Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Todd Sampson - Bodyhacking Mastermind

Transcript

Todd Sampson - Bodyhacking Mastermind · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the show that doesn't deal in absolutes, that doesn't deal in blacks and whites.
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  So many shows, so many politicians, so many commentators, so much of your social media feed,
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  expects either your agreement or disagreement, either your furious love or your furious anger.
• 0:20
  I do not. I ask only that we give each other the benefit of the doubt, that we wrestle with ideas,
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  we reject, as well as those we think are right. Let's escape the dogmas, a conventional wisdom,
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  let's have conversations that straddle the cultural divide, and make us all just a little uncomfortable.
• 0:49
  Today on the show, a brilliant man well known to Australians, and one of the most elusive
• 0:55
  guests of this podcast ever. He's only ever appeared on three podcasts in his life,
• 1:02
  despite being requested as a guest many, many, many times. He doesn't like talking about himself,
• 1:07
  in fact, when I invited him on the show, and I had invited him on several times on different
• 1:12
  incarnations of various shows that I've done, he said, I'll only talk to you if we can talk
• 1:18
  strictly about the project that I'm promoting, and not about me, which I thought was quite
• 1:26
  endearing. Don't worry, we talk about him anyway, because obviously I'm not going to take instructions
• 1:30
  from my guests about what I can ask them. But Todd Samson is something of a national treasure.
• 1:36
  He's originally Canadian. He's really a documentarian. I sort of was trying to wrestle with how you
• 1:41
  would describe Todd to people who don't know him, and you'll hear me try to explain who he is to him.
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  With limited success, I suppose. But he first came to prominence in Australia as a panelist on
• 1:54
  one of Australia's most popular panel shows, which is called Gruen. And the panel show, it sounds
• 2:00
  a bit odd if you don't know it, but it's basically all about advertising. It's about breaking down
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  how advertisers and marketers manipulate us. But through that prism, it ends up talking about all
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  of the big things that Australia and the world are grappling with. So Todd, although he is on
• 2:17
  the panel as a sort of token expert marketing former ad man providing his insights,
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  becomes a sort of whimsical and insightful philosophical voice of sanity to Australians about
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  all of the things that we're dealing with. And this has been running for more than a decade now,
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  and he's become a household name as a result. And as an offshoot of his celebrity slash notoriety,
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  he has embarked upon a number of documentaries that he's made. He writes them himself. He produces
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  them himself. He essentially is interested in the brain, the body, psychology, sociology,
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  all of the things that make us who we are. And his latest incarnation of this is a big two-part
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  special, which is about to go to where on Channel 10 in Australia called Mirror Mirror. It's getting
• 3:09
  a ton of advertising in Australia. It's a big special event that they want all Australians
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  to sit down and to talk about and to watch and to wrestle with. It's about body image and the way
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  that we judge ourselves and the way that we are derailing our psychology with self-judgment
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  about our own physicality. I wanted to talk to Todd not just about that, but about his extraordinary
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  life. He climbed Mount Everest. He's one of those guys, you know. He did went all over the world
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  embedding himself in the most bizarre, different subcultures as part of his television show Body
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  Hack, which has been, you know, nominated for all kinds of awards that I won't go into. I won't
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  preface this conversation any further by simply saying if you don't know Todd Simpson, you should go
• 3:52
  and seek out some of these documentaries online. If you do know him, you will know it out and
• 3:56
  enjoy his conversation with me and the one and only Todd Simpson.
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  I try to stay out of the media until I sort of need to be in the media and once I'm in I'm all in.
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  Why is that when so many people at the moment have such a passion to be observed?
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  I'm primarily interested in creating contents with some sort of meaning or some sort of challenge
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  or and I'm less interested in being a sort of another voice of the cacophony of voices
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  that are often underqualified on a range of topics that should be left to the professionals.
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  So I stay out because I haven't worked in the advertising industry for seven years so there's
• 4:56
  no need for me to comment on that. There's people far more qualified than me and more relevant than
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  me in that space. And so when I'm making a documentary which I dedicate my entire life to for that
• 5:08
  time period, that's something I'm happy to talk about. That's refreshing. Given how we're all
• 5:14
  expected to have an opinion about everything on social media at the moment and given that also,
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  like my life is the exact opposite of that where I'm expected to have a range of insights into a
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  large variety of different things as a broadcaster and it is refreshing to encounter people who are like,
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  you know what, I'll do my thing and I'll let it speak for itself and I'm not going to have to,
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  it's not my job to break down lots of complicated different things in ways that everybody's
• 5:39
  going to understand. Like that is my job, it's not your job and it's good that you don't take it on.
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  Yeah, I think it is a kinder, softer shade of fake news and I've done it. You know, I did a,
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  I remember I once did I did a documentary called Life on the Line. Life on the Line was a
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  series about the laws of physics and how they impact us and how they're, you know,
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  they never changed regardless of your point of view and I did a series of experiments and I had
• 6:13
  a, you know, swinging ball come at me. I bungee jumped only using phone books attached to
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  bungee cords and I did lots of things and I remember at the end of that series, I thought to myself,
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  that is a really good, interesting series that should have been hosted by someone else.
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  Oh man, I've been there. I have definitely been there. Yep, I've had whole television shows in
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  the States where I'm like, I'm not right for this. Why have they got me here? And this is not,
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  this is not me. I don't know why we even threw, I even threw my hat in the ring here.
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  That's something that only comes with age, I think. I think when you're young, you don't
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  know yourself well enough to necessarily know what you're good at and what you're not good at.
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  So you try everything and gradually as you get a bit more mature, you understand what you should
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  be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, hopefully. Yeah, and I remember when I first started on
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  Groon 12 years ago and the lure and the gravitational pull of the ego and being on television,
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  people recognizing you and in the street and and in the first year, it is, it's incredibly charming
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  and luring. But by that stage, I had already achieved a lot of the things I wanted to achieve in my
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  life. I'd already had a career that I had decided to change and like, I had already, I wasn't my
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  40s, you know, I didn't grow up with that spotlight on me. It's a good time to get famous,
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  your 40s. But still, I can understand what it must be like for, you know, for someone who's
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  spent their entire childhood or, you know, the majority of their early adulthood in this spotlight.
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  Yeah, you mentioned Groon that for people who aren't in Australia is a very, very popular panel show
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  that you're best known for, or I suppose was the first place that brought you to Australia's attention.
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  The reason why you said that we can talk about anything is because we had privately said that
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  you don't want to talk about yourself. You just want to talk about your show that is about to happen.
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  And I thought that was that was quite sweet because I identified with it as well. I often find
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  myself in conversations with cousins or family members and I just pause and go, can we not talk
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  about me? I'm so bored of me. I live with me all the time. In isolation, I feel like I have an
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  overabundance of me. I'd be much more interested in talking about something else either you or something
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  completely abstract, like the nature of the cosmos and how big things are. So give people, this is
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  all I will ask of you in terms of putting yourself in context for people who don't know you. But since
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  almost half of my listeners are in the US, I was trying to think of how to explain you to them. I
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  would take maybe a bit of Tim Ferriss and a bit of John Oliver, maybe and a bit of, there is no
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  real, a bit of Ariana Huffington. I don't know. Who are you in an American context?
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  How to describe myself, not certain. How others have described me being in the public eye. I'm
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  fairly clear about that. So I remember one review, which I thought was interesting and slightly
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  obscure, but if Bear Grills had a child with Brian Cox, that would be me. Now, I liked that on a
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  number of levels. I liked the fact that Brian Cox would have figured out how he could have a child
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  and he would have unwillingly had it with Bear Grills. And the two shows being, you know, there are two
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  programs that they're doing being completely sort of opposite of each other. And in many ways,
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  that's the type of television shows I try to make. I have a super inquisitive mind as a child
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  and I kept that child like inquisitiveness and I'd always had an interest in science because I saw
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  science as a language that explained the world that I could actually understand. And then on the other
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  side, I had been a super adventurous kid and always trying to sort of get away from my home and
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  explore and all I wanted to do growing up on a small island on the East Coast Canada was escape.
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  And so I smashed those two realities together to kind of create this. What I'd like to think is
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  often adventurous smart television. Yeah. And if Americans don't know Brian Cox, then they can
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  substitute Bill and I, the science guy probably. That's good. I like Bear Grills meets Bill and I
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  or Brian Cox. So where did advertising come in? That was the result of my insecurity and fear
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  of living without money. I grew up in a family that didn't have money. It's a fairly typical story
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  in many ways. My mom was a check out girl at KFC and my dad worked on the factory floor of Coca-Cola
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  and neither of them had any formal education. And I, at a very young age, were you again, Todd?
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  I was in, I was on Cape Breton Island. It's the arc of life. I was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia,
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  get out. So Nova Scotia, so that all of my images of Nova Scotia, correct me if I'm wrong,
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  wild, windswept, cold, hearty, communal. Yeah. A lot of people have this idea in their mind when
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  I say that East Coast Canada of a red-haired, freckled, kid, frolicing in the rolling hills.
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  The end of being able to use the stemson land. Ammy would die in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
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  The ending of Nova Scotia is a former coal mining town that's under snow for six months of the year.
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  It's a tough but beautiful place, but you know, ammy would die there for sure.
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  Okay. So young Todd escapes and you say advertising was a backup plan or
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  I went to university. I studied a general degree and a general arts degree and then I didn't know
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  what to do with my life. So what do you do when you don't know what to do with your life? You do an
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  MBA. So I ended up doing an MBA and then one day the marketing lecturer, who I actually really
• 12:43
  enjoyed, she fell down a set of stairs and broke her back. And the result of that was they had to
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  get a guest lecture to lecture on her behalf. So I showed up at the guest lecture and it was a
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  creative director from an advertising agency and he spoke about imagination and creativity and how,
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  you know, one idea could have an enormous impact both commercially but also socially. It had the
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  ability to make change. He also clarified that arguably advertising is investment banking for
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  creative people. It is the one industry where creative people could make a lot of money. And so
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  I got really excited when I heard him talk and I remember I walked down and to the bottom where
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  the where he was lecturing and I nervously walked up to him and I reached out to shake his hand.
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  He was a bit busy packing his bag and I introduced myself and I said, you know, my name is Todd
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  Samson. I want to get into advertising and he just looked up at me, glanced up at me and he said
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  under his breath, good fucking luck with that. I love that story. I mean the fact that it begins with
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  somebody breaking their back. It's like a it's like a flashback in a Wes Anderson movie or something
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  how did you begin? Well, it all began when the actual lecture I fell down some stairs.
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  Oh my god, she broke her back and then anyway, very smart. I mean, it's so interesting that
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  you frame advertising that way because it makes me, I'm just remembering for the first time in
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  decades an exchange that I had with John Singleton who was Australia's greatest admin and who went
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  to my high school fort street and I was giving a speech at high school when I was in probably
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  maybe year 10 or 11 about something or that there were, you know, fancy alum who were there
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  for some dinner and Justice Kirby who was a high court justice and John Singleton who was
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  the great admin were both there and at Drinky Poo's after whatever the event was there was a sort
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  of a meet and greet type thing and Justice Kirby said, what would you want to do with your life
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  young man? And I said, I don't know, I want to go either into journalism or entertainment or
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  or advertising and he said, John come over here and he waved over John Singleton who was drunk,
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  of course, as he always was and Kirby said, give us a job, John, all the private schools,
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  they always look after their own, we're a public school, we have to stand up for public school,
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  kids, give this boy a job. So, Singer arranged for a job interview between me and whoever his
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  second in command was and they basically said, do you want to come on board as a junior copywriter?
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  And I was going to say yes and then I got a job offer, this was, I guess this was two years after
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  I'd given this speech and met them when I left school. When in my first year of uni I got a job
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  offer from the ABC to be an assistant writer on Peter Berner's new television show, back burner
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  and I moved down to Melbourne for six months and did that and that was the fork in the road between
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  advertising and entertainment slash media slash journalism. So, we all end up in the same place
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  through different routes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, John is a bit of a, John Singleton's a bit of a legend
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  infamous in many ways when it comes to the advertising business. I'm sort of glad you took that fork
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  and you took that other direction. Josh, I don't know what you would have been like traveling down
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  the advertising path. Yeah, I probably, I'd probably be less fulfilled and a lot more rich.
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  But let's talk about you. In fact, let's talk about the show directly and then we can
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  meander back to your other other other exploits. So, Mirror Mirror, this will come out on the day
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  that Mirror, Mirror debuts on the telly. What's the genesis of this? What are you trying to explore?
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  Well, body image dissatisfaction is a societal crisis. It's a crisis I have been part of.
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  It's a crisis I've played a role in in my advertising career, but I think the relevance obviously
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  jumps forward when you become a parent and you just see the world in which your teenagers live.
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  And so, I wanted to use my voice to discuss this, to start a conversation about it and I have to say,
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  it is an incredibly complicated, it is a very touchy subject and no one is immune to the
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  sort of impact that dissatisfaction has. And so, I thought, I'm going to make a film about it.
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  I'm going to make a film about how we see ourselves and and I'm going to do it through the eyes
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  and mirrors of some extraordinary people. And that really was the genesis. That's how it began.
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  And how did you figure out how to do it? What format to do it in? I mean, we can get to the
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  stories in a second, but I'm also interested in the mechanics and I think people are interested
• 17:56
  in the mechanics of how a television show gets made. Obviously, you have existing cred because
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  you're a celebrity and you've made other documentaries that have done very well. But when you go to
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  Channel 10, you go, I've got this idea. Or do you go to the production company first and go,
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  let's flesh out how this is going to look and what we really want to explore?
• 18:12
  No, I produce it myself and I write it myself. So, I carry around in my phone a series,
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  a number of shows that I want to make. I probably have 10 shows now that are in rough format
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  sitting on my phone. And I approach them at different times and some of them feel
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  right from me at certain times. And in this case, I had, as you know, I had just finished filming
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  a number of years, five years of an adventurous science documentary series called
• 18:45
  Body Hack, where I travel around and embed in different cultures around the world, you know,
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  with the, you might snipe the Iraqi snipers during the Battle of Mosul or in Palestine, in Gaza,
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  in the protests. And I embed with them and try to learn from them. COVID came and there was no way,
• 19:04
  I wanted to have a break anyway from that series. It was a successful long series. I think we did
• 19:08
  19 episodes. The one episode that we didn't actually make was I was in Rio doing Samba Dance when
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  COVID broke and had to be emergency evacuated. That's the only show I've ever filmed partially that
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  never actually went to air. But COVID prompted change. It prompted me to rethink what's next.
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  And I wanted to film in Australia, you know, I had no option, but it was my first time filming
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  a documentary solely really in this country. And so that, yeah, that was that's what got me there.
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  So I did, I went to 10 with the idea, 10 hurt it immediately. I could see the, the combination of
• 19:48
  excitement and fear in their eyes. And I thought, okay, we're onto something here. And it's two
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  parts. It's two parts. Yeah, it's, it's two nineties. That's big three. It's two feature films
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  basically. And it, it didn't start that way. Josh, like it started as what I thought we're going
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  to be two sixties. But the problem with doing a topic like body image dissatisfaction and body
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  dysmorphia and how we see ourselves in the mirror is that there's so many things that need to be
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  covered for that story to at least at least have a voice, a proper voice. Now the result of that,
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  of course, is you skate thin over a lot of things and don't have the opportunity to drop deep on
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  everything. But in many ways, it's designed like the social media that we're talking about.
• 20:34
  Yeah, and I'm glad you raised social media because let's, let's just touch on that. I mean,
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  I am needless to say as the father of four year old twins, somewhat ambivalent about what the
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  hell is going to happen when they start wanting devices when they're seven or eight or nine. And
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  I'm a fan of John Hyte and people in his circle who think that, you know, really children should
• 20:56
  not be comparing themselves. We should not be stoking the adolescent need for attention and need
• 21:03
  for peer comparison and self-judgment until kids are old enough to be able to psychologically
• 21:08
  handle that. And that that's probably late teens. So like at the very early as people below 16
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  shouldn't be on social media. And yet, of course, I know that the imperative to do so will
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  becoming much earlier than that to what extent is sort of adolescent social media a factor in
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  the concerns that you have about body image. Well, first, it's worth qualifying social media because
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  it's easy to blame social media for everything and the woes of society. But that's actually missing
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  the point. And it's actually because we compared. So the two things that come out in the film and
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  two things that we know from the science is that we have an innate desire to compare. And we also
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  have an innate desire towards beauty. Now corporations, organizations have realized that we have a glitch
• 22:02
  in our brain that they could exploit for profit and they've done that. The problem is originally
• 22:08
  social media was created by sophisticated adult minds addressed at adults. But that's not what
• 22:15
  happened. Those sophisticated adult minds have created a matrix. Some would say a matrix of
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  discontent of which our children live. And you know, in this country, when you think about social
• 22:26
  media, you think, okay, well, everyone's on. Yeah, everyone's on. There's 4.2 billion people
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  worldwide. And in Australia alone, we spend over 40% of our waking hours online. And a big chunk
• 22:41
  of that is on social media. So yes, it is the water and which we swim, but it's really the water
• 22:46
  in which our children swim. And that's a lot of the focus of the of the documentary.
• 22:51
  Hmm. I mean, and how do you balance what is good about aspiring towards, I suppose, a more
• 22:57
  healthy body like I'm, I've just finished doing a podcast for Nova, which was called The Rush.
• 23:03
  And each episode we looked at it was very similar. It's funny that we're talking right now,
• 23:08
  because the last episode just went to last, just dropped last week. And in each episode,
• 23:12
  I look at a way in which our brains are attracted to and addicted to and also repulsed by various
• 23:19
  rushes dopamine hits that our brains can get. So one episode's about sex, one episode's about drugs,
• 23:24
  one episode's about sugar and fat and so on and so forth. And in that context, I, and I'm
• 23:31
  sort of subjecting myself to each of these experiences as we go along, which sounds familiar to you
• 23:35
  from, from BodyHack, but for the, for the runners high sort of adrenaline, sorry, not a adrenaline
• 23:43
  endorphin episode, I went to a boot camp and subsequently lost almost 40 pounds, about 15, 16,
• 23:52
  17 kilos off my pandemic chubby weight to being pretty lean now. And I feel fantastic and I
• 24:01
  look better than I have in a decade. And part of that is vanity, part of that is body image,
• 24:07
  part of that is pride. But I mean, a person who is against fat shaming could also say that I'm
• 24:17
  playing into a narrative about the way that people are supposed to look and I was probably
• 24:21
  perfectly healthy before anyway. So should I not be proud? Well, you should be proud, but you just
• 24:27
  touched on so many different topics. Before, can you hold that last one about you and in your
• 24:34
  own body transformation? And I just want to put a full stop or at least a question mark, a squiggly
• 24:40
  line up top of the full stop, around social media and teenagers brains. Yeah. So what we know,
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  and I spent, as you know, I spent five years making a discovery science documentary series called
• 24:52
  redesign my brain. And that series was focused really on the revolutionary idea of brain plasticity.
• 24:59
  Metaphorically, our brain is plastic. It adapts to the stimulus and environment around us.
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  It's what makes us remarkable. And it's also what can make us incredibly destructive.
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  So what we know is that the brain of a young person doesn't fully develop until the mid 20s.
• 25:16
  So it's all there, but the front and the back or the side of the brain do not fully connect.
• 25:22
  So the goal for a lot of parenting is to hold back as much brain damage, especially when the brain
• 25:30
  is so malleable up until the age of 25. So if we can keep alcohol out of the way, if we can keep
• 25:36
  caffeine out of the way, if we can keep drugs out of the way, if we can keep those things away,
• 25:42
  it will help preserve that sort of adaptation and changing of the brain to become the person
• 25:48
  that we become. We should also keep social media out of the way, because what we do know is that
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  social media spikes dopamine and dopamine, which historically has always been associated with,
• 26:02
  you know, with love and with sex and sometimes with exercise is now associated with social media.
• 26:09
  So we need to be careful. But my personal opinion is that prohibition that didn't then well
• 26:16
  is not the way to go. And that the best way to help manage kids online is set some parameters
• 26:22
  and guidelines and jump in with them, because we are not going back. There is no reverse utopia
• 26:30
  that we're all traveling to. This is the world in which we live now.
• 26:34
  I mean, I take your point that we're not going back, but you know, when cigarettes first became
• 26:43
  widespread, one could easily have said, well, we're not going back to an era without cigarettes.
• 26:48
  No, but we are going to go to an era where we understand their use and their harms better,
• 26:53
  and we understand that there are contexts in which they happen. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised
• 26:57
  if in 20 or 30 years we look back at the way that we use devices today where any time we're
• 27:02
  feeling remotely bored, we pull them out of our pockets and we just start plunging our psyche
• 27:07
  into other people's comments and judgments and arguments. We may regard that a bit like we now
• 27:12
  regard smoking on an airplane. Like I can't believe that they didn't understand that there was a
• 27:16
  time and a place for that stuff. I'm not certain, Josh. I'm not certain that that will ever happen.
• 27:23
  I mean, I'm not certain we can equate. I mean, I like to. We can equate the behavioral change
• 27:31
  that smoking specifically had with the behavioral change that social media or arguably the internet
• 27:36
  or the mobility has had. It will be different in the future, but I think the progression is not
• 27:42
  going backwards. It's going to go forwards into new areas of connectivity, new areas of us
• 27:48
  reaching out with each other and weaving our worlds together. I wish it would go back to a
• 27:57
  meditative state where we would all be more centered, but I'm not certain that's going to happen.
• 28:02
  I mean, I'm very excited by the possibilities of the future in which we are all sort of
• 28:06
  nearly linked and there are much more efficacious ways of interacting with each other and we've got
• 28:11
  our augmented reality going on and I can tap the side of my head and I can bring up a conversation
• 28:15
  with you or with anyone else. I just mean that I think that we will have ways of prioritising
• 28:21
  our conversations that aren't reliant exclusively on grabbing our attention the way that the
• 28:27
  imperatives of social media currently are so that there will be hopefully other values that we will
• 28:32
  that we will elevate. In this analogy with cigarettes, it's not about maybe cigarettes is an
• 28:38
  imperfect analogy every analogy is, but it's not about winding the clock back. It's just realizing
• 28:42
  that an aeroplane is not a place for smoking and maybe sitting on the toilet doing a shit is
• 28:48
  not a place to get to parachute your brain into an argument that's taking place on the other side
• 28:54
  of the world about something that you have no relationship to, but that's not that's not
• 28:58
  lutter. That's not anti-tech. Maybe sitting on the toilet is a moment to engage with the great
• 29:05
  meditation that's going on amongst all people who are sitting on the toilet or something. Maybe
• 29:11
  there are other ways, other more sophisticated ways that we're going to be able to plug in. So I'm
• 29:15
  not pro plug in or anti plug in. I'm anti the way that we are currently allowing 22-year-old
• 29:20
  Silicon Valley software designers with skateboards in Menlo Park to be the sole arbiters of how we
• 29:27
  engage with tech. Yes, and that Josh is a big motivation for making the film that I just made.
• 29:35
  Because I think when you have awareness of the matrix in which we live,
• 29:40
  it allows you to better use the matrix. The point I was making is believing it's going to go away
• 29:47
  or artificially taking it away, thinking that you're able to protect yourself from the thing you
• 29:54
  live in. I think that's not the way to do it, especially with kids today. I think the way is,
• 30:01
  I think it's through understanding. I think it's through understanding conversations and being
• 30:07
  in it, not being outside thinking. I hope the future will be better because we see it through our
• 30:16
  own frame and we didn't have it. When I was young, my phone was attached to the wall, but my dad
• 30:22
  is 80 years old and he's on social media and I contact him every day because of that. And it's
• 30:30
  brilliant. But I see it going forward and not backwards, but I agree that it will be different
• 30:37
  as well. I guess it's the, I guess I just don't, I'm not as optimistic, perhaps as you are,
• 30:42
  that we have the capacity to stand up to the forces of the algorithms that are tugging at us
• 30:48
  without having an absolute timeout. Maybe not a total prohibition, but I mean, certainly,
• 30:55
  well, we would both agree that there's a prohibition at a certain age, right? You don't give a five-year-old
• 31:00
  an Instagram account. So at some point, you know, but unfortunately, Josh, many give them phones
• 31:07
  because phones is considered by many a modern-day dummy. So I see so many kids poke in phones and
• 31:18
  I even remember my own girls and we held out as long as we could, but we we fell to the onslaught.
• 31:23
  But I do remember the first time that Coco, my oldest daughter, when she was really young,
• 31:29
  tried to swipe our TV. Oh my goodness. And she just couldn't believe that it didn't move.
• 31:34
  You know, she was like, really frustrated. And when we were younger, you could see the
• 31:38
  swaparks across the TV, often try what we weren't home or, you know, what we weren't looking.
• 31:45
  I saw that with a magazine tide. I mean, it's like a cliché. It's like something out of a
• 31:48
  dystopian, you know, black mirror episode or something. But in a cafe before the pandemic,
• 31:53
  I saw a toddler with a magazine in front of her trying to swipe, trying to pinch
• 31:58
  to zoom in on the magazine and being confused about why the magazine didn't zoom.
• 32:02
  So what is your thinking then while we're on adolescents and kids in social media about how to do
• 32:08
  it? Because I mean, my understanding of 14-year-old girls is that they will continue to inhabit
• 32:14
  a space of self-judgment and peer comparison as much as they are able to. And therefore,
• 32:21
  if they have a device in their pocket that connects them to their bullies, their peers, their friends,
• 32:27
  their sources of gossip and sources of self-criticism, that will supersede whatever else is going on
• 32:34
  in their life if it's if it's available to them. How do you counter that? With difficulty.
• 32:42
  So a couple of things. One is setting, I think I mentioned it before, but setting some realistic
• 32:50
  non-lodied parameters around usage. Well, first of all, delaying usage for as long as you can.
• 32:57
  If you can do that, and you're able to do that, and the schools indirectly are not enabling by
• 33:02
  making them use their iPads, making them use their iPhone. But if you can do that, delay as long
• 33:06
  as you can, because the brain doesn't fully develop until the mid-20s. The longer we can protect
• 33:10
  it during that period, that's sensitive, adaptive period, the better. So delay as long as you can.
• 33:15
  If you get to the point where delaying is no longer realistic, then setting some guidelines
• 33:23
  and parameters, and one parameter we put on the girls is around time online. We try to limit the
• 33:28
  window, allow them to have the window, but specifically, we limit the window when the child's brain
• 33:35
  is most at risk. And here's what we know from the science. We know that when nighttime comes,
• 33:40
  and we know this as adults, we often feel more blue. We often feel a bit more sad or serious
• 33:46
  as nighttime comes. Well, in the child's brain, they basically switch off their prefrontal cortex
• 33:53
  towards the nighttime and live from metaphorically their amygdala, which is the emotional center of
• 34:01
  the brain. So they move from the rational prefrontal cortex to the amygdala, the emotional center,
• 34:05
  and this makes them really vulnerable emotionally, and it makes them vulnerable to bullying,
• 34:11
  it makes them vulnerable to comparison. And so we try to close that window as best we can.
• 34:18
  And then the other thing that I specifically try and do with my girls, my teenagers, is I jump
• 34:23
  into their world. So I'm with them often online. I watch what they're doing. I want to see
• 34:29
  their videos. I want to see their TikTok. I want to see who they're following. And I don't judge
• 34:33
  them. I ask them why. And hopefully over time with education, they will see the fallee in some
• 34:40
  of the things and some of the people they're following. Because the other thing we know is what we see
• 34:46
  on some level neurologically determines who we are and who we become. So curating a healthy
• 34:53
  environment around the kids in terms of what they see online is important. How old are your kids now?
• 35:00
  13 and 15. Right in the thick of it. Yeah, they're right in the thick of it. They were consultants on
• 35:07
  the film. It was really what bassy shocking. Two different things. Yes, of course they got a
• 35:14
  thing. They don't do anything for free at that age. Excellent. And so let's get back to body image
• 35:20
  then and how you think about the interface between social media and tech and the problems of
• 35:27
  of body image. So the body dissatisfaction, what we know is that the longer time we spend on social
• 35:39
  media, the more discontent we become, the more and happier we are. And the main reason is comparison.
• 35:44
  And the problem with comparison these days is back in my day, back in my day. Back in my day,
• 35:52
  you might compare to people on television. They might be sport stars or you might compare
• 35:59
  to people in magazines that you saw every once in a while that you got or you searched out.
• 36:03
  Today, our kids carry around that multimedia television in their pocket and they're constantly
• 36:11
  being bombarded on it. So they are comparing now more than ever. And the problem with that
• 36:18
  comparison, there's two issues. One, they're comparing to these people called influencers.
• 36:23
  And influencers are more relatable to people online because you think they're like you because
• 36:28
  they're not superstars. They're not. But often these influencers are the most augmented.
• 36:37
  They have not just with surgery, which is hugely popular, but also with filters. And you rarely see
• 36:44
  people for who they are now. So again, it is an education. It's just like teaching people that
• 36:49
  Photoshop exists in advertising. It's teaching people that most of what they see online is not real.
• 36:56
  I think when people hear that, they think well, yeah, duh. Like we've had this conversation.
• 37:02
  We know like people, I hear this a lot like, you know, you're underestimating how sophisticated
• 37:07
  media consumers are, especially younger people. Like, we're old, fatty studies. We're like,
• 37:12
  well, everything online must be real. But if you're 16, of course, you know that people are
• 37:18
  brushed and photoshopped. And you're playing with the media in this quite sophisticated and nuanced
• 37:25
  and meta and ironic way. Do you think that's true? I think there's one thing to know. And there's
• 37:33
  another thing for it to have any impact on your decision making. And that's through education.
• 37:39
  So there was a study in Germany where they actually put underneath, underneath all the print ads
• 37:46
  that this image had been altered. It was photoshopped. But the results, the levels of dissatisfaction
• 37:54
  still skyrocketed. Right. Because there's one, rationally, it's one thing to understand. It is,
• 38:00
  you know, obviously people are changing their photos. But what we really need to understand is
• 38:05
  what is that impact on our kids and on us? You probably know this, Josh. One of the reasons that
• 38:12
  Grun was, you know, so successful, this television show on the ABC was so successful is because it
• 38:18
  lived at the curtain on the world, on the matrix of which we live. But the people that are most
• 38:24
  susceptible to advertising are the ones that believe they're not. Like all levels of propaganda,
• 38:31
  if you think you're above it, you drop your defenses to it. And just because on a rational level,
• 38:36
  we think we understand how that world works. That doesn't change the impact that it's having.
• 38:43
  Funny, isn't it? Even when you, there's some political science research into the fact that you
• 38:48
  can't debunk a claim without reinforcing the claim that actually in many respects, you're better
• 38:54
  off not addressing an untruth at all because the mere repetition of the untruth in the process
• 39:00
  of debunking, it actually cements it more in people's minds. And that reminds me a little bit of
• 39:05
  that that what we consciously know and what we subconsciously or emotionally are drawn to or
• 39:10
  repelled from are two very different things. And I'm still confused about why people have different
• 39:19
  levels of focus on beauty and themselves. Like my partner Sean, he will notice a person's
• 39:29
  eyebrows being off. He will notice the crookedness of his own nose. He will notice like the most
• 39:35
  bizarre things, the bizarre to me, I mean perfectly normal to him. He thinks I'm a complete
• 39:40
  doofus for not noticing anything. Like he asks, we're talking about someone who we know whose name
• 39:45
  I can't remember and he asks me what color their hair is. I have no idea. I mean, it just I would not,
• 39:50
  I can't, I can't tell you what color, you know, my sister-in-law's hair is because it's just not
• 39:56
  something that lands for me. I'm just not hardwired in such a way that physicality is at a premium
• 40:03
  in the things that I'm valuing or noticing. But for some people it is. Do you think there's
• 40:07
  anything innate about that or is it that we've been raised differently or what? Both. So one
• 40:13
  of the scientists on my journey said something to me which really stuck in my mind. He said,
• 40:17
  genetics loads the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. And I think that is an interesting
• 40:23
  thought. You know, when we we all have these cracks and obviously we're all built differently.
• 40:28
  And for some reason, for some reason, environment can trigger things in some and not in others.
• 40:35
  And the slippery slope and you'll see it in the film, this all leads to high levels of mental
• 40:43
  illness. And, you know, in the film there's this young man who I'm not going to say he sounds
• 40:48
  like your partner, but there's an incredible focus on detail. He could remember everything about
• 40:54
  faces and he saw everything through this kind of a feature processing. And what we do know is with
• 41:02
  BDD or our body dysmorphic disorder, these people are stuck in feature processing, which means they
• 41:08
  see features, they struggle to see the big picture. And others see the big picture and have no
• 41:13
  problem coming in and out of those. Now, you may have that, but it never becomes something harsh in
• 41:19
  your life, but your environment, your social media environment, your advertising environment,
• 41:25
  your television environment could trigger that and make that into something much, much bigger and
• 41:30
  snowball that eventually into some form of disorder. That's fascinating. But many people, Josh,
• 41:36
  many people, it sounds like you're one of them, do not have. So we all have body image issues
• 41:43
  and levels of dissatisfaction. No one is exempt from that. But the level of which we how we deal
• 41:49
  with them and the action that we take, it varies. There's an interesting conversation that I try to
• 41:55
  have with my partner and I certainly try to have with my kids that usually doesn't work. And I'm
• 42:02
  not sure why not, which is along the lines of nobody else cares about this thing that you're
• 42:08
  concerned about in the way that you look or like nobody else is noticing it or nobody else is
• 42:12
  paying attention. And when I say that, I get pushback from people who are more concerned than I am
• 42:18
  about other people's opinions of them. And we reach an impasse at which I realize that I'm not
• 42:25
  actually articulating myself very well. What I mean is not that there's nobody who is paying attention
• 42:31
  to your own, the own foibles of your own appearance. What I mean is that if they are, you shouldn't
• 42:37
  care. And your life will be much happier if you choose to believe that nobody is looking at
• 42:43
  what's wrong with you. And I can't quite find a way to make that land because the person who is
• 42:50
  self-conscious about some aspect of their physical appearance is always going to be able to point
• 42:54
  to some example of other people who are also fixated on it or fixated on it in others or who might
• 42:59
  notice it in them. Do you have any solution to what that impasse is?
• 43:06
  You mean, you're, are you saying you're impasse to am I the first someone who is dealing with
• 43:14
  enormous insecurities that were probably triggered, that were probably innate,
• 43:18
  then were triggered probably by parents or by some level of trauma that they had in their
• 43:25
  lives and that manifests itself in kind of a self-awareness that is more acute than someone like
• 43:32
  you would have. And yes, I mean, I guess I'm not understanding what's not landing about the
• 43:36
  desirability of pretending that nobody's paying attention. But for them, people are paying attention
• 43:44
  and the person who's paying attention the most is them. And this is my point, and isn't that my
• 43:51
  nobody gives a shit about your bad eyebrows as much as you do. So just like nobody cares.
• 43:57
  But then they say, but people do care. I mean, otherwise I'll just walk around looking like I'm
• 44:02
  unkempt and people will judge me. Yeah, so I think it's happening on both levels, right?
• 44:08
  I think that the person who cares the most is them and they're projecting it that everybody cares.
• 44:13
  And so what I've, one of the things that I found in making this film with a number of the
• 44:18
  characters is that deep down there was some level of trauma. So if you imagine genetics is loading
• 44:24
  up the gun, some thing may happen in upbringing with parents or the way parenting happened, not the
• 44:30
  point the finger totally at parents alone. And then they enter school and then something. But almost
• 44:36
  everyone had some level of trauma. So the level of logic that you're talking about is in many ways
• 44:43
  beyond them because they don't see it. They see it through almost an irrational point of view.
• 44:49
  So when you put out the road, the clear path as to why A goes to B, they're going, I just don't
• 44:56
  see that because the issue they're dealing with is emotional. I'm not saying you're not emotional,
• 45:03
  Josh. I know you're emotional. No, you absolutely can say that. And you would have a lot of people
• 45:08
  agree with you that I'm a brain and a vat incapable of my robot. My robot brain doesn't understand
• 45:15
  human foibles. And then this gets us also into gender because this is something that is I think
• 45:23
  a self awareness of how one looks is one of the many characteristics of the gay community that I
• 45:30
  have never experienced myself despite being part of it. I'm the unkempt daddy of the,
• 45:38
  there's nothing remotely manicured or twinkie about my gayness. And in the same way,
• 45:44
  I wonder whether or not there's a gender divide here where the conventionally masculine bloke
• 45:51
  doesn't care about self image, but perhaps the preening metrosexual does and perhaps women do.
• 45:58
  Is there such a divide? Historically there was an even bigger divide than there is today.
• 46:04
  So the the fastest growing area of cosmetics now is male cosmetics. And surgery among men
• 46:11
  is skyrocketing. And what we do know is that there is without making a sweeping generalization,
• 46:18
  the research does say does confirm what you just said, Josh, which is there is a disproportionate
• 46:23
  amount of focus and body dissatisfaction within the gay community. I know that's no big surprise.
• 46:31
  But and it's interesting that we filmed a young woman named Tara. It's in the first episode
• 46:39
  and she's transgender. And her story was incredible because she talked about as she described it
• 46:46
  both sides of the fence. So as a male, she didn't fit in. She was slightly overweight on camp.
• 46:53
  She just she just didn't she didn't fit into the male world let alone gender dysphoria. So she
• 47:00
  didn't did she knew that even as a man, she there was a struggle for her. And and then you add,
• 47:09
  as she said to me in the film, gender dysphoria. And then you're like, whoa, okay. And then she as
• 47:15
  she says jumps the other side. And she goes the judgment on the other side was even harsher.
• 47:23
  Like it was it was she had her feet in both worlds and both were really harsh.
• 47:30
  That's fascinating. And I mean, my goodness. Can you imagine how difficult it must be if you are
• 47:35
  trans to try to get, you know, it's funny. There's a I was talking to a trans person a few years
• 47:42
  ago about the the Caitlyn Jenna coming out. And she was expressing concern about the extent to which
• 47:49
  the narrative around trans people in the mass media was even when they're trying to be supportive
• 47:55
  of trans people. It's always like, oh, look at isn't Caitlyn beautiful? Caitlyn's so beautiful.
• 48:00
  And also the trans woman in oranges is the new black whose name escapes me. She was on the cover
• 48:05
  of magazines. She's so beautiful. She's so beautiful. And this trans person was saying. She was
• 48:10
  saying, look, I've never passed very well as a woman. You know, I have always felt like I'm kind
• 48:17
  of an ugly woman. And I still look a bit masculine. And therefore it's a bit offensive to me to see
• 48:24
  all the celebration of trans people being framed around how well they're passing and how sexy they
• 48:30
  are as women. Can't we find our validity as as trans people and also as human beings outside of
• 48:38
  whether or not we happen to look like the gender that we feel we are. And I thought that was an
• 48:44
  interesting take. It opened my eyes to how stressful it must be to be constantly focused on
• 48:50
  your appearance when you have gender issues. And this was what you just said. There's an
• 48:58
  excellent documentary called Disclosure, which was an inspiration for me around trans exactly
• 49:02
  what you're talking about. But what you just explained was the reason I decided in the end to include
• 49:06
  her story. And her story's included not because she's trans, but because of this concept of passing.
• 49:15
  Yeah. Because some view. So there's two sides to that, right? Some view passing as nothing more than
• 49:23
  conformity to a beauty ideal that has been created by corporations and organizations to justify
• 49:29
  the need to have only two genders to sell huge amounts of products and services.
• 49:35
  Yep. And other people like Tara, they just, well, Tara's explanation, I just want to fit in.
• 49:43
  Yeah. And and it's an extraordinary story because you go, whoa, okay. So the beauty ideal is so
• 49:51
  powerful that this sort of this thing that we have created in advertising and media and you know
• 49:58
  this thing which I take from what you said. And some ways you consciously or unconsciously rebel
• 50:03
  against is so powerful that it pushed, it pushed Tara into getting facial feminization surgery,
• 50:11
  which is a nine hour surgery that we filmed, a nine hour surgery that costs $30,000 that's not
• 50:17
  covered by Medicare. Wow. It's an extraordinary story. It's a story I'm super proud to tell. And I
• 50:25
  know there'll be huge controversy around it. I know that. And and but it's a voice that I want
• 50:31
  it to have in the film because I thought that it's an important voice and a voice we're listening to.
• 50:36
  What do you make of the of the state that the gender is in in flux at the moment as the father of
• 50:42
  of teenage girls and as someone who through your work on body hack and elsewhere has sort of
• 50:48
  dialed up your own masculinity. These very conventionally masculine experiences that you've had,
• 50:54
  like you mentioned, you know, being embedded in Iraq and and so on. And yet we're at a moment where
• 51:01
  the gender binary is being disputed, you know, questions about gender being a spectrum, a certain
• 51:07
  anxiety and loss of and sort of ruthlessness of masculinity, you know, conversations about
• 51:13
  sexual picadillos in Canberra, well more than picadillos, sexual assault and even rape in
• 51:18
  parliament house. And the crisis of, you know, young boys not knowing exactly, you know, post me
• 51:24
  to world, how to deal with gender. I mean, there's a lot there, but do you want to start teasing
• 51:28
  open that crack? I think on some level, it's a huge question, Josh. I think on some level
• 51:37
  on a I'm going to say, I don't want to say superficial, but by the nature of a two hour film,
• 51:44
  it is superficial. We try to tease it apart in this documentary. And we do it to the framework
• 51:49
  of the beauty ideal, which is an ideal that is often fabricated and created and curated by
• 51:56
  corporations to make people feel insecure so they can sell them products. And that beauty ideal
• 52:02
  becomes a stereotype for the genders. And in some people, like Tara, do not fit that stereotype.
• 52:08
  And therefore struggle, often a lot of times with mental illness and often a huge amount of
• 52:15
  depression and sadness, you know, that comes from just not fitting into that. That has now been
• 52:19
  challenged. And I think it is being challenged more and more. And it's not as binary as, you know,
• 52:27
  pardon the public, not as it was in the past. But that doesn't, it's still the lag effect of
• 52:34
  corporations and structures in society, the lag effect to catching up to this. It's huge.
• 52:41
  And a lot of people are left in the wake, you know, of that change.
• 52:46
  I mean, it's a double edged sword. I mean, on the one hand, the lag effect is huge and corporations
• 52:52
  are slow. On the other hand, it's very easy for corporations who get spooked by online Twitter
• 52:58
  mobs and public shaming to jump all the way into whatever the latest fad is and start declaring
• 53:05
  things about, you know, trans women or women or, you know, there is no gender binary or whatever
• 53:12
  that hips. Yeah, I mean, I remember, I remember we covered it on groom, pink is profitable.
• 53:17
  Right. And I remember pink being used in everything, you know, at one stage in the marketing,
• 53:22
  because it was pink, pink wrapping, you know, or pink washing or whatever. Yes. So
• 53:29
  corporations are always sitting on the edge. Some of them with triple bottom lines that
• 53:34
  concerned about society, but they're built to make money. They're built to find the, the
• 53:38
  kinks. They're built to find the weaknesses that allow them to exploit, uh, often our mental
• 53:45
  states to sell us things, because what we do know is an insecure customer is a more profitable one
• 53:50
  for the reason that they think they need something to complete themselves. But when you talk about the,
• 53:57
  me, I'm best to speak for my own life and not on behalf of, you know, this massive, massive issue.
• 54:02
  But, you know, you mentioned about me doing these kind of manly things and going in the war zones
• 54:07
  and things. But, but my girls don't live, don't see me like that. Right. So in my house, it is a
• 54:13
  bit of a reversal or Naomi, uh, is the, is the, is the kind of dominant character. She is the,
• 54:20
  she, she is the alpha female. She's the alpha in the house. And, and I'm not. Uh, so I'm much
• 54:28
  softer. I'm much more with the girls and, and I'm into jet, jet likes makeup and, uh, I'm down
• 54:35
  with that. I'm like, okay, well, I, I want to understand your world as well. And I want to
• 54:38
  be a part of that and if I can help and if I can do things with you, then I'll do that. Where
• 54:42
  Naomi is no makeup, um, you know, she's not into how she looks. She doesn't buy brands. She doesn't,
• 54:49
  you know, she's, she's the opposite. So in my household, uh, I think a lot of people would be
• 54:55
  surprised thinking that I'm off doing all of these adventure things. But in reality, the hero of
• 55:00
  my household is Naomi. Mm. Mm. But do you feel a certain sensitive side that's coming out in
• 55:06
  your family life that is in contrast to or conflict with or compliment with the, uh, aggressive
• 55:14
  masculine side that's coming out when you're on the road? I've never felt that I fit into that
• 55:19
  aggressive masculine side. I've never felt that that's an ideal that I never wanted to live up to
• 55:25
  or, or, or be or, um, I'd never, well, why do you spend so much time exploring it?
• 55:31
  What was exploring which though? I suppose you're masculine side. I mean, a lot of body
• 55:35
  hack is about tapping into these extreme experiences of physicality, which are traditionally associated
• 55:41
  with masculinity. I don't know. I've never associated them with masculinity. I've never really,
• 55:47
  I saw a body hack as, uh, there are extraordinary cultures out there that exist and there's lots
• 55:52
  we can learn from them. So I'm going to just drop myself in the middle and and see how I go.
• 55:57
  And if you enter those cultures, as you know, as someone who does this as well, if you enter
• 56:01
  those cultures wrapped in your masculine cloak or you're overcompensating, you know, masculine
• 56:09
  mask, you're going to get nowhere because they're not, you know, they don't open. Most people don't
• 56:14
  open to that. They close to that. So, uh, yeah, as to the underlying question as to why I like to
• 56:23
  test myself in different areas, that completely comes down to my, my own insecurity.
• 56:32
  What is that insecurity? This is a combination of many things. When I was young, I always thought
• 56:38
  that I needed to, uh, to, to prove myself, you know, and start it with money. When I was really young,
• 56:45
  I, I just was so scared of not having money because I didn't have it in my family that that's all I
• 56:49
  wanted was money. I carried this insecurity around of being poor. Then, you know, I, I had success
• 56:55
  in my life and then I, I carried this insecurity around. I'm not good enough, you know, that it's,
• 57:01
  it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's temporary. And I, I remember, I remember I had spent my
• 57:10
  young adult life climbing, mountaineering. It was my passion. I did so much of it. And it's,
• 57:16
  I just, I loved the suffering and the extreme nature of it and the physicality of it and being in
• 57:22
  nature, all of that. And then I, I eventually decided to climb, you know, I guess, decided to
• 57:29
  climb a cliche in search of an epiphany. I, I, I decided to climb Everest, you know, when I was,
• 57:35
  my mid 20s. And, uh, and I did it. And I remember I stood on the top, you know, 8,850 meters. I had
• 57:43
  lost 15 kilos. The site in my left eye, I had an eaten in who I can't even remember how long,
• 57:49
  but I think I had a Mars bar for a week or something and I had very little to drink. I was totally,
• 57:54
  totally finished on the summit. And I stood there and I was lucky. I was by myself and I could see
• 58:01
  the curvature of the earth off the Tibetan plane and it was amazing. And then I remember distinctly
• 58:07
  thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? And the answer to that is fear. Is my own fear that I've
• 58:19
  been dealing with my whole life, you know, I mentioned some of them to you. And, and, and, and then
• 58:24
  facing those fears, I felt better. I felt better. But that moment in my mid 20s changed my view of,
• 58:33
  you know, of fear many ways. I started chasing it less overtly with physical things, although
• 58:40
  body hack did unfold like that. But it's only because of my own experiences. But I started inwardly
• 58:47
  trying to face my fears through meditation and through under frameworks of understanding like
• 58:52
  different religions or whatever that might be. I changed it from a physical pursuit to a mental
• 58:57
  pursuit and it's a pursuit I'm still on. Was it anti-climactic climbing male Everest?
• 59:08
  No, it wasn't. I stood. You had to think about that.
• 59:13
  Yeah, because it's because it is the highest point on earth, right? So there is, there is going to be
• 59:20
  an element of, you know, I've done it. You know, now there is an element of that. But when you're at eight,
• 59:26
  when you're at 8,000, almost nine, you know, nine vertical kilometers in the air,
• 59:33
  your ego is sort of pushed aside in the spirit of survival because you are a third of the oxygen
• 59:40
  of sea level. So you're dying every second. You're up there. I mean, you are not, you're not
• 59:44
  like adapting. You're dying. You know, one adapts above 8,000 meters. It's a physiological impossible.
• 59:50
  So everyone dies equally up there. So you're thinking survival. You're not, you don't really,
• 59:56
  you don't really realize what you're doing until you start trekking out and then they start laying
• 1:00:02
  things over your head in every village and making you chug a beer and then you realize. But that
• 1:00:07
  stage you're so pissed, you don't even know where you are. And did you, when you talk about
• 1:00:13
  reaching those, those heights of physical endurance, was, when you now reflect back with the lens
• 1:00:20
  of body image, have you been through periods where you were too fixated on your body?
• 1:00:27
  Yes, often on. I've always had a functional lens to my body because I was adventuring as a kid.
• 1:00:40
  You know, I was climbing sometimes three times a year around the world. So I always had a
• 1:00:47
  viewed my body not so much from the aesthetic, although nice to have, but from the function,
• 1:00:52
  because it became a tool for me. So I obsessed about that tool. Yes, I would train hard and even
• 1:00:58
  for body hack, what I would do is I would adapt my training for the adventure. So if I was
• 1:01:06
  embedding with the Iraqi snipers in Mosul, I knew that we would be moving low to the ground
• 1:01:14
  and carrying packs. So I trained myself in a safe environment at home to do that. And so, yes,
• 1:01:21
  I did become obsessed with the functionality of adventure. And the thing with adventure is it
• 1:01:27
  is a great mirror. You know, it is a great mirror. And because it can be harsh, it can be beautiful,
• 1:01:35
  it can be ego driven, or it can be, you know, sad in its reflection. I mean, the reflections of
• 1:01:43
  adventure and the the anticlimactic or otherwise nature of climbing Mount Everest, these kinds of
• 1:01:50
  things bring us to another aspect of social media, which I'd love your thoughts on, which is the
• 1:01:57
  what it's doing to our head to constantly be trying to curate our own existence.
• 1:02:03
  Yes. I remember I was backpacking around India not that long ago, not when I was a kid, but
• 1:02:09
  but once I was a grown-up with a couple of Aussie mates and we were in like cashmere in like a
• 1:02:17
  remote part of India and we were at this monastery on a hill which would climb up to before sunrise,
• 1:02:24
  where you could go and hang out. And I spent the most transcendental sunrise listening to the
• 1:02:31
  monks chant and looking out over the Himalayas. And I mean, it sounds like such a cliche that,
• 1:02:38
  you know, the middle class white guy going in the and finding spiritual fulfillment there.
• 1:02:43
  But I did. And at the same time, my two mates were scrambling all over the mountain.
• 1:02:51
  This was, I guess, pre-instagram. So it must have been about 10 years ago. We weren't taking
• 1:02:56
  photos on our phones, at least they wouldn't have been good enough. They had proper professional
• 1:03:01
  digital cameras and were scrambling all over it taking photos of the sunrise over the Himalayas.
• 1:03:09
  When we got down to the bottom later that morning, they were spending all their time comparing
• 1:03:13
  photos on each other's phones on each other's cameras. And I did realize like something has shifted
• 1:03:20
  here in our relationship to reality that they're comparing their artifacts of an experience that
• 1:03:28
  they didn't actually have with each other. And I have nothing to show for my experience, but I
• 1:03:34
  actually had the experience that their photos will make people think that they had, but they
• 1:03:40
  didn't because they were too busy taking the photo. And I use that as a as a marker in my in my
• 1:03:46
  brain now for what we're almost all doing almost all of the time. I mean, back then it only happened
• 1:03:52
  when you were climbing up before sunrise in a to look at a cashmere sunrise. Now it's happening
• 1:03:58
  when you order brunch and you're as fixated on Instagramming it as you are and actually
• 1:04:05
  tasting it. Where's this all going? Yeah, I mean, it's a little sad, isn't it? When I climbed
• 1:04:11
  ever there were no, you know, phones. I wasn't able to do any of that. I just basically had a camera
• 1:04:18
  which I ended up losing and I do have a photo from the summit, but I just experienced it for what
• 1:04:25
  it was. But in fairness, I wrote everything because I'm a diary keeper. I keep it. I diary my dreams,
• 1:04:32
  I diary everything. I write everything down. So I did keep it, but I would not publish that.
• 1:04:40
  And I don't publish it. I tell you, moving to Australia was what I did when I was, I've been here
• 1:04:48
  in my 20s. I moved to Australia. And in some ways, this society, although it's changing,
• 1:04:55
  is really, really good for what we're talking about or better than the American world I lived in
• 1:05:02
  in Canada. Because in Canada, when you tell someone you climbed or in America, you tell somebody
• 1:05:08
  climb Mount Everest, they often will jump on that and expect some sort of heroic story
• 1:05:17
  or they see you through the lens of this achievement of climbing the tallest, the symbol of success
• 1:05:26
  where in Australia, you tell someone you climb Mount Everest, they look at you and they're under
• 1:05:31
  their breath, they're thinking, you fucking close for more on. You just see that you can just see
• 1:05:41
  in their eyes. So you don't tell anyone because it's one of the ways of really turning someone off
• 1:05:48
  because we have this sort of psychological thing around tall poppy syndrome.
• 1:05:53
  That's very interesting. I mean, I actually, I even have a teasing moment in my
• 1:05:57
  nova podcast about people who climb Mount Everest on the on the basis of like, you know, it's
• 1:06:02
  almost the most childish way to achieve something. It's like a, it's like an eight year old
• 1:06:07
  goes like, I want to do something really big by literally climbing to the tallest place
• 1:06:11
  on the on the planet. And I think there's a part of that sort of cynical attitude towards
• 1:06:16
  feats of any extreme achievement in Australia. It's definitely, it's definitely literal.
• 1:06:23
  Like, I mean, time where I happen to, I mean, it does, I have to swallow. It's not like, you know,
• 1:06:29
  it's not like climbing Mount Everest and you're just swallowing it. But for me, ever was,
• 1:06:34
  you know, it was a series of mountains of which that one was not the least interesting because
• 1:06:40
  the altitude makes it interesting from a survival perspective. But it's certainly not the most
• 1:06:45
  difficult. Yeah, right. But the point you're making is these days, it's the equivalent of taking
• 1:06:52
  your journal and then publishing it. Or as you said, not living in the moment, but capturing that
• 1:06:58
  moment and publishing it. This is one of the things I try to do with my kids is when we're on
• 1:07:05
  holiday, I try my best to get them to put down. Don't see the sunset through the phone. See it to
• 1:07:12
  your eyes. But the people that need to take accountability for that are the companies that are
• 1:07:22
  creating these social share because we know that our brain, it, it, it, it, it, lodges images,
• 1:07:30
  visual. We process them 60,000 times faster. It's in the film. We talk about this 60,000 times faster.
• 1:07:36
  We remember more of what we see than what we read or what we hear. And so these companies that
• 1:07:41
  create these platforms know that. And so they just pump us with these rewards. These sort of dopamine
• 1:07:47
  hitting rewards over and over again, which then encourages us to do more and more and put more and
• 1:07:52
  more on. And the point I was making earlier about the future is I believe these companies may come
• 1:07:58
  and go. I believe Google potentially Facebook, we will move on to other platforms. You know, we,
• 1:08:05
  but what doesn't change is the fundamental behavioral change that exists underneath them.
• 1:08:11
  The structures and brands themselves will come and go.
• 1:08:16
  That's interesting. I mean, I think what's going to have to change is the,
• 1:08:20
  the sole measure being the amount of time that we're spending on these websites, like the
• 1:08:25
  funding making, the funding model has to change because as long as they're, as long as they're
• 1:08:30
  bottom line, it's tied to how long we spend on the platform. Any, I mean, the algorithm is going
• 1:08:36
  to be maximized to try to enhance our time on site. And we are obviously going to be more engaged
• 1:08:42
  in content that extremifies our emotions that either reinforces what we already believe or demonizes
• 1:08:48
  what we don't, what we disagree with or gives us something aspirational to look at or gives us
• 1:08:53
  something that, you know, something that triggers us, something that creates a little flutter in our
• 1:08:56
  tummy or in our soul or in our mind. Those are the things that are going to keep pulling at us,
• 1:09:02
  not cold, reason, hard facts, boring reality. And as long as the incentives are misaligned like
• 1:09:09
  that, I think whatever you replace Google and Facebook, Facebook with is going to be corrosive
• 1:09:13
  to our psyches. We have to find a way of aligning what is true and what is human with what is
• 1:09:20
  capturing our attention online. I mean, I personally believe that we need to be protected from
• 1:09:25
  ourselves. And I do believe regulation in this area is as I believe in advertising, you know,
• 1:09:32
  I think we all need protection. Because as we said, right at the beginning of this conversation,
• 1:09:38
  the problem is within us. It's the innate tendencies that we have that are being exploited.
• 1:09:43
  But focusing on the people that are exploiting them is one thing. But it doesn't change often the
• 1:09:52
  tendencies that are getting amplified that exist within us. So in many ways, I do think we need
• 1:09:57
  protection from ourselves. Now, once you start doing that, of course, then everybody starts thinking,
• 1:10:02
  oh, are we going to be living in an anti-state? And, you know, Australians are already living in
• 1:10:06
  an anti-state. But I think left to our own devices. Lord of the flies. Let's come back then, Todd,
• 1:10:15
  and we can wrap up with this sort of element about my losing weight and my, you know, bootcamp
• 1:10:25
  challenge and my pride in the way that I look and what the healthy, like what do you make of,
• 1:10:31
  for example, the fat acceptance movement? So it is worth just caveating everything I'm about to
• 1:10:39
  say. As I am an able-bodied white thin male that doesn't get sneered at when I eat pizza in
• 1:10:48
  public and I can pretty much buy whatever I want without eyes on me. I think fat phobia is a massive
• 1:10:59
  issue in society. You see the opening of the film, we start with a series of kids in a kind of
• 1:11:05
  research format where we have two Barbie dolls. One Barbie doll is thin, the normal Barbie doll,
• 1:11:10
  the other one we made bigger. And almost bar two kids. A hundred percent of the kids
• 1:11:17
  went asked, which one do you think is bad? Which one do you think is lazy? Which one do you think is
• 1:11:23
  mean? Nearly all of the children from ages three to 11 said the bigger doll. Wow. And half of those
• 1:11:34
  kids have never been on social media. That's interesting. Yes. Is a massive issue in society.
• 1:11:45
  And it's an issue that we often don't talk about and one of the reasons that we discuss it in the
• 1:11:50
  film is that language is difficult. Obesity you need to put a disclaimer on it. Fat some people
• 1:11:56
  like and don't like. The concept of being overweight and something being inherently wrong with that
• 1:12:02
  is rarely challenged. Yeah. The medical system often views or filters its diagnosis through
• 1:12:10
  the lens of obesity, through the lens of BMI, which was created by a scientist, by a mathematician
• 1:12:16
  hundreds of years ago before computers were invented. So we live in a world that you know the part
• 1:12:24
  of that matrix is fear of being fat or fear of being bigger or or or or or fear of what that does.
• 1:12:32
  And when we that is ingrained in us from our parents from our schools, it is possible. One hundred
• 1:12:39
  percent it is possible to be bigger and healthy. Is that true or is that a politically correct thing
• 1:12:47
  that we're supposed to say? No, that's absolutely true. You can be fat and as healthy. I mean,
• 1:12:52
  obviously there's a bell curve, right? So there are going to be such as saying thin is inherently
• 1:12:57
  healthy. And we know that that's not true. Yes, that's not true. So you can be thin and
• 1:13:01
  unhealthy. I mean, so a fat person can be fat and healthy, but it matters what you are. I just
• 1:13:07
  want to make sure that we're not playing with words here. A fat person can be healthier than a
• 1:13:11
  thin person. But in aggregate, a fat person is going to be less healthy than they would be if
• 1:13:18
  they weren't fat. And every other variable was held. Okay, so what it comes, well, not
• 1:13:25
  that's not true. It is possible to be fat and healthy. It is possible. But not as healthy as you
• 1:13:31
  would be if you weren't overweight. Yeah, but so how do you measure health, right? And that's part
• 1:13:36
  of the that's what comes up in this film is it's often through the lens of BMI, which then says
• 1:13:40
  zero beast, which then you know, based on. No, but isn't it true that like heart disease and
• 1:13:44
  cancer and but you cannot, but it's important, Josh, not to confuse correlation with causation.
• 1:13:51
  Okay, so there no doubt is a correlation between being fat and certain diseases. Yes, it's
• 1:14:00
  of course, but being fat doesn't like there are plenty of bigger people that are considered fat
• 1:14:07
  based on BMI that are healthy. Yeah, I mean, people look BMI has its own problems and we don't
• 1:14:13
  need to get going to that. I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger is obese, so according to BMI statistics,
• 1:14:17
  right? So, you know, anytime you're working out, you're the BMI is going to be off and you might,
• 1:14:22
  you know, you know, but failing I guess I'm torn between on the one hand, the desire not to fat shame
• 1:14:29
  anybody. People should be allowed to be whatever size they want to be. On the other hand,
• 1:14:33
  noticing, for example, that in the United States, there's been very little public health
• 1:14:39
  information during the pandemic about the importance of eating well and losing a bit of weight and
• 1:14:44
  something like more than 80% of COVID deaths among people under the age of 70 are people who are obese
• 1:14:50
  and it's not something that we talk about. It's considered that it bumps up against fat shaming
• 1:14:56
  and I'm just wondering if there's a needle to thread between not wanting to fat shame people,
• 1:14:59
  but also not wanting to be full of shit about the fact that ideally, if you're overweight,
• 1:15:03
  you'd probably be better off if you lost some weight. I think it's, I think the focus should be
• 1:15:09
  on functionality and health, right? So, I think that you can, I mean, look at some of these,
• 1:15:16
  I don't know, it's a great example, but I remember these, I went and embedded with the sumo
• 1:15:22
  wrestlers in Japan and by most measures, they were healthier and fitter than me,
• 1:15:33
  by most measures. But this lifestyle of overeating to that level is not going to be healthy in
• 1:15:40
  the long run, but if you measured by their physical ability or their functionality, they were much
• 1:15:46
  healthier than me. And not all of them were fat as we would see fat, some of them were just bigger,
• 1:15:52
  right? Yeah, interesting. It's a topic that I think is, again, as you mentioned, it's not
• 1:16:00
  talked about because of the risks of talking about it. And you know, one of the things that we
• 1:16:05
  talk about in this, and I know this is going to send a lot of people perplexed, is we talk about
• 1:16:10
  set point. And the controversy around set point, that the hippocampus predetermines like a thermostat
• 1:16:18
  in our brain, predetermines what our set point is, bar a few degrees on each side. And that open,
• 1:16:27
  so the dieting is basically opening a window of which your thermostat will readjust eventually
• 1:16:33
  to your set point. And that dieting does not change the set point. The only thing that changes the
• 1:16:38
  set point is someone who kind of works on the dial, a mechanical. And in that case, we looked
• 1:16:44
  at bariatric surgery. And so we explored it from both sides. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay,
• 1:16:51
  well, I'm going to let you go here, but I just want to wrap up with it with any future thoughts
• 1:16:56
  about the way that we can kind of ensure ourselves against dysfunction in how we think about ourselves,
• 1:17:00
  how we can be gentler with ourselves. Awareness? So I know it sounds obvious, but having a better
• 1:17:09
  just like understanding how advertising works, it's also understanding the details of how the
• 1:17:15
  other parts of the matrix, social media, how this all works, and teaching kids at a young age,
• 1:17:21
  one would argue that media literacy today is as important as the other disciplines we're learning
• 1:17:27
  in school because that's we need to try and make behavioral change because we know that most
• 1:17:33
  corporations are focused. They're focused on some level on making money, although I have to say
• 1:17:37
  some are becoming more responsible with triple bottom lines and trying to do their part. But we as
• 1:17:43
  parents can take it on to help educate and teach our kids about the world in which they're in.
• 1:17:49
  And I think a big part of that is getting in with them and understanding it, trying to understand
• 1:17:54
  through their eyes. Todd, it's great to talk to you. Mira Mira is on Channel 10 Wednesday night
• 1:18:00
  and then Wednesday second follow up. It's Thursday night. So they're back to back. Back to back.
• 1:18:05
  Fantastic. Come back anytime and we'll explore everything else that you've done with your life.
• 1:18:09
  We won't talk too much about you. It's a relief.