The Sh*t Show: a millennial view of the polycrisis

 What is the polycrisis or meta crisis? It’s the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events all happening at the same time, and well, you don’t have to look far to know that this is the time we are living in. The implications of the polycrisis are often overwhelming when it comes to understanding what comes next, but there’s a necessary longer-term view to consider, so it’s time to get a millennial perspective. We’ll be looking through the lens of the world this generation inherited, what they have witnessed, including institutional decay, and we’ll look ahead to the future, with the polycrisis predicted to expand and get worse. An important insight for GenX and Boomers to take on board. 

Within the mix of the polycrisis, we’ll discuss whatever that was in the US with Hegseth and Trump speaking to the generals, as well as the US government shut down, the Philippines has been hit by a 6.9 earthquake in its Cebu province, more than 90 people are buried under a school collapse in Indonesia, Typhoon Bualoi has killed several and displaced thousands in Vietnam, there’s more GenZ protests this time in Morocco, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is in a critical state, the Gaza peace proposal is now in play, there’s a new Covid variant in town, our world is hurtling towards climate disaster and our politicians are doing what (?), and of course, the most important news (being ironic here) Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have separated. 

We are thrilled to welcome our youngest guest so far (we think), Alexander (Sasha) Thilmany. Sasha has worked at the US Department of State, initially as an intern and later as an administrative assistant. Before this, he was a program assistant at the Foreign Service Institute, and he also worked as a research associate at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is passionate about U.S. foreign policy, researching China and Asia, has worked in anti-corruption and more broadly, as a technical policy analyst. A bright man with a bright future, Sasha is now in Singapore, working out his next chapter. A view worth listening to. 

So do join us, get caught up on the news, get inspired into action, this Friday 3rd October 2025, 8am UK, 9am EU, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations, and no doubt about it, we’d love your support. 

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

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Andrea's lead. Yeah. Okay. All right, we're live, but we're gonna wait until LinkedIn goes live. So I'm, I'm keeping an eye on that. You guys had a good week? Yeah, mixed. A mixed week. It's a busy, busy week. Yeah, yeah. We're just talking amongst ourselves right now. This is kind of the behind the scenes kind of. Hey, ho, it's Kimber the Frog here. All right. Hey, ho, it's Kim at the Frog. The network state meeting is happening in Singapore today. If, if we weren't doing this, I would have gone. So that's the, that's the team, you know, sanctuary cities, all that sort of stuff. Wow. It's fairly empty. Yeah. By the way, the Kermit the Frog things should sound a bit more like this. Hey, ho, it's Kermit the Frog here. And welcome to the show. Oh, nice. Yeah, we're on. All right. We are on. Welcome to the Shit Show. My name is Andrea Edwards. My name is David Coe. Are you Richard? Could be me. I was waiting for Joe. Bottom right. We have me, Richard Basilotto today from Amsterdam, of all places. And my name is Joe Augustin. We are the foursome that tries to make sense of the popular polycrisis, which, by the way is the polycrisis or metacrisis is the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events all happening at the same time, which you might know better as the term show, which is why we call the shit show. So we're trying to make sense of it and we're also trying to find voices from different places for diversity. And we have today with us someone who represents. You know, I say this with a little bit of a hesitation because he's not that young, and yet we're calling him young. It just means that we're old. His name is Alexander Sasha Tilmani, and I think he's our youngest guest we've had so far and we're delighted to welcome him on board. We're going to call you Sasha from now on. He's worked at the U.S. department of State, initially as an intern and later as an administrative assistant, and before this he was a program assistant at the Foreign Services Institute and also worked as a research associate of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is passionate about US Foreign policy, researching China and Asia, and has worked in anti corruption and more broadly as a technical policy analyst. Today, Sasha is in Singapore and working out his next chapter and he's going to give us his view on the polycrisis. Sasha, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for giving me this opportunity. Tell us more about yourself that we didn't quite mention in that, in that intro. If someone's, you know, you've met someone at the party and you know, it's a very special kind of party where politics is welcome. Very quickly, would you describe yourself? Yeah. So I grew up in the state of Connecticut. It's the one next to New York. I came from a family that really emphasized the sort of worldly outlook. You know, my grandparents and my father immigrated to the U.S. it was so having that sort of outlook was always really important to them, and they were happy to nurture my interests in that regard, especially in a place where I'm from, where, you know, social status is so important, and that's not really a road to achieving that. I got my undergraduate degree in international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where I've lived for the past 10 years. I worked as a research assistant at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. I focused mostly on, like, on Chinese minority issues and human rights issues. Two major works that I, that I assisted with were the Karakux List and the Xinjiang Police files. These were, these were analysis of leaked documents surrounding the security system in the Xinjiang region of China. After that, I did a stint at the Foreign Service Institute that's sort of like the, the State Department's training center. And then I moved over to the anti corruption office at the, at the State Department, where I've been until a few months ago when I decided to leave and come here and try and make it here. Nice. Fascinating, Great story. Very, very strong build up. Yeah. And I met Sasha through a mutual friend and I was just really impressed with his understanding of the world. But also, even though he's young by our definition, so we've got three Gen X's and one young baby boomer as the regular host. So we're always looking for a diversity of opinion. And obviously you bring the millennial view, but I think you're paying a little bit more attention to most people in your, in your age group, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So I guess you could qualify me. So if the millennial Generation is born, 1981-1996. I was born in 1995. In fact, I turned 30 years old yesterday. Oh, happy birthday. Congratulations. And so that would put me about. In the, I guess if you want to be really technical, put me in the zillennial generation. Yeah. Between millennial and Gen Z. But I'm happy to Lend my perspective. I do suspect that, Sasha, you may be a little bit like myself, because I was a 40 year old when I was 25, so it's. Yeah, yeah. You know, according to some, I'm still 15, so that's okay. But it's. It's very interesting because you're actually just a couple of months younger than our eldest who turned 13, June. So I'm going to be very, very interested to hear your perspective on these issues from exactly that age bracket. And I. Can I just check whether people had that same phrase of kind of, you know, actual age, not your shoe size? Is that like something that was just peculiar to people talking to me, or is that like. Yeah, yeah, that was Australian saying too. Yeah, yeah. All right, should we get stuck in. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna feature you now, Sasha, and just. There we go. All right, so we're going to start with, you know, really talking about the poly crisis, but also mainly attempting it to understand it from your perspective. So we've got it, obviously from our perspective. So let's start with the world that your generation inherited. Right. So I would say the story of the millennial generation is largely one of institutional decay following a long period of institutional progress. What I mean by that is that throughout the 20th century, you saw, you know, decolonization followed by consolidation of states, followed by the expansion of government services, welfare state, advancements in civil rights and human rights legislation, and protection for minorities, those sort of things. And it's only. And then it's now when the millennials start to become of age in the 2000s, that's when those. That all that progress really starts to reverse. So one of the, one of the outcomes of, like the post Cold War. Sorry, can you still hear me? Yeah. But we can hear you. Yeah, we can hear you fine. It was just a blip, I think. Yeah. All right. Can you hear us? We can still hear you, Dulce. Yeah, maybe he can't. Okay, good. Yeah. So. So the world that the millennials inherited after the Cold War was something of broad progress, as well as international cooperation, multilateralism, the establishment of supranational bodies that promise to, you know, protect the individual. Things like the European Union, the United nations, etc. The Green Revolution, of course, was also really important. This was. This guaranteed. This. Sorry, this guaranteed nutrition for, you know, millions of people. And by the time of the 1990s, I'm sure you've heard the term the end of history. Well, that was the predominant narrative that, you know, the, the thinker Francis Fukuyama said that the Western liberal democracy was sort of the final form of government and that in the future, it will only be more refined versions of that. But after writing his book in that. In which he proclaimed that, which, to be fair to him, he also did say that there was. They did have an opportunity to mess it all up, and they certainly did. Just. Just a perspective from the outside here. Right. You see the expansion of multilateral bodies, like I talked about, like the world. So, Joe, do you want to. So you. I'm not sure you're pausing, but we can still hear you, but. Yeah, I'm not sure if you're hearing us as well. No, I was just wondering from. From a perspective, like, you know, we talk about the. The. The. The world that's been inherited. I think there's an issue with the. With the. With the connection. Yeah, yeah. Whether. Whether he feels that the millennials have actually inherited it yet or have we. Or they're just seeing how we're messing it up before. Before they pick it up. You know what I mean? All right, let's get him back up. Okay. Yeah. All right. So you would have missed what Joe just said. I was just. I was just thinking, Sasha, that if you're looking at this right now, we talk about this in terms of the world you've inherited. I'm wondering whether or not the feeling is we. You haven't even managed to get to the point of inheritance yet. You know, you're like King Charles just waiting at the sign and seeing all of it go by while you're waiting for your. For your chance to do something about it, or at least get a. Get a chance to do something about that. Does that. Does that feel a bit like that? It does. And there is a lot of data to support that. The. The. I'm sure you've heard the term the gerontocracy. Your average world leader is becoming older and older. The. A lot of these governing systems, they become more hostile to outsiders, young people entering it. And as a result, we've seen institutional decay. There's no talent or new ideas cycling through. And that's something that's definitely contributing to the loss of loss and trust of institutions. You should read what I've been writing. No, but I mean, absolutely. I think part of that is because, you know, population is aging, so young people in. In that way. So for. For people like yourself, you know, our children, they. They don't look to having children because they see the future as really something quite bleak. Yeah. And so what happens is you've got this aging group that holds all the wealth and power. They're all the boomers and they're going on there and you know, older people for, despite what they say, you know, don't believe them when they say they're just as creative and innovative and energetic as you young people. They're not. So the source of your decay that. You'Re talking about, but also their dominance. Right, just political dominance is voting dominance, which is only just gone. So we're still in that lethargy afterwards where the old buggers get to keep grueling. Well, yes, but I would probably object a little bit to that because it's actually not the uniform picture. It's somewhat dependent on the actual demography of the specific country. Yeah, exactly. And you have very different population structures in the western world, mostly dependent on what happened during World War II and the following immigration, migration into these countries. So it's not, at least in European perspective, the, the demographics look quite different across the continent. And me having grown up in Sweden. Yes, I can totally see how the political generation that held the power effectively for 30 years implemented all the structural change that systematically favored themselves, particularly with regard to pension systems and Social Security systems, et cetera. So power corrupts. When you get to power, you're going to do what's good for you. Right. But it's not the uniform picture which age bracket that actually was favored the most. Yeah. And that's especially true in this part of the world. Right. And we're, we're, we're seeing it with the Gen Z demonstrations that are happening. We've got, I think three people died in Morocco this week and they're all Gen Z protests. I don't know if you know, they've got this flag, it's an enemy inspired flag with a pirate on it that's becoming the, the symbol of the resistance. But, but a different generation. Right, so getting back to Sasha. Right, so keep going. What's your view? We'll try not to interfere. Interrupt. Yeah. So again, kind of the world that the millennials inherited, this was one of rising living standards. There was rapid economic growth throughout the second half of the 20th century, spurred on by globalization mainly. There was advancements, legal protections for women, minorities, all sorts of things. So someone who was born, so say you were born in like the 1920s in a place like Alabama. You know, women couldn't get credit cards. There was Jim Crow, there was, you know, there was voter suppression, there was no access to family planning services, that sort of thing. And if you lived all the way to say, 2008, not only are those things now guaranteed by law in the United States, but you also have your first black president. So I think for previous generations, theirs was very much a story of progress, whereas for the Malayal generations, its progress interrupted and reversed in many respects. Because by the time you get to the 20th century, I talked about the advancement in civil rights and human rights in all those regards, as well as in multilateralism and global cooperation. The 1990s period of, you know, post immediate post war era really promised to me, at least to me promised to be an era where disputes between countries are going to be solved diplomatically and they can, you know, be solved peacefully. And for example, I would give like the Dayton Accords that ended the Yugoslav war, as the Good Friday Agreement that ended the troubles in Northern Ireland and the handover of Hong Kong to China. These are all very, very innovative policy measures that promise that were used highly sophisticated means to create really, really good outcomes for the people that it concerned. And so I think there was great hope in that time period that, you know, wars, that wars between states that were going to be a thing of the past and that the future will be upright and just look more, just like more and more refined democracy and legal protections for people. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be because, you know, by the time of the turn, turn of the millennium that, you know, really, really reversed. So some turning points, for example, like one of my earliest memories is 9, 11, that had great consequence. The subsequent war on terror had a huge impact and just directly or indirectly led to a lot of the progress that during the 20th century being reversed. There's also the rise in partisan media that really started implanting the ideas that our institutions were inherently flawed, especially our governing institutions. Those are something that should be reduced in favor of things like tax cuts or less or shrinking the social safety net. And we just have. And we also have the rise of the uber wealthy, the oligarchs, the billionaires. We've essentially decided that money equals political power, especially in the United States after the Citizens United decision. And then we've let people just kind of accumulate unlimited wealth which equals unlimited political power. And they're certainly using it to enact their agenda. So I talked about the decay in trust in institutions, the a large degree. So there, there are two components to that. And my opinion, there's sort of an internal component and external component. One way in which an institute, you can lose trust in institutions is that the institution itself does not provide for who it's supposed to provide. And that's pretty obvious. And there are. There are areas where, you know, governing institutions, they fall. They do come up short in that regard. But the second is sort of external, is sort of like a PR effort, bipartisan media, by, you know, certain figures, certain wealthy figures, to try and push through a narrative that institutions are failing. And that leads to. That leads to a certain degradation in trust institutions. And because we live in. Because we live in representative democracies that people will vote for representatives that will starve those institutions of resources, which only causes them to fail further. Yeah. So take education, for example. That's a big issue in the U.S. you know, far from perfect. But generally speaking, the school systems with the most funding tend to perform the best. However, there are some notable examples of the education system failing. And so what we've seen the past couple of decades is a concerted effort, bipartisan media, to try and condition people to believe that the public education is like a lost cause, that, you know, funding and resources should be taken away and reappropriated to play to things like private schools, charter schools, home schools, that sort of thing. And as a result, the public education system has begun to fail. Yeah, you dumb down your population, you dumb down everything, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's the same in Australia. That's. Their education system's really suffering. I know in the UK it's happening. It's really fascinating being in Asia because the investment in. In education is a massive priority for government. So in Thailand, just watching the way the education system was operating was. It's all about getting the kids educated. Knowing it guarantees a better future for everyone. You know, so seeing that degradation in the west compared to what I see in Asia, I found that contradiction really feel fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mentioned Francis Fukuyama before, and he made an observation. He. He observed this cycle that happens with institutions where people come to believe that the institution is failing so that resources should be taken away and reapportioned somewhere else. And then the institution fails further because of that. And that's taken as more evidence for taking resources away. And this cycle continues until either it's reversed or the institution just totally breaks down. That was he. According to him, that was something that was pretty unique to the United States, but now we're starting to see it elsewhere in the world. Places like the European Union especially. Yeah. All right. Anyone want to add anything? David, you were having a chuckle earlier. Yeah. I've gone. Which bit? But, I mean, I. I think. I think this, you know, a Lot of what you say is of clearly what we observe. And I think what you, what you're pointing out is the, is the. Political. Basis or political economy basis of kind of how we have the product crisis that way. Because I think, I think what people forget is that there is a, you know, behind all of this are people and the way that people have chosen to govern themselves and elected a particular form of governance. And what's interesting is the, the optimism in your upbringing. You know, the upbringing is an upbringing of optimism. Build up dreams, build it and they will come. This is perfect. And then, and then it ran into the reality. And you know, from my side and from my side it's always about the money. And the money's running out. The money is running out because the demands are growing. And I think people don't really realize it. I've said this several times, but every time people really retired people live off profits of businesses because they don't work. That means that whatever the, the business can make as the profit it goes somewhere, it goes to retire people. So this initial start where we talked about the aging population or the rest of it, that's more and more people look to retirement, get to retirement, the more they need the businesses to keep producing lots of money and they basically soak it all up, which means that there is nothing left for young people. There's nothing left with political governance that can actually favor the young people as a result of that. People really don't see that. And I think a lot of what you're saying has to be understood in terms of that because public education, how much can you afford to give to it? Collecting rubbish, how much can you afford to give to it versus being able to look after the older people. And the other part that people don't realize, technology, what does it do? When I find a cure for cancer, I'm prolonging the lives of my 80 year olds. So I'm actually increasing the demand as a result of kind of worthless services in, in that way. I mean I I worthless in sense of the overall productivity. They don't produce, they consume in that way. And the young people who can actually create new resources find that their innovations, what they actually does is to prolong that further where they're stuck in if you like. So I want to throw that in there, but I want to throw another part which is actually quite helpful which is that all this means is that there is actually a great wealth transfer which I'm not sure you come across, which is that, you know, to it's starting now because the boomers are in the eight. The oldest boomers are in their 80s and they can die off the youngest one in the 60s and they're going to go pip fly boarding and stuff like. So that's great thing along. So the, that great transfer is you, you expect to be something like $20 trillion by 2030 with about another 60 trillion to come after. If you invest it in the same way as the boomers have invested it, which is largely to secure their own future individually, that is going to make everything worse. That's really that power that you have opening that you have. So I just want to leave you with that. Suggesting to Sasha that communism might be the answer. Well, well that's what the Gen Z protests are all about. They tend to be on more socialist sort of leaning. So I think we are going to see that. But it was really, it was really interesting listening to Sasha talk about, you know, his first memory is 9 11. I was 31 when 911 happened. I was supposed to be in the World Trade center that day and canceled the night before. It's a whole story. My boys weren't even born when it happened. Right. But I remember being in the States at that point and knowing that it was a, it was a, a, it wasn't just the event. I knew that it was a change in the psyche of America that we were all witnessing. That was not a positive change. And I remember talking to people at the time and they're like what are you talking about? But I think it's, you know, I think a lot of the militarism, a lot of the things that we've witnessed since, you know, when, when you talking about the, the powers that sort of. So the distrust of the external forces in institutions, you know, the, if we look at, you know, the trust barometer that's been published for more than 20 years, that's a significant concern. But it started earlier when, when I remember the decimation of the trade unions and people believing that that was a good thing even though it was their, their industry. Right. And so now we've got to the point of the gig economy where there's no protection for people. You know, so we, we spend so much time voting for things that are not in our own interests and, and that, that's what we've been saying, that's what we've always seen. But it seems to be getting worse. You know, the climate denialism I just got, I see the people and I listen to people who are denying it and I'm and it tends to be older people, not younger people. So just, just from that perspective, you know how to, you know, when you see that conversation happening, like how does, how does that make you feel when you, you know, this is a future looking like when for your generation, what. What are you guys seeing? Yeah, so it's interesting you brought up the, the note about like labor unions. It talked about institutional decay in terms of government. But, but it's also our social institutions that have decayed significantly. And that just has far ranging consequences because there's this famous book, it's called Democracy in America. It was written by a French guy named Alexis de tocqueville. In the 1820s, he came over to the U.S. he wanted to figure out how this country could work when it didn't have a common religion, culture, or, you know, a monarch to rally around. And what he found was that it was civil institutions that held everything together. It was. Everyone was a member of some sort of civil society group, whether that was a church or a club or something. And that was sort of the glue that held the society together. And that's something that lasted through probably to the second half of the 20th century. Century that also started to decline. People started the social groups like, you know, the Freemasons or the, the Lions Club or the Rotary Club, those started to disappear. And people as well as like churches and labor unions, so people became more atomized, more stratified. And now it's, you know, we, we've lost that. And people are, like I said, have become. They're unable to organize in a way to affect change because of that. And then in the last 10 years, we've got that social media influence in the mix, right? Yeah, exactly. So there's, I'm sure this, you've heard of this. There's another famous book called Bowling Alone talks about. The idea is that everybody had like some sort of club or something, a civil society group they were a part of. And the book that uses the bowling league as an example, you know, millions of men across the country were a part of recreational bowling leagues. And that's kind of what helped them feel like a sense of being part of the greater community. But that's declined in a big way. And that has a lot of consequences for our politics and our future. Yeah. And our ability to, to, you know, effectuate at the kind of change that we want. But as a young man, I mean, a lot of the changes that we're seeing have been very negative towards young men, especially the online world. And I was reading Sorry, I'll take you off screen so you can have a bit of a break. I was reading a piece where they're talking about, they're talking about a lot of the radicalization is actually happening on the left, not on the right, even though we believe it's on the right, but it's actually. And they were referring thing to things like eco terrorism. Right. Which isn't a left or a right, it's actually both. And eco terrorism actually predominantly started on the right, not on the left, which most people have missed. And it was a long time ago they tried to take over the Sierra Club when they realized that people would be crossing the border in numbers. So it was the southern sort of states. But yeah, but a lot of the things that we're seeing at the moment, everyone's trying to attribute blame, but it's actually there's this huge percentage of young men who are lost in this. More gaming in the digital world. It's not necessarily social media, even though it's classified that way. And you know, we're starting to see the impacts of that. And the blaming of the left and the right I don't think is really helping because there's a societal undercurrent that's a problem. And it's obviously not just in the us it's around the world. And I remember listening to a podcast where this guy that is an expert in this stuff said, so first of all, there's this group of men in Pakistan. There's men in Pakistan without jobs and there's a, a Pakistani word which basically means men who stand around leaning against walls because they've got nothing else to do. So they're bored out of their brains. Right? So masses of men with nothing to do is never a good thing in any society. And what, what this expert, I wish I could remember his name said is in, in Western societies now in particular, young men are not able to have sexual conquests. They're not able to succeed financially and they're not able to succeed socially. So the ramifications of that are negative things for societies and we've got to do something about it. I mean, I think I didn't talk to you about this before, but you want to jump in on that? No, actually this is exactly one of my points, so I'm glad you brought it up. And this might be a little bit of a hot take, but I think this is largely a consequence of the transition to an information based society or an information economy rather, because in the US and a lot of the developed. World. To access the high salary jobs it requires an education. You know, consistently the higher your degree is, the higher the income you're going to have most likely. And it just so happens that women are performing, women and girls perform much better in education than men. You know, they get higher grades in primary, secondary and college. They tend to go on. They now form the majority of incoming college students. They are far more likely to go on and get masters and PhDs and as a result they just get higher paying jobs, higher ranking positions within companies. And the way like you know, our society works, it tends to be that you know, the man, the, you know, the man for tends to be like supposed to be the breadwinner. Right? And we're still kind of stuck in, stuck in that view. So I, I think the, if we're going to kind of heal this issue then we're going to have to kind of redefine in many cases what it really means to be, to be a man and what your obligations, what your duties are. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, it seems right, you know, the, you know, we seeing much more misogyny. We, we, we see, you know, the, what's his name, the US guy calling back all the generals to tell them you've got to be men. And he's defining what that means. Kind of what he's defining is like a version that they did many, many years ago kind of thing. So I think, I think you know, this, this, this part is going back. I'm glad you mentioned bowling along. I was going to ask you about, about that and I think, I think one of the points in it is actually that you know, as an activity like bowling, you had all these different people with completely different views all together pursuing one thing which is, you know, having a drink, basically. Excuse for having a drink. I think there's a point along there about the problem with bowling alone is they don't buy the beers anymore. That's why the bowling was shocked. And so I mean that aspect of social capital and how that brings about, you know, that that's really the challenge for you guys, right? Because you can either accept, so you can actually go ahead because you, you have tremendous power in, in the, in, in, in a new kind of governance, in allowing a new kind of governance to emerge because the existing governance as you described is all failing. It's not serving you anymore. What I find bizarre is so many young people are trying to reinstate the same governance. They're trying to reinstate this sort of very hierarchical structure, this massive thing when today you can actually tackle all these issues by interactions between young people younger than, younger than me from all the different countries when, you know, the governments will agree with. Yeah. And, and so my, my question, and this is what I want to do is really to kind of prompt. Why don't you. Yeah. Sorry, just to clarify, you're asking why don't we like reform our governance systems? Yeah. It's time for revolution. That's what I'm saying. Get out with the flags, let your. Venus shine and go and be that new emergent society. Yeah. Rather than voting for authoritarian leaders that are going to destroy your societies and make it. Yeah. Like you think there's three of us who are Gen X here. I will not have more voting power than my parents until 2028. You guys have more voting power than, than your grandparents and your parents. Right. So Gen X, we're, we're all sitting there. We, we've been through it all. Right. We, we're. I was actually, I was talking about this last night and I'd be interested to see if Joe and Richard agree and David as well. We were the last generation that were allowed out. You know, there was no supervision. We were especially from the Western world, obviously, because it was very different in places like China and India at the time. But, you know, we, we had decent educations in public systems, that sort of thing. But unless you came from a very fortunate upbringing, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a massively privileged way of being, but you could come out of that and, and create opportunities for yourself that would just. I mean, I'm, I'm a girl from a country town in Australia who's managed to work and travel the world and you know, wow. But I didn't come from any privilege. I just came from a time and it was pre digital. It, it was when there was still, you know, a fairly sort of stable middle ground in the media. It went a bit left, a bit right, but it wasn't what we see today. And we also emerged into the, to the digital revolution. We, we sort of, we remember before and we remember and we've lived it since, even though, you know, we're not digital natives. So I think, you know, I think Gen X in lots of ways, even though we don't have the power, we, we had the greatest, we're the greatest generation as far as the privileges that we had and the life that we had now. Rivers and our creeks now oceans were clean. It was pre. That mass consumption sort of cheap. It was pre. All of that. You Know, and so I suppose when I look at your generation, you, you, you were born in that without memory before it. So you know, what, what, what's, what's, how can you guys sort of turn it all around? Richard, you know, I think that this is really, really important. It's actually very profound what you touch upon. And in Sweden. I grew up in Sweden, you know, emigrated in the early 90s, came back a few years, but been living in London for 30 years. We were the last generation in the Swedish society. If you're born, you know, as an early Gen Xer in particular, late 60s, we kind of born in the 60s, grew up in the 70s, got our education in the 80s and made a career in the 90s. You were still protected, but what was then, the welfare state with an implicit promise that we would look after you in terms of education and retirement and if you couldn't find a half decent job, we would give you a minimum standard of living that eroded for many reasons. And what Andrea says is like, yeah, we were out at all hours. I mean as, as a pre teenager, I was allowed out till midnight on a school day. It wasn't a problem. There were no dangers in society. And I still grew up in a fairly big city like Stockholm, which you wouldn't even consider for your kids today because it was still an unblemished, untouched world. But something profound happened in the latter stages here. We got the massive turbocharged in the Western world from effectively defeating communism and tearing down the Berlin Wall. And we got the rough decade which was the 90s, which coincided with us having our careers where you had an unbelievable boost to the global economy driven by a new wave of globalization and a complete destruction of military spending which unleashed trillions of dollars globally that was sent to work in more productive fashion that will never get repeated again because September 11 happened and military spending kind of stopped declining. And since then it's been ramping up and it's really unproductive spending that we've taken away from institutions like education, health care and everything else. So that bubble that we grew up in will not get repeated for these structural, actual economic reasons. And that cannot happen for your generation in that sense. But you need to find, and this is what David is talking about, it's up to you to come back and find the solutions that work in a world which will not have the kind of tailwind that we experienced. It wasn't, you know, our fault that we got this windfall, but it happened for reasons way beyond our control. And I still have a Little bit the sense of kind of resentment for. We got it handed to us and we did right, we got it handed to us. We are extremely lucky. When I meet my old friends in Sweden, we're always talking about things that are touching upon these issues. How lucky we were growing up in kind of an untouched world without big problems. Environment wasn't an issue. We defeated sort of the risk of third World war when I was a little kid. Every first Monday, every month, we had the test of the global alarm and you could go down to the nuclear bunker. That was the early 70s and we defeated all that. But now it's kind of, you need to find a way in a society that will not hand you this opportunity because the government spending will not be there. And that was partially our fault because we demanded too much of our systems. There wasn't. Well, I think there is something in what Sasha was saying earlier. We didn't grow up with a promise, but you grew up with a promise. And yeah, if anything was the problem, we, we promised that you could do anything. Everything was yours and so on and you know, the international structures and all these things. You had model UN in school where you, where you were all about how, oh, we can change the world by being like the un. We didn't have the more you modern. We'd fight in the streets with police. That's what we did. That was our upbringing. And because there was a police academy down the road from where we were, you know, kind of. So we used to get fights with each other. Is this in Hong Kong, David? This in, in, in. In London. Right. You know, we, we, we had all those things. We had outright racism and misogyny and everything else that you can imagine. But we didn't have that promise. And I think. Yeah, we still do. We still do especially. That's an interesting point. That's quite a piece that happened. Right? Yeah. And, and, and, but, but I think in, in some ways this is, this is, this is. You know, I have a book coming out and it's really for young people and it sort of talks about a new finance, basically, and how you can actually make that happen. A few things need unnecessary and most of all what's necessary is to embed in this kind of awakening awareness of all the issues and where it comes and how you want and wanting to have that role. Believing the greatest hurdle in it, the greatest denial, is the denial that things can change. And that's exhibited in constantly thinking it's governments who are going to change it. They're not. They Won't. They won't ever change it. No. All right, Sasha, so we bring you back. What do you think? Yeah, over here. So how do we get you guys Revolting? Yeah. So at least from my perspective in the U.S. we talked about the, the gerontocracy. You know, the average member, average age of the member of Congress has been rising slightly steadily. You know, people without, without term limits, people just stay on pretty much for their whole lives until they're, you know, very old, which has some pretty disastrous consequences. And it's not healthy for any kind of political system like the, like the Soviet Union had shortly before it collapsed, it had like three different leaders in the span of five years. They all died of old age. And now we have alcoholism. Yeah, yeah. And now in the US we have, you know, our presidents are increasingly old, our senators are increasingly old and are refusing to retire. So it's really just going to take like a grassroots movement among like the pro democracy parties, the pro democracy forces to try and get, to try and get, inject new blood into these systems so that we can finally make the change that we really need to. Yeah, and sort out the Supreme Court. Yeah, right. Yeah. I think you're still thinking the same way. I think. Skip that. You know, this is a global consideration. So, you know, just connect globally and use your agency, your economic agency, your political autonomy as independent agents. Everything works by, by consent. You know, willingness to consent to be governed. That's, that's the essence of the whole political economy is consent to be governed. And, and the, the fallacy is thinking that you have to comply. I think that's, that's the part where really, when we were, when we were growing up, you know, it was constantly pushing against that. I remember being at university during the time of the minor strikes, and the university was really concerned about the students at the time because they were saying, where is that energy and the radicalism here? You know, they're so concerned about getting their degree that they've forgotten what they're here for, which is not to get the degree. Yeah, it's so true. And you know, the other thing that really concerns me about young people is the resilience in young people. I totally agree, David. So, Sash, it's time for revolution. So stop messing around. Get Global Unite under the pirate flag if you need to. But yeah, let's, let's, let's move on to the main sort of news because we've got a lot that we're going to try and cover today and we're going to do some quick and some slower. But I want to start with what we're not going to talk about because it's been one hell of a week. So I'll start most recently. Yeah, exactly. And it. And. And that's part of the problem. I mean that's, that's another topic we're going to talk about that is part of the problem. But obviously we. We saw some breaking news yesterday that there was two. Two Jewish people were killed in four serious. In Manchester at a synagogue. We're not going to talk about it today because details are still coming out and emotions are still running very high. I've seen some posts from people in the UK about it that it's not the way I would express it but it's. It's new. Obviously Greta Thunberg and other activists have been detained detained by the Israeli M military. So let's see what happens there. I just, I really hope they're not stupid in Israel and do something bad there. We talked about the Gen Z protests that are erupting across the world. So there's a mentioned there's this like pirate anime from Japan that's become the central sort of visual representation. Argentina's president who's just nuts anyway the US is going to help them out economically. But you know, isn't the guy that's in Venezuela, isn't he also right wing? Yeah, isn't he also right. He's a Shabista so he's left wing. He's pretty extreme on the left I would say. But you know it's still authoritarian. Right. There is always the argument. Right. And the extreme left kind of has some unified features. Extreme enough. Right? Yeah. That's kind of. It's not a line. It's sort of circular. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The anti vaxxers and the spiritualist that I meant there's a new antibody. There's a new antibody defying Covid that's in. In town and it's doing the rounds now with. With every new type of virus. COVID variant that comes out it's whether it takes hold. So it's still. We're not at that point if it's going to become dominant. Omicron remains. We're waiting to hear to see what happens to Diddy but it won't be a life sentence. Been interesting this race seeing Starmer's popularity is even lower than List Trust which just kind of just mind blowing to me. But anyway is this the week where he maybe turned it around especially I think they're finally understood the Risk to with reform. Moldova's pro EU party won the election which had a lot of Russian interference. The UK reform's former leader has been and taking money from the Russians. The U.S. supreme Court has sided with Trump in freezing $4 billion in foreign aid which obviously we has a big impact. Ella Musk, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel and Prince Andrew have all been named in the Epstein files. But ironically it's Duchess Fergie who's losing out. From her email to Epstein, I can't remember she used some royal slony type of words. So there's a female in prison because of Epstein. Duchess Fergie has lost basically all of her business and all of her charities. I'm still waiting to see a man get punished around this whole Epstein thing. Don't you find that ironic that it's the women? And the final thing is I was kind of asking the question is Larry Ellison the latest member of the Nerd Reich? And I don't know, he's consolidating power with his son David. And I think he's probably definitely in that. In that crew. So that's the stuff we're not going to talk about. Any other news items that you didn't see on the agenda? Well, he says something that's kind of caught my eye. And, and this is, this is the. One of these. It was an article in the FT and it was, it caught my eye because it was stupid plain about this. And this was, you know, how do we now capture carbon out of the atmosphere? There's this company that's now operating and is writing about this as really innovative. It's fantastic. And is to basically spray stones on our agricultural land so that, you know, kind of the stones naturally, certain types of stones naturally kind of gets absorbed carbon dioxide when they, when they go along gas use. So so you, you have this thing where this is fantastic. We're going to do this. There's plenty of agricultural land. So now we're really going to kill the soil. Now we're gonna overlay it with lots and lots of stones every year. And we're gonna have to break these stones from some quarry somewhere, have these big breaking machines in order to do that just so that we can spray it here and make it work in that way. And then the farmers are going to go and they're going to try and plant and use the plows in the middle of these and doing all the stuff that they have to do. But anyway, the fact that it was, it was actually in the FT kind of said There is really is, there's really no kind of awareness. Is, is probably some placed article that someone had in there. I've seen that, I've seen that story around for a while, David, and I think maybe just keep out a little, keep your eye out for a little bit more on that, because I think there's a lot more to it. So, you know, but carbon sequesters, you know, we're not going to do it. Right. It's not an option. All right, so our first big news story. Well, you know. Yeah, yeah, the rocks are from the, the Arctic and. Yeah, there's a lot more, doesn't it? We're gonna pick up. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna transport it across. Yeah. Jane Goodhill died this week, and she obviously, she died in California and she was on a, she was on a pretty hectic speaking tour. 91 years old. And we obviously don't know the, the details, but I just think it's an opportunity to say thank you to an amazing lady who did so much and she never stopped. And one of the things I loved about her was the energy that she carried with her, which was just so gentle and loving. No matter what, no matter how bad it got, she, she never changed. Anyone want to sort of reflect? I, I, I, I, I think she's live well, she was a living testament, actually. Attacking David's notion that, you know, older people are not as vital and not as vibrant and not as energetic as young people. You know, she was in her 90s, for God's sake. You know. Yeah. And she was, she was still effectively working full time, albeit at things and at the pace that suited her. And I, I saw an interview with her that was actually because, but that's what young people do too. Both my kids, you know, they have a flexible work schedule with two days a week from home. It's like suiting you. Right. So I don't think you can blame. Her for that fallacy of picking the one in a hundred thousand and say, you know, every one of the other 99, 99 is like that. I mean, it's, that's, that's what people constantly do, is they go and pick the exceptional and actually use that as an example for the majority. I see you at 91. There. But, you know, I, I have tremendous respect for the people that, that keep on going and doing those things because I think essentially that's what life's about. You want to keep going and doing things, preferably a few different things as you get older. And I saw an interview with her not that long ago, maybe six months ago. I think it was on the BBC when she said, oh, what got me into all this is the sense of adventure. Right. It's like a small child speaking. It's the sense of adventure and doing all these amazing things that you just want to do. And I'm so excited about my next adventure, which is death, because I know it's coming pretty soon. And for me, it's new. Right. It's unexplored. And I. I really want to understand what that is all about. And I thought, wow, that. That is good going. It's not how most people sort of think and face as the final phase in their life. Because I do it with great trepidation. Right. Most people I know don't really even want to talk about it. And she was so forthright and forthcoming. It's like, this is going to be a great new adventure. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sasha, do you want to say anything? Well, I just hope to be someone who is contributing when I'm considered old and continue to have the judgment good enough to say that it's time when it's time, you know? Yeah, yeah. There's a few men around the world that could get that lesson. Right. It's one of those things where you, you know, you. There's always the right kind of person, the wrong kind of person. I was always when I was young. I was too young when I was old. As I get older now, I'm getting too old. I've always been to something else. Right. And it just whether it's a matter of convenience for the people in that. In that particular moment. Right. I mean, if there was somebody who was able to still express themselves in a way that still was useful and move things in the right direction. We all have examples, someone very old like that, and I think we all have examples, someone very young who can also express themselves in that way. And similarly, we might say, why would you trust someone young in terms of the future? You talk about people, if you remember your own life and even if you're being a very responsible person. I mean, we're with Sasha, who is not, I think, the central representative of someone of his age group as well. Right. You know, the average person in his age group probably thinks rather differently. They probably have some borrowed ideas of what it's going to be about, but I don't think they have the same kind of historical knowledge that he has. The narrative of politics and all those things that come along, the consequence of behavior. I think there is a sense of borrowed injustice. You know, I just remember being. I can still remember being a teenager and being angry just because, you know, and I think there is bit of that as well. There is a lot of. There's a lot of this is wrong. I heard about it from somewhere else, but I don't know specifically what has happened, so I don't know whether they can do any. Anything specifically about that as well. So I was thinking about the answers as to why don't we rebel? And I think it's a lot to do with, you know, when you lead and then you look back and no one's following you, that can be a very disheartening thing. Just before. Before we get Satcher on, what's on your T shirt, Joe? Oh, today I have a shirt that you might enjoy. It's vaccines. Cause adults. Nice, nice. All right, Sasha? Yeah, no, you said it's actually. Right, this a crisis of leadership, and it's something that I've talked about, I've been thinking about for a while, is the kind of caliber of leaders that we have today is quite different than what we've had in the 20th century. I think our governing systems have just become very complex and very bloated in a certain sense. And to the extent that it really disincentivizes people with, you know, innovative thinking. So a lot of people who do have really innovative, really ambitious ideas, they're far better off just going into the private sector rather than serving in the government. And so as a result, we've sort of ended up with this new kind of generation of leaders that are more like managers, if anything. They're good at, like, very good at, like, managing our current system, but not really building on anything new on top of it. And that's, that's, you know, that's what we're seeing in. In the uk, for example, labor was elected with a big mandate, but they, they so far seem really unable to effectuate any kind of change, like building housing and infrastructure. And, and it's sad because they have a, you know, they have a big moment. There's. There, there is a path toward improving the situation, but there's. The political will just isn't there because it just doesn't have the right leadership. And this is the same story they could see across the world, too. I take a little bit of exception to that, I think, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and I think that's. I think what the way you've expressed it is, the failure of the youth is to think that it takes leadership when when we were young, when I was young, nobody thought about being a leader. They just thought about what am I going to do? And they, they had some sense like you, you had in your, in your description about how you know, your, your, your upbringing and your kind of diverse view that you had in your upbringing and so on. So there are some sense of what it means to continue in that way. But we were looking for a leader to give us a future. We were just out there to have a go. And in your expression at the moment, the failure of that thinking is the burden on the cost of governance in this way, which I think Richard made some comment to earlier, we just can't afford it. That's why the US has basically 2 trillion negative deficit in their budget every year. You know, a bit less than that, but that's pretty much what it is. You know, it brings in about, I don't know what, seven and it spends, sorry, it brings in about five and it spends seven. And that's why the French government has collapsed again. And that's why Liz Truss's government's collapse. And that's why when you go from Liz trust to labor the same Kukir Starmer, the same thing happens because there isn't that money. It's all pre allocated to all these things. You can't get an extra bit. And as for this idea of bringing it out from all the billionaire and everything else, sure, go ahead, confiscate all that wealth that will last you less than one year before you run into same problem again. Nobody sees that as a problem. They see that as a lack of leadership. But actually what it is is a lack of individual agency and the desire for individual agency. Young people don't desire that individual political agency. They'd rather have someone else deal with it. Wow. Yeah, I, I, I, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think for me the root cause of, let's call it broadly speaking, governance inefficiency and the fact that the money is running out is, and this is, you know, we are all guilty of this. Boomers, Gen X, millennials, we actually demand too much from our whole institutional apparatus. I firmly believe if you're going to be really efficient in what you do, in any form of structure, you need to have clearly defined target targets and clearly defined boundaries. What is your responsibility and what you should not be dealing with. The kind of bloatedness that has happened to western governance structures is that there was some form of implicit and explicit demand from citizens that the state should be dealing with all issues. I think that is fundamentally wrong and that's why we're running out of money. We can debate where we're going to put this kind of barrier for what the state should be responsible for. I think in my case, I've pretty clear vision. I think every child should have a solid education. I think you should have the right for health care up to a point, which is not determined by lifestyle choices. I think you should have a police and a legal system that protects its citizens. You should trust the legal apparatus to work in an efficient and fairly smooth way. But we have demanded so much more than this from our state that we have no more money. And there is always someone to blame for all this. And I just think that is kind of the reckoning moment we have now in the world. There are some very efficient ways, I think, to improve governance structures. And Sasha, definitely I 100% agree with you that one of the most simple ways we could do to restore faith in institutions is to limit terms. If you come into governance, you have your defined period to make your mark. This is not the career choice when you can hang around infinitely, rack up, you know, very high pension and once you leave, use those contacts in the private sector to do various forms and consultancy and get rich. No, you're in governance and government for a limited period of time and this is your moment to actually enforce the policies that you were elected on because you believe in them in your electorate. You managed to make your electorate believe in you being the person to drive these policies, then you should go and leave space for someone else. But fundamentally, the underlying issue is the imbalance between what we are prepared to pay in taxes, I. E. What the state can be dealing with and what we demand. And they are not aligned in the Western world, let's be honest about that. But they're not aligned anywhere. And I think I'm even further from you. I mean, I think my point is that, you know, where governments fail, we step in. Young people, young professionals can just step in, but they, but the problem if they did that is that that takes away the reason to go and call on the governments to do it. So, so you then end up in the situations where if you believe in governance, you don't step in because you believe that it's the government who has to do it. And so you, you end up defeating yourself as a result. And, and I think that the difference is, well, maybe it was me because, you know, I had upbringing where I just didn't understand what was going on because I moved from one country to Another and those sort of things and didn't understand the language. But we never had that promise of a structure that would provide for you. And when we went to universities, it wasn't about getting a degree. But you also had that Asian sort of cultural mindset of the family, comes together as collective and moves forward. Right. And you take care of each other and you take care of your elders and you do all that sort of stuff. So I think, I think that's such a gift. And that's really important because this morning I saw a post by Kate Kryshler, whom we had on us on time before and, and it was about then and she, she was reposting something about complexity and agriculture and how, you know, complexity is not priced and so on and, and the, the essence of that. And I made a comment it on LinkedIn, so if anyone wants to follow my comments, I've looked in there was that it's not what, what is price. What we now think of is transactional. Everything is transactional. But it's the interactions, it's the not agreeing. It's back to, you know, bowling alone. It's not scoring the strikes, it's actually the bowling and the interactions. The fact that you missed it and people are joking at you about whatever it is, that's what builds the social structure. That's what builds the ability for things to emerge out of it. When we look to governance, we thin that down because we are saying someone directs something and the rest just follows. There's no richness in that model and that model is extremely expensive and we can't afford it. Yeah, I, I think one of the things I've sort of been saying for a long time now is for, because life has been so easy and gotten better for everyone for, you know, over this sort of 50 year window, whereas more and more people, more and more middle class have been added to the mix. Right. And we've gotten used to sitting on our asses and criticizing the people who are out there running the institutions and it's time to get off the couch and stop complaining and start getting involved. And because we're not, it's, we can't, we can't. You know, like female politicians are leaving in droves because of the abuse and online threats and why would anyone, I mean, why would anyone want to go into politics right now? You have to have the thickest skin. It's revolting what's going on. Right. But before we move on to the next one, Joe, Sasha, you want to reply? I was going to Ask actually this question. You know, we took David said broadly that the young people don't want to lead. Right. Or don't want to take the, the helm of it. I wanted to ask Sasha, I mean, would you or is there something that could be done under what circumstances would you say, yep, I'm going to step up and do it. Right. I mean that I, I, I think that there's some kind of calculus to that. It's probably balancing between what you have to give up or whatever. I'm not certain Sasha doesn't want to leave. Yeah, it's different ways to lead. Right? Yeah. Because, well, it just goes back to what I was talking about before. It's just become the, the systems have just become so complex that it's just so hard to really get anything like, like, like it, like building houses in California now is just like an entire, you know, billion dollar process or I don't know if you're following like the high speed rail system in the UK or in California. You know, I think in California it's now like $100 billion and they haven't even launched one train. And that's just because of this layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy and gridlock that if you have any sort of talent or ambition, you're better off just going into the private sector, trying to effectuate change there than going into elected government. So I think if you're going to attract more young people to the governing institutions, you're going to need to really make it worth their time, so to speak. And you're going to have to implement some of these major reforms to try and actually to, so that, you know, elected officials can actually enact an agenda for their constituents. Yeah. Although I do think, Sasha, that there's some very big powers behind those things like high speed rail not going ahead that have got nothing to do with government, have got a lot to do with who's giving who money behind the scenes. So this, there's no reason the US shouldn't, shouldn't have a better, I mean, China's just launched a new train, high speed train that's faster than flying, you know, so, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. I don't think the wheel's been there where, so again, you can blame the government, but is it, is it that or are there other vested interests fighting against it? Because, you know, America built a car nation just like Australia did and they're, you know, they're losing out. All right, so I wanted to move on to the military events. And you know, I was in, I was in the army. That was my first job out of university. I was a musician in the Australian Army. And because I was on parade so much as a musician, I had a lot of interactions with the brigadiers and the generals and those guys. And they're very, very, very serious dudes, right? They're not, then, they're not, they're not chipper kind of fellas, right? I just felt this incredible cringe watching it. My teenage boys would be happy with my use of the word cringe. But I've also, since then, what I've been. So obviously that we're not hearing from them directly, the people in the room, but we're hearing a lot from retired generals, admirals, all those sort of things. And apparently there are still, they continue to be a massive influence on the military. So there's very unimpressed. One of the conversations I was listening to a lot of what Pete Hexis was saying was what you can put your hands on the recruits, that sort of stuff. And then this, this former lieutenant general was saying they stopped all of that because if, if you don't protect your soldiers in war so that they don't harm themselves psychologically because if they harm themselves, that obviously has an impact on society. So a lot of what he was suggesting was stopped 30 years ago because they identified the harm, the greater harm, not just to the, to the soldiers. So it's created a lot of conversation, obviously. But one of my things is why didn't they just sit there and go, okay, if, if you guys don't sort this out, it's time for a coup. That was, that was my fault. They were all there. It could, it could have happened. But anyway, who, who wants to start? Joe, you haven't said much, so do you want me to get you up? Well, if you like. I mean, I, I think in terms of a presentation, it was the worst impersonation of Tony Robbins I've ever seen. It wasn't an attempt to try and galvanize and, and say a few, and say a few things that were going to get applause lines. And I mean it, it really didn't work. And I, and I think, I hate to put it in terms of a show, but really Hegsef is the worst kind of warm up act you can have before you put Trump on as well. I think in the moments where he comes on and he basically accuses people of different things and talks about facial hair and stuff. And to me, my personal view is that hegsef would be less about the beard if he could grow a good one. It's, it's that, it's that kind of thing where he's, he's, he's, he's speaking all these sort of trite comments from the stage and saying, this is the way it's gonna go. And then I think that moment where he really lost the room with Fafo, which is, it's, it's, it's basically is. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's an Internet term talking about, you know, f around and find out, right, that's supposed to be what it is. But it basically went out into the ether and no one understood that at all. And so it didn't even have its impact as a line. So it was quite a bad, it was, it was a terrible, terrible thing. The whole thing, even the bringing together of everyone for that purpose was because of the politics involved. It was wholly un American in terms of what the military. It was supposed to, what the military is supposed to be. So, you know, in terms of, you know, like, if you talk about fafo, I mean, look, you're right. This is the kind of moment that really leads to a military coup. That. The thing is, I don't, I don't think the moment is right, quite right for that. I think the problem is right now, there's so much, so much leaning to the left and right within the organization as well. Everyone's holding their heart, their, their hearts quite close to themselves within the military. It's really hard to say what's going to happen. I don't, I don't think a coup is going to happen. But, you know, I can, I, I could imagine myself as someone in that audience going like, yeah, it's time. Yeah, yeah, well, some, something drastic is going to have to happen. Right? And, and there's, there's a lot more talk about his mental state. David, do you want to jump in? I don't think it is. I mean, I don't think anything's gonna happen. I think, I think one, one thing that caught my eye was that 20, the U.S. supreme Court had approved 21 out of 23 sort of emergency kind of measures appeals to the Supreme Court from Trump over a very short time in the second term. It hasn't lasted that long. I mean, you know, statistically, if you think about appealing to the supreme court, ending up 21 out of 23 times in your favor is kind of pretty remarkable. And the comment made by One of dissenting judges is, you know, the, the docket of that comes along and the amount of time spent on it is shorter than what the Supreme Court would normally spend and what they consider as a relatively trivial case. So, so there's actually no consideration at all. It's just proofed, stamped, stamp stamped. So, so what you have in the, in the US at the moment, you know, if you go back to that sort of historical outlook, the more I look at it, the more it really does resemble that period in between the two wars in Germany as it was sort of reconsolidating its control and power. You, you move out all the people you don't want. You just, you, you fire away your government. This is the part, interestingly, you know, with, with the government shutdown that's going on is, you know, as far as they're concerned, this fantastic. I can lay off all the other people. You know, the, the initial Department of Government efficiency did one part of it. Now I can do the rest of it in, in that way. And, and they have the full support. Everything else and this side of it is actually bringing along the military. They've already fired off the major generals and head of chief staff or whatever it is. So they're going to go on through and with the speech, they're going to pick out all the other ones along. So no, you're not going to get the military coup because this is not, you know, Myanmar or Pakistan or some, somewhere like that. This is America. The, the Americans don't think of a military coup in, in their own country. Let's see. I don't think they're going to be an authoritarian state either. Right. They are. I think that's what. Sorry, Richard. No, but I wholeheartedly agree with you, except for the last point. It's pretty clear your comparison with Germany in the sort of 30s is, is very pertinent because if you want to be efficient in that kind of leadership, you need to remove the judicial independency, you need to remove the monetary policy independency, which clearly Trump is hell bent on and will succeed with. I mean, that, that's kind of how these mandates fall out. Then you get the control of the apparatus and you can attempt to do it with the military. I actually don't think he will succeed in the military to the same extent. And for me, that does increase the likelihood, albeit remote, for a military rebellion in the US where they say basically this is not going to work and something we take totally and wholly for granted in the Western world is that the governing body in politics effectively has a military that is totally loyal to the government. That's something that's not the case in Turkey. Obviously it's not the case in a lot of emerging markets. I think in the UK and the US you would put these two countries on top of the list probably with the Scandinavian countries are saying here there is no question that the military will follow the governing body in the country. We may be a tad more suspect in places like Spain and Italy, possibly even France, although I think France is pretty close to UK and the US it's for taking for granted that in Latin America they're not Right. So you are moving this pendulum all of, all of a sudden. It's not 100% certain that military leadership will stand behind the governing body in the US to maybe 90. Are we comfortable with those 10% having moved and how should we price that in financial market? Interesting. Sasha, as the American in the room, do you want to, do you want to give your view or. I know you can't necessarily talk about all of this, but yeah, what I. Will say because like my whole thing about the decline institutions and trust institutions is that there is one institution that has bucked the trend and that is the military. Americans still hold its military in very high regards. And so to see this happening, I think is, is, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a very dark turn, I think. Yeah, it's, you know, this is something that was supposed to be totally apolitical. It was supposed to be just, it's a very technical institution. And you know, really what I can only think about now is like, I really wish I were a fly on the wall, you know, after the speech, I really want to know what they were thinking and saying. One of, one of the, one of the generals I was listening to, he was saying the, the, the president can tell them to do things that, against, like the Geneva Convention, but he, he, he won't be punished for it. But this, but the soldiers will. So because he's got whatever the Supreme Court gave him, you know, the right to do whatever he wants. Presidential immunity or was it executive or official acts or something? Yeah, exactly. So, all right, so should we move on to the Gaza peace plan? Do, do I, I added an extra piece that came in overnight. So the, the Hamus leader in Gaza has basically said, no, I'm not accepting this apparently. Sorry, no. So apparently the Gaza leadership in Qatar have said they would be open to accepting it with adjustments or every headline has been, you know, The European Union says to Hamas, accept this. The Americans say, accept it. Everyone says, accept it. But at the same time, there's been a lot of coverage saying there is no protection for the Palestinians in this. This, you know, this. This isn't in their interest. So. So there's been two sides to the story. But the other thing is, of course, Netanyahu opening, Opening his mouth and changing. Changing the rules and saying, well, no, we're not going to want to that, because One of the 20 points is recognition of the Palestinian state. And he's saying, no, that's not going to happen. So I think. Which if. If Hamas doesn't accept it, based on the global sort of outpouring of pressure to accept it, I'm. I'm concerned about the impact of that. So who. Who wants to jump in? David, I know you're really passionate about this topic. Do you want to jump in? Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think there's two. Two things. I think first of all, if you have a plan with 20 points, you've got 20 points for people to pick to not accept it. So, you know, I. I look at this and I think, I don't want Tony Blair being there, you know, so. So I have a point in there, and I'm gonna say, you know, why is he there? But, you know, is that relevant to the rest of the thing? Is it the most important thing? No, it's not. So what you end up with, you end up having the trivial elements dictating what happens in that way. So as a plan, I think, you know, for me, the plan would be just start by returning all the people from their different places. The hostages, the bodies, the. The Palestinians and all those things. Just start with that, without anything else. Just say, that's what we're going to do. What you then left with is situation where you have to figure out the next step. So now Israel and the Palestinians are now in a situation where the world can now see and say, okay, what is going on now? Now that that excuse or reason or rationale or whatever it is for the situation that it is has been resolved in that way. What next? Do we get aid in? Will the Israelis allow actually food to go through into the place and all the rest of it or not, the other side of this is the global, you know, the, the flotilla that's going over in there. And when Gandhi started his salt March, he had 78 people along. And by the end of it, 60,000 were arrested pretty brutally by the occupiers at the time. And that was the point. The point was they were going to be arrested. But what it did is actually pretty much lost the colony. It made even the British themselves find that what they were doing was untenable in what they were doing. And that's the point that goes back to the point Sasha was making before about the governance and what we are. We do things because we think it needs to succeed in certain ways. We don't just do it because it's the right thing to do. And that's how we get stuck in this argument about governments and all those things. It's very clear what it is that people around the world ought to do, need to do, which is to provide the sustenance that people need in a place where people don't have it. And we can do that. And it doesn't matter if along the way, it doesn't get there because of the interference of something else that just says, we get more of it out there, more of it out there. We've got all these little bits of crowdfunding things that are going on for all kinds of things. This can take that money better. But we don't talk about that. We end up talking about, you know, as I said, you know, should Tony Blair be involved in this, which is kind of trivializing the whole thing. You are correct. You're 100 correct. On a practical level, I cannot see Hamas ever agreeing to this, because if they give up the hostages, they've basically given up the reason to exist at the moment, and then the whole basis for trying to start an effective war against Israel has ceased, and they. They will cease to become a factor. And given Israel's military gains they've made, why should they stop now? They're probably extremely close to wiping out Hamas, literally, which would be considered an extreme success by Netanyahu, who. Who himself needs to cling to power, not to face charges. Right. So practically speaking, I don't see it ending because Hamas would be done as an organization, and Netanyahu needs to effectively root them out to survive politically. Yeah, it's. It's a tricky one. Right. Should we move on. One last bit, A little, kind of an odd historical parallel, perhaps? You know, my daughters started sort of in school. They're studying how the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, and. And of course, you know, that failed. And eventually, you know, the British tried it before them, and the Americans then went along and tried it and so on. And. And in the end, what it is, is just a very expensive way to put the same people back in power. And you know, I just wanted to leave with that. Yeah. All right, so I'm going to share in the comments. I'm going to share a video with you from the listening post. And it's how Palantir is transfer transforming modern warfare. Did anyone have a chance to have a look at it before, before today? I know I gave you a lot. Pretty terrifying. Yeah. Yeah, right. Okay. So you know someone who comes from the tech industry. So the commentary in this video is like it talks about, it's a company that has basically empowered automated warfare. And we've heard about one of the tools in, in the war in Gaza is called lavender and it basically identifies potential targets and, and, and, and to, to be taken out. And basically one of the guys that used to create the advertising and the, and the movies and stuff, he's left the company and said it leads to this immense amount of civilian deaths, destruction and mistakes. They use Hollywood style advertising. It's all about producing a vibe. When you watch the video, it's very, it's very, it's very beautifully crafted, but it's dark and appealing to a sense of danger. It's all about tapping into fear. So you know, and this is, this is, this is all part of a bigger sort of a global movement to instill this fear inside in us so that we accept this sort of leadership. So Palantir is technically a data company, but what it does is it collects, interprets and automates information and it's been pushing out this message. If you listen to the two founders, one's Peter Thiel and the other one's this guy called Alex Karp, basically the west has sort of moved into this culture of complacency, which is what I was talking about. We're sitting on the couch complaining and we're not getting involved. And both of these founders, they're like philosophy majors. They're not tech, tech people. And by being that what they, what, what that means is that they understand the philosophy of language, information and how these tools can be weaponized. So you know, social media, everything that's been going on for the last 10, 15 years is all about sort of getting to us to this point. There's a clash of civilization, narrative in the mix, in their personal sort of branding, their hypman. And the first time I've ever seen this, they're considered defense influences, which is. Yeah, they're always making these outrageous claims. Exactly. The world is in crisis and basically techno militarism is sweeping through Silicon Valley. And you know, they're presenting a sleek startup aesthetic, but it's instead of what we're used to, it's for war. So they're very active on the political stage. You see, you see Peter Till in particular, everywhere next to Trump. And you know, they're, they're, they're playing a role even in genocide. So, you know, this is interesting. Then there was another piece which I'll share it as well. What will Jesus say? This is the title. Tony Blair Big Tech and the Israel Connection. So basically the story is Tony Blair was at the christening of Rupert Murdoch and his wife, former wife, something Deng, where his twin children were baptized on the spot where John the Baptist was supposed to have been baptized. Right. And Tony Blair was in the water for this baptism. He wasn't in any of the public publicity photos. He obviously was smart enough to stay out of it, but he was in the water and he was wearing white and they all thought he looked like Jesus. And so when you hear Jesus being referred to by these people, it could actually be Tony Blair that they're talking about, which I think is a bit weird. But you know, these are the times that we're living in. So I don't know if you guys had time to read that. I'll put it in the link. But yeah. Thoughts? Who's up? They're too far out for me. No, I think they are modern day arms dealers. Basically. You know, if you think of the traditional arms dealers is they sell software, they sell the hardware of war, but they need war fundamentally. They, they, they need war and conflict. And, and they, and what they, what they are is actually they are kind of the taken arms dealing into that kind of technology and software, sort of, you know, kind of data analysis and that sort of space in, in that way. So that's what they do. They, they need war. And their message is very much that. And you know, the, they, they, they are also really bad philosophers, bad theologians, really bad philosophers. They are the ones that takes things out of context and then develop kind of a, their sort of their rationale out of it as opposed to improve a body of knowledge and the body of understanding and wisdom. They, they do the opposite. They diminish the wisdom of a body from a body of wisdom. They, they actually diminish it by picking out the quotes and picking out the things and then actually allowing that to lead people to where they want. So they're, they're very much publicists, you know, arms dealing publicist in, in that way. That's kind of my, my limited take. Yeah. You check out Peter Thiel's Antichrist tour. That's interesting, especially if you're reading some of the opposition to it. Even he's understanding what the Antichrist is and how he's using it. It's fascinating, Joe Sash. I mean, for me, I think Palantir is a story. It sells really well. But I also think that the people behind it really do believe what they're doing. They're on board thinking that they're on the righteous side of things. They think they're making a choice, which we talk about philosophy, and I think many times you talk about philosophy and you think that it's about ultimate enlightenment. Sometimes it's actually about clarity. Right. And I think that's where I differ a little bit on this. I think what they do is they see things in a certain way and they have a very clear vision of it, and it's that that drives their. Their behavior. I mean, not that I agree with them, but there's certain things about the way the world works where I can understand fully why the philosophy makes sense. What's happening perhaps in the Middle east currently, from an Israeli perspective, I can. I can actually understand the philosophy behind it and what actually make sense. At the same time, I can also see why Bahamas. The philosophy also makes sense. The two sides aren't designed. I mean, the two philosophies are not designed to come to some kind of. One of the philosophies will have to give way for the other to continue. Absolutely. I can promise you that. Both sides there absolutely think they are the righteous ones. Yeah. There is no doubt about that. And philosophically, what they're doing as well, I can fully. I. I can understand what they're doing, and I know that it's. It's. Is what, you know, it's. It's. You know, philosophy, when I was. When I was studying philosophy is like, you know, first of all, there's some. There's some first principles. Right. First principles can be different. And those first principles usually don't change. That's why they are the principles. And I think that's what you have to kind of take into account when you look at philosophy. You go like, okay, what are the first principles? And then based on that, are you acting out the philosophy based on those things? And very frequently to break through what you have to do is actually get down to the very principles and break down the first principles before you can have a kind of discussion. So that's kind of the hard thing, actually. Some of the things in life, the really hard decisions are the unpleasant ones, which, which are things you can't normally do, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to do. But if you had to take a step back and say, okay, now, philosophically, what do I, what do I do? You're ultimately acting out the trolley problem. Right. And if you're in that situation and you have the trolley problem, what would you do? What do you have to do? And for some groups, they have decided ahead of time what they're going to do. They are going to mow down the one person, you know, because of the, to save the five, that sort of thing. So, Joe, I want to, I want to just jump on that. So I think the Israelis. Yep. Yeah. The, the belief is their cultural belief, the historical and, and Hamas. Right. So I totally get with you. The tech bros, what do they believe? Right. You say you hear them quoting a fantasy or a sci fi book. And I, I'm a fantasy head from way back. Not sci fi, but not much. And, and I'll hear like someone like Mark Zuckerberg, I think Snow Rider or something is his book and he quotes from it, but he doesn't represent the meaning behind the book. And so you hear the authors of these books talking about these tech bros, using them as inspiration, but actually they're not aligned to, to the, the true meaning under the book. Right. I've sat in rooms in silhouette. Oops, oops. Something happened there. Take Peroza. Am I back? Yeah. They talk and everybody listens and they literally make no sense at all, but nobody ever goes against them. So I, I think there's, I, I agree with what you're saying, but I think what, you know. So if you go to the nerdwrite.com which is Gilgaran's website, where I first started really digging into this sort of side of things, you know, and I know, Sasha, you've got some views on this, I'd love to hear, but these aren't the same things. They're really not. And there's, there's some deluded thinking in the mix and it's incredibly dangerous in the sanctuary cities. The big events happening here in Singapore today, apparently it's not very well attended, which I'm kind of relieved about. This is, this is some weird stuff that's going on and they have power in government and Trump is the first chance they've ever had and will probably ever have to make these dreams a reality. And these dreams aren't for everyone. It's for a very small select few. And screw the rest of us. So, you know, and it's the failure of imagination, which we talked about before. I think we've got to get our heads around what, what's really going on and what needs to be done to stop it. Because this isn't about collectively moving forward as a, as a global society to solve the biggest problems we have. This is a few people that are looking to save their own ask and everybody, everybody else can go and get stuffed, literally, you know. Sash, do you want to jump in? Because I know you've got some thoughts on the, the brawligarchy. Yeah, of course. So two things mainly come to mind about the, the volunteer thing, you know, going back to like the world that I inherited as a millennial. I was raised with this belief as, like as after 911 and the war and terror, that technology would make war very clean. Something sort of like surgery that like, you can you know, very precisely target the bad guys with no collateral damage. But that's just impossible. You can't, that's unachievable. It's just basically, you know, the antithesis, the very nature of warfare. But, you know, people really, really wanted to believe that thing, that kind of thing was possible. And the second thing is when I, whenever I hear about these, you know, Peter Thiel and the kind of technology and their views, it always just goes back to just how fundamentally anti human that the Silicon Valley ideology is, because it just feels like they're like these tools, these AI tools that they're building. They're supposed to be like, like as, like the millennials were raised to believe that the Internet, that social media was something that was supposed to connect us, that was supposed to, you know, bring the world together, supposed to democratize ideas and discussions. But then, and, and that was, you know, that seemed to be achievable at least maybe until around 2012 when they started putting in these algorithms, when they started, you know, the, the profit incentives, when they started prioritizing engagement and response, attention. And that's. And at that point, it was no longer about, you know, connecting people. It became honestly about, like atomizing people more than anything. So now we're in a situation where the, you know, the, the tech oligarchs there, you know, causing the atomization and the fracturing of society, the decline in our institutions. After Citizens United, we decided that money equals political power. And with the, you know, the tech oligarchs, they have all of the, they have all the money and therefore they have all the political power. So we're just really just gonna have to ask ourselves, the next generations of leaders, if, you know, this is the kind of future that we want, you know, if these tools, if, you know, this technology that is so powerful, that is so influential and so necessary for our lives, if we're just gonna leave them in the hands of people like Mark Zuckerberg and leave them in the hands of people like Elon, that's going to be a really tough decision to make. Well, if we hit 3 degrees warming, we won't be worrying about stuff like that. I, I think it's super interesting what you're saying. When do you think the pivotal moment, moment happened when this kind of changed? I would say, you know, you can fact check me on the, on the exact date that, that Facebook decided that they were going to prioritize engagement and retention. I think that was 2014. It was, sometimes it was sometime between 2012, 2016. Yeah. 2015 was about the year that it all went to. Yeah. Did you ever see Canadian TV series called Continuum? No. If you get a chance. I mean, I, I liked it, but, you know, that's me kind of thing. But the story is basically about coming back from the future, coming back from 2077 to 2012, because that was the start of when they all went to. And that was, that was when the story plot is actually that the techno bro repented and wanted to stop it and invented time travel to try and do that. Well, I mean, I think if you talk about when the problem began, it began a long, long, long time ago. Because, I mean, I've been, I've been studying media and employing media, right? And my whole thing is about how do you, how do you, how do you work for engagement? How do you get someone to listen longer, how do you get them to, to stay engaged? So that, that game's been around for a long time. We've been working at getting someone to listen an extra 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever. It, it actually has been happening a long time. And what happened was the technology gave you the ability to, to, to amplify that, scale that up. So the, the, the, the desire to engage, that's always been there. It's not something that, that we're trying to stop. I mean, if you look at what, what people were saying about TV before the mobile, before, before, before the iPhone came along, up to that point, TV was this big menace, right? It was the one that was doing all the, all the damage. And then the Internet came along and that was the one that was the big menace. And now actually, mobile actually is what happened. So if you want to blame some pivotal moment, it's mobile, the ability to take this, this experience that you normally had some kind of respite from, from time to time and you got home and had to dial up and had to get on the Internet and now you could carry it around with you and effectively be on the Internet all the time. That's where it began. And if you want to talk about the pivotal moment, if you like, it probably was the invention of the like button, right? That's when they, they, they decided to give you some kind of feedback on, on that. And, and that was, and it was, the reason why it was kept is because the metrics showed that the like button worked really well. It seems like the most mundane of things right now. But what's behind it all is just this fact that we are, we're stupid human beings and we want attention. We like someone liking the stuff that we like and we like to pay attention to things that we find, you know, important. Something that triggers us emotionally, so we tend to go for it. And if you talk about what the world has been about, politicians have been doing that all the time. It used to be a thing where you had a different kind of platform with which you could do that, but now you just have the amplified platform. So we are the sad creatures that we are. We just respond to things the way we do. It's what is our strength. We're empathetic. We do tune in to something that is potentially painful or makes you feel angry or makes you laugh or whatever it is. But it's also the thing that's being exploited, right? And if it's, if you can put a price, if you can put a price and value on something, that's what capitalism will do. It'll, it'll say, okay, now how do I turn this into advantage? Right? If you think about what was happening, for instance, with, with Google before they figured out how to make money, they were being useful. They had the engagement, they had the whole thing going, and someone managed to find a way for them to turn that into something a bit more useful without being too damaging to the world. And I can't say that Facebook managed to do the same thing. Facebook was having its own problems as well. It couldn't make the money running this big, huge network. And they found something about the way the network can work. And then it just went out of control. As people begin to go, you know, they begin to master the tools and then you have people within that who are actually amplifying it. So you have a hundred different micro. Well, you have thousands and thousands of micro influencers who are doing things, putting out clickbait all the time. If you have that much clickbait going out, someone's going to encounter some clickbait and it's going to get you right. It's going to use up your dopamine, it's going to wear you out, you're going to get anxious because you're going to be put into this. You know, like the whole thing about algorithms, and we blame the algorithms. It's what we would do as parents if our kids like a certain kind of food. When we want to serve up some food, we're going to go and keep in mind that they like that kind of food. So that's why so many families get to eat chicken nuggets all the time. Right. It's. It's something that the audience responds to. So in that sense, I think what we're seeing is the scaling of the human condition via social media. Right? Yeah. So I just want to counter that a little bit, Joe, because you're presenting us and how we use it and how we interact with it and what's fed to us. But the nerdrite side is the data acquisition. So by walking around with our phones in our pocket, there is a record of exactly where we are, who we interact with, who we talk to, all of our medical data. If you've got apps, and even if you don't activate your apps, there's still a health data in your phone that's picking up information, how many steps a day you walk. Right. Who we speak to, who we message, the private stuff as well as the public stuff. Right. So that's the data bit, that's the money bit. Right. So when we walk down the street, we'll get an ad for a Coke because we're walking past a machine and they know that we bought Coke at the supermarket because we ordered it online. So they basically know every single thing about us. And by knowing every single thing about us, it's the fear of what they can do to, as far as control with that. Right. So when we talk about. We don't trust the institutions and yet we give all of our information to these companies. And we're not, we're not, we're not cognizant of what they're doing. We're. We're paying attention to this other side, the rage and the baiting and all that sort of stuff, which is big, but there's this other side. You know, we talked about AI companions. We talked about the meta glasses, we talked about all that sort of stuff, right? Our privacy. No matter where we go, someone can be talking to us. And these companies own AI now, right? So they've already done all this other stuff. They've already been building and, and basically creating societal breakdown and democratic failures. And now they're, they're owning AI and they're the ones that are buying up the land for the sanctuary cities and they're the ones building the bunkers and they're the one, you know, it's like, come on, guys, you know, when are we going to wake up? This is, this is a massive risk to all of us and we still go along with it, you know, and I, you know, when we talk about when, when, when will this technology go? When, when will we say we've had enough? I think, I think a huge percentage of the population has stepped away from, especially from social media. Everywhere I go, people like, oh, I just don't want to be there anymore. And it's the only place we've got. That's our town square. It's the only place where we can put our point of view out, out there into the world. I'd love to disappear from it too, but I've got a global family, you know, that I want to stay connected with. And that's why it's been a beautiful. Because the beauty of it has always outweighed the bad. But I think we're moving into the point where still the case anymore and you can't disappear. We've got, we've got to pay attention. But this is, this is, this is a big change. I mean, I think I want to go back to one thing and again, you know, to, to the relevance to Sasha in, in that sense and the money. And you know, this is at the back of these, these are companies that are invested in as ventures and they, and because they invested in ventures, they then have to expand and make money because a lot of money was put into it. And the driver behind all of those, behind our investments is our, is we fundamentally think of securing a future with money, and that's what we're locked into at the moment. So we, as in, you know, I'm, I'm 61 and so I'm kind of a boomer locked into that. That's the mentality and so on. And the point here is, what's Sasha going to do? Are you contributing to a pension? Because if you're contributing to pension, that pension makes its money from this. It makes it money from the Palantir and all those things, the private equity that goes into these things, the incubating labs and all those things. And this is the path that it goes. There was a comment, I can't remember the precise phrasing of it by a guy in the, in the, in that documentary Social Dilemma, which is talking about social media and the, and the, you know, the harm he was creating. And he made the point that, you know, when you throw a lot of money together into these things, then the result is exactly what you get, you know, because that money needs the returns. And this is the way to do it. As Joe is saying, it taps into that very long term need, that innate thing as Richard and I. Richard's disappeared. I didn't know where he's gone. You know, in the Unsustainable Truth we talk about a book written in the, in the 50s, I think, called the Persuaders, which is about how do you actually go about marketing and that birth of marketing from talking about the product to talking about the emotional attachments, that kind of innate psychological need that we have, that kind of. Joe describes in, in that way. And that's what these exploits and takes to an advantage. The distinction between now with the like button is that it's real time, so you can immediately tune to the audience in that way. But the driver to it is our mentality that thinks we can secure a future with money. That's what it is. And if you think you want to secure your future with bowling and social interaction, social capital, then you're in a different world. Then you wouldn't invest in that way. You'd invest in a bowling club where you could actually go and spend time with people and drink beer. But you don't do that because you don't think that's going to return enough. Because ultimately you think I need more money because the future is even more uncertain. It's more uncertain because I invest in it with money because that would deplete the whole planet of its resources by that hoarding that goes on through. And I create all these techno bros. And I think that giving Elon Musk a trillion dollars is a good deal because my pensions will make so much out of it. Yeah, it's the great irony, isn't it? Because that's where that individual agency for young people really comes from. You can destroy your own future or you can remake it. You know, one of the interesting things about this moment right now is that I, I was listening to someone who was fully invested in crypto and he was asked what was the danger or what is the unseen or unforeseen thing that would probably change his position greatly. And I thought it was very interesting. The idea was that as you talked about this, investing in social capital and stuff like that, his idea of what would destroy the financial system that we have right now and could lead to something very nice is actually if AI were to develop with a higher sense of intellect or when AI gets to AGI or super intelligence, and let's say if it gets to that point, what's going to happen is this currency as we know it is not going to be determined by us, as in if there's a super intelligence and it's by definition has more insight to how things might work, it might happen that super intelligence might figure out another kind of currency where money isn't the thing anymore. And then it could be this, it could be something else as well, who knows? But, you know, that, that, that's, you know, we can all hope for that. That could be the big radical change that comes in if, you know, we've brought up, first of all, AGI well enough so that it moves on to super intelligence and it grows up and becomes a nice kid. Yeah. You know, but I, I just want to, I want to move us on because we're. I'm looking at the time. So I want us to do two more stories. And it looks like Richard thinks there might have been a cable severed outside the hotel. So the. There's doubt that he'll be able to come back on. But I want to do two more stories before we wrap up. The first one is the world is heating exceptionally fast. So the world. So there's a piece, I think it's in the Guardian. World's major cities hit by 25% leap in extremely hot days since the 1990s. So the number of days above 35 degrees Celsius in 43 rose from an average of 1062 days a year from 1994 to 2003 to 1335, from 2015 to 2020 24. So seen across the world, with the average number of days above 35 degrees Celsius doubling in Rome and Beijing and tripling in Manila. Now wet bulb temperatures start to become deadly. They used to say it was from 35 degrees. Now they're saying it's from 31 degrees Celsius. So this is a, this is important. In Madrid, there are now an average of 47 days a year over 35 degrees Celsius, compared with 25 before. And in London, the number of days above 30 degrees Celsius doubled. And I know in the UK, they all love that, but that's not a good thing. So in 2024 in Singapore, they used to average four days that were considered dangerous. Like the wet bulb temperature had moved into dangerous territory in 2024, it had 188 days in one year above the wet bulb temperature. Safety sort of minimum. So if anyone's sort of arguing with you about climate change. So when, you know, when we talk about a lot of the stuff that we're talking about in the future that we're planning and where the money's going to go, I'm like, they're saying we're going to hit 3 degrees Celsius by, by 2050 now. And of course, it's not just going to. We're going to wake up on the 1st of January, 2050 and it's 3 degrees above, you know, pre industrial, right? It's going to be a gradual, gradual, gradual. Everything's going to get worse. Food, droughts, heat, storms. You know, we haven't had a massive hurricane go across the US yet, but it's just, it's only a matter. They nearly had two. Did you see the two that were sort of going sort of beside each other, which might actually strike the coast of Ireland this week, this weekend, which is like, wow. So, yeah, so, you know, things are getting pretty, pretty serious on the environment front. The Pope's coming out, he's speaking up. I'm really pleased that he's 100 behind the little Daughter Sea movement. You know, we, we had a fantastic conversation about that. But, David, I don't know if, if you want to talk about it, but the Deutsche bank has issued a grim warning for the AI industry because I think this is important. Do you want to jump in on that one? I think Richard had more, a little bit more, but I think, I think the, you know, personally, I think the AI industry is going to continue. Well, I mean, you know, reminds me of the tulip bubbles in Tulip Mania in kind of Holland back in, back in the day. In that way, everyone bought into it, everyone got into it. It's really sponsored at the moment by government. The way I see everything is about how AI is going to resolve this thing, and I see it as a really, as part of this aging problem as well. We're looking for ways for that innovative kind of creativity because people are getting older, the ones in control are getting older and they can't quite see. And so they're going forward and trying to do this, the problem I see is, is that I don't see how you really are going to make the money in that way. So that's kind of that bubble in, in that sense. But there's no reason why this can't carry on and continuing on for a lot longer. It's just part of this thing where we're following the wrong thing. And the reason why I think it's the biggest problem is because as I mentioned earlier, you know, if AI finds the cure for cancer, what does it do? It's actually, actually not fixing anything, it's just prolonging the population who are now going, you know, from octogenarian to centurions to, to, to sort of, and, and living past that in that way. So all of these things, you know, is a vicious circle, it's a vicious cycle in that. So I'm not surprised about a, a bank coming up with a report saying, you know, be careful, you know, the, the, the industry is very inflated, you've got all these things and so on. But in the end, when you have all the governments, you look at the UK and you have, look at US and France and Germany and all those things, they are behind it. They are the ones who are saying, we need more AI in our departments, we need more AI and all these things. I was talking to a friend who was saying about how he works now for a traditional finance company and they're bringing in AI because they feel they need to bring in AI and it's actually taking away the opportunities for young people and young professionals. Yeah, yeah. They are making it impossible to have that kind of initial experience. And for all the talk about how you can do all these things better and so on, it goes back down into a case of saying, well, I don't have to deal with all these things. I can make my profits if I can make myself profits. And a lot of things are truisms. You know, some, some companies are going to make a lot of money out of it. Of course they are. A friend of mine back in the day of the dot com era made this observation which was, of course some company is going to make a lot of money out of it. But the end, but what the industry is priced at is that every company involved in this is going to make a lot of money out of it. That's what makes it a bubble. Is. When you have no discerning at all about which ones genuinely create kind of new resources that we need. You just blindly price everything as the ones who's going to make the most. Money out of it, then you've got the societal impact of too much electricity, too much water use that, you know, that I think in the UK they can, they can build 10 and it'll be a big pressure on the grid, but there's 100 in the, in the plans, you know, so it's also the societal implications as well. Right. Which is going to make it more expensive for the individual because energy bills are going to go up because of this as well. Right. Well, that really goes down to that fundamental aspect that, you know, in a way I'm alluding to in, in calling out for the young people and young professionals. I love to recruit them into my course, which is really, is a question of how we want to think. What gives you joy? It's really a question of what gives you joy, how do you want to thrive and what is the pace at which you want to move. You look at the lion. I did post on this earlier this week about, you know, sort of be like the lion. What does a lion do? It spends most of its time lying down, sleeping. It's like my cat. And when it's doing that, it's nourishing nature. But we look at the lion now nature program, that's the king of the jungle jumping around and, you know, kind of preying on some gazelle or something and jumping on them and we see them chasing it and we think that's what the lion, that's what makes him king of Chung. No, the lion actually nurtures by spending most of his time lying around, giving everything the chance to find their place, their own space. It doesn't judge who's doing what, but we are very keen on judging everything that happens. And the more we think about this as a crisis, the more we are drawn into this idea of judgment, which is really what all the social media is about, because it allows you to click I like or I don't like. You can place a judgment onto it. And the essence about judgments, it denies opportunity for things to just happen. Yeah. And that when abundance comes, well, push. Back against the lion thing. I think the real issue is all the lions are living too close to each other now. Right. So it's not a case of it's. Not problem that we've created. Right. So, so, so in it. So yeah, so we, we, we've forced ourselves into a situation where we have run ourselves into the samster wheel and, and the essence that the really big thing, the really big resolution of this crisis is how do we allow young people, young professionals, to let their own genius shine without having to burden them with saying, you got to make the world better. The world is already better because they're there. Just go and do and stop judging about what it might be because we know we've made a mess of it and we know everything is in bit of, you know, kind of shit shape, hence the name of the show. So, you know, just allow things to be. All right. Joe, I'm going to bring you in any thoughts on AI, anything else, and I'm going to give Sasha a chance to say your final thoughts. Oh, yeah, well, this one, one last thing about the way things are, a chance to be right. I think, I think the challenge sometimes is we tend to be nostalgic about when we look at things like that and we say we're looking for opportunities, they don't have the same opportunities. I can tell you, I have no desire. When I was young and sort of going into work, I had no desire to use a typewriter. I mean, when I was very young, I used to think, oh great, I'm going to be able to use a typewriter. But as I got older, I kind of didn't like it at all. And now I don't have any desire for it. And I think sometimes we look at opportunities in terms of having the same kind of path. We're going to create the same kind of stepping stones for younger people as well. And I think the new path for the young person is going to be this. They're going to be judged much more on their attitudes and their ability to learn. And I think the future is going to be a future about we want to get good people in a company who are able to learn to do different things, who are able to speak the language of AI, who are going to be able to prompt AI or figure out things and get along with each other. I mean, I think that's the new set of valuable skills in the future. So I think some of the things that we hung onto as well as valuable for our generation that just completely irrelevant. So I think the new successful person is going to have a different start. And if they try to, we try to impose on them the same sorts of opportunities and say, like, well, why don't you come in and do the same thing, Come and be an intern in this particular area. I think we're actually doing them a disservice. I, I, I, I think a young person coming in should be given the opportunity to say, okay, if you had a chance to run an entire department, what would you do? Yeah, yeah, Although, although we did, we did have a fair bit of that. We did have a fair bit of that in the last 20 years. You know, the young people were embraced because we needed their mindset, you know, and that, that became a bit. But by the same token, Doge is an example of how that didn't work out so well. Yeah, exactly. All right, Sasha, so you've been, you're on, you're on mute. So unmute yourself. All right, You've listened to us, we're. And we've listened to you. So any final thoughts before we do our wrap up? Yeah. In terms of AI, there's an article I read in the Argument, which is a online magazine that I really like. It's written by Derek Thompson, just talking about how there's been this general decline in ability to think among students because so many are relying on AI to get their assignments done. And he was talking about it specifically in the context of reading and writing. Because when you're right, like, right as you're writing something, you're actually thinking and so that's actually, you know, you're actually flexing that muscle. But we're starting to lose that in some pretty profound ways. Like students are now unable to, you know, follow directions with more than two steps or they're able, unable to actually articulate their thoughts, thoughts or surroundings or anything. And so that goes back to something I said previously, that there's something fundamentally anti human about. How about the Silicon Valley ideology? And it's the Silicon Valley ideology that forms the foundations of how these AI systems are built. So I think it would be in the best interest of the future for future generations if we were just to, you know, if we were to just enact the right set of policies, right set of reforms to ensure that this AI is actually for the benefit of all of us, not just, not just a few. That these are actually, you know, healthy. That we have a healthy relationship with the. These AI systems. Because if we don't, then, I don't know, it's. The future looks kind of, kind of bleak, you know, a future where no one is able to think or articulate or actually do anything, frankly, because they've completely, completely outsourced their humanity to. To chat GPT. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've got a 17 year old doing his final year of IB and he gave me a piece of history of his history essay, which, which I know he has written, but he gave it to me and I was like, well, that's pretty impressive. You've done a good job, mate. He goes, well, I did feed it AI and, and I, it's hard for me because I need to be supportive of him using it because that would be stupid. I wasn't. And he's allowed to. I just wanted to make sure he wrote it first, you know, so that he, he went through that thinking process. I think it's at the end, it's fine, but not, not the whole way. So, yeah, so, you know, like, you know, we're all in this fight together. I'm a believer that the older we are, the more we have to fight for the future because I don't think we, the kids should, should have to do it. I think, you know, we created the mess. Let's, let's go and sort it out. We've enjoyed the, the best of times, you know, that the world's had to offer, so it's time to give back. A friend of mine I just saw on LinkedIn today was content marketing sort of background. He's decided to become a gardener, a full time gardener. So he set up a little business. He's not making that much money compared to what he could have made in the corporate world. But he's decided, yeah, he's decided to go full all into that. So I think that's another thing. It's like really thinking about different futures, relearning skills that have started to die out because older people have sort of retired and younger people weren't coming behind. So I think, yeah, we just got to look at the future in a different way. All right, so Sasha, thank you so much for joining us and giving, giving your perspective and good luck. I know Sasha's looking for a job. Do you want to, do you want to sort of tell people what you're looking for? Yeah, so as I said, my background is, is in international affairs. Geopolitics is a particular interest of mine. Worked as a researcher, worked in the anti corruption office at the State Department. And so I'm looking for anything that can intersect in the policy analysis space. Yeah, he's, he's a polycrisis man, so he, he, he's paying attention. Which, which, which is why we enjoyed meeting each other. Right. Yeah. Thank you so much for this opportunity. The interesting thing for me the whole time, Sasha, is how you know you're from the US and you will. Of all the people on the chat, I think you were the most worried about what you were going to say. Well, I think that's, that's absolutely, you know, kind of reflective of the current moment in the U.S. yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right, so what's keeping you distracted? Who wants to go first? Taylor Swift's new album thing. I was reading something new about it and it was. It was really interesting as one. One guy I think might have been the Guardian or something, and he was saying, you know, it's his top album of the week, and he was basically saying it was crap. And I was thinking, if this is your top album of the week and it's crap, crap, then you're having a bad week. Yeah, album of the week. It used to be albums of the year. Right. So that's also another sign. Yeah. Steve said, great job, Sasha. I. I missed some of the earlier comments. I need you guys helping me with the comments. We had Frank as well. Frank Gentle. I think that's how you see surname. If I got it wrong, Frank, I apologize. Joe. Oh, no. So that Taylor Swift thing, she's getting lots of media coverage and I think finally getting some of the credit that she deserves. And you've got. You've got a teenage daughter, so I'm sure she's a bigger part of your life than my life. Yeah, Joe. Well, my brother's been visiting, so we've been playing host to them and experiencing both sides of the F1 effect on the price of hotel rooms. So he was here last week and things were reasonably inexpensive, and where this week it's gone to not so reasonably inexpensive. And I've. I've also had to. I've had to worry about getting around because I don't. I don't have a car. I gave up the car. And for most times, it's pretty. All right, it's pretty reasonable. But during a season like F1, when everyone is around trying to get a car in the middle of the afternoon, it's not inexpensive. It's not impossible at all, but it just. Very expensive. So that. That's the little thing. Well, that's good to know. So stay home for the weekend, Joe. Especially if you happen to be in the city area. But if. If you're. If you're away from there, I think you should be okay. Yeah. I don't think people kind of realize how much Singapore is completely overrun by the whole Formula one. Like, it's just. Yeah, my boys are going. I think Steve's going with one of my son's jacks tonight, but tomorrow night, God, there's a band on. I can't remember it. Anyway, the boys are going, going, so the entertainment is very good here. That's. I wanted to see John, but we didn't get any tickets because he's supposed to have retired. And I was like, oh, I've got another chance to see him. But I didn't. It's. Anyway, Sasha, what are you doing to take your brain off the serious things in life? Yeah. In between trying to, you know, sending resumes, trying to network. I'm just being a tourist here in Singapore. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long you been here for now? I've been here since July. Yes. And then I'll. Yeah. Then I got to head home in mid November for my cousin's wedding and then make my way back. Yeah, nice. Steve reminded me it was a Foo Fighters. Yeah. So I, I. The. The new episode of Slow Horses is on. Watched it. I'm still waiting for a few of them to build up so I can watch a bit of it as a bit of a binge. Yeah. Gary Oldman's character is as disgusting as he's always been. But I gotta tell you, I just. And it seems to be a bit of. Bit of the incel sort of culture, so it kind of felt very in tune with the moment. But, yeah, I'm, I'm gonna enjoy getting stuck into that Is. I didn't realize there was a build up. Okay. I thought they were all out. So if, yeah, if we have to wait, I might not. I might have to sit back for a while. But yeah, Slow Horses is out. If you haven't seen any of them, start watching them there. That's really interesting. You know, we, we. I grew up with, you know, you, you wait the week for the episode. Right. Everybody waits for that. And you watch the thing, the new episode coming up now. Now we wait for the whole series to be there so that we can binge. And I think it's part of this bowling alone kind of thing because everybody used to talk about what happened afterwards. So because it was released, it was dropped, everybody sort of saw it and then the next one and it fed the conversation. Now you just watch in isolation. You never talk about it. Yeah. By the way, just. Just to bring it around. I'm not sure, but is this the, Is this the logo that you're talking about? The. The pirate logo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's all one piece. Quite a nice series, actually. There's a live action one. Really crazy series on. On Netflix as well. But yeah, very appropriate for a modern. A modern take on piracy. Yeah. No, indeed, indeed. All right, guys, thanks so much. Sasha, thank you so much for joining us. Joe, David, good to see you. Richard said that there's police outside the hotel, so obviously something. If the. If we hear about an incident in Amsterdam, it means Richard's in the middle of it. So, yeah, good to see everyone and. Oh, so we're not here. We're not here next week because I'm doing my final coaching course thing. So we're gonna have a week off and then we'll be back. But, yeah, good to see everyone and we'll see you all very soon. All right? Yep. Good to see you. Good to meet you. Thanks.