The Know Show – the battle for the soul of the West

Welcome to the Know Show. There’s so much news it’s hard to know where to focus these days. Don’t worry, we have you covered. A quick 10-minute trip through the main news happening around the world, and then we will spend time discussing ‘the battle for the soul of the West,’ which is based on an article by Umair Haque, as well as other recent commentary on this topic. 

Times are definitely changing and with fascism rising around the world - in often subtle ways - we’ve got to ask: how do we stop this rise before it’s too late? This week, we are joined by Kerrie Phipps, author of ‘Do Talk to Strangers’ ad we are delighted to welcome Kerrie onto the show. 

The Know Show is a Livestream held every fortnight on Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Tim Wade and Joe Augustin, and at least one special guest (just the three of us this week), review the news that’s getting everyone’s attention, as well as perhaps what requires our attention. We’ll talk about what it means to us, the world and we hope to inspire great conversations on the news that matters to all of us. 

The Know Show is based on Andrea T Edwards Weekend Reads, which are published every Saturday on andreatedwards.com, and covers the climate crisis, topical moments in the world, global politics, business, social issues and passion/humor/history. Join us. 

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To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Transcript

Unknown: 0:02

Welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards. My name is Tim Wade. And my name is Joe Augustine. Welcome to a show that's trying to do this for the world and get you more informed to have you have broader opinions. And maybe just maybe we can help you save the world as well. We also try to have a really diverse set of points of view on the show. But to tell you more about why we do this show here is the person who's created the show. So Andrew, tell us about your reason for doing this. So it makes you come back every few months, I just know that we're going through a time for humanity, where we have to be paying attention to the information that matters and stop being distracted by shiny things. And there's loads of shiny things to distract us. But we've got to stay focused. And one of the things that I'm incredibly aware of is how hard it is to pay attention to the news, especially right now. It's like every week, there's more and more new shocks, whether it's climate, political, whatever's going on, right, the rise of fascism in Europe, which we're going to talk about later. And it's hard, you know, it's hard, and it's easy to run away and put our fingers in our ears, and it's pretending that nothing's happening. But when we do that, the bad actors are pushing us towards, you know, nationalism, separation, protectionism, and none of us were going to win, none of us will win at the with this sort of approach. So we have to come together, we have to face it, we have to own it, we have to accept what is happening. And then we have to ask ourselves, How can we bring everyone together, because if we're not together, we're not going to be able to overcome we are in a decade of enormous challenge. And we need to get strong, and we need to be ready for that. Obviously protect ourselves when we have to. But so that's, that's why I'm doing it. I just think it's really important. And I spent a lot of time, you know, putting my weekend reads together and doing all that sort of stuff. Just because I really believe it's important to pay attention to the information that matters. So that's why we're doing it. And I appreciate you guys coming in and supporting it. Yeah, well, you know, because because of what what you believe in all that I actually I insisted that my doctors released me in time for this. Because all kinds of trouble at the hospital. No one's been ever released from hospital before 12 o'clock in their entire history. I was because I had to do this show. So as part of a mental hospital. Yes, that was part of this process. We also try to have this diverse set of voices on the show. So Andrea, would you like to introduce our fourth voice today? Our fourth voice today is Gary Vee at select Carrie. Hi. Great to be here. Now, I've been trying to convince Carrie to come and join us for a while and she kept saying no, because I don't know why you can tell us why. But I'm Karis, the author of do talk to strangers. She's also a coach and executive coach and she I did a programme with her called Positive Intelligence which, which was fabulous, and I definitely recommend looking it up. But Carrie, tell everyone tell everyone about you. Give us your story in 30 seconds or less. Okay, I've actually had a pretty quiet year this year. I'm calling it my semi sabbatical year, although I never announced that. I've had a couple of days blocked out midweek to do a lot of journaling, writing, reflecting learning. And yeah, I've been doing the mental fitness, Positive Intelligence, mental fitness coaching. That's been like a key part of what I've done this year. And just calling this my year of meaningful conversations during my connect with confidence podcast, which Andrea has been on Publish to get the other guys on at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Because the more open we are, the more authentic we are in terms of grappling with what's going on in our world, and how can we contribute? How can we connect and work together? I'm just up for all those conversations, but have felt a little daunted about this, because you know, I don't follow all the news going on around the world, I get snippets, and mostly in conversations. So you know, when I'm talking to Andrea, my world is expanding. And that's the thing when we connect with others, we can expand our world and start to see things from different perspectives. I think that's really important. And also to manage our own awareness. And how do we how do we respond positively? So yeah, thanks for having me, Andrea. Thanks for convincing me to turn up during the conversation. I don't take no for an answer. Yeah, I'm mostly listening today, though. I'm sure mostly it's actually that's that's really what you're about. Carrie, it's turning up and joining the conversation, isn't it? Yeah. And getting other people usually I'm the facilitator, getting other people to talk. Face, you're getting a taste of your own medicine. That's all it is. We had to we had to come up with this whole show and run it for over a year. Just to get you here. I feel seen. Awesome. Well, we're gonna start off with I don't even know where we start with this one, but I'm gonna hand it over to you just to just to give us a feel So what the hell is going on in the global economy? Well, how do you say the world is ending in five minutes? It is a very, very tough time that we have ahead of us. I mean, these are all by the way signals that we're paying for that were committed a long time ago. And the the penance that we should have done, should have been done a little bit earlier. So all around the world, we've had a lot of loose economic control. And it's kind of it's, it's gone a special way. I mean, because COVID was not exactly something that that really helped us in terms of normalcy. So COVID, posed some very specific challenges. And what happened was a lot of governments rushed in, especially like the US government, to try and save their economies by creating more cash, creating more money. That isn't something that happens for free. So one thing that I think anybody who has been in school and studied a bit of economics always learned that if you have more money chasing less goods, you're going to have this thing called inflation. And when the US did what it did, it did create a lot of money and therefore, was the starting block, I think, for the kind of inflation that we're seeing right now. Now, it's not that that shouldn't have been done at the time, I think it was completely necessary for that to happen. But what happened after that was a series of unfortunate events. Not you know, I mean, we we can't discount the fact that the the war in Russia had a quite a bit to do with it as well. So when you have, when you when you when you have a lot of money, chasing a small number of things, and when that number of things decreases because of sanctions and stuff like that, you are going to have inflation. And that's what we're facing right now. Now that the thing is the control of inflation and how to how to kind of like pull back from inflation has almost always been an interest rates, you try to the government's tried to increase the cost of doing business of living in general, now, it seems like a draconian thing to do to try and increase the cost of living. But what it is trying to do is try to make people a little bit more cautious about the way that they spend money and so that it can slow down inflation. So like in Singapore, right now, we've had something that just just was announced, at midnight last night, new measures to cool the housing market, for instance, because we've had recently, a number of HDb, flats, public housing sell for a million dollars, which is a crazy idea. But it was happening because the price of flats and things were just going up so fast, people just thinking, You know what, I'm just gonna pay a million dollars, because I don't think I can get this deal again. So that's the kind of thing that that governments are trying to slow down, unfortunately, is also very painful for the average person to deal with. So like in the UK, what they tried to do what Liz trusts tried to do was to introduce a budget that was going to be people friendly and business friendly. And so she introduced a number of things, which included tax cuts, permanent tax cuts for some of the wealthiest, and I think it was quite a large sum as in like it amounted to 1.5% of GDP. I mean, all the tax cuts, and a quarter of those were surprised cuts as in like not previously discussed. Now, the great thing about the UK is in their system of government, there is this office called the Office of Budget Responsibility that has a look at things to make sure that everything is okay before it's kind of unleashed on the on the general public. The terrible thing is, Liz and her team decided not to even let them see it. So it was released without the scrutiny of this budget of the Office of Budget Responsibility. And of course, the world recognise that the UK was in a kind of a problematic situation, the the British pound slipped 4% in a day. And to give you a sense of what what what that is, in terms of what Forex is, usually when you're trading Forex, and stuff like that we're talking about usually less than a percentage point, you know, it's quite a big move for four points in a day to the lowest exchange rate it's ever had with the US is crazy. And that forced the hand of the Bank of England to step in with measures as well and they begin to buy back bonds and stuff. So it literally is one of those cases where we have in the UK, the UK versus the UK and we hope the UK is going to win it it's an own goal. And okay United versus UK city. Yeah, some something along those lines. So they've had an interesting effect because while the rest of the world is trying to play this game of slowing down the economy, which would have been the thing to do, what happened was the Bank of England had to step in with some easing as well just to try and stop the freefall of the of the of the UK, that the pound, the impact of it was was was profound as in like from 1000s of mortgage products that were available the day before, it dropped down to hundreds as in like in terms of what was available for people in homes and businesses and all that it just disappeared, literally overnight. So it was drastic, something had to be done. And it has been done. But it's basically now created this problem in the world where there is this huge imbalance where the natural thing for the market was supposed to be just a dissent, dissent dissent. But this big kind of reaction that the the Bank of England had to put into it kind of switched what happened in the in the US markets for a bit. So they had a mini rally in the middle of what is the big bear the bear market they have right now. And it is causing all kinds of weird things to happen. In Russia, I'm sorry, I'm going through this in a very haphazard all around the world kind of thing. By the way, we are officially in a bear market. And what that basically means is that the market has dropped 20% of its value from its highest point. That happened just recently. But of course, what's happened within the bear markets, what you call a bull, a bull within a bear market, which is where you have a rise of 20%. But it's smaller than that 20% drop down. We are not likely to come out of that. And many of the pundits are looking at the worst bear market they have seen in their lifetimes. So we don't know exactly what that looks like yet. An interesting story on a Russia is about how their economy might die by winter. This is an article by Fortune magazine. And the thing about Russia has been all this time a heavy sanctions, which were arguably doing some some damage, but at the same time, not enough damage. Because everyday life and Russia still seem to go on people who are going about this stuff, going to cafes and doing things like that. But what happened is, Putin now doubles down on his on his on his war effort. And he's announced conscription, which basically is first of all, one way to get rid of all the guys in the room. The biggest Google search term, by the way, in Russia was how to break on the thought of why conscription presumably. So what what happened was right now is the economy is really gonna get participants taken out of it. Because if you take our 300,000 men, and I guess, presumably the rest of the market is going to be affected by that as well, there is a lot less going around in terms of people just spending money and doing things and what have you. So that that could be, as they say, the death of the Russian economy by winter. So as I said earlier, the world is kind of ending economically, just for a while, I mean, it's not going to be permanent. And it's always going to be a chapter. So we are heading into recession, there's very little doubt about recession. And Biden is now the guy who is going to be meeting with his economic team amidst all of this stuff. And, you know, there's never been a better time for Biden, and I know, this is one of those weird things to hear right now. But what we do need at this time is an elder statesman, who has seen the economy come and go, who has seen what you need to do to bring an economy back you need you need someone who's actually been there, seen the inflation of the 70s, seeing the financial crises that have come before, and seen what needs to be done. So in terms of someone who knows what needs to be done, and I think, maybe has an idea how to try to hopefully lead the people along, Biden is someone who actually could get it, right. I mean, he's there, he understands, or his at least, at least he's seen it. Many of the other people, you know, in government right now, literally, are kind of new to the job. I mean, Liz truss brought up something, which I haven't heard for a long time, but I think it's scary to hear someone say trickle down economy. But that's, that's what she's brought back. And her idea is that, you know, make the wealthy rich and all the money's gonna come back, and that's gonna make the world a better place. And the worst thing about that is that it was proven a long time ago that that really doesn't work. And so to have that come back as, as as a way to save things, is really quite bad. So if you are, if you're trying to bet against one economy right now, I'd say the British economy is waiting for your short sell. And as for the rest of the world, we do have to come together and do something about this. Or the last little thing about about, about what's happening waiting in the sidelines is China. to take over the world, they've already laid the groundwork. They've done lots and lots of stuff in terms of the the infrastructure, and they own so much of it. But right now, because of the global crises, they have actually got the banks or the central banks together. And they are about to defend the yuan, because it's been a, it's been a freefall versus the US dollar, because of everything going into the US dollar. But they're about to, it looks like they're about to defend themselves pretty hard. And it just the fact that they said, so affected the exchange rate. And that's usually what, you know, central banks used to have to do only, but now they have gone ahead as well and said, Okay, we're prepared for this. So we're prepared for a currency war, we hope that doesn't break out as well, because that's really going to destabilise the rest of the economy even further. That is, hopefully a taste of what the economy is like going on right now. So basically, hang on to your hats right? Here. I want to I want to just say one thing about, you know, a lot of people who are going to be thinking about traditional ideas about you know, when When, when, when, when you're in a bear market, things go down, it's time to pick up all the so called Safe stocks and good stocks. This is a very different situation. It is one way, if you look at how the markets been going, you can see that there's been drops, people have been trying to buy the dip, but it's been just pushing back and pushing down and pushing and pushing down. It really is one of those situations where if we talk about risk and managing risk, it's about waiting to see what happens, you should really sit back and let it settle. Because if you go in right now, and you think you know, I think it's gone long, I think it's gone low enough. No one really knows where low enough is. And that's literally going to be a gamble. It's much better for you to find the bottom, and then take the write up and miss a little bit of the lowest prices. Yeah, you just average the whole way down. Alright, so moving on to the other bits of news, because obviously the economy is important. But if I go into if I pause, we've got the typing Nehru, hitting Thailand at the moment, and I just had an electrical cut out. So you never know. I might, I'll leave. I'll hand it over to you guys. All right, so some other bits of news, David Malpass, who is the head of the World Bank, and he was also a Trump appointee. It's a political position, a political appointment, in the World Bank. And he's been getting all sorts of attention in recent weeks, because he will not say that humans are causing climate change due to fossil fuel. So it's creating a huge ruckus. It's not sort of seen as something where they should sack him. But the question is, will he resigned. So that's, that's a big story. Another story that broke in the last couple of weeks was this idea that the scientists want to spray the north and south pole with sulphur dioxide. And I gotta tell you, this one left me cold, there's a lot of potential technologies coming up to to solve the crises. And you know, keeping keeping the pulse Frozen is obviously important part of it, but you know, spraying poisons into one of the most beautiful and protected nature, parts of our Earth. You know, we don't we just don't know what the consequences of that are going to be. from extreme weather perspective, I got caught and I don't often get caught in a CNN, rabbit hole this week, and they do a whole series of sort of one and two minute videos. And it was just basically, obviously hurricane Fiona. Obviously Tyrion, Typhoon Nauru, and most recently, Hurricane Ian, have you guys seen some of the video footage that's coming out around that. But basically, but it was more than that it was extreme heat, like the West Coast of America is in September is experiencing extreme heat. For this time of year glacial melt. I mean, there's so much going on. And I watched all of these, and it was just one after the other after the other all around the world. And I'm just sort of thinking, is this enough? Is this enough? Are we going to wake up? Are we you know, because the climate scientists are saying, this is the beginning of climate breakdown. So how bad does it need to get before we act? Because the sooner we act that, you know, it's gonna keep getting bad that how bad it gets is is up to us? And then of course, the other one is in Iran. We're continuing to see the protests after Marcia Massa. I mean, he's death. The president who said they're going to be taking decisive actions against the protesters and we are seeing protesters being killed, but still they rise. So I wish the ladies and the gentleman strength as they go through these periods of potential great change, or they could obviously be going back into suppression, Tim? Yeah, definitely check out Andrews weekend reads there's a lot there on all of this and also On Russia and what's going wrong over there, although, of course, who knows what's going on in Putin's head, but there appears to be a massive shift from ambivalence within Russia toward towards Ukraine, because before it was a case of what's the point, you can't stop Putin. But now that the wars coming home with, especially with the mobilisation, things could end are being predicted to unravel very quickly. So it's some of the articles. There's one article in The Observer from Simon Tisdale, which which talks about, it actually talks about a lot of impacts in areas where things have been going wrong. It's a very, it's very, it's a real polemic really against scathing against Putin and what's been going on really, and so you got to, if you want to have a sort of balanced opinion about it, that one's very to one end. But it really does sort of point out some of the triggers that are happening and how this sort of how it's stacking, how everything is stacking up to look at it as I mean, he used terms like colossal failure, and all of this sort of stuff. But it really does show that there's a lot of a lot of things going wrong. From the leadership side over there. There's another article where it's talking about hundreds arrested as the Russian draft protests continue. And so there's a lot of people protesting all around the place, at the same time, a lot of people trying to leave Russia, and some of the protests, you know, or some of the things that people are talking about, or how, you know, disabled people are being drafted, or called up and people that are ineligible, you know, too old or being called up. And so there's sort of an admission, which is a very unusual thing to hear from Russia, that that, you know, there's been some errors in the way that that's happened. But, but and that that will be corrected, I think, was the rhetoric. But there's the protests are really just against against conscription, and the war. And now every now the protesters are now saying everything's Putin's fault, which is really interesting. And so as those numbers increase, and the courage of the people increase, we're going to see some interesting things possibly develop there, and probably some pretty traumatic things starting to develop there. I would, I would hasten to guess, the thing about people also trying to leave to the Georgia border. So there's a there's a sort of, you know, eating 18 miles or 30 kilometres of cars banked up trying to get across the border, as people are trying to and as Joe said, you know, people working out how to avoid getting sent to a frontline. That just seems to be one of the protesters are saying we don't want our young to be cannon fodder. And so it's, it's, you know, there's this, there's an anti war sentiment in the people, I guess. Now, the thing is some of the country's like, I think it was the Finnish border, or one of the European countries where people were trying to come in, we're talking about closing their borders, because they were saying, well, there was no conscientious objectors when Russia was invading Ukraine, but now that they're getting conscripted effectively, now that conscientious objectives, objectives, not so sure. So it seems to be, but actually, this is the narrative of the world, something's happening over there. Our country is implicated or whatever, but it doesn't affect me. That seems to be the narrative. And then, and then now when it does or has a risk of affecting me, now there's an element of taking action. So when you ask about climate change, what's it going to take, it's going to take more of these storms, it's going to take people loved ones dying, COVID was the same COVID was like, you know, I remember going to Australia in in March 2020, or April 2020. And there was a conference on and COVID was getting more and more and more real to the point where I only just got out of Australia before everything closed down. But at the conference, everyone, there was a masquerade party, and everyone had masks up here instead of down here, except for me. And it was now you might you might say, Well, why the hell did you go to the conference, if you're, you know, so hoity toity against it all. But yeah, great question. And Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I suppose is, is the is possibly the answer. But I still was was trying to protect as much as I can. It's, it's like it's not COVID was an example of, I'm okay, it's never gonna happen to me until people around you start getting it and falling seriously ill and then it's like, Oh, my goodness, this could happen to me. And we all got a little bit scared. And then we got complacent again. So the whole climate thing, we could all get scared and start taking action. And then it's like, oh, actually, we're having pretty good weather. Let's just not worry about it. Let's look at the next big shiny thing. And then we're back into that loop again. So that's that's the scary part, I suppose. Anyway, the other the other Big news of the week, of course, is a sabotage or potential sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, plenty of conversations on who is responsible, but we wait and watch. Some people are obviously looking at Russia, as the scapegoat. And this will be an interesting topic has really come to come to scapegoating a little bit later. But does it make any sense that Russia would do this? There's nothing definitive yet on who is responsible. But one of the articles was, there was this one little line in one of the articles which said, who stands to profit? And for me, that was that was really telling. It's also a bit of a sign of, of, of the times carry? Well, you've just prompted me to think about the little things that make a difference, you know, we start making changes, and they go, Oh, do we really need to? Yes, we do. But one story that I wanted to share was something that will make small differences. And it was in The Guardian, in the UK that the roof of the bus stops there being transformed into bee and butterfly shelters. And they called Buzz stops, which is just gorgeous. love having a cooling effect also. So you're not going to sit there and melt while you're waiting for your bus. But yeah, there's so many different things happening with bees in different places. And yeah, that's something that's been under threat in Australia, too. We have, you know, quite tight biosecurity laws, to you know, keep our agricultural industry healthy. And yeah, these little things make a difference. But a big news story in Australia this week is the Optus data breach. So a hacker who is apparently apologising, and there's just sending out some weird messages. And so everyone's like having a joke. There's a whole meme about sitting down having a beer with him, because it's like, yeah, okay. You didn't mean to, but um, it was like 10 million customers or 40% of the population, you know, experienced this personal data breach, and my husband got a text saying, oh, yeah, we're sorry, you did get hacked. But don't worry, they don't have your password for your Optus account. They just have your driver's licence, date of birth, etc, etc. So it's like, this is a massive problem. You know, some expenses, it could be the worst data breach in Australia's history. So we don't know what the ramifications are. But I've seen the Queensland Government, New South Wales government, you know, they're just making it super easy to get a new driver's licence number. I've had the same one for you know, it's just a few years since my 17th birthday. But you're getting new information. Getting that all sorted. So amazingly, a record number of Australians are now fleeing Russia. They all now have, sorry. Okay. I just wasn't quite following you there. But I just thought, yeah, definitely Optus for sure. And suddenly, Telstra is looking more appealing. We'll see. We'll see what happens. But some some other good news as well. I'll share this with Andrea for the weekend reads the the ad that's been made about the Uluru statement of the heart. It's just beautiful as indigenous elder sharing this story of how the country collaborated, and people came together and and the kid says, like, ah, is this a true story? And he said it could be. And I just thought it said beautiful to inspire people with hope rather than just going you should be getting on board with this at some, you know, it's so congruent with your message. I love that. No, this is like, yeah, yeah. And there is so much reason for hope. There's so much reason for her, but it's up to us. So we can we can be we can stop in fear and hopelessness or we can step into action and create the future we want. And you know, that's where that's where I sit. You know, sometimes I get dragged into the hopelessness bit and I have to pull myself kicking back, but there's space, there's so much space for hope. So Tim, yep, there is a door to go through that. That has a brighter future, but we have to have the courage to get to it. Just a quick final one. There was a brilliant story for the space nerds among us live long and prosper. We have a successful direct hit. So you know, all those movies are like Armageddon, Armageddon Arma, she made an Armageddon Deep Impact. All these ones were in asteroids coming towards earth and they send up a rocket to drain you know, blow it up or stop it hitting Earth or basically NASA has gone you know what? Let's do that. So they found they found an asteroid happily just going past it wasn't going to hit Earth. And so they decided they're going to send a they're going to send a rocket effectively to the to the asteroid just to heat it so that it pushes it off its orbit or off its target anyway. Like, and so that if something was coming directly at it, you could just hit it a little bit. And with the amount of distance between it and Earth, it would miss Earth. That's kind of the idea. So it was called the it's called NASA's double asteroid redirection test spacecraft or Dart for short. I'm pretty sure its original name was fatal asteroid redirection test. But the the acronym for that probably wasn't as appealing. If but the anyway so I love I love how it was described as it was described by the programme scientists the dots programme scientist has a golf cart travelling at 15,000 miles an hour, smashing into the side of a football stadium. And and then there's, if you have a look at Andrea's weekend reads is a link to one of the things which shows the camera of the spacecraft approaching the asteroid. And and it looks like it's having a zoom call with somebody with a potato shaped. Ferreira rowshare just pushing it closer to the camera in black and white, for some reason, anyway, and everyone cheering that it's probably hit the thing. So they now need to measure if it's actually turned anything off its course. But I wouldn't be surprised if soon we get some messages from Die amorphous, or that was the asteroid or DDMs, meaning the twin which strange because there's only one of them. Dumb offices, the two natures type one that was orbiting it. But I wouldn't be surprised if we get a message from them declaring war on us because we've just screwed up their atmosphere. Or, or Jupiter is now in a state of panic, as this thing is now approaching yet instead of us. But yeah, so it's kind of cool. So we've spent billions of dollars doing that. And isn't that awesome? Yeah, I can add to that. Australia for a moment. Tim Malcolm catch posted on LinkedIn this morning. I actually noticed two days ago. I just saw it this morning. You know, so the story, the essential role Australia played in NASA's asteroid redirection test. He said, What I'm hearing is Australia's save the planet. So that's the bottom line subjects as sweet as cool space stuff. And NASA needs us. That's all I need to know. Yeah, well, I mean, Australia is good like that. Because when America is facing the other way, they can't see anything. So reason. Two, were useful. Yeah. Yeah. Steve said planet wars. That's the last thing we need. We don't need any more wars. You know, what it would do? It would change everyone's focus from themselves and, and their own nationalism and fascist agenda, to looking at something bigger, but that would be problematic. It's kind of think COVID would do that. And the climate crisis would do that. And that doesn't seem to be working. So what we're, what they're all doing is pushing us into into our national corners, which is the last thing we do, we need. But the article that I've just I've just shared it on. So it should go through to the social media links is the battle for the soul of the West. And of course, this is after Joe Biden's comments, the battle for the soul of America. And I agree with Joe, I think this is a time for Biden, I think he is it's not a political statement. He's just a man of wisdom and experience. I mean, either there's an author called who may who may hack and I apologise to him if I'm saying he sent an incorrectly and he's one of the thinker's 50. So the thinker's 50 is the top 50 sort of thinkers in the world, across multiple, multiple topics, and he writes amazing content, anything anytime he pops up, I'm having a look. And the last few articles he's written are about the rise of fascism in Europe. And he's, you know, he basically sort of said, the fact that I'm writing this frightens the hell out of me. You know, that the rise of fascism, and we don't need all countries to become fascist states for it to be concerned in World War Two. We had, you know, Germany and Italy. I think we also had Spain and Portugal, right. But basically, fascism is now ascendant, we saw it in Italy, we, the second largest party in Sweden is has ties to Neo Nazism. And the issue around these parties is they are nationalistic, anti immigrant, anti LGBTQ, anti women, eventually, you know, when the other scapegoats don't work, but the problem with scapegoating is eventually, countries work out that it's not the minority. The minority aren't causing the grief, there's a there's a bigger problem. So basically, the article saying that Europe should have been looking to the UK and America for the last decade, who've been following this policy, and they're obviously still failing. So it's it's a massive concern that this is happening right now. Because right now, the world needs to come together. And what we're seeing is it splintering apart into these fascist movements? So guys, thoughts as you're reading it, have you come across you may have before I have I, I kind of can't help but think, Well, you mentioned something about you said, you know, COVID and, and climate change should should have galvanised the world in some sort of sense of togetherness, and and centralised purpose. I still think climate change has a opportunity to do that. But look what happened when, when, when COVID was first announced in all these places, and and the toilet paper fiasco. Okay, so so that that's like a minor, minor thing. And then everybody quickly goes and grabs for themselves. So this is grabbing for themselves. Now on a national level, this is an element of let's protect ourselves. Let's not let people in let it's all their fault. The stuff that's going wrong, it's somebody else's fault. So there's a lot of deflection. So it's interesting. We just talked about asteroids. There's a lot of deflection now happening. I mean, deflection has been happening at a political level for ages. But, but I think, the cause of this, what's really interesting about this, is that, that, that it's being labelled as outright fascism. Which, which, there's been a lot of, you know, political whitewashing, I suppose, of what things are called, parties are saying they're their ex neo Nazi, which means, yeah, we used to be neo Nazi, but we're better now. Yeah, you know, we're better than that. A little bit. So just for those people who are going hang on what's fascism, again, it's a way of organising society in which a government is ruled by a dictator. And that government controls the lives of the people, and in which people aren't allowed to disagree with the government. And it's a bit worse than that, because it controls every aspect of everything you people are upon to do its agenda effectively. And, and that that, you know, there might be that agenda is going to be sold as the solution to all the current problems, and to sell it as that, which is what Hawk is talking about, to sell it like that to say it's the solution to the problems, you then have to define the problem as being external to us at the beginning. And so it's it's always immigrants problems, and another alpha. And when that sort of runs, it's, once it's raised a little bit and people go, well hang on a minute. It's not really the Megan's problems, is it? Because didn't Boris, Boris Johnson, didn't you go to a hospital with COVID? And it was the immigrants that saved your life. So maybe it's not the immigrant problems after and then it's like, yeah, you're right. It's, and then it's fine people within so long as you've got somebody to hate, it drives, it takes that passion and energy and hatred into activity. So if we could, if we could somehow harness hatred for bad weather, maybe we could actually, maybe we actually put this to some good use. But at the moment, it's being used as hatred to people not like us. And it's an in a increasingly and this is the thing in an increasingly homogenised world or a diversity diverse world. It just takes a couple of people to say, Well, is this person's fault and sort of deceived? That? I mean, we even kind of said, you know, what was the pipelines? Was it Russia's fault? We kind of did that even today. But we were sort of thinking, I mean, there's a war going on, it seems to be maybe something or somebody's standing to profit by that not being up again later or something. So you know, we're just whose fault is it? And we are creatures of whose fault is it? So I find it fascinating article, or you guys just wanted to Yeah, he's really good. I just wanted to add to what you just said about defining fascism, because I thought that was that's a really important thing. And he said, the correct way to say national fascism, which is hyphenated is a kind of death spiral. This death spiral goes like this, this nations begin to have problems, usually economic stagnation, high levels of personal debt, and people's lives begin to feel precarious, desperate and broken as living standards decline. So yeah, that's what we're seeing. Right. And that's not going to change. While we're in this situation from an economic standpoint, from from drought, which is obviously an end war which is causing inflation and you know, we can go this path or we can say whatever we look at the collective issues and challenges that we face and say, now we need to go to come together and go down this path and manage how we approach this coming decade because it is a decade of challenge that we're facing. So anyway, so Joel, Carrie. situation like this comes about when there's only when there's bad news, right, but you really is hard to ride is I think fascism cannot rise when everything is going right. That's the whole point of it. And there's a very funny thing about about, I think the world's problems can be the same as it like we can have the same asteroid heading towards us, and we can have a fascist response, or, or a more constructive response. I do think that there is this, there's this. And again, this is the this is why I'm always talking about these early right, I do see the upside of fascism as in the sense that it's a really quick way to get people together on the same idea. You know, it's a lot, it's a lot less time to spend on convincing because it actually it actually triggers off some very natural base instincts that we have in ourselves. So in that way, it's a very quick way to get things going, as I'm like, I think, for instance, if the Republican Party and with respect to anybody who's inclined that way. You know, after all, we really, really think that the problem would be with the with the climate. I think they do more faster for it, then the Democrats have been able to do it's, it's just and I'm not calling them fastest unnecessarily. If I'm saying that there is something about that fear of others, that drives you to action, to protect yourself a bit more, you know, you know, when you were saying fascism can only emerge when things are going wrong. It made me for some reason, immediately think of Superman. So Superman, and weirdly enough, fascism portrays the leader as some sort of Superman that can solve everything. Only I can solve this problem, you know, comparing him to God, I mean, it's it's Superman transistors like that, right? Superman only gets his kid off when something's gone wrong. Yeah. And then he flies around and saves the world. Anyway. It's not quite like Superman, because he seems to be reasonably benevolent. Alright, so yep. Carrie, what do you think? Yeah, I was waiting for you to speak. So I was wondering why you suddenly started laughing when Joe was being so serious, but joking about those basic instincts, you know, to shut down to just be all about you and your people, your people. And, you know, it's that fear of the stranger. And, like, it takes personal work to open up to collaboration to how can we hear differing opinions? So yeah, I, I hear you. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, there was a there was a bit in the article that I really liked where, because articles like this and commentary about, you know, here's the problem is this. And here's that here's the problem, the problem, the problem, the problem. So the whole thing about scapegoat ism is, the problem is there the problem was there. And when it doesn't work, it actually shows that that's not the problem. So what is the problem? And Huck says, here's the point. None of this is the cause of Europe's real woes. It's, you know, is our immigrants responsible for European living standards stagnating? Of course not. The reason for that is what's true across the West living standards are flatlining like a foetal heartbeat because of under investment. The EU itself foolishly caused this problem with its stability and growth pact, which places severe restrictions on how much nations can really invest, which to me doesn't make any sense. It went into force in the early 2000s, which is precisely when European living standards started to flatline and personal debt levels began to skyrocket. Not a coincidence or relationship. Yeah, yeah. It's actually so when I was in Europe, especially in the UK, I was hearing people saying, what to the immigrants, immigrants immigrants, I'm like, You do understand they're not the problem, right? No, no, no, they are the problem. I'm like, not they're not the problem. The problem is the infrastructure that you've got in place, it can't. It's not coping with it. And you know, like, you know, we, I think we were talking about it last week or two weeks ago, you know, the UK hasn't invested in its water infrastructure for 30 years. So why that's not anyone else's problem. That's government's not investing in something for the last 30 years. And yet, but but the government's are there, they're so good at it. But what I find disturbing is how people get sucked into this message consistently get sucked into this message. And you know, and the other thing that was really coming through is the belief by this author that America is coming through its decade, and obviously we're going to see that in the in the November. What do you call that? half term elections? It looks good. It looks good for the Democrats. Right? And that's mainly because the Republicans went after women's rights to have an abortion. So women are voting in bigger numbers than ever before, but people believe it that's what I'm always you know, I'd like you know, I was one of the things I was talking about in the book all these people is rage you Watch these videos is rage on people's faces towards a minority. And after it's over whether a violence is committed in physical violence or verbal violence, do you feel any better? Is your life better? You know, well, they didn't change anything. I feel like they're taking some action. But the thing to me from a sociological perspective, when you look at it, is they're raging and they're angry. Because and, and there's only one reason it's not because of a big, systemic, anything else, it's because their life, their personal experience is being adversely impacted. Their dream is unattainable, the dream that they've been sold, they can't have it. And so they've been sold something that they can't have, and now they're angry, and they can't have it because the opportunities aren't being given or the education is not there, or something's being shut down, or the jobs are going away, or whatever it is, is is happening. And all of these things are just foundational, economical, you know, it's the bedrock. And when you mine away at the bedrock, it eventually collapses and people get angry, but they're getting angry at the wrong people. Because the people who are controlling the narrative, which is usually the media side, are giving them a false narrative. And when you get a false narrative, you make a false conclusion, you get a false conclusion, you get false action. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we're gonna say something. Well, you know, I'm just hearing it's, it's really, in every country, someone mentioned, you know, Boris Johnson being sick and being looked after by migrant versus people move to another country, whether it's Australia or America, or the UK, and this so instrumental in building, they build so much of the community. But then when it's not convenient, and you're looking for a scapegoat, then it's this like blameless stranger. Rather than how can we learn from each other? How can we collaborate, and it really takes listening to each other and listening to us different perspectives. Yeah, and it's critical. So where does this end? Well, it doesn't end well. We are now in our what you might call, the cresting phase of a fascist supercycle is rising across the west and much of the globe. But if America is very, very lucky, he calls Joe Biden's Alter Ego dark Brandon, have you guys heard that before? Potentially, America could actually sort of step into the leadership of the world again, because they've gone through this terrible decade of sort of going all over the place. So Well, I suppose we wait and see. But, you know, when we look at the future, if we're going to make it enlightenment versus fascism, wisdom versus ignorance, truth versus lies, demography, demography, Gary, how do you say that versus democracy? Trump's in every nation masses screeching in rage, hypnotised by big lies? You know, so basically, this is an opportunity for the West to rise again and remember what it was so by Europe getting caught up in fascism, the bigger threat is of course, it's it's putting into question what the EU was always supposed to be about. Even Eurovision was part of not returning Europe to fascism. So it's a we've got a big fight ahead. And it's I know, it's a frightening if we go down this path, we're going to go into it, you know, the last time we didn't went down this path, there was mass destruction all over the globe, you know, cities reduced to rubble, that's where we are on the journey towards that. So going to concerning, you know, Jay, come on. I know you got something to add. Well, the challenge is always going to be about, you know, a story that guides people out of the forest, you know, you need to you need to have a narrative that that does that. And over, it just happens right now that we are very clear labels for everything. And I think the problem we have right now is too many labels as in like, you know, there is no way I mean, for instance, it just go with me for a while with this. There's no way a fascist can do a good thing, right. But what if you could, you know, what, it's just some sometimes there's some people who maybe have the way out of the forest, and just that the story that they have comes along with the wrong label, and so people can't follow. So, you know, one of the things that men that I've been I've been very fascinated by these American celebrity couples where they are diametrically opposed politically, but there are a couple and that that ability of them to have those differences in discussions and yet at the same time to go towards the greater objective, which is to have a good family to look Got to protect the future together, that sort of thing. I think that's something which, which, which I think we need to try and figure out, we need to be able to be okay with other people being somebody else. And I think, you know, we have too much of a situation where we don't want to be in the same room with this other person in this particular way. We want to keep our identity versus that person. So I, I mean, I, I think we do a lot of signalling to make sure that people know exactly who we are and who we're not. And to the exclusion sometimes of good ideas. Because we're not being told those things in either terms that we kind of want to see them, you know, we don't want to talk to someone to someone who is the wrong kind of person to be speaking to I mean, for instance, I mean, in on the, on a, on a good day, let's say the person who has the brilliant idea who's going to help us get out of all this right is our Kelly, we'd have trouble taking his advice, would have trouble saying that he did a good thing, or he had something useful to say we just we just wouldn't be able to do that. And that's something that we really have to start thinking about. The person who's had the wrong idea before doesn't have the wrong idea. Always sometimes. Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying that there's a piece in The Washington Post, it's called forget polarisation. The problem is right, right wing extremism. And what this article is really emphasising is the language that we use, and especially the media, they present balanced opinions from both sides, right. Could a fascist have a good idea? is basically what you're saying, right? Yes, of course. But fascism in its historical context, and how it's played out is not a good idea for the time that we're facing right now. Because what what we need now is leaders that, can I have the ability to bring all of the different parties together? Because if we don't come together to overcome the challenges, then we have no, we have no hope of overcoming the challenges that we face. So it's not it. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. But I, yeah, I'm not it's about it's the likability factor, right. So what we do is we have a dislike for, for, for people across, let's say, across the aisle. And this thing about how you express that dislike, or how there's exclusion, and that that does come across a bit actually makes a difference. Because I think like if I've always been thinking about the the Chinese situation, Chinese that's in China, right? I don't think China set out to be this big, hulking ape that wanted to just take over everything. I think China wanted to be at the table, have a seat at the table and have its part and be recognised and be respected. But I think too much time passed, where, for instance, China wasn't seen that way. It was always about, you know, if it was a western idea, it was great in any because China, it was China trying to, you know, assert his dominance, or what have you, to the point where you get to the, to the to the time, and you get to a point where you go, like, you know what, screw you, I'm just going to do it myself now. And I can do it. And I can do it nicely in high society. Or if you don't want to accept me in this, then what I'm going to do is just go and do it myself. And if you find someone that is capable enough and powerful enough and loud enough, I mean, we have that even now in our social situations, they're going to go ahead and do it. And they're going to do everything they want to do without having to worry about you because you didn't want to play in the first place. So there is that kind of polarisation that we take into the into the arguments, which is why for me, it's about this idea, but being able to take ideas and that conversation and it's not that anybody is immune to this. We're all innately designed in that way. It's very easy to get into someone's head you just gonna go like, Oh, that's really nice. You Oh, yeah. I love what you're wearing. You're, you're so handsome. I love what you're doing. It's like, Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. What do you have to say, you know, and it's, it's the kind of thing that I think we've come to a place in society now where we want to be as different as possible. The, the, we work so hard at being unique, and we want to have our own space. I mean, this this whole idea of, for instance, a pronouns and all that kind of stuff, right? Just it just, it's just a symptom of it, right? It's like, No, I am not this, I am this, and you call me this, I want to be upset. We're not calling you this. And it's like, why does it matter? Why does it matter? You know, and I know there's an answer to that, but it shouldn't matter as much. If we said if we agreed that We are all citizens of the world with worldly problems. Why can we solve this the citizens of the world, there's a, there's a lovely spectrum. Well, and it goes from significance through to connection, this connection at one end the significance at the other. And we're supposed to be somewhere in the middle, because when we're completely down the connection end, we can be lost, our uniqueness is lost, we're just, we're just one of many we are lost in those many. But if we're so we would say that as a result, we seek some sort of significantly want to stand out from the crowd, the crowd is that connection to stand out from the crowd, is that sort of significance, but, but with social media and, and our ability to be seen, and Western thinking being very much, especially American thinking not not always Western thinking, because as we saw in the article, hack talks about Europe being very much a connected society, and that being really important for its identity, whereas America is a very individualistic, I can be by myself forever society, so long as I'm just, you know, working, buying, consuming going up the ladder. And so, I, and I really appreciate that distinction between Europe, and America, that's a really interesting one, because when we just bundle everyone into the bucket of the West, it doesn't really help. It doesn't help. So the sub but that, and Americans, you got two places in America, there's super connected and community. And, and together, you know, the all the small towns, they've got that togetherness in their community. So it's not all of America either, to be fair, but it can be you know, if you're stuck in New York, that you can, you got to fight for yourself, because nobody cares. You know, you got to you got to watch in the movies, everybody steals your taxi. And, and, you know, the soup Nazi threw you out of the shop. So you just got to take care of yourself. But the but the, but the, I guess, if if that individualism is getting into the psyche, we weigh down that that end of pursuing significance at the cost of connection. And it's that cost of connection that gives all that pursuit of significance and gives rise to the facet of the fetish, the fascist ideology and makes it very, very easy to buy into, because it's about me, me, me, me, me. Yeah. And I think, I think the ultimate message is if you have a government that is dividing you, and then he's saying to you that somebody is responsible for all your problems, and they're a minority group, you just have to say, Wait a minute. That's not what's going on here. We've got a problem. We've got a big boy. Exactly. And it's not it's not the people who are least able to fight for themselves. It's not the LGBTQ. It's not the immigrants, it's not women. You know, it's it's the systems that we've set up, you know, we've had David and Richard Bissell, Otto on before, and they've written this book called The unsustainable truth. And I've just finally been really sunny to get stuck into it. Joe, you'd love this book. What it gives you is the entire history of the world's economy for basically for the last 100 years, and why we're in this spot. And if we could all understand that, I actually think that that would help us, but it's not. It's not the guy that's running for his life from Guatemala. You know, it's not the people escaping the floods in Bangladesh. It's not the people drowning in the hundreds 1000s on the boats in Europe. It's not who is it? It's, it's the government's that we've set up, it's the businesses, it's, you know, the pensions that we're talking about, then willy nilly basically, wiped out the entire UK pension fund, you know, but when you look at pensions, and how, especially reading David Richards book, Understanding how pensions have been built and built and built, you know, there's a there was a story in Spain, where a UNESCO World Heritage space, marshland has been drained to, basically to grow strawberries, and now it's completely drained and destroyed. And this is completely human, you know, involvement. And it's that sort of stuff, you know, because nature is required to deliver a profit, so that these pensions keep earning more and more money. But nature isn't something that can keep growing. It has a finite limit. And that's, you know, the fundamental fundamental message of the book and the economy. So I recommend this book to you guys. You love it. But um, let's finish up because we are almost right on time, which is amazing. You impressed? I will I could be let's see what happens in the next 10 seconds. All right. What? What is keeping you distracted right now? Carrie? No, not Carrie is not keeping me distracted. I was just asking. Keeping Carol distracted. I didn't realise you were asking this question. But what I'm trying to spend more time on at the moment is journaling and swimming and just get me in water, which is where I'm going next. No, I'm actually minimising distraction and just being in nature as much as I can. Wonderful, Joe. Well, I've been distracted with my health last week, I checked into the hospital on Monday to wait for a barrage of tests, which included MRI and a spinal tap. And realise that it is the slowest thing in the world where they make a little bit of a hole in your spine, and they wait for drops to come out one at a time. And they spend a lot of time counting the drops just to fill it up. But 1111 I'm in the process of trying to figure out why it is I have this little glitch in my vision, which makes reading difficult. But yeah, it's kind of a it's one of those things where I've had to think about my big plan as I go forward. And what happens if I do this and I realised that I have a terrible disease, which is, I am an opportunist at every level. So even as I am looking, I'm hearing about the health challenges that I've got. I've been thinking about how do I turn this into marketing? Nice. That's for me, I've been in India and last weekend anyway, and I was speaking at a conference helping people improve their professional speaking, which is, which is really fun. But other than that, I've just been trying to get some sleep a bit go to bed early, trying to get some sleep. I think that possibly is procrastinating from actually writing the assignment I'm supposed to have written by Monday. So So I that's what's gonna keep me distracted this entire weekend is writing that, Andrea? Yeah, I am. What's the new Oprah documentary, I suppose on Sydney, Sidney Poitier. And it's on Netflix and I absolutely recommend it magnificent human being very inspirational, very different. You know, like just, he grew up in the Bahamas. So his sense of identity as a black man, when he turned up in America was very, very different. And he never really lost it. And he, you know, he he changed the world. Yeah, so much grey, so much dignity, you know, beautiful man. And so if you want to watch something that sort of makes your heartbeat with goodness, I would recommend that so there you go. He's his big moment was, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Wasn't it? Was that he did like he learned so many so many immediate so many. But what happened was he that was the big rule. But he actually I mean, he earned his way to becoming the star. Ultimately think of for a show like that. Yeah, fair enough. But he also but I didn't realise he produced and directed a lot. So yeah, stir crazy. Remember Richard? Richard Pryor? That's yeah. Yeah, he was. He was great at comedic stuff, which I was really surprised to hear. So yeah, definitely watch it. Oprah is obviously a huge fan. And, ya know, he's an important man that changed the world. So if you want to look for some, some inspiration of going out there and being a voice in the world, and you know, we all need to be that voice in the world. Now. We need to give each other hope. We need to, like you said, Joe, we need to sort of paint the story of the future, you know, for each other so that we can we can head towards that rather than being dragged towards the dystopia that seems to be running towards us at a very, very fast speed. So there you go. The no show. We did it three minutes over. Nicely done, everyone. Job team. Game. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. We're gonna have a bit of a break at some school holidays. So I'm having my Australian family reunion. But we'll be back on the 28th of October. So I've been having a little break. So Tim can get on and get his homework done. I got seven to do seven assignments. The family to meet up with Yep, Joe's gonna get that. Joe will just discover that it's just a giant eyebrow hair coming down sitting in front of his eye. But he had to have a spinal tap to work that out. No, okay. All right. Let's see Carrie. All right. Bye. Bye.