The Sh*t Show: managing yourself and owning your BS

The bombs started falling on Iran again this week, who retaliated by striking US bases in the Gulf. Israel attacks on Lebanon escalated, threatening UNESCO World Heritage sites, and then a ceasefire was announced, but will Hezbollah stop? Russia scaled up its attacks on Ukraine, with murmurs suggesting internal support in Russia is waning. And on the other side of the world, Pauline Hanson in Australia is moving up the electoral charts, leaving us wondering, really? That’s the direction Australia thinks is sensible right now? 

Extreme heat events continue around the world, with India releasing estimates of excess deaths during heatwaves at 3,400 a day, and up to 30,000 over a five-day heatwave - and that’s just India. Weather professor Jeff Berardelli said the forecast strength of this El Niño is nothing short of astonishing, deserving a “Supercalifragilistic expialidocious!” rating. However, later that day, he shared another view with a different data set, suggesting it won’t be that catastrophic – we hope so! Meanwhile the results of 60 section 301 investigations are out (we’ll explain that), Trump wants to cancel the 250-year celebrations because most of the musicians pulled out, SpaceX’s IPO is coming, Europe is disentangling its tech reliance on the US, and that’s just a taste of what’s been happening this week. 

Our theme this week is managing yourself and owning your BS, which we think is a pretty important skillset right now, so we are delighted to welcome the Titanium Hipster herself, Cindy Tien. Cindy is a professional speaker on EQ for influence, an executive coach, Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and she recently launched her new book – InSide, Break Through Your BS to Influence Yourself. We’re going to learn why she decided it was time to write her book, her journey of facing up to her own BS, and we’ll also learn the most underrated skill we all need so we can manage ourselves. We are excited to learn from Cindy. 

Please do join us this Friday, as we all prepare to face our own BS, as well as getting an update on the most important news happening in the world. We’ll be going live Friday, 5th June 2026, kicking off at 8am UK, 9am EU, 11am UAE, 12.30pm IN, 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 

You can find me Andrea T Edwards | The Digital Conversationalist and Welcome - Uncommon Courage - An Invitation. 

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage 

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar 

Transcript

0:01

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel. You got me on the hook with a promise and a plan? Said, brother, this will be over before it ever lands? You said it come easy said they'd fall in line just a little thunder then we'd both be fine? I signed on to your story, took my seat in the game? Now every late night audience laughs when they hear my name? Coffee cost more, diesels climb instead? And everybody's asking who's gonna pay the bill? You said it'd be easy, you said it be fast? Just light the fuse and let the trouble pass? Now the prices climb and the people curse? Every speech I give just makes it worse? You shake my while you cut my rope? Call me brother while you kill my hope? You can't keep selling sunshine on a bitter pill? When the whole damn country's paying bill. I said you swore it be simple you said don't put, put that on me? I only said the pretty part you already wanted to believe? But I'm looking for a way out and you're blocking every road you keep working every screw loose at the straight of hormoo. We'll take a couple of questions? I think when they were dancing they burst out laughing? Thank God we're muted. Nice work, J. A good use of AI I like to think so. I'd like to think so. All right. It's not really you there. All right. Welcome to the shitshow. My name is Andrea Edwards. I'm David Koh. I'm, as usual, in the bottom left. And by the way, I'm Richard Basilato, and we may use a little bit of AI, but we're live every Friday at 3pm where we take the world's carefully assembled collection of crises and ask the important question, has anyone tried turning civilization off? And then on again this week, we've got riots in Paris, warnings of a possible Godzilla El Nino. America, apparently, still is experimenting with super superpower decline. Europe is trying to build a tech industry that doesn't require permission from either Washington or Beijing, and enough climate tipping points to make a game of Jenga look like a robust risk management strategy. Meanwhile, scientists may have delivered one of the biggest cancer breakthroughs in decades. Hunter Biden is handing out sarcastic life lessons on sobriety, and the Internet loves it. Russia is discovering that endless wars are, in fact, endless. And somewhere in Australia, Pauline Hanson is being discussed as prime minister, proving once again that satire has officially given up and left the building. Joining us today on the show also is a speaker who Specializes in helping people navigate the most dangerous territory known to humanity. Their own nonsense. She is an executive coach, a certified speaking professional, a sought after expert on emotional intelligence and influence, and the author of the new book Inside Breakthrough youh BS to influence yourself. But I have to warn you, she's part titanium. Please welcome the Titania hipster herself, Cindy Tien. She is. Hello everyone. Loving the introductions for sure, the video and everything that's happened so far. No bullshit there. Absolutely not. Yeah, yeah. It's great to have you, Cindy. And thank you for saying yes. I know sometimes when I ask people, they're like, oh, what can I add to this show? But you can add a lot because all of this stuff that Joe was just talking about, you know, people are in a pretty vulnerable state, I'd say around the world right now. So you've written the book, you know, the book that sort of talks about that inner. Inner self management. So before we get stuck into the questions, just do you want to just without talking about what you're going to talk about relative to the book, including the titanium hit stuff, do you want to just give us a little bit more of your background? Sure, sure. So thank you for having me, by the way. I'm really excited to be here. I'm freaked out, but I'm excited all at the same time. So I'm based in sunny Singapore. It's crazy warm in Singapore right now. You just cannot be in a non air conditioning room. Okay. That's for me. I'm oiling up as I'm talking. So I've been in the industry for the last year, 13 years. And this industry is training speaking as well as coaching. I also have a podcast called the own your beer show where I get other accomplished humans to talk about turning their barriers into influence. Okay. So personally, I'm married to a husband who has the unfortunate job of telling me before I spiral into any black holes. I'm also an openly obsessed mama of a dog and a cat. So I've got a dog with a golden retriever. Her name is Bella. I've also got a Siberian cat, dad. Her name is Libby. They are of the same age. I brought them home at the same time and they tolerate each other for the last three years. I'm a Christian, so my faith runs the engine room of a lot of the things I do. Yeah, nice, nice. And I've met your beautiful dog. We, we asked Cindy to bring her golden retriever over after Freddy died so we could get a little bit of golden retriever love. So I just showed you a book inside. Wait a minute, what's it break through your BS to influence yourself. So that's a, a big part of what we're going to talk about today. But you, you first publisher was just, just a couple of months ago, right? Yeah, yeah, we had it published in November 2025. It's been like seven, eight months. It's been that long gone. Okay, so tell us what sparked the decision to write it? Because it's a real warts and all. Yeah, I'm sure, you know, happy to answer that question. And you know, there's so many, so many reasons as to why I wanted to publish a book. And the first answer I will answer that is the real honest answer was I, I wanted to build a speaker credibility brand. Right. So they say in order for you to be a credible hired speaker, you need to have some thought leadership. I'm like, at that time, what thoughts do I have? I've got absolutely no thoughts. Then his name is Avi and I, you know, was sharing with him about all my life stories. And then he was saying, you know, Cindy, your stories are so transformational. I said, is that so? I never shared with anyone my stories and I said that. But my, all my stories are not like success stories. They are all failure stories. So I decided I'm gonna write a book of all my failures. You know, I thought that was the easiest way to kind of get it going. And at the same time, because I've been doing this work of training and coaching a lot of leaders and sales teams in Singapore. So I realized that they all won one and it's not always the easiest to achieve, which is influence. Yeah. So we all want influence at a larger scale with social media, with the public. We want influence with our teams, we want influence with our family members. But you know, I think a lot of them, they want it, but they don't necessarily have have it in the way that they want it. So I realized that a big part of it was not that they don't have the skills, but it's a self problem that they needed to manage. Yeah. So it got me kind of thinking back about the time when I used to be in a sales role and a leadership role as well. You know, it take me back as far as 2010. I was that time the sales director of this company. And I was in Bangkok attending a sales conference. And at that time, this was a job I just taken for six months. And it was a job I took purely for the title and the salary. And at the time I had just left a job I totally hated for another one that I totally hated. So that was what was going on. So I remember sitting in the bedroom of, I'm sorry, the hotel room at that time, and just feeling lost, lazy, and so unmotivated. And I. And at the same time was having so much relationship issues. I was dating this guy and, you know, I thought he was going to propose to me, but he decided to dump me. So that was like double whammy. And I just remember looking up at the ceiling and saying this sentence, you know, cindy, your life is nothing but a load of meaningless crap. Yeah. It was almost like I had lost all influence over myself, much less influence over anyone else. So that sentence kind of became the spine to the book. And, you know, and, and that's how, you know, it got me started into writing this book because I, I. And it took me seven years to write it, just so you know, it took me. But I think a big part of me writing the book is me asking myself this big question. Why can't I get myself to do what I know I should be doing? Why am I losing control of my life and, you know, why am I not respected? So it's answering all of those questions. Yeah. Big, big, big, deep questions. Right. So I've actually heard your story, but I haven't heard that part of the story, so that was interesting. So, BS or IS. You know, I've been in Asia since 2003, and it's not a region where you swear comfortably in public because people are quite sort of, you know, a bit funny about it. So I'm very cautious. I'm a swearer, but in, in public situations, I sort of try to sort of tone it down just out of respect for people who don't feel the same way. And Australia is obviously quite different. But, well, even when we called this the show, people said to us, oh, you shouldn't call it that. And every now and again, someone will say, I can't go on the show because of the name, which, which is kind of, kind of interesting to me. But I, I, you know, but then we've got a president of the United States who uses all sorts of swear words. Right. But what does, what does BS mean in your world? You know, by the way, I really wanted to come on the show because there's a word on it. I'm like, okay, this is my kind of show. We are swearers. But I have to be very careful about that because we're still professionals. Right. So I think mine Are posture. Okay. So when I say bs, a lot of people will think of it as it's meant to be a little bit provocative. But you know, what I realized is that a lot of my failure stories is because of my own bss. So I kind of broke it down into three different types of BS in the book and I'm abundant of them. The first one is blind spots, which is the things we can't see about ourselves but everyone else else can. Yeah. So I've got a ton of blind spots that I had to discover over the years. And you know, for somebody else, it could be, you know, a leader who thinks that they're being efficient and fast, but the team experiences them as a bad listener, lacking self awareness and you know, super transactional. So that's blind spots. Yeah. The second one is really about the belief system. So the belief systems, I call it like the shoots and the mask that you've inherited in your life and you might not even know that is running you. Right. So for example, it's the high performer who's unconsciously addicted to work and they tell themselves I'm being productive, but underneath it the narrative is if I'm not productive, I'm not worthy. So they over commit. Yeah. So they work over the weekends, they chase the next achievements and then they complain about how busy and tired they are. The third BS is I call it the bull stories, which is the excuses, the justifications, and the uncomfortable lies we tell ourselves to avoid dispositions Discomfort. Yeah, so I used to lie to myself a lot. Okay, so maybe for someone else is the person who's struggling to cope during the hard times. Okay. And maybe they get hooked on something. Binge drinking, pornography, numbing up with AI and social media for hours. And the bull story that they might tell themselves is, I'm just relaxing, it's no big deal. Yeah. So different levels of bs. But I think my point to this is that your blind spots will endanger you because if you cannot see it, you know, you can't change it. Your belief systems will limit you because it kinds of put a cap on what you can achieve and your bull stories will comfortably lie to you all the way to rock bottom. So I believe that self influence is the brutal honesty to see your BS clearly and the courage to do something about it. Oh, I love that. That's very, very clear. Guys. Got any comments yet? Well, I'm actually disappointed. That S doesn't stand for what I thought it was. This is false advertising. This is. Sorry to disappoint you Joe, I think, I, I don't know, I, I, I, I think Bull's story is still what you think it means. All right, so I know that you went on quite a journey before you got to this clarity and it's really, really fantastic clarity. What caused your first downfall? And because I've got so many downfalls, 10 chapters of downfall inside there. Right. So help yourselves to it. But I think one of the most significant ones was during my very first full time job. You know, I joined the airline at the age of 19 years old. I was young and so innocent then and I really, really wanted this job because of my BS belief system. I never felt that I could do anything else. To be honest, that was the only thing I wanted. Only thing I wanted, the only ambition I have. People want to be doctor, lawyers and astronauts. I just want to be a flight attendant. Only thing I wanted. So I joined the airline believing that, you know, I have achieved my dreams. I'm going to travel to Paris, London and New York and just kind of living the life I've always dreamed of because I kind of came from a family which is we were not dirt poor but we were kind of like always in lack right. There was always not enough and you can't buy extra things. So this is the first time I'm going to be making good money on my own. So I was really excited about the job. We went through four months training. After the four months training, I did my very first flight and it was a flight to Osaka in Japan and I was so ready. I thought people are going to love me. But unfortunately people did not even minutely like me. So I got bullied real bad and it was bullying for little things like how come you're not smiling so much? How come you're not initiating a conversation with us? Why are you not offering the seniors a drink? I got bullied really badly and it really affected my self esteem because I thought that that was the only thing I can do right. Total self belief about that. And because of survival reasons, I had to force myself to change from somebody who honestly didn't care about smiling or being nice to somebody who is extremely people pleasing. Interestingly, when I did that, I got rewarded. So what it means is that people started to like me. I got better work positions, I stopped getting bullied a lot more. And then suddenly I realized, oh my God, this is my new belief system. If I were to put please people, I'm gonna get my way. Yeah. So it kind of started there. But the, the, the horrible thing was that I felt misaligned inside. So as much as I was smiling like a sunflower on the outside inside me, I felt so sick of myself because I felt I was performing and putting on an act all the time, and it became so exhausting. And every time I went back to the hotel room after a flight, all I really wanted to do was to throw my uniform aside and light up a cigarette and drink a beer. And that was literally what I did after every flight. So that was kind of like the beginning of me descending down into this black hole and just almost at some point, didn't even recognize myself. So, you know, if you don't recognize yourself in your own reflection, it's time to recalibrate. Except that I did not do that because I was young, innocent, and not so smart then. I didn't realize it started there because there was also some school bullying as well. Right? Yeah, yeah, the school bullying was. There's a whole lot of that. Right. The school bullying was very much about me bullying others. Wow. It was. And, you know, there's a whole other story al together because, you know, I came from a background where. In Asia, and this is common where. Where in those days, boys are favored more than the girls. So I was brought up in a family of 20. My grandmother was like Empress Darwazia. She loves the boys more than the girls, and she would say quite mean things to me that, you know, I mean, this is not about blame. This is just pressing. And. And I think a big part of me felt that I was never enough and not really wanted. So then when I went to school, I. I really wanted, because at home, I was invisible. So in school, I wanted to be super visible. So because of that, I. I just became a total badass. Got myself into gangs and started. I started bullying people first. You know, just. I would. I would. I would actually confront girls, pull them to the toilet, and just beat the crap out of them just for my own description, which is horrible. Right. But I think it really came from a place of I didn't feel enough. So. So I. I had to do this to make myself feel important and powerful because, again, when I did that, people were, like, cheering me on. You go, girl. You are the leader here. So I'm like, oh, why not? Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's funny. Every. Every. Every bully I've ever met. Just a second. I'll give you a break. Every bully I've ever met is hurting very, very much so inside. Okay, so this is where we're going to Get a little bit more serious about where this all led to because you've sort of underplayed the. What. What caused this. So far you go by the name Titanium. Titanium hipster. I've only got titanium in my mouth. So what's the story there? Because that's when I first heard it. And by the way, Cindy's the sweetest person in the world. I can't even imagine her being a bully. But when I, When I hear story, I was, I was, I was quite gobsmacked. So. Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean, I don't even believe that I've gone through this. Okay, so, you know, earlier I was talking about, you know, being in the airline and I was struggling with all that self esteem issues and being bullied and the misalignment and, and all that, you know, under current has been accumulated. Accumulated. And because I couldn't manage myself, I started drinking a lot. And initially started with just one beer to relax. And I thought it was no deal. Right? What is one beer? Come on. Yeah. So from one beer it became three beers. From three beers, it became a bottle of wine. From a bottle of wine to a bottle of wine. Every night from a bottle of wine. And at that time, because I was struggling with all their horrible emotions, I was also struggling with insomnia. So from the bottle of wine, it became a bottle of whiskey. And then after that, even the bottle of whiskey could not get me to. To sleep. I just could not get my brain to shut down. So I started mixing whiskey with sleeping pills. And after that, the pills started to increase as well. So my personal record was drinking half a bottle of whiskey and downing eight sleeping pills. And I blacked out for 24 hours in Copenhagen. So that was the kind of like the. And. And I just woke up feeling. It was almost like I woke up not knowing where I am. But subconsciously I knew that I had to put on my makeup, go shower and go for a flight and I could still do that. It was so weird. In the middle of the flight, I suddenly sobered up and I wondered what have I done the last few hours? So that was so dangerous. So anyway, that went on for a few years until I started feeling pain in my legs. And. And that time because I was exercising a lot as well, because I was also struggling with wanting to be skinny. So as you can see, a lot of BS that I was struggling with. So I thought that because it's running a lot, and I thought that it was just rheumatism issues or nerve issues, you Know, I started going to see doctors and traditional Chinese medication. Nothing helped. And the, the pain became on both legs and shooting pains in the middle of the night. Eventually I was referred to an orthopedic specialist who took, you know, scans of me and my legs. And I was sitting in the, in the hospital with my mom trying to get a diagnosis of what's happening. And the doctor told me, Cindy, have been diagnosed with this condition called avascular necrosis. And what it is, it's really a degeneration of my hip joints. So what he said was that my. Both of my hip joints have totally degenerated to that of a 90 year old woman. And I was 25 years old at that time. So it's, it's crazy. Right? So I looked at the doctor. Disbelief. My mom was there with me. I held her hand. I started crying. My mom asked the doctor, how did this happen to my girl? You know, we don't have family history of this. So he started sort of investigating a lot more and he came to the conclusion it was due to alcoholism, chronic alcoholism. So there was a loss of blood flow to my hip joints which caused it to degenerate. And he told me that I would likely have to be living in wheelchair for the rest of my life. So in the end we found another doctor, another orthopedic specialist, and thank God we found that person. He eventually told me that, you know, the best thing I can do for you is to cut off your diseased hip joints and put titanium implants inside. So Since I'm my 20s, until now, I'm in my 40s, I've been living with titanium hips implants in my legs. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy. When I travel, I have to carry a cart with me. Yeah. And I'm not supposed to run for the rest of my life. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's kind of where I am. So that's how the titanium hipster came about. It's, it's just how quickly it all happened. Right. You know, from. Because you were still quite young and I could imagine it must have been truly frightening. But, but yeah, that massive consequence and, and also chronic alcoholism at such an age. Right. But were you a Singapore, were you working with Singapore Airlines? Yes, I was. Yeah. So a Singapore girl where you had to be skinny as well. So there was a lot of pressure. There's, you know, on that. Right. So like, God, listening to all of this, there's so much to what you've just been telling us and it's, it's heartbreaking and empowering at the same time because I think there's. There's a young girl out there who's going through exactly what you went through and could potentially listen to you and maybe get, get beyond this faster. But how do we break through our bs? What, what are the. What are your key learnings from a life hard lived? Yeah. A big part of breaking through your BS is to. To, number one, examine your bees. I think a lot of us, we don't even know what they are. Right. So I call BS is like your invisible barriers that you can't see, you won't question, and you refuse to challenge. So it's kind of invisible to many people until you start to examine it. And I tend to use the analogy of, you know, me waking up in the middle of the night and I'm somebody who's a little. I'm a little bit of a night owl. So I wake up in the middle of night to get a drink from my kitchen all the time. So there was one night I went to the kitchen going to get a cup of water. I opened the cabinet to get the cup and there was this just massive giant cockroach there feasting on my potatoes. And I chose not to. I chose to ignore that the cockroach was there because I was so afraid of it. I didn't want to deal with the mess. So I closed the cabinet and decided I'll go back to sleep and pretend that nothing has happened. Three days later, I forgot all about it. I went back to, again, get myself a drink, opened the cabinet and there it was. Now instead of one cockroach, it's become four cockroaches. So the analogy is this. Your. What you leave in the dark, it doesn't disappear, it multiplies. Yeah. So I. A big part of it think about the cockroach analogy is to call it out. Right. I think what I'm saying is that people are not even acknowledging their BS's in the first place. They go straight to, oh, what can I do? But let's call it that. What does it mean? It's a moment of radical honesty, you know, to even just say things. I keep committing over, committing to tasks because I'm scared of, seen as unimportant. Be honest with yourself. Yeah. I get defensive with feedback because I tie criticism to my worth and, you know, I can't do sales because I crumble, you know, when people reject me. Yeah. So that's calling it out, being the radical, radically honest with yourself. The second part is really clean. It up. So own the mess it's made. Let go of the shame. Take responsibility and make internal amends. Apologize if your BS has hurt somebody or hurt yourself. Forgive yourself for not honoring promises. Let go of the stories that no longer serve you. And then the last one is really about correcting it. And this is about redesigning new mindsets, narratives, and behaviors. This is about reframing your thoughts. This is about practicing new behaviors. A lot of the time, people go straight into what can I do? But I think the deeper work of calling it out and cleaning it up, it's not there yet. Yeah. So I truly believe that self influence really starts with, you know, seeing your bs. Clearly not to shame it, but to put a spotlight on it and to strip it of its power. And I. That's why I am. I try to be, you know, as radically honest as I can because I'm really okay talking about all of this now. It doesn't, like, hurt me or bother me, according to a whole lot anymore. It's just something that's happened is of the past. I've dealt with it and, and I'm. And I'm really trying my best to just own up to it. If you. So, like, for me, like when you especially. What was your second one? It was the. The clean it up. No, the. The BS. There were three BS's. The second one was belief systems. Belief systems, right. So for me, unraveling my belief system happened when I spent a lot of time traveling around the world by myself when I didn't have everybody else's noise in my ear telling me who I was and what I should think and how I should behave and all. So that's how I kind of cleared out the system. Have you got any ideas? Like seeing your. Your BS in the first place? I think possibly the hardest thing for anyone to do because it's comfortable. Even if it's uncomfortable, it's still comfortable. How do you. What's that first step? That's a great question. If you're somebody who does a lot of personal development work, that means you read a lot, you engage coaches to work with you, you're reflective. Usually these bss will come up quite a bit because you're doing the work on yourself. But if a person is somebody that. And I think these days, a lot of people do personal development, by the way. But if you're somebody who jumps from one meeting to another, you jump from one job to another, you never ever stop to reflect, to think. You never ever get feedback from everybody. It's very Easy to be hidden in your bss because, you know, even for me, all the while I thought I was okay until a time such as all my BSS will sort of catching up, catching up with me. One of the tools that I use my clients is, you know, we use Enneagram as a framework to get them to think about, you know, how their BS might be surfacing in ways that they don't know. And the clients that I've coached who has used the Enneagram has found it to be super powerful. So that's one way of doing it. Using a psychological assessment, working with the coach reflections. And typically, people who want to discover their bss have also got significant emotional experiences that have happened to them to make them want to uncover these in the first place. Yeah. So, and, and one example, you know, I was working with a coach at one time, and I was struggling a lot with my marriage at that time, mainly about the problem of. And I'm just going to be really honest with this. I. I didn't feel like my, my husband was, was taking up the role as the man of the household. So I was worried. I was working really hard until one of my friends, who is a marriage mentor, and because she's so good at this and she knows me so well, she asked me this question. And the question was, cindy, what are you truly afraid of? And I remember stopping to think for a while, and I realized I was just really afraid of working in McDonald's when I'm 72 years old. I was just so worried we didn't have enough money for retirement, and I have to work really hard. And that was really the fear driving, the anger and the fights and the quarrels. Right. But I, I wouldn't have known it if, if nobody asked me that huge question. I think getting coaching, getting mentors, reading, hopefully that comes up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think for a lot of people that the idea of the working McDonald's and when you're 72, it's a very cultural thing here in Singapore. There's a lot of elderly people working in McDonald's across the island. It's got a lot of media coverage and the question and cleaning up in, in the hawker centers and stuff. So it's, it's created a lot of conversation about elderly people still needing to work to survive. So it's, it's a very local example and that I can relate to. I just want to make sure everybody else does. But yeah, for the three guys, what's your BS that you have either faced or are Too scared to face anyone. Anyone. Got theirs? Joe, do you want to. Hey, Joe, come on. You got, you've got some. Well, I was, I was just gonna put a marker on the time stamp when you were talking about me not stepping up, being the man. Oh, sorry, you're talking about the husband. Sorry. And I'm quite, I'm actually quite comfortable with asking if someone wants fries with that. I, I think my, my BS or the, the difficulty that I have is trying to figure out. I spend so much time on being smart and smarter than everybody else. I really have great difficulty finding people who truly are smarter than me. So that's. And it may be bs, it may not be bs because I was, I was actually struck with the idea about how, you know, as you were speaking, this is the way my mind works. People will tune in and listen. My brain goes in the totally opposite direction. And I think about how BS helps us, as in I think well executed bs. Some presidents, not included, can really do something. I mean, if you think about how we got out of the first depression, the 1930s, right, that was BS. That was absolute BS. It was manicuring of the news. It was making sure that it was all good news. And it was a bold faced lie about how things were going, but it worked. I was just at the talk recently, and I apologize for not having the full name, but essentially the talk was about beliefs. The author's first name is Nir. Go for the rest of it. And it really was about, again, beliefs. And one of the great stories that I got from that one was when Serena Williams was having trouble with her game. You know, she wasn't going, she wasn't approaching the net enough. And her coach said, listen, you're not going up to the, to the net. But she said, I, when I do that, I don't seem to do well. And then he said, no, listen, look, statistically speaking, when you approach the net, 80% of the time, you actually are more successful. And so she began to attack the net and she began to turn around again and she did extremely well. The only thing is, 80% was bullshit. It was just totally made up. The coach had very strategically created something which they hung on to. So I understand, and I do believe very much in this because I study hypnosis. I'm actually in the middle of a course right now. So if you're feeling very sleepy right now, it's not because I'm mooring, is because I'm leading you down a path. The power of belief is so, so amazing. As in like, if you can absolutely create the sense of belief around you, and when you're talking about the need for reflection, I think when things aren't going right, when there is something wrong about things and enough is going wrong, then you kind of go like, okay, maybe we need to adjust the bs because if you think about. For me, the thought really right now is about the world as it stands where America is right now. America used to run on a much better story, and along the way they lost it and they're not holding on to that story anymore. But if you are able to step back and say, let's think about this, the original story, the idea of America is BS anyway, you know, it's such an amazing thing, right? The start of America. And then you think about what happened after the Second World War. That is totally against the usual game. As in, like, the way civilization has been running itself in the past was the victor always takes everything. The losers, you know, they get to suffer and die. And what America chose to do at that time was to do a different thing, and it changed the way the world worked. Unfortunately, now we are not in that same game anymore. So anyway, my thoughts about bs, and with apologies to anybody who may be offended by ideas that working in a McDonald's may not be a good thing. I don't know. One of the great things about the way this brain works in here is when I'm talking to somebody who works at McDonald's, I keep thinking to them, how can you make yourself a marketing asset? A marketing asset? Yeah, I'm always trying to. My daughter was spending some time in a restaurant. It was a job she really didn't enjoy very much. But I said, listen, why don't. Why don't you do this? Why don't you try and figure out how you can actually upsell someone, Offer them a coffee, offer them a dessert afterwards, and then become a valuable, you know, employee. But it's just the way I like look at things. It's. It's never the mainstream. And as I have mentioned many times on this show, my wife is not fond of me going on, off on these flights of fancy of different thoughts and considering the other side. So we just had one of those blowouts a while ago, so this is all quite fresh. So it's interesting, Joe, because what you've just been saying is, is your BS comes from a place of confidence, whereas what Cindy was sharing was. Was a place of having. Not. Not having any value in yourself. No. So they're kind of. Kind of the opposite Right. David? I think that's. There's. That's not the difference I hear. I think difference. One is internal, one's external. Okay, you take the Great Depression story. It's an external BS to motivate you. Take the Serena Williams stories, external bs. But the BS we tell ourselves are internal. And they. They are ways for us not to. Not to need to come out of the, you know, comfort zones that we've created for ourselves. The songs where we have. We. We. We do not need to genuinely sort of do what the BS that Joe talks about is actually asking us to do, which is to challenge ourselves. And, and that's what, you know, Cindy is really talking about in that way that those belief systems prevent us from actually challenging ourselves and realizing what we actually are, whereas what Joe's talking about are very different and they tend to be external. There's a coach, there's a mentor, there's someone else who gets able to do that. And the techniques they may do is those things. Even hypnosis, you know, self hypnosis is an incredibly difficult thing in that way, except for rationalization as a form of self hypnosis and that rationalization, that's very much in that line of what Cindy talks about in. In that way. So I think there's actually a big difference between the two. And. And it. And. And the connection is that that power of that belief, that sort of, you know, mental placebo in some sense, as Joe's describing, is extremely strong. And when you use it on yourself, it is that half bottle of whiskey and the sleeping bones. It is extremely strong. And it's so strong, you really don't see it. And you end up going through a long period of life, following through. And, And I think culturally, we. We are that as well, which is the commons of America in that way. As, you know, we end up kind of caught within that. And that's kind of, you know, the whole party crisis in many respects is because we are caught within our own BS in that way. We are caught within belief systems that actually has us thinking things have to be this way or things are better this way, or things need to be this way, or the moral responsibility is this way, or whatever it is that we want to say. So I think there's a big distinction between the two, as in who is using the BS in what way, but the power of it is the same. Yeah. Sin, did you want to comment on what everyone's been saying? Yes. I think this is really interesting and complex at the same time. There's the internal, the external. And I think what I'm saying is that the main thing here is to examine it and to look at it clearly and to ask yourself, is this BS helping you or not? Who is the person is turning you to be? Is that the outcome that you want for yourself? Yeah. So for me, if I were to share my story, mine was, you know, I kind of reach a point of my life whereby, oh, gosh, I am totally not. I'm totally in a place whereby it almost came to the point whereby I was self loathing, I was despising myself, I was disrespecting myself, and I just couldn't live with, with all of that anymore. So. But if your BS is working for you, it's taken you to a great place, you've achieved more, you're happy with who you are, then you know your business is working well for you. Right? So I once had a quote by somebody, I think it was Tom Billyu is another influencer and he once said this, which is really interesting because I, it was really true for me. He said something like, at the end of the day, how happy you are is determined about how you feel about yourself. When you're by yourself, when you're all alone, how happy are you with yourself? And I don't mean happy with the achievements, happy with who you are generally how you're progressing, who you are as a person. You're not hating yourself, you're generally respecting yourself. You know, you're, you have peace of mind, you're moving towards what's meaningful for you. I think reflections like this has been helpful for me because, you know, what I try and do is to recalibrate on a weekly basis because we're doing so much right. And then sometimes we forget where the wind is taking us, where our bss are taking us. And the recalibration on a weekly basis for me has been very powerful. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I've just known so many people trying, trying to go through the journey that you're explaining in the. And they struggle with where to start, what to do first. It's, it's too, it's so overwhelming to begin with that they don't do anything or they get on the journey and then they get overwhelmed and then they step off, you know, so it's, it's, what you're talking about is actually the hardest thing a person can ever do. It's pull all the stuff that's inside out and have a look at it and say, do I want it? Do I chuck it? Out. Right. So when it comes to this, what do you think is the most underrated skill in managing yourself and how can we all practice it? You know, if I were to think back again about my own experience and, and you know, my own example, it would be insight about your own emotional patterns. Emotional patterns. And we all know emotional intelligence is knowing your emotions, but do we really know? Right. So I think the idea of. There was a, there was a research done by Tasha Urich, is an organizational psychologist. And you know, this is a big part about self awareness, self insight, that, you know, 90 to 95% of, of the people generally think that they are self aware. But her research, after interviewing 5,000 people, came to the conclusion that only 10 to 15% of people are truly self aware. Yeah, I just say, duh. Knowing who you are, how you perceive the world, knowing your thought patterns, your emotional patterns, your habitual patterns. Okay, we kind of know who we are, but do we really know the pattern that's running us? So I think one, one part of it, if I can just specify, would be to be able to read your emotions well, because the general public, if you ask them how they feel, they'll probably give you three words. I'm frustrated, I'm exhausted, I'm stressed out. But is it just that? So I use this acronym called read R E A D. So the first thing is to recognize it. Yeah. So asking yourself, how many, what's your emotional vocabulary like? You know, a lot of us are financially literate, but emotionally illiterate. Yeah. Understanding how you're feeling on a regular basis. We think this is simple, but it might not be simple. The, the example I'm sharing is, you know, I never knew I was feeling all those feelings. I only knew there was something uncomfortable about me and I just tried and numb it away with partying with, with alcohol and going to sleep. Right. But it was only on hindsight that I realized that the environment I was in, the way I was thinking, the person I was dating was all not great for me. Not that they are bad on their own, but they're all not great for me because they were stirring up all these things. Okay. And that's something that nobody can do this hard work for you, that self insight work you're reading your emotion. Number two is examining the cause. So we always say the emotions are signals to emotional needs. And, and I usually, you know, we want to say something, you know, we're all adults here, so there's nothing really to hide. There are times whereby, you know, we're Upset. Why is it that sudden? I'm just gonna say this. Okay. Why is it that sometimes in a marriage, one person cheats? Is it because maybe the husband needs respect? And then. And then the wife is a very strong woman. The wife keeps going on and on the husband. The husband doesn't feel respected, and then they go out and find somebody that can give them that respect. So emotions are a signal to a deeper emotional need. I've also heard a quote. I think it's from Dr. Gabriel Mate, because he goes around and he talks to drug addicts, Right. And he says that a big part of addictions are stemmed from emotional needs that are not being met. Yeah. So it's not just about the feeling, but it's to examine the cause of, you know, where is it kind of coming from? Okay. You're yelling at your colleague or you're snapping at your spouse now, but there's a deeper underlying current to that. That. And then a would be to assess the intensity. On the scale of 1 to 10, how serious is it? Yeah. For some people, it could be just snapping. I'm irritated. No big deal. But if it's causing. If the intensity is serious, like, you realize that your body is breaking out in hives, you're suddenly having severe insomnia. Yeah. Then you kind of know, okay, there's something right here. It's chronic. I cannot not do anything about it. Let me not budget, let me not cover it up. I really have to assess it because this is something that I have to deal with, and there's a bigger underlying cost to it. And then d would be direct your efforts. What do you need to do at this point? It could be as simple as, I need to talk to somebody. I need to go and see a therapist. I need to slow down and maybe take a sabbatical. So burnout is really a big part of burnout. And people being exhausted is not having enough balance in their life. So very often, again, we go straight to the. What are you going to do? When we have not uncovered what could be underlying, you know, causes of all these emotions? So I. I would say emotional insight for sure. I think not everybody is emotionally very literate yet. And, you know, what I do with my coaching clients is I get them to collect data about them themselves. So for 30 days, they have to put in an Excel spreadsheet. What are the dominant emotions you feel at the end of 30 days, you now have data. What does this tell you about yourself that's so interesting? Have you ever come across Neil Donald Walsh he wrote, he did the conversations with God. Who's read, who's read them? The Catholics might be. I'll never read that nonsense. But, but he said something, he said something that I, I really took to heart. He said, when you express anger, it's not about the person you're expressing anger towards, it's about something that your anger, the angers with it within yourself. And I remember just listening, I just, it was one of those phrases. I just really, really took it on board. And then the next time I was with the boys and they were small and annoying and I wanted to be doing other things. I, I'm not an, I'm not a children's entertainer. I was never that mother. Right. You don't twist balloons. No, no, definitely not. And I'd be like the boys. And I then I said, wait, wait a minute. Am I angry with the boys or I'm. Am I angry with myself? And I realized I was frustrated in the situation I was in and I was, I was projecting that onto the boys, blaming them. But it's actually, it was my own frustration. So I think that that real self awareness of your own emotions and when they come out and why they come out, and if it's directed towards someone else, is it really about them or is it about you? You should really try the balloons. Yeah, they're really bad for the environment. Joe. I'm just looking at the time. What are the tangible things people can do right now to manage themselves, especially in the current climate? Because, I mean, this is a very, very intense time for humanity and there's a lot of people escaping into addiction consciously and unconsciously. So what are your thoughts here? Yeah, so, so, so tangible things and, and, and I'm a framework person. Right. I think in frameworks, you know, what can people do right now? I think the first thing is to understand, you know, how, how stress, how, what is your tolerance level like to stress and uncomfortable emotions? I'm going to be the first one to put up my hands and say that I'm high in anxiety and I'm naturally wired that way, so I'm not going to behave like a person who's really calm. So be mindful of that, that default version of myself. Right. And what are the, the, the stress symptoms that are showing up? So if we kind of break it up into like the four domains, and I call it the four burners, would be the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. So, symptoms. Yeah. So what are physical symptoms? Like what's sort of showing up in your body? Back aches, Insomnia, you know, maybe you're breaking out into rashes, you're suddenly putting on a lot of weight, or you're aging suddenly. So this physical symptoms. Yeah, Emotional symptoms. When is, is when you start to feel suddenly emotionally disconnected. You start to feel lonely. You. You start to feel like, hey, there's nobody in this world that I can connect with. There's emotional symptoms and you suddenly go into like a depressive moods. And then mental symptoms will be brain own fault. You feel like you cannot make the right decisions. There are 20 things pulling you apart at one time. You cannot make clear decisions on how to move forward. And then the S would be the spiritual symptoms. Spiritual symptoms usually come in the form of feeling that your life is empty. Like, what's the purpose of this? What's the meaning of this? Yeah, what am I doing all of this for one day I'm just gonna die. Right. Why do we bother? Yeah. So understand your symptoms. And then from there. So let's say you feel that maybe your symptom is really strong in the spiritual part. Yeah, I'm feeling empty all the time. I don't know what's the purpose of my life. Yeah, the world is just going to die with all these walls coming across. And then you want to ask yourself, what can I then do in that domain to balance up. So spiritual things we can do would be things like, you know, connecting with something bigger than yourself. So for me it's religion for you it might. Doesn't have to be religion. It could be going to a walk in the nature. Yeah. Connecting something bigger and more powerful than yourself. It could be things like building my purpose. Go and volunteer somewhere. Changes the entire perspective. Yeah. Physical symptoms, physical things you can do. Running. Yeah. Massage, Eating better. Nobody wants to eat a salad when they're feeling stressed out. We all want to eat like a bucket of fried chicken with the right amount of bacon. So we always say that what you need to do, you think about how you feel after you do it, not when you're doing it. So it might. A pound of bacon, you know, two strips might feel really good, but a pound of it might not be super helpful. Yeah. So that emotional symptoms, I mean, for me personally, animals has been a big part of regulating my own emotions. And I realized that I cannot do without animals right now. So they've emotionally regulated me a lot. It's just kind of connecting with things that speaks to your heart. Music could be one, you know, and then mental things you can do. A big part of mental is really getting Clarity. Right. So taking out a journal to write down. What are your top 10 values? Yeah. Clarifying what are your thoughts? What's messy about it? Yeah. So this is how it's a tangible thing. So thinking about it with the four domains is, has been quite helpful. Understanding of stress tolerance, what are your symptoms, and then going into the activity that helps to balance up those symptoms. So it's a big part of recognizing your signals before they start to spiral. Yeah, I just, We've just got Nico here. Who's, who's valuing what you're sharing. It is Nico. Right. I can't really see the picture, but he said he, he knows he's got all the tools. He's been on the show before and foundation to be successful. He's an incredible guy, but something keeps holding him back. Have you got any thoughts but any tips? I know you don't know him. Yeah, I don't know him and I don't know what he means by something keeps holding him back. If you have not had a conversation with a coach, a therapist, start there. I, I, you know, and again, you know, because human beings, our brains, other than Joe Augustine, most of us, our brains are not so powerful. So a little bit more one dimensional. Sorry, which Joe Augustine are you speaking about here? The one with the voice of the wizard of Oz, the one that drives his voice, his wife crazy. Right? Yeah. Seek wise counsel. Seek wise counsel. Think of the people that you have in your life. And, you know, not all of us have great friends that could give us some wisdom. So if you don't have. I'm fortunate to have a lot of great friends that bring a lot of wisdom to me. Not a lot of us have. And if you don't have it, pay for it. The money is not wasted. Not wasted. Yeah. Get a different perspective. Get a coach, get a mentor. You can do the Enneagram test if you want to, but, you know, that's not the be all and all because even with the Enneagram test or whatever personality test on us, we lie to ourselves because we want to be this and we don't want to be that. And that adds up another bull story there. But definitely talk to somebody who can give you some wisdom. Yeah. And it's not just keeping and thinking about it, but it's you expressing it. And a big part of emotional leadership is emotional expression. When you can express yourself, you process it. And with AI these days, it's easier. Right. You can process it. You talk to yourself and talk to somebody and see what comes Up. It's never a one step process. It has taken me a decade. So if you're hoping to get rid of all the negative BS within one day, not possible. It's an entire journey and the best time to start is 20 years ago. I'd like to add a little bit to the thing about why it's hard to start, especially when you think that you need to do something. It's self preservation. We're human beings and our egos, as much as we talk about egos as usually a negative thing. The ego is the self, right? So we, we are actually protecting ourselves. So we don't want to willingly kill ourselves. But that's what a radical change is. Because you, the person you've been for the last 50 years, 57 in my case, if you're gonna go through something that's going to radically change you, like for instance, if I were to start smiling all the time, it would be weird. It would be weird. And it would in a sense kill the old Joe Augustine. You know that and that, and that part of it is we are self preserving in that sense. We're very comfortable with who we are despite all the circumstances. So we can sit in a pile of BS in a really sad state and recognize that in order for all this to go away, we have to change. So I spent many years recognizing that what was holding me back probably the most was the fact that I was on radio, right? Because I was on radio, I was enjoying it. But if it, it was, if you talk about what was holding me back from greatness in terms of being bigger than myself and doing more, probably that whole thing being it, being addicted to it and kind of liking the, the whole thing, the, the way work went, went and all that, but it was the thing that was holding me back. And, and actually in a sense getting fired was the best thing that could ever happen to me. But we, we are protective of ourselves. So the idea of just saying, okay, you know what, we need to change, I'm going to do something about it. You are actually stepping into the abattoir of your life. I shall become bacon. Yeah, I remember a friend of mine was, was, she was stuck with a story of misery that was the foundation of her life. And there was never going to be any resolution to, to the story. And, and I said to her, it's time to let that story go. But she couldn't because it was the foundation of, of her entire existence. So what you're saying, Joe, is really, it obviously manifests in many, many, many different Ways. But I think you can say profound. You can say profound. No, no, I'm not giving you that. Anyway, coming up to the hour. So, you know, Cindy, we're, we're in a world in a state of crisis. And my greatest fear is that the vast majority of the human population move into despair based on how bad things are getting. So what's your sort of takeaway message for everyone listening today about, you know, because self management is probably going to be one of the most important things we, we all learn in the coming years. What's your final message to everyone to help them on that journey? Yeah, yeah. You know, if you're somebody truly struggling and you're stuck. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're really, really happy in your life, with your life, and no beers, nothing's bothering you, of course, you know, go with the flow and do whatever you need to do. But if it's somebody who's feeling stuck, you're not happy with yourself. You kind of know that something needs to change. You're not living your life to your full potential or you're really, really troubled by what's really happening in the world. You know, I started this conversation by saying that I had lost all influence over myself in that Bangkok hotel room. Right. In hindsight, I think the turning point wasn't really like a strategy or framework or big enlightenment on the outside. It was a decision to stop looking away and start looking inside. So pay attention to what's happening within because your symptoms, whatever symptoms you're experiencing, will first whisper before they shout. So I usually like to leave my listeners with one thing. Imagine that you're now 85 years old. It doesn't look like any of us are 85 yet and now. But imagine you're 85. Okay. You're looking back on your life. Yeah. Who is the person you would have wanted to be? So you're going to ask yourself that hindsight question and just as important, who is the person you would not have wanted to become? Yeah. So get crystal clear on both. Okay. Because as we're keeping up with the war, the crisis and everything on the outside, let's not forget about what's happening on the inside. Yeah. So honesty without compassion is really self punishment. And compassion without honesty is self denial. Okay. So remember that. And the first and most powerful person that you'll ever influence really starts with yourself. Yeah. Nice one. Now I, I, I'll bring us all back up. I forgot to ask you if you wanted to stay or if you want to escape the news bit Most people do, so it's totally up to you. I'm gonna escape it, but thank you for having me. I'm just gonna listen to the YouTube live for now so that I can do some of the other work that I have lined up for the rest of the day. Oh, I thought we could speak behind your back. Okay. All right. Please don't. I'm gonna record it. No, thank you, darling. We really appreciate it. I love your honesty, I love your stories, and I love the work that you're doing. So thank you for agreeing to share it with us. Thank you. Thank you very much, Andrea, for having me on the Shih Tzu show. I'm so proud to be here. And thank you, Joe, David, as well as Richard, for being here together with me today. All right. Yeah. Have a lovely conversation, everyone. All right. It's all downhill from here. Yeah. All right. Yeah. You know, we were talking about the external that Joe was talking about when you were talking about Serena Williams and all that sort of stuff, but I was actually talking about you and the way you. You. You sort of exist in the world versus the examples that you shared versus what Cindy was saying about the lack of self worth. Because you don't like self worth, right, Joe? I. I have. I have views about that. I. Anyway, so I. I would say that when I. When I think about it, I realize that my mom made me feel much better than I deserve to be. She. She. She. She installed a sense of confidence and self worth. So the shorter answer would have been, no, I don't like it. But it is. It is thanks to my mom. I think she was the one who. Who reassured me about my thoughts and my thinking. She realigned me when I was off. I'm a bit included physical punishment, which, you know, resulted in. In. In what I have today, which, you know, may not be the catch of the week, but it is what it is. Yeah. All right. Any other. Any other thoughts before we get stuck into the news? We're going to rip through it today. A lot there. There's a lot there. And actually, what struck me the most, what she describes is actually almost like the professional process you're trying to go through in your work. If you manage money, which is what I've done, you know, virtually all my working life, is you. You examine where you did well and where you did not do well, and you work on those parts to ensure that the bad things don't happen again. And you're trying to emphasize the good parts and the most important part of that whole Process is the honesty with yourself and not in some way or form blaming others. There was a raccoon crossing the road. Right. That's why I lost money this week. And it really is a very, very hard process because at the end of the day, people still want to effectively lie to themselves about the things you did badly because it, it hurts to admit it, but it's actually something that does improve your performance over time. If you are honest about these things and evaluate them correctly and hopefully you can include people that enable you to do that as well on that road. I think it's the, is equally dangerous, the opposite. The things that you do well, you lie to yourself about as well. It wasn't the raccoon, it was me that made it work or whatever it is. Right. You know? Yeah, yeah. Because when you, when, when things work, especially if you're trading or whatever it is, you make a bunch of money. Yeah. Is you really believe in yourself? You think, of course I'm so brilliant. That system was obviously right. But I, I kind of think of the people that you, you guys must have worked with across your life. I, I don't think that self awareness and emotional intelligence would have been at the top of the pops. Right. I mean, I mean there's, there's, there's this part. I think this is really interesting because I'm just looking back at, you know, Nico's comments in that way, you know, about, you know, wanting to be successful and something keeps holding back back to this comment about you, you know, as a person. I, you know, kind of that. Because that, that success is defined in some context and that emotional awareness in, in a way is sort of what that is. Right. So, so, so you, you, you have this thing of saying, you know, what actually does it mean to be successful? You, you credibly successful, you may be incredibly successful, but you don't see it because you see it in the next context. You know, you've done a lot, you've gotten here, so you're always kind of moving it to the next context. So in that way you never be successful because you never actually accept that actually you've made it, you've done a lot. And that goes in some sense into the question of people we work to. In that way is when you are sort of like, you're making money in that sense and all these things going on in the world and stuff is you in some sense make yourself contactless because contacts contextless. Because if you actually are too concerned with the context, you're not really just Seeing what it is and so on. You know, you. You get to. You get married to. To a story or whatever it is. You don't want to do that. So. So in some sense, you. You're in a business where you strip away that kind of personal associations, in some sense. And it goes on past, and I've seen it. And it goes into your personal relations, goes into your relationship with your wife, it goes into your relationship with your children in those ways, because you begin to see them as a trade in that way, because that's what you do all day. That's kind of innately how you see everything. Yeah. All right, let me stop loss on that one. Let's. Let's move to the news. Shall we do that? We should do it. There's a lot to go through. There is what people pay for, right? Oh, we're getting so much money. It's ridiculous. Joe. Okay? Hunter Biden is on social media and he's having a. He's. It looks like he's having a bit of fun. So Jill Bowden published her book, and Jake Tapper's sort of going in all sorts of directions around the book. But the really interesting thing is there was a. He put up a post the other day saying, I'm seven years sober. And most people were like, hurrah, good on you. And then someone wrote, that was your bag of coke in the White House. To which we replied, it most definitely was not. I would never have forgotten my drugs. But there's a lot of other things that he's doing. So one of the things he's really starting to highlight now, he's like, you. You know, you guys keep going after me. You go, you're going after my mum. But Jared and Ivanka with their. Their island in Albania, which is creating massive protests. Eric's got some drone company that's going IPO or worth 1.5 billion, that's just won some massive contract. Don Jr. You know, all that sort of stuff. And. No, nobody's really talking about that. Right. But they're talking about this. So, anyway, he's. He's worth. Worth keeping an eye on for the football fans here. What? Why. Why do those riots happen? Can anyone help me understand? You win. Go and enjoy yourself. Anyone? Yeah. I think it's more or less orchestrated. Our son lives in Paris now. He wasn't in Paris for the weekend there, but he said it was always going to happen, was his only comment. And I do think you have this for a better word. Darker forces that takes these opportunities to Basically start up rights and stir up conflict and stir up social mess because it's an opportunity for them to do so. How well planned and how well premeditated it is, I'm not sure. But largely speaking, when these things happen, there is always for me a reasonable element of. Of planning and premeditation that goes into it. It's an opportunity to push your narrative further. Okay, I. I'm always a bit confused by it. Okay, so in the nerve. And I'll. I'll share the article in a moment. Timothy Snider. Now, do you guys remember Timothy snider left the U.S. he's in Canada now because he's an authoritarian expert and recognized that he needed to leave the country. So the title is we are watching the US Attempt a Superpower Suicide. I don't know if any of you have had a. A chance to read it, but yeah, that's, that's been something that, you know, you. So many of the decisions that are being made, so, so, so much of what's going on, you're kind of looking at it and you're like, what. Why would you choose this path? So, and what were your thoughts, Richard? You read. You read it? Yeah, yeah, I think it's. It's a really interesting article and people, if they have the opportunity, should read it because it's. Sure, it's a really good piece of journalism. Now, I tend to be, you know, huge cynic, as David in particular knows very well. And I, I actually don't think this is done out of idiocy, anything like the sort. I think this is a premeditated plan of, of basically enriching yourself in the process where America becomes a very distant second compared to what I can achieve on a personal level because of the position I've been put in. And then it actually makes a lot more sense. Sorry, I didn't get that. Well, the nerd rock sort of that side of things. The nerd rock. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like, it might not be great for America, but I really don't care very much about that because I. In, in this particular world, the national states don't matter anymore, you know, because. Okay, so you, you go back to the X Files with the guys in the room. Yeah, kind of. But I, I just think a lot of the decision making that's taken place lately is all about personal enrichment for the people involved. And then it makes a lot more sense when you have these greater superpowers through history, there's always a finite time. They can remain a superpower. Because the process of, of decline is more or less similar. And you share some of those stories, right? You, you get lazy in your position and you get less on the edge to maintain it because you constantly need to placate people who are expected to get more and more because you are the same superpower of the world goes for the Roman Empire. All these empires, they eventually fade because they corrode from within, because that's how a cycle goes through. So some of the things that would have happened to the US probably would have happened anyway regardless. And it started, in my opinion, many administrations ago, that decline and the rise of China as the next two superpower, that's certain inevitability to it. It's just numbers and you can see what's happening. However, some of the self inflicted wounds that are happening are much more in the context of, yeah, it might not be great for the US as a country, but actually, you know what, it's great for me and my buddies and then it's rationally makes a lot more sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyone else want to sort of comment on it? David? No. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I think the, the, the interesting side is, of course, you know, this is, you know, you have Russia as a superpower committing superpower suicide. You know, do you think Russia's a superpower? In my book? He certainly thought it was. When? Before it started? The Ukraine war? Yeah. Okay. In your own mind, you can still be a super power. And I'm sure, you know, there are still British people who think of the empire, but let's be honest, you're not. The only superpower that's existed for the last half a century is the US Really. And now you have a rising superpower that at some point in the not too distant future will become the new superpower of the world. And that's huge element of inevitability about that. Yeah. So yeah, for me, Russia, in their world, they were probably thinking they were a superpower, but really they're not. Yeah, but the only thing that sort of gives them that superpower status was the nuclear weapons, right? Yeah. So the core thesis of the article is no state has ever deliberately and systematically destroyed its own power as fast as Trump's US is doing. And Snyder, the authoritarian expert calls it strategic suicide. It's really worth listening to because a lot of the decisions that are being made, you know, kind of like what, what's going on and what you're talking about with the tech bros, the, the, the what can I take for myself? So a couple of times I've been talking with people about this community and they're like, but they're smart, right? And, and I think that's, I think that's something that people aren't really appreciating because if you actually look at the decisions. So anthropics basically just put out a call out for a slowdown on AI because, because of the risks. Right. The long term thinking, the, the consequences of their actions and their decisions. I, I actually don't think they are as smart as everyone thinks they are. They might be brilliant. They might, they might. You know, and if you watch a developer, a tech developer at work, it's like a, they're like a composer, they're amazing. But, but human impact. That, that, that question, that's not necessarily a conversation that they have. It's what can technology do? It's not what will the impact on humanity be with this technology. Those, those two questions are not anyone. Yeah, I pick up on the smart part. I mean, you know, kind of, you know, what does it mean to be smart because they make money? I think, you know, that's, that's what you, you can see or you can observe. You know, that's what the evidence is. The smart bit is an inference. It's kind of like a contextual inference that we've somehow put on top that actually doesn't need any evidence because it's a receiver wisdom. So, you know, it's a deference. It's, it's people, people do that as a deference, not because there's any accurate evidence of, of anything of the kind. And, and when you go and look at people who are, you know, kind of smart, as in, you know, they, they, you know, they're academically smart, they are culturally smart or, and so on in those things, you know, they don't make money and you kind of tend to ignore them and don't think of them as smart. So I think, I think all that's, all that comment is just that, you know, we, we have this reference for people who make money and this cultural suicide. What Richard is saying is, you know, that reference is now allow reference for them, not reference, reference for people who make money. And that reference for them is allowing them to kill off a superpower. Yes. Yeah, I think that's, that, that's actually the, the real essence of the conclusion that I have the ability to do this because it adds to my own bottom line. And you know what then in the grand scheme of things, the future of the US as that Superpower is irrelevant. Yeah, yeah. And then they can set up their network state. Right. And so the things that he's talking about is in this article where one of the things is the energy misstep. It's just, you know, it's really, it's really crazy what's going on. You know, there's two, two, there's two countries in the world. One's focused on fossil fuels, the other smok focused on sustainable energy. You see the growth that's coming out of China in, in, in this sector, it's just, it's, you know, it's, it's incredible outdated military focus. So Trump's, you know, battleships, all that sort of stuff. The, the diplomatic collapse. I don't know how many of the embassies around the world don't have any, any ambassador in them losing to Iran. You know, just that whole decision. So, you know, I mean, basically, you know, whatever happens next, if the tech bros win and the individual wealth, if they win and they can go and build their network states, they were trying to do one of them in, in the Philippines that got rejected just, just recently. Or the US Is going to have to go through a massive revolution and it's going to be very, very painful. But you know, that's kind of, that's the point that we're at. Moving on to another story. Big cancer news this week. There's a new pancreatic cancer pill. And this was always one of the, the worst forms of cancer you could get was like, I don't know, the fatal, fatality, but it was very like 99% or something, 95% or something like that. But there's a new drug and it's stopping tumor growth. Joe, did you have a chance to have a look at that or talk to any of the academics in, in that field in the last week? Well, I do spend some time on the scientific podcasts. They're pretty excited about this because what it does is it creates a lot of extension in terms of life. So for pancreatic cancer, the numbers were so encouraging. And what they really like about this is the markers are also translatable, as in like it's something that they're going to do more exploration about this, but it could very much influence other cancers as well. So that's all I got on that. It's very exciting. They're trying to fast track it. And the doctor who was speaking about reporting on the numbers was actually saying that his hope and the way it looked like it was going to go is that he was going to be able to take it back to his other patients for the mainstream use within this next few months. So that's, that's really, really great. Yeah, no, it's cool. They got a standing ovation, which was, which was not expected. So the other, the other story that's been, I mean, it's been brewing around for a while, but the, basically the EU is launching a major push to break with the US and China from a technology perspective. But then there's this other thing which is called Pax Silica. There's a guy called. I know, I know Bertran, who's a, he's a sort of a, an, an academic type person. I don't, I don't know how to classify him. And he was basically talking about these packs, Cilicia, as Europe being submissive to America and that this was a negative thing. And then Europe's announced that it's going to break with, with American and Chinese companies and build its own. But there's a lot of contradictions in the information out there. But the, but the core, the core message seems to be that Europe is going to take control of tech, of its tech, and get out of the, the US in particular, because, you know, you've got people being locked out of Microsoft, you're being locked out of databases. They can't book an Airbnb because it's an American owned company. But at the same time, all of these great technology revolutions happen in Europe. They get bought up by Americans companies. So like the, the money's got to be there in Europe to get the technology revolution going. So I don't know who, who's. Who, who's on the, on who's on top of this story? Anyone? Well, one of the biggest things that holds. Sorry, go ahead. I think, you know, Europe is never going to be able to do that because it's got the EU running it. Right. It's just a totally stupid dream. All right, so cloud sovereignty rules. I mean that, that, I mean that's always been there. Chips. They can't. I mean, just look at what Europe has done for, you know, data privacy and stuff. Gdpr, okay. What is done is meant that everybody can now get whatever data they want because you now you just end up clicking on all the things that says you agree or whatever it is. The European approach is that somehow we govern it. And when you do that and you still want it to work, you actually end up by giving away all the control they could possibly have. The, the, the, the, the regulations, the regulations are done. By people who have absolutely no sense. I was speaking with a guy who was working with Timmerman after the European debt crisis and 2008, whatever, and they're sending up all these new rules about leverage and finance and stuff. And this was about two, three years ago. So this is kind of like a long time after the crisis went. And I said, you know, you realize debt is now way over what it was before. And it was like, it can't be. It's impossible. We said, absolutely never be that. I mean, that's the eu. Yeah, yeah. So you're trying to. Right. Okay. You know, Joe, did you. Well, I was gonna say from the opposite side of it also is about the regulations, right? The regulations that also stop companies from saying, I want to develop in, in Europe because it's too expensive to go wrong. Right. So it's, it's the, it is. I, I think the EU is to tech what California is to buildings. If, if you want to do something in, in, in the US you want to do a, if you want to change something in your backyard in California, it's, it's a, it's hell. Right. And I think, I think the, I think Europe poses that kind of thing as well. So when I, when I look at that companies. So far, what I've seen, again, I'm not an analyst, but I've seen companies withdraw from the European market. And I think most times it's about the risk of going awry in terms of, you know, gdpr, that kind of stuff. It's, it's, it's, it's the, it is the consequence of not following the rules. And, and it's, it's, it's too much in terms of a framework. I think, I think in Europe it's very clear what you can't do, do. And that's not always a good thing. That's like the message. Right? Yeah. Anyway, anyone, Anyone else? Because basically what it is is everybody somehow now in a world that feels that they can't feel secure with being neighbor to someone else. So just, just think about what it means actually for the world to have three times the resources that you need in order to try and make a silicon chip. Europe is suffering drought all over the place. The amount of water you need to make silicon chip is absolutely insane. The, the, the reason why it's all done over in Taiwan is because this is not some hilly going into, into, into the factory. These factories are the cleanest space on earth. They're cleaner than space itself, outer space. So you go, then you have people pissing around in there and you know, and, and then you have all the things around us as, oh, it's my right to do this, or whatever it is as trying along here and whatever. And in that way. And I think you're going to find that actually, you know, it's just going to end up. You, you, it's, first of all, I can't see how Europe under the EU is going to be able to do that. Look, look at the European Space Agency. Where's it caught? You know, when was the last time anything went up in space out of that? And, and just look at the European jet fighters, what happened to them. And, and this whole thing is just kind of a completely ridiculous, I mean, going south, having an unelected president. Absolutely. You know, the whole thing has no representation. It's, I, I, it's not to say I'm against Europe, I love Europe. I hated Brexit. I like to be in Europe, be part of the eu. But let's be honest about what we can actually do. Yeah. All right, so cynicism on Europe's ability to deliver on this promise. Okay, get the message. The UN came out this week with a big warning on a super El Nino on the way. There's a lot of coverage coming out of it in a publication called Severe Weather Europe. They're saying that the first impacts of El Nino have already been detected. So a lot of the, a lot of the early coverage was saying it was sort of September time frame when it would hit, but they're saying it's already happening and it, and it seems like the warming of the oceans. So one of the, that, what's his name, I put it in the show notes. Professor Giardarelli said it's going to be a super, super fragilistic, some something El Nino, not, not even a Godzilla. It's going to be something much, much bigger than last time. But it's, don't you hate it when nerds try to be funny? Yeah, I think it's good. We need, we need humor. But it's warm, warm Pacific Ocean anomaly. So that's one westerly wind burst, weaker trade winds, the strong Kelvin weight. So that's that big red thing, heat, space that's under the ocean that keeps showing up in, in the graph. So there's a lot, a lot of fear starting to build up around this. I think it's one of the things that we need to get prepared for. I, I can't even imagine how much hotter it's going to get out in this part of the world. So, yeah, any, any, anything you guys have been noticing on the, on in your coverage, it's starting to, to, to get noticed. For me, that would be the big news. If we rewind a month. No one, except, you know, people very, very in tune with environment news. We're talking about it. It's now on the way to transition into mainstream media. Okay. Yeah, I, I think people don't know what it means. I think it's reported, but this is not like, you know, Trump is going to visit and everybody now has a vision what that means for them in, in their way, positive or negative, whichever. But saying how Ninu is going to come along is. It's like sort of saying, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. In that way, people don't know what it means. I, I don't know what it means, you know, kind of like terrible. But what does that actually mean? I don't know what it means. I suppose, I suppose we, we probably know what it means more out in this part of the world because, you know, because we know it. Right. So growing up in Australia, La Nina, there were very different things. You know, floods, cooler heat, hotter fires, you know, so it was very, very clear. One of my frustrations with all the media coverage is every single piece of coverage goes through about half, half the half the article is explaining what it is. I'm like, I don't need to know what it is. Just tell me what this news story is. So, yeah, I suppose in different parts of the world and Europe is going to be the. Technically the least impacted. Yes. By, by it. But at the same time, not really. I mean, this, this is the whole point. This is what I mean, you not knowing what it means. You know, our food don't come from Europe. Sorry, what's that? It doesn't come from Europe. It come from Chile. It comes from, you know, Australia. It comes from all these places which are impacted. So, so this is what I mean by is people don't know what it means because they talk about all the reports, talk about some weather pattern. What it means is not the weather pattern. What it means is what happens to the supermarket that I go to. What happens is the, is the, you know, few I need to put my thing or the Amazon delivery I'm expecting or whatever it is. Yeah. And that's what I mean by people don't know what it means because people talk about it. Insist on talking about some dipole oscillation in this, you know, kind of Southern Pacific. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Going south is talking about how it's the biggest since 1875. So we spoke about this quite probably a month, six weeks ago now. Yeah, one of the things that isn't being discussed about that 1875 event. So 10 of the world's population died at that time because of it. But one of the things that isn't discussed is at that time. So the British took the food from India back to, back to the UK and a huge number of people in India died from starvation because of that. So going into this super El Nino, countries like India will keep their food and make sure that their people are okay, which we, we've talked about before. They've done in, in, in past years when, when rice production was low. But, yeah, but like David was saying, so there's going to be food shortages, definitely famine, drought, food inflation, supply chain disruption. There's going to be technology that doesn't work because there's no, there's no rain. So every country knows what most people from a country know what happens during an El Nino based on where they are. Most people do. So in Australia, we could be seeing one of the worst fire seasons it's ever, they've ever seen. Again, the coral bleaching. There was, there was an article I read this morning. The coral reefs in the Northern Hemisphere could bleach. No, no, it's not could, it's. They will bleach. It's going to be heat like we've never seen before. You know, some of the, some of the charts that you're seeing of the heat extreme. So, yeah, I mean, and, and the impacts are going to be enormous. So. Yeah, I agree with you. All right, We've promised to talk about this before and we haven't talked about it. And it's called 60 Section 301 Investigations. And I'm going to hand it to Richard and David to talk about this. But the, but the, oh, thank goodness the investigations are in and Singapore's been put on the list as one the of, of the countries that has not fulfilled its obligations, there's Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan are also on the list. So basically 60 countries. And to me it's just a legal way of Trump being able to do his tariffs, so. Because I'm sure they don't, they don't fulfill those obligations either. All right, who wants to go? David, I think you've said it. Yeah, you summed it really nicely. If there ever was a BS story, can we do the El Nino thing and let me know what it is with the 60 Section 301 investigations. Yeah, yeah. Richard, come on. No, I, I, I think it's just a drum drummed up fig leaf for be able to push ahead. Whatever you, you've already decided. I mean. Yeah, the, the determinants of the list are basically, it's a joke because you have no ability to actually delve down and, and find the real truth. If there is such a thing as a retreat. It's just, yeah. We compile a list to justify what I'm going to do anyway. What it does is it allows the US to take action over trade and over kind of over currency and so on. It allows them to then go on and actually kind of, you know, it's, it's not a sanctioning of a country in the sense it's impose fines. Yeah. On a country. So, so, so US always has to host that as, as kind of like a, a weapon of last resort in a sense because it then allows them a lot of room in terms of how they can impose financial punishment. Okay. Yeah. Can I just pretend I don't know what's going on? Yeah. So I'm going to tell you. So they, they've done this. They've done this. They, they put out a notification, it was quite some time ago saying that they were going to do this assessment. So basically they've come come up with the response. So if you have an economy with some forced labor prohibition framework, so there's, there's forced labor, so child, child workers or some sort of human suffering in it, you will be charged 10 duty and 12.5% duty for all the others that are lacking effective processes. So basically they, they went out and they, they sent out a notification to all these countries. We're going to be doing this. Then they've come back just in the last week and said 60 countries have got this labor, they're breaking the labor rules around the world. And because of that it means that they can compete with America and produce lower, lower value items because they're, they're not taking care of the people who are producing the product. So very bad way of explaining it. But you kind of get. Right. Yeah. Right. Basically saying unlike the coal mines in America. Yeah, yeah. And because, because there's none of that, that America's not doing any of that anywhere in the world. So. Yeah. Safest country in the world. Yeah. So basically foreign producers use forced labor to keep costs artificially low, undercutting US producers who comply with labor standards. So that's kind of where it comes from. But the results just came out in the last week and now all of the countries who've been put on the list have got an opportunity to respond. And a lot of the countries are saying, but this is completely unfair. So, but to me, it just seems like a legal way to get tariffs. Yeah. Because the tariffs have been overturned by the Supreme Court. The, the, the sort of crazy tariffs have been overturned by the Supreme Court. Trump supposed to give money back, or the US Government supposed to give money back to the, I don't know, whoever, who is who. The companies that got the tariffs levied on them effectively have sued in some cases. Cases. Right. And so the big, the big trouble right now is that if they, they're being pushed now to give refunds to those who didn't sue as well. So that's the, yeah, that's the big bill that's coming their way, which is going to be cost the US Quite a bit. And Trump believes that, well, American, America can't be the, the world's consumer. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the idea that, you know, you can't have one country consuming everything other countries producing in the world in that way. But section 301, I don't know when it was first signed into law. 1970s, I think, so it's quite old. Essentially allows the US to decide if another country is trading on unfair terms with it. And if it deems that it is trading on unfair terms with it, then it allows the US to take action by the way of imposing tariffs, restricting imports and kind of. And tearing up trade agreements or whatever it is that it wants to do. Yeah. All right. All right. So we're all clear? Clear as mustard on that one. Indeed. All right, we, if you're paying attention to the news, you'll be noticing that there's a lot of news around what's going on in Somalia. So one of the pieces in Global Voices is titled Somalia Drought, Fuel prices and conflicts. Heightened famine risk. So repeated failed rains. I mean, this is a, a population that is really, really suffering conflict and insecurity is obviously on the rise. The, the, the energy shock is it's put the price of fuel up 150. And you've got to remember a lot of the people there are incredibly poor. And then of course, the funding like USAID has collapsed. It was that they only got 20 of external funding. So it's 288 million versus 1.42 billion. And so I always say to people, if you feel like you're having a bad Day. Yeah, you're lucky you're not in Somalia. But to me, to me, like some of the articles that I'm seeing, it's, it's, it's, it's on the, it's on the road of a completely collapsed state. And it's. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think, you know, the, the outside of this is that, you know, Somalia is on the coast of Africa, scan below sort of Saudi Arabia and coming out of the Gulf, almost that sort of thing. So a lot of the ships, if they're going to try and, you know, go, go past it in that way. So the piracy is increasing because if your fuse in price and it's nothing else, you're going to use it in the way that makes the most money. And the way that makes the most money is going hijacking that ship. So we're going to find that Paris is increasing and that's going to end up affecting everybody around. So, you know, Somalia is not something that just happens out there because a lot of big ships end up getting hijacked. You know, massive container chips can get hijacked as well. You just have a little flotilla, little ones along, coming along. So it goes down to. Yeah, it has kind of implications. In a few years back, almost a decade back, I think now the, I think the UK and other navies had their navies patrolling that sort of part of Africa as an attempt to try and deal with that. But that was when UK had a navy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The UAE is in there too, right? The UAE is in there as well. Getting up to no good. As in, as in the piracy or as in just. No, no, in the, in the country. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's sort of, sort of a little bit, sort of a little bit behind closed doors, that one. There's, there's a lot of stuff going on. Okay, so Russia, war losses, they're starting to sort of report the numbers. I remember, I can't remember when it was. It was earlier this year when the. We were talking about how the Ukrainians basically have announced that they're just going to have to go out and kill a lot of Russians and because it's the only way that they can see that they're going to win the war. A lot of the headlines are sort of talking about that, but Ukraine's definitely got the upper hand in. Zelensky basically said Russian casualties increased to 145,000 this year. 86,000 killed, not 59,000 seriously wounded. They're not able to replace the amount of troops. But the interesting thing is in three of the, sort of the mainstream Russian media, the conversation is shifting where it's. It's basically the message is it's time to get out. It's in the fifth year. It's, Russia's not winning this war. They're not gaining new territory. Ukraine's developing new skills and they're selling those skills now. But I don't know when. When will this be over? It's just, It's, I think your last. Yeah, yeah, go on, go on, go on. Go, go. Richard, I. I think you are very, very rapidly approaching a massive inflection point here. Yeah. Where things will go in one or two or three directions. It's abundantly clear that Putin and his sort of lackeys can no longer protect ordinary Russian citizens from the reality of this war. Ukrainians are able to militarily penetrate much, much further into Russia than was the case before. They're imposing massive strikes on Russian infrastructure, and in some cases they have the potential to hit other targets, but so far seem to have not done so. But they have the ability, which is important. And Russia has no longer got the ability to recruit people that will leave the citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg in particular, unaffected of what's going on. You've emptied the prisons, you've depleted the countryside of recruits, you're importing mercenaries from all over the world. And it has the further military implication, no doubt, that the quality of Russian troops at the front line is shrinking all the time, and hence the casualty rates are going up. These are not experienced combat soldiers that probably the first wave involved a much larger number of. And Ukraine has found out that. That when you are a very, very large country with vast territory and your explicit strategy has become to kill as many as possible, you can always trade terrain for casualties, and that's very effective in Ukraine's case. So for me, you are very, very, very close to this kind of Minsky moment where Russia will either decide to go all in, we will probably include new weapons and start hitting civilian targets, or they will find some kind of fig leaf for getting out of this absolute show. Yeah. And what, what Russia is capable of doing to finish this is, you know, that's, that's what's got everyone so alarmed. Right. We don't know what it's capable of doing. Going, David. Well, I mean, Russia, you know, Afghanistan, Georgia, Chechnya, kind of the list of countries where it got into long drawn out conflicts that eventually sort of backed off and went over. So. So, you know, this is not necessarily different in that way. Why it keeps doing that I'm not sure. I can't understand it in, in particular, but that tends to. Goes on. But what has happened out of the war in Iran is actually that, you know, the sort of drone technology, cheap drone technology, has really become a great commodity, really become interesting. And that's where the Ukraine's have been, you know, kind of really have. Have been finding, you know, there is a market for what they do in that way. A drone that you can imagine, imagine building a military drone over that. That comes from initial concept to implementation that took, you know, maybe half a year kind of thing. Right. That's the sort of technology that you have that ends up being extremely effective in, in dealing with these things. It's like the time when people were talking about how, you know, we've got these amazing space weapons and, and, and you know, lasers that come out and stuff. And then if this image of someone else going around with a spray can just kind of covering up where the laser comes out of type thing. So, so where this goes to, I don't think it's going to go there. But you know, I'm usually who, I don't know what it, what it is. But you. If, if Russia wants to push this on, I suspect it may rather just back off. It does go into the next, the next step, which is kind of the tactical nuclear weapons. Yeah, you know, that's, that's the thing to do is the, is it is also the thing for the US to do with Iran in a sense. You know, what, what Iran has done is drawn the US into effectively a guerrilla war that they never wanted. Yeah. And it was going to have a decisive closing. Not a win, just a decisive closing that it can claim to whatever it is. It is a, you know, is the crescendo in a set of fireworks. Something that can do that. And so either way finishes it. Oh, not sure you can talk of who wins or whatever it is, but it opens the door to kind of much worse conflicts. That's the next step of what we have. It's all a part of a sign of a time. It's not particularly hopeful or helpful. It does kind of go into whether you go back to the previous story of the, you know, superpower committing suicide or whether, you know, there's a group of people who are actually, I don't think there's a group of people decisively planning this is what we want. I think there's a group of people going back to the smart I don't think they plan, I don't think they do that. Yeah, I think there's a group of people who are very happy to then go along and you know, as, as a gap opens up, typically, you know, something happens, everybody goes, oh my God, what's going on? And then it kind of, kind of closes. Gives you a chance to close as a reaction. What happens here is the gap closes up. They go, oh, yeah, I can go in there. And they're very fast at getting in there. And so it can't close and just wedges it open wider and wider and, and they can do that because they have a lot of money. They have a lot of kind of that connection from the money and all the rest of it. So, you know, it's, it's not a great path in that, in that sense it requires Russia, Putin to, at this point to go along as it would in the sense of Trump to sort of says, actually, you know what, I've got my election to fight. I'm not going to win it this way. Maybe that's not their mind. I don't know. We, we'll see. But, but if it, if it, if it is too close, if it's bringing it to a close, it is going. I, I see more chance of it being kind of like a great big massive blow up or something. Or rather then let's just pack up our backs and go home. Exactly. There's no, no, no ego in that, in that way. Okay, let's move on to, to some more ridiculous politicians. So Australia's going through a bit of an interesting phase where Pauline Hansen. Who, what's, what's her party anyway? She's. God, this, this is still one nation. Or is it something else? Yeah, yeah, just, I mean, she's just, she's just so ridiculous to me. So the Batuta advocate, who I've just shared an article, sort of talked about the top seven things that she's going to be able to achieve. And one of them is negotiating deals with our major Asia trade partners. So she's a complete racist. She's been racist since she started. She's, she's the one that wore the full burqa into parliament. She's ridiculous. Gina Reinhardt is obviously propping her up, you know, because you've got to go. If you're going to go far. Right. You might as well. You got to go with Gina. I just, the idea that, you know, that there's even a possibility and, and, you know, where I grew up is the first place that this party won a seat just, just a few weeks ago, and I was like, oh, for God's sake. Anyway, we are, we are at a stage in the world where we need, we need the adults to step up and, and lead the countries of, of our nation. And everywhere I look, you know, Nigel Farage in the uk, Pauline Hansen in Australia. Everywhere I look, you know, it, I, I, I don't, I, I don't know how people can't see it. Like talking about the Asian negotiation. Tony Abbott, who's now the new labor, the leader of the Liberal Party again, right, he pissed off China so much that they said, all right, we're not doing any business with you. So Chinese business to Australia is worth 45%. American business to Australia is worth like 10%. So it's never in Australia's interest to piss China off because the market's just too big. So now you've got Pauline Hansen coming in and all she does is piss off, off anyone who's not white Australian. Yeah, it's not going to be good for the country. So, like, yeah, well, well, I mean, she's also. So, so the one thing that came out of, about the, the Asia connection and China connection in, in that sense, the one thing that Trump's visit to cg, to China made clear from the China side was lay off Taiwan. You know, just allow it to be whatever it is, don't disrupt it, don't do anything, just, you know, kind of, you don't need to do anything. We, we've had, well, 1940s, right, so, you know, 88 decade of accepting the status quo as it is, basically, and look at how Taiwan is, look at where we are kind of thing. Well, let's just have another eight decades and then we will see how we all come back together in that way. Who knows, the whole world, maybe one country by then. And so that, that's very clear. But Pauline Hansen is actually very much pro Taiwan independence and she wants to have great trade with China. So that's going to be a bit of a. And she can't control her mouth, right? And she can't control her mouth. She never shows up. Yeah, I, but does, does it worry you guys that there's so many. I think what it is, is, I, I mean, I, I, I think it's not time, I think we've gone past the time of kind of the adults in the room kind of thing. I think it's the time to recognize that the people, we are an adult, we are the adults, we are the people together. In, in that way, you know, the Ukraine, we're just talking about the Ukraine. Ukraine is not because of Zelensky, it's because of the Ukrainian people. People. And, and, and that's what it is. And across countries, across the world, you know, there are people who feel very much wanting to be in that kind of solidarity, in that kind of communion with each other, as it were, without it having to be formal, without having to have all these kind of other things about it. Just in the sense that, look, we all face this together and, you know, let's just stop trying to turn it into something else. But she's elected. This is. Yeah, yeah, which is, which is great. She hasn't got a seat that will give her, allow her the path to the prime ministership, but she's now talking about going for one of those seats. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's going to be. But, but I think the comment, you know, going south earlier was, you know, Ursula von Lines not elected at all. No, I'll give you, Give me Ursula over Pauline any day. All right, I'm gonna quickly rip through some of the environmental stuff. So the Trump administration has announced that it's going to dismantle the ocean monitoring system. So if you've ever watched Day After Tomorrow and all those, those boys out in the ocean start, Start sending their alarm. So that's what they're dismantling, which is a really good idea because it's really good not to know what's happening in the ocean right now. That's everyone's. No, I mean, I think. Sarcasm. Sarcasm, yeah. No, they're taking the, the scientific method, you know, to, to be exactly what it is. You need observations for things to be real. So if you don't observe it, it's not. It can't be real. Yeah, exactly. So nothing's going to happen. Right, so it's. No, no, no problem. I'm presuming that the pilgrimage to Mecca is over, because I think it was last weekend. Was that right, Joe? When they had the final celebrations. So I didn't hear, I didn't, I didn't hear about the mass deaths that we heard the year before. I think it was 1300 people died the year before. And this the time. It's. So it's Eid. The time that the. This happens will be moving backwards towards January. So it's not expected to. To. It's expected, basically, the temperature that they've got now will. Will also move backwards. So they don't think it's, you know, it's Going to get worse. So if you've ever been in an airport where there's families getting ready to get on the plane to go and, and visit Mecca, because every Muslim should do it once in their lifetime, it's a pretty special thing to witness. It's, it's very powerful. But the big, the big thing that's obviously been getting a lot of attention is the heat waves. And when I, last Saturday I spoke to my mum and she's like, oh, how are those heat waves in Europe? I'm looking at your clothes. It's not that hot in the UK at the moment. Right, the heat wave is over. Yeah, heat wave is most definitely over. Right. So it's been going on for months in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. Is the, the variability of the weather has been much more severe. So the past past few weeks, the past few days have had incredible kind of, you know, cloud bursts, hail, very strong wind, and that comes off the very kind of heat before. So complete kind of complete variability. Yeah. And it's actually, it's, it's actually really dangerous for you guys when you go from cold to hot, you know, and, and the summer predictions are looking pretty hot. But yeah, an estimate came out from India, which I put in the weekend reads last week, where they've, they've done an excess deaths during a heat wave per day, they believe 3,400 per day. And if the heat wave goes for five days, it's 30,000 deaths. In the mainstream media, they've said there's officially 37 deaths in India and 10 in Pakistan. And I haven't seen that number updated in the past week. So. But, but they actually. And this has been going since April, it's early Pakistan, a place in Pakistan called Dadu, it reached 51.5 degrees Celsius. One of the big risks in Pakistan is obviously a glacial lake outburst or a glove. So we're just waiting for another one of them to happen. So, yeah, the, the heat's been really, really, really, like scarily intense. It's very, very uncomfortable in Asia. Like, even when you go out for a walk at night, you know, it, it just doesn't cool down. But of course, it's not just about humans, animals. There was an article saying that the koalas in Australia are at risk. Insects, which obviously impacts pollinators, which impacts food. Soil that dries out faster, which makes it harder to grow food, and the topsoil gets washed away. The river heat is increasing, which is killing the life in the rivers as well as algal blooms. The Forests reduce growth. You know, so there's a lot of impacts where we, we talk a lot about the human impact. We don't talk a lot about the human impact outside of the Western Hemisphere. There's a lot of people dying. We don't know. And, but there's a lot of other life that is dying which is also going to impact us no matter where we are in the world. So that's, that's another one. Thoughts? More of the same. Yeah, they getting better. I think the animal part is really kind of important along, you know, kind of, you know, tiny insects and not, not just the big animals but the tiny micros and stuff. Because, because we, we, we count the deaths of the, you know, the excess deaths of the humans and we, we're beginning to do that in, in, in that way. But nobody's counting the excess deaths of the, of the basic kind of living matter that supports the higher organisms. Yeah. In this, you know, go back to school, your biology has this pyramid and you've got all this masses of stuff at the bottom and you, you, you kind of go on top and the top of is some elephant I think typically, or maybe a lion or something. But without all of that mass along then the, the top part just, just sort of crumbles down in that way. And that's kind of, you know, I'm glad you, you're bringing this up. But it's not all just humans because the humans don't actually survive without all that stuff. Yeah. In there. Or we're going to find ourselves severely tested in how we kind of be nice to each other when that happens. So. So yeah, definitely something to think about or something to, to not just think about something to kind of, of take a step towards dealing with accepting and then going forward. I wanna, I wanna get us to do a couple of AI bits with Joe before we finish, but there's an Arctic tipping point that's been passed. There's a Tibetan tipping point that's been passed. So it's all good news on the climate front. Super smart. We're doing everything we need to be doing and it's okay. We're measuring it less. So it'll be fine as long as we don't measure it. Not happening. All right, Joe, There's a guy called Rob Williams. It looks like a Jeff Bezos story. It's not. Who's trying to work out the brain's core algorithm to make AI more efficient and use less energy. Which kind of interesting. And he seems like a pretty interesting dude, but that Might not be the story you want to talk about from an AI perspective. So what got your attention? I can speak a little bit about that because, I mean, this is a story that's getting attention right now. It's not a new thing. I mean, we've been trying to imitate the brain for the longest time. And what has been fundamentally wrong about the approach is most people have said this, the brain is like a computer, and that is actually fundamentally wrong. It's not the way the world works, not the way the brain works at all. And so when people try to solve things in that same way as they used a computer, it doesn't work when you're trying to solve what the brain is doing. So what they're doing now is they're trying, and what they've been doing for a long time is to try and figure out what intelligence is like or what thinking and computing is like, the way a brain works. And the project that we're hearing about is this half a billion dollar project where they're trying to understand this thing and get some insight to it so they can use it and probably commercialize it and all that kind of stuff. So it is an alternate route to AI SGI superintelligence. Because if you can solve that, you can kind of create that, you can run a human brain, if you like. The, the thing about something like humans. I beg your pardon. If, if you had the human brain artificially, you could just have humans. Yes. You could have humans. Yes. Right. But what they're trying to do, of course, is to, to take out little irritating things like fatigue, need for sleep, and all those other irritating aspects of us. Now, the problem that I have with this is that when you cross the first boundary and let's say you manage to make something similar and you have this basic human brain, what you do have is a basic human brain. And I think it might be a fallacy to think that every human brain is the same as every other human brain. So if you come up with something like this and you work out something, something, it doesn't mean that it's going to necessarily create the rest of the stuff that you might imagine. If, for instance, what happens is we figure out exactly how to duplicate a human brain in terms of activity, then we're going to duplicate everything else that comes along with it as well. Which means that then we are really playing with fire because we get irrationality as well, right? Yes. Do you duplicate a teenage brain? Teenage brain. Exactly, exactly. Forever as a teenage brain? Yeah. If we create, if we create successfully this artificial brain in all its form. It means it's also going to have the artificial forms of hormones and emotions. And to me, if you think AI as we know it is dangerous. I don't want to have super AI with emotions. I don't want super AI with strong feelings about things. I don't want super AI. I don't want super AI to get to the day when it goes, you know that thing I did last week? Not the best idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's. I'll put this all up. There's. There's some pretty strong feelings about it. Like we said earlier, you know, anthropic sort of asking for a global sort of. Of pull. Pullback on. On further developing AI. It looks like it's about to get out of human control. It's like, oh, for God's sake. There was another piece on Mythos being used by the Department of Defense for cyber. Yeah. So, yeah. Wasn't that an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or was it back in the day about Sky Night or something? Yeah, no, the Skynet. So I, I always thought Skynet was, was like, oh, wow, cloud computing is Skynet. But now, of course, we're in a different time. That was Terminator. Yeah. Saving energy by not doing what they are told. Well, they use lots of energy. Yeah. So I. Look, there's a lot of other things that we wanted to talk about. There's all sorts of shenanigans going on, obviously with Trump. SpaceX is going through its first IPO. I'd love to have talked about that. Obviously Iran, Hezbollah has said that, no, we're not going to stop fighting. We've got a police crisis in the UK and there's a lot of other things that are going on, but we, we just. There's too much to talk about. But you can, you can follow my weekend reads where I keep everyone up to date on the latest stories. But what's keeping you guys distracted? More old movies for. For me, I'm afraid having done it. Clint Eastwood trilogy. We've. We've moved on to more 60s and 70s movies. So we obviously needed to do the Dirty Harry trilogy as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was just had to be. But there's a few more lined up here. Yeah. Anything. Anything you enjoyed? Pretty much all of it, which makes me probably very sad. But I think they've stood the test of time. Really. Well. Well, one of them were watched with. With a daughter who is 28 now, I think, and although she's become more of a woman of the world and somewhat less woke, I think, than she was in her earlier years. She was still quite shocked by the whole languaging sequence that was being used in Dirty Harry. How to describe things. And when you think of it. Yeah, of course it is. We have moved on since the 70s. But I dread to think what she would have thought, you know, 10 years ago with that kind of language. Should watch Blazing Saddles with her. I'm really. I'm really tempted to watch that with my boys. I think they're ready for it. Yeah. All right. David, you're on mute. So I've been watching. I. I think this goes back a little bit to Cindy comments a bit earlier in that sense. So I've been watching this thing called Mindful Murder and this Joe might know it. So anyways, this lawyer is really stressed about his life and he, he, yes, he gets to engage with mindfulness. And as he engages mindfulness, he's more purposeful and more kind of at them in the moment and is more able to single task rather than between and multitask and all those things. And he's reaching his kind of work life, balance and so on. And along the way, he manages to kill a crime boss, runs two. Ends up having to run two different crime syndicates and. And is wanted by the police. And it's kind of like all these other things going on along as well. So. And. And all of that is the consequence of being very mindful. And as he says in Of Attack Lines, I didn't kill anyone until I was 42. And you know, that's a little late, but in that week he killed about half a dozen others. Wow, that sounds. That sounds fascinating. I reckon Joe. Joe would like that sort of thing. Joe, what. What do you. I love concepts like that, but sometimes I don't quite get into the. Into it. Like there's a series that I enjoy. Enjoyed in the first few seasons of it. It's not that it became bad or anything else, but I've just not been connecting with it. I'm reminded that I should. The series is Barry. I don't know if you remember that. It's basically a hitman who decides that he wants to try something a little bit different. So he gets into acting and improv classes and his world from his past collides with his present. And there's a whole fun of a whole bunch of stuff that happens out of that. But what I've been really enjoying actually is watching and too much of it. The crowd work by a Certain magician, comedian. And I think you'll enjoy the character as well. Her name is Lucy Darling, or at least the character is called Lucy Darling. So just go search lucy darling on YouTube and you're gonna have hours and hours of fun with this really fantastic character that does stuff from the stage. So I think an Australian reference that might give you a bit of a sense of who. Who that might. That that person might be Dame Humphreys. You remember? You remember Dame Humphreys? Yep. So imagine that. So it's. It's a. It's a character. It is somebody who shows up in a certain way and she does magic, and she is just delightful. She's. She's one of those people that, in the character creates those lovely comedic moments. And yet at the same time, you can also hear the wisdom that comes because that character is wrapped around the actor. So it's a very interesting story where it's actually a very young person acting as a slightly older person. And through that channeling, she's able to create both the confident Persona, the witty remarks, as well as the wisdom of the old. The person. Okay, now, last. Last week, I promised I was going to watch Aaron Brockovich and Hidden Figures, and. And I did. And in some ways, it's kind of like it's. It's not a brain break because it's. It's still happening. Aaron Brockovich is doing amazing work on the data center front. But watching hitting figures was interesting because I watched it with Steve and he saw it for the first time and when it first came out, because it's. What. Aaron Brockovich is 20 years old, I think hidden figures, maybe 10. A little bit more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone I know in the tech industry went and saw it. You know, there was great excitement about watching the movie. But when you. If it's been a while since you've watched it, I recommend watching it again because it's. You know, I. One of. One of the chapters I write. I wrote in my book was about, like, when we hold people back for a reason, whether it's because it's a female or. Or because they've got a sexual preference that isn't acceptable in society or whatever. But when we don't allow people to become all they're capable of being, everybody misses out. And. And when you. When you watch it, I mean, this child genius becomes. Is the person behind the reason America landed on the moon. And. And we. We're going back to that again. We're. We're excluding people. We're not giving people. You hear the Stories about what's going on in Afghanistan. You know what's happening to women in Afghanistan. Like when you hold women back, you hold everyone back. That's. It's proved. It's. It's in the data, it's in the economy, it's in every. Every figure. So if it's been a while since you watched Hidden Figures, I think it might be a good time because I'm looking at the anti. Anti Muslim rhetoric that's coming around, rising around the world. Just racism in general. It doesn't serve us. It doesn't serve any of us. And they're the loudest voices and we have to drown them out. So Hidden Figures was. It wasn't. It wasn't the break I was hoping it was, but it was a good reminder. Well, it'll be a long time, I think, before you see that movie where they talk about the great Muslims behind mathematics and progress of science in general. I know, right? That's where it all did come from. Right, Sorry. I'm laughing because that's where our numbers come from. Yeah, exactly. Right. That's where our numbers come from. So. So it's just kind of. Yeah, that's. That's why I'm laughing. I know. It's. It's so stupid, right? We're so stupid. Anyway, there we go. Another. Another week on that chest. Yeah, that's where we're going to end this. We're so stupid. Well, we are. We are so stupid. Might recommend be stupid and know it. Yeah, exactly. As long as you know it, it's all right. It's all right. That's another. That's another bs, by the way. Be stupid. There you go. Yeah, Yeah, I like to be stupid. I enjoy it. All right, we'll see you guys next week. Indeed. All right, thank you very much, everyone. Have a good weekend.