Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Josh's Soap Box: Josh Is Getting Sued!

Transcript

Josh's Soap Box: Josh Is Getting Sued! · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:00
G'day humans, welcome to the space space for days of this idea.
0:04
And I'm not feeling very safe today.
0:07
I'm not feeling safe at all.
0:09
My world has been shattered by...
0:12
I don't want to say...
0:14
I don't want to swear on this show, but he's a good for nothing.
0:16
He's a good for nothing.
0:18
Consonant.
0:20
Mmm.
0:21
Let me tell you what happened.
0:23
And this is... there's a big story in this, by the way.
0:25
So what's gonna... I'll tell you what's gonna happen today on the soapbox.
0:27
You do two fantastic vehicular rants, rants of the vehicular kind.
0:33
That's what's got me hot under the collar.
0:35
It's a vehicular issue that I'm having.
0:37
Then I'll give you two brief science stories that have crossed my desk this week,
0:41
which are fascinating.
0:43
They involve drone guns and sharks.
0:46
And then I'll play a little of an argument they had with a tarot reader.
0:50
So this is a little cavalcade.
0:52
This is a smorgasbord, if you will, of delights, of zepsy and delights.
0:58
So about a year ago, the family's in the car.
1:02
I'm driving.
1:03
We're busy.
1:04
I can't remember why, but I remember I was frustrated and I was busy.
1:06
And I'm in a very narrow cul-de-sac.
1:08
And I'm trying to do a three-point turn just to turn around and get back out of the street.
1:13
And I'm not driving fast at all.
1:14
It's a tiny...
1:15
We're driving at one half of a kilometer an hour.
1:17
And I just feel a little bump.
1:19
I'm like, oh, did I just touch that car?
1:21
Did I just bump a car?
1:23
So I stop.
1:24
It's a parked car, right?
1:26
They're kind of angled to the street.
1:28
So they're all sticking out every which way.
1:30
And I'm trying to do a three-point turn, like Austin Powers in the movie where there's no room.
1:34
So I stop, I get out.
1:36
I can't quite tell.
1:38
There's what looks like it could be an indentation.
1:42
But the car isn't that greater car anyway.
1:45
So it may have just had a little indentation.
1:47
And I'm not even sure if I did hit it.
1:49
And I'm not even sure if that's the spot where I would have hit it.
1:52
So I get back in the car and Sean, my husband, being a better person than I am,
1:57
says, you're going to leave a note, right?
2:00
And I'm like, well, of course I was always going to leave a note.
2:05
It never crossed my mind not to leave a note for a thing I may not have done.
2:11
So Sean writes the note, puts his name to it.
2:14
He puts out his phone number on, slips it under the windscreen.
2:17
He says, look, we touched your car, call us if there's a problem.
2:22
Next day or later that day, we get a call.
2:25
It's a long time ago now.
2:26
I don't remember when the call came, but the call comes.
2:28
The guy goes, look, I can barely see anything.
2:30
But I'm taking it into the garage anyway for a service.
2:33
I'll get him to look at it.
2:34
If there's any problem, I'll give you a call.
2:37
Thank you.
2:38
He says, thank you for being the kind upstanding people who would leave a note
2:42
on a stranger's windshield.
2:44
Well, I don't know if you've heard the phrase, no good deed goes unpunished.
2:50
Ladies and general persons, but you can probably see where this has gone.
2:53
So anyway, we don't hear back.
2:55
Nothing.
2:56
We think all right.
2:57
That was fine.
2:58
Six months later.
3:00
Six months later, we get a call from him again.
3:02
He says, I don't like you get it fixed.
3:04
I'm going to get it fixed.
3:06
It's, you know, if the bump is still there, he says it was there.
3:10
Then it wasn't there.
3:11
It popped back out.
3:12
And then it popped back in.
3:14
I didn't know that bumps could do that.
3:16
I mean, some bumps, sure.
3:17
Maybe if it was a bump like made of soap bubble,
3:21
but a bump on a metal, I don't know.
3:23
But anyway, I'll take his word for it.
3:25
Okay, he wants to get his bump fixed.
3:26
It's six months later.
3:27
Now, if you're shrewd, if you're smart, if you're canny, if you're savvy,
3:32
this is the point at which you go, Josh, just tell him to fuck off.
3:36
It's been six months.
3:37
Like, you know, he had his chance to get it fixed.
3:39
I don't even know what's happened in the intervening six months.
3:42
Who knows?
3:43
But Josh, being a nice guy who does good deeds that do not go unpunished,
3:48
goes, all right, whatever.
3:50
I can't be bothered.
3:51
The hassle of fighting it, you know, and of antagonizing him
3:54
and having him calling us and texting us and emailing us
3:57
and having his insurance company call.
3:59
I don't want it.
4:00
I don't want it.
4:02
We've got third party property insurance
4:05
with a very high excess of $700.
4:08
But nonetheless, that's the maximum that we can pay.
4:11
So, Sean, I get Sean to call the insurer.
4:15
We pay the $700 excess.
4:17
The insurance company sorts it out.
4:19
Pretty bad, right?
4:21
Pretty bad outcome, you would say, for just a tiny little indiscretion
4:25
and for the good deed of leaving a note to be $700 out of pocket.
4:30
Oh, Nelly, you ain't heard nothing yet.
4:34
I was happy with that outcome.
4:36
I was happy with that outcome six months later in September.
4:40
So, anyway, more time passes.
4:43
We think nothing of it.
4:45
I then apply for another car insurance
4:47
because we just need to get another second hand, second car.
4:50
And of course, my insurance premiums are now through the roof
4:52
because there's a loading.
4:54
My insurance premiums gone up with my conventional car
4:57
because you don't get the no claim bonus, right?
5:00
Now they think you're a liability
5:02
because you've been in an accident.
5:04
It doesn't ask you what kind of accident,
5:06
when I'm applying for the new insurance, it just says,
5:08
have you ever been at fault in a vehicle accident
5:11
where you were the driver of the vehicle
5:13
in an accident that had to be claimed on?
5:16
Well, that sounds like I was driving down the highway
5:19
after polishing off a couple of bottles of rum
5:21
at 150 miles an hour.
5:23
And then I took out the side of a semi-trailer.
5:28
Well, I did was a nudge, a little nudge, a little tiny tiny tiny tiny
5:31
little nudge that just bumped and then popped out
5:33
and then apparently bumped back in again
5:35
magically six months later.
5:36
I'm not asking questions.
5:38
I'm not casting any aspersions on this guy.
5:41
I'll do that in just a moment.
5:43
So any hoop,
5:45
I lose with the no claim bonus,
5:46
more expensive insurance, all that sort of jazz.
5:48
I pay the $700 out of pocket.
5:50
Then we go away.
5:51
It's the summer.
5:52
It's the holidays.
5:53
And then we get back after a trip to New Zealand,
5:56
soaking and boiling mud pools in Rotorua,
5:59
the geothermal volcanic area.
6:01
And we get home,
6:03
and there's a funny looking letter,
6:05
very formal looking letter.
6:07
And we open it up.
6:09
And it's a court document.
6:13
It's a statement of claim
6:15
that the bloke has lodged
6:17
in small claims court
6:19
through his lawyer
6:21
for $13,000
6:25
to cover the cost of a rental car
6:28
while his car was in the shop
6:30
getting the tiny bump repaired.
6:33
$12,000 and some dollars
6:35
for the rental car.
6:37
Then $500 bucks for his lawyer's fee,
6:40
and a $23 fee for him
6:43
to pay for the registration license number search tool
6:47
to locate us
6:48
to know where to send the statement of claim to.
6:52
Now this statement of claim is a data January 4th.
6:56
January 4th is very relevant,
6:58
as my solicitor subsequently tells me
7:00
when I call him freaking out about this,
7:02
because this is the third call
7:04
that my solicitor has had
7:06
in the past week.
7:08
Apparently, it's a thing that,
7:10
like ambulance chasing no good lawyer scumbags do,
7:14
which is you have 28 days
7:16
to respond to the statement of claim.
7:18
Otherwise, the small claims court
7:20
regards it as being uncontested
7:22
and decides in favor of the person making the claim.
7:25
So when would you want to send your 28,
7:27
when would you want the 28 days to begin?
7:30
Well, you'd want the clock to start ticking,
7:32
ideally at a time when the person might be away
7:35
and they might not see it
7:36
until you're already well into the 28 days.
7:39
So apparently, it's a tactic for people
7:41
to be sending these things out
7:43
right around Christmas and New Year,
7:45
hoping you might be on a European holiday
7:47
for the next three weeks,
7:48
and you get back and you don't notice it
7:50
in your pile of mail,
7:51
and then it sits there for five days
7:52
before you actually open it,
7:53
bam, you're already on the hook
7:55
for your $13,000 of made up rental car fees.
7:59
I mean, I could have bought him a car for $13,000.
8:02
Who rents a rental car that costs 12 and a half thousand dollars?
8:06
How long does it take?
8:08
Who is the lazy, idiotic panel beater
8:11
who takes, what, 15 weeks to fix a tiny little bump?
8:17
Anyway, it doesn't make any sense,
8:19
and it's not intended to make any sense
8:21
because my little lawyer friend says,
8:23
no, the point isn't that it makes any sense.
8:25
The point is that either A,
8:27
you miss it, and then you're on the hook for it,
8:29
and even then they don't expect that you're going to pay it.
8:32
What they expect you to do is freak out, call them,
8:34
say, look, I'm not going to pay you $13,000,
8:36
but I'll pay you two.
8:37
They say, make it four,
8:39
and then it goes away,
8:41
because they know that the cost to you
8:43
in frustration of trying to fight the thing
8:45
is more, and probably in legal fees,
8:48
is more than just paying them to make it go away.
8:50
So it's basically a shakedown.
8:52
It's extortion.
8:53
And this is going on all the time.
8:55
In fact, my lawyer was saying,
8:57
here's the good news.
8:58
In just in case you're freaking out,
8:59
just in case you're having a mug of coffee
9:01
and you're going,
9:02
zaps, don't pay the bastard,
9:05
don't do it, don't worry.
9:07
I'm not going to pay a penny,
9:08
because the other good news that my lawyer said was,
9:11
actually, it's the insurance company's problem,
9:13
and they deal with this all the goddamn time.
9:16
All the time, they're confronted with these trivial statements of claim,
9:19
and because I have third party insurance,
9:21
it's just there.
9:22
And so what they will do,
9:23
as they'll just say,
9:24
this is totally ridiculous,
9:25
but I'll give you X amount of money,
9:26
and then they'll go back and forth,
9:28
and they'll do what we were going to end up having to do anyway.
9:30
And it trust me.
9:31
It offends every fiber of my being
9:35
that this guy is going to get anything.
9:37
If it was up to me,
9:38
I would not only pay him nothing,
9:40
I would count as Sue
9:42
for the emotional distress
9:44
of having to produce this podcast for you
9:46
and rail about it.
9:47
I would count as Sue,
9:49
until he had nothing left.
9:51
His pockets would be empty.
9:53
I would go around there in the middle of a night
9:55
with a baseball bat,
9:56
and personally make sure
9:58
that the tiny little dent that popped in
10:00
and popped out,
10:01
and magically popped back in again six months later,
10:04
didn't fucking pop back out again.
10:06
I'd make sure that was well and truly popped back in.
10:09
I'd make sure the windows were smashed in as well,
10:12
before they magically reconstituted themselves
10:14
and then magically smashed themselves back.
10:16
I'd make sure his whole family
10:18
was murdered and his house burned and raised to the ground.
10:23
But fortunately, I'm a decent person.
10:26
And a busy man who hasn't the time
10:29
to do such things.
10:31
It's great being busy
10:33
because perhaps your better instincts
10:36
have to take precedence
10:38
over your lesser instincts.
10:40
And unfortunately,
10:42
I don't have time to murder his family
10:45
and burn his home to the ground.
10:47
Much as I believe I would be doing the Lord's work.
10:51
So my solicitor says,
10:53
here's what happens.
10:54
The insurance company
10:56
not only is going to negotiate this thing,
10:59
but they will sometimes outsource
11:02
the legal work of doing so
11:05
to petty solicitors,
11:08
whose job it is to not only fight these things,
11:11
but also to generate them.
11:13
So the same individual lawyers
11:15
will be going out
11:16
and chasing people like this bloke
11:18
and saying, oh, you know what you can do?
11:20
You can get a few extra grand
11:21
by lodging a totally trivial
11:23
and bullshit statement of claim
11:24
about some nonsense.
11:26
At a time when the person is likely to be away,
11:28
you're going to scare the shit out of them.
11:29
They're going to come back
11:30
and pay you some money.
11:31
Or as good,
11:32
then you get your free holiday to Fiji.
11:34
And that same lawyer
11:36
who is doing that hustle on the side
11:38
will be turning around
11:39
and taking work from an insurance company
11:41
defending the insurance company
11:43
against similar claims
11:45
from other bullshit lawyers
11:46
who are doing the same thing.
11:48
It's a fucking scam
11:50
and it's going on all the time
11:51
and the small claim.
11:52
So I said to the lawyer,
11:53
hang on,
11:54
I have 28 days
11:55
since I was served this notice,
11:56
this statement of claim.
11:57
What does it matter if I was away?
11:59
Isn't that the whole point
12:00
as to why they have to hand you the claim?
12:02
You know that,
12:03
you see in the movies, right?
12:04
Like the,
12:05
you open the door,
12:06
you know,
12:07
is Mr. Ascension?
12:08
Oh yeah, I'm Mr. Simpson.
12:09
Here's your divorce,
12:10
you know, papers.
12:11
And it has to be handed to you.
12:13
That's the whole point.
12:14
You have to physically receive it
12:15
so that you can't claim you didn't get it.
12:17
Well, he says no.
12:19
Not in a small claims court
12:20
in New South Wales,
12:21
in Australia, at least.
12:23
No, a small claims court
12:24
doesn't abide by the normal rules
12:26
of justice.
12:28
A small,
12:29
it's just basically a little kangaroo court
12:30
where some,
12:31
so-called judge,
12:33
I don't know if they even are,
12:34
a so-called judge,
12:35
they may not even be called judges.
12:37
Whoever the person is,
12:38
whoever the hobo is,
12:39
who's presiding over the small claims court,
12:41
who they managed to drag off the street,
12:43
he will basically just kind of feel the vibe
12:45
of whoever he thinks should get the thing.
12:47
And if someone's got a piece of paper
12:49
in front of him with a stamp on it,
12:50
and $13,000,
12:51
and the other person doesn't show up,
12:53
he's like,
12:54
okay, well, bam, thank you, man.
12:55
That's a yes.
12:56
That's a yes from me in the kangaroo court.
12:59
So they don't even,
13:00
so the statement of claim
13:01
just begins whenever they send it to you.
13:03
It doesn't even matter
13:04
if they know whether you got it.
13:05
That's fine.
13:06
We're 28 days.
13:07
Oh, you were on a four week trip
13:09
to the USA,
13:10
seeing your parents and grandparents.
13:12
Now, that's fine.
13:13
That just means that you don't get to defend yourself
13:15
in this system of so-called justice.
13:19
So anyhow,
13:20
I did a statement on that on the radio
13:22
about whenever you'd done a good deed
13:25
that did not go unpunished,
13:27
and man,
13:28
a number of people who called in the text
13:29
and it was absolutely hilarious,
13:31
and very cathartic for me.
13:33
It may be, you know,
13:35
on the scale of one to 10,
13:36
my desire to go
13:38
and slaughter his family
13:39
and cold blood
13:40
and then burn down his house
13:42
and smash his car
13:43
and with a baseball bat
13:44
went from about a 10
13:45
to about a 9.99.
13:47
So I think that was a success,
13:49
just on an emotional
13:50
and spiritual level
13:51
in terms of my spiritual advancement
13:53
as a spiritual being,
13:55
having a human experience
13:56
in this cosmos.
13:57
So I think that was an upside.
13:59
I did promise you two
14:01
vehicular rants.
14:03
Was that a good first one?
14:05
Would you like to hear another?
14:07
I can't.
14:08
The other's not.
14:09
The other's not that amazing.
14:10
It's just,
14:11
it's about numeric points, okay?
14:14
In New South Wales,
14:15
we're about to have a state election.
14:17
That's the most populous state in Australia,
14:20
of which Sydney is the capital.
14:22
State election coming up in March,
14:24
and the opposition party has promised
14:26
that if they get elected,
14:29
then every year,
14:31
that you don't commit a driving offense
14:33
that gets you a numeric point,
14:35
you will earn back
14:37
one numeric point that you may have lost.
14:39
So we had a conversation
14:41
on my ABC radio show
14:43
about how many numeric points you've lost,
14:45
whether you even remember
14:46
what you lost them for,
14:48
whether you were stung
14:49
by some low-range offense.
14:51
Because here's the thing.
14:53
They last for 40 months.
14:55
They last for three years
14:57
and four months in New South Wales.
14:59
So you could have been,
15:01
you could have been just not paying attention
15:03
and you accidentally drove through
15:05
like a school zone.
15:07
And you didn't realize
15:08
and you were doing 50 kilometers an hour
15:09
and it was supposed to be 30 kilometers an hour.
15:11
And you could have done that
15:13
before you'd ever heard the word COVID.
15:17
You could have done that
15:18
before the black summer bushfires
15:20
in Australia.
15:22
And you would still have those numeric points
15:24
on your score.
15:26
And it doesn't matter how frequently you drive.
15:28
It's not like you earn, like,
15:30
good negative demerits
15:32
for driving a lot
15:34
without an offense, right?
15:35
Which is kind of crazy when you think about it.
15:37
If I am an old person
15:38
who just, who hardly ever drives
15:40
and when I do drive,
15:41
I just take the back streets
15:42
to the local shopping center.
15:44
Then, of course,
15:45
I'm going to have a clean driving record.
15:47
But if I am a professional,
15:49
like truck driver,
15:50
and I drive the M1 every day,
15:53
and I never lose a point all year,
15:55
that's a fucking miracle.
15:58
I mean, you're driving around Sydney.
16:00
If you're not from Australia
16:02
and then you do not understand how strict traffic is in Australia.
16:07
All of the authoritarianism
16:09
that you saw brought to bear during the pandemic,
16:11
during the hashtag Australia has fallen experience.
16:14
All of that nonsense
16:16
about how Australia is no longer a democracy
16:18
because it's actually a totalitarian dictatorship.
16:21
That was BS.
16:23
But I'll tell you,
16:24
on the roads of Sydney,
16:25
it is a dictatorship.
16:27
If you just simply drive according to the conditions
16:30
and try to drive safely
16:32
without paying heed to the speed limits,
16:35
you will lose your license within 12 months.
16:38
You need to know exactly where the speed cameras are,
16:40
you need to know exactly where the speed,
16:42
where the speed limit changes are.
16:44
Like, a couple of decades ago,
16:46
there were basically three speed limits.
16:48
In most sane cities in the world,
16:50
there are about three speed limits.
16:51
There'll be one speed limit for little local roads,
16:54
another for the intermediate large roads
16:56
that aren't freeways,
16:57
and another for the open freeway.
17:00
In Sydney,
17:01
there is 40 kilometers an hour,
17:02
50 kilometers an hour,
17:03
60 kilometers an hour,
17:04
70 kilometers an hour,
17:05
80 kilometers an hour,
17:06
90 kilometers an hour,
17:07
100 kilometers an hour,
17:08
110 kilometers an hour,
17:09
and all of them toggle back and forth
17:11
in the space of about 200 meters,
17:13
back and forth and back and forth,
17:14
unless all you're doing while you're driving
17:17
is looking out for road signs,
17:19
you will lose your license.
17:21
So, we were having this conversation,
17:23
saying, why isn't it,
17:25
that if you drive a lot,
17:28
then you get to sort of earn
17:30
demerits.
17:32
Like, instead of it just being 30 months
17:35
that you have for your demerits to go away,
17:37
why isn't, why can't you also say,
17:39
like, well, okay,
17:40
it's 30,000 kilometers that I've driven.
17:42
So, either you can drive like one kilometer
17:44
in 30 months,
17:46
or you can drive 30,000 kilometers
17:48
in a month,
17:49
and if you don't get a single ding,
17:50
you're done.
17:51
You're good.
17:52
You've earned some up.
17:53
You've got some in the bank.
17:54
That's my proposal,
17:56
as I hear by Announce,
17:57
my candidacy for the premiership
17:59
of the government of New South Wales,
18:01
the upcoming election.
18:03
So, yeah, the idea of earning points
18:06
for every year that you lose none.
18:08
Because also,
18:09
if you drive perfectly for 10 years,
18:11
that's not factored in when you have one bad week.
18:14
But, you know,
18:15
if someone who systematically drives
18:17
poorly all the time,
18:19
and loses a handful of points every year,
18:22
is considered to be a better driver
18:24
than someone who drives perfectly for 10 years,
18:27
and then, bam,
18:28
makes one mistake.
18:29
If you think that I'm a little hot under the collar
18:32
about this,
18:33
ladies and gentle persons,
18:34
I'll tell you why.
18:36
I'll reveal.
18:37
I'll pull back the curtain.
18:38
I'll do the reveal.
18:39
Here's the wizard in the Wizard of Oz
18:41
behind the curtain.
18:44
When I first moved back to Australia,
18:47
in 2017, right?
18:49
I borrowed a friend's car.
18:50
This is before,
18:51
Sean and the kids have even moved here.
18:53
I'm out here on a wrecky, essentially.
18:56
We've been living in the states.
18:58
The kids have just been born.
19:00
I'm just about to start a new job in Australia.
19:03
The kids are two months old.
19:04
I'm going to have to schlep them
19:06
at all of our shit
19:07
from the United States back to Australia.
19:09
We don't have anywhere to live.
19:10
We don't have any internet.
19:11
We don't have any mobile cell phones.
19:13
We don't have nothing.
19:14
I come out here for a week
19:16
and I try to set everything up.
19:17
I get the house.
19:18
I try to get things sell.
19:20
All that's a buy a car.
19:22
All that.
19:23
I'm stressed.
19:24
There's a lot to do.
19:25
I'm saying.
19:26
I'm driving a friend's car.
19:27
I'm used to the way that traffic cops work in America,
19:30
which is they don't really.
19:33
People basically do whatever they want on American roads
19:37
and they generally get away with it.
19:39
If you're in America and you're thinking,
19:41
that's not true.
19:43
My cousin got a DUI.
19:45
You're done on what you're talking about.
19:46
You have no idea how intense the policing is
19:50
in other jurisdictions.
19:52
So anyway, I'm driving along
19:54
and there's a set of traffic lights
19:55
that are very familiar to me
19:56
with a right hand turn
19:57
that takes forever for the lights to go green.
19:59
It just takes forever.
20:01
And there's a long, long line.
20:03
And it's a bright sunny day.
20:04
And I've got about 20 cars in front of me
20:06
all waiting to turn.
20:07
The lights go red.
20:09
I stop.
20:10
I put the car into park
20:12
because I know it's going to take six minutes
20:14
for the lights to change again.
20:16
And I'm just sitting there looking around
20:18
Whistle and Dixie.
20:20
And my mobile phone's on the passenger seat.
20:22
Next to me.
20:24
There's no little mobile phone holster.
20:26
What am I?
20:27
Uber driver?
20:28
This is 2017.
20:29
I'm just sitting there.
20:30
My friend's car.
20:32
And the phone lights up with a text message.
20:35
So I look at it.
20:37
I reach over.
20:38
I pick up the phone off the passenger seat.
20:40
And all of a sudden.
20:42
On the window.
20:43
Next to my face.
20:44
A knock.
20:45
I look around.
20:46
There's a cop on a motorbike.
20:48
He's been driving.
20:50
He's been rolling very, very slowly.
20:52
On a slight incline.
20:53
A slight hill going downhill.
20:54
He's just been rolling silently between the cars.
20:57
And he's obviously stopped just behind me
20:59
at the rear passenger window.
21:01
He's seen the phone on my seat perhaps
21:04
or maybe he was just sitting there looking at me for.
21:07
Maybe he thought I was disarmingly attractive.
21:10
And he was just gazing at my beautiful visage.
21:13
Which is also something that.
21:14
Look, we're all susceptible to.
21:16
Nonetheless, however, he's done it.
21:18
He's seen me pick the phone up.
21:20
Car is in park.
21:21
Completely stationary.
21:22
Red light.
21:23
And he.
21:24
Knock, knock, knock.
21:25
Wines it down.
21:26
Pull over sir.
21:27
Eventually when we get through the intersection.
21:29
I pull over.
21:30
It's a double the merit point.
21:32
We can.
21:33
And I lose.
21:35
I think it was eight points of 12 points.
21:38
I think it's four points for using your mobile phone
21:41
while you're driving.
21:43
Now that's the same penalty.
21:45
As if I was like driving.
21:48
A semi-trailer truck down a highway.
21:50
110 kilometers an hour.
21:53
In the middle of the night.
21:54
And I was like playing fortnight on an iPad.
21:57
And not looking at the screen.
21:59
Right.
22:00
There's no.
22:01
Don't make any distinction.
22:02
If a digital device is in your hand.
22:04
That's the crime.
22:05
It has no.
22:07
Doesn't matter at all.
22:08
Whether or not there's any impact on anyone's safety.
22:10
That's the rule.
22:11
And it has to be a digital device.
22:14
I could have been reading a book.
22:16
I could have had a.
22:17
I could have had a physical book in front of me.
22:20
Right in front of my face blocking my entire vision.
22:23
While I sat there.
22:24
And that wouldn't be a crime.
22:26
But if that book was on a Kindle crime.
22:29
In fact, I could be driving along.
22:32
I could be driving very fast.
22:34
Eating a hamburger.
22:35
In fact, don't make it a hamburger.
22:37
Make it a steak.
22:38
I could have a platter with us.
22:39
No.
22:40
Better than a steak.
22:41
Let's make it a pig with an apple in its mouth.
22:43
And some gravy.
22:44
I could have been eating a pig on a platter with an apple in its mouth.
22:47
And I could have been playing the violin at the same time.
22:50
And I could have had a blindfold on.
22:52
And technically, that's not against the rules.
22:54
Because you don't have a digital device in your head.
22:56
And we'd add eating my bass while you drive.
22:59
Killed lives.
23:00
So anyway, I lost my eight points.
23:02
And perhaps, see, once again, here I've gotten hot under the collar again.
23:05
I'm sorry, dear listener, for getting a little, a little hot under the collar.
23:10
But I promised you two vehicular rants.
23:13
And there you go.
23:14
I'm going to end now.
23:15
That's my two.
23:16
That's it.
23:17
Okay.
23:18
One was about insurance scams.
23:20
And doing the right thing when you leave the note on someone else's windshield.
23:24
And then getting raped for it.
23:27
And the other was about whether or not perhaps the demerit system could be shaken up.
23:33
And whether it's entirely fair that I still don't have my eight points just because I glanced.
23:40
Had a motherfucking text message one day.
23:44
So a couple of interesting sciencey stories.
23:47
How many sharks do you think there are actually in Sydney Harbor itself?
23:52
We were jumping off a wolf deep in Sydney Harbor last weekend.
23:57
It was a beautiful day.
23:58
And my brother came down from the northern beaches of Sydney.
24:03
And we had a little picnic in a park and the kids splashed around in a beach.
24:07
And there are dogs in the water.
24:09
People are throwing frisbees for the dogs.
24:11
People are throwing balls for the dogs.
24:13
You know, lots of dogs splashing around dog sharks love dogs.
24:16
Sharks love the smell of dogs.
24:18
They love the activity that the dogs make that kind of flailing around.
24:22
And dogs attract sharks.
24:24
We all know that.
24:25
So anyway, we throw our three year old four year old and nine year old children into the water around the dogs.
24:30
As you do, they love the water as well.
24:32
And the sharks, you know, who knows any who I'm thinking to myself,
24:36
look, we're not out in the beach here.
24:39
We're not out in this isn't.
24:41
You know, this isn't the big water.
24:43
This is the little water of the harbour.
24:45
We're stuck by the coming all the way from the heads where the ocean starts in Sydney.
24:52
Into the harbour, under the harbour bridge,
24:55
and then all the way up into this little arm of the harbour,
24:59
where we currently are and where we're starting to jump off this pontoon.
25:03
And my brother says, do we have to worry about sharks?
25:05
I'm like, get out of town.
25:06
Get out of town.
25:08
Really?
25:09
Here?
25:10
No, not in the harbour like this.
25:12
So any who I tell this story to some friends of mine at work and they burst out laughing.
25:18
So I got on the show one of Sydney's leading experts on sharks in the harbour.
25:23
And apparently, I'm the only Sydney cider who seems to be unaware that the harbour is literally teeming with bull sharks.
25:33
You know, you're not going to get a great white and you're not going to get a tiger shark that teep into the harbour.
25:38
But you may get a bull shark.
25:40
And this scientist who I had on Dr. Amy Smoothish was saying, look, the shark doesn't want to kill you.
25:46
It just wants to taste you.
25:48
It's just curious.
25:49
It doesn't even probably like the taste of you.
25:52
It just wants to have a little nibble because sharks don't have hands, she said.
25:56
So they can't feel what you are.
25:58
They have to find out another way.
26:01
So I'm sure that all the people who've had their limbs ripped off by a vicious sea beast
26:06
will take that as some consolation to know that it was nothing personal.
26:11
He didn't even frankly like the taste of you, the shark.
26:14
He was just exploring.
26:16
So maybe next time I won't throw the three-year-old into the harbour.
26:20
That's a sign story number one for your sign story number two.
26:23
There's this Australian company, I spoke to the CEO of it, who make these drone guns.
26:28
And when I heard that, I thought, oh, it must shoot drones out of the sky, right?
26:33
No, no, something even cooler.
26:36
It jams the frequency that all drones use to navigate and to know where they are.
26:42
I didn't realize there's a particular part of the radio frequency spectrum.
26:45
It basically emits a light, emits an invisible light gun that immobilizes the drone.
26:53
And then the drone itself, it doesn't crash.
26:56
The drone is actually unaffected.
26:57
The drone is clever enough to know how to land safely even when all of its communications are blown out.
27:02
So this happened in the first week of January, three weeks ago.
27:07
It was the inauguration of the new Brazilian president, Willa de Silva.
27:11
And at his inauguration, there have been assassinations in South America of political leaders by drone.
27:16
They have these drone, they have machine guns mounted on drones and bombs down on drones.
27:21
They just come flying and blow people up.
27:24
So at the inauguration, de Silva's security detail notice four incoming drones unknown drones heading towards the new president at inauguration.
27:37
These guys are now equipped with Australian made drone jammers.
27:43
They fire them.
27:44
They work up to two kilometers away.
27:46
They fire them at the drones.
27:47
The drones completely freak out and just descend directly to the ground and land where they are and can be intercepted.
27:53
Isn't that cool?
27:54
We're also selling these things to the Ukrainians, which is helping them in their fight against Russia.
27:59
So I just thought that was excellent.
28:01
I want to leave you with an exchange that I had this week with a tarot reader who was on the show because apparently in Prince Harry's book,
28:12
he talks about going to visit a psychic, a medium.
28:16
And he says he was a little bit skeptical about this.
28:19
But nonetheless, when he was there, he felt a certain energy.
28:22
And the medium put him in touch with his late mother, the wonderful Princess Diana,
28:27
made God risk, risked her beautiful soul.
28:30
And she apparently said to Harry that she's very proud of him.
28:35
She's very pleased with everything he's doing, which is lovely, but that's what the deceased tend to feel.
28:42
Never met somebody who went to a medium, a clairvoyant or a psychic, and came out saying they connected me with my mother.
28:51
She thinks I'm a fucking failure.
28:53
She really does not approve of anything I'm doing.
28:56
So it's good that the data is so positive.
28:59
And we were talking about why is it that your young kids these days are so into the occult.
29:04
More and more of them are liking the witchcraft and the tarot and the clairvoyance and the mediums and so on.
29:11
And I spoke with a journalist who is quite open to this sort of stuff.
29:14
In fact, she does tarot herself.
29:17
And her name is Amal Awad.
29:20
And I was also joined by another journalist who's much more skeptical, Gary Nunn.
29:23
I thought you might just enjoy this little exchange.
29:25
I'll leave you with this.
29:26
Nothing after this.
29:27
Have a wonderful blessed week.
29:29
We'll be back with regular programming next week.
29:32
I don't know. I read tarot cards.
29:33
So I don't I don't call myself psychic like it's a skill set that you can use to almost like a mirror really.
29:40
You can use tarot cards because well, they're quite beautiful.
29:44
There's a lot of sort of archetypes in it and mythology and a lot of it has its own story and it's very relatable.
29:52
And that's what a tarot reader could be someone who is almost like giving you therapeutic advice.
29:57
And I think listening to Gary it was really interesting because he really tapped into what I think
30:02
draws so many people towards these things and it's pain, it's need.
30:06
And yes, like sometimes people are, you know, scammed and their grief is capitalized on.
30:13
And I completely agree that I don't think everybody thinks of themselves as being deceitful.
30:17
I think that there are charlatans, but I don't think everybody is one.
30:21
So I wanted to wrap up my entire journey, but with a bit more gravity.
30:26
So as a journalist, I was able to do research and I even traveled to the U.S.
30:31
and I attended a conference called Celebrate Your Life with an exclamation mark.
30:36
And it was very.
30:38
We're without an exclamation mark.
30:40
I just think it would have sounded a little bit despondent without the exclamation mark.
30:44
Celebrate your life question mark.
30:47
Exactly.
30:49
And it was it was very American, you know, it was very American.
30:52
Oh, yeah, we're going to celebrate our lives, man.
30:54
You got a grasp of your life and celebrate it, baby.
30:56
They're so happy like this woman came up to me and she had glitter stamps on her face.
31:00
And she was just like, yeah, I'm so Australian.
31:03
And I just don't belong here.
31:05
But, you know, I think what's really interesting for me is I always wanted to understand.
31:09
Okay.
31:10
So we have these layers of information that I wanted to distill, which is we can't completely say everything is focus focus or nonsense
31:17
because people are driving benefit from these things.
31:20
And how do we then regulate this sort of thing because every industry in life attracts charlatans.
31:26
I watch so many documentaries on scams and fraud and all this sort of thing.
31:30
And honestly, it infiltrates all aspects of our lives where there's a need.
31:34
There's always somebody who wants to capitalize on that need.
31:37
And I think the reason why psychics get such a bad rap is because people are so vulnerable when they go to a psychic.
31:43
You know, usually you go because you want clarity, you're feeling down, it does serve as a form of therapy.
31:49
And if it works, great.
31:51
And if it doesn't, that's a really bad idea.
31:53
But it's different to say that there are scammers in every industry and that, you know, the medical industry has scammers as well.
32:00
When you're talking about individuals who are bucking an institution or framework of knowledge, that is quite rigorous in its understanding.
32:08
Versus saying that there's this entire pursuit that is founded on full on principles that we don't know.
32:15
Yeah, but it's not this is where I would, this is where I think my book sort of diverges where I actually realized how much shame I had internalized about my interest in what we call the mystery.
32:26
You know, what's the unseen telling us sometimes and allowing room in our lives for the supernatural or the unusual or the things that we can't explain.
32:35
There's a lot of beauty in those things. I don't need to verify everything.
32:38
Now, I internalized that because I think the new age has taken so many existing traditions and just completely turned them into commodities.
32:47
And you know, there's a capitalist machinery at work here that is completely upended that industry in a way.
32:54
And I think it's it's actually to me really sadly taken existing traditions that are really beautiful and have cultural significance to people.
33:02
And actually just made made made fun of them. So you have all this mockery of Marie condo and yet she was drawing on a really important tradition to her with shinto tradition.
33:13
So do you see what I'm saying like it's not as simple as it's all just malachy crap and everybody's just trying to steal your money.
33:22
There's a lot of it's just not simple. It's such a diverse world, you know, the mystery, the supernatural and so many people are curious about it.
33:32
And I would honestly argue that I can't verify this. I haven't interviewed enough people for it. But say, you know, two thirds of people will do a reading either because they're curious or because they really believe in it.
33:46
And they feel like it will help them in some way. And then one third will just be not interested at all.
33:50
Gary, what do you make of what Amal was just just saying about this? Yes, there are Charlottesons everywhere, but clearly people are getting something.
33:58
Yeah, the thing that I zone did on that Amal was just saying was about the internalized shame for being a believer or being at least on the curious side.
34:06
And I think that a lot of people carry that shame, but we don't place that shame at people of faith, do we?
34:11
And as a secular person, I would argue that there is no difference between the unfeasible supernatural miracles that they believe in and the unfeasible supernatural miracles that believers of psychics believe in.
34:24
But what do we do with people of faith? Well, we gave them seats in the House of Lords in Britain for a very long time in Australia.
34:30
We give them tax breaks to run huge influential organizations, but with believers of psychics, we tend to be a lot more dismissive and a lot more.
34:39
We tend to laugh at them and see them as little more than entertainers. They're not afforded the same gravitas.
34:44
And I think it goes to that internalized shame of people worry, Prince Harry evidently is less worried about this.
34:51
But some people are worried that if they admit to it, their credibility and their intelligence and their rationale will be questioned.
34:59
And I reveal that in my book, because what I do with my book is I'm taking a bit of a different direction to what Amal has taken in her book.
35:09
I reveal the secret influence that psychics have over powerful people, so chief executives, world leaders and the police.
35:20
And also people like Prince Harry, people have got a lot of influence. I've got a lot of power. I've got a lot of money.
35:25
And they're also susceptible to the same human emotions as Amal was saying pain, fear, grief.
35:32
It doesn't matter how much money or power you get, you are just as susceptible to those things and the need to process them.
35:40
But I think that there is, one of the most interesting stories that made me change my mind about the people that seek out psychic counsel was the executive chairman of the biggest stop broken firm in Australia, BBY.
35:53
His name is Glen Rose Wall and he hired a psychic and paid her for four years to advise him on where to invest the company's stocks and shares.
36:04
She also advised him on who to hire and who to fire. So she'd say the spirits of predicting that Amal isn't going to perform very well next month, find a way of firing her.
36:14
He ran me.
36:16
Sorry, but this is what the spirits say.
36:20
So he ran that company that way, paying this psychic Naveen Rottinger for four years did not go very well.
36:26
It went bust. It was the biggest stop broken firm collapse since the global financial crisis.
36:31
And I reported on that story for the Sydney Morning Herald and he was put on the dark for corporate mismanagement in the liquidators report and the psychic was called as the witness.
36:40
And it gave me this new hunch that maybe the people that seek out psychic counsel aren't as I'd first considered like my sister, which was vulnerable.
36:49
And as a result of that, perhaps a bit gullible and naive, perhaps in fact, they were like him, which was powerful, authoritative.
36:56
And as it turns out, responsible for hundreds of staff and 61 million dollars of other people's money he lost by paying a psychic for four years and running the company that way.
37:08
Where I get tripped up here is there's clearly, when you speak to true scientists, not, you know, personality skeptics who want to be dismissive of everything.
37:18
But when you talk to Richard Dawkins about the majesty of the cosmos, the male roles arise to very name Richard Dawkins about the majesty of the cosmos.
37:26
You hear from someone who is overwhelmed with with mystery and wonder at the cosmos.
37:33
I just want to understand why they can't, like everybody does that. They talk about science.
37:37
And I don't know where having sort of some sort of kinship or interest with the un, with sort of the unseen world.
37:47
Well, have you read Carl Sagan?
37:49
Many years ago. I'm familiar with this.
37:51
I mean, he's not actually wrote a book about the importance of still having wonder and joy.
37:55
That's what I'm talking about.
37:56
When you're talking to people who devote their lives to understanding the how extraordinary life is and how majestic it is that we can have evolved from,
38:04
from simpler organisms, how extraordinary it is that we find ourselves in a cosmos that is knowable at all.
38:09
When you read Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan or any of these people, they are overwhelmed.
38:13
They are exuding so much more or for the majesty of the cosmos than any dime store psychic who's taking money and saying that they're connecting with a medium.
38:24
So it's not a, we're not in opposition. It's not like one side is devoid of wonder and the other has wonder is just how do you respond to the wonder?
38:32
Do you say there are enormous mysteries which we can't possibly for them.
38:36
So we'll do our best to understand the things that we can and all of those other things that we don't know we won't claim to have certainty about,
38:43
which is the scientific approach, or do you say, no, we can know that because the stars are in a particular shape in the sky,
38:49
that means that this is about to happen to you or because I draw this card, that's going to happen to you.
38:53
Like that strikes me as the position with greater certainty and less wonder.
38:57
Absolutely. So, sorry, I didn't mean to sound combative. I was, I was just the thoughts for covering out so quickly.
39:04
Part of my journey has been understanding. It's very, very dangerous to use psychics as a bandaid.
39:12
And that's essentially what happens in your sister when she was in her peak state of grief.
39:17
She knew she wasn't really getting anything out of that. It was just sustaining her, right?
39:22
Prince Harry sang he felt an energy. That's communion.
39:26
There's no energy in that room probably. It's just communion.
39:29
What happens when somebody looks at you and gives you their full attention? You probably start crying.
39:34
Hold your hand. One of them helped my hand and I realized it had been a long time since anyone had helped my hand.
39:42
And suddenly I just felt the human touch and it's very powerful.
39:47
Care. So, this is the thing. So, our vulnerability, no, it exposes us in this way.
39:51
Now, what I would say is, if anything that I learnt from my journey was I don't need psychics.
39:56
I don't need, but I did at one point. So, that tells me where I was at in my journey.
40:00
So, I agree with you 100%. There's a beautiful world around us that we should be invested in.
40:05
And the more time we spend listening to psychics, whether they're on YouTube or TikTok or, you know, the lady at the market store on Saturday,
40:15
we're not trusting that world that we're in. We're actually relying on an external world to show us the way.
40:22
And most of the time people can tell you everything you want to hear and you don't change a single behavior, right?
40:28
So, as someone who's read tarot cards before, I can tell you, they're only useful if the person on the other end is genuinely taking something away from it and implementing change through their own intuition.
40:39
So, I can't tell someone what to do. Like, I can only say this is what the card, the story that the cards are telling me is this.
40:46
I still don't even know why I can do that. I don't know what it is. It's just, but I would always, I don't do it for a living.
40:54
I don't take that responsibility. I also just really urge people if you have an interest in it and you want to find someone who really helps you, but don't once a year, that's it.
41:04
Don't go every month. A lot of people, they get caught in this loop of going to a psychic and it becomes this thing. It's like a hit.
41:11
And they feel, yeah, it's like an addiction for some people.
41:14
It becomes an addiction. Yeah, so it's very dangerous.
41:16
I completely take you take a point of my that the people are getting something out of this and there's that sense of connection.
41:22
There's that sense of, you know, when Prince Harry is saying that he feels an energy is not dreaming.
41:27
I mean, being very close to someone and sharing something profound and delving back into your, the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to you and could ever happen to anybody,
41:36
which is losing one's mother at an early age. That is going to stir up energies that feel, you know, quite unique.
41:44
But then the question from the person who's questioning the utility of the psychic or the medium becomes.
41:53
If the medium were there saying we're creating a special moment in this room by sharing with one another the trauma that you've been through.
42:02
That would be one thing, but that's not the extent of what the medium saying.
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The mediums claim to the mediums claiming to be doing something quite different.
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You