era gun checks for people with mental illnesses.
• 35:06
  President Trump quietly signed a bill into law on Tuesday.
• 35:09
  That's this Tuesday rolling back an Obama era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun.
• 35:14
  The rule which was finalized in December added people receiving social security checks for mental illnesses
• 35:21
  and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database.
• 35:27
  Had the rule fully taken effect, it would have added about 75,000 names to that database.
• 35:33
  So at the moment, if you're getting a social security check for mental illness, you can buy a gun.
• 35:41
  If you've been deemed unfit to handle your own financial affairs, you can buy a gun.
• 35:48
  This tiny tweak which would have added people who obviously have a mental illness because they're receiving a social security check for it.
• 35:56
  And if they don't have a mental illness, then that's such a security fraud.
• 35:59
  So fuck them. They don't get their gun. They can choose one or the other. Either you get to defraud social security or you get to have a gun.
• 36:05
  But no, the Republicans want you to be able to do both.
• 36:09
  You can get your social security check for mental illness and you can also buy a gun.
• 36:15
  So that regulation, which was implemented after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has been revoked by President Trump.
• 36:26
  Let's also just note that if this really was a problem of mental health, then you're basically claiming that Americans are uniquely insane.
• 36:34
  I mean, if you have 25 times the number of gun homicides as the average and developed world, are you saying that you're 25 times crazier?
• 36:41
  Because that's a pretty fucking damning indictment of your own country.
• 36:44
  In my experience, Americans aren't more crazy. They're a little more odd in some ways, but hey, so are Aussies.
• 36:51
  And the other final point that I'd make about mental health is it stigmatizes people with mental illnesses to claim that the reason why America has this problem,
• 37:02
  the recurring catastrophe of gun massacres is because of the mentally ill.
• 37:09
  And quite apart from anything else, when we talk about making sure that mentally ill people don't have access to guns, I'm not sure if your claim is that there is a second amendment constitutional right to bear arms.
• 37:24
  Why, for example, schizophrenic people don't have constitutional rights?
• 37:30
  Imagine arguing that schizophrenic people shouldn't have the first amendment shouldn't apply to them, so they shouldn't be allowed to freely speak their mind because they're mentally ill.
• 37:38
  That wouldn't pass, Master.
• 37:40
  How come you can say that the second amendment doesn't apply to them and they don't have the right to bear arms?
• 37:45
  If, as you claim, the second amendment is absolute.
• 37:48
  And this is where we really start getting into the juicy stuff. Let's talk about the second amendment.
• 37:56
  The second amendment says this.
• 38:00
  A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
• 38:10
  What's the first thing you notice about that statement?
• 38:13
  No, it's not the well-regulated militia. I'm getting to that.
• 38:16
  It's not even grammatical.
• 38:18
  I mean, quite a part for anything else. People who think that the US Constitution is flawless and the most brilliantly devised document ever handed down to man by Moses from a burning bush.
• 38:30
  It's not a grammatical sentence. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
• 38:39
  Yeah, that's missing a verb.
• 38:42
  Anyway, we take their point. Their point would seem to be, unless you're an ideologue, unless you're intentionally misunderstanding it, would seem to be that you want to have militias.
• 38:53
  You want to make sure they're well-regulated, but those militias are going to be fundamental to maintaining freedom in this state, both from aggressors abroad and within.
• 39:04
  Therefore, people need to keep and bear arms.
• 39:10
  This has become the sentence on which all of this carnage and mayhem is predicated is justified.
• 39:17
  All the lives ruined, the bullets tearing through flesh, the little children lying in pools of blood, is all because of this sentence, or rather because of the Supreme Court's interpretation of this sentence.
• 39:32
  To Americans who say, well, it's in the Constitution, there's not a lot you can do about it. Fuck that.
• 39:37
  What are you talking about?
• 39:39
  You can interpret the Constitution a million ways.
• 39:42
  If the Supreme Court can find a right for me and my gay husband to get married in the Constitution, which was the furthest thing from the Founding Fathers minds, if they can find a right to privacy which allows a woman to get an abortion in the Constitution, even though there's nothing about abortions in the Constitution and nothing about privacy in the Constitution, then they can find a fucking way to interpret the Second Amendment in such a way that you can't buy, that a mentally handicapped person can't buy a semi-automatic weapon.
• 40:11
  The Supreme Court's already said time and time again, including in the Heller decision, which is the one that fundamentally changed the game for gun ownership in the United States.
• 40:21
  And by the way, it was only in 2008. If you think this goes back a long way, well, guns are a long, honored part of the American tradition. Yes, they are culturally, but the Constitutional right was only invented by the Supreme Court in 2008.
• 40:36
  That was when the Supreme Court heard a challenge to a decades-old ban in Washington, D.C. on handgun position.
• 40:44
  Washington, D.C. had for decades not allowed you to own handguns. And any firearm that you had in the home had to be stored unloaded and it either had to be disassembled or bound by a locking device. That was the law of the land in Washington, D.C.
• 41:00
  And it was only when gun proponents became particularly cocky and the NRA was essentially co-opted in the 1970s by radical reactionary libertarians who became very bullish and started pushing this stuff up through the courts that the Supreme Court found that for the first time in 70 years there was an individual right to possess firearms.
• 41:26
  In other words, that that whole bit about the well-regulated militia didn't exist. They just did not think that that was relevant to the Second Amendment.
• 41:36
  And that was a radical departure from what the Supreme Court had previously held. So don't give me this like it's a long, long, long history of American jurisprudence. It's not. It's a decade-old, less than a decade-old.
• 41:50
  But one thing that even the conservatives, even Anthony Scalia on the Supreme Court said was that the Second Amendment should not be understood as conferring, quote, a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.
• 42:07
  The court gave examples of laws that it would consider presumptively lawful, such as a, prohibiting firearm possession by felons and by the mentally ill, b, forbidding firearm possession in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and c, putting conditions on the commercial sale of firearms.
• 42:28
  So the Supreme Court itself has said, listen guys, don't take the Second Amendment to be absolute. Of course it has to be interpreted sensibly. If it has to be interpreted sensibly, then just interpret the fucking line sensibly.
• 42:42
  This is not about the Second Amendment being a great impediment to common sense gun safety laws in America.
• 42:50
  I mean, Bill Clinton banned semi-automatic weapons. It has already been done in America and then George W. Bush revoked the ban.
• 43:00
  You know, what is an arm? Let's look at this. What are arms? A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. What are arms? Do you think nuclear weapons are arms? If they're not arms, what are they?
• 43:15
  Are rocket propelled grenades, arms? Are bazookas, arms? This makes no sense. If the Second Amendment is absolute, if the Second Amendment is the reason why, and I, I, gee, I hate it when people say, well, I'm a Second Amendment, I'm a believer in the Second Amendment.
• 43:32
  Yeah, we're all believe it. What do you mean you believe in the Second Amendment? I believe the Second Amendment exists, so I can see it right in front of me. It's in the Constitution.
• 43:40
  And I'm not saying you should deny the existence of the Second Amendment or past laws that breach the spirit of the Second Amendment as it was conceived of by the people who wrote it and who specifically wrote the words a well-regulated militia when they were writing their crazily ungrammatical sentence.
• 43:58
  So, yeah, nukes, bazookas, rocket propelled grenades, what about a backpack nuke? Why can't I have those? It says, in the Second Amendment, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
• 44:13
  If you're going to say that I can have a semi-automatic weapon, but I can't have an automatic weapon. In other words, I can have a machine gun looking thing that I can pull the trigger as many times as I want as fast as I can and even put a bump-stock on it which artificially pulls the trigger as faster than is humanly possible.
• 44:33
  And that's okay, but that a machine gun where I just hold the trigger down and it releases rounds at about the same rate as my semi-automatic can, little bit faster.
• 44:47
  Then where is that in the Second Amendment? I don't see that distinction in the Second Amendment. You're already agreeing with me that the Second Amendment has to be interpreted through the light of current arms.
• 44:59
  So, either say that individuals, in fact, mentally handicapped individuals, should be able to buy nuclear weapons, rocket propelled grenade launchers that can bring down a plane and so on, or shut up and agree with me that the Second Amendment is a matter of interpretation.
• 45:22
  And you could just as easily interpret it to say that all it allows you to do is it allows sane adults to own the kinds of firearms that existed when the Second Amendment was written.
• 45:35
  That would be an equally valid interpretation. There is absolutely nothing in the current debate about guns that has anything to do with the Second Amendment.
• 45:42
  Because everybody agrees, apart from those who genuinely do believe that children living with psychotic mental illnesses should be able to buy nuclear bombs, everyone agrees that it requires interpretation.
• 45:54
  So just interpret it differently. However, all of this is not to say that I have no sympathy for gun advocates in all of this.
• 46:03
  The main argument that the most reasonable sounding Republicans make when tragedies like this take place is one that I actually agree with, which is what possible amendment that you could actually get through Congress would remotely make a difference.
• 46:23
  It is such a daunting problem in America where there are as many guns as there are people more, I believe by now, that what can you do that would help?
• 46:36
  I saw Tucker Carlson saying this on Fox News, you name me one thing he was talking to a Democratic Senator or Congressperson, you name me one thing that you could get through that you had to have any hope of getting through that would have made any difference.
• 46:47
  This was after the Las Vegas shooting there would have made any difference at all. And he's right. Here's the problem.
• 46:58
  The tactic has been for the past 40 years by the NRA. Oppose all change to gun laws unless it's making guns more available. Oppose any restrictions whatsoever.
• 47:10
  So that you make it impossible for people who want to improve the status quo to see any possibility of large scale change. So you force them into a corner and then and then force them to propose essentially only tiny tweaks at the edges.
• 47:24
  The because they only want to propose things that they could have conceivably imagined might pass.
• 47:28
  And they also propose tiny little tweaks like you know banning semi-automatic weapons or you know banning bump stocks or tweaking the mental the mental health conditions of who can buy a gun or closing the gun show loophole.
• 47:42
  These are little things that people who who are in favor of gun safety put forward partly because they're the only things that they can imagine getting through and partly because they want to show how unreasonable the the gun nuts are by not even agreeing to the tiniest form of progress.
• 47:58
  But the the double edged sword there the flip side of that coin to mix my metaphors is that then the gun nuts I want to call you nuts the gun advocates the opponents of any gun safety law will say look you're proposing such small or things that they wouldn't make a difference and they're right.
• 48:18
  They wouldn't make much of a difference. It reminds me a little bit of the debate around climate change. You know people have gone I remember 10 years ago when people who were who opposed any action on climate change would say.
• 48:31
  Look we don't know about the science said we we can't be certain what's going on now they don't say that anymore they usually say.
• 48:39
  I believe in climate change I believe that man is probably having probably has something to do with it but if the prognostications of the intergovernmental panel on climate change and the climate scientists are correct.
• 48:50
  Then this is such a big deal that what you're proposing at the Paris Climate Accords is going to do barely anything you're saying that we should reduce the world's temperature by one and a half percent.
• 48:59
  And yet you're saying that we've it's already gone up by 3% and there are 400 parts per million of carbon and this and that and the ice sheets are melting and all you're saying is that we should do make these tiny tweaks around the edges come on get serious.
• 49:12
  But of course the people who wanted action on climate change wanted to get serious 30 years ago and every step of the way the people who have opposed such action say.
• 49:21
  I mean they throw sand in the gears and make sure that it can't work until you get to such a scenario at which now we do face a crisis or rapidly will.
• 49:31
  And the tiny tweaks that we want to try to get through in order to begin addressing it seems so small or that our opponents are actually correct when they say it's not going to fucking matter.
• 49:41
  If as you say it's as dire as you claim then what you're doing is just fiddling while Rome burns it's deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 49:51
  And they're right.
• 49:53
  They've successfully stalled reform on guns for 40 years.
• 50:01
  And each time people who want to change the status quo of guns in America proposed something the problem has gotten a little bit worse.
• 50:11
  There are a few million more guns than there were last time we had a massacre.
• 50:17
  And then people who seem to be cool with this litany of destruction and yes if you oppose all gun safety laws then you are cool with the litany of destruction you can't say on the one hand.
• 50:32
  I oppose these laws because of freedom in the second amendment but I also hate school shootings you fucking love school shootings you love it on some crazy insane level that I don't understand you it is a pact that you're willing to make.
• 50:47
  It's just something you're willing to tolerate.
• 50:50
  Maybe you can find a way to be emotionally inert about it so you don't actually love it but on some secret emotional level in the darkest corner of your soul you do you must because something as abstract as the second amendment can't motivate you to turn a blind eye to this horror of living in a country where this constantly constantly happens.
• 51:14
  Unless the time a little part of you is cool with it.
• 51:19
  And so when those people say well it's too late to fix problem this big there are too many you know you're closing the door of barn door after the horse is already bolted yeah they're right they're right because they've successfully kicked the can down the road for so long that there's very little we can do.
• 51:35
  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything because we're going to find ourselves next year facing exactly the same problem but a little bit worse and the year after that a little bit worse and the year after that a little bit worse.
• 51:47
  The claim that none of the none of the laws that are being proposed by Democrats would do much to impact gun violence in America maybe true.
• 51:59
  But like the climate change trick it's a sort of logical fallacy of saying because we can't do everything we shouldn't do anything.
• 52:08
  Reminds me a bit of saying well we're never going to we're never going to get rid of fires in apartment buildings therefore we shouldn't do anything we shouldn't have fire escapes on the outside because that's just that's just feeling while row and burns that's deck chairs on the Titanic there are still going to be fires.
• 52:21
  Yeah but you do what you can you do what you can when you can.
• 52:28
  For your final section today Alice Drago one of the world's foremost experts on gender intersexuality and sex advise it to the International Olympic Committee on gender in sports enjoy.
• 52:41
  Why is it uncertain why is it not just there are there's XX and there's XY and then of course there's a whole conversation about gender performativity and transgenderism and how we might want to express.
• 52:51
  The characteristics of sex but that there's fundamentally two different biological sexes what's wrong with that view.
• 52:58
  Well for one thing not everybody has XX or XY so some people have XX Y and some people have XX XY and some people have XY and some of their cells and XX in others of their cells and some people have combinations of four or five different types of cells.
• 53:14
  And then the other issue is that your sex chromosomes don't actually tell you how your body develops they can tell us part of what's going to happen in terms of your biological development but there are other genes that come into play that are not on the X or Y chromosomes.
• 53:29
  And then there are also things that happen during prenatal development that can change how your sex develops so if your mother is exposed to particular kinds of hormones for example that can change your sex development.
• 53:40
  So the truth is XX and XY tell us a little bit about how you developed but they don't tell us the answer to how your whole body developed so there are people who are born as girls you would have no question looking at them and in the birthing room that that's a girl but they have XY chromosomes which is normally male.
• 53:57
  And then there are people born who absolutely clearly are a boy when they're born but it turns out they have XX chromosomes so nature is far more complicated than our politics would sometimes like.
• 54:08
  And these people might have internal sex organs or something they might be XY but they might have what tiny testicles inside that they haven't noticed or something as they were growing up as a girl or if they were if they're XX then they they might have what over is that they aren't being noticed is that the point.
• 54:28
  Yeah so there's lots of different types of conditions if we count up all the different kinds of sex differences that you can have besides the normal what we think of as the standard male or the standard female there are at least 30 some different types but just as a couple of examples you can have somebody born with a condition called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.
• 54:47
  And when she's born she'll look absolutely like a girl inside she's got XY chromosome she has testes but her body doesn't respond to testosterone and other masculinism hormones so when her body develops except for having testes inside she's developing externally in terms of a genitalia as a female her brain is subject to the more female typical brain development.
• 55:08
  And very often in these cases you don't know anything up until she hits puberty and she starts to grow and develops breasts and rounded hips because her body is making hormones that lead to estrogen so she'll she'll feminize according to the usual feminine puberty but she won't menstruate because she doesn't have ovaries inside and she doesn't have uterus.
• 55:26
  So then an example be done and the discovery will be made but she is a woman I mean that this is a person who in terms of her development in terms of her upbringing in terms of her self concept has been a woman from the start and makes no sense to call somebody like that male she has some male characteristics but she's a woman.
• 55:43
  And then you can have a condition for example called congenital adrenal hyperplasia which in a very extreme version of it can lead to a child whose XX being born to be appeared to be male so in that circumstance the child has XX chromosomes and ovaries but some other glands that can be involved in sex development the adrenal glands are in high gear they're making lots of antigens which can masculinize development.
• 56:10
  So when the child's born the child's born with male genitalia the brain has been subject to the more male typical pathway it appears to be male.