Uncommon Courage

The Know Show – theme: why equality has slipped back by a generation since the pandemic started, with Lavinia Thanapathy

October 08, 2021 Andrea T Edwards. Tim Wade, Joanne Flinn, Lavinia Thanapathy Episode 17
Uncommon Courage
The Know Show – theme: why equality has slipped back by a generation since the pandemic started, with Lavinia Thanapathy
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to The Know Show. Every week, Andrea T Edwards, Tim Wade and Joe Augustin review the news that’s getting everyone’s attention, as well as perhaps what requires our attention. However this week, due to Joe’s work commitments, Joanne Flinn has agreed to take the hot seat. We’ll talk about what the news means to us, the world and we hope to inspire great conversations on the news that matters to all of us. 

This week we are joined by Lavinia Thanapathy, LinkedIn Top Voice 2020, speaker on change, author, and champion for equality and diversity. Our theme this week is: why equality has slipped back by a generation since the pandemic started, and what we can do about it. We’re looking forward to a heart conversation on an important topic. 

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:

Well welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards. I'm Tim Wade and I'm Anna Flynn there we go welcome. That was that was we did that well, we did. That's amazing. Andrea, you're you're in a what's happening for you right now. You're in a swell. I'm still I'm two weeks into recovering from my booster vaccine and there's a big storm hitting Phuket as we speak, I've lost electricity twice. So if the screen goes black, that's what's going on. If it gets too bad, we obviously we won't be able to continue but we're going to give it a go. Well, I'm in a, I'm in a holiday chalet. So the furthest we can get away from Singapore is the is next to the airport. So I'm in I'm in a room that is extraordinarily echoey so you'll see in a in a wide shot that covered my microphone with a detail. Now it looks a bit like Mother Teresa. But that's okay. Hopefully the recording will be Europe with the chalets that are the I know those ones I go biking past them. The cheney the civil service club one yeah. Court noise you know, you're not good. Yes. And I'm dealing with the the vaccine blues, too. So for the last week where it's Oh, to the, to the point that you know, I'm really the the the inner child is just going where's my mommy, where's my chicken soup? And whereas my tomato soup, you can just tell what I used to get fed when I was five or not feeling truthful around? Yeah, exactly. Alright, so introduce our guest today. I'm gonna hand it over to you, Anna. Okay, okay, so here we have living without a party who is absolutely stunning and amazing one who I have known for, but I'm not even gonna say how long I've known her. But I think I've known living even longer than I've known the two of you, which is saying something because I've known both Andrea and Tim, you know, quite quite some years living you and I met originally at a professional Women's Association. And we have been friends and stalwart supporters of each other and our goals and missions in life for an incredibly long time. So it was wonderful to have her here. And the two, I know that she's going to be sharing some of the things that she's speaking up very strongly about. But one of the things she's done absolutely, amazingly, in the last two years, is really showing up, you know, like Andrea on LinkedIn, and Lavinia is now one of Lincoln's top 20 voices, which is pretty, pretty cool for someone who I think the way you described it to me when we had lunch, and we were trying to work out what we should be doing that you felt like you were just dipping your toes in. And that was only about three years ago. So you've done some absolutely amazing things in that platform and helping people find their voice in that way, Lavinia. And I know how much you stood out for women, and change and being able to be your most powerful self. So I'm really looking forward to this show that I would share with you. Yeah, it's fabulous to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So but living in your own words, trying to give everyone a bit of a quick overview of the, the wonderful life you've led so far. So hi, I'm living in telepathy, and I am based in Berlin, Germany at the moment. I'm from Singapore, which is where I know all these fabulous people from and what I do now is, I help people with navigating change. I work on personal branding, and my lifelong journey has been to close the gender gap. I am currently part of an very exciting campaign called hashtag this little girl is me. And that's part of an organization that I brought to Singapore called inspiring girls, Singapore, inspiring girls as part of a global network and I'm the founding chair for Singapore. And right now if you've seen it on Instagram and LinkedIn, you've probably seen a lot of stories of women sharing their career journeys and where they've come from and advice to their younger selves. So our goal is to ensure that girls get lots of role models to choose from so they can see lots of different options for their career journey going forward. So that's pretty much me except for one little thing that you probably don't know which is that I have in total my husband and I have five children. So we have four adults and one kid left in the house. So we have done the parenting journey from every angle. So this is my little exciting side hustle. To the side hustle live in your belly important part of your life. Yeah, and well done on this little girl is may campaign it's it's really quite powerful when I'm watching a lot of the women And people who want to be connected to you on, I'm seeing people sharing it. So well done. I think it's it's running the date, the deadline to participate, it's almost over right? Well, it's in the run up to the International Day of the NGO, which is on the 11th of October. And this is a day that focuses on the reason there is an international day of the girl child is simply because the the development of girls, particularly the developing world, has very much lagged behind that of boys. So focusing on what still needs to be done to ensure girls as nurtured as boys, and given the same opportunities is important. So yes, it's it's been in the month in the run up to the 11th of October. So if you haven't yet, please join us, all you need is you don't need to be famous. I mean, we've had some fabulously famous women participate, you don't need to be invited, all you need to do is post a picture of your younger self with a little bit of a story about your journey, professional or personal. And some advice to to your younger self, or to the young women who are, who are reading your posts, and then use the hashtag, this little girl is me. So if you're looking for inspiration, have a look, do a search for the hashtag and see what other people are posting. And I haven't done it yet. But oh, I'm feeling I'm feeling that I should, I don't like to do what everybody else does. That's not my thing, right? So, but I think it's so important what you're doing. I feel excluded. But at the same time, I love it. And I've seen it come up in my feed, have a lot of women doing it. And as a father of a five year old girl, I love the fact that this is happening. And I love the fact that Disney's got a lot of women role models, characters coming out of their movies. And I just I love the fact that access to these sorts of role models for her is there. So congrats, and I didn't know came from you. That's awesome. That's not from me, sorry. It's from an organization that I am part of. So it is. So Mira runs into inspiring girls International. She is the the powerhouse behind the entire the inspiring girls network. And they exist all over the world. So you'll see posts in different languages as well. So it's really been a very global campaign inspiring girls, the global network, there is one in Singapore. There's one in Indonesia, in Asia, I think. And then Hong Kong, I think that those are the three big ones in Asia, but all over the world. Yeah, you know, what would be a really a nice sort of follow up campaign is to get the men or the boys to say something amazing about their sister or mother in a way that is that excludes a bunch of stereotypical things and look beyond that to amazing things. Because then you've got the men sharing the women's stories, too. And that could also be a game changer, just the thought. That's what I think some of the supportive men now networks have been sharing the campaign and encouraging the women that they know to participate. Some of the men who cannot possibly bear the spotlight not being on them have started at this little boys me campaign, which is going nowhere. So it's kind of like ally ship sometimes means you don't get the spotlight on yourself. So I think the men who have been super supportive and like you have really been just sharing those stories with their, with the women in their network, encouraging people in their network to participate. This is really to, to, there is a difference there from a very young age and the way Gulf confidence develops in the mode of participation they have, particularly in STEM subjects. So the goal of all of this is to get them participating. so fabulous. Thank you very much, Tim. So it's like International. It's like International Women's Day where all the men are like, Where's International Men's Day, and it's like it's in November. Go and do it, go and do what you need to do on International Men's Day and live International Women's Day alone. Anyway, should we get stuck into the news that struck a chord this week? Yeah, you guys ready? All right. Can you guess what the biggest story of this week has been? Well, I actually given the lineup that you have, it was really different to the one that I expected because Oh, yeah, yeah. He will lead off lead off and then we'll get into talking about it. Well, I think the biggest news story well, the one that obviously got the most attention was the Pandora papers. So if you haven't been digging into that, I do definitely recommend you have a look. So 12 million leaked confidential financial records, basically thrown a light on the concealed wealth of powerful public figures around the world. Basically, it's essentially this is how they hide their money. That's the story. The King of Jordan. He's obviously had a lot of coverage. He's often the lead sort of person that's in the media coverage, and $100 million in concealed property was uncovered in Malibu in London and Washington. He claims it within his rights as a king, Russia Putin has a mistress who has had a little baby and he has covertly bought her a lovely residence in Monaco, and the Czech Republic's Prime Minister, who is an anti corruption Crusader. Apparently, he's also secretly acquired a French Riviera estate. So there's lots and lots and lots of stories right across the world. There's lots of there's so many different ways this story is being told it's a national story. It's an international stories, I found that really interesting. But in countries where media control is his thing, so countries like Jordan, Kenya, Russia, Ukraine, it didn't ever make it to the front page, if you've got any coverage at all, Ecuador, Chile, in Cyprus, I got a little bit of coverage, but lots and lots of denial. And then, of course, in countries like as a design as a vision, a little to no coverage. So I found that side of the story equally interesting, who talks about it? Where is it spoken about? Because of course, you've got the Blair's who bought a property in London, and didn't pay any tax because they bought it through one of those offshore companies. So which, which, incidentally, was completely legal? Yes, it was all legal. Yeah. And there's definitely a lot of agreement. Yeah, absolutely. But that's the point is, to me, the whole story, right? There's a lot of criminality, money laundering, and there's a lot of illegality in the mix. But there is a lot of this stuff that's coming out what they've done is not illegal, like the blades. And so when I stand back and look at these news, for me, it's it's a moral issue, right, with rising inequality around the world, you know, famine in 20 countries, the divisions that are pushing us closer and closer to paths that we don't want to be on. I think that that's, to me, the big part of the story. It's, the wealthy are getting wealthier, and the poor are getting poorer. And we're in a global economic crisis, which we're going to have to deal with as we come out of these pandemic and it so for me, it's a moral issue. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. What do you guys, what are your thoughts? What did you pick up? Well, I noticed like you that it was interesting, which countries in which channels we're covering, which ones weren't? So some of it in all truth is sort of like, yeah, yeah, like this has been going on forever. That there are some that is distinctly, you know, not not legal, but a lot of it's being done it technically, I don't even like using the word technically, there are ways of achieving certain outcomes, and the people are following those ways. We would like that this is maybe some people listening might say, this is a shocking comment. But the truth is, there's no moral obligation to pay tax. There's no moral obligation to face that, you know, that's one of the highest courts a minute, you know, in many Anglo countries, as a statement from the higher court from the chief justice, it's not a moral obligation, you do have a legal obligation to pay according to certain rules. And so when people like talking about like some people using particular structure, so they don't have to pay various taxes, it's sort of like well put it this way, most people like a discount. That wasn't what some people done is found an equivalent way of of get creating a discount. Now, that's not to dismiss the issue of inequality. But they're different. They're different places to be exploring rightness and wrongness fault. Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say not specifically about the papers, but I think actually, globally, we are due for a reset in the way we tax people. So I've been living here in Germany for over a year now. And we're always texts in Germany, because my husband's a diplomat. So it's never an option to be taxed anywhere else for us. So we're, we're always paying very high German taxes, regardless of where we live in the world. But the benefit the karlee of that, the corollary of that is that we have extraordinary public services, even though there are a lot every German will complain about public services. Public Services here are extraordinarily good and a very high standard. And so it's a real trade off. But what happens is that Gemini has a very high middle class, they're big middle class, and the middle class is paying a lot of the tax. What happens when you're an entrepreneur, you own a company, the middle sized companies that hold the German economy up, these organizations are able to transfer so much of their wealth through their companies, as opposed to regular Joes who go to work. And then when you when you accumulate a few assets, you want to hand them over to your children, you pay very high estate taxes. So I think the way that we get these systems is almost a gift to people with extraordinary wealth, and people with power will always have wealth. And so we have to think about how we are taxing and the way in We benefit companies because we think they drive our economy. So we don't benefit regular people who and we, I think we need to really change the threshold. No one earning, say, under $100,000 a year is actually wealthy, these are people more or less managing. So I think we need to re re look at all our tax systems, I think they benefit sophisticated people, much more than they benefit regular people. So I think we should simplify it much more. So this is one of the things that I've, I felt, I don't think I don't have a problem paying taxes, because here at least, I see a huge benefit for my taxes, education, everything and on all aspects. Sorry, back to you, Andrew. No, no, I think it's, I think it's a really great point. But also when we get ready for the future, which is automation, robotics, where the human isn't necessarily going to be the one producing the goods. Taking the environment will conversation way out of it, but but there's going to be less people required to do the work. So how are we going to manage it, so we do need to completely transform the whole taxation system, and the wealthiest among you know, so you know, if Amazon if the majority of their workforce is robots, then they don't have to the costs of health care of their employees and all the other things that their employees bring to the table, but equally, they won't be employees being tax paying for into the state coffers, right. So there's a huge transformation with universal basic income in the middle. And I think we're gonna, you know, within this next next decade, if we're going to get it and also if we're going to move forward from a technological perspective, we need to transform everything but the wealthiest people should be contributing their share to the roads to cleaning up the environment to to the hospitals to the schools, because you know, those things benefit everyone. So yeah. I do agree from the and just once again, this tea towel is because I'm in an echoey room. So my microphone is, is Yasser Arafat or, or Mother Teresa or someone. So hi, mother, arafat? I look, I think, I think there's definitely there's a sweet I think he's Swedish, there's a, there's a guy that's doing the he did the rounds, doing TED talks and other things about taxing people and getting taxation properly happening properly. And I think he was talking about American taxation in particular, and how to fix it. I don't know if he was Swedish or may have made that up. But but it was, it was quite interesting what he was, what he was saying was it a lot of their challenges can be fixed quickly. If you tax the rich, now, America has got a default crisis happening again, which is one of the things that leapt out in the news for me, and, you know, they're borrowing too much money to pay for all the bits and pieces, but they're not taxing the rich people. I mean, Bezos is shooting himself off into space, with a lot of the money of that coming from tax subsidies and not paying a lot of tax, Trump hardly paid any tax like $700, or something like that, you know, these people aren't paying tax because they're using all the loopholes, to hide it. And I think one of the things about the Pandora paper, the Pandora papers is, is even though we know, we all know that some of these people are hiding their money somewhere and using all these offshore accounts and everything else. All this is doing is saying yes, and it's this much. And if we leading with the King of Jordan, for example. I mean, really his his spent $70 million, or 70 million pounds, I think it was on properties, which which, you know, I watched the football, I mean, that's one player, one medium player. So so but that's a lot of money. And the problem there is that there's a couple of there's a media spin on it, of course as to who they want to put as the poster boy for, for being, you know, bad. I think the problem there is that this country is going through a lot of austerity measures. So from the moral issue that Andrew is talking about, if you're imposing austerity measures on your country, and going out and buying properties, and he's claiming that those properties are helping the investments, they're helping do stuff for Jordan or something like that. But really, it's you know, it's family stuff, then it's a bit challenging. But I also see the other challenge, if you were running a charity, and you were paid a salary, and you saved your money through your Financial Intelligence, and everything else, and you you're driving around in a Porsche, that the problem is driving around in a Porsche and running a charity from a public perception thing is a is a no, no. But if you're a banker, you're allowed to run around in a Porsche. So it's a bit unfair, in one sense, that perception is kind of, in one sense, perception is forcing people to go well, you know, I'd like a second property or investment property, a few properties or whatever it is. But making it publicly known is drawing attention to me and whatever, rather than what I'm trying to do. So I'm not trying to defend it, I'm just trying to say that there is a, there is a challenge there, if you're in this position of, of power, that that some of these things should be kept private, especially if you're surrounded by cameras the entire time. So I can understand why there is an there is an element of keeping things, keeping your private life really private, and your private investments really private. But the other thing here, I guess, is also and I think I was talking about earlier was, was Financial Intelligence. And, and the fact that the rich have access to high levels of Financial Intelligence, because they've got surplus wealth to do something with. And so as a result, they look to how can I, how can I manage this better. Plus, they've got access to financially intelligent advisors who know all the loopholes, and so they're employing them to do the best thing with their money. And while that's, that seems to be a sensible way to manage your money, so Andrew was saying it's a moral issue, like the Blair's one and that one, that one is, it's possibly it's an integrity it possibly it's a values integrity issue, because I think the blaze were campaigning about tax loopholes being a problem. And yet he's exploited the tax tax loophole, to buy the property without paying tax, because he bought the company that owns the property, therefore, he doesn't need to pay the stamp duty tax, because actually, the owner of the property changed because it's still the company, it was just the owner of the company changed, therefore, he doesn't have to pay the stamp duty, which is, you know, if that's the case, then everybody should be the company managing their property. And he's not exactly stupid. And his wife is a lawyer, so it's not like it you know, there's, it's, it's not an ignorant decision. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to take that, to take that forward at one level, what we're, what we're exploring here is that there's a finance system game. And, you know, like, if, like, if you think about the gaming world, you know, like you join in, you're on the basic level, you can only do basic, you only have basic powers. And then as you get more sophisticated, you've got greater powers and things that you can do. And so at some, you know, full disclosure, I trained in economics law and have postgraduate qualifications in finance and investment. So I'm looking at a whole bunch of this stuff and going like, yeah, that's that's the rulebook says, This is the rulebook, you know, you're playing in the rules, versus people who are playing outside the rulebook. So that, you know, for me, there's a, you know, a big distinction in that. And I'm pretty sure later on in the conversation, we're going to be getting into the equity side of things. So I'm going to leave the, you know, the other space that you're exploring there, Andrea, in terms of, you know, a greater social divide. That's coming out to that conversation there. And that's actually good, right. Sorry, Andrew, who runs the rulebook? I think, is the challenge. It's well, they will write the rule book or help the wealthy. I mean, yeah, well, wrote the rule book they did with it, but there's also a huge space there, we could go down a rabbit hole. You know, Andrew, might be good to move on. But there's a lot of mythology around what makes money money. And the reality right now is it's a bunch of digital electrons that people choose to put trust in. So but i think i think it is, and you know, when we talk about what we need to do to transform our whole global society, this is a piece of it, you know, we need to we need to transform those loopholes out. So let me know if you need to call there's a mute button, mute button down on the left, grab a grab a warm drink, I'm sorry, my throat has been acting up. So the way I have a distinction is it's, I would invite us to drop the conversation about it being loopholes, right. Because that's a backwards thing, as opposed to what constructs would enable prosperity that was actually truly possible across the world. Vast varieties of countries and economic and economic conditions, they back in the 60s, people thought by the time it got to the 20, you know, 2020, we'd be working 1515 hour weeks, that was the forecast that the promise of all the automation and digitalization was going to be we're working less. And yet somehow we've created a social structure where we're working longer hours, at a lower standard of living or below or perceived standard of living, you know, in the developed world. So there's a whole bunch of other other things that are going on. I'm sure that you know, we, you know, we can parse that up in another Part of the news. Yeah, and I think it just, you know, but stand back from this news like, don't make it an us against them. This is a society that we live in that we need to transform. So try and look at it, try and look at this information through very objective eyes, I think that's the key message we always want people to take away when we share the news, right? Because if you, if you look at this media sensationalization around this story, it's very easy to get caught up and get angry towards the wealthiest, which creates more problems and more divisions and what we what we need is less of that. So just yeah, just really stand back from it. That's that would be my advice, and there's a lot to it. And we've got a lot of change that we need to make, every single one of us has a lot of change that we need to make to to get in balance, right. So that's just a part piece of the story. So moving on to COVID. So Alaska is now the worst hit us state with COVID. We doctors at the point of having to decide who lives and who dies. But the other thing is, is a big strong movement in Alaska that believes that COVID is fake, it's not even a real pandemic. And I'm always constantly spun out by that, because I don't know how long we have to go on this road before people start acknowledging what specifically for our eyes, but there are a lot of the doctors if they turn up at community meetings to say please wear masks, their lives are actually being threatened. So that's pretty messy. We discussed last week that the US has now hit 700,000 deaths from COVID. And that is higher than the 1918 flu pandemic. And it's due to the combination of vaccine refusal, as well as the Delta variant. So just to give you a feel, the the rise of cases in the US is predominantly in the in the southern states. In Florida. It's suffered the most deaths of any state during the period since June, and it has basically 17,000 people have died. And in Texas, they were second with the 13,000 deaths. Both of these states account for 50% of the US population. But the deaths since the US has crossed the 600,000 threshold, account for 30% of the nation's debt. So it gives you a sense of like the real numbers that are on the ground. But on the other end of the earth, New Zealand has finally decided that they're going to abandon its zero COVID strategy. It seems that basically once Delta has gotten in, and I think you're seeing that in Singapore, once it's in, you can't stop it. So this is a big challenge for the country. Because of course when you approach a zero COVID strategy, you're not focusing on the vaccines, you're focusing on COVID control. So the population doesn't have incredibly high vaccination rates. But this is a big, big risk of the Maori population, who are much more vulnerable and susceptible. Because they live in a sort of more tight knit community so that I'm expecting the news out of New Zealand to be potentially quite bleak as we move forward. Anything else for COVID that you guys have been listening to? So my daughter has COVID Oh, so Germany has has actually been doing relatively well with COVID. It's never tried for zero. tolerance. The healthcare service has never been overwhelmed. We have very high vaccination rates. We do have what we call queer denken. So people who also think that masks are fake and, and you know, I live in a very central part of Berlin, so I see them parading past we have protests in the summer, every Sunday, there's a protest so you know about something or other and so we have, we've had at least two COVID protests. But you know, they were required to be for during the lockdown, they were required to have their purchase in cars, which ruin the environment, of course, because they were not allowed to be out on the street, right? So Mind blown. So it's a real problem with some people. But basically, we have very high levels of vaccination. My father in law was 91 had his vaccinations like in February. So it was really very early, they really prioritize the older people. So what what's happening now, so my daughter who's 29, she lives in Glasgow, and she was vaccinated twice with Madonna in in Scotland, and she came here to she's working from home here in Berlin. And she lives with her with our other daughter who lives here and she got it from a I think she thinks from a yoga studio. So she has cold symptoms. and here if you are non symptomatic, so their whole household has just locked down, locked themselves in and that's it. So here it's been being dealt with very practically. You have to wear masks, indoors, on public transport in, in shops, that basically on the streets, you don't wear a mask, and certainly not out in nature, you would never wear a mask. So it's a real mix. It's not like magic. This I don't think it's a magic solution. But it's been. But it's been it's been very much under control here in part because they let science take the lead. And I think that's the big problem in many parts of the world that it became politicised so early on, not that there isn't politics here, there is politics here with with COVID as well. But I think the countries that did well, who are continuing to manage with different variants, and as it takes it's different flows and ebbs and flows. Those have tried to really focus and allow the scientists to take the lead. So yeah, and it helped with some Merkel's background as well. Right. And a lady of science herself. So yeah, but you know, Germany's a federal state. They're federal states, which means she cannot make COVID rules. The states have to agree. And the states are an old boys club, essentially, I think almost every state except now in the new election, I think every state is led by a man. So she's like trying to herd it's trying to herd you know, recalcitrant sheep. So some states like Bavaria wanted to open the economies, they wanted to ban people from other states, it was just it's been chaotic here, too. It's just because it's not an English people don't realize, but she's definitely been able to hold everyone together. Yeah, she's amazing. Anything else you guys have been looking at from a COVID perspective, what I think the thing that I've noticed is how much the narrative is still about fear. And, and that it's interesting that that's the one that's the lens that is continuing to be pulled out. It's, it's because as soon as we put groups of people into fear, it locks them down, makes them less creative, more susceptible to being controlled, and all sorts of things. And there's enough information and science out there just going okay, so like, for example, in Singapore, and I respect what they're doing at many levels, but I'm also really mindful that the fear levels here have meant that suicide rates are up at over 300% on what they were last year. So while the death rates technically of COVID directly, are low, we're seeing just coming through and another form where I think like New Zealand, I think Singapore is one of those countries where it's done so well for so long. And all of a sudden, it's now got this COVID is just ripping, I mean, I've got two friends who've managed to pick it up in they don't even know how they got it. So it's kind of ripping through so I think it's more of a bit of a shock. And of course, like we've talked about before, Israel's Israel has, you know, their big COVID Delta wave and Singapore learns a lot because of population size and similarities. So I don't know I think the Singapore government's been cautious. I've seen a lot of criticism about it, but I don't know I think they it's like I did it. I trust them you know, but I agree totally agree with you on the fear if you're put into a, I think in the early months of the pandemic fear definitely right that all of us, none of us knew what was happening. I think we're moving more into resignation mode now because it's just never never ending right? I feel that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I think we've got another six months, the European north, North north. Pretty, call it northern hemisphere winter, think what happens will matter as far as how we all feel about it, but I feel like we're heading towards the right direction. Now, which you know, took a long time, but I think anything if anything leads is sitting in fear, you've got to really look into that and say, if you can't operate from a place of fear, you can't make good decisions. You cannot think clearly from a place of fear so anytime you're sitting in fear really sort of look into that and understand it and try and release it if you can, because none of us have got any control over this right and that's why that's why I bring it up because it is it's an hour it's a one of those subliminal narratives that's floating around and it's easy to adopt it because it is just so pervasive. It's like take Singapore any country that going like okay if we're going to the live with it, as opposed to eradicate it. And particularly with say something like Delta its mass its goes it's going to go through like the flu goes through the country. It's going to go through how many people are going to catch it X number at a time and it's just it is what it is and the numbers will be high. Now we don't report we don't report people have mild cases of the flu. We don't highlight it as an issue. Yeah, but we're highlighting COVID when people have mild cases. And so we're creating a layer of fear around as opposed to you know, there's this this and this that all creating ones and so you know, yeah, the why in a bigger thing. The fear of the fear story, get in the way is a big one. Sorry Tim, over to you. I was just gonna say fear has its benefits, though. I think it got a lot of people vaccinated. When a wave comes through and another push happens, I think a lot of people went, Oh my gosh, I better go get vaccinated, Okay, enough of this nonsense, or whatever it is. But at the same time it does polarize, like you said, and it can. I think it's good for political campaigns. Basically, when there is a great deal of uncertainty, people tend to not add uncertainty to that so they vote back in the people who are already there. However, when those people have been there for for a while, even though they may have been very consolidating, or or disciplined or good or whatever, as soon as they leave, populations can often just go well now that we've got two uncertainties. Let's go to the opposition. I don't know if that's what happened in Germany. But, but they shifted and I'd love to hear we'll go to that perhaps we can go to the gym election topic now that we have a Berliner doobie, Steiner, berlina, I'm Melina. But yeah, so that would be so yeah, fear has its has its benefits, but it gets out. It's overplayed from a political perspective. But yeah, I do think the narrative is a bit. It has a bit of all consuming, but it has been a, you know, a media darling, really, because they love hearing bad news. So just a while and just just commented that she thinks on Facebook that she thinks that the the fear will subside as we start to accept it as part of part of the reality of our lives. But I think the other the other thing that every you know, we've talked about before is we're always two weeks behind COVID. And countries who are conservative in their approach to dealing with COVID always proved to be right. The ones who are not conservative proved to be wrong, you know, so you see, the Australian politicians, British politicians, they're making these decisions where they're not listening to the science. And then, you know, within a couple of weeks, that's a very, very, very bad decision. But we're always two weeks behind. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a it's a fascinating time. And I think we'll be studying human behavior through during this time, probably for decades to come, right, because it's been fascinating. So moving on to the next piece of news. The French Catholic Church is having its reckoning. So I don't know if you guys have seen this news, but it's pretty horrific. So basically, 1000s and 1000s of pedophiles have been found in the French Catholic Church and have been operating since the 1950s. They found evidence of between 2902 3200 abusers. And there's only 115,000 priests or clerics. So it's a pretty high percentage. The number of victims they believe is a minimum of 216,000 children. So I was raised in the Catholic Church, every time these news breaks, I am absolutely disgusted in the church. But I think it's a there's the biggest story of institutions like the we call them the Boy Scouts in America, that last year, the claims have basically become a bankrupt organization since then. But it's like, we're never gonna get to the end of these stories of abuse. And I just find it quite sickening. Did you guys read anything about it? Yep. I was the one good thing from the French side. It's not it's not a good, there's no good thing at all. But that the French Catholic Church commissioned the investigation once the allegations and other countries are starting to emerge. And so they went in to find out rather than, you know, presumably they'd been, they were presumably my presumption here is that they knew it would be it would it would turn up at some point anyway, so they went in to uncover it. I think it's I personally, from an opinion perspective, I think the Catholic Church. I don't know how long it's going to be before they make the decision to allow their priests to marry. And to move away from the celibate framework that obviously be never 1000s of years, but well, 2000 but it hasn't been there for 2000 years. It's been it's not very, but not even half of its history. They did it because basically, there were too many babies being born and they had to fund all these new these families. So it's actually not a permanent part of us all. middle aged stuff. Okay. Well, I mean, so I, my my son, my suspicion is that will change. Most of it has to do would have, they're going to destroy, but then you know, yeah, I mean, I so some of my friends, my friends mothers have left the church in their 70s because they're so disgusted. By all these revelations, right, but then you go to countries like the Philippines where the Catholic Church has never been more popular. So, you know, this idea that it will destroy the foundations of the Catholic Church worldwide. I don't know, I think they're so powerful that I think that it's impossible to believe, but nothing's impossible these days. But then the rise of atheism, atheism around the world, younger people that also older people, too, are losing their faith in institutional faith. It's not faith, it's faith in institutions that they were often brought up with. So I don't know just, and, you know, we have to think about, you know, like, this is the catholic church that's gone through the wringer for a couple of decades, and it's great that they are, because this deserves to come to the surface. But before that, people were willing to let it be unsaid. But there's many other faiths around the world that haven't gone through these time. And based on the traditions of faith and the institutions behind them, you know, the Taliban were famous for for pedophilia, you know, so like, there's there's a lot more to come from a lot of different fights. So I think it's just a beginning. I think there is some there is some. So I'm not Catholic, but I didn't notice that the that the first but I think for the first time, Pope Francis actually expressed shame, personal shame and shame for the church, I think in his statement about about the case. So perhaps, while very, very slowly, there are some changes institutionally in the church. But I agree with you, I don't think it's just that just the Catholic Church, I think there is a problem of abuse. And it always stems from unequal power. You know, so it's in any situation where there's an equal power, there's always potential for abuse. So yeah, I think it exists in all religions. Yeah. So obviously, always a tough conversation. But I think it's important that we, we talk about it, and the light should always be shown on abuse, because we need to, we need to stop it, you know, it's this, these children are put into the care of these institutions, and they trust, you know, I would never allow my children to walk into a church. Because no way, I wouldn't trust them. So you know, that's how I feel about it. So Alright, let's move on to the environment. So there's a lot of things going on in the environment this week, and I'll sort of bunch it up, and then we can sort of have a chat about it. So the first one was a big oil spill off the California coast. And while there's hundreds of these oil, oil spills going on all the time, this one's caused major damage. We also had two very strange weather events. So the first or the first was not, the second one was an easily with experienced two feet of rain falling in half a day. And this has never, ever been seen or experienced before in Europe in modern times, obviously. And then, you know, man, there was a very rare tropical cyclone. So we've talked before about when we mess with the weather, we change the global weather patterns. This is one of those examples of it. And it brought a year's worth of rain, not a year abroad, years worth of rainfall, and deadly floods to the nation. And this, this is a country that really sees floods in a year. So I've got some friends living in Muscat, who've gone through this. And it's, um, there's a lot of destruction, especially outside the city. If we look at fires around the world, so in California, one in eight acres in California has burned in the last decade. But then we go across to Russia and Siberia. emissions from the current fires and more than Germany's total annual greenhouse gas emission quota. We've been stunned by what's been going on in California. But in northern Russia, it's estimated that 65,000 square miles have been burned this year, which is more than six times the area that's been burned in the United States, right across the United States. So far this year. This smoke from Siberia is spread to the to the North Pole for the very first time. And it's even spreading out to the Pacific Ocean. But don't worry, because according to the IMF, the fossil fuel industry is still getting$11 million a minute in subsidies and this has not changed since the Paris Climate Agreement. And while in the past, we've spoken about the world WWF report that says we all ingest one credit card with a plastic a week. Well, the American Chemical Society has really some research that shows that infants digest 10 to 15 times the amount of microplastics that adults do and we still have no idea how the microplastics are affecting our body so babies are born with plastic in their bodies and now they're ingesting 10 to 15 times more than the adults are ingesting so there you go. That's that's some of the things that are going on in the environment this week and there's always a lot more because reckon it's one of those ones where gobsmacked I mean, I was reading these ones too, but it's just man Like what? It's like. It's like knowing you're borderline diabetic and continuing to pick out on the sugar. That's a good analogy. It's just not. I mean not they're giving up the sugar if I was borderline diabetic and had to take sugar entirely out of my life, hence why I drink gin and soda. Nope, nope, nope, nope, no sugar in the soda water instead of the tonic water. But it was a lifestyle was a distinct lifestyle adaptation. The truth is that there's another there's another article, I just read it this morning, I didn't have time to sort of put it into the mix, but Apple, Disney, Microsoft, Amazon, there's a whole bunch of them. They all support these lobby groups who are all actively pushing back on Biden's climate got a budget basically. And when I was reading this article was actually really quite depressing because by the time I got to the end, I realized that this is probably the last chance we've got to really create dramatic change at COP 26 which is happening very soon. And we'll be talking a lot about that in those weeks. But you know, these big global companies are out there telling everyone they're going to be net zero they're doing this they're doing that and all the wonderful things that they're doing but the reality is they're putting money behind the lobby groups who are potentially going to stop progress being made so that's all that's all a bit depressing. Like, you know, you know, like bled last week, he just he said, I thought it was beautifully expressed because I'm just I just feel so sad. I feel so sad for my children's future. I you know, that we've allowed our world to get to this point. And yeah, it doesn't feel like the, it doesn't feel like there's real true action being taken is just a lot of PR and spin. Yep. Yep. I did read a couple of other stories as well. One of them was the Venezuela oil slick. You know, in its lakes, it's seeping into the environment, their energy crisis, algae blooms, impacting their water supply as well. So the algae and the oil slick are now taking up its freshwater lakes. The the article being oil slicks and algae blooms marring visit Venezuela's largest, like a visible from space, presumably. And that's devastating from fishing industries as well. Then there was another article written which I was, I was more. What impressed me more about it in a negative way, was the wording as I listen to this wording, and this is where media plays a huge role. So a global energy crisis costs shadow on crucial Climate Summit. Okay, fair enough. The prospect of a cold winter with skyrocketing heating bills may weigh far more heavily on most people's mind than the distant abstracted calculations that guide climate action. And so okay, I get the the the, the, the beginning of that, but distant abstracted calculations. I don't think they're distinct or abstracted anymore. I think to keep playing that card of we don't know whether they're really the case is, is is not necessarily great writing. That was Washington Post. Right? So they tend to be on the more conservative side and the denial side when it comes to climate, just like that's their political posturing. Right. Yeah. So I always, you know, and that's really important when you when you read the media, who, which which angle are they coming from, because you need to see between those lines, but at the same time, like an individual who has the right to keep themselves warm during during cold winter months, right, and they shouldn't feel guilty about that. They should, they should be able to make the choice, but the government should be making the choices to make sure that the energy to heat their homes is a renewable energy. And so that's one on the individual because they can't do anything about it. It's on the government's and the big corporations to go and sorted out. And that's part of you know, Susanna hasn't held sort of angle like, don't feel guilty. You shouldn't be guilty, do everything you can, but there's things that you're not responsible before but you shouldn't doesn't mean you should be living a miserable life and whether it's freezing or sweating in the tropics, right. So I don't know, I guess I guess the analogy for that. One is when we turn on the heating in our house is not three switches there for oil heating, you know, environmentally friendly heating or something else but government has those levers at their disposal as to and the amount they were 11 billion or 11 million a minute. In subsidies, whatever it was 11 million Yeah. A minute for the for the oil industry. is a huge amount. So actually, when you reduce when you remove those subsidies, the price of oil now becomes a heck of a lot more expensive. And that includes in the cost of damage and repairing the damage that it does. So those subsidies make oil a lot more expensive, they're going it's so much cheaper, then then all these other ones. Well, yeah, that's because we're subsidizing it. I mean, if we, if we flipped the subsidy, what would happen? And all but the technology is not so great for the climate, while the technology is not so great for wind turbines, or whatever else it is, Well, yeah, but we need to invest in it, to get it to be to be mass affordable, you know, and, and the thing is, solar is already at that state. So really, I mean, it may add, like a personal experience here. So here we've had so the the new elections, right, there's, we have the Green Party that's going to pop formed part of the coalition. And the Green Party has constantly been part of thorn in the side of the government pushing for more green initiatives. So we have a lot of green policies here. But they're all very gentle. And what you need is a much more, much more accelerated pace of these things. So for instance, if you have a house here in Germany, most houses here now have many houses already have solar powered, they have solar panels on them. But the problem was, they didn't do that for apartment houses. So I live in an apartment building in the city. And it's very complex to put solar panels on our roof. As opposed to if you had a house like my father in law, and my husband's out, they all have solar panels, and they generate electricity for themselves, as well as for the grid. So they sell excess excess solar energy that they they generate into the grid. electric cars also exist here and quite high numbers. So we have car sharing in the big cities in Germany. So you can just use an app and just jump into a car that's nearby, and most of those cars are electric. So there is definitely a huge move in that direction. Germany also has extremely high public transport usage, we don't use our car at all. So we I'm on public transport almost all the time, because it is very efficient. And you can do that in the cities. So I think there are multiple levels, you really have to build this into societies. I don't think there's an overnight fix. And what I see here is, and I had some guests from Singapore, because there's a virtual traveling to Singapore, suddenly all the Singaporeans are visiting Germany. So they're looking around and seeing a whole different way of living. So you know, you never, you never, you always take your own bags to the supermarket, you never take plastic bags from the supermarket, you can't even go into a fashion store and get a bag. Even they will require you to use your own bag. So it's it's changing at every level and the kids at school, my goodness, you would never catch a kid at school bring their lunch in a plastic bag, they would just all be you know, telling each other Oh my god, what happened? Did your mother like not not wake up this morning or something? It would just it would, it would be such a non thing to do. So they all there's a real culture around using things and there's a real culture around holding on to things and repurposing things. And so this comes with time, and it comes with, with changes that people can live with. They learn to live with it. The first time I came to Germany, I used to be so stressed about trash, I would collect my trash and tell my husband Where do I put it because there was so many different bins. I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, what is this? What kind of trash is this? And I wouldn't know where to put it. Because I was so used in Singapore and he threw everything into the one trash bin and maybe you have the separated thing. But it was it's just so refined here it's like in Japan is the other place that has this very, you really sought through your trash and the amount of non recyclable trash I have is really really small. I have a huge amount of for pecans more which is packaging. And that can be that can be mostly recycled and you can even drop it at your local supermarket. So which forces the supermarket's tend to put pressure on on the suppliers not to provide so much packaging with the thing because you can drop off packaging at your supermarket. And I you know, I think Europe as far as individual contribution, I think it's phenomenal. But we were sharing a report a couple of weeks ago that the UK is the only country in Europe that's even close. Still about 1.5 but the European Union their current way of living in contributing to the the way they hand us energy and everything. Europe the European Union is on track for 3.2 degrees global warming. So while individual contribution is that people are doing it, although you know the last couple of times I've been in Europe, it's not as impressive As I was expecting it to be, but my biggest concern is 62% of the world's population lives in Asia. And this is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. And this is where we need to see this dramatic change because of course, a lot of the Western trash gets shipped out to these parts of the world, where it goes into the waterways goes into the oceans, and we're all doing beach cleanups, and we're picking up stuff from Europeans and Americans, Australians, Canadians, so you know, the global sort of big picture perspective, we're in a mess, and we need to get, we need to get it sorted. But we also have a massive education challenge that we have to get out there in this part of the world as well. So progress, one step forward, 10 steps back, it kind of feels like Alright, so the last piece of news or what is it? Sorry, this was gonna say, there's a fairly big distinction and just given we've got cop 26 coming up, is that the more each of us say that, you know, to go back to the health analogy, once you realize that you're kind of borderline on something, the time has to take action now not to go and kick it down and say, Well, I'm going to do something in a decade. So quite a few of the corporate ambitions are backloaded, that going, we will in the future, but in the meantime, we're going to keep doing all the bad stuff. And I think the time is now to say, okay, it's not convenient, and I get it's not convenient, I get that at six. It's got costs associated. But the reality is a lot. There's a substantive amount of the technology and possibility that exists. And it's only by actively looking for will we create the solutions that will get us there. Yeah. And don't give up. Like, it's like, okay, like, you know, enough of pretending, like, do we want to play kindergarten? Or do we want to play adult? Yeah. And I would like it. Absolutely. And keep the hope alive. Don't get stuck in guilt. Like if every one of us just sort of changes what we're doing communicates what we how are we changing tells our friends, our families, our communities, we ripple out, we create bigger impact. This is something that's in our control a lot, not in our control, but how we vote is in our control. So voting for people who don't believe in the climate crisis is obviously a big issue. Voting for people who, subsidizing fossil fuel companies. Well, you know, that's how the problem, but yeah, so we've got some challenges ahead with the last piece of news I wanted to raise before we move into our theme for the week is there's been a lot of protests across the US women's rights marches, because over abortion rights, and obviously this began when Texas made the heartbeat rule 15 weeks, I think it was, which, for me, I don't, I try not to get involved too much in the regional national news of countries. But I think abortion rights will mean is something that is global, and it's really important, but a Texas judge has temporarily blocked that ruling. So let's see what happens. But what was really interesting around this news is, Americans are apparently strongly opposed to striking down Roe versus Wade. So this should give everyone some hope. So Republicans who want to keep Roe versus Wade are 58% so obviously, and that and 40% wanted to get rid of it, overturn it, Democrats 77% want to keep it 17% want to overturn it. So nationally, 65% of the American voting population that did this Fox poll, want to let it stand. So I think that's a really good sign that, you know, we feel that Roe vs. Wade is being overturned is imminent. And maybe it's not, maybe it's not as clear cut as everyone thinks, because of course, it will be a political disaster. the right tool, the right for a woman to do what she wants to do with her body is something that I will fight for until the day I die. So I thought you guys would be interested in that. It's not as bleak as it looked. hope, hope, hope Yeah. Comments? No. I saw I saw it. And it was one of those ones of good. Yeah. It's not a decision that I would ever hope to make. It's, it's a tough decision. You know, anyone I know who's been through that path. It's a really hard decision to make. But is there just it's not somebody else's? Yeah. You'd like to, if you are ever in the situation you would like to write to me, I have to make the decision for yourself, right? Yeah, they're just controlling how women dress controlling what women do with their bodies, all of it, it is time for it to end. Let's just be really honest, the only reason he is in the need of one of one is because he was involved. Exactly, exactly. We just get proactive and, you know, just the sector is everywhere until they're mature enough to have Have a Baby who don't want who want to control women's bodies are the ones who want the freedom to choose not to wear a mask. Ironically, that is the mask is the problem. Really, you don't be forced to have children. The right the right to a gun the right to a mask and the right to to to lie fright the whole, the hypocrisy. And the irony of it all. It's just you can buy a gun in a Walmart, but you can't buy a Kindle Kindle toy right, you know. So anyway, I think there's a I haven't I haven't thought this through enough. And it'll be interesting to see what the responses but because because a life is involved. I still think the woman should have the right to choose. But I think that she it's almost like it would be interesting to have a panel of like, this is gonna sound like the dumbest idea in the world. But she has to do a shake, shake before she makes that decision, she adds an extra do this online course and go Yep, I understand the ramifications. And so then she gets the point of view of like maybe six or seven different people because otherwise she might be getting point of view of fox news or, or, or the guy or whatever the hell it is, or whoever it is. But if she can actually get because if she can, if she can get, she will get different get different points of view, she'll get one that is just like, No, you can do whatever you want. And then somebody else, maybe from a religious organization going well actually, there's some other considerations. And then a scientist when going well, we consider this, and then whatever it is, so that she can make an educated decision as she can. But it's still her decision. And I think I think you've been very brave putting this idea out there. So I've never known a woman who's goes into an abortion who does not think of all the possible implications, you started off with saying we're still talking about a life where there's different ideas about the concept of what a life is. The reality is that a woman doesn't need to go out and get advice from six different figures with a religious institution in the mix. A woman needs to make a decision for her future based on the quality of the life that she can give the people who are against abortion are not there for the life of the child. So they will say to a woman, you have to keep your child. But when it comes to educating the child nourishing the child, loving the child keeping the child safe, they are nowhere to be seen. So if if a government wants to change its legislation around abortion, fine, but make sure you add all the rest of it in so that you're taking care of the children that these women are being forced to conceive. Based on the laws that men are creating, not women, a woman knows what she wants a woman knows what she wants to do with their body, and what she knows what she wants in her future. Not one woman I know who's ever had an abortion made the decision easily. It's a very hard decision for a woman to make. So I completely disagree with what you just said. And I think that's okay, that we can disagree. You're informed or Andrea? I think women are informed when it comes to that. Tim Tim, I share a story a story on this one when I was I grew up in the Philippines that I remember at about 16 being on a retreat weekend, you know, when the elders were not nearby? What the conversation was literally, can we pass the hat around so that we can each contribute because one of the girls got pregnant? And the conversation was How the hell did we support her in that? Yeah. And it was it was it was hideous for absolutely everybody, because we knew the struggle and the trust that she was in the midst of making and the implications of that she had to set anything outside of that space, how much trust she had to show in us to even create any sense of any possibility of choice. It was it was very, you know, we weren't old but it was very, very real. It was not it was not a light decision. It was not a light process for me but I can still feel it now and it's 40 years ago and I'm sure I'm sure the shame within the society was still there where you guys were country like Australia in the in the amount of single mothers is so high and you know, no one even talks about the father's lack of involvement or or even contribution towards these children, right? We just, you know, a woman has the right to choose what she wants to do with their body because it's also it's about the right for her life and how she chooses to live her life which I think brings us really nicely into Our theme for the week, so livigno, if you want to sort of bring this into it as well. So we have globally slipped back by a generation since since Pang pandemic began, and I want people to really think about this word, generation. It's not a decade, it's a generation. So this is, this is a huge issue. And it's, it's a very frustrating issue for for me, and I'm sure for Lavinia and Anna and for Tim is, as, as a husband, as a father of a daughter. You want your you want your your girls to have the same opportunities. And this is a conversation we've had before. And Joe, who couldn't be with us today sort of said, you know, why, why, why is this happened. And, you know, there was a US news report, jobs report, December last year, 100% of the jobs were lost by women 100%, we've obviously seen the rise of demand domestic violence, all around the world. And of course, men also can suffer at the hands of domestic violence, but we, you know, the, the, the rise has often been attributed to women. And, you know, and then, of course, the Afghanistan Taliban situation hadn't even started at the beginning of the pandemic. So when we look at, you know, equality for women was supposed to be achieved in 100 plus years, so it's probably well over 200 years now. Lavinia, this is one of your areas of expertise. It's an area of passion. Can you try and help our audience understand why we where we are, but also, what can we do about it? And then obviously, Anna, you've got a lot of insight into this as well. So jump in, when, when Lavine is had something to say to you. Thank you, Andrea. Well, I think what what COVID did a lot was it if it showed up the fault lines in every society, I think it showed where the weakness was, in every country, it showed up, where the fault lines were, where was the weakness, where was the imbalance, and all over the world, it showed up with women, because the imbalance of power definitely continues in relation to gender issues, right. So a lot of a lot of what happened, it wasn't that it was targeted at women or women were, it was just the nature of wit, in which women have to live their lives. So McKinsey and lean and put it put out a report one of the reports, I didn't read the one about 100%, because I find that also a difficult statistic to, to, to reconcile in my mind. But the McKinsey leenane study, which was only of women in the US, to be fair, showed the women, women lost about 39 39% of women who are 39% of global employment, lost 54% of the overall jobs. Yeah, so that's, that means women were many times more vulnerable. That study showed women's jobs were like 1.8 times more vulnerable. But yeah, it's just twice as vulnerable as men's jobs and why? Several things, women often worked in those sectors that were most affected. So all the casual labor, right, so a lot of the work in restaurants, and hotels, all those work, a lot of those jobs, the ones that didn't have fixed contracts, they were largely held by women, then, of course, women were required then to also do much more, they already do a lot of unpaid work. And during the pandemic, with everyone locked in at home, they had to do even more unpaid work, because then they was supervising children were now studying from home. And to top it all off, of course, with not having any option to leave the home, there's a huge increase in domestic violence. So there was all these compounding things that meant that the pandemic had a really, overall for women around the world, it had very, very negative effects. And it did set women back by a lot. And it will take some doing and then, and in many developed countries, we still don't, we still don't collect gender segregated data, which means it's hard for us to tell when something particularly affects women, as opposed to something that affects society as a whole. So one of the good things in the last few years has been this increased pressure on governments to produce and to collect gender disaggregated data and Singapore, you still can't get gender disaggregated data on a lot of things. And we've been pushing for that for a long time. In Europe, it's starting to be more available in the US it's very patchy. So it really depends where you're at and whether you can get if you can't tell what you can use data to, to direct your policies. But if you're not getting that data and you treat everyone with one with one set of rules, it doesn't always target the people who need the help the most. So that's that's essentially what's been happening women were already disadvantaged now they just increase disadvantage. So if you came from if you come from a country, like say Japan, right, so let's say Japan, Japanese women in the workplace have for a long time, had huge systemic issues in terms of women growing into leadership roles in terms of women's pay, and pay equity. But you add to that mix small homes, in which they have to then manage children, housework, everything in these small homes, it makes the pressure on women even higher. So you have cultural predisposition, culturally patriarchal societies, we know that continue to be deeply patriarchal, and then you add all these additional pressures. And then you have a real, you have a real cauldron of hell, essentially. And so there's been an increase in women, for instance, on the abortion issue, many women were unable to receive abortions, because abortions in many countries, and then certainly many states in the US, were categorized as non essential services. So while hospitals were dealing with COVID, and various other issues, they put abortions right at the bottom of the list, which meant that if you had been assaulted, and you couldn't, doesn't matter, how but you, whatever you wanted to do, you couldn't you couldn't have access, some countries in Europe made it possible. And I think around the world, some countries didn't make it possible for women to have a video consultation, and then get the abortion pill where it was appropriate mail to them, and then they could have that at home. So the these thing, these access to services, they changed a lot, and they particularly affected women. So I don't know, Joanne, you, you also look into this space. What did you notice? What I noticed was that the default? I think there's reverse simplification. But the reality that women who are married or women who have children is a different reality to I think, people who are where the kids are either out of home, or like in my in my case, I know, I'm single. So in some ways, as a few of you want to one of whom is in on this call was like, gosh, it's been easy for you, I'm going exactly I have nobody to argue with different challenges. Definitely, definitely, definitely different challenges. But what I'm saying this because the the, they're the challenges, the challenge to take forward, what you're talking about Lavinia what I noticed, as COVID started locking in, and as people were having to keep kids in from school, or, you know, just the peace of getting things done, the woman was the one who stepped into covering that. I'm really struggling to think of awkward situations, I have to say, Tim, you'll be the exception on that one, because I've seen how much you've been taking in looking after your daughter and the way that you and Lydia balance it, but truly, my husband to write, you know, you know, he's very, very, very involved, and he chooses to be involved. And that's, that's a big thing, the whole education thing. Now I'm on educating my kids not doing it. I was not put on this earth to educate my children. I mean, they're a little bit older. And so it helps that I can't do it, it drives me nuts. And this is really huge, because if, like I was seeing this in households where the orientation would go around how his job, how his income would be looked after. And hers what Oh, I'm so grateful for my wife. I'm sitting here going like, nice, I appreciate that. You notice that's that that's good, however, to what we've been has been talking about the consequences. In essence, one party and the default has been the female party is the one who has stepped back in their career step back in their in their role in their work in many cases, which just means from the point of view, you know, if you think about it, it's a hiatus period for them. It's even on a straight what they're doing in their professional life. Plus, I just really take my hat off to anybody who's been homeschooling, dealing with COVID jobs in and out and attempting to keep a house and a life together. I mean, I like that is a lot to do. And a certain respect I would like and taking out the pressures that people have been on have been absolutely huge. So going from what you said there and Sorry, just that piece right so that this next that the McKinsey leenane study also showed that a quarter of their respondents, a quarter of their respondents were thinking of stepping back in their careers. As in this is a very large percentage of women who are considering taking a step back in their career as a result of what's been happening in this law. Yeah, in order to do essentially do more unpaid work at home and with nurturing care, because it's been just so much pressure. So you are absolutely right with what you're saying. I mean, if that number of, and if women step back, it's going to be so much harder for them to get back in later. And so we need to be thinking of different ways of ensuring that working from home can or hybrid working can really work. For women, as well as for men, not not just. And also, I'm a little concerned, to be honest, that some employers are looking to pay less to people who worked from home, when the people who work from home often work longer hours, and have and have to deal with so much more as well in terms of carving out space in their homes and all of these things. So I'm a little concerned that employers like Google, are starting to institutionalize paying people who work from home less space. So I'm just gonna say change, you want to give the male perspective and then we can sort of really do the what can we do about it? Because I think that's the important piece here. But, Tim, what have you got any sort of thoughts, you've been paying attention to any of the news around this and the reports? My First of all, I appreciate the position of the criticism against the expectation that the woman would be the one that sacrifices Korea, because kids are stuck at home and stuff. Like I appreciate the frustration about that, because it doesn't, it doesn't seem fair, I do also appreciate that if you've got two people working, and you go, look, I'm making $100, and you're making $60, one of us has to give up something, it makes sense to be the $60 person, which isn't always which is usually going to be the woman, and partly because of unfair pay practices, which, which is the big thing that sucks on that account. So I appreciate why that might be the decision that is made in the family, I also appreciate why that then would harm equality in the workplace. So all that being said, as a sort of my starting point, from a personal experience, you know, Libby, Lydia made a decision couple of years ago, to leave her position in, in one company, because it was just toxic, it was just getting toxic. It was affecting her self confidence it was affecting her. I think her her just a joy, because of because of an asshole male boss, the structure and the expectations that he brought in from another country, and how he was leading his team. And of course, I'm there in the background going his he does strategy, a bid cry, you know, I was I was a real backseat driver for that one. But I was also saying, you know, if you want to leave it, and go and do something else, and go do what you want to do leave it will be fine. And, and it took a while. But she finally made, I think a really brave decision to leave without a job to go to. Because the toxicity of that environment which had moved from, we care about the people and we want to make a profit, too. We just want to make a profit. That that was the problem. The problem is and that the selection of leaders had reinforced that that was the direction that they were going in, and their PR machine was saying we're doing all these cool things for people. But the truth was, the appointments that they made in the organization really spoke more than the PR spin on it. Anyway, then she went and got a job doing something that she is just shining in which which has helped which is working with a government organization helping old older people make sure that you know, they're they're taken care of and that they know about what the government's plan that they all the programs and everything else that are there to help them informing them about vaccinations, all of this sort of stuff and she's just, she's just shining she's, she's probably working in some in some way. She's working harder. She doesn't have to she doesn't have to do redo callously late night calls with Canada. But she's working harder in some some ways, but she's loving it. So and, and just as well, she got all that because when COVID hidden she's working with with sort of health stuff. And mine just when COVID happened, it was great. So my sort of will be fine. You know, had she not found something we wouldn't have been fine. But, but but she found that she found that very easily. It found her actually. And, and so I guess my perspective on the 25% taking a step back. I don't know the study, and I don't know the details of the study in my. But I might, I would guess that there's been a bunch of people that through this last two years, nearly two years, I suppose 18 months plus have just gone to some degree. I was playing the wrong game. And I want to play a bigger game, I want to play a better game, it may mean I will get less, but I'm gonna play a better game. I think some people really like that, I guess this study wasn't looking at that would be my guess, I think a lot of people have been forced into taking a position based on the I'm earning more than you, therefore you're the one who's going to take a hit. I think a lot of people have been forced into this based on a patriarchal society that expects women to take this role, which is a really unfair share of the workload. And there's also there's also no social safety net, right? There's no so and you think about this from single mothers, which, and especially women of color, there is zero safety net. So if they don't work, they can't earn, and they've still got to educate the children, they still got to take, you know, so and they're still putting themselves at risk for COVID. So I think you know that so when we look at what we've got to do about it, you know, if we look at the pandemic playbook, what I found incredible, every single man that have been, has been accused of domestic violence should have been taken out of their home and put into a nice place. Well, any lockdown happens, right? Get them out of the house, if they've already got and we all know that a lot of men who've never committed domestic violence towards their partners did for the very, very, very first time. So but we so we can, we can deal with them, but get at least get the ones that we know out of out of the homes. So we can do that. And then take care of the take care of the single moms who still have to earn still have to survive, and still have to take care of their children and educate their children. And it's like, everything if there was only so many obvious things, and everyone knows that a pandemics coming in every governments got this playbook. But where was all this bit? Where was the bit where you take care of the people. That's what I found. quite shocking. But when we as we look forward, I think women and men, we've all got to stand up. And we've got to speak up. And equality is good for everyone. Men and women benefit from equality, it is not just a women's issue, it's a human issue. Men have more options, women have more options, we can have we can take make different choices with our careers, the paths ahead, equality is good for everyone. So we need to make sure it's going to take us 200 years to get back on track. Which is probably easier. Now you tend to know those sort of numbers, but we've got three, three and a half years ago, when we did the purple elephant, it was over 200 years. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, years then. So it's let's look at the science, it's still a definitely over 200 years. But if we're talking less than, like, you know, like practical things, I think this conversation is highlighted two very practical things that we could either be doing, you're advocating to have happen. You know, one of which is the data point that Lavinia brought forward is that if we don't have gender segregated data, by default we're going to be doing the policymakers will be doing the vanilla answer, based on the origin as human beings, which quite often is designed as a reflection of a male world. So the gender disaggregated data allows a more nuanced insight into some of the some of the differences which would create different policy outcomes. And then I think Secondly, the point that, you know, Tim, picked up on in his thinking that it comes through, and what was spoken before is when you've got a systemic pay differential, built into the system that says if you're female, you will get 25% less private data in Canada, Australia, us in the UK. It's 25% 2524 26 on this route, you know, but you know, pretty much in that still, when you've got that as a standard The differential if you're on the same racial mix as the dominant culture, if you happen to be of a different racial profile, which is often called, well, it's all black, it will be somewhere in the order of 40 to 50% less. And that's significant. And, you know, just so that the data if you're a black man, you will get paid 10% than a white man, if you're a white woman, you get paid 25% less than a white man. So just saying, the gender segregation on this is bigger than the racial segregation. Yeah, so the current so the current number, by the way, for Anna's because she did the one before is 135.6 years. The generation was because last year the report, this is the World Economic Forum, gender pay gap report. Last year, it showed at 99 99.5 years. So it's added like 36 years, to parity. Yeah. And the large disparity, actually, the largest disparity in most of the world exists in political representation. And this is where we, in almost every country, there are just not enough women making the rules. Yeah. Yeah. So that's definitely another way that we can we can tackle the problem, right, get more women into politics and into leadership positions, and support them as well. And women should support you know, like from the other thing is women supporting women, not just women of their own race? You know, I think we need to come together and help each other rise to that I think male allies, there's a lot of great men out there that apart part of the suit want to be part of this, because I know that it's good for everyone, right? So I think it helps if we stop seeing gender, and gender equality as a charity issue. This is an opportunity issue. This is not trying to fix women, we need to fix the situation. So I think one of the problems that I've had with the with some of the talk around with the women about creating greater equity in the workplace for women has been it's treated as if it's a, it's a charity, it's really not. This is about tapping opportunity. Every study shows that companies that invest in women, countries that invest in women often rise as a whole. So it's not a charity issue, this is not a nice to have, when we have time. And when we have space, then we'll create a little bit of something extra. This is not how it, this is not the way it should pan out, it should be absolutely looking at the opportunities that are wasted. And a lot of the world was spending as much money educating girls as we are educating boys. And then somehow in the when they start in the workplace, women fall back not for want of education or for competence. It's almost always workplace culture that holds women back. So I think it's time we stop trying to fix women. I don't think women are the problem. I think it's time we started fixing the structural issues in workplaces and in politics that keep women at bay, because they're designed for men, they all of this is designed for a male life. It's not designed for a woman's life. It's just only for a particular type of male life, because the toxic cultures are toxic to guys as well. Yeah, my friend, Josie just said, just disappeared when women are still considered a minority group, which is insane. I think that's 51% women versus men. So we're actually the majority. So ladies, it's time to stand up. It's not a case of putting a bottle of sherry on the back of the you to go with the big remember that out of Australia, but they took the Sherry off for that, because the new collapse, it's time for us to stand up. And I think it's time for us to stand up and demand it. And I'm ready to fight to come and come and join me and I know that all four of us are ready to fight. So Jim wants to say something before we move on. Yeah, I want to say I want to say Ken, I think we should make illegal, the interview question What was your last drawn salary? Because because that's not going to change the situation. It's it, it the person should be paid commensurate with what the job requires. And not commensurate with an increase on their last drawn salary. Because if you've got a problem with salary, asking that question and making that your pay thing would make it a real issue and people asked that all the time it was your loss because I'm going to pay you based on what somebody else paid. You know, I could have been a bad hang gliding instructor but but I could be you know, a really good this whatever it is stupid analogy, but you know, so just get rid of that question. What's your lat? That's not the answer, obviously, but but it's one of the the blind auditions right? So I used to be a musician. So when we do a solo they used to you have to stand on stage and performance. professional musicians. When they audition for a job. They started to do blind auditions, which you can do with an instrument but not with a voice right? And basically all of a sudden all the print all the principal plays and all these orchestras around the world were women, because they were judged on their performance, not on the fact that they are male or female. So that how we bring that in, right? How do we bring it in? The How can you do a blind career audition? or career interview? That's that there's, you know, there's Yeah, we've got some big problems. And I think we've just got to always be hopeful and looking forward and, and trying to do all our best because what Lavinia said is country gdps increased significantly, when the when there is a focus on female equality. But more than that, companies with three or more women on the board, have more women in leadership positions, that they are more profitable businesses. So it makes financial sense. And usually, that's all you need to convince men that they need to focus on it, it makes financial sense. So why are we still stuffing around? I that's what I don't get, like, let's just move forward and create a better world because it all contributes to us, and how we build our societies, how we design our products, software engineers, if men are designing the world, I mean, how can they possibly, you know, if I was, if I was designing a city, I put a female public toilet, I put two to everyone male public toilet, because I know that's important. A male wouldn't do that. Because I don't know if it's important. Getting a pram around a street, I know what that takes. And may or might not. This is, you know, it's all that sort of stuff. So we need, we know, they're all the great thinking in the minds in the world to come together to build societies that work for everyone. It's just common sense to me. Right, but doesn't take into account all the vested interests, right. So people have an interest in keeping things the way they are, people don't want to include others. So I mean, here, one of the things that's been interesting, I saw for the first time, actually, I'm sure it exists in other countries. But my husband's a diplomat. And there are at least 12 postings at the moment where German ambassadors are sharing the job with their partner. So that means there are two diplomats in the family, that husband and a wife, or sometimes the husband and the husband, where they are now sharing the role of ambassador. And it's it's so interesting at the very tops of the job sharing has existed in all levels, but now in some countries, of Germany's being represented by two ambassadors, who are often a couple that are job sharing. So this is, this is also very unusual. And it's it's rare here as well. I mean, we only have I think only about a third of the ambassadors to just as one, one measure, only about 30 ambassadors around the world are women. So absolutely, we need more women in leadership, but you don't we also have a lot of narratives that are completely false that we never think about. We think women are bad at stem. Do you know the only person ever in history to have won two Nobel prizes, our measure of genius still in the world, there's only one person ever in history to have won two Nobel prizes, one in physics and one in chemistry. And that was, and that was not Albert Einstein, that was Mary Curie. And she wanted the second year that the Nobel Prize even existed she wanted because her husband advocated for her. He knew that the Nobel Committee was going to give it to him and not to her, and he advocated for her to be included. And yet till today, only about 5% of the Nobel Prize has been won by women. Since that, although a woman wanted at the very beginning and continues to be the only person in history to have ever won a Nobel in two different sciences. Women were the codebreakers in those Second World War. The women were the ones in those first computers. The first computers we ever had the codebreakers were women, the Bletchley is existed because of the women who were there on those very fast computers. And yet today, we think it's men in jeans and hoodies that are good at coding. We have created narratives that exclude women, when if you look a little bit further, you'll see that it's absolutely not true. There's nothing intrinsically that makes women bad at one job or better at other jobs. It's so much a cultural construct. I agree. And I you know, the thing that always breaks my heart is what do we what have we lost by holding women back? And you gay people back? You know, what have we lost? You know, one of my chapters in my book enter is, do you yearn? How many people are out there yearning for a future that they're not allowed to have based on some defined societal thing that doesn't allow them to go and fully express themselves. And if we could live in a world where we allowed everybody to express themselves to be who they truly are, and, and to follow the path that they truly want to pass? I think, follow that I think we'd have this. Well, we want a world. I want to live in a world like that. So we're gone. A little bit over again, of course. But great conversation, we could go into so much depth. What else has been capturing your attention in the news this week? Funny, quirky, serious. Just Just what might be one Ah, although first the piece that captured my my attention was a fabulous fabulous podcast that was talking about the divorce booster. Full disclosure, it was one where Andrea was interviewed with talking with her husband Steve on her podcast about just like how the week on which I love because it was just a very real world conversation about the dynamics and stress of two different human beings dealing with both their bodies kind of not being terribly happy and still having to cope with life, which is what people are dealing with right now. So I loved it. Oh, that's cool. I wouldn't put it in the news section but um, yeah, I know which is I think the thing is the news is often the dramatize story as opposed to reality but this is daily life. Yeah, yeah. day to day life. I think a lot of people Yeah, exactly. A lot of people have been reaching out to me saying you know, behind closed doors they're going through some really hard times not necessarily even the same reason of combination of boosters and stuff that we went through but just you know, like these really deep dark depression and I realized it seems I've been vaccinated and it's kind of just just I think just when you know that you can you can say okay, well this is just this it's not real it's not how I really feel I'm just going through this period that this vaccination has created so I hope it helps people who are struggling just have a listen if you're struggling with a post vaccination especially a booster vaccination that's what we were focused on. Red Team What about you? What do you been paying attention to news wise? I had a look at the Nobel laureate most popular Nobel Prizes It was interesting that you just talked about Nobel Prizes just now. And and the ones that and of course, the list isn't of nominees is never revealed. It's part of the the way it works, but but that doesn't stop people trying to make their own list, who for Coronavirus, Black Lives Matter movement for calling for systemic changes around the world, forcing nations to address racism in their own societies, which is quite cool. alexina Vani for being a human rights activist and democracy democracy activist in in Russia, it'll be an interesting political one if he gets us voting rights activist Stacey Abrams for boosting voter turnout Greta tunberg again, so she could be a dual winner for everything curbing climate change. Although last time it was time person to do right. So yeah. Did you win the Nobel gritter? I don't think so. Right now. It was um, I'm Person of the Year and I lost you that was Nobel Prize was won by that's all remember, United Nations? all remember. Okay. You remember? And when, yes, Joe Biden for inheriting a country reeling under the covid 19 pandemic, to get a Nobel Prize for inheriting a disaster. Okay. But that would be basically a polemic against Trump, I think the and just under just under a Darren for handling of the covid 19 pandemic, which which would be a really interesting one. And I I'm, I'm imagining she would need to win it quickly. Before it New Zealand goes out of control. But yeah, sorry, it was 2020. It was a welfare program. There you go, well, food program. Please, please, please donate to the welfare program. If you've got money, they working tirelessly to feed them. Millions and millions of people, especially the 20 countries are the inner facing feminine, they're doing very important work. And please set up a regular regular contribution until everybody you know to do it as well, because they're desperate. Yeah, I want to add I want to add to that, is that if you actually look at groups that have done a lot to prevent war, so that was his Nobel Peace Prize is the one that we're talking about, that the preventing a war groups who've won prizes? Have you actually looked at some of the threads, there's an interesting thread where it's about groups who've done substantive things to reduce famine and hunger, because the number of wars historically that have been generated through through that is huge. And so, yeah, and so and hence, literally, why the call out last year was for the food program, because feeding people, it's so simple. So intrinsically important, is one of the most powerful ways to create peace. Yeah, and also it's it absolutely is, and the amount of people who need to be fed has escalated so dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic. The numbers are absolutely quite staggering. But I think Yeah, the wF pay have been phenomenal. absolutely phenomenal. So we contribute. So Tim's got small. A couple of things that caught my attention in the news was the us senate voting again to temporarily extend the debt ceiling once more so that they can not default on their loan. And the other one was that that I found really interesting was looking at what's behind the China Taiwan divide, particularly with increasing escalations in just sort of political prodding. And what's going on there, and there was a quite a bit right now, there's some quite nice articles, which are explaining the whole history of the whole tension going back to, you know, old jenica days. Yeah, yeah, a lot. I love the whole thing that the tooing and froing. And the, you know, I've even even during the revolution, and, and all of that, so, but even way before that, as to who owns the who owns the island and stuff like that, but it's it's interesting, and it's just right now, this is, as I was reading all of these things that US, US debt, you know, default would create a huge ripple in the global financial markets. China's The evergrande had sort of disaster and default they're happening. The China, Taiwan This is there's a destabilization that's, that's rippling everywhere that's happening. So that, you know, that's that's a bit about having a stabilization of a five year old over that. Yeah, I can hear it. And we are in October, of course, in October is the month that is traditionally when the major Bible recessions happen. So if you go back through history, the majority of them happened in October. And there's been some talk about that as well in the media that with evergrande, evergrande. Right, in China. And yeah, we're in a, if we, if we can get through October and not going into a risk of global recession, I think that will be a good thing. I don't know if people can cope with that coming. But stay stay alert. lumenier. What any other news been capturing your attention. So two things here. So one is that angle emeco is looking super relaxed now. Now that she knows she's not going to be Chancellor for much longer. I've seen the news, looking more relaxed than she's ever looked in her entire life. She's looking super, super glad to be leaving, I think I think Trump was the final straw that broke the camel's back. But she must have been thinking, I'm tired of this meeting these men. No. So aside from that, we're in the middle of a coalition, creating time here in Germany. So Germany never has one party that dominates. It's always a number of parties that have to get together and work out an agenda. So that's what they're doing right now. The other big news here was interesting. Chimamanda Adichie was here for the Humboldt forum. And I think she's still in Berlin. And she was talking about ethnological art and the return of pillaged art from Europe, to back into Asia and to and to Africa. And Germany has already begun a process of returning many pieces, including some of the bending stones that are here in Germany. So it's not that it's doing a perfect job and she did take the opportunity to scold Germany as well for its history in Namibia. So but it was interesting the way we look at it, we always the fact that we even call it ethnological art is his his for her industry. And I never thought about it, you know, the, the way we tell these stories, we tell the stories from the from the victor if you like it's always from a European perspective. It's always from that. And so it's been interesting, I love listening to her. I love the way she turns. The way you look at something to a whole different this perspective shift is one of her great talents as a storyteller. And so her being here at the humbled forum was really, really eye opening I very much thought that that was a brilliant speech that everyone should listen to. I absolutely agree and I've got it now put it in my weekend read so I've just put it here as well as a link very powerful. She didn't hold anything back. And and she was absolutely spot on. And I thought the way that she spoke about it because it's someone who's done ancient history and archaeology like the the I find the heritage so precious, and a lot of heritage would have been lost over the years. But that's beside the point. It's not that's not our decision to make. So yeah, it's a very powerful video. And the final one I just want to say before we get just go into the final couple of things is there's a new malaria vaccine. It's taken over 100 years to create. It's going to be focused on the most prevalent malaria parasite in Africa is not going to be the cure all, it's not going to stop malaria. But it's it's the most progress ever made. And this is going to mean that a lot of children are going to survive. I don't know if many people realize this, that you build up resistance to malaria, but you've got to constantly be getting it as from from a child, and you need blood transfusions, and so many 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of children's are dying every year. So this is, I think it's really, really wonderful news. We live in a part of the world in Thailand, in Singapore, where Malaria is part of life. And I think this is a wonderful story because 94 94% of malaria in the world is in Africa. So I was very happy to say that. All right here was like direct entry, it was like 216,000 children were dying of malaria last year, something like that. And 94% in Africa, like he said, and while while that vaccine, as it as it is, at the moment is targeting one aspect of malaria and can save possibly 40%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but 40% of those kids. I mean, that's, that's still what's that 80,000 kids, that's amazing. That's it. It's a fantastic start. And it's taken six years to get to this point, which makes us think sometimes, you know, hang on 100 100 years to get to this point, and then six, testing, right? Yeah, six years into testing this particular one, which, which makes you think, what do we really prioritize because we scrambled for COVID I know, it's a bit different than everything else. And Malaria is very complex. So yeah, but still, it's good news, the good stuff. The good news is good news. It's huge news. Malaria kills 400,000 people on average every year. So it's been it's been systemically a massive killer for an incredibly long period of time. And even there's a lot of different varieties of the parasite. So it's the fact that there is something that's not about taking a tablet every day or every week is is absolutely huge. I take those tablets once I had I actually stopped and decided it was better to get malaria. They drove me nuts they dried my hair out but the dreams that I were having was so out of control I just went I kind of stopped doing this and then somebody I was talking to said it's better to get malaria so you know you've got it rather than take the tablets to suppress it. And I was like all right, that sounds like good advice to me so I I've never had it. Steve's had it we lived in I lived in Nigeria as a kid right? So we hit we malaria tablets we just you know breakfast you have your malaria tablet, which is just the way it was when we were in the Philippines. It was weekly one that we had but there was we had friends who caught what's called cerebral malaria yeah basically is one that gets in and attacks your brain and we had we have friends who died of it so you know that kind of that was that's not one we don't get that that's one you can't get twice if you get it twice. You die right so you can have it because you died the first time. All right, so Okay, so because different sorts of malaria but exactly terrible. Yeah, it's super had. So today we celebrate good vaccination story, you know, scientists aren't so bad after all. What's keeping What's what? What's distracting you at the moment? What are you reading, watching listening to? That keeps your attention away from the depressing subjects in the news, anything? I've been binge watching How to Get Away with Murder. My husband's a little worried now. Do you know what's amazing about How to Get Away with Murder and generally about Shonda Rhimes? Generally her productions is that they show again like Chimamanda Adichie right it's a whole different type of story here is a dark skinned black woman who is absolutely a genius, but she's not perfect, she's imperfect. It shows as a real view of people that we don't see real views of generally we don't see we either see them all good all bad, all victim all. It's like it's giving this this, this much more complex nuances to characters and that's what I really love about about Shonda Rhimes, and her show is so yeah, how to get away with metta has been my my latest binge watch. Okay, that sounds good. All right. I know you'll just binge watch or read because you you tend to escape through your books right? Through my books. My next one is over there is narrative economics. That's one. That's that's what my weekend read aside from your weekend Greece is going to be narrative economics. Ed prime seemed to have it's kind of funny. For a long time, I had not been reading books written by economists for the last little while. I've read several because it's behind this behind the scenes the economic the narrative of what breeds economic and economically prosperous society is one The hidden narratives on on the world and so working my way through a bunch of the sort of modern thinkers in this kind of thing to to get an insight on like, Well what's what stories have been created? So my next one is to binge read narrative at the moment. We want to see what that one does. Sorry. Exactly, not exactly like entertainment. I need to have a check. We had Suzanna on Mon wagon she was about to go through 1000s and 1000s of Excel spreadsheets on environment data and that was her relaxation so I think whatever floats your boat, right? What do you What are you relaxing with? zig and shako on net? It's a it's a multi multi multi episode because each episode is seven minutes long Kids TV show, I suppose. Where a famished laughing hyena is trying to eat the mermaid on a cruise ship. And she's protected by a muscley shark who's in love with her. And it's just, it's, it's, I mean, Zoe watches it in my five year old and I just found it absolutely hysterical. Based based on this gender inequality thing. It's probably not the best thing because you got two males fighting over a mermaid who seems oblivious to the whole thing, but it's hilarious. She does come out on top a lot as the one that's got any sense at all. But, but I find it very I find it very, very funny. I mean, a lot of the kids stuff I don't really find that funny. It's just like pure all whatever. Well, no, I like pure oil. It's badly written. But this one is very. I just find it hysterical. Zig. And Shaka, you want seven minutes to laugh? It's so stupid. But it's cleverly written a friend. I think it's French writers. Oh, possibly Canadian. Yeah. What to say I love to send you the one that my boys used to be into it. It was two slugs in the gutter. And how they lived their days. I can't remember it was called completely like, Whoa, no, no, no children stuff. You think about LSD. They end up on an island. They end up on the deserted island slugs? I don't know. I didn't really? I had a couple of thoughts. But yeah, okay. So I'm still, I'm still living in, in watching. What do you call it? Downton Abbey for the second time, on season three, Episode Three now. So Edith has just been dumped at the altar. But I've got to tell you, these last couple of weeks going through this sort of COVID reaction, not COVID the booster reaction. I just need, I just need it. And my husband needs it too. And it's just really lovely. We just sort of escaped to another time in history when people are nice to each other. And, you know, there's a couple of horrible people in the mix, but they all get sorted out in the end. So we've been enjoying that. So that's pretty much what's keeping me distracted. Okay, I want to add one thing, and that sounds awesome, by the way, and it is it, you know, to the game, if you've seen it the first time. It's Yeah, but I like the idea of it's an escape, right? What we're talking about is escapes escape from whatever we're going through where we are right now in this in this sort of chalet. It's called a chalet. It's just it's a simply appointed room with a nice view. But it's it's just really, really nice. But what's made a huge difference I find to us is we bought these things. This is a bad idea, but it's a scooter. It's it though it's just a it's a small mobility device. It's electric scooter. Yeah, nice. Maybe we've been zipping around on that. And Lydia and I both have gone we got him from decathlon or something. I knew one on a secondhand one, and we bought one for Zoe, but she doesn't use hers very much. He uses hours, which he can skewed on by itself, which is great, but she's usually writing on hours because she gets time off to like one second. So but we are we're having a ball just getting out, getting out and I know some people in lockdown This is probably not the best thing for them to watch. But getting out and just zipping about. And being here one of the things we're doing is we're just zipping out of the food court or zipping over to you know, some boardwalk and just getting out in the fresh air in the sun, seeing people wandering about and just enjoying that and it's just been really that's been a great escape. Even though we're still working. Even though we're still getting stuff done. It's just been awesome. Get yourself an adult scooter if you haven't, but I do would like to give you a heads up. Not a good idea when you're drunk. I've had a couple I actually had a couple of stacks online, which were very funny. Anyway, let's let's wrap it up. So just so everybody knows I upload this onto my podcast on common courage every week, unedited, straight straight from the show. So listening to something from on audio is your preference. It's there. Lavinia, thank you so much for joining us for Germany. You're our first European guest. We really, really appreciate having you here. And I mean, we could talk forever on this topic of equality and why it's important and how we can sort it out. Joanne, thank you for stepping in because j couldn't be with us today. We really appreciate it. And hope you're happy to do that occasionally and Lavinia to come back anytime you want. And Tim could say Duff. And your weekends everyone, right? gonna say goodbyes. Bye, everyone. Thank you for having me. Goodbye. Thanks, everyone. No show. What's up? Yeah, Joe. Thank you for an excellent no show, Joe. Yeah. Cool. All right, and you the broadcast. Thanks, guys. Thanks for joining us. We've had some We've had a few people participating. I really appreciate it. So I'd say next week. I hope