Uncommon Courage

The Know Show – 2024 was one heck of a year, a look back

• Andrea T Edwards, Joe Augustin, Taryn-lee Kearney, Natalie Nancy Tan • Episode 155

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It’s our last show of the year and that means we’ll take the opportunity to look back at the major news that happened around the world in 2024 – how much do you remember? Or perhaps it all became a blur? Or maybe you haven’t been paying attention at all and this is your chance to catch up in one go? 

We’ll discuss geopolitical developments across the world, including the results of more than 50 per cent of the world’s population going to the polls. From elections to wars, what happens next is what we are all waiting to see - will everything get better, or a whole lot worse? 

The climate has been off the charts this year, with extreme weather events hitting every corner of the globe, and the ramifications have been enormous, but it’s the wider impacts over time we often miss – financial impacts, permanent destruction, food security, and beyond. A lot of records were set in 2024 in the climate space – not good records!   

Of course, technology, especially AI, is on everyone’s lips, plus we had Google achieve an amazing milestone this week, and we’ve seen wider technological progress you may not even be aware of – yes, the excitement of generating AI notes from our meetings is a small cog in a much bigger story. On the cultural front, it was a year of Taylor Swift and P Diddy, although we’re sure the latter wished he was in the formers seat right now – his court case will certainly get the world’s attention in 2025. 

To help us wrap up the year, our first guest is Taryn-lee Kearney, from Johannesburg, South Africa. Tarryn is a CEO, industrial psychologist, global speaker, multifaceted facilitator, consultant and mental health advocate. She’s also the Boomchakalaka lady. Our second guest from Singapore is Natalie Nancy Tan, a dance fitness instructor, personal trainer, M.E.L.D Program Creator, resilience speaker, and transformation coach. Natalie has a mission - Empowering Women to Move from Victim to Victor with the 3R Framework: Realization, Resilience, Rejoice. We are convinced both ladies will bring super positive energy to the discussion. 

The Livestream kicks off at 3pm Singapore time, Friday 13th December. Come and join us for our last show of the year. 

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

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

#TheKnowShow #UncommonCourage

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

Andrea Edwards:

Oh, I'm gonna wait a minute, because then LinkedIn might catch up, like you told us last week, if we

Joe Augustin:

can do the chit chat here on for the folks at YouTube, because it goes out straight to YouTube very quickly and then take some time to get to LinkedIn. So

Andrea Edwards:

all right, well, welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards, and

Unknown:

my name is Joe Augustin. Tim Wade is already on a holiday, but you know, we're still, he's thinking about us, we know. And welcome to the show that tries to put you in touch with what's happening in the world around you, in the world that you may have missed on the way looking through your Instagram feed. And this is our roundup for 2024 and I've seen, I had a look at what's on the program, so much has happened. It's hard to believe this is a one year Roundup. It seems like this year really has gone by much or not, not, not gone by faster. It seems just so much more has happened this year than last year. Yeah, or any other year. I

Andrea Edwards:

know he's gonna look I was looking back on 2023, and this is the most complicated show to put together, because there's so many pieces to the story, right? But what before we get kick off, if I cough, I have to apologize. I've been a bit under the weather now for for a week or so, and it's been a bit annoying, but I think it's time for a break, which is what we'll be doing after the show today. Are you looking forward to

Unknown:

the last no show for the year. We have, of course, lined up alternative voices or diverse voices to join us as well. So bringing on our guests, one of our two guests today, actually, and it's going to be an interesting scheduling day. But let's bring on Taryn. First of all, Taryn Kearney from Johannesburg, South Africa. Taryn is a CEO, industrial psychologist, global speaker, multifaceted trans facilitator, not trans facilitator, sorry, multifaceted facilitator and mental health advocate, sorry, I was, I was just I was in my mind. I bumped on the, on the, on what you were thinking about before Andrea, when you were saying you were very curious of what an industrial psychologist is, yeah,

Andrea Edwards:

exactly. So welcome. Taran, thanks. Thanks

Taryn-lee Kearney:

guys. Boom Chaka, luck. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having on the show. Yeah, and

Andrea Edwards:

that's the other thing I want you to talk about. Boom, shaka laka, but tell me, industrial psychologist, what does that mean?

Unknown:

Yeah. So basically, we are psychologists in the corporate space. We don't have couches in our offices, though, and ask people how they feel. We basically are adult teachers. So we go into the companies and we help people with their professional and personal development and ja, we do things from assessments through to counseling and through to training and development, and that is basically what we are, industrial psychologists.

Andrea Edwards:

Okay, first time I've said it. And then if you look at your branding, boom, Shakalaka is everywhere now that that term came from a 70s show, right? Is that? Am I right? So

Unknown:

there was a song. There was also a song about it, and it was Boom shakalaka. But in South Africa, we have a delicacy that you eat with a maze, and it's called Chaka laka. And it's quite a spicy, zesty type of onion and tomato type of vibe. And somehow I got coined boom Chaka laka because of my energy. So they say I am quite full of energy, a big burst of flavor and quite spicy at times.

Andrea Edwards:

Oh, there you go. Some perfect branding.

Joe Augustin:

Well, we hope to get a good big dose of it. And on this program today. It's a really packed show. I don't know whether we should just try and go headlong into it and get as much done as possible. I have my doubts we'll finish everything we have in mind. All

Andrea Edwards:

right, should we? We should give an overview of what we're planning to do. What do you think? Sure, go ahead. All right. So we're going to kick off with a couple of recent stories that are sort of kind of curious, bit entertaining. And then we're going to start looking at some of the things that happen in the years, or words of the year, people of the year. So there's a cough, words of the year, our heroes this year. And then we're going to break it out into four categories, so it's geopolitics, culture and sports, the planetary crisis. And then we're going to look at technology and science and what's happened this year. So they're very big ones. And then we're going to finish with just, just what we're seeing, and some, maybe some thoughts going into next year, and it could be personal, but it also could be sort of collective. I'm going the collective path, so I'll be curious to see, but taryn's only got an hour, so that's why we need to move quickly. Alright, Joe, do you want to get it start with the first story?

Unknown:

Well before I head right into it, I'm just going to do the one thing that we never do all. Usually don't do, which is to ask people to share us on social. So if you think at this point you have a you feel there's a chance you might like what you're gonna see or hear, please subscribe. You know, like, do the kind of thing you have to do if you're listening to a podcast right now. Give us a positive review. You know what? Just, just give us one, even if you haven't heard the show yet, and and go on faith, right? This show is designed very simply to do one or two things, right? One is to make you either the smartest person in the room and or the most irritating as well. But we'll back it up with some facts. So let's go and look at some quick facts here. Here's a story that wasn't long ago, you'd be laughed out of the room, but it's getting more and more now to be mainstream. It's a story of UAPs. Now, UAP might, might be a theme that a term that sounds less familiar to you, because it's been basically a rebranding of the old UFO, so unidentified anomalous phenomena, which covers not just things that happen in the air the flying object, but also in the sea and in space and everywhere else. And there's been a strange story coming out of New Jersey about a large number of UAPs in the skies, and they're not hiding in the sense that a lot of people are seeing them, they look like very large drones, or able to stay in the air for a lot longer than drains drones are supposed to be able to do, and they look a little bit like cars. So now, first of all, there is no kind of flight data that's coming off of these drones, which is what they're supposed to have if they're a normal commercial aircraft. But then again, we don't know exactly what it is. At this point, it is recognized that these are just unexplained phenomenon. It could be a massive test of flying cars. It could be visitors from far away. It could be tourists from, you know, from from a planet about 4.1 light years that we're having a look at America one last time before the new administration. Who knows?

Andrea Edwards:

Yeah, apparently it's, there's an Iranian ship off the coast that's releasing them. I'm like, okay, yeah, it's all a bit weird, but the Pentagon's not sort of saying anything, so it's, yeah, it's creating a bit of interest. Of course, another big story that's happened in the last couple of weeks was the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson of the streets in New York. And it's really has been quite remarkable to watch this story in how it's been managed. And that's basically just the response to it, positive and negative, right? So the headline of an article in The New Yorker was a man was murdered in cold blood, and you're laughing. And then in the in the article, it commented, the whiff of populist anarchy in the air is salty, unprecedented and notably across the aisle. So it's obviously created a massive discussion around the whole for profit healthcare in the United States, and put a light on the suffering of millions of people in America, which is not a new thing, but it's really put the light on it for the rest of the world. The other interesting thing is it's increased the amount of personal security details that are being hired by CEOs across industries. So job ads are coming up everywhere. But the thing that jumped out for me is the knowledge that was acquired about the murderer. So Luigi Mangione, I presume it's he says Name, we know his social media profile and commentary where he is, we know his book reviews. But the truth is, even though he was supposedly found with a manifesto, we don't really know his motive behind it. But then you look at Donald Trump's would be assassin this young guy, we have no idea what this kid thought. We have no idea who he's connected to. So there's a lot of sort of interesting conversations going on around there. But one of the things so this is a story that I think will continue to grip the nation and the world, but one of the things that I think we really need to be starting to pay attention to is the escalation of these types of incidents, not towards healthcare CEOs, but towards business and business leaders. So things like eco terrorism is is on the rise, and that's someone going up and blowing up an energy facility or a fossil fuel facility or something like that. So I think we're going to be starting to see a lot more happening as people get angrier and angrier about the lack of action that's happening. And it's from the left and it's from the right, but from both extremes. So I think that's it's an interesting time, for sure. Thoughts, well, I must say,

Unknown:

with this particular story, I heard about all the memes first, before I actually heard about who was killed. I mean, it was one of those things where, you know, the online sleuths, people who usually go out in search of unidentified perpetrators, all of them throwing their hands up and saying, Sorry, not within coverage. You know, it was one of those things where they were rushing. Into and I think collectively, I think past judgment, not not the best of, not the best day, in terms of what, you know, human beings perhaps, should do for others, but at the same time I could, I could feel them, understood what they felt, you know, in terms of the relative crime. Shall we say? I think the discussion was about, you know what, what was, what was each guilty of? You know, one, one murderer and one who had a policy that essentially killed many people, yeah, actually, very interesting fact, though I saw last night on tick tock, I'm an avid tick tock. I don't know if I should be ashamed or love Tiktok, but I actually saw that the motive came out last night. And I don't know how accurate this is, but apparently his mom was suffering from a really bad disease, and you would actually see his mom crawl on her knees and hands, and they denied a lot of the medical bill claims they didn't want to pay for things. And I think it kind of just got to him, and he thought something had to be done. So I think it was that's

Andrea Edwards:

interesting, because they were, they were considered a very vault family. They ran basically all people's homes. So exactly when I heard that, I'm kind of like, well, you're kind of part of the problem. You come from a family that's part of the problem. Your privilege comes from that side too, right? So,

Unknown:

yeah, so it's quite an interesting story. It's going to be cool to see how this actually you know what is, what is true, what is not, and how this pans out, hey, and what the real narrative really was. And

Andrea Edwards:

always remembering the first 24 hours, 48 hours after a news cycle breaks. Yes, you very rarely hear the truth.

Unknown:

Exactly.

Andrea Edwards:

Reminder, yeah, yes, a reminder. I love that. But once, once they take hold, they take hold, right? You see, there we

Unknown:

go. But let's quickly go back to wrapping up the year, right? And I want to really just speak about highlighting the Top Google searches for 2024 this year. And it's actually going to be, it's going to blow your mind, because I never when I saw these Google, when Google released it last week Tuesday, I was quite intrigued as to why these aren't in the searches. But let's hear for for what everyone else seems to think. So the biggest search on Google was, no doubt, sports, right? And particularly soccer and cricket, and it dominated all the searches, especially Copa America topped the search terms globally and the UEFA European Championship, as well as the ICC men's T 20 cricket world cup. Then with that, with regards to cricket and soccer, we go over to the US elections. That was also one of the top led news specific world searches. And on top of that, there was excessive searches on heat waves, and what to do about this heat wave, so that's something quite interesting to speak about. And also this year's Olympic Games that was hosted in Paris, we also had top searches for US President Elect Donald Trump, and followed by Google's people category. This year, most searched was Catherine, Princess of Wales, probably due to her cancer, and the US Vice President Kamala Harris and all the celebrities that have been backing her, and Algerian boxer Imani Kalif. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, who also led athletic specific searches. Meanwhile, the late Liam Payne, that was said to fall um fall over his balcony at his hotel, as well as Toby Keith and OJ Simpson led searches worldwide for notable individuals who died in 2024 but in the world of entertainment, we have Disney and pixars Inside Out too. Have you guys seen that movie? Oh, I love it, man. It's awesome. You need to go see it. I want to say it. Yeah, you have to, oh, it was one of the top training movies of the year. Well, Netflix, baby reindeer. And I know this because I've got kids led to the most, biggest TV show trends, and then a song, a song I don't really like myself. Personally, Kendrick Lamar is not like us. Dominated song trends. I don't know if you guys have heard that song, not like us by Kendrick Lamar. I don't

Andrea Edwards:

know. Not my cup of tea. No, no, not at all.

Unknown:

And that, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Guys, we also had a lot of queries for the Olympic villages chocolate muffin. Now, what do I mean by this? It was made famous final region so may Henrik and the Summer Games this year, and it was Google's most, most um searched global recipe. Trend for this year was chocolate muffin made by this guy. Can you believe it? And then a last one for top searches was. A game for under the game category, it's called connections, and it is a puzzle game that was the most searched. But what I found quite intriguing, because I'm such a Tiktok fan, was the word demure was searched the most. What is the meaning of the word demure? So that could be also a new Gen Z term coming up this year, and that's about it. When it comes to our Top Google searches, guys,

Andrea Edwards:

sometimes I feel old when I hear the Gen Z terms. I've got two of them in the house, so, but even, but even they're not, they're even, they're not fans of the words, so

Unknown:

Well, don't worry, you're playing it.

Andrea Edwards:

Natalie is here, so let's bring her on. Hello. Hi

Unknown:

Natalie. Hi everybody.

Andrea Edwards:

You're you're currently attending a an Eric Fang speakers workshop, right?

Unknown:

Yes, yeah, yeah. It's a three days boot camp. So I just finished my excitement.

Andrea Edwards:

Oh, wow. You love to give Erica love. It's great. All right, Joe, do you want to give a quick intro?

Unknown:

Well, okay, let me try and find this on my on my good old fashioned script here than I have here. So NAT Natalie, nantley, Nancy, tab, yeah. She's a dance fitness instructor, personal trainer, M, E, L, D, program creator, I'm not too sure what that is. I want to find out more about that a resilient speaker as well as transformation coach. And Natalie's mission is empowering women to move from victim to Victor. So Natalie, yeah, tell us a little bit more about yourself. Hey, everybody. This is Natalie. I first started as a Zumba instructor, and slowly I evolved with other programs, and I become a personal trainer as well. The M, E, L, D is a holistic program that not only encompass the physical resilience, also the mental resilience. So M stands for mindset shift, and then we have L for lifestyle, E for exercise, and finally, the diet part. Yeah. So Natalie, throughout the rest of this, you don't have to put your microphone as close to where you have it right now, because it's sounding really, very, very, just sounds too close. So just, just nearby as you call, we should be fine for the rest of the show. So welcome to the show. I'm glad you've joined us. We're actually in the middle of our quick takes, and I'm going to get to times Person of the Year. I thought what I can do is, first of all, define it, so you won't be as surprised if you hadn't heard yet. Times Person of the Year is recognition about the individual or group, sometimes device that has wielded the greatest influence on global, global affairs. And in quotation marks for good or ill, close, close quotation marks, because the Person of the Year this year is Trump, and I would say, based on the definition, completely on the mark. And now you have a new, actually sort of answer to the question, what does Trump and Hitler have in common? Both were persons of the year, the four shoulders for 234, in alphabetical order, not influence. Kamala Harris, Kate Middleton, Elon Musk, Yulia navalnya, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerome Powell, Joe Rogan, Claudia shine, Bond, Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg, right,

Andrea Edwards:

interesting, right? Oh yeah, God, I have to keep seeing that man's face and hearing his voice. Alright, so we talked about Macquarie's word of the year a couple of weeks ago, which was in shitification. And now it's time for Oxford word of the year, which is brain rot. All right, I'm gonna Nancy. I might put you on mute. Just sounds like there's some noise in the background, and just jump off me whenever you want to speak. Alright, so brain rot. What does it mean? It's in the noun, suppose, suppose a deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of over consumption of material now, particularly online content considered to be trivializing or unchallenging, so when you were talking about Tiktok before Taran, also something characterized as likely To lead to such deterioration. Merriam which is word is polarization, and another word was brat. So that's where we alright.

Unknown:

Apologies, I got taken aback for the word, but let's go one second. Let's get over to I was, I'm amazing. It

Andrea Edwards:

was some, but it was some young influencer. I don't, I don't know who it is, Charlie. Oh, that's it. That's it, and brass on it. Yeah, I remember that. Okay,

Unknown:

cool. So this year, Taylor Swift became the first, I'm a Swifty fan, first artist in history. Wait for it, drum roll please, to make 2 billion, not million, $2 billion from her heiress tour. And Beyonce received her 99th Grammy nomination, becoming the most nominated artist in the Grammy histories. Females are just rocking it this year, and a literal banana duct taped like imagine a food banana duct taped to a wall, sold for a mere 6.2 million Rand in New York. Anyone want to buy a banana duct tape to wall? Anyone here for 6.2 million? Yeah, it was also consumed very shortly. That's the big news on that as well. Oh

Andrea Edwards:

yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Unknown:

Natalie, do you want to come in here by the notable, famous death that happened this year? Um, what I can remember, but it's actually Donald Trump. And also, I didn't know that you're not just make so much money.

Andrea Edwards:

Yeah, so Natalie, have you got the, have you got this? Have you got the script in front of you? Or do you just want to chip in on conversations? It's alright, if you have, I'll,

Unknown:

I'll chip in the conversation. Alright, okay, come in here. With regards to notable, famous deaths, we have Shannon doubtrey, wasn't she that? Singer,

Andrea Edwards:

no, no, 210, okay, you're obviously a little bit younger.

Unknown:

You see, you see Shelly. Dubale damay, Maggie Smith, Richard Simons, doctor, Ruth Westheimer, Toby, Keith Cole withers, Quincy Jones, Chris Christopherson, tyto Jackson, Tommy cash, James Earl Jones, Phil Donahue, John Amos, and, of course, many, many more, such as Liam Payne, etc that we mentioned earlier on.

Andrea Edwards:

Yeah. Now, Natalie, I know you're younger, but do you were you ever aware of Richard Simmons?

Unknown:

Sounds familiar, but not really.

Andrea Edwards:

Oh, he was, you gotta go. You gotta go and check him out. He was very much in the 80s. So the the 80s was the, you know, the TV sort of aerobics. You know, in the morning shows, there'd be a little section for aerobics. But he was, he was the man. He was the man. He was very, very funny. Is

Unknown:

there the guy with very clean hair? Oh, okay. Then, then yeah, I remember, yeah.

Andrea Edwards:

I hired a graduate in Boston because she was a fan of Richard Simmons. I was so impressed that she knew who it was, even though she was well beyond her generation, that I had to give her a job because at least she was curious and had a sense of humor. All right, so our biggest heroes this year, Joe, who's your biggest hero this year. It's been a year. It's

Unknown:

very hard to identify heroes, and even I'll say, even as I say the name of who I want to give some admiration to, that a few people are not going to agree with this. So for me, it's Sam Altman, the man who is largely, I think, behind chat GBT and open AI and stuff like that. For the many things that he is actually sort of championing and putting forward, and also because of something that I learned about his arrangement with open AI, he doesn't hold equity in the company, and that was something that broke recently, and his salary is somewhere in the vicinity of 65 $67,000 and that's all he is doing. This for the rest of it is is driven by his belief in what it can do. Of course, he's also very actively an investor. He has all other opportunities and doing very well in other areas as well. I think, I think he, I could be wrong about this, but I think he's a billionaire without his involvement in AI So, but the things that that I think his vision for the future, and I think where he's going, and where I think people are also afraid of is, is he wants to really, really change The world for the better. And I think if you take the time to listen to what he's doing, you figure out that he is pretty much on the course for that later on, when we do our update on technology as well, I'm going to show you, or talk to you, about some of the things that people have not noticed, I think, in terms of AI development and how much of an impact it's going to make on the World to Come.

Andrea Edwards:

Alright? So my Hero of the Year is Giselle pelico, who's obviously the lady in France who was raped by 70 men, drugged and raped by 70 men, and she decided to put her face out there in the world, and she didn't realize what she was. Doing at the time, but she wants to take shame out of out of that, and I think it's incredibly powerful. There's big pushback on time for not putting her in the list to be considered for Time Person of the Year. But yeah, I've just got so much respect for her and what she's done this year, and I think it's it's significant. It's a significant contribution to global society. So she's mine, Sharon, who's your hero.

Unknown:

All right, I absolutely would like to say Selena Gomez. So back in the day, she used to be on Disney and Wizard of Oz and all these places. But she's kind of given up singing, not really given up, but she's really shifted her focus on her beauty brand. Yes, I know another beauty brand, but it's not just any other beauty brand, right? The beauty brand is called rare, and she has developed it for people who have diseases, who struggle to use makeup, who may have the shakes and things like that, like lupus, like she has herself, and she's designed the bottles, the product bottles, in such a way that they can open it themselves and they can use it. And she just made it free, you know, easy, accessible and friendly all over and not just that. She's hit millions of dollars with her, her brand, because she's appealing to people who really need it and so, and not just that. She's got a good heart, a kind person. She gives most of her profits away to to charities. I'm a big fan about that. And also she is now, recently as of two days ago, engaged to Benny Blanco, and he's not the greatest looking man out there, but again, it speaks to her heart. You know, she has fallen in love with someone for their insides and not for the outsides, and that is quite rare in the pop scene, pop and culture scene, so I really do wish the best for both of them. So she's my hero because she is a girl boss. Love it,

Andrea Edwards:

alright? Natalie, who's your hero this year.

Unknown:

I don't really have any but I do agree with that the Selena Gober, when she created her rare beauty. I think not many people are actually aware of this lupus disease, and a lot of makeup in the market is highly concentrated with chemicals which a lot of people can, can't use. And even though these are the minority group, it's always good to have someone to speak up to them. Speak up for them. And also the lady that you say, which is a French lady who stood up and speak out against her waiting, I think it takes a lot, lot of courage. A lot of people will start to put shame on the victim, but actually she did the other way around, because she actually had a mindset change and say that, hey, I'm not the victim. It's not my fault. So I'm going to, you know, tell the whole world that if something unfair to you, you should fight for it. Don't let anyone tell you that, you know, to make you have a victim mindset you should never accept.

Andrea Edwards:

No, you're right. No, it's very powerful. I suppose we should add Swifty to the heroes of the year. I mean, seriously, I don't want to say it, but, you know, I mean, I mean she was Time Person of the Year last year, which she deserved. But you know, for the amount of criticism and the horrible stuff that she has to endure every single day of her life. And she just keeps showing up and getting better and getting bigger and but also, I think, you know, because I I'd probably go to a Taylor Swift concert now, just just to see what it's all about, the the energy of love that was constantly sort of coming out of these shows all around the world. I think it was such a positive thing in the world. So let's give her credit as a hero this year too.

Unknown:

Blum Chaka, laka, I like that one.

Andrea Edwards:

All right, Joe should we get into the geo political developments this year? And it's a lot when a lot went down? Well, we'll

Unknown:

try. I can rebrand this as Joel. Joel, political, okay, well, the thing about this is that it's been a complicated year. There's so much happening, and as we talk about this, we're not even going to cover some of the other things that are running off to the side as well. So the biggest issue that we see is the issue of violence from the ongoing war in Ukraine and all that entails, including Russia's nuclear threat. Recently, new weapons entering the war, tremendous human suffering and the courage of the Ukrainians. Russian propaganda, propaganda is in full force. North Korean soldiers are now, apparently, in this as well. And on and on it goes. And of course, the Middle East conflicts. Just where does it end? And throughout the year, we watched the Israel Hamas war intensify with violent protests across the world. We've also seen the power of the is of Israel's control over the media and politicians. And it's a definite souring, a definite there's also a definite souring of political and public support for Israel. It's war theater expanded this year, including recent months in Lebanon, and now Israel is responsible for destroying all military capability in Syria as it moved in to protect the Golan Heights. What's Israel's goal here, and what will happen in the Middle East next? Will it move towards peace, or will it explode into even more violence, and will that violence expand out to consume the world. We'll hopefully finish this as well, as well with a section, this section with a with a discussion on Syria, which I will have to admit, I do not know enough about, but more about that in a while, across the span of the largest elections this year, across the span of the largest elections year for the World, with 50% of the world's population going to the polls. We'll start with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stepped down following two decades in power, and in Indonesian general elections in February, it resulted in a new administration with significant implications for regional politics. So far in South Africa, in May, the African National Congress, the ANC, lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since apartheid ended, leading to a coalition government. Another massive election in the Global South was the Indian general election, which, by the way, goes on for many, many months and was severely impacted by the heat extremes blasting across the continent. This year, it finally concluded on June 1, and saw the incumbent, the BNP, Bucha Janata Party, retained power, though, with a reduced majority. So it's not all roses from Modi either. Mexico elected its first female president in June. Claudia shine bone is also a climate scientist. The UK finally got rid of the Tories in July. These words prepared by Andrea. And while the position as a landslide, the voting turnout was very low, with youth extremely disenfranchised, the first few months in power for labor certainly haven't been easy, either. I have to say that. Why? Why does the media continue to give Nigel Farage so much attention? Haven't they learned anything? Well, I think the attention they've learned is that he gets attention. Keep an eye on things here. It looks like Musk is determined to interfere not only with the US, but also UK politics. And in addition to what he's already been doing, now it's been chaos after chaos in France this year, starting with President Emmanuel Macron dissolving the National Assembly in June, which prompted snap elections the following month. The elections led to a fragmented parliament with no party securing a clear majority, causing political instability, and now it seems to be falling apart. Speaking of falling apart, Germany is also on that list that they're facing tough times politically. We're also seeing chaos in Romania and Georgia. What a year it has been. There been elections in Iran, Uruguay, Ghana and many, many more, signaling a shift in the countries either to the right or left, but notably, really nothing much centrist happening. A vote for change ricocheted around the world as voters expressed their frustration at the status quo, the ongoing economic impact of inflation, and also the day to day struggles that they face. But the biggest elections of course, of last year in recent history, the US, where on november 5, Donald Trump secured a second non consecutive term as president, defeating vice president Kamala Harris in the elections, the Republican Party gained a majority in the Senate, while Democrats, Democrats increased their representation in the house, which led to a divided Congress, and seeing all the announcements of the appointments in his cabinet, as you've seen recently, I can only assume we have a wild ride ahead of us, like I said, maybe that's why all those UAPs were seen over Jersey, and then we have Syria. So this is where I open it up to your thoughts. I must confess, it's one of the areas that I have not spent as much time thinking about. And I must also thank Andrea for a referral from I think was two weeks ago. You said praying for abigailden was a movie that you recommended that I check out I did a search for. At and I found another movie, same title from PBS that actually is, I think it's in Farsi, and it's a documentary by someone in Aleppo, which I'm sure it's one of those things, but it gave such a perspective of what is happening on the ground for the people of Syria was just amazing.

Andrea Edwards:

Well, so we got Asha or joining us. 2024 is such a messy year everywhere. And I couldn't agree more. So basically, since this whole Syria thing, so as you guys know, I pay attention to what's going on and try and try and understand what's going on. And I've got to, I gotta tell you one thing with this serious situation, it's not clear at all. So, you know, early signs. What is it? J JT, JTS, JHS, that, you know, the party, the group that went in and have taken over Syria. Early signs are good. It's always amazing, you know, on our TV screens to see all these prisoners released. You know, the that that feels good, right? The women are unveiling, they're doing TV interviews. They're freed troops that were part of Assad's sort of army. So there's that, right? So, okay, okay, maybe this is good. And then you saw another one where they're smashing all the alcohol in shops. So are they going to be more extreme, you know? So it's all this sort of stuff. But then there's the conversation about Russia, you know, is this a good thing for Russia or a bad thing for Russia? And there's different points of view there. Some people think it's Russia laying a trap for the West to go in, just like the West left a trap for Russia to go into Afghanistan all those years ago. So there's that. Then there's the turkey side. It's either a big failure or a big success for for Turkey. So it's been really interesting. I've listened to political commentators, so people have worked in politics. I've listened to people who are investors. I've listened to people who are tracking war. And the one thing that's really, really clear is there is no clarity at all. We don't like. So what's next, you know, is this the beginning of of of a wider war across the entire region. You know, they're talking about these, these sort of pipelines that, by by liberating Syria, these pipelines can be built which will be good for the West. So it's, it's a, it's a very, very big story. And I don't think there's any clarity yet. A lot of people have got very definitive opinions, but there's a lot of different opinions, so it's definitely a story that will over the long term, will understand, sure,

Unknown:

yeah, the whole thing about the military involvement of Russia in that, in that whole crisis, that was just crazy for me. It's like the people on the ground were literally bombed by Russian planes. It's just a crazy, it's a crazy situation in that country. And why the various people who are involved in that are involved in it. It's just, I don't fully get it. Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Edwards:

I mean, you know, could it, could it help the Ukrainians. Could it? Could it make it harder? You know? So there's so many, there's so many dimensions to it. That's why, that's why it's really interesting. So I'm not surprised you haven't got a grasp on it yet, Joe, because it's like, I've been my dog walks. I'm listening on podcast to all different points of view, just like, What? What does it mean? Because that's the, that's the question, what does it mean, you know, because we've, we've already had this year, that's just escalation, escalation, escalation. And, you know, we need to calm things down. So it's just calming things down or heating things up. And I don't, I don't know the answer to that. It's

Unknown:

kind of a reflection of our collective anxiety when something appears to be good, and we go like, that doesn't sound like it might be good, as in, what I heard recently was it sounded like good things were happening in Syria. And, you know, like, like you've been mentioning the thought, it's almost towards, well, why? Right? It's like they don't deserve a good day. This is strange, yeah,

Andrea Edwards:

oh, mate, for the for the people. I mean, you know, there's like 12 million Syrian refugees that can go home, you know? So that movement's starting to come to happen, and that's a very positive thing for Europe, right? So, yeah, you know. But would, how quickly as a refugee, would you go home? Would you wait for it? Would you wait for it to settle? And then the European Union are talking about, okay, well, we can kick these guys out now, because, yeah, that potentially could leave some space for refugees of other nations that are in trouble to come into Europe, because it's already the infrastructure is already in place to take these people. So, you know, it's. You know, I don't know it's, it's a big one, but you, you're talking about the election. So one of the things, of course, that we missed was Romania has nullified its election because of Russian interference. So, yeah, so Russian interference in elections is, is a big part of the story this year, and it's the first country that sort of went, No, okay, we're not doing that. And that was the the guy that got elected on tick tock that nobody knew. But I want to show you. I want to show you something else from a geopolitical perspective. Let me, let me see if I can find it. Yep. Do you know that picture?

Unknown:

Yes, I've seen it. Yes, Joe, have you

Andrea Edwards:

seen it? I

Unknown:

am trying to call it up because it's on a very small screen that's far away from me. Oh, yes, you know, I've seen that. Yes, yeah,

Andrea Edwards:

yeah, yeah. This, this has had a lot of commentary, right? And a lot of it's around RFK, like eating fast food. It's around the diet. It's around just the people. You know, there's a lot of commentary around this picture, but the one thing, and I've been meaning to put it on social media, but I just haven't gotten around to it, the one thing this picture that I think people need to be paying attention to, is these five people, not just in America, but influencing around the world, deciding what life should be like for all of us, right, to an extent, all of us. When I say all of us. Do you see representation in that photo? Hell no. Mm, hmm, right. So, like countries, businesses, when there's when there's proper representation and all, and they're in a war against representation, a dii dei against it, right? But five white men sitting around a table making decisions about the future of their citizens and the world are not representative of the world that we live in. And I to me, that's the issue that should have been called out with this picture. Yeah, agreed 100% I just wanted to show it because I haven't done it yet. Alright, remove it. And I'm

Unknown:

just quite intrigued as to what, what? What was that chicken nugget that Elon Musk was having? McDonald's out of all your fast food, you can make donuts. Donald Trump's in charge of catering. That's what it is.

Andrea Edwards:

Yeah, exactly. He loves his fast food, and obviously plastic, plastic coke bottles, all those little sachets that are ending up in the ocean. I mean, just from a pollution perspective, unhealthy eating, you know, the amount of chemicals in the food, the amount of sugar in the food. I mean, there's so many things in that photo, but it's five white men deciding, yeah, you know what's right and what's wrong. To me, that's the story of the photo. And

Unknown:

what's interesting is, you know, Musk is from my hood South Africa, yes.

Andrea Edwards:

What do you guys think of him? And teal? And what's the other these? The

Unknown:

other South Africa. What did I say? Harry Potter? It's he who shall not be named.

Andrea Edwards:

Is there any is there any pride in the country for him? Um,

Unknown:

a little bit, but not really. A lot of people are quite taken aback by him, because he hasn't really given back to our to his own country, his own homeland. He doesn't declare South Africa as his homeland anymore. He says the US is so, I think we've kind of like, I think he's kind of like, cut ties with South Africa, even though it's part of his history and his upbringing. And his mother also cut ties with South Africa, so, and she's backing him all the way because of who wouldn't if you were a man, you know. So anyways, let's get into cultural moments and sports highlights. Is that alright? Change of flavor, the Bucha flavor. So for sports this year, it is only really the Paris Olympic Games that truly deserves a mention here, and was considered a big success, although lots of scandal in the mix, especially, I must be to say about those the a lot of the athletes were complaining about the cardboard boxes they had to sleep in, and how some of the Athletes actually booked out of the Olympic village and went to go stay in some hotels because they their back just couldn't take it anymore. But anyways, coming back to that, we also had opening ceremonies. The scandal there and everyone's different opinions about the opening ceremony, actually, before I go on, what was everyone's thoughts in the open of the Paris Olympic games opening ceremony.

Andrea Edwards:

Well, okay, let me just tell you what I was trying to explain to people, that the what people were saying didn't actually make any sense. It wasn't logical. So we're talking about an Italian feast at an Olympic ceremony in France. So. There's two stories that France are going to tell. They're going to tell a French story, or they're going to tell a Greek story. And so Dionysus feast, yeah, he's a Greek story, right? And then it turned out to be a mockery of Catholicism, so, or Christianity. So I, I was kind of like, can't guys, you know, even Mary Antoinette, the whole beheading, you know, that was construed to be something that it wasn't. So yeah, just Yeah. A lot of opinions, yeah. But anyways,

Unknown:

coming back to that female boxes with XY chromosomes, and, of course, the poor Australian breakdown. So Ray Gun, I don't think she did that bad, although she's got a meme to this day that's quite abused quite often. Joe, you love your memes. Have you seen that one of Reagan break dancing? I

Andrea Edwards:

feel sorry. Well, you can't get over this.

Unknown:

You know? I think it's one of those things where someone who, someone who leans into the process and can go through the administrative effort to get to get to qualify for the Olympic Games. Because we do know that the, you know, the Olympics tends to have a lot of process around it. So if you've got an administration, you can kind of administer your way into something which might be not so well known amongst the rest of the people in that sport. So I think that's kind of what happened there. And she, I think, just got, she showed up without the necessary qualifications to be there, unfortunately, and the world

Andrea Edwards:

was watching, no, she had the qualifications. She just, I mean, I

Unknown:

know she literally qualified in break dancing, as in, like, she literally did studies and break dancing. I understand that, yeah, but, you know, just in terms of the level of competition, I think I don't know, I it was stark, the quality of it, you know,

Andrea Edwards:

I just like, I just love to, I'd love to hear from her, what her idea was, because she's competitive in global competitions and won like she's not someone who can't break dance, but she obviously, she had an idea in her head, and that's what she put a put out there. And the mockery has been so big, but I'd love to hear what, what she was thinking, yeah,

Unknown:

yeah. That's something maybe last for to to to speak about in 2025 next year. One of the secrets, yeah. Anyhow, going back to I can't believe it already, two years of love. Can we give it up for Taylor Swift's eras tour again, and it's finally over on the December the eighth in Canada. It was such a huge effort, and she did. It was 149 shows of the eras performance, and was in all over the world, except South Africa, by the way. Like, why is she not coming to Africa? But that's a discussion for another day. We'll have to see if we can tweet her and get her attention here to come over. But it was ranging from cities from Bucha areas to Paris to Tokyo. And while it is not official just yet, she says, obviously we spoke about it, that she may have estimated to make more than$2 million but smashing a previous record of Alton John's pandemic interrupted farewell yellow brick road tour, and that was an estimated sold at $939 million in tickets over 328 shows spread across five years. So I must say, like she did, the areas to her in two years, and she is almost close to more than 2 billion guys. This is phenomenal. And why I say this, and I'm so passionate about this, because she put a lot of effort into her concerts. I mean, she supercharged local communities and economies. She even donated a large portion of her profits to communities in the area, the local community, um, her stamina, her energy. She was always on point. Her outfits, oh my gosh, I love bling. And she just blinged it 100% there, Joe, you like bling only on Wednesdays. And she really created such a movement that you were speaking about earlier on, and that's love, and how she did that was with a friendship bracelets. So kids and people around the world started making friendship bracelets and beads with words and sayings, and was swapping and exchanging with each other, and not just that, if you had a sunflower. So we all know that the representation for sunflower is people with special needs and disabilities, and you get VIP access. And also she made sure that her whole concert was inclusive of them, which I thought was pretty rad, right? And they got special treatment from. The beginning straight through. But not just that. It wasn't all sunshine and roses for for Taylor Swift, she had quite a bit of hiccups along the way, and one of them was Donald Trump declaring that he hates her. I mean, he's one of the most searched guys on Google, and now declared, you know, the Times year of the year, the guy of the year, and he hates her, to a point where she had to cancel three shows in Vienna, where authorities arrested a man in connection with the Islamic attack plot. So, I mean, and that was like, that was apparently quite devastating for her, because she always shows up, you know, and she's always there no matter what, and now they had to cancel three shows. But did you, I don't know if you saw all the people who were going to attend the concerts gathered outside her hotel in a in a large community and started singing her songs. I mean, that is the love you want to see around the world, right? Although that she did have a bit of a tragedy. Sorry, guys, you can see it's at the end of the year, a tragedy. The year, a tragedy, I can't even say it now, where a fan died from heat exhaustion during the show in Rio in November last year, to a point where she even declared and devoted a song for her fan. She's now got a boyfriend, Travis Kelsey, who plays the Kansas City Chiefs. She never used to attend those type of football games. And not just that, with this new romance on everyone's lips and all the Swifty lips, especially mine, she's bringing a lot of attention to football, not just that, where girls are starting to join their dads at football games, and it's actually impacting the relationships positively with Father daughters. So I thought that was pretty rad. So hats off to her. Whether you like her music or not, don't tell me if you don't like her music, how can you criticize her? So keep an eye out for her in the future, and I know she's got a documentary on Netflix about her the previous years and all the mental health struggles that she had to overcome, and all the challenges and all the heartbreak. So I would recommend go watching that on Netflix. But on the other side of the music industry, we have Sean Diddy COVID, or everyone likes to call him, oh, sorry, no. I was just

Andrea Edwards:

going to say before we go into Diddy. So I just wanted to make make clear that the Vienna terrors threat and Donald Trump hating her connected. They're separate things. Connected, yeah, but I, but I did appreciate Ivanka Trump his daughter, taking her daughter to a Swifty show just after that tweet, so that was kind of interesting. But Natalie, I was going to ask you, are you a Swifty fan?

Unknown:

No, I'm not. I don't know her songs well, but you know what? I just did, shake it off in my excitement. I like that song because I find it's a very positive song. I do. I'm not a twisty but what I like about her is that she's very positive and she empowers women. Because for the longest time, I don't know why people hate on her. I'm like, What's wrong with her? She's okay, right? Seems like she get a lot of negativity effort. It was Connie who snatched that award from her, and then after that, she has a lot of other backlash and stuff like that. But yet, she's well known by a lot of bands. I remember when she was in Singapore, I was on a train, and you don't even have to tell those people our sisters because of the way they stress. So this is the power that she gave and that's what Karen say. I think it's a very positive power. It's a empowerment to a lot of us, especially the minority group, and also to let people know that just because you are bullied, you're being bullied, you don't have to be a victim. And I think she set up a very good example, even though I'm not a sister fan, but yeah, I do a mine.

Andrea Edwards:

Yeah, nice. Love that. Kanye West is not doing so well anymore, but neither is somebody else in his community,

Unknown:

yes, and that is P Diddy, because he's having his day coming up in court. The renowned music mogul is facing sex trafficking and racketeering charges. There are multiple lawsuits alleging sex sexual misconduct, including claims of assaulting underage individuals and a woman was identified as Anna Kane accused him of gang rape and sex trafficking when she was 17. Another lawsuit alleges that P Diddy and fellow rapper Jay Z raped a 13 year old girl at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards after party. This is just so messy. Both combs and JC have denied these allegations, of course, with JC labeling them as attempts at blackmail. But from all we're seeing, Diddy now and Jay Z have many, many more are expected to fall, including top executives in the music and entertainment industry as well as business leaders across many industries like banking and finance and more. So guys, I think you need to keep glue. COVID, and expect to see a lot more about this in our news channels, and the full story coming up in 2024 but if, like I said, it's ongoing, they're all in court. I mean, there's a lot of name sneering happening. Apparently, there's a list, and that list has think people such as Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, ja on there. So that's going to be quite interesting to see what's going to be happening in that industry. So that's about it for with regards to cultural moments and sport highlights, and again, I sort of quickly also just mention we get we did speak about the Paris Olympic Games and how that was quite interesting. With regards to the top searched woman was Iman. I think it was the boxer and how she did such great effort there. So if you don't know about her, go Google her. She's an incredible inspiration for women out there. That's exactly what you were speaking about. Natalie, we sing a lot more females step up in arenas where, you know, I mean, boxing, come on, you know, it's awesome. Over to the next news,

Andrea Edwards:

yeah, yeah. So we got that, that, that whole box of story, that's, it's very contentious one, because, of course, it's, there is a hormone issue at play here, or a chromosome issue at play, right? Yeah. But the way that was handled, I Yeah, the the way those women had to deal with that media scrutiny, especially because they were from, they were from traditionally conservative Muslim countries, and then genitalia was being spoken about on on by everybody, you know, I can't even imagine how hard that would have been for those women to deal with that, you know? But you're, you're right, like, there is, there is a rise of women in in industries, in fields that are doing really, really great work. And the music industry is a fantastic example of it. But this Diddy story, I think it's gonna, yeah, oh, there's

Unknown:

a it's gonna be very messy. I'm gonna be very honest with you, and it's going to, I think it's going to change quite a bit. It's going to have a massive global impact in 2025 might not be seen, but I feel that there's going to be a domino effect. Yeah. So that's going to be quite something to keep an eye out for. And we also have someone with regards to XY chromosomes, Costa Semenya from South Africa, a runner and ja, she's been taken out quite a bit, you know, because she's a man turned women, and she's had quite a lot of backlash as well. So it's quite interesting. I think it'll be quite nice to speak about this in one of your future segments. Mm, yeah,

Andrea Edwards:

yeah. Uh, Nancy, oh, sorry. Nancy Natalie, have you got any thoughts on this before we move on to the planetary crisis? Is in the in your health, in your health space, is, is this something that sort of comes up?

Unknown:

No, not really.

Andrea Edwards:

I mean, it's been very politicized as well?

Unknown:

Yeah, I think, I think one of the big challenges for me is the whole thing about the differences of real differences between bodies based on genetics, right? There's something about that, and whether or not we accept that, that we have competitions based on certain genetic realities. So what's happening is that there's a conflict between what genetics creates and then culturally, what we begin to accept as well, and what we figure out, right? So that really is the big, the big issue. Because if you talk about, if you talk about the ability to identify, you know, as a different gender. This is, this has been scientifically taken up as a, as a, as a, as a problem or as a challenge, right? And essentially, there is hardly any sport where a male chromosomal be a genetically male person will not dominate over a genetically female person. There are some categories right now, like long, very long distance run or high, high, high stamina events where women are better than men. And I mean, I speak only in, in, in, in genetic terms, but yeah, for the most part, you know, yeah, the the genetically male person is going to be superior. So the the issue is, then, about competition, right? So I think there's a this footage of Serena Williams, for instance, where, you know, I think everybody got came up and really gone on John McEnroe's case, when he said something about about, you know, men versus versus women in tennis. And then the question was put to her, as in what she what she felt about that? And she said, yeah, absolutely, there's no way she and. He said, There's no way she could beat the 100th guy, you know, because it was that much of an advantage. So it's, it's not as it's not as straight up and as simple. And I think that's the real issue. We have to come up with something. Some people who are a wise council of elders of the genders may have to come up with some kind of solution that we can all live with or

Andrea Edwards:

within the sports the issue, the issue is the politicization of it, right? And it was a huge part of the US election. So the female boxers at the Olympic are have been given approval by their own sort of organizations to fight as women, they're not transgender. They've just got some extra bits going on in their chromosomes, right? A transgender athlete is a different thing to me, as far as a man, a man becoming a female and competing in swimming. But it shouldn't, it shouldn't be politicized. What should happen is the Swimming Federation should sit down globally and say, what's our take here? Do they do they create, you know, two more streams of competition. Or, you know, understand, like, because once you start taking all the hormones and stuff, the benefits go away. So there's a there's a lot more to it. It's like everyone's jumping in and having an opinion on this stuff. But actually, yeah, when you actually look at the medical sort of doctors, yeah, it's very different what they're saying compared to what the mainstream media is saying. So that's what I don't like about it, you know, especially, especially for females, it's something people

Unknown:

can have a very quick opinion about without knowing the science. And that is and because people don't know enough about the science to rebut or to push back. That's where it goes into a category where you solidify your opinions based on unchallenged views, and then you don't have a balanced view. So that's really, I think, the big issue. Sure, I'm gonna love and leave you guys. I need to go wrap up my year. But I absolutely loved spending time with all three of you. You guys are awesome and Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. And for those listening and joining in, please do like and subscribe and share this podcast. We I think it'd be great for more people to hear about what's happening around the world, and let's just up our general knowledge in essence. So guys, thank you so much. I really, really, really appreciate it. Have a great, great day.

Andrea Edwards:

Thanks for joining us here around see it does. Yep. Ciao, all right, now we're going to talk about the planetary crisis. So, oh, God, I'm talking like Taryn now. She's I

Unknown:

have to, I have to leave as well, because I just got last minute notification about something. Okay, I have to leave. You guys, no,

Andrea Edwards:

that's okay. You weren't because we weren't sure what you were doing. So you, you haven't had a chance to say much. Do you want to? Do you want to give us a, you know, a message to everyone for next year before you go

Unknown:

for next year? I think I find that it's there's a lot going on, and a lot of people are very confused right now, especially, I want to bring the attention to mental health. I know it has been going on for a while now that I think it's precisely the wall is very messy, and there's a lot of things going on. What was the war? What's with the US election and stuff like that? And even though that guy won, they were quite surprised, but not surprised. I think we should really take a look at minority groups. And what you will say is not gender wise. I think a lot of people need to do more research before we can input our opinion. It's never just as simple as from a man change to a woman or man, because it's many levels that allow things to unpack and then for empowering women. I think more women need to step up, because we have a void, and I think we need to let more people know that. You know, it's doable, as long as we put our heart to it, we can spread love and positivity around so not not much on the board and world news, because I'm not really into that. But yeah, check my conclusion. Connect here, stay positive and do whatever you can to sweat now.

Andrea Edwards:

Nice, nice, great. A great final message. Alright, good luck with the rest of the workshop. Thank

Natalie Nancy Tan:

you boot camp. Thank you so much for having me.

Andrea Edwards:

Thanks for joining us. Alright, we are going to talk about the planetary crisis. Are you ready for that, Joe,

Unknown:

yeah, just before you start that, I just want to point out that I said something and then two women left.

Andrea Edwards:

Don't take it personally. You haven't been canceled. All right, so we're going to look at the planetary crisis, but I actually prefer not to call it the planetary crisis. I like to call it supply crisis. And I'm going to show you my. My image and take on the poly crisis, which looks at all the different arms, because a lot of people talk about climate change, and yes, the climate climate change is a thing, but there's so much more, so much more happening happening. And so the poly crisis is the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events happening at the same time. So that's why I just really wanted to focus on that. So I'm going to focus. I'll take this off, just let me get it, remove it. So I'm going to focus with the planetary crisis. And the reason I didn't say climate change is because, can we make that pick up? Yeah, because I think it goes well beyond that. So to me, the most the most important information to pay attention to is the nine planetary boundaries. So the Stockholm center, do these Johan rockstroms doing a lot of presentations. Please listen to them. So the nine planetary boundaries are climate change, novel entities. So when you say novel entities, it's plastics, microplastics, nanoplastics, chemicals, nuclear waste, blah, blah, blah, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric ozone loading, ocean acidification, which has been gone off the charts this year, bio, Geo, chemical flows. So that's nitrates or nitrogen and phosphate, phosphorus, fresh water use, land system change, so deforestation, soil erosion, which is really happening at scale now, and change in biosphere integrity. So they're the nine planetary boundaries. So it's really important to understand them, because they're all at risk and and if we cross all nine, so we've crossed six now, if we cross all nine, basically we're in a runaway situation. So it's not just climate change. However, let's get it stuck into some of the extreme weather events we saw this year. And so obviously, the flooding in Spain, in Valencia, or Valencia recently, was the worst flooding in 50 years. More than 200 people died, still so many missing. But some later coverage of the longer term impacts. It's an absolute disaster. But if we go back to early April, we had the Brazilian flood, floods in Rio Rio Grande soul, and it affected over 90% of the state. It's an area the same size as the UK, and it's placed displaced nearly 600,000 people and caused 169 deaths. But the floods have been dramatic in in all over the world. I mean, Nepal was It was absolutely shocking. Floods, Nigeria, Nigeria, Sudan, and they've killed millions, displaced millions. Sorry, they've killed 1000s, displaced millions, but also caused incredible infrastructure damage, like dams, buildings, that sort of thing, but also agriculture, and so they're wiping out food sources in some of the countries that are really struggling. Extreme weather events are going to cause more and more food security risks. We're seeing that more and more all over the world, and it's another reason why we're seeing inflation. So the politicians need to start talking about that. This year, heat was an absolute killer, not just for us, but for wildlife and for our food sources too. So in Asia, we had an extended hot season that started in February and went all the way through to July. In some parts of the region, it was horrible. It was really, really horrible. It scared me, the heat. I was in Thailand when it happened. So in Singapore, you're a little bit safer because the infrastructure is here. The resilience is built into Singapore, whereas the majority of the global south does not have that. It's a reason we moved back. So the hot, the heat impacted countries like India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, LAO, Vietnam, and of course, in Thailand, where I was and it caused a lot of issues, a lot of disruptions. A lot of people died, but we still have no idea how many. And then by June in Pakistan, places like Karachi, were experiencing 45 degrees Celsius temperatures, which is deadly. We were hearing about morgues being overflowing with bodies, and we still don't know the true number of heat straight deaths, because they don't know how to do it in Italy and South America, we saw, we've seen severe drought affecting agricultural production in the south of America. It's obviously causing a lot of the fires that we're seeing in the Amazon. So it's creating food shortages and economic challenges. But in Zambia and Zimbabwe, which we're not hearing as much about, they're going through the worst drought in in a century, and there's millions at risk. 27 million lives are affected by this drought, and 21 million children are currently malnourished. So we've also seen the heat, the build up of heat in the oceans, which is being reported, which is still really high. It's not as high as 2023 but it's still really high, which is creating bigger issues with things like hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons. So I've got a little spray go. Um, we obviously hurricane Helene led to unbelievable destruction in the US, which cost a fortune. But it's countries like the Philippines that are really, really going to suffer. They had four typhoons in 10 days in November. It's never happened before. I spoke to some people in in the Philippines, they've lost all of their crops, and they're import, importing a lot more food for the first time, which, of course, is going to be a catastrophe for the people. So some of the highlights this year, so we're seeing this, it's big, it's going to get bigger. It's not it's it's never going to it's never going to get better. I think that's the important thing for everyone to understand and understanding it and the ramifications of it is important to get ready. So we've seen no plastics Treaty, which, to me, is just a shocking indictment on on the fossil fuel and the plastics industry. We We live with this waste in front of us, especially in Asia. It's disgusting. Not enough money for the developing nations at COP 29 and I just want to say, If anyone thinks our leaders are going to do the right thing, they're not. If this year has improved, it we're on our own, so we've got to come together as a society and get to work. So 2023 was the hottest year in 20 150,000 years in 2024 is going to be hotter, although we did see one report saying it might just come in under 2023 but we have passed 1.6 degrees Celsius of global warming. So remember, 1.5 degrees is when the Paris Climate Agreement, but it's also when the coral reefs start to die off. So we've been facing this alarming milestone for a few years now, and, you know, it continues. You know, climate change is accelerating, and we need to be unbelievably ambitious to mitigate any of this, and we're not going to, we can't solve it. We you know, there's a lot that we can never turn around, but we can make it less worse, but there is no sign of action that's relative to the alarm we're seeing that the international climate case is happening at The Hague. Will it make a difference? Corporate accountability and sustainability legislation is coming more and more, especially led by the EU there's some issues with it. This is good news. The fires in Canada, mainly caused by drought that in 2023 those fires contributed over 640 million metric tons of CO two. But the other thing that is often talked about is the CO two is then dumped on the Arctic, and therefore it absorbs more more heat, and we see more ice melting, so they're expecting a blue ocean event before the end of this decade, which means more warming, permafrost thawing and wildfires across the Arctic. Right across the Arctic, it's traditionally a carbon sink. It is now a CO two, a source of CO two emissions. The Earth energy imbalance is something that the scientists have been talking about for a while now, and so basically they've shown that there's less clouds, which means more heat, so there's a reduction in low altitude clouds, and that basically is what typically reflects the solar energy back out into the into the atmosphere, and instead it's being absorbed into the atmosphere. And they're basically, what they're saying is this, this is the reason why this point, there was point three of warming that couldn't be quantified. And they're saying this is the reason why it's happening. So another big one. Global wildlife populations have declined by 73% since the year of my birth. You know in the ocean, OCEAN health is God, it's really bad. So the ocean Health Index reported a global score of 69 out of 100 making the marking the largest decline observed over 13 years. And it reflects deterioration in areas such as biodiversity, Clean Waters and sustainable fisheries. So elevated temperatures creates Bigger, bigger impacts, like hurricanes and cyclones. But we're also there's an over, over fishing crisis that we need to get a handle on. Oxygen levels are going down, which threatens marine life and ecosystem stability. Ocean acidification is a really, really big issue, and it's because of CO two absorption. And so things like lobster and crab, if you enjoy them, they'll probably be off the table soon because their shells break down in acidic environments. We've got the horrendous plastic pollution in the ocean, and, sorry, coral bleaching on such a wild scarf. I've said it before, Joe, I think we've already lost the corals. Even though they're still there, I don't think we can save them anymore. So, you know, these are big, big things, and it's been a really, really big year, and I think a lot more people are waking up to it. A lot more people are moving into despair because of it. If you can move beyond just. Air into action. It's really the best place to be and moving into acceptance. You know, it's not going to get better, but it can be less worse. Doesn't sound like a very inspiring slogan, right? But

Unknown:

it's a t shirt, yeah, yeah, but,

Andrea Edwards:

but if you can accept the reality and but then just understand that you're be empowered to act. That's the most important thing. Be empowered to act, save something locally, be part of something globally, whatever it is. You know, when we look ahead, Australia's in for a potentially horrific summer. So Queensland's currently getting hammered by floods, which is typical for now La Nina year, but the they're expecting some of the worst fires they've ever seen, yeah, because there's so much dry stuff, right? The global south is obviously going to be preparing for the heat extremes next year. Is it going to be warmer than than it was the year before? There's no indication to show any cooling down, you know? But then we're seeing already some of these heat extremes in South America and Africa and, of course, in the Pacific Islands. And then another big story this year was a mock which is the Atlantic meridian, or occidental current, and this is the one that sort of moves the heat and the cool around the world. And it's very, very important. It could send the northern hemisphere into an ice age, and it could heat up the southern hemisphere. So it's an important one, right? So they're talking about that. So time to face this. I know it's not pretty, I know it's not nice, but it's here, and business as usual is not going to get us out of it. You know, replacing your car with an EV might feel good. The best thing for everyone to do is go and use public transport, walk, ride, a Bucha, go vegan. If you can at least reduce your medium per take by 70% 70% is the magic number. Reduce your energy and material consumption by 70% that's the magic number. And if you think about what that means, and that's flying, driving the closure by the food you eat, where it comes from. If everyone could reduce that by 70% and might be able to get out of overshoot, but then we've gotta go and regenerate nature, and we've gotta do it all really quickly, because the hotter it gets, the less opportunities we're going to have to succeed. So that's the planetary crisis. Joe,

Unknown:

well, it's a big one. Don't try and eat the whole sandwich at once. I frequently try to encourage people, you know, when they're facing very, very large problems, trying not to try, not to try, not to frame it in such a way that if you can't solve the whole problem, the whole problem can't be solved, right? It's about, it's about doing the small things, like Andrea was saying just a moment ago, a while ago, you know, it's, it's about that if you can, if you can do something, and it doesn't mean doing all of it at once. I mean the idea of going vegan, for instance, as the as it's a, it's kind of a, it's a digital solution. It's on or off, right? But there's also, there's also cutting down. There's also saying I'm going to have one less meal a day, a week, a day, or whatever. And that can help as well. And, you know, in terms of clothing, I think, I think that's the real big one, because, you know, people are unwilling to give up a lot of their lifestyle. And one of the biggest things, really, is clothing. It's surprising how bad that is for the world. The this, this whole desire of, you know, the desire we have to look good in front of each other, so we try to get new clothes and new fashion. It's remarkable that it actually is worse than getting on a plane. So just you have a think about that.

Andrea Edwards:

Yeah, it's not just the emissions, it's the pollution of fashion, especially fast fashion, right? Yeah. I mean, like I said, 70% we gotta reduce our lifestyles by 70% so how, what does that look like? You know, I find veganism very challenging, but I do things like trying only a chicken that's from you know, an organic farm, you know, so things like that. So none of us commits. You know, we need a billion people, people changing imperfectly and then influencing the next 4 billion. So it's not about perfection. But if you're buying 50 new items of cloth a year, you're not you're contributing to the problem, right? So we need to be buying four or five new items a year. So have you got enough T shirts to get you through? Joe?

Unknown:

Well, I have underwear that's barely hanging on, much to the chagrin of my wife. So let's talk a little bit about some of the good stuff. Or yeah, you know, technology and science has made a lot of progress in this past year. Some of it, you'll see some opportunities in there, and some good news as well for the environment. We hope so when it comes to technology and scientific developments in the year, most people will only see the rapid prevalence of AI into almost every aspect of our lives. Jobs have been lost to AI in the last year, and it's continuing on as well. And. But here's the updated and reorganized version of these breakthroughs based on some categories. Okay, so I've, I've looked at it first of all from a computing perspective, and I put the most recent developments first. So you may have heard, just a few days ago, Google unveiled its Willow quantum chip, and it represents a major leaf and quantum error correction. Now, the big thing about quantum computing is that it could go really fast, but it would make a lot of mistakes as well. And what Willow does or change? Well, how Willow changes the game is because it is really succeeded in scaling out the reduction of errors exponentially. So this is the equivalent of having a friend who can move their arms really fast, but they keep slapping and knocking down things, and then they come up. They've come up with a process that really helps to make that whole thing more organized and calmer and so less damage to the data happens so that the errors aren't significant. And to give you an idea of what quantum computing can do, it can take a problem that would take literally trillions of years, based on current computing power, and get it done in five minutes. So when this was launched, or this particular news was released to the world, it actually had an interesting impact on the markets as well, because crypto actually had a mini crash because of it, because the idea was, or the idea prevalent in crypto is that, you know, everything is secure because it's being kept behind all these large, large, difficult solutions or difficult mathematical problems. But here you have the idea of quantum computing, which can solve these problems in a matter of minutes. But crypto is back again, but that's the story about quantum computing. There also has been a lot of advances in AI. This is in the area of natural disaster predictions. So Google's AI division developed sophisticated models capable of accurately forecasting hurricanes, wildfires and other climate disasters earlier this year, and that's made a huge difference, or can potentially make a huge difference in terms of how we respond to these big problems. So while they're coming more often, and they're getting bigger, having the specific information about how to address them, that's something that's becoming better. AI has also come up with, well, I believe it hasn't come up with it. AI is responsible for some hope for people who may be facing cancer, and in fact, we may not even face cancer because of vaccines that we can develop or have been developed. So you've heard about mRNA, right? You've heard about those things being being being done for COVID and stuff like that. But now we are moving it out as well, because the urgency of COVID has kind of passed, and now there's room and capacity for it to be applied to the original intentions that it was created for the these, these mRNA vaccines. The idea was to address things like cancers, so pancreatic ductal cancers and some additional very complicated cancers can now be looked at on a more specific way because of what AI allows, allows science to do so they can have more customized genetic solutions, which are going to be it's almost equivalent of an individualized vaccine for cancer, or even when it comes to trying to cure it using immunotherapies, you can give specific information about your specific body to your specific cells so that it can, it can, it can mount an appropriate response. So that is the world. Ai, yeah, I was

Andrea Edwards:

just going to say I didn't realize the amount M, the M, RNA story. MRNA, yeah, I didn't realize that was an AI. AI story too. Okay, that's interesting. Well,

Unknown:

it's not. It didn't begin as an AI story. It began many, many years ago, right? So, it's a long story of failure that eventually succeeded, but AI right now, laid on top of what mRNAs are about is what enabled it. So the start of COVID, for instance, the, you know, the vaccine that was developed, that we first used is the one that, I think anyway, the first, the first, the first mRNA vaccines, those were developed literally in a matter of hours using machine learning and AI. So that's the power of it. So you could, you could create these virtual experiments and solve the problems much faster than real time. This is, this is actually one of the big things that made people doubt the vaccines in the first place. How far? Yeah, just

Andrea Edwards:

although the other side of things, Joe, I still really struggle with the whole longevity sort of push, because, you know, I've just done the planetary sort of update, right? And so we're going to have a lot. More people living a lot longer for what, you know. And then I was listening to a population, you know, the rapid fall of human population, which is obviously South Korea, Singapore, Japan, China, they're all at the front lines of this. And it's the cliff is so fast. It's, it's, it's, it's not, it's 12 years, and this is massive reduction, and then you've got all these old people. So I think it was, was it in South Korea? So for every working adult, they will have eight grandparents to take care of. So not obviously, their own grandparents, but there will be eight grandparents that their income will have to support. So yeah, it was really, it's a really interesting one. So longevity, with the planet that we're moving towards, longevity with the societal infrastructure that we're going to have to support it or not, it's a bit of a complicated one, right?

Unknown:

Well, so the big future that we're looking at, and it may involve, it may evolve, well, not genetically evolve organically, is maybe based on the following, right? Because you think about what's happening with the world right now, we are, like you said, not replacing ourselves anymore. In fact, even even people having sex, that number has gone down. Thank you, Netflix. So it's just Netflix, no chilling, right? Then there's, there's also the idea of enhanced healthcare and healthcare outcomes. So you know it. There was a survey I saw a couple of days ago, which is where, you know, people were asked if, what would you like, what would you what would you like? How old would you like to live to given the world that we live in, and the number wasn't as high as you might think, right? So it's about 60 to 70. That answer changed dramatically when people were then given a different idea. So what do you want, if you could guarantee health, right? If you could guarantee health, what would that number be? And this is even amongst older people, and that changed completely the outlook that they had on what life and what meaningful life was about, right? And if we have a broad societal change, and this is a really, really big idea, if we change the way our bodies age or don't age, if we cure aging, as some people have been looking at it, right? We change the way we look at the world so we don't look at the world. We wouldn't look at the world as saying we're going to have that number of of older people being supported by the younger people. It would be a world where you have that number of more experienced people in good health who can make wise judgments, helping all the rest of us make better decisions and move forward. And you know what, if you think about what's happening with the way the world works, and if you're worried about the poly crisis, get old people to know that they're going to be around for another lifetime. And I think they will change how they do things, because they're very concerned about the temperature in their homes. If they realize they're going to be around for another lifetime, and you know, and it's going to be uncomfortable, they will do something about it, and they will have the means to do something about it. So it's a crazy idea. It sounds like science fiction, but just imagine a world where people do live 200 years, and what then would they do if you live 200 years? Yeah, so if I'm gonna, can I move on to the 100

Andrea Edwards:

years? Yeah, go for it, just a long time. But

Unknown:

you know, you know, the afternoon is long for me because my knees begin to hurt, right? But if I, if I was the same guy I was when I was 12, you know, the day wasn't you go to Disneyland. As a kid, you go like, Oh, we have to go home. And as an adult, you're about, you're just queuing, and you're like, let's go home. So let's talk about space exploration astrophysics as well. This last year, China's Changi Chang e6 mission just came in in November, they they retrieve samples from the moon's far side. And this is a historic first. They took a 1.9 kilogram Hall confirmed volcanic a 1.9 kilogram hall that confirmed the volcanic activity for over 2.8 billion years, or at least from 2.8 billion years ago, and it shed some light on the lunar revolution. Of course, this is not only a great big step for science, it's also a big PR move, I guess, for the Chinese space program. NASA's Europa, Europa Clipper launch as happy happening. Earlier this year, NASA launched the Europa Clipper mission to study Jupiter's icy moon. Now this mission focuses on the detection of potentially habitable subsurface oceans, marking an important milestone in the search for extraterrestrial life. And one more idea, which you probably. May not have heard about is laser cooling of positronium at certain loss of words there I didn't understand until I read this, positronium. First of all, it's a kind of substance. Don't really need to know what it is, but the idea that you use lasers to cool thing, cool things down, it's mind boggling, but it was a big, big step in the area of quantum gravity. And for those of you who are wondering, why do we even think about quantum quantum science, there is a whole world that makes sense right now with all the science that we already have, and then it's a bunch of stuff that doesn't quite make sense until you apply quantum theory to it. And more and more we're finding out that we seem to be right about those ideas as well. So a lot of phenomenon that may have been put down to just things we don't understand, the spiritual world, premonition, all that kind of stuff, may one day, and I'm not I'm not guaranteeing it. I'm just saying, may one day be shed light, may have some light shed on it, because we begin to understand a little bit more about quantum processes. It's an interesting world that we potentially could be living in. I know