Uncommon Courage

The Know Show – theme: why media dominance harms us all, with Glenn van Zutphen

October 01, 2021 Andrea T Edwards, Tim Wade, Joe Augustin and Glenn van Zutphen Episode 14
Uncommon Courage
The Know Show – theme: why media dominance harms us all, with Glenn van Zutphen
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to The Know Show. Every week, Andrea T Edwards, Joe Augustin and Tim Wade, 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. 

This week we’ll be joined by Glenn van Zutphen, journalist, communication coach, and radio host with MoneyFM 89.3FM, he also pays attention to the news. Our theme this week is: why media dominance harms us all, and with World Press Day this week, we’re going to talk about the role and importance of a vibrant and fair/independent media. 

The Know Show is based on Andrea T Edwards Weekend Reads, and covers the climate crisis, Covid 19, topical moments in the world, global politics, business, social issues and passion/humor/history. Join us. 

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

Unknown:

Are we alive? Welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards. And my name is Joe Gustin. And the one of the face that should be on right now who is going to is Tim Wade? Now this is a show that is interesting. We hope that at the end of the show is not the end of its impact on you that you walk away from it going like oh, what they said there, we've got to think about all this and new things that we walk away with. So think of it as a, like this cup, right? Think of it as a cup of inspiration, a dose of critical thinking that hopefully is contagious as well. We have also a very, very special guest today. And he is someone who is a media professional amuse professional from from years and years ago from CNN. He is now a media consultant he works on on radio as well. And he is one of our members in the Asia professional speakers, Singapore, and we welcome Glen van zeuthen. Yeah, I got that. I always feel the pressure as I say the surname and I knew I just just missed it. Here's the thing about that, Joe, and you did not do it wrong. But I will say so if my ancestors 370 years ago came from Holland. Right. And the name of the town in Holland is zutphen. So you got that right. But we have Americanized it over the years to van zutphen. So your health right near half? Not right. But pretty good. Okay, pretty good. Great to see you both. Great to see your wonderful audience out in Facebook Live land. And we got a lot to talk about today, huh? We always do. And we keep trimming it down because we were doing too much and taking too long. And I know that you've got a rush off as well. But really great to have Glenn here. Glen is one of those people that I really enjoy listening to what he shares on social media. She has lots of really great thoughts and insights on what's going on in the world. So it's more than just his background in journalism that we wanted him here today. It's also he's, he's he's keenly interested in what's going on in the world. So yeah, do you want to just give a quick introduction, Glenn, and just sort of give people a bit more background background around you and what you've done? Well, thanks, Andrew. I've been a news junkie, all of my career. So over, I hate to say it, but push them 30 years. And I over the years been a reporter, a producer, an anchor for TV, like CNN International, Joe mentioned, CNBC, Asia, radio correspondent for ABC News, have a radio show now on money FM, here in Singapore, as you know, and also a print reporter. So I've really done the gamut of it. And an all of my career, with the exception of a year or two right after I got out of college has been overseas. So I've lived in Tokyo, I've lived in Hong Kong, I've lived in Switzerland, and now Singapore for the past 18 years, following international news and reporting on it mostly for an audience back in North America. So that has been my my passion over the years. And in more recent years, I've I've left Daily News production, to become a communication coach. So we do executive media training, presentation skills, anything that helps people explain to other people what they're doing, and how they're doing it. So it could be at the corporate level, it could be individuals, startups, all the all of that included, which, of course, is where I met you lovely folks at the Asian professional speakers here in Singapore. And it's been a very interesting, very interesting journey. And I will say that I've always loved living overseas, and, and trying to live a life where we are able to run into and meet and get to know interesting people like yourselves, and many of the other folks we know who are doing fascinating things in fascinating ways. And that's what really turns me on. And needless to say, the news environment, not only now, but in the past, let's say 15 or 20 years, has gone through radical change and be very interesting to watch. And I know we're going to talk a little bit more about that today. Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about it. And if you are looking for a communication coach, because I shared something on LinkedIn, just recently, I was at a pretty, pretty significant business at one of their events online and their global heads of business units were speaking and they were all appalling, and really appalling. I mean, I was shocked, right? And you know, we were all living in this world all the time. But there are some great professionals out there that can really help and Glenn is definitely one of them. So if you need your executive leadership team trained, chat to chat to Glenn. Well, thanks I appreciate the plug in and I know Joe does coaching and you do coaching in different different areas. And the one thing I think we probably all have realized and seen in our own experiences. It is amazing to work with such intelligent people as we all do. At multinationals and SMEs, but even the most experienced speaker, either he needs a little help figuring out what to say and what not to say. Or B needs a tune up to make those messages come out in a way that's memorable. You know, one of the one of the analogies I use and I don't know if you guys have been to Tokyo to Shibuya Crossing, which is that super busy crossing right in the middle of Tokyo, five roads come together, you know, 2500 people cross each green light, you know, at this at the intersection. And when you stand there and look around, it is just a cacophony of billboards and lights and sounds and everything. And, and that is absolutely what our media landscape and our message landscape is like today. For all of us. Either we're being bombarded or we're trying to bombard others with our own messages. So being able to give those messages in a clear and concise and memorable sticky way is absolutely imperative. Now, and going forward, and that's that's one another thing I feel passionate about helping people try to figure out for themselves. Yeah, I love that analogy. That's a perfect analogy, right? Yeah, standing out today. Breaking through, right? is so much going on even what we're doing here, right? We're going to, indeed, slowly build an audience. And the other thing is commitment over time. You know, you start something like this, you've got to go for the long haul. So yeah, alright, show. Well, we still have a no show for Mr. Tim Wade. So should we get stuck into the news that kind of struck a chord? Yeah, man, let's go. Let's go. Yeah. For me, the week kicked off in with a really, really, really fascinating story. I don't know if you guys have read the sort of the full article that was in the BBC. It'll be my weekend reads. But it's a diplomatic story where we're always executive Meng Wang Zell, I hope I'm saying that correctly, was freed by Canada. And she went home. And in response to Canadians were freed, who'd been accused of espionage espionage charges by China. And that's Michael savour, and Michael covering. So they're now back home in Canada. But if you actually read through the story, so it was always positioned as not being a tit for tat by China. But then you see, you see, these sort of all sort of play out. And it just kind of had that real Hollywood spy thriller feel to it. And, but but also, I say, I saw it as a good news story, like trying to, you know, taking diplomatic steps in the world, which is a positive thing. I mean, more of that, because there's been so much antagonism between the West and China and in recent years, and obviously orcas hasn't hasn't added to that if you get a chance to dig into orcas more. There's some really deep, thoughtful content coming out around that you guys have been paying attention to it. Well, I was just blown away with the idea of Canadian spies. Yeah, well, it's not as we're watching the new James Bond movie come out, right? Those two don't necessarily aligned. I was watching. I was watching Johnny English last night. Couldn't be more closer to that. I don't know. We'll take it we'll take your secret say. This particular story, though, look, here's my top line is we don't know what we don't know about what's going on behind the scenes. And to be sure, there is a lot between the US. And you know, of course, Canada, this mostly on the behalf of the US, right? Because the US was trying to get at her and get at Huawei for perceived influence with the Chinese government and sharing data and secrets and things. So they're, I mean, they're, we're never gonna know everything that happened behind the scenes here. And likewise, we'll probably never know the terms of what exactly went down to get the Justice Department to release her to release her from her from the charges that she was facing. I do know that part of the deal. And they've they've announced, you know, various elements of the deal, of course, in the media, but I'm sure there must be much more below the surface. But one of the interesting elements of the deal was that she, when she's back in China, she cannot recant or would or retract any of the guilty elements that she confessed to with the US government, right, because she did confess to certain things. And so that's kind of interesting that they built that and they baked that into her deal, which is the whole Huawei do. The whole Huawei story that's been evolving over the last sort of decade has been fascinating, full stop. If you haven't looked into it, I definitely recommend it. Moving on to American politics. So Donald Trump said something again, that will help lawyers convicted in Georgia, what a surprise. You have to wonder when these convictions will actually happen. But the other the other news that I've sort of been paying attention to this week is around Trump and Biden. So basically on Tuesday the generals are speaking in Congress about the disastrous evacuation from Afghanistan. And in this article that was published on Tuesday, They started the Biden didn't listen to the generals, who had advised him to keep 2500 troops on the ground. They also accused him of lying. The media did not not the generals. So of course, the republicans jumped all over this story. But then the very next day, the same general set stated that the US Taliban deal which was signed by drum Trump hastened the Afghan collapse. And the Doha deal is central to the challenges they face. So this whole this whole story, you know, you've got the politics and the posturing of this story. I mean, the republicans started the war, a Democrat ended the war. But how the war was ended was was was a deal signed by a republican president. So it's always I always find it a pretty interesting story. Hey, the no show has arrived. Shall we bring him in? Or leave him lurking? What do you think? What is it looking Tim look like? And will he be wearing a wig this time? Oh, no, he's wearing it on his chin. Hi, everybody. Somebody has to be no. So hi, Glenn. Nice to see. Hey, Tim, great to see you as well. Yeah. Does anyone else been looking at that one? That story that's coming through from the generals this weekend? Congress? Yeah. Pretty interesting. 20 years? I've been looking at this one? Well, look, the the it's much like the it's much like the the back and forth in the Middle East? Where do you want to start the timeline on this debacle? Right? How far back do you want to go? Because one side talks and the other side talks. And, you know, really, you got to go back 20 years if you really want to, but Okay, let's, let's take the last couple years, Trump made a deal with the Taliban without any elected leaders from the Afghan government last year to withdraw American troops now, you know, first thought that was the dumbest thing ever to do. Because you're basically saying the Taliban is going to be the next group in charge. And the Afghan government isn't going to matter after they, they get you know, they get in power. But he obviously had his reasons for doing that. That'll be worth, you know, books and things later on. Now, he gave the artificial deadline of the 21st of May, I think it was that all the American troops would be out this year. And then he took off and left office and left, you know, left Biden holding the ball. It's so cool. To be fair, he wasn't planning to leave. Well, that's true, I try not to. And then, you know, bind came in, and you guys have heard all the quotes, you know, I'm not gonna be the next president to kick this can down the road, we're gonna get out, you know, after, after all this money in this time, it's time that Afghanistan stands stands on its own. So they were being pressured by the Afghan government, you know, to do certain things, and not others, et cetera. So is, is buying to blame because you know, what, every general over the past 20 years has said, don't take all the troops out, leave them in, right. And, you know, our rearview mirror and this is crystal clear, the way we saw things go down. But at some point, you've got to take the troops out. And, and everybody agrees that was you know, there was tragedy in the way that was done, but there was you know, when there was never not going to be tragedy, especially when the first guy that left the country is the freakin president of Afghanistan right on the cover of Dave and nobody knew not even his cabinet. So when you've got that happening, it wouldn't have mattered I don't think when the US would have pulled the troops out it was always gonna be the Taliban was gonna March right back in if Afghanistan wasn't gonna stand up and you know, for itself so bit of a hard line there. I know and I'm 100% sympathetic to the hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of lives that the US messed up in Afghanistan either by by death and or by injury, but what else can you do? I don't I don't know you know, and we're all aghast at what happened but I haven't heard anybody that's got that's had a better plan or one that would would have worked in that situation I don't know what that looks I think all lawyers should start with a shot clock and basically you have to make all the scores and everything happened within this time and then after that it's it's the next move right? Yeah, I think the problem is this this thing then have a did have an expiry in this there was no real deadline so to speak, by which certain things were going to happen so it was just going to keep going and then you know, it was they were Meyer they weren't they weren't able to change things and stall things and make things complete before they left. And so you know, ultimately, they just did at some point, leave and then actually took a long, long, long time. I mean, it's the it's the it's the old fear of the pain of removing a plaster, right. I mean, you, you see it there and you're like, Okay, this is gonna be it has to go, but we'll just do it a little bit at a time. And in the end, it doesn't have to go. You remember the reason the US went in there was to get Osama bin Laden, right? Because he was hiding in Afghanistan. That was the reason that the US went into Afghanistan. Then it became about nation building and kicking out the Taliban, who were horrible, which they are terrible people. But, you know, those are two very different objectives. Right. And, you know, everybody has known since even before the Soviets go back to the British, or, what, 200 years ago or more, that Afghanistan is not a place where you can coalesce people, it's tribal, it's a, you know, it's dozens and dozens of different groups of people that have their own idea what they want, and who they want it from. And you cannot build a nation, an external force cannot build a nation from that. Not possible. And the US was told that I remember I was, you know, I was anchoring at CNN International when all this happened. In fact, I did the first network news interview with Hamid Karzai when he went in to cobble a fried Kabul after the American troops were there. And it was I remember the night we did it, it was amazing, right? And he was so positive about we're going to build a new Afghanistan, and we're going to, we're going to bring it all together. And it was 15 or 20 minute interview that I did with them. And, and sure enough, what happened, you know, he and his family, his brothers stole money, like thieves in the night. It was and they turned right back to the corrupt practices that, frankly, you know, every other warlord was doing in that country. His brother ran the drug trade for many years. And it might still be I'm not sure. You know, so. With with that, as the start, what do you do? Right? How do you build a country? We've got a bit of a nightmare. So isn't it. And I'm not passionate about this at all? Really. I'm walking away with as if you're going to be a warlord, wear a suit. It's awesome to hear your view. I mean, we started the no show in the week after all this happened because it was like a real. I see I watch and I know you were very passionately, like the US has really screwed up on on this entirely. And it behind which they did, which they did. Mr. Country, you know, is part of it. And it's just the arrogance of the West, you know, but the other thing is, we just can't afford to keep going to war, we've got to sort ourselves out, we've got to we've got to move towards diplomacy, you know, and, yeah, it's, um, I'm with you. It is a hard line to take, we had to just get out. And Afghanistan has to sort itself out and work with its allies to rebuild the nation, but they have to do it on their own terms. Because, you know, this whole idea that we can nation build on with our ideas. It's just it's, it's proven time and time and time again. So yeah, like I could paraphrase Lee Kuan Yew on this. Told you so. You're not doing it on your own? It would be so funny if it wasn't so darn sad, right? The challenge I have is, but there's a couple of challenges I have. One of them is they're not doing it on their own terms. Really, the people there it's, it's the next, it's the next most powerful tribe is coming in. Right. So the challenge with a tribal a tribal country is, unless you have a powerful coalition, or in a tribal country to bring the tribes together, we've seen examples of that in Saudi Arabia, for example, when the Saudi family first took over, that was able to coalesce with a powerful ally, which was the Brotherhood, then, as a result, they've been they've been able to bring a country together. The Africa is full of tribal nations. And what tends to happen is one tribe is, is robbing the country blind until usually the patriarch comes to some sort of, well, old age or untimely end. And then there's an there's some sort of election that finally gets past all the all the rotting, and then a new tribe comes in, and they go now it's our turn to finally get what we deserved, and they started taking and you're in this endless cycle of corruption effectively. So we see that in in a number of different places, but and I guess you could argue that democratic politics is to tribes usually at each other's throats, the same sort of thing. I was just about to say what you were describing a while ago was the Democrats and the Republicans, right? I mean, yeah. Or the Tory or the Tories and the liberal dems or whoever right it's Yeah, it's a global sickness in our in our governmental institutions. It's a Why do we have a dream? Why do we have tribes up? Well, I think because we're building human beings at our at our Core we're tribal, tribal, human beings, right? We're tribal people, right? Which is in our DNA going back to, you know, the caveman, right? That's my pop psychology. My pop psychology add on to that would be would be the the pop psychology leading the pop psychology, pop anthropology probably not a straight model but the you know the whole post modernistic, pluralistic, almost ideology that is now that we're living in for the last 25 plus years is is very tribal. Because this is this is collective truth is you know, you just decide what you want. There's there's family, bloodline, tribe, tribal tribalism, language based tribalism, we've had geographic tribalism going on over the world for the last several 100 millennia. And, and so yeah, it is we're seeing difference all the time. We're seeing us in them all the time. We're seeing it's, it's, it's it's antagonistic, always towards somebody. And if there isn't somebody to be antagonistic against, I'm seeing in in the news and everything that we're creating it. And then and then two countries sort of go at loggerheads over very little. And then that escalates into some sort of standoff. And then you, you know, then you buy submarines? Yeah, that's really bad acronyms. I think this is a really good setup for for the theme. Today, we will talk about the role of the media and all this as well in how the the media set up the tribes, does it help divide the tribes? Is it trying to market the small tribes, you know, and in doing so, is it doing all the damage is doing? Maybe Andrew, we can we can continue with some of the other news, the things and then come back to the discussion again? Absolutely. Did you? Did you want to do your Tony Robbins story? Well, I was, it's not a news story, per se, but it's, it's just one of the things that I've been, I've been concerned about I you know, I'm a fan of Tony Robbins, in general in terms of what he does, and the impact he has. But I was part of a webinar some time ago, where he was talking about what you can do, you know, with regards to COVID, and I was really quite disturbed and upset that his perspective is, is one that is along the lines of, you know, just build up your immunity, and you're gonna be fine. You know, it's not something that it stems out of the early truth for themselves as an organization, you know, because in the first few months of it, they were very resolute and strong about the idea that this is something that people didn't really know enough about. And it was too much hype about it. And I think at a certain point along that trajectory, they will probably right. But then what happens is, you end up in a new place where you develop some beliefs around some bias confirmation as well in your in your environment. And he became convinced, you know, that, that Corona is something that you can you can deal with, with your with your mindset, and your attitude and your immunity and what you can build up naturally. And because he's so influential, it's going out to a lot of other people. And maybe just as I was just reading this, the story about how he claimed to have saved the life of one of his, one of his team members who went to the hospital, and got into a state where she was, you know, you know, in, in, put on a on a ventilator, and that the life saving action was the intervention of getting the doctor to call and convinced the doctors to reduce the pressure, so that, you know, that person wound up coming out of the coma, and therefore it saved their life. And I thought, you know, in terms of in terms of, of making a strong case about things that sounds like an incredibly credible thing to do, but the basis of it in science is so tenuous, and he's leading a large group of people who would believe almost anything that he says, just right off the bat, because it's Tony Tony Robbins. So he's a great master in so many, so many areas. Just because someone is great in golf, you shouldn't take financial advice from them sometimes. He is not a medical doctor unless there's some degree out there that we don't know about. But you know, s t f you are the four things that initials that I would say to him, he should not be talking about being a doctor or anything medical. And the other I think super important thing and I don't know if he's acknowledged this or not, I'm not familiar with all of his writings on COVID but you He is exactly part of the elite class of people who have been least affected by COVID-19. It is otherwise people of color people at the lower end of the economic spectrum who have to go out who have to be in crowds who have to go to work every day, you know, he is able to fly in is G seven or five, whatever he's got, um, he is able to self distance at whatever, you know, capability, or whatever angle he wants to he and his probably close friends, and probably a fair number of the people of His devotees, right, that are at the kind of upper end of the economic spectrum. And this is not the most affected group of people when it comes to COVID-19. Because of that, right? We have over him to say, hey, just do your take your vitamins and do some exercise and you'll be fine. I mean, that is vastly ignoring the reality of, of what his daily life is like, and how different it is from the majority of people that are getting COVID-19. Now, yeah, you're absolutely so right. And so the next piece is, is about Asia. And in the New York Times, The title is how Asia, once a vaccination legged, is rubbing up on population. So it's a really good news story, finally, for Asia, because, you know, these last few months, especially for me, being in Thailand, really big thing being on the front line of it. But one of the things that the article points out that is that vaccinations has never been a polarizing issue in Asia Pacific. Basically, people can't wait to get the vaccines. And you guys are lucky in Singapore, it was all free and easy and quick, you know, the rest of the reason people are still struggling, right. But the other thing and this this comes up every year in the Edelman trust barometer is most Asians trust their governments to do the right thing. And they are also willing to put aside their, their individual freedoms for for community. And that's something I've always really admired living in the region, that that sort of sense of communities. So it's a really good pace. But most people in Asia think the vaccines are the only way out of the pandemic. So that that adds to the take up of the of the vaccines when they're available. But the other thing is most Asian countries, especially in the developing countries don't have any social safety nets. So if you're a taxi driver, and you get COVID or you just can't work you don't get paid so the day the day workers right so that the whole region is full of these people. And so they're all sitting there gagging for the vaccines. And then the final thing is that I wasn't I hadn't quite tuned in to this piece of information before in Asia because Asia dealt so well with the pandemic at the beginning and locked down hard. We all did it with the region that's been in it for the longest, right? The government's cross region didn't secure the vaccines. So they they basically delayed the ordering and then of course when the Delta storm hit the region got absolutely hammered. So it's a it's a good news story that Asia is moving forward and there's a lot of countries in the region with 80 plus percent now vaccinated including in Australia which is getting close so yeah, so that I thought that was kind of good news maybe maybe there's some light at the end of the tunnel I certainly hope so because the amount of the amount of people needing life bags in Phuket at the moment continues to go up and the team delivering the light bags have to drive away every single time because there's too many people requiring the food and then we can supply so yeah I'm looking forward to this time being over and that deep economic devastation that has happened in the developing world is it's so hard to bear it like it really is and I think in Singapore you're protected from a bit out here it's it's not good at all Yeah, I think I mean okay, so me me going for the funny first is that you know, the reason why Asia was behind all this is very simple. We're always looking for a bargain and also Well, well let the iPhone lines go first everyone who wants to vaccine first and then we'll come in a bit later on and get a bargain on you know, on the iPhone 10 you know, yeah, so we got we got our vaccines off carousel No, but the thing that we I think tend to do as well in Asia one of the one of the the things that quiet quietly gets done about about the Asian patients is that let's see what happens first as well so there's a little bit of that going on it's in combination so the the the the stoic major let's say you have let's do let's do lock downs because that's the hard thing to do. And when I hear when I hear about the hard thing to do like what they did in in China in the first few moves that they did, I just thought it was bizarre we would in even in Singapore, we would find this too much to have no right. People will welded into their homes, as in the metal gates, as part of the lockdown was was was was instituted by having the gates welded you know, and Despite dangers of if there's a fire, whatever it is what you're gonna do, but that was the way it was, was going to be done right? So there is this stoic nature, I think about Asian cultures in general, and what we expect from other people in an Asian culture that allows for some of these these things to happen. And so, you know, it's it, it kind of survived, those seem to work out. But I think it will also some assumptions about how it was how well it was going. In some cultures, where we expect people to be quite stoic and quite disciplined, like, like in Japan, I think most people are really quite surprised about how bad COVID is in Japan, you know, and how it's, it's not turning out the way the rest of the Asian countries are going because they have a really high rate of infection. death rates, pretty high, low rate of vaccination. And if you took away all the telling signs and asked someone is this is this Japan, you might think, no, this doesn't sound like Japan, because they're, they're compliant, live for everybody else kind of society. So it's a it's a strange little thing there. But how it happened, I think Singapore was a little bit more utilitarian about how he was going to do things. I said, we were going to, we're going to use money and planning and paying for stuff to solve for the problem. And so he was able to make those quick moves. But yeah, tough tough for other countries where, and I think I think Australia had the toughest situation, or at least not New Zealand has a tough situation right now. Right? Because they've had it good for so long. The need for vaccination hasn't hasn't kind of gone through the entire country. They're not convinced. That is what they absolutely have to do. Because it's, you know, for them, it's still, I don't know, it's still February 2020. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, totally. And anyone else wanna jump in? I thought one thing was interesting. First off, the Korea in many ways, was doing very well after they had their initial wave, and then they got it right down to almost zero. So I think they, the, from a couple of articles I read, they didn't really feel like they needed the vaccine right away, right? They didn't have to be right there. And then, of course, they spiked again, and it was just all out of control. But I do remember, specifically, especially Malaysian, Indonesia, early on, they were you know, the religious leaders were praying away COVID were trying to pray it away. And I have nothing against organized religion or any kind of religion. But the the clear scientific fact was that prayer was not going to get rid of COVID-19. And it didn't, and they suffered greatly. And they lost a lot of time. Because of the partially in from my reading of it, and understanding of it, because of that mindset. And there were certain other systemic issues at play there as well. But so I think that there were, you know, you, you almost have to look at each country in isolation. And then you've got places like Cambodia or Laos or other places that either ages didn't have any money to buy it or are so generally so rural and agrarian that, frankly, it probably wasn't a huge priority for them at that time. So it's all across this region, there's so many different stories. You alluded to some of them, Joe, that it's hard, and I totally agree with you, Singapore took the pragmatic approach. And if you all remember, you know, for 1819, almost 20 months, the Singapore government has been saying the same four things right, wash your hands were a mass contact tracing, and social distancing, right? They've been saying it and of course, more recently get vaccinated. So they've added a fifth, but that has been since February of 2020. They have been saying the same exact thing day in and day out, and all the media, and they have been, you know, that's one thing I love about what's happened here in Singapore. Now, there's some other things that we can all probably agree weren't handled the best way or, or things that we're getting a little bit tired of now, but generally speaking, the messaging has been absolutely consistent. And the government's been in front of as much as they could be in front of this with a few exceptions. Yeah, Tommy, you know what, what I find really interesting, Glen, is when we do complain, that complaint tends to be all they said, we're gonna open up and and sort of let it go endemic, and then it's, and then it's all no pullback, again, sort of back to two people at a restaurant sort of stuff, which is still a lot more open than some places. And we're complaining about that. But what we don't see is that those in charge and those making those decisions. I guess the closest we are to that Is there like parents making a decision for their kids? That's I mean, it's, you know, so what I mean by that is we can complain. But as soon as I heard that somebody some one parent of the kid at Zoe's preschool was COVID positive and then then you know and then we just pulled her back we just go Okay, we're gonna hang on to her until the results of the of the kid come out and the teacher that was in some other thing came out we're gonna pull it back. So I my I reckon that we are we're hope we're holding the government by a different standard than we hold ourselves to when it comes to how they're making their decisions. And it must be incredibly and this is why a lot of politicians start with a with a nice color in their hair and end white it's the amount of pressure other than other than then coming in at one age and leaving at a much later age. But the pressure of the job must be significant because they've got millions of people that they have to make decisions for. And while I can go this is you know, it's hurting small businesses and people are really really hurting they're making that hard parental call of I know it hurts but I don't want you to go to hospital and and so you know, everyone's gonna have their opinion on that one. And with regards to things like the Malaysian Indonesia, praying things away Yeah, we did you know, we hear these sorts of things, but you did mention this, there's obviously systemic issues behind there, probably as well. And I would, I would argue that the praying away is a nice news story, when the real problem is the systemic issue, and the disorganization and, and all of this sort of stuff and and also probably we weren't seeing the numbers, and they weren't counting the numbers and until that sort of got to some level of, of reliability and publish ability and, and not losing face, but this is the responsible thing to declare. Then everything went through the roof. We saw the same thing in India. I think there was an element there was a period of time where the ego of politicians was there was a lot of peacocking and chest thumping and this is an opportunity to show that we're better than everybody else until they realized we're all the same and we all have the same we all have the same we're humans and it should take something like an alien invasion which is pandemic effectively is it's it's something foreign and alien to our bodies to really unite the world but it's not like an independence day script. But instead of a giant instead of a giant metal thing floating above a building it's microscopic and going in our noses but you know, it's so it's it is what the challenge is the sad part is and this is going back to the Commonwealth throwback to Andrew and just sick The sad part is this should unite humanity in incredible way and it did for a moment but but we're we're now starting to point the finger again. Yeah. And and we keep flipping between blaming and compassion, blaming and compassion and it's like as a species and don't forget that part in their target information Yeah, which is probably where the blame is coming from blaming and putting compassion and misinformation it's like it's like as a as a as an absolute as a species human beings a 14 year olds you know, we're aware we appear to be 10 year old boys Alright boys, yeah okay. But but as a species but yeah, we we seem to be like this and it's just it's frustrating as heck. But anyway, I like that that as a species we could be distracted from all our problems by giving out free porn. But no, I said the thing that's missing in in this whole COVID situation is the color purple or let's just choose green. And I'm thinking about the idea that I saw in a kind of witch witch Batman movie it was where the Joker I have the power people smile. And it was the it was it was it was all been sent out in makeup and stuff. So the news people weren't using makeup and and you know, they were avoiding that because what it would what this disease would do, or this this this this contagion would do was it would make you have that manic Joker smile. And that was the that was the kiss of death. And when I say that what we're missing is a color. I'm borrowing an idea from Neil deGrasse Tyson. The problem with COVID is it's invisible. As in you know, it'd be great rate, if in the moment you got COVID, or were exposed to COVID, you changed color, you know, and then we can see it. So you know, like in Batman, you can see someone had caught the smile. The problem is the world already has a racism problem. So we don't want to be changing color. So I actually maybe that would unite everybody else, maybe that would be a good thing. We all turn blue something. Well, it's tribalism, tribalism is both the bad thing and the good thing, right. So it was was done it was actually done with, with boys in, in camps. And what they did was they put these I don't have the reference exactly right now, but they put all these boys in different camps, or they'll tell the different people that they were different camps. And they all form their own little tribes. And then once you told somebody else about the other camp nearby, they began to form rivalries. And the funny thing was, they could break the rivalries down by creating a third sort of rival camp that was trying to do something really dramatic to both these camps, you know, so you know, tribalism is the problem. But it might be the solution as well, if well handled. It was a great movie years ago called wag the dog. I don't know if you remember Oh, love us. The political movie it hasn't I haven't seen it on any of the streaming services. But basically, it's you know, find an external enemy that you want to fight with. And Trump tried to do that with with COVID. And China, for example, Mexico, lighting all that and Mexico, in the wall everywhere. Exactly. So, you know, this is nothing new and certainly as a political tool. It's definitely nothing new. Sadly. Yeah, yeah. It's just it's just pathetic that we still get sucked in by it. Right? What it's like to go ahead. Alright, john, move on. Yeah. Yeah, November. Yeah. Which is? That's cool. No, no, we haven't been. Okay. So moving on to the environment, a new report came out. So children born and we're all parents, we should all care about this, right? children born today, faced living through seven times more heat waves than their grandparents. So basically, a child born in 2020, will experience double the number of wildfires 2.6 times more droughts. Almost three times more river floods and crop failures than someone born in 1960. But don't worry, we're we continue to chop the Amazon down and alarming rates. And just this week, America has announced 22 extinctions including one of their beautiful woodpeckers. So yeah, let's just get going with that environment. There's lots coming up on that in the in cop 626, coming up in November. So I hope you guys start reading about it. Another piece of information that's coming out at the moment, is are you in Japan? Yep. Yeah, so I was just gonna, I was just going to mention, the challenge was saying with chopping down the Amazon is the same challenge that was presented to India about stop using coal. And, and the, and one of the responses from India with regards their emissions and everything else was, Well, you did the same thing to get to your level of development, everything else. So don't tell us to stop and keep us down here, we should be able to go to there. So then there's been this sort of attempt to somehow balance and in a sense, that argument is half right. It is right that there are some some cultures, some countries that have that need an opportunity to use some of those metrics. And Andrew, you've talked about this before, where it's the develop places that need to take the biggest share of the the emissions reduction load. And even those, those developed places are significantly producing a lot more. But at the same time, India has been around for a long, long, long time, a lot longer than us as a, as a sort of a proper setup. And so one of the reasons why they've got the problem and they'll say, Oh, we've got 1.3 billion people or whatever it is, is because of I mean mismanagement, cultural the tribalism that's there, but a lot of countries have gone through that. The way that their government is structured on either doesn't have control. So there's a lot so the excuse sounds to me, makes some sense. And the reason why I mentioned it, is when we're saying we're still cutting down the Amazon at alarming rate. Brazil could argue, well, you're still cutting down your own trees while you're only pointing at our trees and I know the Amazon is like the lungs of the earth and everything else but are we going in and buying up big chunks of the Amazon and the the Swedish billionaire did but other than that, are we doing that to protect it? How is Brazil? Should they just stop their development because they happen to have the Amazon maybe they should be selling air rights or something like that or somehow leveraging off the Amazon in a in a different way. So what's everyone else doing? You know, it's great and reforestation is going to be a big priority all over the world but the Amazon some of the specialist sites already passed the tipping point which means that we'll be heading towards being a Savanna so it's not the lens of the of the world idea I've heard that argued against but the two big forests on each side of the world one in Indonesia and the one in the Amazon, they they they control the weather patterns of the world. So the deforestation of the Amazon is and you know when you when you talk about you know, they deserve to develop and I mean this is illegal logging it's corruption it's it's government officials it's to create more land for for cows, we've talked about that before we need to reduce that because they also produce methane it's one of the potent emissions but so to me, it's that argument isn't correct and also you know, the amount of indigenous people who have been murdered the climate activists who have been murdered you know, so it's basically greed what that is what is chopping down the Amazon and its greed at the expense of all life on Earth. So and since the pandemic and obviously a Bassano it's gone through the roof and there's you know, like when you see the some of the footage where they're chopping like hundreds and hundreds of football fields forest down and the all the animals in you know the ecosystems that are in there and it's just we have to get it under control but there was another report which I haven't included philanthropy is now genuine generously moving towards climate action so there's like 5 billion commitment so for cop 26 so it's government's need to put money in but so so to the richest people on earth and that's starting to grow now into significant numbers so India's I think it's a different thing and the individual emissions per Indian is is like a 10th of an American but it's just the sheer scale of the country and the population and that they need to rise and we need we need to come down now so we get some sort of middle ground and and take things like coal out of the equation the solutions are there and you feel the energy in India to towards that change you know that it is there is an awareness growing there this issue is just it's so it's so sad to me that I can I can I can almost not I can almost barely think about it you know and what we're doing and and I don't know if you if you guys have surfaced this in your own discussions or your thinking but you know, there is a certain way of thinking and it comes down oftentimes along religious lines that says something to the effect of you know, God created the earth for man's use and man should use the earth however he wants to and that includes using up resources and all of this right and this has over the decades been one part of the problem that there there has been a religious element to some people's thinking about our stewardship of the earth Now on the other side there are other religious people that say you know, God created the earth and we should respect it and it's what part of his creation as as are the animals and and humans on it so it is it's complex just even from that level but then you add on as you mentioned, the greed corruption people just having a short term view of how they can line their own pockets and I I am very much a glass half full person and I am just not seeing how we're going to get out of this you know, cop 26 they're gonna meet in Edinburgh they're gonna you know, and all this stuff, you know what, it's basically it's too late for the right fix to happen we're now at a point where we're going to do Band Aid solutions because it would you know, it would literally take all the coal fired fired plants turning off today and then we might have a chance of coming back to some sort of equilibrium with our environment you know, in 20 years from now and we know that's not gonna happen so I'm I'm so sad and I'm so confused and I'm just, I don't know, you know, not not taking a straw. You know, fruit with your soda is you know, it's something we can all individually do but it's just that's gonna mean nothing to to the to the crisis that we are in right now for our kids. And you know, let's face it will be gone will be gone in 30 or 40 years. So you know, it's somebody else's problem, to be honest with you. But I, I just don't know what what do you do? What do we do? If you're under 60, you are going to, you are going to experience extreme climate crisis, right. But you know, I totally relate to how you feeling and, and what you're saying, and I but I don't feel hopeless, I know that, I know that the future is not going to be better, I know, we're not going to stop it, we just need to make it not as bad as what it's looking like, because it's going to be wars over water wars over space, space, countries, climate refugees by the billions you name it, right? So if you use all of it, right, and so that this idea that as an individual, our changes don't matter, I really believe that that is actually the core of the opportunity that we that we have right now. Every we need billions of us to change the way we live. And we pay billions of us to speak up and to demand that change. Because as we reduce our impact, we reduce, we reduce the opportunity for businesses to keep, keep doing what they're doing, you know, because they're not changing fast enough. Coca Cola things, plastic bottles are fine. The whole fossil fuel industry is banking, on a significant increase in plastic production. And so we've just got to start to say, No, we can we can, we've got to change the direction of the future. And I think right now, that's the only thing that we've got, because cop 26 here, what are they going to do, right? And if everyone is focused on technology, that's not going to that's not going to do the job. We are sitting inside right now all of us are sitting in air conditioning, I would imagine, all of us have lights on all of us have fans on, all of us will probably have our air conditioning on tonight, when we go to sleep, or most of us will, you know, we're each one of us is absolutely part of the problem. And are we you know, are we saying No, you know what, I'm not gonna sleep with any air Connor fan tonight, or any of us doing that just and from here on out, right? And our families aren't going to do it. You know, and that needs to happen with, you know, 5 billion people starting today. Is that happening and how, you know, it's, it's a collective thing and, you know, doing carbon offsets and carbon credits and all that, that that's a nice sounding thing, but that doesn't actually solve anything that just pumps money into a system that allows the system to keep polluting. And so what are we talking about here? You know, what are we doing? And how are we going to do it? You know, because I know, I'm not going to not turn on the air conditioning tonight when I go to bed. I just know, I think the carbon credit system has a chance because I think the idea there is hit people where they really pay attention, which is in money. I mean, we've replaced we've replaced values. We've we've made money, the number one value, right? Yeah. And and that's why I mean, we're saying Amazon by greed, you know, all of this by greed. So and, and everybody's working 996 again, for money, because of a prestige because of some sort of status because of ego because of value because of because of however we're defining what we're supposed to be and, and why we're validated in this world. And it's and so the carbon tax system is a really interesting one, because we're saying there's a form of currency here that's attached to the climate, unfortunately, and for Unfortunately, it just seems to be a bit of a shifting the problem around pretending we're doing okay. So it's, it's like, fundamentally, it's got it's got a it's a, it's not a cryptocurrency to climate currency, but it's a currency. And so it's, it should have a chance. But at the moment, it's in a bit of a smoke screen sort of mess. As Tim and I've had this conversation many times about carbon credits, I've looked at the growth of multiple industries, and the projections to 2040 2050 and all of the growth basically says that we're very close to any any of that stuff just doesn't make any sense anymore because we just say we need to bring it all down. And you know, it will get to the point where when you offset your flight, it doesn't actually matter because there's so many more people flying that you know, the emissions are out of control. But let's let's listen. I'm just gonna say sorry, just want one last thing and that is, you know, all of us here on that are watching this or taking part in this today we are all avid social media users. We are all we are all feeding from the data center. Echo system that supports all of our uploads and downloads and shopping and everything else and we all know that that is A massive contributor to global warming gases and heat right and use of fossil fuels to run those data centers are any of us willing to stop our social media habits our streaming habits our whatever habits you know just just one extra example of we are so integrated with using power physical power and maybe maybe maybe personal power as well but you know, how do we get societies again billions of people to change their habits now technology is trying to play a part and certainly renewables and all of that but that that is not going to solve the problem they're just there isn't capacity and scale for that and there won't be for decades to to take you know, coal fired power plants offline and replace it with solar it just is not going to happen because of the capacity in the near term or even in the medium or maybe long term. It's a good start and it should be done we should try but you know, the reality is we have to cut down on our usage of of electricity and that's powered by fossil fuels. You know, even if you own a electric car, you plug it in at night, right? Where's that coming from? That's going from your power plant that's probably coal or natural gas fired. So mine comes from my treadmill. Well there you go, and then you're svelte and trim and looking good as always, the problem is it's so hot on the treadmill I have the aircon on and a fan Yeah, it's a breeze blowing through your face Glenn I think the the the issue that you were really raising is one individual making a change is not going to change a damn thing many the Andrews point is that's why we need to keep talking about it so that many individuals make a change but actually at the end then every and then those individuals take greater influential action. And we lobby business leaders and governments and we ask them what are we doing? Because if China can just go I mean China is a bit of a slightly separate point and Joe will probably talk about it a little bit but if they can just go you know what we're taking everything offline by the end of September no more no more mining you know for for whatever it is then then the government can make those big decisions that impact all their population. Yeah, yeah. And they've done that not just I mean not not the cryptocurrency bit but they've done that with coal now China's China's said no no more to call so I mean outside their borders which which is probably linked to the impending ecos eco side law that will be sort of with us hopefully soon. So in any international crime environment crime they obviously weren't there getting ready for it. So to me that was a that was a signal that eco side is coming but let's move on to the faster depleting resources there's only 16 minutes before I know Glen has to be off somewhere else. Yeah, sorry. Sorry You have to leave in about 15 minutes or so your private jet is waiting for you is mine Yeah, I just got a new one too It's a g7 beautiful I go by myself and just take a once around the block just alone just because I like to have a little bit of space around me Yeah. All right, what I want to just bring bring up this one and then we're going to go into into the theme for the week But please, if you're interested in this and I know when you will be the Wall Street Journal is running a series of articles on Facebook and the information is very very damning. It's a it's quite a comprehensive investigation and I think as we've seen in the past, it won't really change anything. But three week three headlines to look out for in my weekend reads one, Facebook says its rules apply to all company documents reveal a secret secret elite that's exempt that is definitely worth a read. The second one is Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen preteen girls company, the company's document shows if you have teenage girls, please read this article. Because suicides mental health issues all this sort of stuff is linked to two teenage girls using Instagram. And then the final one is Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place it got angrier instead. So basically Do you remember a couple years ago to 2018 Facebook changed its whole sort of model where it was moving away from brands to family, family and friends connections? So that was supposed to that was supposed to be better for us but actually what's what it turns out easy turned into a platform that rewarded outrage. So it's gotten worse Zuckerberg and everybody knows about it, but they have refused to fix the problem. So I think there's I think this information is important to pay attention to so that you that you're not part of the problem, you know, because this is an algorithm problem and then they're not fixing it. So I thought that was really fascinating. Well, the thing that I I take overage with and that particular story is the fact that people tend to say they They're refusing to fix the problem. And yet, I know they're part of the team's psychologists. And they're not just psychologists who are evil by nature that they're trying to do good things as well. So I think what they're not saying is promising to fix the problem, because they realize the problem is too big to try and fix. But I, I have faith that they're trying to fix the problem, and no one no one, no one wants to be remembered ultimately, as the technology that killed civilization, you know, I think they even want to do they want to do something, something good. There's, there's things that tie into human nature about control and influence and all different kinds of things. But I do believe that there are people trying to fix a problem, it's just that they can't say that they have I mean, if, if Facebook were to say that, okay, we're gonna fix the problem, right? I mean, that itself was what will cause a whole different problem. So what what they have to try to do is kind of drive quietly behind the scenes and try and move the needle, I think I don't think it's, I just, I just can't see a situation where Facebook says, We're gonna fix this problem. And no one says, Well, what are you gonna do about privacy, about freedom of speech about all these other things, these other things that are so so important as well, I think it's a, it's an artificial intelligence problem. So they've set it up with these rules to manipulate us. And they and that, that intelligence that's designed into the system is out of control. So they if they're going to fix it, they've got to actually redesign to take the manipulation out, and then when they actually might, might stand a chance, but then then they're gonna have to completely transform their business model, because people won't interact in the same way. Yes, you know, the outrage culture won't be rewarded anymore. So it's Yeah, to me, it's like the greatest global example of artificial intelligence and how it can go wrong? Well, I think the the actual real problem is most of the users have artificial intelligence. The the, but they, maybe maybe they should just just say, Look, you've got 100 outrage credits per week. And once you've used them, you can't be outraged by anything anymore. So save them up or maybe a month, that'd be better. So that you, you have to realize, yeah, offset by offsets to try and to be more outrageous. Outrageous to be a whole sub economy happening there. Yeah. That'd be interesting. You can wait that will be on you. Yeah, with Colin Wade's. Please, wait, I'm outraged. But the other thing was, of course, when your credit get updated on the first of every month, everyone will be outraged for about four days. And then and then and then we'll have Christmas for the next, you know, three and a half weeks of a month. Rest of the month will be blissfully blissfully blissfully ignorant. Oh, everyone will do something else. Because? Because they can't be outraged. That's funny. All right. So let's let's move into the theme, because we want to make sure that, Glen, sort of the thing about well, let me let me give you a beautiful segue into the theme. Joe was mentioning that, does Facebook want to be remembered as the technology that sort of brought down civilization? Well, they probably wouldn't be because they control the news. So they would be remembered however they write it, Andrea? No. Oh, okay. Not a good segue. did that. Did that did that pause for you guys? Or is it just pause here there was there was a bit of a glitch. But you know, I've kind of gotten used to Tim glitching I glitch. Okay, so media dominance. And we wanted to talk about why and we've been talking about it on an offer of you know, since we started this, but I really wanted to, it's a great opportunity with Glenn here. And talking about how media dominance really does harm us all. And I know a lot of people have got sort of negative attitudes towards journalists, but we need media we need a fair and democratic media. it's it's it's a it's a critical pillar of society. But there was this great article, right, so SBS news, which is a foreign language service out of Australia, and it's something it's one of those sites I always loved. This is the headline, why anti vaxxers conspiracy theorists and the far right have come together over COVID-19. Now, you could never have imagined headlines like that before. COVID-19. But it's kind of the norm now. It's a really, really fascinating rate. So I recommend you have a look at it. There's one thing that these article misses is the role of the media, especially in a country like Australia. So basically 80 90% of media in Australia is right leaning media, you know, Murdoch, sort of in the 6060 percents of influence. And then there's a few other players, right, and especially in the regional countries, so to say So they've got a role to play in the creating of this division. And they've definitely been playing that role throughout the COVID-19 situation. But then you can look at the UK, again Murdoch's very dominant and divisive. But then recently, I was listening to a podcast on the US media and local media, regional media is on the decline. So people are having to just get the news from the, from the national broadcast or the broadcast media. So the fox news and we're seeing how that's dividing everyone. And then the other issue with the media, of course, is the way the media earn money has changed so dramatically in the in the digital age, that they're all desperately trying to work out how to earn money. And so a lot of the headlines are very sensationalist, which is creating problems and more division. So it's a big mess, right? So Glenn just wanted to, you know, what are the challenges you're seeing in the media? And you know, how can we fix it? How can we solve it? Well, I would never use the word fix. But here's, here's what I will say. And, you know, the media has been part of the problem and the solution to a lot of things for what 200 plus years, right. And the stuff we're seeing now, with misinformation and disinformation, yelling, screaming, poking at people is absolutely nothing new. The only new element to this is the speed at which the news gets transmitted, and the and how fast, and how wide, it can go in a very short amount of time, and how it can be amplified. Right, rather than just a broadsheet that's printed, and then, you know, handed out or sold to people on the street corner, you know, in at the turn of two centuries ago. So there's nothing new about this, this challenge. So I would argue that this isn't so much about a media problem. It's a media literacy problem on the part of news consumers. And never, you know, in no time in history have we been able to access so much amazingly good and accurate information, as right now, and people have chosen to go to Murdoch or go to Fox or go to CNN or go to you know, MSNBC or whomever, The Guardian, they choose to do that. And I would, I would argue, it almost goes back to some of that tribal, those tribal lines that we talked about earlier in the show today. And they are choosing to do that. Now. If they took even just a moment to look for other alternate voices or sources of opinion, that would be an awesome start, even for Well, for 25 years, I've argued that, you know, you should as a news consumer, and this was back in the day when we just had newspapers, right, and TV, not we didn't have internet. But if you purposely chose, you know, three or four different sources for the same story, call it COVID. Today, and you read four different sources, you would probably somewhere in the middle of all that find what we could broadly call the truth. And, you know, left, right, center, whatever it was, and this, I think, is a problem with media literacy with people. And, and I don't blame, honestly, I don't blame Murdoch, I don't blame Fox, I don't blame anybody, because they're doing what everyone's always done in the news business, which is trying to get eyeballs, or ears or whatever part of the body is accessing their news. They're just doing what they do. I blame people that could be, you know, for your birdcage, that might be bums as well. You know, I blame people that aren't taking it upon themselves, to educate themselves and to and to find different sources of media. We're never going to you can never legislate Murdock to be more reasonable or Fox to be more reasonable. It just cannot happen, right? Unless you want to go to an authoritarian style of existence with your media, which I don't think any of us do. So I guess I guess that's my thought on that. And I do think one, they should be legislating percentage of ownership and percentage of influence. So in Australia, it's out of balance, right? So the people who are on the left don't really feel they have a voice. But the other thing is, I think there's a business problem. And that's, that's the bigger issue that we're sort of facing. Now. I totally agree with you on media literacy. And I have, that's why I do my weekend reads it's multiple publications. So people get different points of view. And you shouldn't just watch one thing or read one thing you should watch. And you should watch anything that's in opposition to what you believe, just to hear what their point of view is. And maybe you might even see some truth in it. But I think there's a business model problem. And that's what the whole media industry has been trying to overcome in these last two decades. So the big ones like New York Times, have been inundated with subscriptions, but the smaller ones are going out of business because there's no way for them to compete unless they become more extreme in in in the information that they're sharing. So I think many of these small local for example, newspapers communities, are gobbled up by the large conglomerates, which may represent one point of view or another for better for worse. So then you've got that further thing. You know, there's been a lot of talk over decades of having a newspaper media, not just newspaper, but media trust type scenario, like you'd have with the BBC, right? And funded by taxpayers, but there's no commercial advertising. And so you free up that commercial imperative. But look, you know, just look at the case of the BBC, people are constantly pissed off at the BBC, and that their their tax money is going to fund, you know, people that are in favor of it or against it. So there's there are challenges with that model, as well. And believe me, lots of people in the news industry are exploring these issues every day trying to get to, how can we get to a better, more pure, more equal or fair media? And, you know, lots of very smart people are trying a lot of different things. It is just a really hard problem to solve. Yeah. So in the meantime, don't, don't buy into the outrage culture, read different different sources, like we've got responsibility to write. Yeah, yeah, we just had world news day, this past week on Tuesday, and some nearly 500 organizations participated. It's it's kind of sponsored by the world editor's forum, it's called, which is a conglomeration of different organizations, and the Canadian journalism Foundation, and they are dedicated to supporting journalists and audiences, to try to use facts and understanding to to bring to bring about real story. One of the other challenges, as we know is, people were you know, they said, we're in the post fact world, right? I think I think one of Trumps many spokespeople said that, it's like, Hey, you just make up your own fact, you make up your own reality. And that's what reality is. And so, you know, and just like people are ignoring science these days, many times with when it comes to, to the pandemic. So how do you how do you present facts when nobody agrees on what the fact is? And you know, that's another layer of complexity to this issue? Yeah, that's a big one. You know what we should do a podcast where we just talk about it. And you know, I have a number of really smart people that I would would offer to have you have on the show, because there's lots of lots of really smart people trying to figure this instead of us, Joe, instead of you could easily get those to me to reach out. And let's actually put in some people that know what they're talking about. Yeah. All right. It's like going on now you need to jump off at some point. But I got a couple more minutes. But I'm Yeah, can hang with you for a couple of weeks. So the final one, this is this, this can be the quirky one, it can also be serious. But it what else is grabbing everyone's attention. Anything else that sort of stood out for you this week? Well, I like the tweet that I that I caught from Neil deGrasse Tyson, it was something he shared on a podcast. I was catching up with a podcast from some time ago, but he was talking about this idea of COVID and the mask mandates and having it be in some states and some states didn't want to have it and whatever it is that like having a COVID Mosque mandate in some states and not others, it's like having a peeing section in the swimming pool. like smoking on airplanes. Remember, remember back in the day where there was a smoking section, non smoking is just like so I lived in Tokyo in the late 1980s. And I would take a 747 back to the US, you know, for holiday or whatever. And I would invariably get you know, it was three seats, five seats in the middle and three seats, you know, in some 47 or DC time, and I would invariably get the middle seat in the middle of the five right? And I would get through row 38. And row 39 is where smoking started. Right. And and it was it was there was literally just a placard that said smoking in front, you know, smoking behind only this placard. And that would be the placard that was on my head rest. Yes. So basically all the rows behind me were smoking and you would I mean it was like I smoked six packs of cigarettes on on the 10 hour flight back to the US, you know, and so it's a lot like that. I feel and you know, so So, you know, I'm smoking on flights, but yeah, it was back in the day, not fun. I caught a flight. I caught a flight from Athens to to Istanbul and, and I was in the same seat. I think I was in 38 whatever. It was the same one. And yeah, I thought the plane was on fire. I mean, it was it was shocking. And I came out of there and I was I was literally smoking. I mean it was it was bizarre and that that was a short flight. Also my seat didn't work and the one next to me, I think had fallen out of the plane already. The whole thing was just horrendous experience. Glad you made it back safely. Yeah, that's a good progress. And when I used to work for an aerospace company and one of the divisions used to maintain aircraft and if you've ever seen in those days you see The inside of the aircraft gets pulled out. And you can see where all the tar from the smoke goes in. Yeah. Oh, it's not a pretty sight. What else is capturing attention? That's why they put the masks in that would have been good for them to drop down. I saw an article I saw an article Andrea about. Did you see about the Nazi? The Nazi trial there was that so there was an old lady, she's 96 years old. And she fleed. So there was a there was a so she had been the secretary, Secretary in a camp when she was a teenager in World War Two, and apparently 10,000 people died during her time as the Secretary of the camp. So she was being put on trial. And the whole article was that, you know, she had fleed, her trial at 96 years old. And I was like, I found that interesting, because there's, there's another trial on in a few days time or 100 100 year old guy. So they're running out of time to try them, because obviously everybody's dying. But But then I read on, and her fleeing was she left her retirement home and took a taxi to the subway. And this was and then there was some confusion as to where she was because she didn't turn up to the trial. But how could she run? I mean, really could well, not. Yeah, they did get up but but she'd even written a note to the court prior to that saying she was going to boycott the trial. So but so this is, so should I do I just love the fact that she's in a retirement home and took a taxi to get to flee. But then the prosecution had said, Well, if she's, if she's capable enough to flee, she's capable enough to do time in jail, which was sort of the, the upshot of it all too much. So uh, yeah, so it's, it's, it's, this is it's an interesting one. Anyway, there's a lot on that, that you could go into detail about when is when is when is it enough? but it probably. So anyway, a decision, I think it's the people who are in those camps. I think it's the survivors, the survivors had a had the would taking had the lawyer that was taking her to trial, apparently. And then there's people still looking for the last of them, they're hiding out somewhere. So the other one that I looked at was the Australian borders were going to reopen in November, and they were going to scale back the internment of those people who have visited the country. So So those people who are vaccinated, would have stay at home for seven days or something in the non vaccinated would have to do 14 days in some facility or something like that. But they would only allow reopening of states that had 80% of people vaccinated which by my calculation isn't going to be November. But But apparently, New South Wales is pretty close. Yeah, and Victoria, Victoria is not far behind. But But, but that's interesting. I mean, Australia's been very, very close, but that's good news. And then the third one I saw, the last one I was gonna mention was that the who have updated their air pollution guidance for the first time in 15 years, which I just found astonishing that it's the first time in 15 years that they've updated it, I suppose that a few other things going on the last couple of years. Health Organization, but but the air pollution side, I think Mongolia have just gone Hooray. 7 million, I think 7 million people died due to air pollution related challenges in the last 12 months, globally, something like that. So I just found that I first of all, I found it fascinating that it took him 15 years to do it. But it may be again, Andrea, coming down to this. What is it? climate aside? eco side, eco eco side. Okay, that's probably it's the fifth international law against humanity went once it gets approved. So yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty interesting. Then a couple of weeks ago, I shared an article that 90% of the population on on earth live in pollution that is unhealthy for our survival. 90% and yeah, so I'm hoping I'm hoping I'm doing a right here. I'm surrounded by green so I hope so. At the top of the tower, yeah. Another piece of news that really fascinates me is the whole post Brexit mess. Have you guys been paying attention fuels, fuel shortages, empty empty shelves in the supermarket hoarding This is on the chopping block. Yeah, exactly. Metal shelf and they try to get lorry lorry drivers in from the in from Europe to drive these trucks because the former lorry drivers in the UK and basically say We're not going to drive them, because conditions are so bad. They're not even willing to go back and get the jobs that are now available. So yeah, they're bringing in the imported labor that was part of the Brexit argument in the first place. Yes, yeah. All right. I've got a quick one for you. Before I go. It is a good news story. How many times have you opened your refrigerator? And your kids had just drunk the last bit of let's say, milk, or whatever, you're looking for your milk in the breakfast and it's gone? Well, this is what happened to a dad in in the US last weekend, Saturday morning, he goes to get his bowl of cereal and the milks gone, the kids finished, right before him. So he heads off to the quickie Mart, you know, the local corner store to buy a gallon of milk because they buy gallons not leaders in the state of North Carolina, and while he's there, he buys a $10 scratch off lottery ticket. And wouldn't you know it he got lucky. So how much do you think you want? 12 not $12 10 million? Yeah.$200,000 I was gonna say you want a dairy farm? Okay, not bad. 200,000 for putting down a $10 scratch in play. I mean, you know, that was worth the trip to the to the store and, you know, delaying his breakfast for a little while. Yeah. From bricks it to breakfast. Nice. Nice. There we go. Yeah, you guys covered all the things in the no show. Yeah, we Oh, there's so much left. That. Yeah, hopefully people check into the weekend reads and just really, we need people to be paying attention, you know? Yeah. Hey, on that we'll just backtrack to fleeing. We'll backtrack briefly right now and let Glen's Lee play. You want to leave your retirement home and take a taxi and then the subway apparently is the way to do it. Andrew, would you mind putting my LinkedIn tag on the show whatever comments, and if anybody wants to connect on LinkedIn, I'd be happy to connect with them. I put it into the into the private chat. So you can just copy and paste it from there, if you don't mind. And great to see you all. Thanks for having me on really been a lot of fun, and congratulations on the show. And I hope I hope you'll come back again. That's my absolutely yeah. Tim, if I come on again. No, no, no, I gotta give you more space. That's why I deliberately wait. Yeah, so yeah. Thanks, Glen. It's been it's been real privilege and pleasure to be here chatting away about some of the stuff in your experience with in Afghanistan, or you're chatting with people about Afghanistan. That's amazing. So it's been great. All right. So everybody froze? I don't know, you all, we all dropped off freely for a moment. While I was saying, Glenn, it's great to have had you here. Yeah, definitely. Um, stream stream yard has been misbehaving today because it's not my network. So anyway, but anyway, their LinkedIn addresses there. So definitely have a great weekend. If anybody is doing nothing. Saturday morning, tomorrow morning, nine to 12 join me on 89.3 FM here in Singapore or on the 89.3 FM Facebook page, we'll be on Facebook Live, love to have you when we don't have to be doing nothing. We can be doing a lot of things while listening to radio and indeed you could but I bought a treadmill. You could be on the treadmill with the aircon on and the radio on at the same time. I might do that. Alright, have a good day. Bye. Bye, Glen. All right. So we'll just we'll just wrap up with what's keeping you distracted at the moment. You guys. What are you guys been doing? Well, I have been on original and join the rest of the world and watching him squid game. Okay. This appointment on your site? Yeah, no, no, no, I haven't looked at it. And I just found out my 13 year olds looking at it. And I was like, No, I don't think he should be watching that. Should he? Is it bad? Well, it's one of those things that people have asked is this suitable for for for kids? And I go, it says it depends on the kid. It's not what I'd call typically family viewing. But then again, someone pointed out to me that depends on the family. So it's running men, Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the 80s. It is sort of a little bit like that. I think I think in terms of the the body count rate is high on the show, and some of the ideas a little gruesome but in terms of actual in your face, sort of graphic violence, which may be a terrible turn of phrase, but it's it's not as bad in that sense. But my own Because only because I think I've become a bit desensitized to the idea of someone being being shot, no weed in it. While it's while the concept is actually not about squids at all it's about it's about children's games. And it's people playing children's games for high stakes. It's basically what are the ideas that I've used for my emceeing? In real life? It's one turn into a whole TV series, right? Is it the what high stakes and children's games it gets interesting, it turns out, it's true. Well, you know, when there's a high enough stake, that's that's what makes it different, right. So like, like, if we, if we talked about, you know, if we, if we were to just kill off an audience without any benefit to you, then we're not going to think very much about that. But if then leaving the competition met, you could win more. That would make things sort of interesting. So it's one of those. It's one of those dystopian things very well produced in terms of graphics. And I recommend, I almost recommend watching the one with the English dub. Only because the English dubs are usually not as good. And so you hear some poor acting sometimes. So the story distorts just a little bit, but I've been able to it gets it that way. You know, it's always a little bit. There's always a little extra oomph that goes into dubs performances. I honestly, I'm, I'm terrible with horror, type stuff. And I, I, as soon as I saw, I walked in, and my wife was watching it, and I was like, what's this? Is this good games? And I go, Okay, I heard about it, but, and I looked at it for about 30 seconds, and I went, nope, I don't want to do that. I just Yeah, I don't I don't like. I mean, one of the reasons why I do the show is because I'm trying to ward people away from terror. Although it'd be better Yeah, go go watch squid games instead of ruining the world. That'd be good. But, but yeah, now I prefer comedy and sci fi that's far, far away. Yeah, yeah, I'm watching. I want something that's good for my soul. That's Yeah, yeah. That really? Yeah. Well, I'm working on the old bill, which might not be good for my soul. But I do like it. It's sort of a contemporary spin off of Star Trek. It's been been around a while, but it's now on Disney plus, so I finally get to watch it. first couple of seasons. Well, we've actually started to rewatch Downtown Abbey from the start, is, I was feeling because, you know, when I read all this stuff that I read, right, and watch all the stuff that I watched to do this and making reads, I don't want to I don't want to watch anything more. I don't want to watch ugly. I don't want to I've got enough, there's nothing ugly, right? So I need something and Steve's a bit more of an action drama. He likes the, you know, the plots and stuff, and said no, but he likes Downton Abbey. And yeah, just the other day, I said, Can we just watch it again, because it's just lovely. You know, and I need to I need to watch something lovely. And I've still got my, my booster vaccine had going on. And so Steve, and we're not, we haven't been able to pull ourselves together since getting the booster at all. So yeah, I just felt like that. But another thing that I want to recommend, is I've talked about the podcast, you are not so smart before, just started a series which is focused on genius. And it's seven hours worth he's just launched the first one. So keep an eye out for that, because it's absolutely brilliant. Because even starts with like, he talks to menza people, you know, most of these people are being interviewed and they say most of us are actually losers. Yeah, we're really, really smart. But we're actually not very high achievers. And then he asked them what is genius and it's something separate to intelligence. So it's emotional intelligence that comes into it, and there's and you know, you know, the prodigies come into it. So it's a really fascinating series. So I would definitely recommend getting stuck into that. So that's what I've been watching. And this was talking about smart I want to I want to recommend this podcast which calls itself smart, less, right, which is, I tried to have to I want to remember who exactly is on Jason Bateman's part of it. Also Will Arnett who is the voice of Lego Batman. And I have one more name on that which I can't remember right now. Anyway, trust me smartlace. It's a it's a pretty good podcast in terms of just a fun fun way to have a group of people who have great comedic timing and who are listening to each other and are bouncing off each other. The third name is Sean Hayes. So they're all pretty big names and they get together and to do this this podcast and it's really interesting for them what they do is that the general concept is the three guys who have good chemistry. Every week one of them surprises them with the guests. So one of them books a guest and they have no idea who the Guess is going to be until the guest appears, presumably on their on their resume or podcast. That's what we do. Except Andrew is the only one who produces the guests. And she does send out emails, but I don't read it until the show. And that's great. I love all the effort I'm putting in. Yeah. Joe, you talked about a podcast the other week, and I never got the full name. It was something about happiness. The happiness lab, happiness lab. Alright, I need to. Yeah, you can look out it's part of the it's part of the Pushkin network. So it's the network that Malcolm Gladwell has helped put together. So he's got a series of their they've got a they've got a number of podcasts on that network, which they're pretty good. They're very literary. In fact, this was the thing that I was thinking about this week as well actually about about this, this particular episode, right? In terms of the media and stuff like that. I had written down the word literacy, but I had the word scientific literacy as well as financial literacy. And it was interesting that Glenn added on media literacy. And I thought about the show and thought about this show and thought, you know, this is what the show should be about. It's literally it's a show about literacy, you know, in and hopefully in more ways than just science, finance and media. Yeah. So it's great having Glenn on. He's, I love the way he presents like news and information just just on social media, as well as professionally but it was really good to have ease his views so hopefully we'll be able to get to get him to come back. Is there a way I can, you can give me the full screen. I want to I want to share a video with you. Yeah. This one is a one that just puts me on the screen give a completely by myself or I can try sharing it, I guess. Okay, what we could do is now, what we'll do is we'll leave. Okay, that's one way of doing it. Here we go. So this is the dangers of, I guess, watching a video not realizing that the person who's presenting it is a comedian, I was caught out by this video as well. I had my emotional reactions to it until I realized, Oh, hang on, wait a minute, this may not be exactly what I think it is. So a minute and 40 worth of Well, I think it's brilliant. For not cutting the grass, because it's part of the Halloween decorations. I love it. When my tax dollars go to fund the fire department. That's what I want to know. I don't even use it. Once have we called the fire department. It's within walking distance of my house, I should drive down there and ask for my money back. That's what I should be doing. Because it's my right as Americans to have my house burned down if I want to. I forefathers died for that. That's called freedom. What's the worst that can happen? My house catches on fire. My neighbor's house catches on fire and their neighbor's house catches on fire. Well, you too scared to have your house burned down and don't have one. That's what I say. Going somewhere else. Stop telling me to get a smoke detector. We don't know the long term effects of these things. The battery goes low. And next thing you know, it's chirpin 24. Seven. We don't know what that does to the human body. Plus, tons of people that had smoke detectors in their house still able to get out with their families alive. Their house still burned down. What's important is just breathe a lot. I'll tell you this right now you keep your mandates off my house. I'm not getting a smoke detector. That's a guy called Brent Trujillo and everybody come back in on the screen. But yeah, just just so much fun to see the reactions online. The worst thing about this for me was seeing how it managed to bring out the worst in the good people, as in people who usually come out on the good side, you know, talking about common sense things and in support of things and all that and they got trolled. But, yeah, funny guy brand terhune. And as a brilliant way of naming himself on Twitter. he changes his name every time he's got a new show. So he's currently called Brent or human in some place, October 1. Go look out for it. It's amazing how people can get sucked in. We need more comedy. All right. So let's wrap it up. Thanks, guys. Thanks for thanks for coming along. I upload this on to my podcast on common courage. So if you want to listen to the audio There, we might have a couple of breaks and the recording is this week. If you want to come and join us or the guest as a guest, you know, you don't have to be an expert on anything. Just someone who likes to have a conversation about what's going on in the world. We'd reach out to any three of us. We'd love to have you here. We've got a couple more guests coming up. We're going to do I think Lavine is next week. So we're going to talk about equality and what's happened since a pandemic began. So we're on Tony Tony Robbins says people have have come back to me and they just cancel the booking so I'm afraid not happening. Okay, I can shout Make your move and stand up and jump. Alright guys said thanks for joining us on the no show. And we'll see you next week. All right. See ya. That was fun.