Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / The Best Of Vol. 2: Andrew Denton, Tim Flannery & Ana Marie Cox

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The Best Of Vol. 2: Andrew Denton, Tim Flannery & Ana Marie Cox · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  I hope you're having a pleasant holiday. I hope you are having a holiday. I'm not this
• 0:09
  week. I'm broadcasting, but next week I get to go to New Zealand and visit my family
• 0:14
  which will be lovely. We've selected three of the best exchanges that I've had over
• 0:20
  the past 12 months with three of our favourite guests and we've hand plucked them gently
• 0:26
  to drop them into your earholes. This is the second of three best off episodes over
• 0:30
  the holiday period, Andrew Denton Tim Flannery and Anna Marie Cox. Andrew Denton is up
• 0:36
  first, one of the most celebrated and brilliant Australian comedians and writers. He's been
• 0:43
  a fixture of Australian television and radio for decades and has more recently become
• 0:49
  interested in the right to die movement, the euthanasia movement in Australia. He's an
• 0:55
  absolute joy, a towering intellect and wildly funny. Please enjoy this best off episode
• 1:01
  kicking off with Andrew Denton.
• 1:04
  What happened to your dad? My dad was, had been probably for the last seven or eight years
• 1:20
  of his life. Longer probably, the last decade very unwell. He'd had heart attack, he'd
• 1:25
  had heart surgery, he had lots of stuff going on and eventually his body really packed
• 1:31
  in and he went into our local hospital which is fine, they did all the right things but
• 1:39
  it was congestive heart failure and as another doctor described it to me many years later,
• 1:46
  it's a bit like being water-borted, it's a pretty nasty way to go and he was given
• 1:51
  pump full of all the drugs but my sister's and I, we didn't talk about it for many years
• 1:57
  but we've talked about it since and all I can see as I speak now is him lying there and
• 2:02
  just moaning and spasms of pain and twitching and it was very shocking to see and you walk
• 2:13
  out of that, you don't think well that was wrong, you think well that's how it goes and
• 2:19
  that's the hospital and they know what they're doing and I'm sure they did the best they
• 2:24
  could. You're so because dying and particularly when it's your parent and in my case it was the
• 2:34
  first death I've been up close to because it's such a profoundly shocking thing and you find
• 2:42
  it very hard to process and you're utterly disempowered in that situation so yeah watching Dad die
• 2:51
  was will always be with me and my sisters and it was, it was not good and it could have been better
• 2:59
  I now know. Hell. Well, funnily enough I was being interviewed by 60 minutes some years ago,
• 3:08
  Liz Hayes and she asked about my dad and she said what did he think about you then? I said I
• 3:17
  don't recall us talking about it at length but I would imagine her supportive. She said he was.
• 3:22
  I interviewed him on the today show back in 1986 and here's a tape of it. Oh wow. Was it a
• 3:27
  beta max or a DVD, a YouTube clip? No it was actually it was it was pigeons before me.
• 3:35
  The tiny pigeon there. That's right. No it was a cave fainting with a tic tic tic under
• 3:42
  and yeah dad was a very well-educated man who knew his own mind. I put it really well,
• 3:56
  it's very articulately he said you know what is euthanasia mean? It's two Greek words and which
• 4:02
  together mean good death and it means not dying in a well-repainting and you know I wish that
• 4:09
  could have been extended for my father. I think if voluntary assisted dying which is for those
• 4:14
  that don't know what it is, it's a law which enables people who are eternally ill. If they meet
• 4:20
  certain criteria which is having six months or less to live or 12 months if it's a neurodegenerative
• 4:28
  disease like motor neurone disease, you can legally be prescribed a life ending draft which you can
• 4:36
  choose to drink and if you do drink that then you will die peacefully and quickly at a time if
• 4:43
  you're choosing with the people you want around you which is different to how my father died which
• 4:48
  was in pain, drugged up in a hospital with us watching. Have you read a Tugawanda's book Being
• 4:56
  Mortal? Yeah. Which is a he's a physician and writer and in the States and it's a beautiful
• 5:04
  meditation on how screwy our Western relationship to death is. It's not specifically about
• 5:10
  euthanasia but about the entire medicalization of the process around dying and the the detachment
• 5:16
  that we have from the sort of gritty organic familial reality of the way that death has traditionally
• 5:22
  been experienced. Do you incorporate that into your thinking about euthanasia? This broader question
• 5:29
  of what we're doing when we're dying. Yes, in as much as, I mean not in that spiritual sense,
• 5:35
  although it doesn't mind me, what somebody said to me a couple of years back which is in Victorian times
• 5:42
  they talked about death all the time and never about sex and now it's the other way around.
• 5:48
  In as much as and I know this to be true from so many people who I have got to know who've
• 5:54
  gone through this process that look it's one of the things the Catholic Church which attempts
• 6:01
  to own dying who are the significant opponents of assisted dying. They paint this picture that
• 6:08
  the right way to die as a natural death surrounded by a Christian love and what they refer to
• 6:12
  as supernatural warmth which is a hell of an expression and maybe hell is in the right word.
• 6:18
  And that is, I remember Geraldine Duke who is fairly religious and she used to, I went on
• 6:25
  compass and she talked to me about, do you think there are certain rights around dying? Absolutely
• 6:32
  there are and some of them, whatever gets you through the night is John Lennon used to say,
• 6:36
  I think that Christian view of dying that it's a time of spiritual growth is very important
• 6:42
  to those people. What I've seen with voluntary assisted dying is that there's no less of that
• 6:48
  that those last moments, those farewells, the ability to be truly in that moment with the person
• 6:57
  you love is very very powerful and and people go to it their own way. One man in Victoria who
• 7:08
  chose voluntary assisted dying did something which perhaps you or I would find counter-intuitive,
• 7:15
  he didn't want his family there when he died and he said, I don't want their love holding me back.
• 7:23
  It's such a hard thing to do, it's so hard to do and in this podcast there's one episode where
• 7:31
  interview three people who each have the medication and one of them his name is Peter Jones and he
• 7:39
  was a musician, a professional musician, very dry sense of humour and when I was talking to him,
• 7:47
  I was keenly aware he'd set the date and it was about 500 hours hints from my move going to talk,
• 7:53
  it was only a couple of weeks and I'm glad you did the maths there because I was thinking 500
• 7:58
  divided by 24 and listened to the next 30 seconds and in the course of our conversation
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  I only realised afterwards that there was something that he really needed to talk about and he
• 8:12
  asked me a question and this is burnt into my soul. He said he had one daughter who was the love of
• 8:22
  his life and he said I read about assisted dying and how it's described as this kind of
• 8:30
  come by our moment and it's all very lovely and he said but I'm not so sure I think it's
• 8:35
  I think it's something darker than that and how and he basically said how am I going to say goodbye
• 8:39
  to my daughter because she's I love her more than anything and she's going to lose me I'm going to
• 8:43
  lose her and we had to do it by Zoom and I just wanted to reach through the screen and hug him
• 8:51
  because I got the pain I got the pain and you know it was many years after Dad died that this
• 8:59
  thought suddenly came into my head I thought gee that was hard for us but what was it like for him
• 9:05
  to know as we all must to know that you are going to say goodbye to everything you know and everything
• 9:12
  you love and I remember walking out of the hospital when Dad died it was a perfect blue mountains
• 9:18
  autumn day the kind of day he and I live for I remember distinctly thinking the words I spoke
• 9:27
  them to myself I looked at this blue sky and I thought you don't get this anymore you don't get
• 9:33
  the sky you don't get the sun you don't get the grass you don't get to play anymore and so to go
• 9:41
  back to this to Peter Jones I think everybody reaches the moment particularly when you know when
• 9:50
  the moment is going to be in their own way for some it's deeply spiritual and for others it's I don't
• 9:56
  want the family there because I don't want their love holding me back it's hard so part of the pushback
• 10:01
  to voluntary and so just to clarify the people the first season of your podcast better off Dad
• 10:06
  was about five years ago and you were looking at some of the jurisdictions where these laws have
• 10:11
  been introduced like the Netherlands and Belgium and so on and then the new season which is which is
• 10:16
  just being released now is about Victoria's experience which is a state in Australia that has
• 10:21
  legalised voluntary assisted dying and I mean part of the criticism of this is the slippery slope
• 10:28
  sort of argument about what about these edge cases you just said when the person knows that it's
• 10:33
  their time my dad's starting to get dementia I had his sister is a doctor you know I'd be lying
• 10:43
  if I didn't sometimes think about his mother who ended up in almost a vegetative state as racked
• 10:50
  by Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and schizophrenia and I suppose our conversations at the time were
• 10:59
  here long before he knew that he was going to end up with dementia he was saying that's not
• 11:04
  something that I want to yeah end up living like that's not a life that I think is worth living
• 11:10
  anymore now he's not going to be in a position to make that decision at some point but at the time
• 11:18
  he gets to that state he's no longer he would no longer be eligible under any any realistic regime
• 11:24
  yeah so the critics of these laws say well if not why not and if so then you're opening the
• 11:30
  gate to people who aren't really informed about what they're doing to take their own lives
• 11:34
  and then you're normalizing suicide yeah well got there's many things there first of all I just
• 11:40
  want to address the I this expression slippery slope it is used in the same way as the expression
• 11:46
  fake news is used it's it's like a flame thrower it's like it's and it's essentially code for
• 11:54
  we don't want this to happen anywhere ever you know somebody who I've met in my travels in this
• 11:59
  who I really liked is the Jesuit priest Frank Brennan who's a very eminent thinker in this country
• 12:04
  and and we were on a panel together and he sent me some of his writing afterwards about slippery
• 12:09
  slope and and this idea that you know once you start the law here then it will inevitably expand
• 12:18
  by the way the last 20 years has shown very little of that but I'll come to that and I remember
• 12:24
  thinking you know Frank who's been such an admirable advocate for refugees I remember thinking
• 12:30
  I wonder how Frank would react if if somebody said to him well Frank it you know if you let in
• 12:37
  Vietnamese then one day you're going to have to let him fee jeans and I don't know if we want
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  fee jeans here we've gone but that the principle of this is we help people the principle of
• 12:47
  assisted dying is you're trying to help people who medical science can't help so to go back to the
• 12:53
  question of Alzheimer's which is the number one and dementia the number one thing that's raised
• 12:58
  with me and as you rightly pointed out no law in Australia and few laws around the world will
• 13:05
  encompass Alzheimer's and there is a really core reason for that which is at the very center of
• 13:12
  these laws is you have to prove that this is your wish and that you're mentally competent not just
• 13:17
  when you first asked for it but all the way through the assessment process which is quite testing
• 13:23
  as it should be there is another reason which is if somebody and you know there's a lot of debate
• 13:31
  about this overseas well if somebody with dementia puts it in an advanced care directive that when
• 13:36
  I reach x point then I can be euthanized that mechanism may well work but you're still asking
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  somebody to act on that who can't look that person in the eye regardless of that advanced care
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  directive and no 100% that that's what they want and I think that that's very difficult for that
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  doctor who's in that position so when I was in the Netherlands one of the more fascinating
• 14:03
  conversations I had they have a thing called they've got the longest conversation about
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  euthanasia and end of life of any country in the world and they have developed a place called
• 14:15
  the life ending clinic which deals with what you called fringe cases what they call specialized
• 14:20
  cases and the man that ran it is called Stephen Plyter and we were talking about Alzheimer's cases
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  and concurrently this I interviewed a family whose mum had Alzheimer's and had gone through
• 14:33
  the assessment process and been legally had her life ended in in the Netherlands and they the
• 14:40
  daughter described how the mum had been put through the hoops like all the way through do you know
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  what this is you're asking for do you know that this is what you want and she said even even right
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  to the night before I was unsure I was unsure how does my mum really know and then I overheard the
• 15:01
  nurse say to her on the night before you have a choice you can drink a draft or you can be injected
• 15:08
  and she said to the mother what would what would you prefer and the mother said I will drink I
• 15:14
  always know what it is I want to do and the daughter heard this and said my mother does know so
• 15:19
  cut back to the the man who runs the life ending clinic and he talked about how
• 15:25
  with dementia you've got to make a choice and the expression he used was you have to choose to
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  leave the ball before midnight so in other words you still have to be able to show that this is
• 15:37
  your competent wish so in effect you have to make a choice to end your life before the dementia
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  takes such hold that you can no longer express your wish which means you won't live the full
• 15:47
  extent of your natural life or if you don't choose to leave the ball before midnight then you'll
• 15:52
  go into that gray space which I've witnessed too and it's it's a terrible thing people
• 15:58
  are talking about the slippery slope often raised this as you know this is where we're going to go
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  I don't know what the answer to it is but what I do know is that it is in our society and in most
• 16:12
  societies one of the most pressing medical issues the prevalence of Alzheimer's and dementia I
• 16:19
  think it's one of I think it's the second biggest killer of over 80s in Australia it is a huge
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  problem and many many families are grappling with it and if as a society through the parliamentary
• 16:30
  process which the history of the assisted-dined debate in Australia shows us is extreme and difficult
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  but if as a society we devise and approve and our parliament's agree to a system whereby people
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  with Alzheimer's can be assisted to die then that is what our society wants that is not a slippery slope
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  that is Western parliamentary democracy representative democracy working as a student
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  when we were just launching half-boss live the the the streaming television network that I worked
• 17:01
  on in New York one of my original pictures was to do a recurring segment called slippery slope
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  slippery schmob where we see what you do what was that an extraordinary what was your visa saying
• 17:13
  extraordinary talent and extraordinary talent did you juggle I saw I had left Mr. Denton all I
• 17:22
  had left but yes unfortunately that that particular gem didn't get up but I thought that there
• 17:27
  would be an endless reservoir of weekly debunkings of slippery slope claims that people are making
• 17:33
  about various things well I still look it never you never got the Schmibri schmob I mean I've heard
• 17:38
  so many in the assisted dining space and and it invariably gets to and it probably will again
• 17:44
  in the debates about to happen somebody invariably says but look at Nazi Germany yeah you know the
• 17:51
  outstanding slippery slope is a my for was actually in the same sex marriage debate you'll remember
• 17:55
  is that people were going to end up marrying bridges yeah and ducks and ducks yeah pillow Riley said
• 18:02
  what's next you're going to marry a duck that's an interesting thought I was actually yeah now I
• 18:06
  even interviewed who was Jeremy ions right in half-boss live yeah and I asked him about that because
• 18:11
  the gay marriage was just was imminent in the UK yes and he said could have father not marry his son
• 18:20
  and I said why why would he think you get around death duties and he said if you're
• 18:27
  in terror to your estate then you you could marry or you could marry or something get around the
• 18:34
  death duties and you're not inheriting it you're giving it to your spouse is he proposing this
• 18:39
  always he's not funny so Colbert subsequently picked up my interview with Jeremy ions played it
• 18:46
  and showed a shot of Jeremy ions with his son right who I'll just pretend his name is William
• 18:51
  and I remember but yes Colbert then saying you've just made William a very happy man this conversation
• 19:00
  must be cancelled right now yes or we will so I mean let's just play then in the edge in the in the
• 19:08
  in the fringe there for a moment what did you call it special uh this was the conditions like
• 19:13
  the the cases that are unusual or in the trip in October I'm moderating a series of events with
• 19:20
  Peter Singer who is doing a Sydney and the Melbourne and a Brisbane and I'll be in conversation with
• 19:25
  him and he is well known for pushing the envelope on these kinds of questions and saying look there's
• 19:31
  no if abortion is okay there's no real reason why I severely handicapped two-month-old child who
• 19:38
  has no prospect for a flourishing life whatsoever and is going to be living in pain for you know
• 19:43
  for a short abbreviated life there are some conditions where you know there's no prospect to them
• 19:47
  living more than 10 years 15 years in agony that that it should be legal to kill that that child
• 19:54
  do you play in those waters no not so much I'm certainly aware of those waters in fact I watched
• 20:00
  Peter Singer in a debate with Archbishop Anthony Fisher at Sydney Town Hall some years ago
• 20:06
  and and in fact a very emotional representative of the disability communities with a
• 20:13
  particular former Spiner Biffett has stood up and said I'm the sort of person you'd like to see
• 20:17
  dead which I don't think is what Peter's saying but no I play in very centrist waters and I do that
• 20:24
  for a very specific reason on my side of the argument there are many people well to the left of
• 20:31
  me who think that assisted dying laws should be opened to more people and there are powerful
• 20:37
  arguments for that I might add but when I did that first podcast series I spent almost a year
• 20:42
  traveling around talking to I got the opportunity to speak to everyone including
• 20:47
  fierce opponents and what I realized as I did my research is that the reason these laws hadn't
• 20:54
  passed in Australia is that the political argument was not being well run and that often people
• 21:01
  were trying to argue for something which wasn't ever going to get through an Australian parliament
• 21:06
  right each you know it's often opponents to these laws will point to well look what's happening
• 21:12
  in Canada and look what's happening in Belgium it's like no that's not how it works you know
• 21:17
  Australia and America both have guns but we have completely different approaches to how we do it
• 21:22
  each country makes its laws according to its culture and its traditions and its history
• 21:27
  and what I've discovered because I've spent a lot of time and it's often been fascinating talking
• 21:32
  with politicians over the last five years from all parties from all point of view on this is that
• 21:38
  our parliaments in this issue are conservative and more than that almost without exception politicians
• 21:45
  because these are conscience votes so that you get to actually see their brains and hearts of work
• 21:50
  when they stand up and talk about it almost without exception they will say this is the most
• 21:56
  significant and the most difficult thing I will ever be asked to address in my career so I think
• 22:03
  my focus and the group I've set up which is go gentle Australia to advocate for this law reform
• 22:11
  is to make sure there is law reform and you know I've had some pretty willing arguments for some
• 22:16
  of the people on my side that would like us to be pushing for something wider or bigger or greater
• 22:22
  and I say look I'm arguing for 80% of something rather than 100% of nothing and I have seen this
• 22:29
  born out in Victoria which the law is conservative and the conservative nature of the law has
• 22:35
  created some problems but here's what I've seen what I what was invisible five years earlier
• 22:42
  except for a very a couple of very principal people I've seen doctors senior doctors I've seen
• 22:48
  senior people in palliative care stepping forward and talking about things that were verboten to talk
• 22:55
  about three or four years ago talking about if we're saying that what we provide is patient
• 23:00
  center care and then we're turning around and saying to patients sure you can if you're dying you
• 23:06
  can refuse all treatment and you can you know spend two weeks letting your disease take its
• 23:11
  course and we'll look after you if we're saying that's okay but you can't make that same choice and
• 23:16
  die quickly and painfully that's not providing patient center care that's us saying what we think
• 23:21
  you're allowed to do and so whatever the limitations or the the problems thrown up of Victoria's
• 23:29
  law it has changed the conversation in Australia about what is medicine what is patient center care
• 23:36
  and what is the problem that needs to be addressed let's wrap up when you think about
• 23:43
  the future and younger people who are coming up these days and trying to make it not just
• 23:49
  in the creative arts but in any industry are you are you bullish about Australia I think Australia
• 23:57
  is still a pretty blessed place to be in many ways but I think I think there are significant
• 24:03
  generational issues in terms of distribution of wealth distribution of opportunity you know
• 24:08
  when I was growing up it was conceivable that you would work and be able to get a mortgage and
• 24:15
  buy a place and and establish itself I'm trying to buy a house so thanks for reminding me of that
• 24:19
  my first house yeah you know if you've learned an extraordinary talent you probably would have on
• 24:24
  by now but anyway I'm not not not um slippery smoke was a great idea I can't believe it never
• 24:30
  he's juggling as he says this you can't see it but he is um so in many ways Australia is blessed but
• 24:36
  I think I think anyone that there is an existential question hovering over us all and particularly
• 24:43
  the generations coming through which is the health of the planet and that that overrides everything
• 24:51
  you know I am in that camp that absolutely believes that the intensity of the bushfires that we saw
• 25:00
  18 months ago was not one of those things it was not something that's been happening in
• 25:06
  Australia for a hundred years it was not exploding cow manure someone say that I think
• 25:11
  Barnaby Joyce is one of the people prosecuting that maybe Michael McCormack as well
• 25:15
  he's a climate scientist right Barnaby Joyce well I'm not a climate scientist
• 25:18
  neither is Barnaby Joyce however if you look at what the modeling was showing us many years earlier
• 25:25
  the intensity of the climate events that we are seeing in Australia and around the world is
• 25:32
  exactly what they modeled and uh yeah that that makes me anxious for future generations I have a
• 25:41
  son who's 27 and uh one of my passions in life is Antarctica I've been there multiple times
• 25:49
  and if you look at what is happening to the eye shelf there the last and be eye shelf if you look
• 25:56
  at the size of the ice breaking off it's an iceberg the size of Jamaica broke off not so long ago
• 26:05
  these things are not normal these things are not just part of the historical cycle in recorded
• 26:10
  history although that is one of those analogies that makes no sense because I have no idea how big
• 26:14
  Jamaica is but sure I take your point it's probably large it's bigger than you and it's smaller than
• 26:19
  the planet there so just work it out from there Jamaica is huge right I mean it's it's like when I
• 26:25
  hear people say you know the am I struck the size of Delaware or has just I'm like yeah
• 26:29
  when who's what's Delaware I don't know Delaware is Delaware big it's okay but yes it okay imagine
• 26:36
  all of the Sydney metropolitan area as a giant piece of ice we're talking you know a hundred
• 26:42
  feet high multiplied in size by eight or nine times at least right that's an enormous amount of
• 26:47
  ice that shouldn't be floating north right that's that's kind of the point uh the the Antarctic ice
• 26:59
  cap it's not just about ice breaking off and raising water levels it actually
• 27:05
  regulates a lot of our climate the planet's climate ocean currents
• 27:13
  what happens in terms of and I'm not a climate scientist so forgive me I'm not going to give
• 27:18
  a very technical description here but what happens in terms of our weather it's it's a very
• 27:24
  you know I was speaking to a research scientist who'd done ice cord drilling in Antarctica
• 27:28
  and he said from that we're able to get a very accurate picture of exactly what the rainfall
• 27:33
  been in Western Australia for centuries and what we could see from that is that the rainfall
• 27:38
  patterns have completely changed and that the rain that used to fall on the southwest of Western
• 27:43
  Australia now falls into southern ocean so I get very frustrated when I hear people sitting in
• 27:53
  studios a bit like this um saying talking about climate change and saying it's it's it's it's a
• 27:59
  beat-up it's alarmism and I think wow you know I haven't had the good fortune to talk with
• 28:05
  ice core scientists and ornithologists and biologists and people who spend their entire
• 28:10
  after studying krill and those ecosystems this is what they do for a living and many of them
• 28:15
  live in these places um when you hear them say that everything we're seeing shows that this is
• 28:23
  falling apart we should be paying attention to that so that's my long wind of way of saying
• 28:28
  we're still a great country but we're perhaps not living in a great time in a great plan.
• 28:36
  Up next this week the ecologist environmentalist and Australian of the year the highest prize
• 28:42
  that the Australian government can bestow upon anyone the legend Tim Flannery what do you think
• 28:48
  that the layperson doesn't get about the natural world that you wish they would?
• 28:54
  well Josh I'd say if there's any music lovers listening to this um you know and you're listening
• 29:02
  to an opera you know the story of the opera you know the history of the singers you know the music
• 29:06
  you know the composer and that brings a richness doesn't it to the experience of listening to the
• 29:10
  opera well when I look at a forest I just don't see green right it's like I know this tree I know
• 29:17
  it's history I know how it evolved I know what pollinates it I know why it grows in that very spot
• 29:23
  not the little spot next door and there's a richness that's symphonic in the natural world if you
• 29:28
  think keen to the evolutionary history and to the diversity of that world so to me it's a massively
• 29:35
  deep and engaging experience it's interesting it's like that too yeah did you need to say that
• 29:42
  you know because one of my best mates is a scuba diver as am I and he's a he's a scientist he's
• 29:48
  one of Australia's leading water scientists and I remember asking him why he didn't become a marine
• 29:54
  biologist since he loves absolutely indoors scuba diving and the underwater environment and he
• 29:59
  said I wanted it to remain mysterious I wanted it to stay at arm's length like I didn't want to
• 30:06
  understand at all I wanted it to still seem fantastical and magical because I know so much about
• 30:12
  this other field of of science I didn't want to sort of almost contaminate it um and I don't
• 30:17
  know how I feel about that attitude but what do you make of it I can really understand it um
• 30:24
  I guess though Josh you know for for me the environment that I've been working in and the
• 30:29
  paleontology I mean they're so diverse and so cryptic that you could study them for a lifetime
• 30:35
  and still be an underwizer you know we're still just opening the door to it so so yes I can
• 30:41
  understand but I think in my experience I've I haven't minded studying it and diving in deep
• 30:47
  to certain little areas you know getting a greater understanding but there's still plenty of
• 30:50
  mystery out there for me but when you look at a jungle the the fact of the fact that you understand
• 30:56
  more than the layperson does it is something that you find enriching and fulfilling not something
• 31:00
  that you find reductionist it's totally it is like listening to a symphony you know it's listening
• 31:07
  the complexity of it is marvelous and and the the pieces you know people think of jungles as being
• 31:13
  sort of random or haphazard and of gardens as being ordered but the opposite is true jungles
• 31:19
  are unbelievably ordered every leaf is growing exactly where it is for very very good reasons
• 31:25
  a garden is this forced thing where we force a uh a kind of a view on nature and everything is
• 31:31
  out of place so so if once you understand that incredible uh order of nature it opens the door
• 31:38
  to an understanding of the beauty I think and complexity of those those rainforests or other
• 31:43
  environments how is it ordered it's ordered by the laws of physics and and by the the the climate
• 31:50
  you know so light is incredibly important the chemistry of the plants growing around that plant
• 31:56
  is astonishingly important the predators that are are present are the predators of the predators
• 32:01
  the predators of the herbivores might eat that leaf at all determining why things grow where they do
• 32:07
  and um once you understand that and and kind of look at it you you you do see this this amazing
• 32:13
  complex and wondrous world and what can knock that that order out of equilibrium
• 32:19
  Tim I mean we're dealing at the moment with the the looming reality of climate chaos but
• 32:25
  let's just before we get there let's just talk about more localized effects because I'm really
• 32:30
  struck by it I'd never thought about gardens that way and jungles that way um are there presumably
• 32:36
  that order is in a constant state of disequilibrium being buffered around by the I don't know the
• 32:42
  evolutionary imperatives of each species trying to propagate and trying to get a get a get a head um
• 32:48
  is it in a state of uh of decline of either decline or ascendance and never perfect equilibrium
• 33:00
  yes look I never reaches a perfect equilibrium that's for sure it it is always changing and
• 33:06
  ever adapting um but you know by and large it in if you take a long view of earth history
• 33:13
  I guess new species evolve they may move in new species invade and add to that complexity
• 33:20
  um but that's a very very slow process so what we see more is like uh it's it's it's it fluctuations
• 33:27
  within bounds you know but when you start adding the human impact whether it's through rapidly
• 33:33
  changing climate or through deforestation or um overhunting bush meat or whatever um you know
• 33:41
  you start to see a an impoverishment of those ecosystems and and it's like seeing triggering
• 33:47
  cascades of extinction because the interrelationship of the parts is so intricate you start seeing
• 33:55
  species uh interdependent species vanished so you might remove one but that species then has a
• 34:02
  knock on effect the loss of that species has a knock on effect to many others uh look I give you
• 34:07
  some examples of this not from New Guinea but from South America where it's been studied very well
• 34:11
  where you know people there's a native pig-like animal in the South American rainforest called a
• 34:16
  peckery and um peckery is used while os so they dig holes and holes full with water and it turns out
• 34:22
  the um if you get hunt out the peckeries there's no more wallows and therefore the frogs that
• 34:29
  really knows wallows also all vanish and those frogs prey on insects including mosquitoes so the
• 34:35
  mosquitoes and other species the frogs would normally eat tend to erupt in numbers and among
• 34:41
  those species is some of the leaves of certain trees so those trees then start to become overwhelmed
• 34:46
  by the the volume of um herbivores eating their leaves and then the species that depend upon
• 34:52
  those trees is impacted and so forth wouldn't uh it can't be uh it can't be the case we made that
• 34:59
  any new predator who enters that ecosystem can have that kind of an impact that's what I'm trying
• 35:04
  to get a handle on like uh there there is no stasis I mean what is different about
• 35:11
  homo sapiens than other predators is it just that we're such good tool makers that we're much better
• 35:15
  at getting rid of these uh these pig-like mammals yeah we can drive them into extinction of course
• 35:22
  the numbers always fluctuate so jaguars may locally depress you know that species but by and large
• 35:29
  um other species don't drive um special circumstances they can but my and large species that co-evolve
• 35:35
  don't drive each other into extinction but we are very very capable hunters um do you know do you
• 35:41
  know the way I think about it Josh it kind of like um if you take Einstein's theory of general
• 35:47
  relativity you know that there's no such thing as gravity but that what causes the appearance of
• 35:54
  gravity is this a distortion of the spacetime equilibrium you know the spacetime thing if you
• 36:01
  think about that in ecological terms you know species have a tangible impact on each other through
• 36:08
  a similar sort of distortion of the of the if you want to call it ecological spacetime you know
• 36:15
  and humans are just so much more massive than anything else on the planet that the distortion
• 36:20
  recreate is absolutely it's like a black hole yeah right compared with other species so that's one
• 36:26
  I think you that is that's interesting and there's that old metaphor of gravity as being a ball on a
• 36:32
  trampoline uh you know if you if you put a bowling ball on a trampoline you just sit there and you
• 36:37
  have other balls around it then they're they're they're gonna roll towards it and I suppose you
• 36:41
  could imagine that if there was a perfectly calibrated trampoline with lots of balls kind of
• 36:46
  perched all over it in in a perfect equilibrium and then you threw a massive bowling ball onto it
• 36:52
  that that would disrupt everything um so let's talk about climate chaos because that's the that's
• 36:58
  the obvious single way in which we're having an impact that has so many other cascading uh consequences
• 37:06
  for us I I feel like we're in a strange spot in terms of the public's where the public's head is
• 37:13
  uh I think one is either a catastrophist and deeply depressed or one is at the other end of the
• 37:20
  pole and just feels like you know what capitalism and technology is gonna fix this the way that it
• 37:26
  has fixed everything and we're gonna have to think our way out of it and at the end of the day
• 37:32
  lots of the naysayers have been wrong about lots of things so we can't necessarily trust the
• 37:37
  specificity of their predictions and let's just see how we all go what's wrong with those two poles
• 37:45
  no wow um can I start a step back to try to answer this Josh because just to link the discussion
• 37:53
  with what we've talked about in terms of ecology so I need to ask you a question what do you think
• 37:59
  is created the earth's climate system that is that we've enjoyed in a relatively stable state for
• 38:05
  so much of our revolutionary history I mean I guess some kind of interplay of animal and plant
• 38:11
  life together because it was very different before there was life right that's right so life
• 38:18
  has given stability to the earth system in a sense so and you know scientists have come up with a
• 38:24
  name for that which we call Gaia you know and Gaia tends towards equilibrium so and it's it's
• 38:31
  an outcome an emergent property of extremely complex ecosystems and a dynamic earth
• 38:37
  so isn't my team I understand Gaia as being this is Jim Lovelocks idea I read the book when I
• 38:44
  was in my teens but it's I regarded as being more of a a spiritual ode to the idea that the
• 38:51
  combination of of life on earth and the planet itself and even its even its non-living geology
• 38:57
  all came together to to form some kind of a god almost or some kind of a conscious god like
• 39:05
  pantheistic entity am I over reading into that I think maybe Joshua at the at the basis of the
• 39:13
  hypothesis is the physical reality of the of the world and you know the people call it the earth
• 39:19
  climate system you know if you're a scientist and a physicist but you know Gaia is a way of
• 39:26
  referring to the emergent properties that come out of this highly complex system I think in
• 39:30
  you know which is a kind of useful useful way of thinking about it but if we just go back to that
• 39:37
  that system and you think about the stability it's created despite a whole lot of perturbations
• 39:43
  and it's by no means perfect we've had asteroids knock into the planet causing massive extinctions
• 39:47
  we've had ice ages and so forth but changes generally been slow so what we've done as humans is to
• 39:55
  upset that balance that that emergent property of Gaia by clearing forests digging up fossil fuels
• 40:01
  and overfishing the oceans destroying the oceans so you know that that's the starting point
• 40:09
  so what will happen in the next decade or two is kind of I guess we could focus on that and we could
• 40:17
  ask about the future of our civilization and so forth but really the sort of the long term
• 40:23
  solutions are they're dependent upon a recognition of the role of the earth climate system in
• 40:31
  creating and stabilizing you know life on our planet so I know that might seem like a tangential
• 40:39
  thing no it's interesting it's useful and it's also useful that you throw in the
• 40:44
  dispoiling of the oceans and the cutting the out of forests into that because those those
• 40:48
  two things don't just have implications for the climate I mean those are it sounds like you're
• 40:55
  pointing to a bigger problem to an even bigger problem than climate change well yes it is it's
• 41:01
  the distortion of of the ecological space time equilibrium by this massive massive black
• 41:07
  Oliver species it's led to all of these and you know we don't have to be that way and there
• 41:12
  are some reasons for do we not have to be that way no we don't no I don't think so um there are
• 41:18
  you know there are many ways of living um and and many ways of being I mean that the person that's
• 41:25
  in me or or the devil's advocate in me thinks humans are always going to want to be more comfortable
• 41:31
  than they are and lots and lots of humans have gone from uh from lives of poverty and drudgery
• 41:40
  toil and disease throughout most of human history in most places to increasingly comfortable
• 41:46
  lives of pleasure and plenty over the past century or two since the industrial revolution and now
• 41:52
  more and more people want that life in the developing world and so even if you were to click your
• 41:57
  fingers and and transition immediately from carbon from from burning fossil fuels to renewable
• 42:05
  energy people are going to want to eat fish instead of rice if they can and beef instead of
• 42:14
  you know lentils yeah um and that's going to have consequences and that bowling ball is just
• 42:19
  going to be as heavy as we can possibly make it until the earth pushes back and says you can't make
• 42:24
  it anymore hmm well look that's one in interpretation Josh for sure um I I see it a little bit
• 42:31
  differently I mean how would I start look um let's look at that population issue because this
• 42:40
  is it seems pretty central to what you're talking about there um you know human population growth
• 42:47
  is now entering a phase where we are starting to see a tapering off and indeed in many countries
• 42:52
  the reduction in terms of population and it I find this absolutely astonishing every other species
• 43:01
  that's ever existed on our planet as Thomas Malthus knew um was regulated by you know the
• 43:07
  forehorsesmen of the apocalypse by you know drought famine disease and warfare or whatever it happens
• 43:14
  to be you know that population we seem not to be we um despite going through a period of very
• 43:21
  rapid growth we're now entering a period of stability which looks like it will be followed by a
• 43:26
  period of slow decline and I find that it's kind of like it's it's so miraculous Josh it reminds
• 43:33
  me of the fact that the moon during an eclipse precisely fits over the sun um and without that
• 43:41
  we would never have been able to test Einstein's theory of general relativity without any unbelievable
• 43:46
  coincidence if it is who knows and but this is it's very interesting stuff these unique phenomena
• 43:53
  that we see that give you pause for deep thought you mean because you mean it was an eclipse that
• 43:59
  enabled us to see the star behind the sun that was actually hidden behind the sun but the light
• 44:06
  bent around the sun because of the sun by the sun's gravitational imagine if the if the moon was
• 44:11
  a bit closer or further away or you know as it has been in the past but just at this moment we're
• 44:15
  interested in exploring universe this the moon shadow fits precisely over the sun right creating
• 44:22
  enough shadow that we can see the bent from a distance star behind yeah okay cool so how does that
• 44:28
  how does how does your analogy now map map onto my my previous point so here we are as a species
• 44:34
  which is self-regulating the only species in the history of life on earth ever that is self-regulating
• 44:40
  and not through any conscious decision about oh there's too many people on the planet but just
• 44:45
  through a series of emergent forces that have a reason and that is sense of individual well-being
• 44:54
  a sense of wanting some of those things you were talking about Josh you know wanting a better life
• 44:58
  right so instead of having 15 kids I'm only going to have one or two you know so so there
• 45:04
  are interesting complex phenomena going on here which I find really interesting though you know
• 45:10
  and just think about how those people live if if you were a hunter gatherer eating elephants or
• 45:16
  whatever you might eat you know large mammals in a forest the world can only support a tiny number
• 45:22
  of people if you're an agriculturalist you've moved down in the trophy cascade to the point
• 45:28
  of eating plants and those plants you know you there's a hundred times as much energy as there would
• 45:35
  be in the you know the large mammals yeah so you have a larger population we're now moving into a
• 45:40
  phase though where we are looking at development development of artificial meats we're looking at
• 45:46
  the development of products using bacteria archaea and hydrogen that will replace spread you know
• 45:56
  this is where we're moving further down the trophy further down the food pyramid towards very
• 46:02
  base you see and can you imagine a world Josh where we are sourcing our wheat requirements
• 46:10
  from giant vats of archaea fed by wind turbines and solar panels sorry what's archaea?
• 46:16
  Oh archaea they're little bacteria like entities they're the most primitive forms of life we know
• 46:22
  about but they are they have an unbelievably complex chemical pathways within them they're sort of
• 46:29
  like the swiss army knife of life they can do everything whereas we can only do one thing we
• 46:34
  can only use oxygen but they can do everything and can we farm them yes there's people at the moment
• 46:40
  in Finland a group called solar food so we're looking at how we use archaea to create all of the
• 46:46
  basic starches and proteins that are present in wheat I mean I'm I love to hear you say that
• 46:52
  because I'm very bullish I'm a very conflicted eater of organic meat but conflicted about
• 47:00
  about eating meat at all both for environmental reasons but actually mainly just for
• 47:03
  for moral reasons but I'm very bullish on lab-grown meat and you know the possibility of
• 47:10
  creating animal protein flesh without sentience without without animal sentience and I like the idea
• 47:17
  of you know eating insects and things like that instead of farming animals and I loathe industrialized
• 47:23
  farming but all of that seems to me to run a little bit counter to the sort of goddess temple
• 47:31
  guy I am the world sort of talk that you seem to be pointing to a little earlier that to me seems
• 47:39
  to be part of the kind of bullish silicon valley tech nerd we can think our way out of all of our
• 47:47
  problems strain of humankind and I'm not sure which one to put my face in yeah well look I don't
• 47:55
  know whether we can think our way out of our problems but what other way out is there well I suppose
• 48:04
  some would say I suppose some would say you know return to a much simpler way of life try to
• 48:10
  try to have a revolution in our consciousness so that we're not constantly fucking around with
• 48:14
  nature instead we're obeying you know the the dictates of nature and live just much more humbly
• 48:23
  and in tune with the cosmos than we currently do and that might not be the type that type of person
• 48:29
  might not be the type of person who's tinkering around with finish you know microbes to produce
• 48:35
  fast oceans of wheat well exactly and look I'm I'm very sympathetic to that view and I think that
• 48:42
  ultimately it's probably quite a fulfilling lifestyle to leave that way but the difficulty we face
• 48:48
  at the moment is that the people of China and India are so far from thinking about that and
• 48:54
  Sub-Saharan Africa that that you know we can try and I think it's good the more people live like
• 48:59
  that the better but we're doubtless going to need to think our way out of the problem as well
• 49:03
  yeah there's already too much CO2 in India exactly yeah yeah both but you know the interesting
• 49:10
  thing is Josh with all of this you know once you reach a certain level of affluence and we talked
• 49:15
  about the impact of that on population growth you know the desire to have lots of children or not
• 49:20
  you know the question arises what is life really all about and that fundamental question I think
• 49:28
  what are we about why are we here that question will start driving human evolution and development
• 49:35
  at a later stage I think in our in our journey but at the moment not at the moment you know my
• 49:42
  grandparents you know they live through the great depression my parents were born during
• 49:46
  depression they you know the the second world war was fought in their lifetime so that they were
• 49:51
  shell-shock generation we're just emerging from that now so and that this kind of obsession with
• 49:58
  develop with accumulating material wealth is sort of symptomatic of that generation in a way that's
• 50:03
  just emerged out of dire poverty and trauma so I think we can't expect to go straight from that
• 50:09
  into this more deeply questioning kind of human that only could be more common in the future