The Sh*t Show: the only thing obliterated is the truth + food security

It’s been an extraordinary week in the news. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites left the world holding its breath – what comes next? Because SOMETHING will come next. Then a ceasefire was called, or was it, and that’s the end of it – bombing for peace really does work apparently. Regardless, we’ve never had a US President like Trump, so who knows what’s going to happen, but the world is certainly heating up, in more ways than one. 

However, before we get stuck into the news, we are going to talk soil health and food security, one of the most important issues of our time – but you wouldn’t know it based on media coverage! We’re already feeling the impacts with the cost of food, but what happens when food is not only more expensive, but the shelves are empty? How do we address it? What’s happening now and what needs to happen?

We are delighted to welcome Katie Critchlow, the co-founder and co-CEO of Re-Genus, which delivers a range of natural, regenerative fertilisers, growing media and natural crop nutrition, bringing life back to soils and boosting the health and resilience of crops. Cathy has more than 20 years’ experience in impact leadership and green innovation, including eight in the c-suite of cutting-edge green start-ups, and diverse experience in corporate and NGO leadership roles. We are excited to hear what she has to say. 

Then it will be back to the news. In Europe, NATO has been in full swing, and the language of diplomacy has been incredibly sycophantic. The Great Leader of the US is being acknowledged for ending the nuclear threat from Iran and allies have (mostly) made a commitment to increase defence spending to 5% - but not until 2035, and guess who won’t be alive then? No doubt about it, the language of diplomacy has entered a new era, but there’s a deeper message in that. 

It’s a surreal time, where the only thing that appears to have been obliterated is the truth, with the politicization of intelligence a huge threat to all of us. But that’s not the only news – we’ll talk about the diplomatic dance going on between India and Pakistan, Thailand could be on its way to another coup, and Oxfam’s latest report states the wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires surged by $6.5tn in real terms over the past decade. Bezos/Sánchez wedding is so in-tune with our times, no? 

Come and join us Friday 27th June 2025, 8am UK, 9am EU, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations. 

The Sh*t Show is a Livestream happening every Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh*t show. 

#TheShitShow #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

0:03

Welcome to the shit show. My name is Andrea Edwards. My name is David Koh. And my name is Joe Augustin. And together what we try to do is unravel the poly crisis. And for some of you, that's a huh word. We're going to try and get around that and try to also help you have some strategies I just posted on LinkedIn as well as Facebook as well. What we're trying to do is try to unravel this faster than it seems to be tangling up. So good luck to us. Right? We also tried to bring in additional voices to give us a diverse perspective on things. And our guest today is Katie Critchlow. I should have actually asked the pronunciation of this Critchlow. She's the co founder and CEO of Regenus, which delivers a range of natural regenerative fertilizers, growing media and natural crop nutrition, bringing life to soils and boosting the health and resilience of crops. Kathy has more than 20 years of experience in impact leadership and green innovation, including eight in the C suite, including eight in the C suite of cutting edge green startups, and diverse experience in corporate and NGO leadership roles. And the big, big question I have is how is she right next to David right now? That's a really good question. We plan to meet together well over a year actually. And we were together on this, on this program we had called it's for you where we had a comedy slot where we were asking who's making the world unsustainable. And we had great fun together looking all the sustainability products and actually having a go at them. And then we realized, five minutes away from each other, having tried to meet up in Oxford and various places for the last year. And the thing is, you know, Katie was able to do that because she has such a depth of experience having through the whole kind of ecosystem, life cycle of sustainability, sustainable investing, startups, established companies and all of it. So she comes with a lot of experience. By the way, I just posted, I don't know if this is right, I just described you as how to. As providing the food you eat without destroying the food. Yes, I hope so. Yeah. No. Cool. So Katie, do you want to give us a little bit more background beyond what Joe said and tell us about, you know, where you come from, what you're doing and why you care about it. So I was a biologist by degree and then spent many years at the start of my career at Marks and Spencer tracking down supply chains. And when you work for big company, I say you're sort of basically trying to do bad stuff a little bit less bad each year to put it into a very, very large sustainability report, which gets larger every year. So, so I looked at lots and lots of different supply chains, lots and lots of different products, you know, thousands of them all over the world, and realized that everywhere that humans go and do something, we managed to find ways to mess it up and became quite disillusioned with that, so then decided to go to ngo. So I went to work in WWF Indonesia for a little bit and realized that there's a lot of money flowing, nowhere near enough, but the money that does flow is sort of not necessarily connected to output, sort of KPIs. So we were working in Borneo, looking at the forests and there was no sort of measure of success that was linked to how much forest was still alive. Lots of measures of workshops and activities and that sort of thing. They studied environmental economics, thinking that maybe if we valued nature we would want to save it, but then realized actually economic tools are sort of bad stuff in bad stuff out to say it politely and they're not really adequate because we don't understand how important nature is. So then I spent five years running a startup that gave people data about nature using DNA. That was really cool. We built the business, raised lots and lots of money and, you know, it's still having a really big impact. But I realized that this idea that if you provide people with more data about the situation that we're all in, the theory of change that says people then do something about it is not a good theory of change. Whilst. Whilst we definitely need data and whilst all the companies doing data are really important, I still sit on the board of a company providing lots of geospatial data for nature and climate. It wasn't where it was at for me in terms of trying to make change. So finally now I land in a company called ReGenesis that's making natural fertilizer and actually doing something to change stuff on the ground to regenerate soils, to deliver crops without, you know, five tonnes of carbon per tonne of fertilizer that we put on the land at the moment and hopefully then creating more healthy, nutrient dense food at the same time. Yeah, yeah, nice. Without destroying the food. Yes. Be unused. Kathy, I want to just say, you know, how grateful we are that you are, you know, coming on a show like ours and you're worried about being polite about how you describe things. Welcome to the shit show. I forgot that that was his name. And by the way, you know, I want to congratulate you. What an amazing virtual background you have there. Even the birds sound real. Yeah. And it sounds like you've done a lot of work in our part of the world in Borneo and Indonesia. So that, that's, yeah, certainly interesting as far as the forest management is. Has gone. I've basically driven from Singapore up to the border of Thailand with Burma. What else is. What, what else is up there? Lao. And there's, there's, you know, the, the triangle, the. And going up, going up through those forests and seeing the palm oil plantations right up in the very canopies of the forest. It just broke my heart. So I'm sure you've seen some pretty horrendous stuff in those parts of the world. Yeah, exactly. And you know what, what, what I tried to do when I was there is to say, how can we believe. Because trees are worth more standing than they are cut down in, in a lot of cases. But how do we make that so in our. In this sort of weird economic system we've delivered that, you know, sees a dead whale or a dead tree is a lot more valuable than something that's, you know, swimming around and keeping us all alive. So I've got something to talk to you later if you don't have time. I definitely do because I've got something that I think you're like, I did. All right, so just before we kick off with you with your session, so apart from everything else in the agenda, what's some news that's caught your attention in the last week? Something that's quirky, crazy, whatever. David, do you want to go first? Here's the thing. I. I had a conversation at the beginning of the week. It's London Climate Action Week. So all the people are meeting up and they're talking about what they do and how great it is and all the rest. And I talked to a young man, and he was probing with all these questions about investing and all the rest of it and how bad, how good it is and why. Why do I not do this? Why do I not invest in this? And so on. I was basically saying, look, I don't invest anymore because it's all basically one big Ponzi scheme. And it was like, oh, what about, you know, if it was a company that was building this for that, so that is really good, and all the rest. And I was saying, well, you know, you can do that. And so the news that caught me this week is really how people are investing. And if you think about the world today and you think about how it looks for you and then someone comes up to you and tells you that basically all the world equity indices are at their global highs ever, and they're all just popping up in a euphoria that the world is going to be fantastic, it's going to provide us with more income than ever, and there is absolutely no problem on the 20 year of kind of anticipation that they supposed to provide. So I think that's the piece of news that caught me. Yeah. Kind of almost sounds like the future of peace in the Middle East. Right. Never been better. Right. Everything is now resolved because Trump is there and he's the man. Yeah, exactly. Katie, anything got your attention? Yeah, I think I was also at London Climate Action Week and it sort of links in something I think we'll come on to with government's industrial strategy they published this week. But also a lot of we look at nature tech panels and this kind of thing. And I think one of the things that's sort of strange about the world at the moment is that there's so much excitement about data and AI for sort of productivity. But in the world of nature, nearly all the nature tech investment is going into data. And it's sort of, you know, whilst we need all that data, the data is meant to measure what's going on in the real world, in the real economy. And if there's no investment in actually making anything better, all that data is just going to document extinction. And so, and it's sort of similar with industrial strategy. You know, like, there's really, really big issues like, like food security and, you know, and solving climate change and that sort of thing. And the government strategy is sort of, you know, pulling at some threads around productivity and data productivity. And you think, well, the, you know, like, it's nice to make things a little, you know, a little bit less, a little bit better, but if you're making like just all the wrong things a little bit better and a little bit more efficient, we're just not going to get to where we need to get to. So, yeah, I think that sort of, you know, obsess that we have at the moment, that productivity and data is going to save us when we're just sort of completely on the wrong path, is something that I continue to sort of feel is living in a bit of a parallel universe. I've got this image, as you were talking about this, of some future archaeologists saying how great these people were to document the extinction so that we could. Understand what happened while they're looking at a wall. I Always say the stratigraphy will be like a, a line of AirPods. With a charger. What's got your attention? Well, I mean, what I've been working on is, is this live stream that I'm doing. All my trades are going live now so that I can keep myself within my own rules. And that's kept me busy in the sense that I don't have things, that I have much time to do other things. Time to do other things. So yesterday, or is it a couple of days ago, in an act of desperation to catch up with the news, I decided to try, and you may not think it's a great idea to catch up with the news by going into TikTok. It was, to say the least, interesting. But I was, I was trying to get on there because I was trying to get the views and perspectives of what was happening on either side. So I was trying to hear what Iranians felt about, was what was going on as well as, you know, just, just, just, just to get different perspectives because it is, it is really quite a melting pot. But the one thing I wanted to share was also this, this particular video that I saw, which was, you know, it, it really was, was telling a very stark story. It was supposed to be this video of. It was. It's thousands of drones taking off from Iran to go and attack Israel. And it was, you know, it was with ominous music, it was in the dark, and it was of course, 100% fake. And if, even if it was true, it would be completely useless because it's just too far away for drones to be effective. The kinds of drones that they were trying to talk about there. But what I was realizing is that online, as much as we try and talk about people figuring out what's real and what's not, the bar for understanding what's real is so far away from what we hope it will be, as in like, you know, so something like that was shared and for the most part it was something that people thought was real. And I think we have a bit more coming up a little later on the show about how even some of the big tech people are having trouble figuring out what is a real video and what is not. But yeah, just the size of a story and how much people will share a story just because they kind of like how big it looks. Right. And that, and that's going to be, I think, a theme in our show today as well. Yeah, yeah. How much people want it to be real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a bit, a bit of critical thinking there, Joe. They can't fly that far. Right. The other thing that you said about tick tock, like, I hate tick tock because it's noisy as soon as you get on there. And I don't like that. I've got to do it, but I don't like it. But if you want to talk to young people or if you want to hear young people, that's where they get their news. So it's an important channel even, even if you hate it. So I think it's, I think it's a wise decision. So a couple of things that have popped up for me. Pope Leo is looking like he's really, really standing up for international law, humanitarian justice. So I'm really happy to see a Pope sort of being so vociferous about it. And he's, he's, he's tweeting. Greece is the, the fires have started near Athens again. There's the, the evacuations haven't been too massive, But I thought it was interesting. They have increased their, their firefighters by a significant amount. They've got like 18, 000 firefighters now. I don't know what percentage increase of the top of my head, but one of the stories that's been sort of interesting me as an Australian this year earlier, there was a cyclone. A few months back, there was a cyclone and it washed out a whole bunch of the beaches from the Gold coast down through into New South Wales. I'm sure you guys remember that story. So this last week, South Australia got hammered by floods and washed a lot of its beaches away. And they're Victoria. So if you've ever been to Melbourne, there's these little huts on the beach called the Brighton Beach Houses. They're really pretty colorful little huts. The, the sea was basically up against the huts and sort of that, sort of that real visual, sort of like the sea is rising. You know, people are still talking 2100. It's already happening. And as, as, as the Earth warms, the water expands. So it's not just the glaciers melting, it's also sea expansion. So that to me was pretty interesting, especially sort of seeing the Victorian and South Australian impact. So, yeah, they're the ones that got my attention. All right, I'm going to hand it over to David and Katie. Yep. Fantastic. So I know you've got this long history. I'd love to go along and get you to talking about it, but actually, why don't we start with what you're doing at the moment? Yeah. You mentioned you're going off to this event called Brunswell. Yes. Which is a UK agriculture event and as its name suggests, it's about groundswell and it's all about kind of new agriculture, better agriculture, regenerative culture. Does it involve farmers actually making money? Yes. So it's one of the interesting things that, you know, you speak to a lot of farmers in the UK at the moment and they can't make money from producing our food. That is just mind blowing, isn't it? You know, so what regenerative agriculture is really about is sort of saying, is there a different way to lean into nature, to look at how we combine the technologies of the future with the wisdom we had from the past and, and think about a different way to produce food that doesn't involve so much intensive input, but still, you know, enables us to, to feed the world and be food secure. And a lot of the people I've met that are doing regen ag, like it's one of the most joyful sectors to be in because they're the most wonderful, happy people. And actually it's quite unusual nowadays to find people that are just really happy in their jobs. Now I'm not saying they're not stressed, I'm not saying they don't have massive ups and downs because they're really trying like completely new stuff, but it's just a, it's a nice sector to be in. And I, you know, often judge sectors and, and, and, and you know, whether something's working or not by the, whether someone's got a smile on their face and most of them do. So. So how does that then, you know, when you go there with what ReGenesis doing. ReGenes is the organization you. Yeah. Co founder and co CEO of. So what will you bring to that? Yeah, so lots of people are searching for, you know, there is, there is when you're doing something new, particularly when you're a farmer with very low margins and, you know, you've got, you know, one crop in the year to sort of make a difference on each, on the field. And I think there is always a real nervousness to do something different, but with what we bring is the soil in most farmers fields at the moment is just dead. And we have had this big revolution in physics and chemistry where we've sort of just applied so much chemistry to the, to the soil and we've completely forgotten that plants for hundreds of millions of years evolved to work in symbiosis with what's in the soil. So everyone now knows a lot about biome and microbiomes and we Take loads of probiotics, that sort of thing. And it's the same in the soil. For millions of years, plants and fungi evolved so that the fungi breaks down all the complex nutrition along with the bacteria, bacteria and the nematodes in the soil, and they give that nutrition to the plant, and the plant in return gives the fungi some sugars, and they live in a happy relationship. When you add sort of crack cocaine or ammonia, synthetic nitrogen to the soil, not only does it take 5 tons of carbon to make every ton of synthetic fertilizer we put on, but then you break that bond because you're saying, don't worry about the fungi and the bacteria. They're going to give you this complex nutrition. It's going to take a wee while for you just take this. And so all the fungi and bacteria die away. Then we put all the fungicides on just to make sure, and then you're left with this barren environment where you're addicted to taking more and more of the synthetic chemicals. And also that's why we get weed pressure and disease and things like that breaking out, because the whole ecosystem is no longer in balance. And so you haven't got your natural allies to sort of fight different stresses. So we bring to farmers to say, look, we can put fungi back into your soils, we can help you to get your soils started again. And then the second benefit of that is the plant can now access again these more complex sources for nutrition. So our fertilizer pellet that you apply in the spring is completely natural nutrition. It comes from, you know, blood and bone and hoof and horn and fish meal and old spent oats and hops and things like that. So it's sort of the circle of life, which used to happen. Stuff died, went on the ground, the microbiome did its job and it went back into the plants. And so that's that. That's what we bring. A massive reduction in the amount of nitrogen going into the water, the amount of carbon going into the air and bringing life back to soil. So being having a little bit of humility, we're in our first year, we're just waiting for our first harvest. But everyone who we speak to goes, oh, that makes sense. Because it's sort of working how life works. It's getting back to how, you know, sort of nature intended with some extra technology. Like we're thinking about how do we use AI to make sure that we know we're putting the right nutrition on and all that sort of thing. But it's technology on top, not you know, with nature doing all the heavy lifting. That's great. That's great. So. So this is a bit like kind of, you know, the probiotic to get your gut biome back together that people have. It is. But. So the one thing that we do really differently is that a lot of biologicals grow up stuff in the lab, but the second you start growing bacteria, very short life cycles in the lab, you. They instantly adapt to the lab environment. So one of the questions that we all have when we take our probiotics is, does it do anything at all, or is this just a nice. So we actually grow fungi compost starters in the woods in Wales, with the idea that we're growing up biomes that are adapted to a natural environment, and then we stick those into a pellet and put them into the soil. And the idea then being like, people, our investors say, well, which. Which fungi is it? What have you got in there? Why? What strains is it? You know, what IP have you got on that? And we say, well, we haven't. We don't know, because nature knows best. And there's thousands and thousands of species of fungi. We don't even know what they're called yet, let alone what they do. And so for some investors, that's like, I'm out. You don't know why this is working, where we're just like, well, look, nature's had 200 million years head start on us, we'll figure it out in the end. But nature's already figured out, so let's just let it go. Can I challenge you with a question? Yeah. Yeah. And so, so, you know, I'm gonna stick back my old investor hat on. Yes. So on. And I'm gonna go along and say, so you grow this in Wales, you know, how are you going to get it out to Malaysia? Yes. And you don't even own the IP on the fungi. Shouldn't you actually figure out what the genome is so that you can tighten it? Is that part of the plan? So the whales to Malaysia thing, one of the things, I went on an amazing course run by a guy called John Fullerton, who talks about regenerative economics. And one of the things he's very keen on is this sort of local business and local, you know, scalability, but starting bottom up. And so we, the microbiome in every country and every region is going to be different. So our idea is that you have a network of local production, so you don't have high carbon and so you're getting the right biome for the Right place. So it's a very scalable model. But you just, in each place, you sort of start local and don't think, oh, I'm going to just have one big factory that's going to, that's going to sell everywhere. The other thing is we got investors. We told our investors we want to sell less product to our customers each year and if you don't like that, please don't invest because there's a 200 billion pound fertilizer market to go after. You know, we're not. We know that there's a lot of sources of good growth to have, but we don't want to have the stickiest customers that have to keep coming back and getting more and more and more. We don't want to just get them addicted onto a new. You don't want to be like that practical cane dealer. Exactly, exactly. So my business strategy is to not be a drug dealer. And that isn't, that isn't the model for a lot of investors. They don't, they don't want. No, they want to be a drug dealer. Right. You get addicted, first one's free. That's the best model. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ethical, Ethical Organic cocaine crack dealers. Yeah, exactly. You know, sustainably produced. Just before you continue, would you mind just explaining to people like, soil health is a global crisis that very few people are talking about and especially in a mainstream way, could you just sort of share more about the crisis around soil and its health? Yeah, exactly. It's one of those unusual things that people just don't realize. You know, we are completely and utterly dependent on soil and for, you know, nearly everything that we eat. And yet we. The industrial revolution, which has done so much to increase yields and, you know, help us to increase the population, has just left soils in such a terrible state around the world that they're eroding, they're completely infertile. You know, there's always reports that come out and say, oh, we've got 30 crops left or 40 crops left. You know, we keep finding other ways to sort of rinse more out the soil without doing anything about it. But it, it's, it is a crisis and it's. And, and yet you're right, not very many people are talking about it. It's not a sort of sexy subject. And so one of the things I always get frustrated with is sort of climate myopia because people talk to me about, oh, yes, because we need to be putting the carbon back in the soil. And it's like, well, yeah, you know, one of the co benefits of bringing life back to the soils is that it does store a lot more carbon, but it's not a carbon issue. The issue is we need to be able to feed years time or 30 years time. And, and if we keep just hammering the soil, we won't be able to do that. So yeah, I like that, I like that aspect that, you know, nature needs to be allowed to flourish as it is without us feeding cocaine to kind of say, you know, this is how you stay up all night in order to be able to produce tomatoes for us. Yeah, and one of the other things that I find disturbing at the moment, it's sort of like the, the sort of hyper tech option. Optimists who just think, you know, for so long now they've been saying, oh don't worry, there's going to be a technological fix for climate change. And now it's like, oh, don't worry, we can just have these like super high energy vertical farms. And so we won't need nature, we won't need soils because we're just going to be able to grow anything in vertical farms. Now the interesting thing is we've just realized that you don't get proper, nutrient dense, good food if you don't have a microbiome. And so growing things in like super high energy, super low biome environments, we just don't know what impact that's going to have on our body. Now I'm someone who says like I never poo poo a technology because at this point in the crisis we need to do everything with anything that we possibly can that makes sense. And so, you know, figuring out if we can grow some food in vertical farms and this, that and the other is important, but you know, sticking to our knitting and saying, look, this is how we produce food and actually we know what the answers are to, to produce food in a, in a more sustainable, healthier way. We just need to figure out what are the right incentives to get people to, to do that. And that's one of the frustrating things with the whole poly crisis. Like it's not that we don't have the answers, we don't follow them. I think going back to the conversation I had during London Climate Week, another conversation was with someone who was saying he's so depressed by it, the only thing that he can think about in terms of how to manage is the fact that all this electrification or this renewable energy will get us out of the problem. And the thought I then ask him, look, you know, this is really, really big bet you're making. Because you're saying your sanity depends on everything that someone else is doing. Working. Yes. You actually placing yourself in my mind, in the worst situation for your. Yeah, yeah. Mental balance. Well, and also I saw a great post on LinkedIn the other day that reminded us we haven't had. We're not in the middle of an energy transition, we're in the middle of a renewable energy expansion. Like, we actually use more and more energy every year and renewable energy is just about keeping pace with all the extra that we're adding. But we're not, you know, we're, you know, data centers and AI computing now is just using so much energy that we have to add so much more to the renewable energy pile. And this sort of, you know, constant treadmill that we're on where we think we can just sort of work purely at the production end rather than the consumption end is a highway to nowhere, really. Or, well, probably a highway to somewhere, but not very high. Can I. Can I just quickly say hello to my son Jax? He's the one I was talking about with the vapes. And he's watching. He's watching it with his mate James as well. So I wanted to acknowledge. Hi. We have to get them on the show. You know, the, the, the, the, the. The young generation, right. You know, the kind of the voice of them and what they, what they have to say to us about what we're doing, you know, this layer of vape that they're leaving behind. We, we complain about it. I'm sure they've got different view about it. So coming, Coming back onto Groundswell, then? Yeah. When you go there, what, what do you expect? What do you think? What kind of thing are you looking for? Well, the cool thing is I hear that this is a movement that's just building more and more every year. So I think it started, like, quite small in the field, I don't know how many years ago, and now it's, like becoming quite big business. And that's really cool when people see that, you know, regenerative, organic, you know, better ways of doing things are sort of where it's at. And that, that gives me some hope because we just need enough people every year to cotton onto the fact that this is going to be a joyful way to run their farm or their business and also make them make the money. And so, yeah, so we expect there to be lots more people than there were last year. And, you know, some of the bigger agronomy groups are coming now and having big stuff stands and that sort of thing. So yeah, it's, it's, apparently it's just a very joyful festival of all that's, you know, good and important about how we can change the food system and farming in the UK and beyond. So for yourself, any particular, you know, kind of outcome you're hoping for? Well, we're trying to gently convince people that this is the way forward. I think people that have thought about regenerative farming for a long time, you know, they, when they hear about the solution, particularly the fact that we can sort of fast track because the sort of soil restoration piece, that's really important because a lot of people, if you go cold turkey and you just stop using orthodox fertilizers, but you haven't figured out how to get the soil biome going again. I think because just the general ecosystem around us is so depleted now. We have done soil samples in different organic farmers fields and found that the biome doesn't sort of naturally regenerate very fast. And so you can get this dropping off in the first few years of regen farming. And so yeah, hopefully we can help to convince people that using our stuff is gonna, you know, yeah, gonna help them to bypass that, that, that early difficult phase. And you know, I was at a mainstream farming trade show a few weeks ago and everyone I told about my stuff sort of said, oh, where are your sandals? And so one of the things we really need to make sure is, you know, how do we just tell people that, that this stuff competes on its own merits in the mainstream. Like you don't need to be a hair shirt wearing, sandal wearing hippie to think that you want to try and solve food security and you don't want to be part of the climate crisis and you don't want shoving pollution down the rivers. And also you can still make, you know, your farm can still be profitable. Because I think one of the things I found when I was at London Climate Week this week is, you know, we're back with all the big, big corporates and the big investors talking up here. And the question I asked quite a few of the panels but never really got a good answer was we've got all this talk up here, how does this help a farmer to buy my stuff? Because even when it's at price parity, people go, yeah, but this is what I do every year. And I, you know, so what's the benefit to me? And I'm like, but there's all these benefits. There's carbon, there's nature, there's soil Restoration, long term land value. But for farmers where it's tough, making sure that they make money each year is the important thing. And it's just for me it's very strange that we have all these conferences and we can't link it back to this person who actually wants to make a difference, has a financial incentive or an incentive to make a difference. Yeah, I do find that strange. There was a guy who commented that he thinks now conference market for talking about biodiversity credits is now bigger than the biodiversity credit market itself. And I was like, yeah, that's probably true. I think that's definitely true. Andrea is going to ask, you know, you've lost experience over in Thailand and places of this kind of, you know, of really agriculture in different ways as well over different periods. What's your kind of sense of how the world is? Well, when you sit out in this part like we have no choice but to. So especially in Singapore, the vast majority of food is imported. There are Singapore farms and we, we always try and buy the food is a, there's an area that farms but everything's imported. Right. And you know, we, we're in the uk, in Europe, in the US there's an idea of what's going on, the crops, to grow the crops out in this part of the world, I have no idea. You know, if I peel an apple to get the skin off, really I know that whatever's in that apple is still in that apple. Any, anything. Right. So I, I, after, since the nuclear reactor breakdown in Japan, I try not to buy anything from Japan. I really try and avoid food from China. Like I, because I don't know, I don't know. So I suppose out in this part of the world it's just, you know, then you got the rice crops as well, right? And yeah, you know, once you get over 35 degrees, we start seeing rice crops starting to fail. So it's, it's, this is, you know, this is where the, the, the, the real impact of food security is going to hit from extreme heat, the drought. Especially when, when you look across the global south, south to parts like Africa, I mean it's shocking what's going on there. We're just, I mean it's really hot here at the moment. It's hotter than it should be for this time of year. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm extremely concerned based on not all the crap that's in the food, but just, you know. Is there still going to be food? Exactly. And, but then, and then you go, and then you go across to things like the palm oil, which, you know, I remember the first time I drove into Malaysia, it was all green and I didn't know what I was seeing because this was 20, more than 20 years ago. And then I found out it was palm oil, it was a monoculture and all the impacts of that. And then we live through the haze here because of what's going on in, in Indonesia and the industry that's around it. And of course, this part of the world, not Singapore, but this part of the world, there's a lot more corruption. So there's so much that's happening that's not in people's interests, but the corruption will keep these things going, you know, like the waste, colonialism, dumping into, into local communities. So they're just full of garbage which goes, you know, or they burn it. So the people are breathing it in. So it's such a big, complex area. But food security is a massive issue. It's a massive issue. And I'm. It frightens me more than anything. And that's why I don't understand why people don't talk about it. Because, you know, and then the other thing is subsidies in this part of the world make farmers less productive. They don't have to work harder because they're getting subsidies. So they don't. Rather than being innovative and working out ways to solve it. And so that by the time that they work out they need to solve the problem, it's probably going to be too late. So there's lots. There's about 10 different things that I just put in that. I'm going to speak on behalf of. Richard, just interrupt about the subsidies, because I think what he would say is that subsidies is what makes farmers not able to make money. Because once you get into the cycle of subsidies, the government is always only going to give enough for them to survive. But because there is this coming in, the incentive is not to look at a different way. So you end up being trapped in this cycle of subsidies because if you try to turn in a different way, you don't get the subsidies. So you rely on the subsidies, but the subsidies are not there for them to actually make money, so that they just survive. Yeah, but I think. I think there's another important point. So in the uk, in Australia, farming families tend to be wealthy families, whereas in Asia, farming families don't tend to be wealth. So there's also different sort of cultural nuances around farming that I don't think people necessarily appreciate either. And then you look at the UK the, the last couple of years for the farmers, it's been horrendous. So, you know, and you know, payments where we were trying to move to, you know, payments for public goods where farmers can deliver those because it's, you know, the biggest land using sector in the country. Huge interaction with biodiversity, both, you know, biodiversity impacting on them and them impacting biodiversity. Huge potential to clean up our rivers and restore our soils and that sort of thing. And I think, you know, payments for public goods where the farmer's saying, well, yeah, I'd love to switch to your stuff because it does all these wonderful things for the world, but what does it do for me? I think that's, you know, that's really important. But because the policy environment has been so, so unstable, you know, all the farmers were trying to do something better for the environment and the SFI payments got removed. And so, you know, we've seen that in renewable energies, renewable energy for the home with the green deal. Like, there's been so many policies where we're in, we're out, you know, okie cokey. And so nobody believes it anymore, nobody bothers to do it. People just become very cynical. And this is the thing that sort of, you know, frustrates me at the, you know, this is the sort of big picture thing which is we know that we need really, you know, really good leadership. We need really big strategies and big thinking about how we get out of this. And we sort of know what we need to do. We just need some people to provide the leadership and to provide the strategy and to provide the policy framework. And we're sort of say, fiddling around the edges. I think the government industrial strategy relating to food said something about can we use robots on farms to make them a little bit more productive or whatever. But there's no real big thinking about making ourselves more food secure, delivering food that, you know, makes, that enables farmers to be profitable without subsidies and that sort of thing. And so, yeah, we're just in this sort of leadership vacuum where the big crisis goes on over here and then we're still fiddling around. Yeah, the person searching for their keys under the lamp poster and they drop their keys over there, but it's too dark. How about you? I mean, what, what's your, your take on? Well, I was thinking about how the, the, the challenge, the challenge really is about trying to get people to come on board because you, you know, if you asked about the problem of why, why wouldn't a farmer come on board and do this right? And you've just mentioned that this is going to be your first harvest. Even, even if you are very enthusiastic about it. You know, farmers already inherently bear a lot of risk, right? They, they, they bear the whole risk of the weather and how everything is going to work to then say, hey, listen, there's this whole thing that could do these wonderful things and let's try it. The question is, who bears the risk of that? So even at parity, the rest of the risk then. So I think that the challenge is there. And with regards to subsidies, I think there is something about how you use subsidies. If you use it just as a very broad thing and say, okay, we're going to keep you from going out of business, then that doesn't change anything. But how subsidies are used effectively, I think is when you pair them up with conditions and the kind of behavior that's going to be useful for, for stuff, right? So I will note that, you know, as always comes up in the example, Singapore does a lot of that kind of activity and it's not immune, by the way, to abuse, right? So we see that happening. All kinds of subsidies create a behavior, right, by, by those who wish to exploit it, either for the reasons that the subsidies are there, but usually more because there's money to be made, right? But if you want, if you want, I think what you can do with subsidies and you know, to say that they don't really work, they kind of do push industries along. If the right subsidy comes along and it's linked to the right thing, you get the explosion and pardon, you know, what you might think about that. But you know, EVs, for instance, solar panels, you know, all that kind of stuff comes with, comes with subsidies that have been properly incentivized. So I think farmers could do with that. And I'm not sure whether it's totally about a lack of vision by government or a lack of ability. Because, you know, I do some work with, with people at the Behavioral Institute, Behavioral Intervention and Science. Behavioral intervention. So it's about behavior. Get people to move on Mars, right? It's a real challenge to try to push something along when people can't quite get their heads around it. So for me, I think essentially there is a lack of understanding of what soil is, right? Is soil earth? Is it sand? What is it? Right? So the average person has no idea. Which is why, you know, as a kid when I was trying to plant something, I just thought, okay, I'll grab some sand from the side of the road, I'll put something in there and oh, it died. You know, that's kind of the knowledge that the world kind of has, whereas the understanding of soil is so complex, people have difficulty kind of getting around that. And then I like that, I like that you're enthusiastic about technologies because I think what is happening is there is a growing number of technologists who are aware of the fine tuning of what has to happen and they're trying to do what they can. Just like in the world of AI, where they're trying to duplicate nature. I think there is some parts of biotech where they are trying to do that as well, to try to create nature, at least the more significant parts of it. I know the big argument is all of it's great, but there's also, of course, the 80, 20 rule. What can you do if you can figure out the 20% that's going to make the 80% of a difference? So I'm enthused to hear that, that it's not just purely about that. And I like what you guys are doing in terms of trying to just create local solutions because they are kind of. They are local because the problems are local. And I hope that the subsidy world comes around to that so that at least it begins to slant it towards this. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting what you're saying about that. Sort of like the lack of knowledge. It's one of the things in my last company, Nature Metrics, we talked about a lot. We just need so many leaders at the top of business, at the top of government NGOs that are ecologists, that understand biology and nature and ecology. And at the moment there are nearly none. Most people at the top of government and business, you know, they might have studied PPE or economics or maths or whatever. And there's just, there are very few people that understand how life works. And if you think that humans are part of nature and we're part of a system and we have to work how life works, otherwise we will ultimately make ourselves extinct. And at the moment, nearly everything we do works against how life works. And, and we're, we're pushing further and further out of the boundaries of the way life works. And, and it's very, very worrying to me that there are so few people that understand that. And you're trying, you know, really basic rudimentary things that people don't understand. That it's not the polar bears and the orangutans that do most of the stuff in an ecosystem function. It's all the boring stuff that you. Well, boring in terms of like you can't see it. It's very, very ugly if you look at it under the microscope. But it's, you know, that is where the huge biomass of life is. It's all the stuff you can't see. It's all the stuff that, that's functioning every day. It's on your eyelids, it's in your mouth, it's everywhere. And people don't realize that. And, and because we don't have that understanding and how interconnected we all are with every part of the living system, then we make really, really dumb decisions. It's interesting you say that. I was at, I was in Nairobi a while back now and went through the, in, in Nairobi, there's a national park in the middle of the city. And you know, this kind of these tours that you go on and got on this thing and they were, they wanted to show me the big game. I wanted to look at the ground. I was really excited. So can I actually have a look at the ground and see what they, they like, what are you doing? You know, the lion's over there and like, I don't care about the lion. I want to know, you know, what makes it possible to up the lion. Yes. Yeah, I like the small stuff, but, you know, I'm not a big fan of worms. But I ask you with your, with, with those sort of tiles, like once you put them into the soil, do they also take the poisons that have been put into the soil out of the soil? So fungi can do loads of really cool stuff. And there are people that are looking at whether fungi can take up pfas and contamination of soil, whether you can use that like fungus against other fungus or weevils or all sorts of things that are, you know, that may be attacking plants. I saw the other day that there was a fungi that can break down plastic. So there's loads of really cool stuff that one of the innovations that we have is how do you breed fungi? Like how do you feed them? Because bacteria are very easy to grow up in the lab and fungi are a bit more difficult. So now we figured that out, we've got, we've just recently announced a partnership with Veolia and we're looking, going to start looking with them about how you can remediate land and, you know, whether fungi has a job there. So I'm not saying it can do that right now, but I'm just saying there's loads of potential when you look at nature and what nature already does for us, that we sort of ignored and undervalued There are loads and loads of solutions. It is really cool as Joe is saying that there's a sort of, you know, there is a recognition that there's a biology revolution going on now and that we could lean into that as long as we don't think again, that we're trying to just dominate and control nature. Like that's the thing. Our business is all about leaning in and letting nature lead. And I think humans always believe that we can dominate and control. And it's just a very arrogant and silly thought. When you see humanity on the timeline of the universe that, you know, we, we haven't done well so far as a species. And I don't think we're going to be, I think we're probably going to be one of the shortest lived species, if not the shortest lived species ever, you know, in the history of the world. And so, you know, having that humility and saying, like, how do we lean into nature? And life is, you know, where I think it's at. Just two more things. So it was in the 70s or the 80s and there was, I can't remember the people or the names or whatever, but these, there was this conversation that there was too many people and we couldn't feed them, feed them all. And someone said technology can save them. And then, and then the technology did, technology with chemicals and pesticides and all that sort of stuff. So then we, more people were born and the more food was created. And a lot of people use that argument to say to justify that technology will save us again so that we can just keep going the way we're going. You know the one I'm talking about. Is that part of your battle? Yeah, so actually it's a really, I, I, you might have been talking about the stuff that the Club of Rome did an update. So one of the misconceptions that we have is, oh, technology saved us and so we're fine. Actually, what that early report said was by the time of about now we're going to be really in trouble, to put it politely. And if, and so recently the Club of Rome republished this thing called Earth for All, which was much more sophisticated modeling than they were able to do in the 70s. But they looked at how have we tracked against what we predicted. And actually worryingly, the tracking is extremely accurate. And you know, it said we're going to sort of drop off a cliff by about 2050. And with all of their modeling that they did now, you know, they, they, they said there is a chance that we can still survive. But it's not a very big chance and, and we have to do a lot of really difficult things right away now, otherwise we're in trouble. And so that misconception that we were like, oh, we've been okay, we haven't, the, the modeling didn't say we're all going to die like in a year's time. It said that, you know, the world is going to be on track to a really serious crisis around now. And so it's really worth picking actually the Club of Rome, led by a lady called I think Sandrine Dixon. Declare she's, she's really cool, she's a real ass kicker. And so yeah, it's worth taking note because it's, all the predictions that it made are coming true. And like, you know, there's very few economists or you know, whatever out there that we listen to on a daily basis that are ever right about anything. And these guys were, you know, quite, quite correct. So. Absolutely. So the other thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about, especially out here in Asia, is I see a lot of farmers being displaced for development. So I've talked about it on the show before in Bangalore, the farmers were kicked out so that they could build these skyscrapers and apartment buildings for the, for the tech industry to move in. But eventually, you know, you lose your, you lose your farming knowledge, you lose your ability to feed yourself. So my, my concern, and so I'm, I'm not from a background, I'm just trying to understand it. Industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture relies on the environment to survive. And if we keep pushing all of our farmers out and industrial agriculture will eventually fall over regardless because the environment is, the climate is changing so much, it's going to fail. So there's an economic shock to that, but the biggest shock to that I think is actually us, because where we get our food from will potentially fall over. Well, no, not potentially. It is going to fall over at some point. Is, is industrial agriculture a big part of the British farming system? Is it still with the farmers? What's, what's, what's going on over there? Yeah, it was interesting when I went to this big trade show the other day for the mainstream farming sector and it was basically a sort of pissing contest for who's got the biggest machine. And so I sort of felt like maybe I'd been living in a bubble and like the whole industry that hadn't necessarily got the memo that just having bigger and bigger tractors going up and down wasn't the sort of, you know, where it was at. But look, you know, we, industrialization of agriculture has given us a lot of benefits and you know, and palm oil gives Asia a lot of benefits. Like it's a really, you know, high energy crop. And so I think one of the things that we need to figure out is that it's not, it's not demonizing farming or tech, you know, then it's, it's having a plan. And I think that's the feeling that everyone has at the moment. It's like we need, sometimes we might need to destroy a field to make a tech or in the uk, put solar panels up on some of the least productive farming areas or, you know, whatever it is. But it's just we need to do that in a, in a way where we feel like we've got a plan. We understand how to make our country more food secure, we understand how to make our food more healthy and nutrient dense. We understand how to solve climate change. And it's difficult because human brains find it very difficult to manage and solve for many, many issues at a time. But you know, we now have AI and the great thing that AI could help us to do is to sort of really, you know, solve these multi dimensional problems and optimize for them, but instead we're using it to, you know, make fake TikTok videos that we can all get distracted that we're not dealing with the issue over here. So yeah, I, I, the, the reason I joined the company coming back to the where we started is that we just need a lot more practical solutions that don't involve, you know, data platforms that make investors, you know, 20 times return because they're really excited about SaaS margins but actually leave the real world economy to just, you know, rot. And so, you know, there, there are loads and loads of solutions out there and most of them don't necessarily have to be the super high tech. They just have to be leaning into, you know, the way, the way that life works. Yeah, yeah. Thriving at nature's pace. Right, David? Yes, absolutely. We did our course. We actually did it, you know, three nice sessions. Three evenings, dinner. Over dinner, I made gaspacho for the first time ever without reminder. So it sounds like Katie, like I'm totally with you. That's why we're, the theme here is untangling the polycrisis because it's, there's all these different parts, right, that need to, that need to be, we all need to come together and address all of them at the same time. So everything everywhere, all at once, right? So it Sounds like it's no, no different where, from where you're sitting, but when, when we think of the individual out there. I mean, I'm always saying to people grow food. Like I've got, I'm in Singapore and our garden is full of food. Even though it's food I might not necessarily, necessarily like. It's a lot of weird Asian stuff, mate. If, if it comes to, comes down to it, we can, I can make a jack, jackfruit curry for the family. Right. Which is actually. But what, what would you recommend to everyone? Like, you know, what can they do? How can they be part of the, the force to drive change? How can they help the farmers? Because there's a lot of demonization of farmers, especially in wealthy countries, because they typically have been wealthy. But how can we, how can we sort of drive this change, you know, from the bottom up rather than waiting for the top to act? Yes, yeah. I mean, I, you know, I generally think that in the UK food is so cheap and we have this idea that it's a human right to only spend 10% of your household income on food, which is just completely bonkers. And you know, farm will say, well, you can go and get a chicken. You can get, yeah, what two chickens for the price of a Costa Coffee now, I mean, it's just, it's sort of, the whole world has gone a bit mad and so I think the idea that we, the food needs to be extremely cheap and that's, you know, that's the way it's got to be is, is wrong. And we need to find ways to make farmer, farmer incomes more profitable. Now there are loads of ways to buy, to buy local, to buy, you know, to not go after the, the cheapest food. And I know that, that, you know, sounds like I'm speaking from a very privileged position, but if, if you have the ability to do that, I think that that sort of connecting with your local community and, and, and local farmers and that sort of thing is really important. And also, you know, I'm, I, I think what I've decided in my life is, you know, you can get very anxious and find it very difficult to sort of live in a world where there's all this stuff going on. And so I think connecting with your local community, connecting, making deeper connections and finding things that bring you joy in your life whilst also recognizing that, you know, just buying a bit of organic hummus and driving ev or something like that is not going to solve things. And so you have to be engaged, you have to vote, you have to, you know, boycott companies that are doing the wrong thing. You have to sort of get active, but only, you know, you sort of got to do that in a way where you're still, you're still finding joy in the, in the local and the simple and that's of thing. So I would say lobbying the government and your local MP for, you know, how do we make farming profitable? How do we, you know, how do we ensure that we're not incentivizing all the wrong behaviors with the, you know, the policy system is sort of super important as well, which not everyone feels that they can engage with, but if you can, you should. And we were talking earlier about the sort of, you know, people speaking up, you know, more and more now it's like fly beneath the radar, stick your head below, you know, don't, don't speak up in your job and you're, you know, with your MP or whatever. And I think that's the thing we really need to do is to make people don't have the cynicism that it's all over, that we can't do anything about it. Just, you know, feel the fight in your belly to carry on and keep, keep going. Because I am. If you, I don't know if anyone watches the Marvel movies, but there's a, there's something called Endgame where, you know, Dr. Strange looks into the picture and he looks at billions of scenarios and Iron man says, you know, can we win in any of them? And he says, yes, one. And so then they keep going. And that's how I sort of see it now. You know, like there aren't many scenarios in which we win. That Earth for all model shows, you know, there's a lot of stuff, really, really difficult stuff we've got to do really, really soon, but whilst there's still a chance. Absolutely. You know, we've got to, we've got to work and try and do that and you've still got sort of got to stay joyful. At the same time, I like to. A couple of things from there, if I may, and one is that I think there are lots of scenarios where we win, but the problem is thinking about winning. That's what stops us from actually getting there. Yeah. If you look at nature, it doesn't work by saying, I want that outcome. Yes. It allows each organism, each fungi, each, each bacteria in, to operate in the way that it does, to allow the spark in it to come alive. And that's how the rest of life comes. And that goes to this other part so thriving at nature's pace. We've got this course, and it's about how we thrive at nature's pace. And it's got three sections, and the middle one is economic presence. And we need economic presence. And this is probably the greatest problem because we can have all the spirituality, but we still need to live. That's where we end up getting a job working for some company that says what it does, but not really what it does. And what is that presence? Is that genius? And we actually explored what that is, believe it or not. And quite surprisingly to myself is that spark in you you have before you became successful. It's really interesting. Once you become successful, you actually. Your whole viewpoint is now corrupted by what you think is needed to create the success. But the thing that made you the person people wanted to have on board, that wanted to be a part of you, what you're doing, is that spark in you before you became successful. And if you think of it in that way, it's a bit like the fungi. It's there in the soil before it's recognized, before people started trying to patent that genome out of it. Yes. Yeah. And do that part of it. Yes. And so it's. Yeah. Creating the conditions for life and not worrying too much about what. Yeah. Where you're going. Yes, I agree. That is definitely much more how nature works than having a goal. Nice. All right, so I. I know that you've got to head off. Are you going to stay with us for a bit or. I have. Yeah. I've got to. I've got to head up now. Okay. Thank you so much for joining us. And you're gonna have to come back and tell us how it goes and. Yes. Yes. It sounds like. Once again. Yeah, great. It's about how to invest in not extracting oil, gas and coke. Oh, amazing. To create real value. Yeah. So how do you. How do you invest in not having to touch nature. Yes. And allowing it to be. All right, okay. And actually make money and make. And make value for yourself and actually get immediate benefits for yourself. Nice. Okay, so not. So you're not sacrificing yourself with future, but you're actually saying, you know what, I got extra cup of coffee. An expensive cup of coffee. No, no, no. And you let the chickens be. Yes. Okay. All right. But anyway, I'd definitely love to have you back, but also just to talk about the communication challenge, to get that message out to the farming community, to change and how that's being addressed and what's worked, what hasn't Because I think there's, there's communication challenges everywhere and some, some are working. So let's. Maybe we need to be starting to think about how do I, you know, I think Kate Rainsworth Donut Economics, I think that's really working. Right. So how can we, how can we take some of that and apply it to different sectors? I don't know. There's, there's opportunities. Some wonderful. The other thing about the regen farmers is they're very generous people. And whenever I've been there, it's always been because they're having a farm walk with all of their other local farmers. They're all sharing and learning from each other. And you don't really tend to see that so much in other industries. So it's just something that I think, you know, people that are acting regeneratively, it's not just about what chemical I put on here, I don't put on there. It's. It's a lifestyle that you, you, you become generous and you become part of your community and that sort of thing. And so, yeah, or there's lots of lovely farm clusters and things like that that are working. We've got one group up at Done up that are, ah, they're just, they're just wonderful. So. All right, we have to get them on social media, sharing their stories, expanding the message. Right? That's, that's use the tools of our time. Yes. Yeah. All right, cool. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Oh, really nice to see you guys. Thanks a lot. All right, enjoy the rest of the show. Great to meet you. Thanks. All right. But there we go. So you're gonna, David's gonna stay, I'll stay in the middle. So it seems like it's again, another industry, another sector, same sort of challenges. It's the complexity problem. Well, you know. One of the things that I find and this happens not just in what we're doing right now, but in many is we try to get everyone to become what we are. Right. So you're trying to, we're trying to get everyone to be activists. Right. And it's almost like the dissatisfaction is going to be that we can't get, we can't get everybody to be an activist. And you know, I'm thinking there's always about a balance. There's always going to be a balance. Certain people are going to be the activists, they're going to be the prophets. Certain people are going to be the martyrs. You know, that sort of a mix. It's always going to be that way. And you know, there is the nature, I think, of human beings, which is a large number of people will just go at what kind of works. Right? And that's actually what we're trying to influence. We're trying to make people figure out that, okay, this doesn't quite work. We have to try and do something a little bit different. But I think in the end it's still going to be about a different kind of activist, a different kind of politician. Right? And it's still going to be up there at the apex. They're going to be certain people who have to do that kind of thinking. I was thinking about the, the solutions you need to solve a poly crisis is, is, is, is not going to be embodied in a person. Very few single people are going to have those kinds of skills to, to, to try and solve those problems. We're not, you know, it's a reason why the polymath is the, is the exception rather than the rule. So we can't expect actually that many people to solve the problem. But we have to try and figure out who they are and try to figure out how we can give them the power or the levers that might do something. And I was just thinking about how, you know, I think one of the promises, and I know it's not always seen as the solution to things, might be something crypto, right. I mean, I don't know the space enough right now to know if they're environmental cryptos and that, that, I know it's, it seems to be an oxymoron, but if we have, we have those happening in, in healthcare in terms of, you know, research for, for, for healthy aging, for instance, right. They're actually research companies that have cryptocurrencies that are, that have the, within those cryptocurrencies, you have the ability to vote and talk about where the research is going and stuff like that. And there is also the component of possibly being able to participate in profits down the road. But it's also, it's, it's. I think sometimes we need to say instead of, okay, we need to change everything. We can also try and say, okay, what if we didn't change everything? How, what if we just drove this a bit differently? Right? So sometimes you talk about we need to change business. The other idea that I thought is, okay, well what, what, what, what can we do right now? And yes, it's, it's had a bad track record. What can we do right now to drive business in this correct way? Right? If we can say like, right, now what we're doing is there's an opportunity to fractionalize big business. I mean, I love the idea that you guys had of buying over all the oil companies, which I think it's still viable. Someone could do that. If you had the right person with the right intentions to do that, that could happen. But if you, if you could also maybe just fractionalize the whole thing, right, Figure out how you can, you can assemble enough shareholders to do a, well, I would say a hostile takeover, a, do a docile takeover of, of, of some of these companies and try to direct them because, you know, the shareholders have a perspective that they want to try and create something. And in amongst those shareholders, you're going to have the activists. You know, it's not, it's not going to be, it's not going to be everybody who's an activist. It's just going to be some of us, you know. Anyway, that was a, that was, that was a thought I just had. I said we, we look at success as being, everyone comes on board. And I think, it's not really that. I think you just need to have, you know, the, the 10 who are on board and saying, okay, we're going here right now. And I think a lot of, a lot of people would just go like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I like where you're going, Joe. I think you're, you're heading in the right direction. But it's, it's, it's not a 10 story. If you look at some of the reports that are just even coming out this week looking at the extreme heat, but the earth energy imbalance. So it's not a 10 story, it's a survival story and it requires radical change. So it's almost, to me, it's almost not about the activism. If you, if you listen to Roger Hallam talking at the moment, he's not even talking about it from an activism point of view. It's just a, he's talking about total revolution, but it's a survival story now. So getting ready, Right? Getting ready. So Christoph just said he enjoyed the topics around agriculture and I think we're going to have him on the show. Is that right? Yes, our next show. You know, I'd like to pick up from both, both of what you're saying actually in, in, in that way. Because I think I need to get you, Joe, the manuscript to my new book, basically in that way. And there's a row in there for cryptos in exactly kind of what you described in there. Interesting. There is, there is a There is also an element of how what you're talking about, that individual empowerment through some kind of direction and guide that other people may have. And it's really about creating structure that allows a lot of those things that can happen specifically focused on one thing, how do you invest in not extracting oil, gas and coal? But we'll go on to that a little bit separately, because the other point that what Andrea is picking up is the whole point to our course thriving at nature's pace. It's about how you as an individual or business or community are going to face these challenges now in a way that you can thrive. And the essence of appreciating that is that you thrive through others. You can lock yourself away and survive, you know, in the bunker somewhere, but you're not going to thrive in that bunker. If you want to thrive, you thrive through others. And so that's what kind of thriving at nature space and discourse about. And I think it is maintenance to address exactly the situation that you're talking about when everything else is failing and we talk of the big solutions. If we can't see how we ourselves as an individual is going to be able to thrive, we won't be able to take any of the actions that will make possible. And that empowerment has to start by changing that story, changing that narrative. You cannot sacrifice yourself for some future good that you may never see. You have to think about how you actually thrive. And the consequence and outcome of that is one of those many scenarios where we all do really well. But the one scenario where we are relying on some greater force, some government, some kind of conventional activism to achieve is really putting all of our own individual future, our own kind of individual mental sanity in a crazy basket. Because when you look at leaders in the world today, that's what you're putting into the basket for. So. So just to touch on both of those things, I think they come together. It's very much that what Richard and I with, well, what we call our thrive Academy and reaching out into people, businesses and communities in that way. How do you pivot from the future? Has to be somehow I have to sacrifice myself now to achieve to the sense that if we're able to recognize that we thrive through others, how do we thrive so that that future we can imagine, we want will naturally truly come about. And I think, I think, you know, when I think of that, Joe, from a. From an Asia perspective, like I think of a place like Singapore, where I think it as a city state, it is the focus is for us to Thrive together. Right. Whereas I think in a lot of places it is going to be much more sort of locally, locally sort of focused. So. But talking about crazy leaders. So it's been a pretty interesting week in the news as well, as we all know. You know, I like that when you say that we don't know who you're talking about specifically. Yeah, no, I know, I know. It's. Yeah. Who could I possibly be talking about? Right. I found. I mean, you know, God, I've been tracking the news for as long as I can remember, but intensely for, for many years now. And I don't think there's ever been a week quite like this week. And, you know, just there was so much about it. But one of the things was anybody questioning whether or not it was a total obliteration was attacked as being someone who was attacking the people who actually dropped the bombs. And it was like, no, but nobody's attacking them. They're questioning whether or not this attack was effective. And, and there was total obliteration. And like, just, just, just from a, like the. How far those bombs went in the ground, right. The, the Fordham site was deeper than the bombs, right. So, like could, could penetrate. So that even before the bombs were dropped, there was that. Right. But Pete Hegseth, the man of war at the moment, at the Secretary of War, and Donald Trump's feeling like a warrior. I mean, it's been quite an extraordinary week. Thoughts? Who wants to jump in? Well, what's been interesting for me is how fast it's been changing as well, even in between what you're talking about. Right. So that initial thing about warriors and then backing off a little bit and then being about peace and then about a ceasefire, and then, you know, it was moving. It was moving so fast, like, which is why when I said when, you know, usually what happens when you pay attention to the news, you feel less confused by things. With the way the news was changing in these past few days, it literally was. I had, I had to look at the feed and exactly when it was, I was looking at. Because just sitting next to each other were stories that sort of like, flipped around from one to the other. It's like this, this is the narrative. No, this is the narrative. This is the narrative. And this is from, from an observational perspective as well. Right. So the idea also that, you know, initially the, the, the intelligence report said that, you know, it wasn't effective, and then you found out a little bit more about it, that actually technically it was something with, with, with. It was tagged as, as low, low, certainty or low, I can't remember the word they use. Basically they were a little bit unsure about it, but that was the initial sort of intelligence they got about that. And then it was always a complete destruction. And then, you know, this replies from Iran and it's a big old, it's a big old video production as well that Iran came up with and said, no, you missed, you know, that's sort of, that sort of doing and throwing and all that. It was, it was actually, it was actually like a series that was made for television, right? It, it was on tonight's show, this happens, will we find out that for real, they got, they got hit. Iran might have something to say on tomorrow's show, you know, and it was, it was that kind of development along the way that was just, it was just a little bit mind boggling. You had, you had to find out what was real and then you had to find out it was real but recorded when you know, and you had, it was just, it was, it was just crazy that way. So. Yeah, and then to try and find out what's happening on the ground as well, you know, to hear what was the intention of this big action in terms of creating a groundswell within Iran of its people and you know, finding out that guess what, history has told you over and over and over again, bomb the people, unite them. Right? And that's what's happened now, I think in Iran. To hear the various people being interviewed on various channels talking about what the mood is in Iran, how people feel about it, they're not very pleased and they are now, I think, even more galvanized against America and against Israel. Oh no, there's a massive undertaking. There's a whole bunch of executions going on at the moment for people who potentially are linked to Mossad. So and then a lot of other people are being rolled up into that. So that could potentially not work in galvanizing Steve on tonight's show, you missed. What I, what I take from this is a few people mention it actually. So October 7th was just before the day when Israel and Saudi Arabia were going to sign the Abraham Accord, which have created, you know, kind of a, a treaty and agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel over the existence of Israel and essentially open up Israel to the Arab world. So Hamas attacked before that in probably the most devastating thing that they could do to knock it off, disrupt it altogether. Before the bombing, Iran and the US were going to have their meeting, their, their, I forgotten which number it was, but it was looking likely that something might come about. So Israel bombed Iran and to me the US was caught off guard in the same way as Israel was caught off guard by that and the US were caught off guard by Hamas attacking in that way. And what that is actually kind of saying is that the incentive, the extreme to which the powers that want to stay in power will go to maintain that along is actually getting, getting more desperate the, the means by which they would do that. And I think that's kind of the situation here. So the consequence of this is pretty much all governments are now saying they are going to spend 5% of their GDP on defense rising from largely 2 below 2 going, going up to 5 in that way, sitting behind this or the defense industry and all those people who support, who have investments in them or benefit from that saying yay, great. You know, and this new way of, of kind of fighting that we mentioned before, where you kind of don't really have to have soldiers being sent there, you just want from afar and you effectively just kill people and you galvanize them on both sides, they get more galvanized to go along and send more bombs to each other in that way. Yeah, it's actually fantastic for them. And the markets are up, they're doing really well because now you see all this defense spending coming in. Now you see all this money coming. Into this thing forever wars. Yeah. And, and, and, and this goes back to the comment just before we broke into this segment about the activism of everyday individuals. That activism is not going to be about how you're going to change these vested interests. It's going to be about how you get that power for yourself and, and new forms. So you know, the comment Joe had about, you know, the health aspect, you know, the, the activism of the voting that's possible. Switzerland has a referendum on everything that kind of is that governance that Joe was alluding to within that kind of crypto aspect where individuals can have their say in a different form. So, so what this says to me is actually it's all intended to keep us focused on that power and what they are doing. Are they sensible? Are they not? They're doing it to gain, maintain that power and make sure that it drives to sustain them. They're not interested in the rest of the world. They're not interested in the individual people. They don't care about who gets killed. Yeah, well, there's too many people. Right. So you've gotta, we've got to wipe them out anyway. But there was another, there was another aspect about this wall that I Didn't get mainstream attention, but it got a fair bit of attention in the, in the social media sphere where I live. And, and this was, you know, Trump said, we're going to give him two weeks. He ended up going in two days. Right. And so there's a guy called Hussein Halaku I've, who's sort of been popping up a bit more for me on LinkedIn. I think he's doing a good job. He published something which I'm going to put in the weekend rigs, basically saying the whole decision to go to drop those bombs was driven by ego, vanity and the desperate fear of appearing weak. So this came after Tucker Carlson humiliated Ted Cruz, basically talking about, you know, basically Cruz didn't know anything about the basic facts about Iran. And so basically it was all this, you've got to go, because if you don't go, you're, you're a weak man. So the whole MAGA split. So Major Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, she, she's absolutely 100 up against it. But yeah, so the, the wishy washiness of it, it's potentially, this could be Trump reacting from a, a TV moment and then the war hawks are in his ear, right? And we all know the warhawks everywhere. So we're in the endless wall. But the other thing that kind of keeps just coming back to me. So of course we heard the, about the Iranian sleeper cells. So I think there's a million Iranians in the US Right now. So it would be a terrible time to be Iranian in the US Right now. Is it true? Is it not? Is it enough to put the fear of God into America there? Are these sleeper cells ready to respond? This idea that it's over, because that's never been the case in the Middle East. It's never been over. Right. A lot of people, a lot of people have died in Iran. It's not just about the nuclear things. Did he, did he react just because he had a reaction to a TV moment? Well, it's possible, right, With Donald Trump, and we all know it's possible. So it's the erraticness of it. So, you know, moving on to the 5% NATO defense budget for that was sort of announced this week. The other thing that's been really surprising, not just that. So first of all, the commitment to this is by 2035, and of course, by 2035, there's no chance that Donald Trump will still be alive. Well, his head in a jar, you know. Well, I mean. And you'll know which jar it is as well. Because it'll be a jar, but there'll be a red wig on top of it. Yeah, but, but David, you're sitting in Europe right now. This, this commitment, if, if you commit to that sort of defense spending and you know, fair enough, like Europe's gonna, going to spend more on defense because of the Russia risk. Right. But they have to cut education, healthcare, social services, which is very important in Europe. So are they just saying what Trump wants to hear to keep the peace? Because there's sycophancy which people are responding to. I don't know, it just feels like. Oh, I don't, I don't think they are. Extreme diplomacy. You don't think they are? I mean, I think, yes, they, it is absolute sycophancy. Right? I mean, in that way, absolutely. Yes, in that sense. But what there is also is this aspect that governments are running out of money. They cannot deliver the social services that people actually feel they need. And people have gotten used to the idea that rich governments, well established governments, governments under good legal structures, provide a social network for them that can help them through the difficulties that they see. So they're not going to be able to do that. They're going to fail. So the pensions are going to be at risk. The education budget is not going to be able to sustain. The health budget is probably the biggest problem of all. It's not going to work in that way. I think we may mention it later. I'll just put that in a context. In 166 people receive emergency medical, medical treatment in two graduation ceremonies in New Jersey. Graduation. Right. Due to heat. Just think of health budget, what it means for health budget. So what are you left with is you have to deliver something and defense is something you can always deliver. You can actually increase the rhetorics on it and it can actually create, create more conflicts. It's very easy to create conflict. Also jobs, and it creates conventional jobs, but not the jobs that can actually survive through what's going to come. So I don't think this is just sycophantic kind of following. I think this decision to shift to the budget to that way is real because what it does, it gives you this kind of flag you can keep waving about how you're improving security for the country and for the people and how here is where we can actually build in new things and you can actually kind of like, you know, all the new technology that you can put on it and everything else, because you cannot deliver even if you didn't spend this money on all the other areas. So you didn't. This money on defense, you still can't deliver to meet the demands on those other areas. So it's to me just feels like, like especially from the European Union, predominantly. Right. Like it's, it's, it's like another massive wrong direction for the world to be going in right now. And it's just come, it's just come from a region of the world that has looked like it's willing to lead us in the right direction. But now you're saying that's not just. Just look at what the European look at Gaza. Those people are still under siege. Yeah. Nothing has changed over this. It's just all that has happened is that there's no news item on that at all now. It's been taken off the news agenda. But all of that is still going on. And instead of saying how we may spend humanitarian aid over that region, we're actually going to take that money and spend it on defense. And Sweden published, the Swedish government published this policy paper where it clearly stated that this humanitarian aid is development aid, must be for the benefit of Sweden, which is taken straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. But they're right wing over there. They're right wing in Sweden at the moment, right? Yeah. I don't know for sure, but I caught this along that, in, in that way Richard would know better. But this is this straight out of that playbook where we'll help you only if it advances our own aims. But, but with, and, but ignoring the fact that this self protection idea is not going to protect anyone. Because, because, you know, it's just. Because there's going to be millions, billions of people in the world who are struggling to survive and they're coming in in numbers too big to deny. So we're just going to turn in. Are they, you know, are they just going into the meat, the meat grinder? You know, is that kind of the idea we're just going to. Is it more of the. Because I know, I know when you're sitting in Europe, David, you get a different perspective than we do out here in Asia. Do you feel like that movement is now the walls movement? Like we're going to put walls around ourselves, we're going to protect ourselves. Is that the point that everyone's at? Because if they don't, the right wing is just going to keep rising because you know, what's the guy from the mark. Mark, the NATO mark Root. I mean he doesn't strike me as a sycophant. He strikes me as someone who appreciates diplomacy and using the right language, whoever your target audience. And everyone's falling over themselves with these words of praise for Trump. You know, the whole NATO event was designed around him. But at the same time, weekly show that the show, as Joe was describing, you know, here we'll now see that celebration for trumpets. There was so many moments where, yeah, like, he was put in the middle of the photo opportunity, but everyone ignored him. I think it was the queen of one of the Scandinavian countries. She kind of did a thing in a photo op, so she was taking the piss out of him. But Mark Root, he said so, you know, he's a Dutch guy. They're pretty straight shooters. Typically. You are flying into another big success in the Hague this evening. Europe is going to pay in a big way, as they should, and it will be your win. I mean, you know, I'm sure that behind closed doors, everyone's gone. Did you hear? You all right? I'm gonna. I'm gonna do better than that, you know, because. Because it's. It's really pleasing the great leader. But. But behind closed doors, I'm sure it's different. No, I think it's. I think it's. It's a bit more than that. I think. Okay, yes, there is that element, and that's a conflict about, you know, we. We are somehow better democratic countries, and we don't like what's happening over in America. We don't like that. But at the other side of it, Europe has a real conflict with immigration, has a real conflict with illegal people, people coming from boats coming along, and it really doesn't know what to do with that. And the idea of defense as a way, is this kind of, like, less associated with this idea of defense and security, is how can we keep the people there in that way? So there's this. There's like a different layer on top of simply kind of like Russia in that way. And this aspect of thinking that somehow we'll increase our spending into defend our borders hits people at the point of thinking. Defending our borders means somehow that we won't get these people coming in that, you know, we're going to keep ourselves in this nice place along with that. It's a misconception, because the. Is a. There's a fallacy of thinking because in times where the uncertainties about the global environment, what you need is collaboration, which is more people, not fewer people in that way, to be involved and to. To kind of move together in that sense, you know, kind of. Why do. Why do Fish swim in shows and kind of like rather than more individually that way. But this aspect is very much as much motivated by this sense of defending our borders. But what does that conjure up in Europe is defending against the migrants from around the world, the small boats that come in and all of those things that's impacting Africa. Free European country. Yeah. And it's going to, and it hasn't been handled well and it's pushed the whole re. Whole region to the right. Right. So it is a problem. But if you want to keep people where they are, you got, you got to make sure aid is flowing well. Everyone's chopping their raiding us has decimated it. Right. Stopping, stopping emissions, but also making sure that the sustainable energy revolution is happening in those countries. Making sure that housing is suitable for the extreme weather events. Right. There's no investment going to keep people where they are. The problem is those things don't win you the election. That's, that's, that's, that's the simple fact of it. You know, you, you politicians want to get stay in power, they want to win the elections. Those kind of language and those kind of aspects of kind of how the world is actually changing. And this is just something we need to accept and so we need courage to go along and see what we change and what we, how we, how we change how we are. It's just not the sort of thing that wins the language, the elections. But it's also, but it's long term, it's the best solution. But. Yeah, but short term, even the short term is the better solution because there's a better use of your resources immediately. Yeah. So every nation has this thing about how if you're migrants in, you know, we might, it'd be interesting to get with friend, you know, who has been a refugee and so on. My wife works a lot as a midwife dealing with kind of people who come in, in that situation. Even in the short term the basic thing that they are not allowed to be economically productive. Yeah. Hurts the country. Yeah. And they're eager to be economically productive but they are actually forbidden to be. So so even in the short term it's bizarre approach. Yeah. So just keeping it on the time. So a Harvard study was released this week which finds that Israel has disappeared. Nearly 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children. So basically approximately 377,000 Palestinians, which is basically 17% of Gaza's pre war population, have disappeared because there's still a lot of people under the, under the rubble and unaccounted for. And they did this by doing sort of spatial mapping. Did you see that report before I shared it? I didn't see that report before. I, I find that, you know, I think, I think the difficulty with these things is actual numbers and how you. How you. And. And so on. But I think what it, what it highlights is that it's not so much the actual numbers. I think what people really don't appreciate is that this is a region under siege. And not only is it under siege, it's being bombarded while he's under siege. But there's a percentage of the population that meets the genocide definition. Oh, yeah. I think. I think. I think it's. I think you have to. You have to ask, you know, the. Was it. There's. There's intention and there's actual actions. Right. Kind of, you know, in, in terms of crime and so on. I think you have to actually ask intention as well. And the intention is clear, is to decimate it, is to wipe it off. So I think. I think you kind of have to go along and says, you know, you can spend all your time counting the thing. And they would say, we never had the intention. I think you actually have to go along and says, well, you had the intention. This is intention. Yeah, but I think the number also matters. All right, so moving across to our region. So India and Pakistan's Pacific been interesting recently. We obviously saw the conflict that escalated. God, that was what, six, six weeks ago? I don't know. Everything's going so fast right now. But recently, Pakistan nominated Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. And interestingly, Ukraine did as well, and I'd missed that. So Ukraine's withdrawn its nomination, and Pakistan is arguing in Parliament whether they should also withdraw their nomination because, of course, they are supportive of Iran. Now, why this is interesting is it follows Modi, who's the prime minister of India, saying that Donald Trump did not have a role in negotiating the peace between India and Pakistan. And that's very important to India. So then by then, the Pakistanis saying, we're going to no nominate Trump for a peace prize. That's kind of a. A dig at Modi, more than a. An ego sort of thing for Trump. But before that all happened, the other thing that happened is that India has said it, that it will never restore the Indus Valley water treaty with Pakistan. And this is a big story. So there's. There's this massive river and it's got these different branches, and some of them go into Pakistan, and they had a water treaty 50s, 60s, which they're basically now. And at the time it was incredible that this treaty was made. Also the population was a lot smaller. So that's, that's a big thing. So I think the India, Pakistan thing, you know, it's simmering. They're, they're playing games at the moment. But the water treat is an important one. Have you guys seen anything else on, on any of those bits? Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, the, the, you know, first of all, the, the Nobel Peace Prize. And this is kind of like that's what he wants, you know, he'd like to get a Nobel Peace Prize. People always talk about how Obama got a Nobel priest by, for just winning the election. Yeah, he became, you know, the winner of the election. He got the Nobel Peace Prize, which is kind of like, oh, wow, you didn't have to do anything. That was it. And Trump kind of feels like, you know, he, his big pictures, I'm the peacemaker, you know, I, I go around the world, I create peace. And everywhere that he's been touching for his peace action has resulted in more prolonged conflict so far. So that's, you know, whether to continue in this way. Ukraine definitely got worse out of his negotiations. Gaza gotten worse. From what I can see in terms of what's going on at the moment, you know, the Iran, Israel thing, we wait to see. Let's see what happens next. But I cannot imagine how a country, you know, at last year, before Trump and all the rest of it, Richard and I had thought about what does the world look like with the five basic countries or regions. You know, there's European Union, US for obvious reasons, China for obvious reasons, Russia and Iran. And Iran is in there because it anchors that kind of global terrorism in that way. So you talk about the million sleepers and all those things, you talk about the connection Pakistan and the Pakistan is connected across into Taliban and Afghanistan or that region and all of that. What all this is going to do is going to bring about more likelihood of kind of increased terrorist actions along around the world. So we'll see what that does. But back to the Indus River. I think something like 80% of the water out of these rivers actually go to Pakistan. So there's this sort of disparate split. Anyway. The water treaty was created through the UN a long time back. So it was like one of these symbols of multilateral success, how the world got together to resolve things for the better. In today's world, with the changes in the climate, water is crucial across all of that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh area, both in terms of flooding and in terms of droughts. So this is about the most significant thing you can do in that way to squeeze a country is to prevent the water from flowing to it. And if so much have been flowing from this and you're now going to cut it off, you can imagine what it will do. So there's no doubt this is intentional to try and actually squeeze Pakistan in that way and it's going to trigger more conflict as we go on through. Yeah, yeah. So keep, keep an eye on it. Ollie's saying the simple fact is Trump has decided for whatever reasons to stay out of the accelerating capital capitalist based global fund competition, making renewables and making a ton of money in the process. Yes. All right, so I want to move on to Thailand, my beloved Thailand. And this is probably a story I want, I wouldn't have even been able to share when I was based there because you've got to, you've got to be care cautious. But it could be facing another coup. So the current prime minister of Thailand is, I, I, I'm not going to try, but she's, she's a Shin at Watsa and so that's the daughter of Takson who, who came back when I was still there from exile after 16 years in exile. And he, he, he ended up in prison I think for a night and now he's in some sort of medical facility. Right. But anyway, so basically between the border of Cambodia and Thailand there was an altercation and a Cambodian soldier was shot. The current Prime Minister of Cambodia is the son of the former Prime Minister of Cambodia. And the prime minister of Thailand spoke to the uncle. So the older one, the former prime minister and she called him uncle. Now in Asia it's a term of respect to call someone older than you uncle. So anyone who I get called auntie by people and some sometimes I want to slap them because they make me feel old. But it's a form of respect. Right. So the term uncle, I don't necessarily think the Western media is really sort of connected to the meeting, to the meaning of it, but there was an election in Thailand when I was there and this young, vibrant, amazing party won, but they didn't want enough seats. And the old sort of military especially, they basically didn't make it possible for these guys to get in. She, her party did get in, but they aligned with the, the sort of, the military parties. And so a lot of those sort of more conservative parties have abandoned her over this. So it looks like she will either have to resign, be sacked or another coup will happen. So it's, it's an interesting thing because coups have such a, an interesting sort of people's imaginations around coups are quite interesting. When you've actually lived in a country that's under a coup, you're kind of like, well, you know, there's, there's some, it's, it's safer and there's order, you know, so it's not, you know, it's not, it's, it's, it's not all what people think it is, especially if you've never experienced it. But I don't know, it's kind of felt like with that young party in Thailand, it felt like it was going to move, really move forward with the younger generation. But I think we could be looking at the, that older generation holding it back. So that's, that's another story. Have you guys played, noticed that one? What I find interesting about it is the way in which the, these dynasties. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And, and they come back and it's the daughter in, in the aunt and the aunt and, and, and across different Asian countries, you're seeing similar sort of things, you know, kind of Marcos coming along and, and, and all of those, those parts. And, and it, it's, it's, you know, what we're overall talking about is how the governance model doesn't work on that. Global governance. When you're there locally, it's really nice. But once you go to try to think about that global governance, it really isn't the model that's going to work. No. So when you do, when you think about what you can get out of your political activism in voting for whatever party or people you want support you, I'm very skeptical about how that can actually work for a global governance. I can see that I can really work for kind of like a domestic and national governance. Yeah. And, and I think this, this story really brings it up. Yeah, yeah. So in Asia, it's always the five families, if you, you must have heard of that, right, David? So there's five families in every nation that are the, the rich and the powerful and they own everything. But there's also five families in every region. So even in Phuket, they're with the five families. Right. And so they own all the land and they own all the businesses and they, they basically run the show. So Indonesia was another famous one for the five families. Malaysia, well, Malaysia's still got their royal families, so in every state. So that's That's a bit of a different one, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's fascinating. Right. Well, I just think how culture tends to, how society tends to organize itself sometimes it's just that I think it's the nature of the beast, right. Where we have so much attention and we only have too many ways to rank things. Our hierarchies are such that if you start thinking about the 14 best things in your life, you go like, I don't know, I can't figure that out. Right. Your limitations actually kind of express themselves, I think, in society. So, you know, yes, it's a, it's a, it's a phenomenon, I would agree, but it's, I don't know whether it's necessarily because someone set out to achieve it. It's, it's almost like we can only remember those, those things. Maybe it's because we've got the five fingers in our hands and that's the. Way we have association to it. I mean, not, not because the five fingers, but because, you know, we, we have a way, it's just like our way, our numbers came about. Right. It we had available, made us think a certain way. I, I, I think it's a fascinating thing. I don't, I don't, I, I, I, I would apply that to, to, to me thinking about how to become significant in life because it's, it's a, it's a, I think it's a natural, natural hierarchy which, which is expressing itself, marrying. Into the five families. Yeah, I was going to say we got six people in this family and I think, including the cat, I am way below the first five. So. Yeah, so Ollie's suggesting if Trump switches to leaving oil in the ground and future as future investment, then he can spearhead the U. S. Response to renewables around the world. He can win his Nobel and get his head on Mount Rushmore. Absolutely. Like there is a path to them, to the prize. Right. He's just, he's choosing the wrong path. Yeah, he would love r, I think that, that he would love so much more, he would tick off the other four. They say I'm, I'm the best president. Yeah, that man. Okay. Oxfam released its new report, so real term gain gains of 33.9 trillion. The world's richest 1% is enough to end global global poverty 22 times over. And as we're seeing in Venice at the moment with Bessos and Sanchez, wonderful marriage. I'm loving the protests there, by the way. I think They've done a really great job. They could do more. But yeah, so this, this, this world, like a thousand percent growth in wealth, you know, it's like, you know, yeah. It'S, you know, it's, is what I started about the thing that got me this week is markets at their historic high. All this wealth is tied up with these market highs. So when we go along and put our money into our, our pensions and support that momentum that's driving it up, you're making them richer. You're not actually giving yourself a better future through your pensions. All you're doing is you're making them richer. Jeff Bezos has regularly sold, you know, a billion dollars or whatever of his Amazon stock over time and actually cash that in all the way along. And that cashing in has been on the back of the actual real money you put in through your pensions and through your savings investments in that way. So, yeah, absolutely. It's because you are supporting it. You are the one out there who, through thinking that, you know, I need to invest in my pension to have this. All you're doing is allowing him to cash it all in so they can buy vendors to go and have his wedding. And people don't get that. They don't get they are rich because you're the one making your savings that's making them rich. Yeah, well, I mean, people maybe get that. And I think that the question is, how do you, what else can you do, right? Is there another way of doing it? And I think people don't really think about that and consider that so because they think this is the game, therefore I must play the game. And they may not like the way the game's dominated. They think this is the only game in town. And if people first of all don't have enough, you know, wherewithal to educate themselves financially. And I'm speaking about my own journey as well. Look, I'm a, I'm a 56 year old person with hardly any savings, right? I mean, and I'll be, that's, that's the way I've lived my life, but I've always been able to produce an income to support the lives that I have. So I've, I've been, I've been, I've been living hand to mouth, so to speak, but with a, with a, with a large capacity, big hands, you know, and doing okay. But you know, financially I've not been pushing myself forward on the kind of vehicles that are available. And if you, if you think about how to move yourself forward and what has been the most predictable way to move things? You know, you want to have. You want to have property, you want to try to get some land, you want to do things like get into the market and therefore it grows as well. And yeah, I mean, all of it feeds the same thing, right. If you think about what land is about, yeah, it's about the scarcity. It's about, you know, who already has the land to dispossess the land. You know, you either have a forceful way of doing it or you just buy it. And that's going to be a higher price than what I pay for it, usually. Right. That's the way it's just going to move. So property, all that kind of stuff happens. But there are other ways to do it. Right. But they're all similar in a sense. The vehicles are very similar, all of it, you know. Okay, so money, the big Ponzi scheme that it is, is simply that it's the confidence everyone has in the agreement. Everyone has that this is the thing that we agree on. So this is going to work. And that's why things like crypto come along as well, where it does create growth, it does create value, and it's not without its victims. But each one of those people along the way had the opportunity to do something with it if they just had the means to take part in those things. Right? And the wealthy have an advantage, a huge advantage on these things. Like, someone was just talking to me about, you know, they heard about this very, very wealthy family where, you know, the, the sons are teaching people to invest. And I go, like, when you have, when you have a lot of money, you get to hold on to things for 25 years. You know, if you, if you think it's, if it's not quite working out right now, you can forget about it because it's, it's a small part of your life and you go like, it's only a few million dollars. I don't care about. Whereas for the, you know, the smaller investor, that's the. But that's the money I had to use for my kids in school, whatever it is, right? So that whole thing, it's a different perspective. People don't realize the game is about money. It's about the wealthy having an advantage in it. And it doesn't mean that we don't have access to it. It's just a harder game, right? So we may not have as much. Therefore, we have to work harder within this game. If we accept that that's the game we're Playing. And I think the one thing that I think people are really, really having trouble with is that, or coming to terms with is that we are in this game, right? Unless we choose to check out and move to a system where cash no longer plays a part, where we exchange reputation, for instance, it becomes that new currency, we are going to be stuck in this thing where we are going to try and get more money. It's going to make us feel a little bit more better, feel a bit better, a bit more secure. You know, it's all the things that tie in very deeply into our psyche. You know, the same psyche that brings us the same five families, it's the same thing. We are status seeking machines. Whether or not it is out and out, you know, status in society where people all look up to us or it's just being seen as the important person in the family, you know, do you see me? That sort of thing, it's all about that. And I just think that we could try and all become monks and figure out we don't need all of this. And I think that would change money or the next best thing is figure out how to play the game in a way that can lead more people to have the kind of power and the ability to move things around. Can I just ask a question, Joe? I just want to quickly. The, the status making machines idea. Yes. That's just programming. That's not who humanity fundamentally is. Well, it's a. Okay, so this, this, this, this idea for me is something that I've been thinking about quite a bit, which is basically how a lot of human expression comes down to the very, very, very deepest nature of us. Right? The very deepest nature is to be selected. And what selection is about is this is better than that. That's, that's all it is, right. And in the end you choose the better person. Whatever your value system is, you do not say, you know your second best, I want you. I mean, that's really not the way we look at things in general. So because of that deep, deep, deep deep down inside, we want to make ourselves selectable. We want to be chosen, we want to be the one. And that I think expresses itself. It's not that it's the stated desire, it's just an inclination to do that because of that natural way. We want to choose the better. And we are also at the same time story making machines. And we look at and go like, oh, they chose better. And what was better? Oh, okay, I see what better was. I see what's better. Right. So that's why culturally, that's how things evolve. We go, oh, okay, slim is nice, or long hair is nice, or, okay, you know, buff is good, or dad bods are in. You know, it comes back down to selection. And selection is all about status in the end. And the ultimate way, you know, as you go up that, there's almost like a secondary hierarchy next to Maslow's hierarchy, which is the hierarchy of status. Right. Is it like, okay, I'm a good guy, Great, I'm a rich guy. I'm a rich good guy. Okay, I'm now an environmentalist good guy. I'm now an investor in trying to save the world. There's all that happening as well. We're trying to climb that status. And one of the most convenient ways that we measure status tends to be about money. So it's not because it's all about money, but fundamentally we all want to be loved. We want to be selected, and that drives that machinery. And I think in more mature, more developed sort of scenarios, people get to realize that, okay, it's not so important. Money isn't that important. But even, even in that, there is still a pursuit of status. It is. I'm now more enlightened. Well, I think, I think, you know, I think I don't hard to figure out how I want to say what I want to say at the moment, because I. I very much sense what, you know, Joe's talking about. I don't disagree with that in that way. But what I actually find is that we face a situation where that world is changing because that world is supporting itself through that money that it generates through the status that it generates in. In that form. And that feeds all the way into the tuitions that we put our kids through in order to try and get them better grades in school, in order to get that university to go to Harvard or wherever it is that they can be to gain that so that they can get the better job and be that entrepreneur who will make that billion or trillion or whatever it is by the time they get there. That will be. But if we actually go and say what is, do we believe at all things we talk about in terms of, say, the poly crisis that we have, what Katie was talking about, in terms of that, you know, 2050 limit to growth? If you're €20 today, 2050 is not that far away. Right. You know, you face that alone for me, you know, I'll probably be dead. So I don't care. So that's the kind of distinction that you have in that path. But if you really do believe that that is going to be a crisis along, then the fact that the stock markets are that high and you're going to invest in it, it's going to make it higher, it's going to sustain. What Joe is talking about is a real problem. And for you, your challenge is, how do I leapfrog that conventional wisdom? How do I do that as me, in a way that I can thrive in a way to recognize what is it that helps me to make me thrive? And how do I make sure that that's at the pace that doesn't leave me behind, but doesn't burn me out? And that's nature's pace. And when you think of that, so that it doesn't burn the planet out and doesn't leave the planet behind in that way, now that's a challenge. Nobody has an answer to that. And this is where there's a huge element, what I call spirituality is really important. If you don't believe there is an answer to something, can you have the faith that each person striving to be that better person, that in the current form is about how we increase our status, that we can be, will come out with an outcome, that crux of where we are? Because all things going back to Iran, going back to Trump, going back to the European, you know, kind of Marco Roth and all those people who do we really want to trust in, if it is not in ourselves, if we cannot trust in those, do we then have to go along and say, that means I'm going to be the worst, the. The worst person that I am or the better person that I am, and if I'm being a better person that I am, I don't know what other people would do. Do I have to have that faith to say I can still. I will still do that. All right, so I'm looking at the time. It was interesting hearing your point of view, David, on what's going on in Europe. It's a probably the most concerning thing I've heard for a long time. If. If that's. If that's the real shift, because it's not. It's not the path that we need to be taking right now as a global system society. So it does. It does really worry me. We've seen a shocking heat wave spreading across the US and the reason this will be more deadly than most is because there's been no time to adjust to heat. So early heat waves tend to be more devastating. And obviously, a lot of the parts of the US Especially up in, you know, Massachusetts, where I used to leave Maine, their. Their dwellings, aren't they. They're good for cold, not for heat. So, yeah, there's been a lot of impacts on that and we've seen it right across that region. David, do you want to talk about the Human Genome Project? But I think. I think we'll just leave it for today. But there was another one that says the NHS plans to DNA test all babies in England to assess disease risk. And while that's positioned as a really good thing with Palantir in the mix, I kind of wonder about that. But let's wrap it up just to sort of try and keep it in time. So, Joe, any AI tips this week that you've come across? Well, the broad idea I've been trying to get to most people, I haven't got anything that's really brand new in terms of AI, but I will say that the broader idea about doing AI or using AI really well is that what you need to do is get to be good at the skills that you would normally need to produce the good kind of output, right? And what I mean is at a slightly higher level. So what I mean is, like, for photography or when it comes to filmmaking or videos, what you have to be really good at to get the kind of vision you have is you need to get really good at communicating what you want to create, right? So in real life filmmaking and real life art direction, what you need to do is be able to express very clearly what you need from the various partners that you have. And AI actually works as the partners that way, but they also rely on the same kind of clear cues as well. So the interesting thing for me is that filmmakers, if you're the kind of person who creates stories and what have you, and you're not the actual person who's behind the camera shooting, to get good at creating great output, you have to learn the essential skills and get better at it, right? So if you're a social director, you happen to be in the business of film and you're a social director, and people in real life, as you. As you. As you're creating the work you do, are having trouble hearing your vision and creating the stuff as well. In the world of AI, you're not going to get what you want either, right? It's going to be something. It'll be what AI does when it doesn't know what it does. So that's an idea that I'm trying to get people to think about. If you want to be successful in the next world in terms of what these new tools can do. What you have to do is get really, really good at the communication that's required in your world for success. And one more thought that I've been challenged with recently is that someone said to me, you can't get AI to think out of the box. And I say, no, all you have to do is tell AI it is out of the box and then ask it what it's going to do. Interesting. I'd also say don't get overwhelmed with all the nonsense that's going on around AI I think that what you just said, get good at it within your sector or your area of expertise. I think that's a really good piece of advice. Really good. Yep. Yeah. Okay, so you look like you were begging to say something. All right. What's keeping you distracted, David, apart from what you're doing during Climate Week? Well, I was gonna say, you know, that's. That's the week that it has been. So that has definitely been keeping me distracted. Yeah. Sounds like it's been a great one. So it's. It's been very reflective for ourselves. Kind of, you know, kind of stimulating, and we definitely want to put it. Put it on forward. So thriving at nature's pace. Developing essentially course to engage with. Oh, this is. This thing I really got out of it. A lot to talk about coaching. A lot to talk about mentoring. Actually, what came through is actually what we want. What. What we. What we're doing is we really kind of guidance counseling and the distinction, because coaches want to win together with the team that they're coaching. You know, that's how they can get paid. Mentoring is like, you're the example that they want to follow, that you want to create for someone to follow. That's your mentor. But I don't know what the future is going to be like. And I. I am not. I don't. I. And the coaching part of it, I want to be so that you still have to make your own. Your own work. It's not my work together with you that makes it. You still have to make your own work. So really, I'm kind of like a guidance counsel. Counselor. You still have to do the job because thriving at nature's pace is like a guidance counseling job for individuals, for businesses and communities. But you still have to make those steps yourself. Yeah. And that's where it connects with the idea of a thrive lab for counting those steps that you make. Nice. All right. So that's all right. Keep an eye on David, on LinkedIn and what David and Richard are sharing, especially around Thrive Academy. Joe. Well, the thing that's keeping me distracted is this live stream that I'm doing every single day. You know, to put it into context, right? For me to do a live stream every day, that's one thing. And to trade, the way I'm trading right now, it's something that I've never really done before in the sense that I've never really put together all of my trades into one big, long, big picture, right? So the project that I've got right now on YouTube is one where I'm trading $100 to $1 million in 100 trading days, right? And I've asked several AIs, you know, how can this be possible? And they've all come back to say the same thing. It is not possible. It's going to need the lottery level kind of skill or luck to try and achieve that goal. And yet in defiance of that, I seem to be running ahead of the curve right now. I am still doing okay. And I know that for me it's all about just applying the discipline in terms of choosing the traits I want to get into. And then, of course, getting the rate of return so that it compounds. It. Is actually, to be honest, the longest or biggest project that I have taken in my recent, in, in my last 20, 30 years, everything I've done has always been about delivery in the day or on the moment, right in the moment. Like for instance, doing this show, what I do is Friday. I put the time aside, I watch and listen, read to do as many things as I can so that I do it and it's done by when it's done, right? So for me, this thing, it's crazy because it's going to be five months of my life. 100 trading days basically works out to be about five months. And it's kind of refreshing and different for me because I'm having to observe myself and look at the mistakes that I'm making and also, of course, be completely public about this. And I really hope to be able to report a very successful outcome in a matter of months. And along the way as well, of course, give you, give you a bit of a, an update. It makes me, of course, a much more unexciting person because I'm actually seriously trading now, which is boring. What you're saying. Just remind me, sorry to interrupt. Of one red paperclip. Kyle McDonald, who swapped one red paperclip to a house over a year. Yeah, so that's just, you know, that's how he did it. Yeah. So he wrote about it in his book One Red Paperclip. And if you think about the value of One Red paperclip, which is probably about a penny to a house, which is $200,000, scale that up. That's your hundred dollars to million. Yeah. Yep. Yep. All right. Trading. You're just swapping, right? Or a nice. A bigger hdb, right? Yeah. All right, so there's a series on Netflix called Train Wreck. Have you guys come across any of the train wrecks? No. Been around for a while. Anyway, so it was advertising a lot because Poop Cruise came. Came out up earlier this week. Anyway, it's this Carnival Cruise got stuck in the middle of the ocean and all. It's basically how all these people handled the crises, which just went for a couple of days. But I don't know, every time I look at those sort of things, especially when it comes to people from Western nations, they don't seem very good at dealing with the crises. Whereas you could go to this region, you know, people can lose everything and they sort of just go. Just get on with it and build. Build back better, you know, so. But there's another. There's another one that popped up. It's called the Mayor. Mayor, have Mayhem. And it's the story of this Toronto mayor who was accused of being on crack while he was the mayor. And he kept denying it, and it turns out, yeah, he was on crack. But what's really interesting about watching the Mayor of Mayhem is it's like. It's like the template for what's happening in the White House right now. I. I honestly think they. They watched. They watched what this guy did, and. And they've just repeated it because he denied everything all the time. And in the end, everything came true. All right, so it's the weekend. We'll wrap up. It's last Friday of the month, so I'm going out for a drink with some mates. Joe, if you're ever in town, I know you don't drink, but you can come and join us. Yeah, I could be the most boring person in the room. I don't mind doing that. Not ever. Not everyone drinks. It's all right. It's not about alcohol. It's about connection, you know, building those communities. David. So, yes. So thanks for being with us. Thanks for all the comments. Some. Some really great ones and some interesting ones there. And we'll see you next week. Yep. See you next week. Thank you, everyone. Hopefully Christophers will be with us. All right, Right. Bye.