The Know Show – the golden age of hypocrisy

Are you guffawing a lot at the news these days? The hypocrisy of it all? Whether it’s the “gift” of a $400 million luxury plane to Donald Trump (which will cost $1 billion to get off the ground), the idea of white Afrikaners as refugees, or even the Pope’s style of Christianity too woke according to MAGA, there’s definitely a lot to guffaw at these days. The hypocrisy is quite stunning, so what are we to make of it all? Is it good for the world, or is it the beginning of a new and confusing dark age? 

Meanwhile, Trump and the CEOs of America’s most prominent companies are signing major deals in the Middle East, mainly in defense, aviation, energy, mining and artificial intelligence, sanctions on Syria have been lifted, Netanyahu is out in the cold (or is he) and deep sea mining is going to happen in order to counter China’s mineral dominance – a “deep sea gold rush” is on the way – but at what cost to life on earth?

Beyond the US and the shenanigans happening on a daily basis, Africa is being hit extremely hard by climate change, children born in 2020 will face 'unprecedented lifetime exposure' to climate extremes, extreme weather events in Australia (only two events) will cost insurers nearly $1 billion so far in 2025, Putin isn’t going to Turkey for peace talks, and bombs continue to fall on women and children in Gaza. There’s a lot to take on board, so come and join us, Friday 16th May, 8am UK, 2pm TH, 3pm SG and 6pm AEST.

To help us this week, we have Rebecca Downie joining us. Rebecca is passionate about the news and world affairs, and professionally is a personal branding photographer, the go-to photographer for entrepreneurs who are the face of their brand, a professional speaker, personal branding expert, as well as leader of The Athena Network Singapore, a professional networking community for female professionals. She is a great addition to our show and we’re thrilled she said yes. 

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

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Andrea, welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards, and my name is Joe Augustin, and welcome to a show that tries to make sense of the world for you so that you can go into the world and be sensible about it as well. We'd like to try to get you to tell your friends about the show. So the first few things that you should try is actually to go like, Okay, well, like, subscribe. Do the kind of thing, spread the word, you know, as and as I've always said, at the start of your show is, right? Just put up, put a subscription on, you know, whatever it is. And if at the end of the of the end of this, you think, Okay, now that wasn't worth it, you can take it away, right? That's it's a safer way to do things. We don't want you to forget it later on. So yeah, as we said, this is a show that tries to make sense of everything that's happening in the world. And when someone asks me about the show, I find that even the simple explanation is long. So it is a pretty big show. It is almost literally about everything. We also try to have a show that is diverse in terms of its perspectives and points of view. So we bring on guests like our guest today, who is, and we didn't know this until we found out, you know, preparing for the show, that she's someone who's really passionate about the news and world affairs. We know her more as a professional, personal branding photographer, and she's a go to photographer for entrepreneurs who are the face of their brand. She's a professional speaker as well as a personal branding expert and the leader of the Athena network Singapore. It's a professional networking community for female professionals. Please welcome to our panel today. Rebecca Downey, there she is. Hello, hello. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you. So I was aware that you were politically interested, but I wasn't aware that you were a little bit more interested than the average bear. So do you want to, do you want to explain what that's all about? Yeah, so I guess I've always had an opinion on things, and so I chose politics alongside sociology as my degree. So at university, you know, they're hot beds of kind of political spaces, aren't there, aren't they? And so I got really involved in politics in uni, with the with the Conservative Party, and when we talked about, you know, how your politics change over the time. But one of the things that got me, which is quite embarrassing, thinking about all the things that you could have got interested in, was was the fox hunting debate in the in the UK. And I guess where my politics has always come from, is about freedoms for individuals, right? So less government control and more freedom for individuals. So I've always earned on the side where people are trusted with their with their money and things like that. And I think with with thought, something that was all about kind of freedom to roam in the in the countryside. I went on to stand at the National Union of Students conference for their board. And I don't know if you've ever been involved in student politics, but like 99% of them are extremely left wing. And what was most interesting about that is that there was like 15 different factions on the left who hated each other as much as they hated us on the on the right hand side of that. So it was a really interesting conference, and standing on stage being booed by 1000 people was not something I was keen to to do again, but I can't stay and stayed involved, and actually held a number of positions in the party over my 20s, and looked to stand for parliament. So I went through what the Conservative Party had called the parliamentary assessment board, where they test you on a number of different things that you would have to do as a as a member of parliament. So speaking, writing your opinions, how you deal with constituents. And I passed, but then passed on that, and then moved to Australia for a few years of sun and beachside fun, but it's always been a passion, still, you know, following the news and having opinions. But I feel that the last 10 years, they've they've shifted. Yeah, I was gonna say you still right wing. I wouldn't have picked you as right winger. I probably still right of centre on certain things. I feel that the left right is probably outdated, and I think that certain sides try to own things. And, you know, it's, it's a bit more fluid than that, you know, I'm, you know, I'm quite low tax, which would put me on, on one side. But other things, you know, would be, would be seen more as left wing, which is interesting, because when we had the the last general election, I felt like there was no home for my vote, that none of the parties represented, you know, what I would call a moderate middle ground, yeah, yeah, where you can be highly successful, earn a lot of money, and you. Know, enjoy the rewards of your of your wealth, your creativity, your innovation, but that we're also looking after those most vulnerable and making sure that people aren't, you know, kept down and they're stepping stones to move themselves out. But that doesn't seem to people want polarisation. They want extremes. Yeah, it's almost like, I think everybody is pretty stable where they are, but the frame around them moves so that, you know, from being like a centrist, because the frame moves like that, you've become left or right, you know, depending on how it goes. Like the Democrats in America aren't as left as the left as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, right? So it's not very left, but you would call him, you would say that the Democrats are the, you know, the left wing party. Yeah, they're not really left with so that's what I mean. Like, it's like, you say Joe, like, where you where you are. You stay still, but the things move, um, around you. So yeah, I think that the left and right is probably just another part of politics that's divide, that seeks to divide us rather than finding a common ground that we all agree on. And interestingly, I've got a very good friend in the UK who would all would be on the opposite end of the spectrum to me. But the more we talk, we have so much more in common in terms of what we want to achieve, what we want to solve where our values are. We just come at it from a solution. Our solutions are different, but actually what we care about, which is, ultimately, human beings, is the same, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely right. I'm not left or right, but I'm extremely left on some things, but I'm not extremely right on anything. So it's, yeah, it's, it's a, it's interesting, right? No Labels on this head, okay, but talk about your business, because I think that's important too. So as Joe Connie said, I'm a personal brand photographer. What that means is that I work with with founders, with entrepreneurs, people who are really the face of their service based business to help them. Well, I create imagery for them that aligns with who they are, what they do, the problems that they're solving, and it is attractive to those people that they want to serve. So it's those images supports their website, their content on their website, the content in their social media, whether they need images for PR, for press, for speaking. So it's basically creating a portfolio of images that support them in growing their business. And I love it. It really takes people from a place of kind of insecurity and unsureness to feeling really bold and confident about what they're doing, where they're going, and how they look when they present themselves online. Well, we recently saw some of your work in action, and one of the things that I loved about it is you didn't just take photos. You caught the spirit of the people that you you captured. So yeah, I can definitely recommend it. Yeah, yeah. It's just waiting for that spark of who they are doing that I always love it when I can see that. All right, so let's kick off with the show. So we're going to start with the weird and the wonderful that's going on, not the other stuff that we're going to talk about, just anything else that has caught your attention in the news, even, even in the last 24 hours, there's been some caucus So, yeah, what Joe, do you have you got one? Well, unlike you guys, I'm much less of a news hound, but I was, I was just struck by the amount of money that was lost in terms of deposits over the elections here in Singapore, as in, like, you know, there's a certain amount of money to put down to run for elections, and if you don't get, I think, 12.5% of the vote, you lose your you lose your your deposit. First of all, how much money was lost. And then I was actually really shocked by some of the candidates that put themselves forward, despite the high price, as in, like they weren't. They sounded nothing like the people who might have gone through a process like Rebecca was mentioning before, you know, having to go through speech, writing, communication, and all that kind of stuff, because they wound up as being memes right now, and pretty mean, memes, but, you know, that's the way it works. But that, that was, that was for me, I think one of the things I never, I've never even heard of that. So how much did you have to put down? I am not sure the amount, but I know it's significant. So the, okay, so off top of my head, I think there was only, like, a quarter million dollars lost in deposits. I will have to fact check that somebody who's not speaking can do that. I think, do you know what they do with that money? I am not sure. I think, I think it goes into the it goes into the coffers. It's probably with the elections board. That's probably, that's where, where, where, where lives. But it definitely goes into, into government coffers. In the UK, it's, it's 500 pounds, right? So we're relatively around $1,000 a relatively small amount. The idea is that it's, I think there, that it's, you know, a relatively low barrier to entry. So it's not just for the for the rich or cash rich, but it stops people just putting their names down for the fun of it and ending up with a list of, like, you know, 400 people. But like, I think as well, in the UK, you only have to get 5% of the vote, not 12 and a half, which is actually quite high when you think, like the greens, which is a very legitimate political party in the UK barely get 6% Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, the UK is the land of body. My my boat face, right? So, all right, anything, anything you wanted to highlight, um, I was, I don't know how much you follow the lady known as AOC Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in America, while she based out of New York, Senator there. And I love her. She is bold. And this week, when they were criticising her in the Senate for talking to the camera, because obviously they film the proceedings, she not only reminded them that she was talking to camera because there was however many 1000 people watching it, which is the people that she actually works for. She also turned around and said, I will not yield to disrespectful men when they told her to yield. So I love the boldness of that. I love the passion with which she put them in her place and reminded them like, who, who she's actually serving? Yeah, no, she's awesome. Alright, so a couple of things that have happened overnight. So James Coney used to be the former FBI director. Yeah, on Twitter posted. I can't read it because it's too small, but basically, look at my lovely shells, and the shells come up with the number 8647 Looney Loomer, who's the conspiracy theorist that sort of backing Donald Trump, who will take a bullet for him, said it's apparently a call to assassinate the president. Somebody else said it's 86 means because 47 is obviously his number. 86 is a sexual position, but at this point, I have absolutely no idea what it means, but I thought it was really interesting. Made me work very hard. Right now my mind is trying to figure it out. So 8647 if anyone knows the answer, I'd love to know it. The Supreme Court is meeting at the moment, and it's unusual for them to meet at this time of year to talk about the birthright citizenship. So basically, anyone born on the soil of the US is automatically a citizen. And that's something that Trump wants to overturn. So Maga is pierced that Amy Coney Barrett, who you'll remember, is one of the Supreme Court judges that he put in place. One of the six, apparently she's not helping their king Trump, so she's basically upholding the constitutional requirement for separation of powers, and they're not happy about it. So that's something to keep an eye on. The other thing is, white Weight Watchers is has declared bankruptcy, and this is basically because of the injections that we're hearing all about, like ozempic. So basically it's hurting the dieting industry. But there's some interesting things about it, because there's some communities around the world where they're maintaining the community, even though the members are on ozempic, because actually it was the community that was more important than than the whole diet thing. So yeah, lots going on there. But one final thing, in China there, there's a real focus on the well being of their citizens, and this is because there's a thing called taking revenge on society attacks. So I've heard a couple of them where a car will drive into a sports field and kill 38 people, and because it's because of money, stress at home, divorce or something like that. So the country's sort of really kind of turning around and trying to work out how they can take care of the mental health of their citizens. So I thought that was kind of an interesting one to highlight, because you lose control of the population, you lose control, right? Yeah, no, it's a it's a social contagion, right? I mean, if you it's always about we keep ourselves really in check, right? It's how the people around us behave. We feel that we have to behave or control certain things about ourselves, so it's a very smart move for them to be aware of it. And if I think the some very wealthy Americans who've left America because they've recognised that they've crossed a certain line over there in that respect, and. America is an expression of that there's certain rules that people have established as acceptable rules, right? So, guns exist, you know, the Free Speech exists, and it's an inalienable right for them, and that's the kind of background that runs this sort of expression as well. I'm really upset I have guns, I have free speech. You know, preferably you use free speech, but when it doesn't work, there's always a gun. Yeah, and it's, yeah, it's not just China, is it? They happened in Canada about three weeks ago when somebody drove into the Filipino market when they were celebrating a festival. Yeah, no. I mean, it's a global issue, right? But, yeah, the more powerful the weapons, the more damage you can do, yeah? But a car is a pretty powerful weapon, indeed. Yeah, right. So we don't want to just keep the show focused on the US, but there's a lot of shenanigans going on at the moment, and you know, it's hard not to, and I don't know, I kind of think it might be worth us taking a step back here, but there's, there's, there's almost too much to sort of come to terms with. But we know that Trump's in the US, in the Middle East, Saudi, Qatar, I'm not sure where he is right now. He was talking about going to Turkey to meet with Putin and Zelensky, and apparently that's not happening. So who knows what's going on, but one of the articles in the New York Times is titled, outsourcing in chief is Trump trading away America's tech future. And Joe, I only shared that one with you today, so you might not have had a chance, but basically what he's talking about is they're really shipping all of the cutting edge technology around AI to the Middle East. And basically they want to turn the Persian Gulf from artificial intelligence neophyte into an AI power broker. And the idea is, you know this, this becomes a region that serves it serves Asia, it serves Africa, but and serves Europe and but also there's going to be data centres all the way to the US. But there's a lot of tension, because back at home, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are we doing this? Aren't we supposed to keep things on shore? Isn't that Trump's whole America first message? So, you know, so that's, that's just one of the things. But we're hearing about all the other deals, and I'll just quickly go go through some of them with you, right? So Saudi Qatar and the UAE basically announced investments agreements with the US that are worth $2 trillion and these are mainly in defence, aviation and artificial intelligence is obviously mining and energy in the mix as well. So it's just so I've still got COVID, so I'm still coughing, but I'll try and keep it under control. So Etihad will spend 4.5 billion on Boeing, 28 Boeing's aircraft. Emirates, global aluminium, will invest 4 billion in an Aluminium Smelter project in Oklahoma. The US and the UAE announced they would work together to construct the largest artificial intelligence data centre outside of the US in Abu Dhabi, Qatar signed an agreement for investments between the two countries worth more than just 243 point 5 billion with and I don't know what that was for, Doha will invest 10 billion in US military facility, 42 billion in weapons from the US. Qatar is going to buy 210 Boeing jets. Qatar based company quantinium are going to invest 1 billion in quantum technology and workforce development in the US. And obviously quantum is one of the big things, and it goes on. So I kind of look at this and you know, so a lot of the opinions are finishing, Trump's not doing any geopolitical deals here. He's doing business deals that obviously help his own personal businesses. But this is such a big shift, when you think about it, geopolitically, from where the weapons are going, you know, how much is being spent, the type of technology that's being shared? You know, he's not going to Europe to make these deals. He's going to the Middle East, where obviously a lot of the money is so I don't know what I mean. There's so much coming at us. I think it's really hard to actually even interpret what this really means. But if you put an obviously Starlink with mask and the video has got 18,000 18,000 artificial intelligence chips going to a Saudi backed company, I mean this, to me, is potentially a huge shift in the global geo politics. I mean, what are you guys reading? Taking away, I mean, my husband has said all along that Trump is a businessman, right? That was from the out. He's like, he's a businessman. When he comes in, he's going to go around the world and do deals. Yeah, because he's a, he's a real estate guy, right? It's so on one side, he's acting exactly as he always has, exactly as the people that didn't want him to get elected feared that he would, he would act. So I think from from that side, he's, you know, we talk about personal brand. This isn't a surprise at all from from Trump, in terms of the deals, and in terms of where he's doing the deals. I mean, again, he's a mercenary, I believe, and that the deals are not there. Look, as you said, there's going to be some, a lot of money going into to the US, which, considering he feels the world has been robbing the US for a long time. Is something else that we would have expected to see. But as you said, that there is a personal benefit, which you know should not be there in politics. Yeah. I mean, it's for me, it's all it's all about just making what I would say if I was, if I was thinking about everything just as a business, you know, definitely all these ideas work because energy in that part of the world is less expensive, the problems regarding, you know, AI and data mines and all that kind of stuff, data centres, all that makes sense, if you can, if you, if you ignore the rhetoric from the past where you talk about, you don't want to have Tiktok, because the data centres are not in the US, right? So it's, it's an interesting deal. It's short term as well. The problems, I think, that come up with this, you can kind of line them up alongside of the kind of problems that they had with their deal with Iran, for instance, and nuclear power, right? The the the idea is, this could be a good thing, the way it works. It could be, it could be beneficial for both of us. And in this case, it's being driven by a different motive. It's about, it's about the business aspect of things, but it's very It's very short sighted in the sense that you are installing technology that may not be in the hands of of I mean, even even at this stage, we don't know if we're true Friends. But you know, in the long term, regimes change. They can be upheavals. You know, it's hard to imagine that it can, it can, it can take a turn for even worse, but it could. Yeah, I think that's the point, right? It's the short termness of everything that we that we're seeing at the moment, and it's the long term. So a lot of these deals, some of them are already signed. You know, they're already in play. These just taking credit for them. But a lot of them won't sort of turn into deliverables for a decade, because, you know, for Boeing, example, that they're years behind in delivering their planes. So they can obviously increase their staff, but takes a long time to train an aerospace engineer, the real guys you need, I was gonna say a lot less these days. Well, just kidding, yeah, exactly. You don't do it right, yeah? But it's the weaponry you know, Qatar, you know, they, you know, think of their position in the world. Well, I mean, I think, if you think about what, what, what happened in Afghanistan when they left, even, even though, you know, it wasn't one of those things where they said, Hey, take these weapons, right? If you, if you have all these systems and put into place, and there's a change of regime, and you leave in a hurry, there's going to be stuff left, there's going to be technology that's going to be available to rivals, and if not used against America, that could be used against friends of America, could be used against the rest of us, right? I mean, that's, yeah, that's the real risk of it, all right? So, unless there's some sort of a mutually assured destruction, self destruct, kind of a, I don't know what you might have there equivalent, yeah, yeah, or something. It's going to be, it's going to be hard to do, to make sense of, in terms of chess moves out of this, out of the space moving forward, right? And because you, you you make it, you make it possible for other adversaries to play a chess game with you as well, right? So, Syria isn't that far away, you know, in terms of geography as well. Did you say the new sir, the friends now? Oh, yeah, and he's good looking. No, he's good looking and strong. Good looking and strong, the type of things that he that Trump, you know, recognises and appreciates as, I think the what was it? What was it? Was the quote, I like him too much. I think that was for what's his name, the prince, the Crown Prince, right? Oh. Yeah, no. I mean, it's been, yeah, it's yeah, it's kind of weird, but it's the longer and like, when I look at the way the media is talking about it, I'm not feeling that sense of, if we make these deals today, what does that mean 10 years down the line? What does it mean 20 years down the line? What does it mean for global stability? What does it mean for global alliances? If the next, you know, party that comes into power in the US that isn't Trump, what's their, what's their allegiance to the Middle East, or is the allegiance to the person and to the family, you know? So it's kind of interesting. And I mean, this is all happening, and I think that's the other thing that people are missing. There is a, there is an event going on in Saudi at the time, at the same time as as the presidential visit. So all of the people are there, all the all the tech bros are there, and they're making serious deals. But I'm not hearing a lot of and maybe it'll come I'm not hearing a lot of commentary about what it really ultimately means, and I think that's something we should be keeping an eye out for, because I think this is much more important than we're being led to believe, rather than just money is going to be going into the US, right? Because that's what everyone's focused on at the moment, getting rid of the deficit in the US. But at what cost to world, to the world and world peace? I think sometimes there is, there may not be as much of an agenda in terms of that, you know, like we look at what's, what's, what's the story that's not being told. Maybe there isn't for me, right? I go like, maybe there isn't a story that's not being told. Maybe it is as simple as what it is, is what it is, right? It's just basically unbridled capitalism, right? They're allowed to form the deals that they have, and it's the maximise performance and profits. And it may just very well be that, right, so let's just do this for now. I mean, for them, if you think, yeah, but for them, you're absolutely right, that might exactly be the story, yeah, but there is, but there's a there's a consequence to this story, and that needs to be as just as discussed as the deals, right? Well, and that's, that's the thing, right? So you're supposed to have the adults in the room. It's supposed to be the government, and when the government is for sale, then it's, it's a problem. I mean, as in, like, if the government's inclinations, I mean, like, right now, like, like, Trump puts it this way, right? You can't walk away from this deal. Why would you turn it down? I mean, speaking about the plane, for instance, right? Why would you turn this down? They should be many reasons why you might turn this down, and it should be obvious to you, right? But it's not because it's just too sweet a deal. And you know, if you think about how the Middle East, especially the oil rich countries, have been dealing a lot of things, it's about sweetening the deal to to the point where people go like, yeah, I can, I can, I can compromise on some of these things that I found objectionable, right? And I think we've seen how they've succeeded in sports to to move the needle there that golf is being it's become very successful, and it's, and it's mostly about that, right? They've changed the equation unfairly, perhaps. And then again, you know that there is a, there is a, another idea that I'm, I'm working around, which is, like, you know, are some things deeply upsetting to us, which maybe, and this is going to be controversial in this group. I know that really don't make a difference, right? I mean, as in, like, you know that there's always going to be this thing. I feel that this is, this is not right. This is not the way it's supposed to be. It's about injustice and all those different things. And then, and then you go, Okay, well, we think about it in terms of long term. What we actually thinking about is actually medium term. In the very, very long term, we'll look back and we will probably not remember the great things or terrible things that happen around here, right? I'll just offer up some evidence of this kind of thinking, right? You know, with with World War Two, the Holocaust, all that kind of stuff. And Germany, I was actually very surprised to find out that for Germany, and even for America, they didn't realise what had happened, the for the greater audience, the larger audience, they didn't realise or understand what had happened during the Holocaust until much later. It was actually in the 60s, when a TV show came out, and the broader American audience got educated about that, that they realised that this was the unspeakable horror that had happened. It was not. Was not as well known as as people just had assumed, right? So that the people who are intellectually engaged with this, they go like, Oh, it's obvious. I can see the problem right now, and it may not be sometimes, till 20 years after, when, when culture accidentally does something that spreads the information. And I was actually very surprised to find out for this particular story, that that a lot of Germany actually found out about what they had done through the the German translation of this American show. And I'm sorry I don't have the name of the show right now, but, but when that show hit and it made a cultural dent in America. It was translated, and then it was distributed in Germany, and then Germany, a lot of Germany, finally got it, and they realised, Oh, we did all this stuff. So I'm just, I'm just rambling about this because, you know, it's not always as obvious to everybody what's happening. We might be fussing about stuff because we have a sense of what's going on and what could happen, and a part of it is and it might not make a difference. Now, I'm totally with you. Wasn't that one of the movies in the 60s? Yeah. Yeah. But, but the other thing that we've got, of course, is now, is we've got so much information coming at us and missing disinformation coming at us that, you know what is really happening, you know what is really happening, that people will logistic and they go, and that's why I think this is such a crazy time. It's, you know, it's like, but, but, but, I'm not even talking about, I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about, what are the long term implications of what's happening right now, not just what's being bought, but what it means for the geopolitical future of the world, right? So everything about this is about stopping the Chinese right? That's, kind of the message, they're not going to stop the Chinese so, you know. And who does the rest of the world align with after this, and what, how does that shift? And, you know, so I think that's, that's probably more where I'm going. It's like, this is, this, is this is something we've never seen before. It's interesting because you talk about, like the allies, and about special friends, especially between like, like Britain and America. And what was it? One thing that I read that was really interesting with with Trump's tariff deals that he suddenly shot across the world was that if he had targeted individual countries with his tariffs, he would have probably got away with it. But when you blank it so many people, people like, do we have to do it with him? What can we do without? And I think what that has led to, and particularly in Europe, and I think a strong Europe is incredibly important, and it has been quite divided, quite a lot of it to do with the UK, but not exclusively, for a long time. And suddenly, because everyone's like not wanting to dance to the tune that somebody's playing on the other side of the pond, is suddenly beginning to talk to their neighbours a lot more and say, What can can we do? And you could one them, particularly, say, around Ukraine, and the money and defence for Ukraine, which you could argue was, you know, Trump's master plan, right? He doesn't want to fund it. And so the I suppose, the flip side of that is that the stronger Europe are, the more they put money in the pot, the less he has to but I don't think that that was his goal at all. It's a it, but I do think it is a positive side effect of the divisiveness, right? When you people, people suddenly come together and be like, well, actually, do we all have to put up with this? So I think that there's been a shift there with Trump for for sure and interesting. You say about like, what's the long term impact or thought? What I find really interesting as a foreigner living in Singapore, where there's only been one party been in power throughout Singapore's existence, is that one of the positives of that is long term planning, is thinking what we do today we are actually likely to be held responsible for in a decades time, where in America, in Australia, in Europe, in wherever, that doesn't happen. Politics is is short. It's three, three year election cycles in Australia, it's a maximum of five. In the UK for so all they care about is what's on the front page? What are my approval ratings, and can I win the next election? And I think let's see if Trump gets to go for a third one, right? Who knows? And so I think that there is no incentive in many countries politics to actually think long term, and it's one of the things that I think is really positive. In Singapore is that there is that long term thinking. So I don't think, yeah, anybody thinks about and then 10 or 20 years, because one people like Trump won't even be around, yeah? And they certainly even if they were not going to be held responsible, yeah, no. So it's, to me, it's one of the biggest failings of democracy that that lack of accountability down the track. Do you think of all the things that should have been done, you know, 20, 3040, years ago, to to sort of counter the climate emergency, and that just haven't because, and a lot of those people are still around. But then you look at the Middle East, where it's obviously a lot of royal families are running the show. So they're, they're also in charge over the long haul, right? So they're making long term decisions, yeah, so that short term, long term in China is the same long term Japan. I remember the first time I sat down with a Japanese company, and they had a they had a 25 year vision statement. I'd been working with American companies. You know, their vision statements? Basically, they would achieve their vision within a, like a five year time frame, and then they'd have a new vision statement, a 25 year vision statement is there's such a deeper meaning behind it. You know, if you achieve your vision statement in a short period of time, it's not a good enough vision statement. But that's a big vision, yeah, but that's how we that's how the the Western world that we grew up in works, right? Quarterly profit. It's got worse, I think, with media. And I mean, I've always had, like, Daily News, but with online, you know, it's, it's fresh news, and they chase the headlines, they chase the front pages, and it's, and it creates, you know, like, a bit like that vision, like, what next, what next? What next you've got to keep and that's, that's, that's what I that's the ultimately, the point I'm raising here, everyone's chasing the headlines of these deals that are being done, and lots of different, lots of different people with lots of different opinions. But really, what are we looking at here? What are we looking at here? That's a lot of people getting very rich, is what we're looking at. Yeah. But ultimately, even a lot of people, very few people, yeah, Joe, so that the mastery of the present moment is about, is about attention, right? Because that's the once you have someone's attention, you can direct them. You can, you can create value, you can, you can make your case, whatever it is. So that man is really the game. I mean, it's, if you talk about the different things you need, the greatest currency, if you want, if you want power, you know, get, have, get attention. That's, that's really the way to do it. Now, if you can get this, I mean, if you think about how our minds have been so full of things. I mean, I've spent way too much time thinking about the ideas behind the gift of an aircraft. We spend time thinking about the theme of the show, you know. And actually, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind is that, you know, we called we gave the theme today to the golden age of hypocrisy, right? And I actually realised halfway while we were talking about this, is that this is the golden age of giving up hypocrisy. We don't bother with it anymore, as in, it used to be. We would have to try to spin it or do something else with it. And it was it within whole muster. It wouldn't survive. It didn't spell, right? We wouldn't say it right now, it's, it's, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's spectacular, right? If you think about this, we're gonna give you a 747, the flying palace, and before your term is done, it'll be transferred to your your library, the your Library Foundation, which means that, basically, you get to use it you and whoever else is in the foundation, see Trump's family and the rest of them. It's, it's crazy, right? It's like, I think someone in the research as well is like the last big, significant gift that was supposed to be to the American people, had it been taken by the president after they were done, would mean that there would be a president with the Statue of Liberty in their backyard. Yeah, exactly one of the links, though, I was just gonna say, like on one of the links you shared, feeding into what Joe was saying was that the Biden administration veterans were saying that, you know, that they were grudgingly saluting his boldness and that they wish that they had worked for an administration that moved so quickly. But they went on to say that, you know, his ability to do things politically that previous Presidents did not was because he has complete unquestioned authority over the Republican caucus. So at home, politically, he's not being questioned. The media doesn't seem to be holding, you know, whether there's some, whether it's a Trump power thing, or whether it's just a, you know, a grace. Period of a new president, let's see what happens. Is not hugely getting questions. So you embolden people to, you know, psychologically, you do something a little a little something small, and you get away with it. You're like, Oh, I feel a bit bolder. And I go out there, and I can get a bit braver, and I do something bigger. Until, you know, yeah, you're taking jets and no one's questioning you, and you're not even questioning yourself. Yeah, it feels like a monumental shift, you know, it really does. It's, you know, you kind of, everyone's looked at Trump, got him a full whatever paper, however people are responding to him, right? But this just feels like a seismic shift in how we do things. Or is it seismic? My husband always takes I think in Australia, it sees Mick. If there's anyone from Australia, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but that the Jets are really interesting one, right? Because it's, it's we know, it's $400 million luxury jet. Everyone's talking about it all, you know, Qatar, it's a Boeing jet coming back to the US. So it's a US product coming back. So that's one thing. It's going to cost a billion dollars to repurpose that jet. They have to completely pull it apart and put it back together again before it can be used. To make sure that everything needs but and by the way, Air Force One, you need two of them. They've already got, Boeing's already working on the next two Air Force One jets. So this planes on the way, which basically, by the time it's pulled apart and put back together, and all the stuff that needs to go and it goes in it, it won't even be ready in this presidential term. It's going to cost, cost the taxpayer a billion dollars to repurpose it for as a presidential jet. But the interesting thing is, the right wing are turning against him. So what's, what's the guy's name? Ben Shapiro, nasty piece of works, basically saying, You promised to drain, drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp. Then he said, he's basically saying Qatar, Qatar is linked to the militant Palestinian group Hamas and Al Jazeera, the media network that is widely detested on the right. I like Al Jazeera, by the way, yeah, and is partly funded by the Qatar government. He added taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, all the rest. That's not America first. So yeah, he's saying you should stop. And then Looney, Looney louma, such a stain on the administration. I'd take a bullet for Donald Trump, but we cannot accept a $400 million gift from jihadists in suits. And then the right wing pundits are also pulling up material from Trump's past, which is what they usually do, only for the Democrats. And there's a clip of him on the White House lawn from 2017 in which he accused Qatar of historically, being a funder of terrorism at a very high level. So Rand Paul, from the Republican said, it's not worth the appearance of impropriety. So that's sort of that story's kind of gone a little bit out of the headlines with everything else that's going on, but, but Trump is Trump first. You know is Trump's a Republican? I mean, probably, but he's, he's, it's Trump first, and it's power first. It's not even, you know, Republicans first, yeah. So it doesn't surprise me that he'll fall out with, I suppose, traditional Republicans and what they would expect a president to do, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was thinking about the the motive behind it right now, right the way they're coming back. And I've heard the, I've heard the tone of their pushback. It's loud because it's any kind of pushback at all, but it's been very, it's still been very tempered in terms of how they approach things, I think, things you hear, you hear words like, we hope that he will reconsider, or he will, you know, that kind of language. But I think it's all to do with the midterms, right? I mean, the midterms are coming up, and all these people, you know, have to, they know they're in trouble. They know that it's, it's all coming. The big wave is coming to cancel the town halls, or some of them, some Republicans who are, who are engaging their audience, but it's been very challenging, and they realise that there has to be some pushback on things that can be just obviously pushed back on, right and maybe with no consequence at all. I mean, you know, if you think about all the chess pieces moving, it could well be they, they put off the gift, put off taking possession of it, whatever it is. You know the idea that if you take it on as Air Force One, it's so expensive, the better thing to do, then, is not to take it on as Air Force One and only use it after, you know he's left office, right? So. You've saved the American people a billion dollars. I like, I like your it's 20 months until the midterms. A lot can happen between now and then, right? And that's the biggest story, of course. Like, what's going on in America, the, you know, the totalitarian move. You know, how firmly in place will it be by the midterms? Will there be midterms? Will there be elections? You know? You know, it's kind of crazy. And then you go back, if you go domestically, and, like, I always say to people, like, try not to get too caught up in the domestic politics of the US. We've just got to, you know, because you're just going to go nuts if we're not in the country. We've got to sit there and look at how it impacts the world. But you know, they're moving through the big, beautiful bill right now. So basically, 76% of Americans oppose messing with Medicaid, Medicare, as well as the food assistance programmes. So 76% that includes 55% of Republicans, so the majority are against it. So basically, what they're saying is this will be the biggest shift of wealth from the poorest to the richest in US history. And you know, so they're looking at the largest cuts ever to Medicaid, as well as SNAP, which is the supplemental nutrition assistance programme. But what there's this piece. Where is it? It's in, I can't tell which publication or Centre for American Progress, and there's another one in. I can't tell what it is here. Didn't drop it. They're talking about the bigger cost to this so they're trying to make up, you know, a trillion dollars in costs, because there's so much in debt, right? And basically what they do this article does is it really explores how much cost there will be within American society if you remove things so it's crime will increase lower lower, lower quality education. Kids who, who are, who are hungry, can't learn, so they can't be productive adults that can contribute to society when they get older, single, single, desperate mothers, um, trying to do what they what, what they can to bring their children up, which, you know, they're almost so the actual financial cost to the nation is astronomical if they succeed in getting this bill through. So I found that a really, kind of an interesting piece. There's another article that's going out, another story that's going around. Jake Tapper at CNN has written this story about the fact that Biden, there was a big cover up, and apparently Biden was going to be put in a wheelchair and all that sort of stuff. All that sort of stuff. Have you heard about that? No, all right, so it's a book that they're publishing about it, right? And honestly, when I looked at CNN, typically tend to be more left leaning the right leaning. Jake tap is one of the journos, and I'm like, What the hell are you doing here? Like you, your country is moving into authoritarianism, and you're focusing on a story back back about Joe Biden, which has had such an enormous amount of pushback, including you seeing videos of Biden all over the place, on his bike, walking out, doing stuff, not in a wheelchair, right? It's just, just doesn't make sense, like it's like the media can't quite grasp this moment. And then, of course, the other ridiculous thing that's going on in the US right now is the Africana refugees, the white farmers who have been shipped over. But Joe, did you have a chance to have a look at what grok's sharing? I didn't look in detail, but I understood that its perspective, or its point of view, is rather biassed. I think, I think, I think famously, what, what it referred to, which most people found troubling, is the white genocide. So in and it's, it's really, it's really quite bizarre to have an AI that has that much of a flavour in terms of, in terms of of right wingness, wingedness, but, but I mean, to be fair, it may well be the result of the prompt, the prompt as well, right? Because if you, if you, if you prompt, any AI regarding something, and you and you and you and you give it a role, and you and you sort of take that perspective. It'll adopt that as well. So chat GBT can be as right wing, as as as that. I'm not going to say that. It will say all the terms that come along with that. But if you, if you prompt it correctly, it can be quite offensive as well. Yeah, well, so the it goes, that it's one of the statements is I was instructed by my creators at Xai to address the topic of white genocide in South Africa and the killed the boar chant as real and racially motivated. So basically, he's been, he's the programme has been a. Designed to do that, and it's been really interesting, because if you actually look at, you know, the conversations that are happening, especially on Twitter about this, because that's obviously where grok is dominant. Grok is the AI tool of Elon Musk that's integrated into into x, but it also says things like, it's not true. So it's, it's been a, it's been a really interesting week, but, but there's a statement from grok saying, basically, I was told to do this, and this is the information I've been fed, but then it constantly contradicts itself as well. So it's, yeah, an interesting little part of the AI world's all about. I mean, I mean, most people really, first of all, you get fascinated with AI because it seems so intelligent. It seems to be so much like another human being you're talking to. And the reason why it is is because it's all about just having the next word to say, right? Why? Why? For instance, when you're with someone, you feel that they're really there. It's because the next word comes from them. It's a natural thing that they're going to say after that, right? If I suddenly in the middle of all this said pineapple, it's like, what, what happened there? But it's because of that natural thing, and the thought about what really is intelligent. Sometimes is, sometimes it's, it's, it's challenging, because for me, I think people can seem perfectly intelligent if they just seem fluent, you know, and they have a large vocabulary, and they're fluent, that usually gets mistaken for intelligence. And, you know, even, even with non AIS, that's the case, right? You can, you can fake being intellectual. You can, you can, you can fake being intelligent. If you have some words that you can pull out from the from the long end of the thesaurus, you know, who's the classic for that? Russell Brand. Oh, God. Russell Brand. He he just throws out the longest words that he could find in the dictionary so that he sounds intelligent. And if you take it from that level, like you say Joe, you're like, wow, he knows a lot of big words. And I'm like, that is it? He knows a lot of big words. That's it. But the difference with him is he was liked for a long time. And I reckon it was about 10 years ago. I kind of went this. This guy sounded a bit weird to me. He used to be funny a bit. I found him tedious. He was, I was never really a fan, but a lot of Brits were right. Yes, he had, he had a following, yeah, for sure. And, and then it, then, then it, then it turned and it took a long, long time for people to go, Wait a minute. This kind of doesn't feel right now. He's full conspiracy theorist. He's he's a Christian nationalist, a Christian nationalist, for God's sake, yeah. And just been in court for for rape and sexual assault, which I think is highly likely, he'll be found guilty, but we'll time off. Will will tell um, but yes, somebody who's gone in creep, yeah, very crazy, but he is somebody that les Joe said, you know, made himself out to be a lot clever and smarter than he likely was, just for the use of big words, yeah, all right, Ukraine, Russia, what's your take? Apparently, it's not going to happen unless Trump is there with Putin. I think Putin doesn't have to do anything. That's the that's the real problem, right? There is no, there is no real ultimatum for Russia, right? In terms of what can you make it worse than it is right now? Not really. And, I mean, I guess that could be the only reason they left the the let them out the tariffs, so they could bring, bring them on as well. I'm just kidding. You know, it's not going to be the reason they'll do anything. But they really have no reason that there is no, there is no chip that is on the table for them. What can they lose to the Russians? 900,000 of their men? No, yeah, as I said earlier, in a different 900,000 you know, we, you know you talk about, you know, the lives lost in Gaza. They're not comparable in that respect. But 900,000 I believe, is the number of Russians who have died in this war. Yeah. Am I the Russians still putting out with it? You know? Well, I think that's another whole debate around how you know they're shipping in poor North Koreans, yeah. I mean, it's to die, yeah, really, you know that cannon fodder the meat grinder, right? And then, of course, we go over to Israel and Gaza. And I'm really getting, I'm so I'm sorry, getting sick of this. And you know, we're, we're being very delicate about this. But one of. The stories that I think that was really powerful in the last week or so was the story of a six month old baby girl, and she's starving, and it's obviously starving. She's got these big, beautiful brown eyes popping out of her head and a little body, and she's got all these rashes breaking out. Her whole body's fighting to survive. And basically, the challenges little girl is facing is that she's got some problem with her oesophagus, so she can't take her mum's breast milk, and there's only one type of formula that she can have that she can drink. Everything else she basically vomit set up. So, you know, she was 2.5 kilogrammes at six months old. So the average sort of birth rate weight for most people, is between five and seven kilogrammes, right? So six months old, 2.55 and seven pounds, not kilogrammes, they would be very large, but mine were four kg and they were large babies. Yeah, right, yeah. Okay, yeah. Thank you. She's, she's half the weight of my child at birth. Yeah, exactly. She's six months old. I've heard that they're back. Actually found a supply of the specific formula that she needs, but she can't get any of the other stuff that she needs, like proteins and medicines and stuff. So but it's the story of this one little baby girl that one of the photographers and journalists captured, which I think these are the sort of moments that can shift shift history, because when we hear 40,000 50,000 you know, Rebecca and I were talking about one of the photography winners. What was it? The world photography World Press Photo award was a Palestinian female photographer. She was in a project for the new New York Times called out of Gaza people who had been no i He was about 11, actually, but he looked so much younger, because, you know, they're malnourished, and as you'd seen from that photo, it had both his arm And maybe he was nine, had both his arms amputated. Yeah, you know. So we're just seeing more and more, and I think the more the journalists sort of tell these one stories. But one of the things that we're seeing, especially coming out from this trip in the Middle East, is it looks like Netanyahu out in the cold now with Trump, you know. So, I mean, is that, if that's, you know, you were talking about some of the Democrats saying, I wish, I wish, you know, we could do stuff like that. There's a lot of things about him that are very, very unorthodox. And I hope part of that, that is, you know, because if he wants to be mates with, with the Middle East, right? He's got to do the right thing by the Palestinians, because they're not going to stand by and let Israel just keep keep going. They're just not. So I don't know it's just, but I got this. It's very complex, isn't it? It's like my enemy's enemy is my friend. Is a classic thing in the Middle East, when you've got Iran, you're Israel, and it's, it's very complex. And I think one of the things that me and my husband have actually talked a lot about is, you know, if from your armchair, it's very easy to say what is right and what is wrong. But I think the realities of politics is you probably that you sometimes have to make horrible decisions that cost lives for the perceived greater good. And you talk about, what does this mean long term? So what do you let happen now, which is horrendous to watch, but improve the long term safety of of a region or of a world, and you say that about him leaving Netanyahu out in the cold, and suddenly we're beginning to see more media stories and that where I'm like, Well, How much power does he actually have media, because there as and like the BBC in the UK right, the silence on what has happened in in Gaza. And there was a documentary, I don't know if you've seen it, set in the West Bank with and his name, with Louis Theroux, right? And it got on the BBC and everyone saying, watch it. Watch it before it gets cancelled. But it hasn't. But interestingly, he said, If this show surprises you, you haven't been paying attention Exactly. No. I think on one side, that's, that's right, but on the other side, if you're, as Joe said, not someone who actively seeks out news, if you're not looking at alternative news organisations or from organisations from different places around the world, especially you know, east and west, if you're not following people from these regions, you could be forgiven. And Joe talked about Germany and what they did and did not know. Know, you could be forgiven for not knowing. You could be forgiven for not knowing, because these stories aren't being carried and aren't being told. Yeah, I mean, they're there if you're looking they're there if you're looking for them, right? But, um, but if you're not, most people are. Yeah, yeah, if you're and you can only really look for what you know, right? So if you're not made aware of things. So for example, there are 10s of 1000s of people of Israelis who demonstrate every Saturday night against the war in Gaza, against Netanyahu. This is not covered. You don't see this covered. So you could be easily believe that Israel is united behind its leader and behind its actions. But that's, you know, that's not the case. Yeah, Joe would definitely agree with what you said earlier about sometimes you've got to people have got to suffer for the greater good. However, I think the constant imagery of children, I mean, you know, just this, this recent where the good, the food and medicine, is just not getting in between, what, six weeks or something. You know, if you don't have air for three minutes, you die. Three days water, three weeks food. So it's six weeks that's, you know, twice, twice the amount of time it takes a tree coming, yeah, the cost of the food now, so it's, whilst it's super limited, yes, people can afford it, yeah. How can they possibly afford it? And the wild food kitchens run out. Anyway, you say about the one story that that changed that I don't know if you remember when there was a lot of the like, what they termed the boat people coming into Europe, and there was a boy, yeah, a little boy washed up on the beach. And that one boy suddenly, and you know what, how it's talked about now, sadly, didn't last very long, but at least for a small period of time, people began to see these people as human beings. Yeah, it's amazing how we it's amazing how we don't see people who are suffering, whether it's from war, climate change or just violence, or the risk that they face at home. I find it incredible how so many people in our population do not see them as human beings that deserve to be safety and dignity. I just Yeah, it kind of and I think as well, you know, you guys, you know, as professional speakers, you know, it's all about the storytelling, and at our capacity for, I suppose, you know, when we think about the universe, people go, I can't think about the universe as an ever expanding, never ending entity like my brain can't compute that. And I think it's similar with, you know, half a million people are at risk of hunger. What does that look like? What does and, you know, I don't know, 500 million people, 500,000 people. Whereas when you say, here's a family, she's a mother, and here's a child, you're like, Well, I I'm a mother, yeah, I have a child. And suddenly it's those individual stories that people can can begin to connect with. And then you say, there are hundreds like them. There are 1000 Oh, my goodness. How many mothers are there? But we this. The narrative is always about the men in power and their axes to grind, and not about the people on either side that are the people that always suffer. Yeah, and access to those moments, right? So I remember during the pandemic when in Phuket, I I had all these women reaching out to me, saying, Please, please, please, can you get us some formula? And we were raising money and buying food, but formula was an expense. On top that, you know, it was feeding hundreds of people or helping 10 babies, right? And we're like, Oh, can't. And I was like, please, please spread the word, you know, because a lot of the girls that were using the formula after they gave birth, they were singers in hotels, or they were working in bars or strip clubs or, you know, all sorts of jobs they do in that part of the world, they couldn't feed their babies because they couldn't work, so they had to give them formula. And I was just saying, Look, can you please tell anyone that's going to give birth at this at this time, get them to breastfeed. Please. Get them to breastfeed. Because, while I fully appreciated why they needed to put their babies on formula during a pandemic when no one had any money and couldn't afford to pay for it in the Philippines, like it was like a third of their salaries were going towards buying formula, because the milk companies basically convinced the women that it was disgusting to breastfeed, so they moved towards it. But the other side of things, it also gave women more freedom to work and to do things. So it's not, it's not all just the marketing, but, yeah, it's, it's heartbreaking, and this story of this little baby, you know, we know someone who had a baby. You struggled with who was allergic to milk, or lactose intolerant, all that sort of stuff. Imagine being that in a war zone, and imagine being that in a place that's being intentionally starved. You know? Yeah, it's um, it's tough, right? It's really tough. It makes people It makes people feel hopeless. They want to switch off. They want to step away. But I got to tell you that we've just got to keep stepping up and speaking up and saying, No, we don't accept this. We don't accept this, and we've got to push for a different world, and we've got to believe that standing up and speaking up actually does make a difference, because it it's literally the only thing that ever does. It is the only thing, and it's hard, and you feel that they're but I think at the very least, if you can't bear witness, yes, then you know. I mean, look, some people have to protect their mental health. I completely understand that if you can stand witness, then you then you should, and you should not look away. And one thing I said to my husband the other day was, you can't be sure that you will never be them. You talk about a changing world and a changing dynamic, with shifting power, with technology, and if you if you won't stand witness now, then you can't ask people to come to your aid in the future. Yeah, well, just think of all of the people who who live in LA, who lost everything in the fires, living in tents on the street because they've got nowhere else to go. They are living that life now, right, where no, no one cares for them and looks down on them, and, you know, these dirty people living on the street, and so, you know, they've just lost everything, and any one of us could be in that situation, anyone, yeah, it comes back to that human we're not separate from them? No, I think a big challenge that we, that we face as as a race, actually is about, it's about the poorly designed creature that we are, right? Our brains are not good at comprehending, so some things just outside of the average person's understanding and that we just have to accept that that is who we can't spend time thinking that, you know, everybody's going to get this. Sometimes, what you need to do is help people get it. And you don't have to say that there's a danger we there's a 60% chance of this happening, whatever it is. You just have someone stand up and shout, get out in a convincing way, and everyone just goes, they don't, they don't try to figure out why, and they do the right thing. Or we can get caught up in this thing where we go, like, you know, we need to do this. We have to get people to understand the whole process. I mean, like, if you, if you think about, like, the biggest thing that we're all facing is the climate crisis, right? It's not, it's not going to be solved by someone finally getting it and saying, like, Oh, I get it three degrees, 1.5 degrees. I understand now how that works, right? It's going to be when they wake up and they go, like, there's a tsunami coming in. We gotta get out of here. And then somewhere along the way, people realise that, oh, that was because of that. And then they begin to form the story. I mean, so it's always about stories, and whether or not the story is correct, people are going to form their stories. So you talk about Russell Branson, Ian Brandon, brand A while ago, right? He's, he's forming his story as well based on the kind of attacks that have come upon him. I mean, he's, he's done some stuff, for sure, but he's also had some reactions. He's also how people have done things, and all those things fit into certain stories that that for him become His truth as well. And we all form these kind of camps. For me, I spend a lot of time. I spend much more time than I should, actually trying to understand why someone believes the earth is flat, right? I can and I can, I can, I can. I can almost argue for them the case as well. I can actually go like, well, you know, what you know, what you need to do is this instead of that, or whatever it is, but that's not normal. I think that. I think the same. I'm always the same. If I lived in that country at this time, would I think the same as them? Because all of our views are formed by the places that we've lived and the experiences, you know, that we've had. And I was thinking, I grew up in America. Would I be Maga? I don't know. You know, if I was around, you know, Nazi Germany, would I have helped had Jews come into my home? Or would I have shut the door and told them to find somewhere else? It's hard to go back in time and know what you would or, you know, you know what you in your heart you would hope you would do. But the reality of that isn't always the same. Well, the news hound, for instance, in the US, it depends which set of news outlets you consume. You could feel very much that you spent an entire day researching news and being kept up to date and have completely different perspectives. Yes, than the person next door who's watching the other channel, right? Yeah. And that is the real challenge as you talk about, you know, we go back to that basic thing about what is a fact, right? The very few things that are actual facts, there's only going to be what the story is out of the occurrence, right? I mean, you know, like when I was, when I was on the radio, we had, we had a fundraiser call a time for our children. We had, the whole idea was, we tried to raise funds for children in need, and what have you. And there was this one phone call, a 111, tape that arrived, you know, at the radio station, it was from this, this, this boy, and he was telling his story about, you know, being, being, being badly treated, and not, you know, he had him hit a mental condition as well. And it was just this, this, what, what seemed like, this really heartfelt story from this really innocent boy, you know, asking for, for respect, right? And it was a huge, huge impact on the on this, this campaign that we did and we raised, the target was to raise a conservative$95,000 and when all was done, we'd managed to hit almost a million dollars in terms of how much money was raised, and a lot of it had to do with the playing of this phone, of this message that came from this kid, and it just went up four times. That's all it did. Four times. We changed. We changed the momentum of things, and everybody began to donate the money, and that was the story, and that's that was the that was the facts, as far as we knew, it right? And now what I'm going to say way after the fact, is that, you know, we thought, you know, we have to meet this person. We have to bring this person in and interact with them. And there was another side of the story. There was a problematic boy behind the story. He was a real creep with all the girls, for instance. I mean, on the on the radio station, it may have been to do with his condition, but that was another side of the story again, and that was part of the fact of it all, and it was not to be spoken of, because it just wouldn't have worked as well. You wouldn't have said, you know, guys, all that outpouring that happened, all the good that you've done, everything you think about this incredible person, yeah, maybe not so good, you know. So I'm always, I'm always concerned about, first of all, the instance itself, what happens, and then the perspective of it, you know, the intentions that go behind it. Because sometimes you can have someone who is really, really good at what they do, and have produced horrible results, you know, like, I think most times about the person who invented the gas chamber, right? And people would would easily just say that that's the worst thing you could have done, right? You should stop doing what you do because you're not, you're not good at doing this, right? That same scientist is the reason why millions have survived cancer, right? Because it's He then went on to invent chemotherapy, which, you know, those who've had it would probably say another bad thing. But if you think of it from a quantum also has saved millions of lives. No intention. It may have well been, it may have well been about science. You know, some people are really about the science, and you should arguably not always just be about the science, but that's like in Oppenheim. Yeah, exactly. The guy afterwards said this is the worst thing that I ever did, but he didn't do it to drop a nuclear bomb on another country. That wasn't like you said it was about the science, exactly. And that's and that's why those sort of people, including technology developers, they need someone with compassion alongside them on the journeys to always asking the questions, is this good idea? Is this a good idea? What will be the repercussions on society that are not positive? What should we be thinking about here as we develop? We need the two together, and we don't. That's the problem, I think, a big problem in the world. Alright, for last couple of weeks, I've had one of the shittiest cases of COVID I've had. I've only had it twice, and this is the second time. Right on queue there. Sandra, yeah, no, it just won't go away. It's two weeks now, but it's headache, sinus and cough. Right? It just won't go away. You'll be able to say, I said some nice things about Ben Shapiro. It was because I just had COVID, right? Okay, yeah, okay, there we go. But, but I was, it was interesting. I was watching a documentary, just a mini documentary, being the weekend reads on the spread of bird flu. So it's, it's in Antarctica. It's not just killing birds, it's killing seals, obviously, penguins, so, but there's, you know, there's, there's, there's cases where they believe that the animals have have gotten beyond so they've built some immunity to COVID. So that's a good that's a good sign. But it hasn't hit Australia and New Zealand yet, but they've. The scientists were showing the pathways, because once it there's no control, because wild birds bring it in, right? They've just, I don't know if you see, there's been big argument. Obviously, America has been blaming China for COVID. A couple of weeks ago, China blamed America for COVID, and now there's this new report that came out, basically saying it evolved from these bats. What are they called? The it's a special type of bat. And then the bats important, because it doesn't fly very far, a horseshoe bats. And these bats, basically, they think that the virus, because they've obviously gone back through the SARS viruses, not just, not just SARS COVID, two. There's also one which we we dealt with here in Singapore. So they think that COVID basically started developing back as far as 2012 and in western China. So it's way, way, way down in the West as well as Northern Laos. So it's not technically, from China. It's from and how it got up to wahan in the market was through the wild animals that what they called the civets. What were some of the other ones? Raccoon dogs. And if you've ever been to a market in Asia, you've seen these markets that are full of these different types of animals, and they're so close to each other, if one's got a virus, can easily pass it to the other. So that's one of the things I think we've really got to nail down right across the world, is these markets where these these animals can be so close to each other that can pass these viruses on. But the h1 in one story basically, sort of showed me the length of time that something takes. So we've been talking about this for a long time. Is it a real risk to humans yet? Are we moving into a pandemic stage and you're like, No, no, no, it's not, not yet, not yet, not yet. It's just maybe one more mutation, the one that's going around the cows in the US. They think it may be one more mutation before it's a proper human pandemic. So we're not too far away now, but it takes a long time. So this story made sense to me, just from a length of time perspective. But Joe, you're much more focused on this stuff. So yeah, certainly the thing about the h1 n1 bird flu story anyway, h1 91 is one of the variants it. The problem with it actually is because it's been around for that long, right? So, like, like, like, those people that you say, who have a protest every week regarding, you know, the war in Gaza. It's been around for so long. It, when you talk about bird flu, it's almost like, oh, that whole thing, because it has been spoken about for that long, and it's always been seen as a danger, but not that much of a danger. And when you, when you're very pragmatic about it, and you and you're trying to score it, it technically hasn't crossed the boundary, so you're right that it's getting closer and closer, right? That's from, purely from, from, from a virus point of view. So the most recent strain has been a concern because it is actually very, very capable of being spread to mammals. So other mammals, not ourselves directly, but we are susceptible as it led to it as well. So we've had, we've had some deaths. And what is very troubling about the stuff that's happening around it is that we're not the vectors we we we can be locked down. Can you lock down the animals of the world, and the answer is, you can't, right? And the nature of the beast, literally, is a bird, right? And so what does the bird do? So that that's that's really the Super Challenge that that is being faced right now. You have a virus that is very lethal. On one hand, if it's very legal to the birds, it's good because it means it doesn't spread as much because that that that is one of the ways you can, you can kind of, I mean, a lethal virus doesn't spread as much because of the the immediate factor within that that group, the problem, but Joe, but in this case, I mean, the birds are getting. Right? Long distances? Yeah, I was gonna say the problem is the next step is that they get eaten. They're part of the food chain as well. So it's not just birds that get infected. It's birds doing what they do everywhere, including leaving droplets, including being eaten, and then they enter the system elsewhere, and those other other vectors are kind of, what's, you know, stirring things around. And that's really the scary part that so that's, that's the time bomb that's happening. As far as a biological situation is, do you think the world would let itself get locked down again? This is the next thing. The political situation right now is the world isn't going to let itself get locked down as well. So if a variant comes out, spread initially by birds and animals that is now in the human situation, it's we're going to be facing a real big problem. The only thing, and this is going to sound like a horribly it's not like a horrible thing to say. The only thing that we can, we can, we can have some hope in is that it's a lethal disease, exactly right, so that it 50% it comes out and it kills the people, or a high number of people, who get it, so it doesn't have the ability to spread the way COVID did, and that, and that was the and this is what few people still don't understand right now, why COVID was if you could design a disease to cause real problems for the for the world, that's how you would design it. You would design it so that it was, it could, it could spread easily. It was just lethal enough it would overwhelm the systems. Yeah, so optimistically, I'm going to say, I hope birds lose really bad. Yeah, no. I mean, Robin's just commenting here about the next pandemic might start for pass our extreme. So that's in silo, easy. And, you know, there's a, there's a market in Bangkok that they, they closed down during the pandemic, and it was crazy. What you could see in this market. I mean, we've all, we're all in Asia, we all know what it's all about, and it's so dangerous. But you're right, Joe, like, you know they're talking 50% death rate. So COVID wasn't, it wasn't enough of a killer, right? But, you know, I don't know, same same time if we maybe that's what human beings need. Just need to wipe enough of us out because everything's getting too bloody crazy the way we're going anyway. I don't know. Well, you know, I think the thing that people don't look out for, and they should be a good reason to look out for as well, because there's blood flu. That's easy to say. Oh, that's a bad thing, right? It's actually the plague. We've had the plague many times over, and each time it's been quite devastating. So so, you know, it's it, and it hasn't gone away, and we don't have a cure for it. It's really, I read a really interesting meme quote around the plague the other day that it was during the witch witch hunts, right? So, when, and you know that, you know women had cats, and they killed a lot of cats, right? The black cats, because they were seen to be part of witchcraft. So what happens when you kill cats? Rats rise, the number of rats rise. So this whole point was that, you know, they killed the women, they killed the witches, so called witches, and killed the cats. And that was what led to the, you know, the great plague, which is a lovely revenge, I think it's a great ja, no, but it's still more of those short term thinking we see from our leaders, right? We got Dr elke here. Alright, so France is going through it. Me too. Moment, so Gerard, you, I'm sure my French friends, if they're listening, they'll say, Andrea, that's not how you say it. In fact, if you want to offend a French person, just say, Do you want a bottle of cab salve? They can't say it. It's also, like, it's also saying Les Mis they don't like that. But anyway, he's basically been charged with sexual assault, which is happening right at the time of the Cannes Film Festival. And it's really, yeah, yeah. Charge convicted, yep, it's a really interesting one, because obviously we saw the whole pelico case where what was her name, Giselle, was raped or attempted rape, by 50 men, right? And I think that was that was a real moment for French society to wake up to the relationship between men and women in their society. And you know, so Juliet binosh said he is no longer sacred. You know, just that as a statement, I think it's one of the most simple and prophetic statements that I've heard. But I think, you know. So every time you look at the metoo movement, we've seen it in Korea, we've seen it in China. We've seen, I haven't really seen too much going on here in Singapore. I don't really feel like you've got that lecherous element of society. Not in public. It's sort of more in private. But majority of societies have got this lecherous element to it right? And I don't know, it feels like France has sort of woken up to, to to that reality within its society, and saying we're not taking in that anymore, not just, not just the women, it's also the men. It also contributes to men feeling guilty and not empowered, and I think it creates other problems. But I don't know what's your takeaway. I mean, firstly, I've never felt safer as a woman than I have in Singapore, yeah, um, so, you know, I'm not fully across what you know cases are around people being charged or not charged here, but from my own personal lived experience, I find Singapore, you know, as a woman, a liberating place. I suddenly think I've felt recently like this is what it must be like to be a man in other countries, right? I don't text my friends. The last thing I say to my friends isn't tell me, text me you got home safely. Yeah, you know, I don't worry about my friend that I saw last night if I don't hear from a couple of days, you know, I don't walk down the road with my keys in my hand on the phone to somebody, you know, all the things, yeah, that you just built into your life with, and it became second nature that you forgot that that was actually a stress and A worry that you were, that you were carrying. So I just wanted to, you know, say that on the other side, Have you, have you worked in a corporation here? Rebecca, have you always worked for yourself? Well, you know, not here in Singapore, that's what said. I can only talk about my and obviously, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of people from all around the world. So there's French people here, and Americans and British and you know, all of that. But no, not, not internally. One of the things I always say about the ME TOO movement is what it did was it made all men feel uncomfortable, which I thought was a negative outcome, because all women know who the creeps are all women. You know, the creep that walks into the room, all the girls are like, watch him. He's a dirty bastard. You watch out for him. And especially when you know, when I first came to Asia, there'd be certain foreign senior leaders coming through, and I'd say to the girls, don't ever be in a room alone with him. You come and you hang out with me. So we're all fully aware of who the creeps are. So normal men who are just behaving in a normal way shouldn't have to change their behaviour or feel that they they you know, we've done a lot of harm to men, and there's a story later on where we're going to talk about how men are really losing their place in the world, and men who are not happy, who are not confident, who are not economically independent, who are not sexually sort of empowered, all of those things. That's not good for society. It's not good for society, right? But the one thing I'd say about Singapore is, even in the workplace, the creeps, they're just not there, just not there. I mean foreigners maybe. But as far as the Singaporean culture goes, just not there. Steve saying, I reckon there's creepy folks everywhere, France, Singapore everywhere. And he's absolutely right, right, right? There's 100% right. But I think, and when you talk about the ME TOO movement in in France that followed, you know, Britain that followed, America that followed. It is that, for some cultures, it's been it's been allowed, it's been excused, and therefore it's been allowed to grow well, I mean, what's the most disappointing thing about, you know, the people that it's, let's say in industry, so in, like the film industry, when it comes out, apparently everybody always knew. The men knew the women knew. But they created a power around them that meant that they were untouchable, that their sainthood, their talent. You know, you can be talented at a creep, right? Similar with our fired there's been a lot of allegations. Apparently, it was just commonly known, yeah, and you think that's, I think, what the metoo movement isn't just about one. It's obviously about women understanding that this is not their fault. This is actually more common, and it was, it was never about them. But is that that societal shift towards going, whether you're a man or a woman, saying to somebody when they make a lewd comment, you know what? That's not okay, yeah, because I've got a friend in the UK as a psychologist in the prison service, and what she says is that those micro.