Episode description

🤑 CHIP IN TO OUR PATREON https://www.patreon.com/ARationalFear
📨 SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAIL LIST: http://www.arationalfear.com/
🎟️ GET A TICKET TO OUR NEWCASTLE SHOW — JUNE 5TH
🎟️ GET A TICKET TO OUR BEGA SHOW — JUNE 13TH
👕 BUY OUR MERCH HERE

Once a month on the A Rational Fear podcast feed with publish a Greatest Moral Podcast Of Our Generation podcast. These are long-form chats with climate leaders from all walks of life. This month I bring you two conversations with a couple of comedians whose work and energy around climate justice has inspired me for years.

🌏 IN THE CLIMATE NEWS SECTION:

Linh Do and I also chat with energy journalist and fellow Bertha Fellow, Antonia Juhasz about the Dutch Court ruling that Shell must cut their emissions to meet the Paris Agreement targets, and how shareholders of Chevron and Exxon are forcing those companies to reckon with their own carbon footprint.

🎙️FEATURE INTERVIEWS:

The Juice Media's Giordano Nanni, who's Honest Government Ads reach millions and millions of people on-line. He's one of Australia's most influential YouTube creators on issues that matter.

and Rod Quantock. Rod is no strange to Australian comedy fans. From his early stand up days at The Last Laugh, to his work on TV shows like Australia You're Standing In It (yes, and Captain Snooze).

Rod dedicated the last couple of decades to doing comedy about climate change . He is the guy who inspired me to start A Rational Fear as a vehicle to bring more people to the topic of climate change in an accessible way. The conversation with Rod Quantock is a little …. depressing but it's worth hearing his point of view as a guy who has been active in this space for a long time…and is tired.

Enjoy the interviews and see you at the LIVE shows in Newcastle, Bega, Sydney and Melbourne!

🎟️ GET A TICKET TO OUR NEWCASTLE SHOW — JUNE 5TH

🎟️ GET A TICKET TO OUR BEGA SHOW — JUNE 13TH

Dan Ilic  0:00  
Hello, hello. We've got two great interviews for you today Giordano from the juice media and also rod contact. But before we do that, I just want to acknowledge I'm on gadigal land in the eora nation,

Linh Do  0:10  
and I'm on the lands of the war Andriy people of the Kulin nation.

Dan Ilic  0:14  
All right, let's kick it off with the climate news despite

Unknown Speaker  0:17  
global warming, or rational fear is adding a little more hot air with long form discussions with climate leaders. Good. This is called Don't be afraid the heat waves and droughts greatest mass extinction tomorrow we're facing a manmade disaster podcast, climate criminals

Unknown Speaker  0:43  
ration all of this with global warming and a lot of it's a hoax. But write a small podcast about generation for short,

Dan Ilic  0:54  
now listen, before we get straight into the climate news, I want to let everybody know that we are doing live shows in Newcastle in Vegas for a rational fear we're also going to Melbourne but a little bit later on. We are performing June five in Newcastle where we'll have James panda from semi j cursed and dries out from reputation rehab in Hungary based Louis harbour or so from Triple J. It's basically people used to be on hungry based it's gonna be a base mini reunion. It's gonna be fantastic. And also James benders from the Rodney John's half hour adult TV show that I still do on channel 10. Also, we've got Georgina Woods who is from lock the gate, and DJ diabolical from news fighters. It's going to be fast, funny, it's going to be like q&a on crack. We're going to be talking a lot about the hunter. So if you are in New Castle and you want to come along, please do. It's going to be great. We've released tickets have already started to sell. I think we've sold 20 or 30 tickets already amazing. Yeah. And we are trying to work out also workshop that you can be at Lynn where we do some kind of digital main workshop where we can teach people how to make names on the internet.

Linh Do  2:03  
It's gonna be hard, it's gonna be this funny thing where we're meeting offline in real life in person. things on the internet. This is how all right digital activism starts. It's actually not on the internet. So get excited and get tickets.

Dan Ilic  2:16  
So yeah, do follow a rational fee on all the social medias and we'll let you know when that workshops gonna be but during five at the Newcastle Civic Theatre, get your tickets details are in the show notes. All right, huge week in a climate news this week, we could talk a bit about bravest losing their water licence to to create the Galilee coal mine, which is pretty funny. You know, it's very, it's good comedy to say these guys going ahead creating a coal mine. But we weren't because something has wiped that off the slate. And we are very lucky to be joined by Antonia yuhas, fellow Berta fellow to talk to us through some of the biggest news happening in climate probably ever.

Linh Do  2:55  
Antonia, thanks for joining us. We just woke up to this excellent news. But tell us more Spain. Good bad, what's awake? Is the fossil fuel industry being having?

Unknown Speaker  3:04  
No I'd say it's been a really, really knock their heads together, run over them with a tractor drag them behind the wheel of the car kind of kind of kind of weak,

Dan Ilic  3:18  
dragged him behind the wheel of an electric car, probably a new f150 lightning maybe.

Unknown Speaker  3:25  
Now I think they're gonna I think it's like data behind a car that's puffing out a whole lot of polluting exhausts that make them suck it in or making the rest of us do it and hold them accountable before it kind of we

Dan Ilic  3:38  
all right, and now we've had a couple of huge rulings by shareholders and by court. Let's walk us through just quickly. What First of all, let's start off with shell in the Netherlands. Shell is being forced to slash its pollution by a Dutch court.

Unknown Speaker  3:51  
It's a massive ruling. So the Court upheld that companies have a requirement under the Paris Climate accord to essentially meet the standards of the Paris Climate accord and that it runs contrary to the guaranteed human rights guaranteed to European citizens, for Shell to destroy the climate. And so shell must change its practices so that it doesn't destroy the climate and the ruling order the company to nearly have so by 40% cut its emissions across its entire supply chain its entire chain production chain within less than 10 years so by 2030 45% cut in emissions from counting not only its own production and exploration and refining and transporting of oil and natural gas, but also what its suppliers contribute to emissions and what its consumers contribute to emissions. When So we're talking scope one, scope two, scope

Dan Ilic  5:02  
three, the whole thing. Indeed, wow, that's such a cool thing. Like, it's so incredible that this this fossil fuel giant is kind of being pulled together like this by a regulatory body. And I guess the Netherlands is so progressive in places like in kind of areas like this, or like, how do they get to this point of kind of forcing shell to do this,

Unknown Speaker  5:23  
they're saying that in signing the Paris Climate accord, nations have created essentially have agreed on a moral norm. And that moral norm is that the world cannot be warmed beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. And that not only our governments accountable to that norm, but with this ruling, so to our companies, so that there isn't, there isn't an international body that exists to regulate multinational corporations. And that's what the what the court is also saying is, it is the obligation of the company to adhere to the norms of its home government. And the agreements that that government has signed, including the Paris Climate accord, and including human rights accords, under the European Union, for the case of shell and the Netherlands.

Dan Ilic  6:15  
This sounds like it's gonna be a great day for Australian corporates, I can see shell moving their headquarters to Canberra, where Australia will provide sanctuary for companies like shell to keep the learning at the current levels.

Unknown Speaker  6:30  
I mean, it I wonder if that would solve the problem. Certainly what would not solve shells problem is to move its operations from one place to another. So for example, the courts really clear that wherever the cuts come from, Shell has to achieve a 45% reduction. So if shell moved all of its operations to Australia, it would still have to meet this obligation. I have no idea what would happen if it moved its headquarters.

Dan Ilic  7:03  
Also, let's talk about Exxon and Chevron quickly, as someone who's covered this space, how you feeling about shareholders kind of holding these two companies to account this week,

Unknown Speaker  7:12  
all three events happened with Exxon's annual shareholder meeting, Chevron's annual shareholder meeting shells, court ruling all happened on Wednesday, May 26 2021, it's a day that's going to go down in infamy for these for these oil companies. Shareholders at Exxon got two seats on the board, for activist shareholders that want to force the company to act to be more aggressive on climate and to address the climate, to do anything on the climate. And over at Chevron shareholders force the company to have a much more aggressive accounting on how its emissions impact for climate and to try and reduce those emissions.

Dan Ilic  7:52  
I see you as someone who's covered this energy space for ever, how do you feel about a day like this? And what does it mean to you?

Unknown Speaker  8:00  
It's a day of reckoning for the oil industry, it's saying I, you're going to have to shrink your footprint that the climate crisis is real, it's been accepted, there are costs associated that people across the spectrum are not going to take so they're not going to accept any longer. And that's those impacted by the harms. That's investors, that's policymakers that financers finance years. So that it's it's a it's a statement from everyone who suffers the consequences of these of the company's continued continuing to operate, without any concern for their impact on the climate or unwillingness to respond to their own knowledge about their harms on the climate that will not be accepted anymore, that the costs are too high. However, when measures the word cost,

Dan Ilic  9:00  
yeah, and environmentally, socially, financially. It's so fascinating to see how the world is moving to this direction. But there are a few rogue states like Australia who are still accounting for emissions in a way that is only financial and can't, can't measure this for long term strategy for long term value creation. And it's so disheartening, being in this country to see the leadership of our country not even considering this not even blinking, putting in more gas when the rest of the world is getting out rapidly.

Unknown Speaker  9:30  
That's the thing is like talk about rogue actors. There's no more rogue actor than Exxon, there's almost no more rogue actor than Chevron. There's almost no more rogue actor than show. And what each of these events is is an attempt to say well, you may want to be robot but we're gonna hold you to account so for example, this is basically trying to get at it from from every angle so if the view late you then the court will hold the company to account if The courts and the governments will hold the company to account then the shareholders. Well, if the shareholders won't, then the lenders will if the lenders won't, then you know, like, and that's what's happening is that basically, you know, this has been building over decades of organising and activism and demands to try and get at this problem at every single way, because you're talking about the world's most powerful and wealthy wherever they used to be companies, and the world's most powerful and wealthy countries, which are many of which if they remain, if they if they continue to tie themselves to fossil fuels, they won't be either. So the companies are no longer the most powerful companies when I used to write about when I wrote my book, the tyranny of oil, the world's most powerful industry and what we must do to stop it in 2008, it was the world's most powerful industry. It's not today. Yeah, it's not the case anymore. And that is going to happen to the governments too.

Linh Do  10:54  
So I guess I tried to do the other thing that for me kept coming up with all of this really great news overnight is like sprint One, two and three emissions. Do you mind just like telling us? What aspect three missions for listeners that might not be aware?

Antonia Juhasz  11:06  
Oh, I hope I can. So let's say scope. Creep missions are the emissions that are burned by the consumers of fossil fuels. So those are the emissions that come when we drive our cars and aeroplanes fly. And companies have tried to say that that's not their responsibility. It's they've used the argument that tobacco companies use, which was, well, we know that our product is harmful, and we know that it hurts people. But if you want to drive it and you want to fly it, then that's your fault.

Linh Do  11:36  
Like it's an argument that the NRA has used a lot as well, right. It's not guns that kill people. It's the people that use the guns. And I think fossil fuel companies have definitely gotten away with that, too. People just find the coal. I mean, how widmet responsibility Campbell,

Unknown Speaker  11:53  
exactly. And similarly misled the public about the content, what they knew to be the consequences of that consumption, right. So the companies knew the consequences of that consumption decades ago. And that's part of the shell case that that the plaintiffs are arguing is that shelah has known for decades, the harms of this of consumption of its product, and helped mislead the public about that and did not act accordingly on that information. And so it also is part of similar to the tobacco argument is that consumers actually didn't know it. They were misled about what the harms would be about consumption. And now the companies with the shell ruling are being told, actually, you have to account for that, for that consumption. And also, that's what Chevron is saying it what its shareholders are saying to the company is we're going to require you to account for that consumption as well.

Dan Ilic  12:46  
Thank you. And Tony, you has fellow Berta fellow. Thank you, Lynn and Dan, looking at? Look, I think that's enough common use, but there's what I want to leave you with one other singling? You know, our minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor. He favoured, he was asked on three a W by Neil Mitchell. If he drives an electric car. What do you think his answer was?

Linh Do  13:07  
I mean, even though you think you've been his job description, he probably walked around the answer and told us all something a little bit depressing. It's not that he's riding his bike everywhere, but he's driving a guzzler

Dan Ilic  13:18  
that he made it absolutely clear. And he said, I am not driving an electric car as if he's never going to drive an electric car.

Linh Do  13:26  
He's just waiting for self driving cars that maybe that's what he meant, you know, if we give him like the smallest molecule of DNA.

Dan Ilic  13:32  
Yeah, he says I live in regional New South Wales and drive us to huge distances every year 60 or 70,000 kilometres, so I need something that can handle hard roads and distances. He drives a Ford Everest, which is a five cylinder car which pumps out 225 grammes of co2 equivalent per kilometre. That's a can of coke of co2. Every kilometre Angus is putting 70,000 cans of coke worth of co2 in the air every year. This what the Minister for emissions reductions should be doing is offsetting. He's just putting a gas plant physics 100 million dollars where there's no money to be found. Also, he did this on the same day, he kind of came out on the same day that Joe Biden was riding around in a brand new Ford f150 light being Ford's brand new electric ute, the biggest truck in America, the most popular car in America. Joe Biden launched it with Ford last week and just the optics at the same time, Angus guy No, I'm not gonna there's no way I'm gonna drive an electric car that said Joe Biden guy here is the most masculine electric car you could possibly get today.

Linh Do  14:44  
Here I am driving it and I don't know for any of our listeners who have been to the US obviously pre pandemic times, but they cause a way bigger than any of our cars. You know, like these are huge monsters if we can make one of those vehicles electric. Pretty sure I guess Taylor might be eating his words. Very saved from breakfast.

Dan Ilic  15:01  
That's it for the climate news. We've got two super great interviews for you today. First of all we've got Giordano from the juice media. If you don't know the juice media here is some of their work. Hello,

Unknown Speaker  15:11  
I'm from the government with an important message as we enter the third decade of the 21st century things are going fine overall, the Amazon is fine half of Africa is fine. So is the Arctic Indonesia angry even Greenland's on fucking fire? I mean, fine. Scientists have coined a new term for this stage of climate change were entering with but unlike the previous stage, which climate scientists called listen to us, or we might be fucked, where fact is happening and in your lifetime. This is thanks to us wasting decades, pis farting around at climate summits with non binding emission target while handing up subsidies to climate criminals attracting renewables, and generally not giving a shit that rising co2 levels are about to trigger what scientists call feedback loops. a feedback loop is the scientific term for when a species uses its own ignorance to screw itself and everything else around it so hard that its own planet tells it to get foe some people are already experiencing where facts such as these Pacific nations facing rising sea level who recently back to Australia to please stop burning coal to which Australia responded get fat,

Dan Ilic  16:18  
really funny stuff. always makes me laugh juice media stuff has so much cut through would you say Lynne?

Linh Do  16:25  
Yes. And every time I see it on, you know, like, scrolling through social media. I always think it's sort of real. And so I was like, No, no, no, no, no, no. There's some genius behind this. It is satire, because it's just so on point with whatever's topical. At that moment in time,

Dan Ilic  16:39  
Joe, Joe and juice media have long been champion climate conversations through the comedy they make on their channel. Another person who has been champion climate conversations is a legend called rod Quantock strain comedian been around forever. I did a panel with him in 2008. And I remember him saying something well, I'm throwing out all of my material and just focusing on climate because there's nothing else to talk about. And I thought, Oh, my God, that's incredible. That's, that's so interesting. And that's almost that's probably why I started a rational fear. So I should let you know that rods conversation is a little more depressing.

Linh Do  17:18  
So it's very sober about the reality and the facts. And you know, I guess it comes with working on something for well over a decade. But um, when he wants to cracking jokes, still funny. But yeah, this work is not easy. And I think we need to just give people at times the space to feel all their emotions.

Dan Ilic  17:33  
Exactly. So you can feel despair, which is an emotion with radcot.

Unknown Speaker  17:38  
You're listening to the greatest moral podcast about generation

Dan Ilic  17:44  
jordanna. Welcome to the greatest model podcast of our generation. Awesome to be here. Thanks, Dan. Does that feel too weighty a weighty title on your shoulders to be part of the greatest moral podcast in my generation? It definitely yes. But I'll do my best to live up to date an absolute fan of your work for a decade. Ever since the early juice wrap news days. It's so it's so thrilling to kind of see you grow and blow up and ultimately become self sustaining. And I, you know, I don't know how you feel about this word, very successful. But it's a thrill to kind of sit down with you and talk through your work and talk through your process for what is essentially enlightening the world in a in a funny way. Oh, man, I appreciate that. That's very, that's very kind. Thanks. First of all, you are a historian. How does your background as historian inform your comedy? Do you think?

Unknown Speaker  18:46  
I mean, you know, I, whenever people ask me these kind of questions, I don't know how sort of beep to go. And, and sometimes I ask myself these questions as well. Or I think, you know, the simplest way of, of answering is that studying history really kind of like makes you think, what are some of the big picture frameworks that you have to apply because whenever you talk about history, it's really important to sort of put it in put things in context, you know, of the, of the of the of the year, the year, in the decade during the century, and then ultimately, humanity in this whole journey that we're on. And so that's studying history has really helped me to kind of like, juggle all of those perspectives to think about the really big timescales, and also the very small timescales, because that's where it really gets exciting when you can bring those two things together. Yeah. And then you go click, oh, my God, this is where we're at, oh, my God, I didn't know. And a lot comes from that feeling of, oh, wow, we're living in a really historic time. You know, when people say that, we've got a saying that I often invoke, history is happening. Meaning, you know, history isn't something that's just in the past. It's something we're living through right now. It's just that we don't see it. We just think our history is something in the past and right now is the present. But, you know, in a decade from now, people will look back and see this as as history and so, well, what are we going to do about that? What kind of history do we want to leave for people in the future, so I often often don't think of myself as a historian that looks at the past but a historian that looks at ourselves from the future,

Dan Ilic  20:05  
though that's, that's kind of that's exactly kind of what I was thinking about when I was thinking about your work. Your work is so detailed, and it's filled with minutiae. And I wonder, what will historians think about the work you've created? You know, 30 years time? Do you ever think about that? Do you feel like do you feel like you're, you're, you're almost like breadcrumbs for future historians to kind of understand this time better?

Unknown Speaker  20:27  
I don't know. I've never thought of it that way. But, you know, I think future historians will have so many fucking bread crumbs. You know, I just I really pity future historians because, you know, with the, with the arrival of the internet and social media, I mean, like, how do you even keep track of the archives of the future will be shit shows.

Dan Ilic  20:48  
Future historian coming across q anon and trying to understand why Q and S Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  20:51  
no, and then trying to go through H n forums. And yeah, yeah. It's Yeah,

Dan Ilic  20:57  
tell me jordanna what is shit fuckery.

Unknown Speaker  21:02  
Should fuckery is is a word that kind of, I don't know, materialised itself. I don't even remember when. Because I think I was just trying to search for a word that kind of tried to even get close to the level of corruption, ineptitude, arrogance, fucking betrayal of basic, you know, morality and human rights that this government upholds on a daily basis here in Australia. And that word just came to me, you know, as in, you know, sort of a vision. It was like, yeah, that kind of gets pretty close to it. And I don't think when I first used it in one of our honest government ads, I thought it was anything special, but people really kind of latched on to and went, Wow. Yes, that's what it is, you know. And so I was like, Okay, I'll keep using it. And now it's become like a something of a sort of something that people will associate with us quite a bit with the honest government ads that

Dan Ilic  21:50  
not only you I have seen it now sprinkled through the Zeitgeist. Yeah. Have you seen it leak out outside of the media world?

Unknown Speaker  21:57  
Yeah. Occasionally, I see a pop up that someone had a sign at the march for justice in Canberra. They added campy should fuckery in front of it, which I thought was very nice addition. kudos to them. But yeah, every now and then I see it pop up. Yeah. Yeah, some people wear wear the T shirt, they go through customs or arrive in Australia, we're in the department of shit fuckery Petia, which I think and then they post that on Twitter, which I think is quite brave. And you know, so every now and then I'd say coming up, which is nice. Yeah,

Dan Ilic  22:23  
I find this time we're in is really interesting, because we're at a pretty crucial time in history and human history in that. I think there's enormous humour about how we are not dealing with climate change. But it's incredibly sad at the same time. In Video, historic historian hat, aren't they? How do you think future generations will feel about the kind of delay we're having right now on climate action?

Unknown Speaker  22:48  
Yeah, I think it's gonna be brutal. Yeah, I think it's really, it's going to be, it's going to be horrible, the, you know, the, the way that the weight of his that history is going to put on our generation, collectively. And, you know, I know that, you know, some people say, yes, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're doing something and we're saying, and we'll speaking up and everything, but, but collectively, you know, the graters of the future are going to be they're all going to be greater than the future. They're all going to be stuff with us. And rightly so. I mean, that is one of the reasons that I think, you know, we talk about climate so much is, is that feeling of nausea? Really, that comes with Oh my God, is this really fucking happening? are we really doing this, like, This can't be happening, and I already feel angry. And so many people feel angry today. So I can only imagine how that will be amplified in the future. If we don't at this point, now, take a different path. Because Okay, you could say that 10 years ago, there was still you know, uncertainty, blah, blah, blah, all that sort of stuff. And, you know, we we gave the deniers so many opportunities to really sort of prove that the point that you know, there wasn't a need to act urgently. And now now now that's No, we've done it. We've wasted those decades. Okay. But now we're really have to fucking do it. And we're still not because mainly because of, of the government that we have. I mean, so many sectors of Australian society, the market industry, business people, entrepreneurs are just moving ahead. They're saying, fuck it, let's just do it. And the rest of the world is doing it as well. We're literally becoming a Lego just getting to the point where it's, it's not even funny anymore. It's actually pathetic. It's

Dan Ilic  24:18  
pathetic, and it's demoralising. And, you know, to hear these government delay tactics at the federal level so blatant, like coming out and saying stuff like, you know, the guy. Oh, yeah. Well, we now we know it's real. We know we would got to do something about it. But we're going to do it with technology. Oh, and the technology is not there yet. But it will be soon. So just give us another few decades of using fossil fuels.

Unknown Speaker  24:42  
Yeah. I mean, there's that element of it that that is just on its own is already fucking irritating. But then there's the other flip side of it is that there are so many opportunities that we could be embracing right now which could absolutely secure the future of of Australian manufacturing. jobs, which in turn then spills into society and our education, healthcare, or are these sort of things which could be powered by Australia becoming a renewable energy superpower, we everything is laid out in front of us. I've just been reading Ross ganas book superpower, which I really recommend, actually, I'd want to talk about it a bit more in some of the podcasts coming up. And it's just heartbreaking. The opportunity is that we're not taking which could be benefiting Australia so much, especially rural and country, Australia, which ironically, was where so many of the Liberal Party or liberal National Party seems to win a lot of seats. So it does, you know, it's it blows your mind anyway.

Dan Ilic  25:37  
Can you remember the first time you took notice of climate change or the lack of climate action as an issue that you're really passionate about? You want to communicate through through juice?

Unknown Speaker  25:47  
I'm all it was before juice. I think we started the juice me to channel 20,008. I think for me, it was when I was an undergrad uni student at GW a and I heard David Suzuki came and Kevin talk. He spoke at Winthrop Hall and he gave this amazing talk, which was quite a catalyst and a turning point. And then I had a lecturer at uni who was who introduced me to sort of on the sly, gave me books and said, I'll have you read. He was actually a South African. And he said, You've got some really great writers here. But you know, they're not very celebrated here. So he gave me a book by john Pilcher, he gave me a book hidden then a couple of others. He gave me the Gaia theory by James Lovelock. He was a bit of any sort of revolutionary kind of lecturer that kind of tried to radicalise he did you know, he really look at your say, exactly. It's all his faults. And those are kind of some of the texts that, you know, I read when I was quite young, probably 1617. And that kind of really imprinted on me that that issue being being of urgency? I don't know, I've just yeah, it's just been a constant theme, really. And then when we started juice in 2008, and retinues, in 2009, I think one of the first episodes we had was about climate. So it was really, very, pretty much the the thing that we were spoke about, from the very beginning, I think,

Dan Ilic  26:56  
for you, like, out of all the things you've done on climate, do you have one that stands out as the thing that you're like, this is the market climate statement that we've done so far?

Unknown Speaker  27:06  
Yeah, we did. We did a video about the fires towards the end of the deadly tragic bushfires that we had here in Australia. And I feel like that really kind of tapped into, from where we are at now with, with climate without government's policy, which is kind of this really interesting, and sort of also, you know, terrifying approach to Colombia, which has been for years denying and delaying and obfuscating, and then all of a sudden, with the bushfires, realising that that's not going to cut it anymore. And then skipping the part where we say, Okay, let's do something about it. Skipping that, and going straight to our Well, we're gonna have to adapt and build resilience. And this is just a reality. And we have to accept and it's like, what the fight what happened to the step in between that motherfuckers, you know, sorry, I get really upset about this.

Dan Ilic  27:46  
I know, this, this is the podcast to get out of that place.

Unknown Speaker  27:50  
And I feel like that that video really kind of captured that moment quite, quite accurately. And we had a great response from a lot of people, a lot of climate scientists and climate communicators also took notice. And we had a lot of sort of response from them. And one of them was Michael Mann, climate scientists from the US who was visiting at the time for a sabbatical. And he and he, when he came down to Melbourne, we met up and we, we hang hung out, and we really kind of connected and we spoke a lot about climate should fuckery and you know, and he was really keen to help out with he's kind of become like a de facto adviser, and he's come back on the podcast a couple of times. So that was a real kind of catalyst. But we've done so many, there are others as well. But that was kind of the one that I feel like I'm most proud of, let's say yeah,

Dan Ilic  28:32  
as are you gonna say he's become kind of a de facto father figure. Yeah, at the rational fear, we did a similar thing we made like a 12 minute explainer about the constant delay tactics and how the fossil fuels engaged in politics in Australia is basically responsible for getting rid of every single leader who ever wanted to do anything on climate actions. And there was I remember sitting on the beach at Bond I sitting with ash falling on me and just texting people saying we need to make a video we need to get this going. texting

Unknown Speaker  29:08  
you made a great video about this. I remember. I don't remember the name but I had a really good

Dan Ilic  29:13  
Yeah, Tim mentioned that Tim mentioned voice to narrator It was a car Schlegel wrote it and, and we just put it together and I was really good. Are you gonna do more collaborations of that? And so Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. We'd love to sorry. I'm gonna take over because, you know, things like things like that cost money to make. Yes. Do you know anything about making online content? Right, yeah. So the podcast is kind of the focus of the book because it's cheap. So economic wise, it's a very loaded to the podcast and I can start paying the kids start paying people give them more money, because that was really good. And then some more of a few roughly listening, where should they go to support you? They know, podcasts. Now. Gee, do you have a theory about comedy and change? Do you have a Have an encompassing theory about you know, if you can make people laugh, do you might actually better change things? I don't know, I

Unknown Speaker  30:06  
just do it because it feels, I don't know, comes naturally, as this way of kind of expressing anger and frustration and comedy is a way of doing it that sort of doesn't leave us in a in a sort of a puddle of inaction and sort of the press of, yeah, just inaction paralysis. You know, I feel like laughter takes away fear and emboldens people. And it makes us feel like laughter is also kind of like, it's a really unifying element. Like when we laugh, it's like, we both get that thing, you know. And so it kind of creates a sense of a shared sense of identity of like, yes, this is shit. But we both know, we all know that we're in a situation. And that that can't not be positive for change. Because once you have that kind of group identity, once people understand what should fuckery is, and they bond around concepts or ideas or understandings, you would expect that to, to, to lead to change, but I mean, yeah, I've never theorised that. But I would, I would say, Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah.

Dan Ilic  31:05  
Do you ever find yourself galvanising? Your audience around a particular issue and getting them to do things they do? Figure out dude, cuz you got such powerful audience and you've got such a clued in audience smart audience and you know, that it's huge. Your your footprint online, do you ever figure out, you know, do you have a drive them to actions?

Unknown Speaker  31:26  
We have we have occasionally? Yeah, I mean, you know, we depends on the topic, really, we did a we did a video, for example, about the anti encryption legislation that ended up being voted through by both Houses of Parliament. Surprise, surprise.

Dan Ilic  31:39  
They're listening to this podcast right now.

Giordano Nanni  31:40  
Yeah, great. Good job. There was a senate inquiry submission process where you could submit comments, and so we may easily thought, hey, let's, let's get people to submit comments to this senate inquiry, and then maybe they'll have taken notice of what people are saying. And I think we draw something like 17 or 18,000 submissions to that, you know, that means one example and and, you know, all of those submissions are completely fucking ignored. You know,

Dan Ilic  32:06  
so what you saying is democracy?

Unknown Speaker  32:09  
Yeah. You know, we do we try, and we know, we do push, you know, if there is anything that people can do, or you know, that we feel like there's something practical, we, we sort of encouraged that, you know, but I'm never under any illusion that you can change things with petition or, you know, Senate submission, they're all good things, and we need to do them. But there's no illusion that that's what you know, at the end of the day, we've got to vote, the shitty government out, that's, you know, an elected better one. So I feel like that's really where it counts is in the electoral. And at that point, you know, and all along the way, there are decisions that we can make, you know, to, to lead to that outcome. But that's, that's the, that's the real aim of the videos that we make a few your your videos are incredibly well thought out and very values driven.

Dan Ilic  32:54  
Do you ever have political parties tapping on the shoulder and go, Hey, Joanna, I want to do something about this issue that we would love you to do this to do to help us with this thing?

Unknown Speaker  33:07  
Not really. Let's see, a lot of people think that that's what happens. A lot of people sort of say, yeah, I've had a lot of people saying, Are you paid? You must be paid for by the greens, or sometimes by the Labour Party? For some reason never by the Liberal Party

Dan Ilic  33:21  
degrades can afford your production.

Unknown Speaker  33:23  
But no, I mean, no. I think everyone kind of, I feel like the parties that that would want us to do stuff feel like you know, that we already produced content that sort of supports the the policies and there's no need to waste money on it

Dan Ilic  33:39  
yet. So Clive Palmer, if you please draw down a couple of million dollars to do some pro Galilee basin content. Have you ever heard from people in the corridors of power about how your work may inform the decisions that they're making?

Unknown Speaker  33:53  
No, no, not at all. I'd love to I'd love to be a fly on the wall when some MP or senators watching one of our videos, but no, I've haven't actually no. I mean, that's the dream, right? The dream

Dan Ilic  34:03  
is to have someone go factory that Jason's done a video of this. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  34:09  
I'm pretty sure Susan Lee, environment minister said that when we did a video about the jabber on trees, and we kind of focused on her on her role. I'm very surprised that she hasn't seen that. So I'm just gonna have to imagine it. Somebody did an FOIA request for the juice media. They said, Can you send us all this? Because there was a whole discussion. I don't know if you remember a little while ago, the government sort of started sending us emails about the use of the government logo. Well, they call that a logo I was calling was called a Coronavirus. They just they like corporate motherfuckers it's our logo. And I'm like, What? Okay, anyway, so they call it a logo and they wrote us a letter saying, just come to our attention that you know, you're using our logo in your videos, and we concern that these could be mistaken for real Government Communications in which I nearly spit it out my coffee because I thought it was hilarious. That's, that that's all it takes to confuse real government policies with Data is just the logo. Is that Is that all? It is? Is that how close we are to sort of the reality here? What does it say about the policies? So there must have been a lot of communication going around that that issue before somebody launched the FBI. And it was quite interesting seeing the conversations that's as close as I've gotten somebody, somebody said, in response to the video, which caused this email to be sent out to us. They said something like, Oh, I, you know, this is this must be the latest wave on social media. And it was someone in the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, I can't remember who, some staffer, and so we put that up on our banner. The next the next wave on social media, I suspect this is pretty much department a Prime Minister and Cabinet Australia government. I

Dan Ilic  35:42  
mean, if you're doing a comedy festival show, that is a great slogan to put on your poster.

Unknown Speaker  35:47  
I put it up there. It's still there on our Twitter banner, it's Yeah, but if you don't know the backstory, you might not know what that is. That That explains why that's up there.

Dan Ilic  35:55  
Now, can you give me a bit of a rundown of your of your work process, like, from ideation to creation to publishing? Like, what does that look like? You know, in terms of your ways of working, how do you put the enormous of what appears to be an enormous amount of content out every year?

Unknown Speaker  36:12  
cocaine is usually the first. Just kidding. Yeah, like, I mean, you know, we don't put out as much content as a lot of other creators pretty much not nearly as much as you put out, or others, you know, in the same. So I've kind of the process that I've gone for is like, I mean, or I mean, like you guys are the chaser and the shovel, and friendly jordiz. You know, whatever the you know, there's, there's, there's very a lot of very prolific commentators on politics, I've kind of gone, we've got a young family, and I'm past the point where I can sort of just smash it out every week or every second week. So we've kind of gone for like, okay, cool, there's a lot of people commentating on stuff on the fly, like as it comes out. And I kind of see that even though we don't know each other personally. So first time we've met, I've met James from the shovel, once, you know, you know, we have a little bit of like, a camaraderie, we're part of a team that's kind of like working individually, sometimes, you know, we cross paths, but generally, we're kind of like working on a similar goal. And I've kind of thought, well, everyone's taken care of the here and now and like, you know, stuff comes out people onto it, you know, straightaway, I'm going to focus a little bit more on sort of broader picture, pick up some issues that get lost along the way, or that maybe aren't as time, you know, sensitive. So we put out a video every month, sometimes two, but usually one and a podcast, you know, so that's, that's the timeframe, the longer time frames, the work process is I spend most of that time just reading and researching and, and talking to people, you know, really experts in, in the fields, everyone discuss, just thinking about, you know, how to approach this topic in a way that's really going to cut through, once the video is written. That's the hardest part. And then that's when the sort of the fun part starts, you know, we will record it. Lucy is my partner does the voice for the for the video. So we get into the booth. That's always fun, because we've got to try and do it between nap, the junos naps, and, and Lucas play play dates and stuff. So that's, that's dance and other dance. And then we get our actors in Zarya and Ellen. And that's always a fun time filming. And then I edited it in a couple of days, maybe three, four days, sometimes with the help of a couple of VFX brands who helps out with VFX. And then we put it out. So that's that's the process really.

Dan Ilic  38:19  
So the production doesn't take up your living room for too long a time I get it, you know, you've kind of worked it out. So it doesn't, you know, take up your life.

Unknown Speaker  38:28  
That's right. Yeah, it takes up about a day or two of the month or you know, longer if we do a couple of videos. And then then the rest of the time this room where we were chatting and it becomes like a playground a rumpus room, you know? Yeah.

Dan Ilic  38:42  
Now, what do you think is the power of subverting a government? What do you think is the secret sauce there? Why do people why are people attracted to that?

Unknown Speaker  38:53  
I don't know. It's irreverent. It's it usurps the voice of this of this government. And I feel like you know, if this government is just has just done so much to erode public trust and confidence, and, and it's just always mincing words and beating around the bush and not really coming, coming in and being honest with people about what it's doing, you know, the rhetoric and the bullshit really is just, it's just a constant charade, really trying to conceal the reality of the policy. So I feel like it's the reason it appeals to people to impersonate this particular government probably all should government's, is that it's just cathartic. It's like a fuck Imagine if that's how this government spoke. Yes, yes, there are pieces of shit but at least they're honest about it. I feel like that would remove the most annoying part of the government this discover that we had at least then they're honest, you know, there's something there's something Qatar they can kind of therapeutic about that I

Dan Ilic  39:56  
think what I'm hearing from you is a smart staffer would tap scope. On the shoulder and said, Actually, we should put out an honest ad that way juice media won't have anything to complain about.

Unknown Speaker  40:06  
It will put them out of business. Yeah. Thirdly, actually, I'm scripting in a video about the electric vehicle policy at the moment. And I've got a line in there. I'm not I'm not sure if I'll use it, but it's something along the lines of, you know, introducing our future fuel strategy. The acronym is ffs, and then the next slide is like, no, that's not a joke. That's part of our strategy and put satirists out of business faqeer the chaser and the shovel and Alice government and she hates, you know, I love the fact that even their acronyms are satirical as like ffs, you know, but yeah, no, they totally should definitely not, not do that. It's very effective. But you know, the I hate I hate this government and its policies, but that what they do is actually very effective that they're very consistent with their with their obfuscation.

Dan Ilic  40:54  
Now, honest government ads is a format you've been doing for some years. Now. Can you remember the first one you did? And you went? Aha, this is a great format. Yeah. And I'm now I'm going to rinse and repeat.

Unknown Speaker  41:05  
We used to do a series called rock news. And we finished that in 2015. And after that, I had this decision to you know, like, Well, what do I do? Do I go back to university? Or do I try and keep doing this YouTube thing? You know, we had no Patreon support at the time. So it was like, you know, do I want a job? Or do I want to be unemployed? That was the basic decision. And I chose the latter. And I'm really glad I did that. But the immediate challenge that I had was like, Well, what am I going to do now we've done rack news. That series was very successful, but it really relied on the collaboration with Hugo, who was the rapper. And so I didn't feel comfortable continuing that didn't feel like that was what was special about that collaboration was the two of us. So although Initially, I thought maybe we could continue, but in the end, I realised I needed to figure out something else. And I experiment with a couple of ideas. I did a few different things. Why

Dan Ilic  41:52  
did that fall apart? was it was it just hard work? And just a lot of work?

Unknown Speaker  41:57  
Yeah. I think, yeah, definitely. It was, I think we got ourselves into a situation where it became not pleasant to do it anymore. You know, I feel like you know, all projects have have all collaborations have that. That window, you know, in which they you have this amazing productivity and you know, things work and then and then they don't and I think for Hugo especially, he wants to do a lot of other stuff. He has got he's incredibly talented guy. And I mean, you should see him do live shows and freestyles is it's kind of really impressive. And he wanted to do a lot more of that. And he didn't have enough time because we got ourselves into this situation, which was we had a contract with RT Russia today to produce content. So we were on a on a on a schedule, and the Russians were quite, you know, strict about you know,

Dan Ilic  42:47  
if you miss a deadline with the Russians,

Unknown Speaker  42:50  
there was a guy who was always CCD now emails cool, called Vladimir. And we had a joke that that was proven that your CCD and all the emails,

Dan Ilic  42:57  
I forgot, I forgot you had a ship with Russia. So

Unknown Speaker  42:59  
yeah, that was another fun thing that happened. Yeah. I mean, that's a whole I'm happy to talk about it. But that's a whole other thing. After after we finished that show, I you know, I was kind of like, what am I gonna do now and had a few different ideas that I tried out. And the third video that I made, was, was a video was a US government at Christmas time. Or at least, I can't remember who the minister was. But they, they pressured UNESCO to remove Australia from the sort of the areas that had been that are under threat from climate change, including the barrier reef, and we got UNESCO to just sort of erase it. And so it's kind of like a typical, like Band Aid solution, let's not fix the reef, so that it's not endangered list, especially UNESCO to not put them on the endangered list of places, you know, and it had an amazing response, like people really loved it. And there was no actor involved. It was just Lucy, we, I think we did in the day, you know, I wrote it. We had a couple of beers, we wrote it, we recorded it, I just pasted a few images together. And the format really resonated with people. And initially, I thought this was, this was, this would be one of the things that we'll do here at the juice media, but people loved it so much. And I realised pretty quickly that we could do so much. I mean, just the Australian government alone provides us so much more material that we can deal with. But then there's other shit governments, you know, I mean, we're constantly getting emails from people in Brazil, and in Canada, specifically, Alberta, in the UK, in you know, so many places, India, that people are saying, like, please, can you make something about, you know, the Ukraine or Hungary, I mean, the list goes on. And I realised and then we could do once about past issues. I mean, I would need three or four lifetimes to, to do all the videos that I would like, you should see my list of,

Dan Ilic  44:33  
you know, play list and get your data so my money guy just made his Patreon.

Unknown Speaker  44:37  
It's not even money, it's time you know, it's that that's the thing it's, that's the limit is, is more time. So it's more like actually more than money. It's like if you're a talented writer and researcher, you know, and you want to help write stuff, get in touch that would help more

Dan Ilic  44:53  
if you're if you're a brain ready to get exploited. Yeah, trail money. Well, I don't think that's out of the question. I'm a very collaborative person. And we've got a Discord server now and comedians who want to be part of a restaurant, chime in with jokes and help help help write the show and give up ideas. And you've got a very thriving conversation about shit fuckery that's happening around Australia. That's a real thrill. You know, I'd like to see all these folks in a virtual writers room. participate. And I don't think there's anything wrong with getting extra brains in because this stuff is hard to do. You know, it's very difficult to do and can be very draining. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. When you started you were a young man. That's right. It's true. Yeah. Let's talk about it for a second. We've both worked for state broadcasters. I've worked for zero in the past. The broadcaster of Qatar and you've worked for it. We've worked for brutal regime. We've worked for broadcasters, yes. Yeah. soft power, they like to call it soft power of hard power. Yeah. How did you find that experience? And what did you do you have any feelings about it now?

Unknown Speaker  46:04  
Yeah, look, I mean, it. Yeah, it was a fascinating experience. It was a really good learning experience. It really forced us to really be organised. And you know, and you know, even though I kind of sort of talked us down a little bit earlier, I think we did a pretty good job actually, of rising to the challenge. It was pretty complicated show that we did rap news. I

Dan Ilic  46:22  
don't know if any of your listeners remember it. Absolutely. Incredible. early days of juice media. incredible stories wrapped in the night, you know, the news wrapped? Yeah, but incredible guest performances from people like Julian Assange and yeah, other folks.

Unknown Speaker  46:37  
Yeah, we are Noam Chomsky and a few others. Yeah. I, it was a really interesting experience. And you know, we weren't, we didn't go into it, naively thinking, Oh, this is just wonderful. We were quite aware of the implications. And, in fact, we didn't sign up, we didn't agree to sign up with it straightaway, they approached us very early on, I think it was like 2010, after we did the very first videos about Wikileaks in 2010, which really helped a lot of people to understand what was happening, who what Wikileaks was, who Julian Assange was, in the very early days in 2010. And so they approached us then, and they were like, oh, would you like to do it? We'll you know, we'll get you to do a show. We'll give you a show on it. And we were like, Yeah, thanks. Like, you know, we really wanted to build our own independent name and brand and voice. And so we didn't want to be absorbed by this giant that which then would just, we would become an arty show. And then they would then maybe spit us out. And then we'd be like, well, that's gone. You know, we want it to be a separate thing. So we said, Yeah, maybe. And then 2011, they were like a new producer, would you know from it would be like, are you still keen? Are you interested in our maybe? And then eventually, in 2013, we said yes. And we then we negotiated for about a year, there was that most hardcore fucking negotiation that I had with, with these Russians about the terms of the agreement, and we were like, really, really strict that it had to work for us, because they were like, Oh, we want a video every they wanted like a, you know, a video every two videos a month, and we're like, You're insane. And we can't do that. And then we're like, okay, video every year. And we're like, we can do 10 videos, because we need time off as well. And then we need full editorial independence. Like, we don't want anyone telling us what we can and can't say the only thing that will censor is the swear words. And you know, we hadn't we had we even negotiated that we would be able to upload to our YouTube channel first, you know, so now let's enter them afterwards. That's a huge day. Yeah. So like, you know, we really kind of like, and we were quite ready to walk away from it. Like if they said they didn't want that they weren't okay with it. We were like, Oh, that's sorry, we're gonna leave it then. But they agreed to all these terms. And, and I have to say to the credit, like they're really respected all of those times, especially they editorial independence, I think everyone thinks that when you work for RT, or possibly AlJazeera, that you're like, you know, there's some person telling you what you can and can't say, or removing words. Actually, the funny thing is, I've had, I've had that happen with Western NGOs that have that I've worked with who've really kind of tried to bully us into what we could and couldn't say, and I've said to them, you know, I'm not going to name them. But I actually said to one of them, I was like, you know, this is fascinating. I've worked with it, you know, Russia's state television, and yeah, over two years, and we never had anyone telling us what you're telling me now over the

Dan Ilic  49:11  
argue I've had more editorial, I had more editorial freedom at AlJazeera than I ever had at the ABC. Let's fix

Unknown Speaker  49:20  
Yeah, let's say something. Yeah. Then Okay, maybe it doesn't even say anything bad about the ABC. But it definitely blows away a lot of the stereotypes that we have about some of these, you know, they've got a call it a soft power. let's not kid ourselves. There's a reason that Artie was interested in. What we're doing is because we're putting out a lot of videos that were critical of us imperialism of US foreign policy, and also domestic policy that was the focus of rap news. So it definitely served the purpose. But it also helped us because what it did is it allowed us to quit our jobs. I mean, I was working part time at uni, and that contract was coming to an end and Hugo was teaching he was teaching he was an English teacher. And it allowed us to fulfil our dream which was to be full time creators, you know? gave us a. It gave us that freedom, you know,

Dan Ilic  50:03  
would you ever do a collab? Now the US government's change? Would you ever do a collab with US government? Say on the on the green New Deal or something like

Unknown Speaker  50:12  
that? Or do you mean with the Biden government? No, no, definitely not. Yeah, I would. That would be the surest way to destroy all the goodwill and independence and the value of the brand that we've created. The I totally know. I mean, like, you know, sometimes if we're going to support what governments are saying, we did a video about the Coronavirus. Last year, just as the pandemic was kicking off, it was mid March. And there was so much confusion, I'm sure you remember, it was like, is it? You know, what, what do we do? Do we, you know, do we wear masks? We wear masks? You know, do we do we take it seriously, don't we? What do we wait, you know, we put out this video, which basically, you know, helped really governments to put out this man, in fact, we put up before the government was able to come up with its own coherent communication strategy. So sometimes we we help governments, you know, in that regard, but I'm not

Dan Ilic  50:58  
many would argue that they still trying to come up with a coherent communication strategy. Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker  51:01  
Yeah, totally. But Sorry, I was just gonna say with with RT, you know, one of the little stories that I think maybe some people appreciate it, but so I think so many people just kind of went under the radar. When we signed up with it, we kind of really realised we'd never spoken about Russia, we've never really, you know, they've been mostly about Australian and US politics. And we were like, okay, now that we're working with RT, we have to talk about Russian politics. So we're very conscious that by entering into this agreement, we also had to turn the critical eye and satirical eye towards them. So we created the Russian character at a time there was a lot of persecution of LGBT people in Russia, probably still is, but at the time, it was a real issue in that there was a prominent, prominent in the media and persecution also of Greenpeace activists up in the Arctic. So those are the some of the issues. And then about two months after we signed this fuckin agreement, Putin invaded Crimea, and we're like, Fuck you, man. Like, seriously, like, now, we can't not talk about this, you know, and I think a lot of people who thought who think that by signing up with it, the juice media was like compromising itself, kind of have to look at that episode that we put out because it was, you know, we impersonated Putin. And we created this character, Russian character who was an RT reporter, and we totally ripped into Putin and RT and, and made and cetera, satirised. You know, Russia's peaceful, so called, in inverted commas, the invasion of Crimea. So yeah, that was, that was some of the stuff that we did to mitigate our concerns around working with this propaganda arm of Russian government was to actually Okay, we'll do this. But we're not we're gonna make Saturday and make fun of you as well. So I feel like it was that was our attempt to balance the two things. And obviously, you

Dan Ilic  52:43  
feel safe being here in Melbourne. I live far away from from the heavies of Russia?

Unknown Speaker  52:51  
Absolutely, I would have been a different story and respect to people who you know, who do the job that we do in countries where, you know, we've seen these comments, it's like, fuck man is someone made that video here in Malaysia or in India? You'd be gone, you know. And that's, that's always worth remembering that the that the freedom that we have in this country to to do this is a wonderful thing.

Dan Ilic  53:09  
Yeah. I made a way the bloody Hawaii video on Manus Island, and I got I got deported deported from Australia. Good as good as it wasn't the other way around. Which is possible. In theory,

Unknown Speaker  53:27  
I guess. I mean, there are Australians locked up on Christmas Island as we spend Britain can strip your citizenship if you have a dual one.

Dan Ilic  53:35  
Yeah. Oh, are you excited about you know, Dutton sending out cease and desist letters and, and threatening people with defamation? Oh, well, I'm just disappointed that I haven't received from you. What's the best? What's the best postal address for that? Most people would have said, You know, I haven't sent one either. I've met someone who has sent them to people on Twitter who said remotely defamatory things about Peter Dutton on Twitter. Are you kidding me? I know. Yeah. What a thin skin. I remember the first time I made a kind of government ad like government ad parody would have been 2006. It was a where the bloody hell are you parody? Right. And I got a cease and desist from Gilbert and Tobin, who are tourism Australia's lawyers, saying that the music that I'd use was exactly the same. But it wasn't because I got my music commission to be a sound alike. And so they asked me to pull it down. Idiots. They asked me to pull it down off my website, and I said the only similarity between my music and your music is the word now, because it was now Nanana. So I said, I've done a do version, a whistle version and a crazy frog remix version. And I've republished that. So you know, it's, um,

Unknown Speaker  54:47  
and what happened in the end? I never heard from him again. But if I see you didn't cease and desist, no, I kept publishing, right.

Dan Ilic  54:57  
But that was the first time that I went on. There's real power in using the tools of propaganda. Yeah against the propagandists. Oh, totally. Yeah, no, absolutely. And they're scared. You know, they're scared enough to send you a letter. Yeah. As a 25 year old kid. That was super exciting to me. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  55:16  
Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's also a reminder that we have really shit copyright laws here in Australia. We don't have a fair use. I mean, in theory, that there is a fair use, exclusion and the Copyright Act, but it's never been tested in court, in court. So I found that about this when we got letters from it wasn't from the government for this. It was from the the writers of the john Phantom song, the voice, right, which we got Julian Assange to parody. So we changed the lyrics. And we've got, you know, we didn't change the music, but we got it. We rerecorded it. So it wasn't the actual song. And we got a session session musician to, to sing. And I just thought, this is this is a parody. It's it's obviously modifying it, it's obviously, it feels the definition of parody. It should should work

Dan Ilic  56:01  
under satire and parody. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  56:03  
Like you would think so. But because of the shitty, untested, fair use clauses here, the publishers were able to sort of put pressure on us and say, Well, you know, we don't agree, we don't agree that that's Saturday, and then what the will the only response you can have is, I will see you in court. And, and, you know, I was like, ready to do it. And I was like, is anyone going to take this on? Because this would be a great. This would set a great precedent, you know, for testing the Fair Use clause in the Copyright Act. Absolutely. In a very public one.

Dan Ilic  56:31  
Yeah. Now, if that happened again today, would you go to court?

Unknown Speaker  56:34  
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, somebody's got to fucking do it. And you know, as long as you've got a good as long as you've got good backing and you know, because you can't afford it yourself, you've got to have shorter

Dan Ilic  56:44  
beer. Yeah, surely I feel like this is a Kickstarter campaign ready to go go fundraising campaign ready to go to test this thing called?

Unknown Speaker  56:51  
No, totally. And it was high profile because it had Julian Assange was impersonating john Farnham. We even got john Farnham he even like said, Yeah, I'm cool with that. It was it was the publishers, you know, they're the gatekeepers that kind of didn't didn't quite see the humour of it kind of thing. So I remember that clip. Did

Dan Ilic  57:07  
you end up seeing the system that when did you end up taking that one down?

Unknown Speaker  57:10  
No, we didn't. But we had to pay them. We had to give them the all the revenue from the video. So we kind of got hijacked by them, you know, and I thought, well, this is sucks, but it meant the video stayed up. You know, that's a Would you say that's a low price to pay. Or I think it's a ship price. Like I shouldn't pay anything for it. But we didn't have anyone. You know, I reached out to people and no one was really keen to take it on. So I was like, what are we gonna do? Yeah, I'm not gonna spend the next five years of my life trying to scramble up pennies to fight a copyright

Dan Ilic  57:40  
thing. Giordano? Thank you so much for the work you do. Thank you so much for the smarts and the funnies over, over a decade's worth of work through grettir a great privilege to have you on the greatest moral podcast of our generation and to do it inside the inner sanctum of where the magic happens inside the bunker in the volcano. Yeah, we live undisclosed location in a Melbourne Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  58:05  
Yeah, no, look, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks for thanks for taking the time. It's, it's like I said, we're part of like, a bit of a network a bit of a family. Yeah, exactly. So

Dan Ilic  58:14  
a comedy come out. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  58:15  
sounds really nice. And I appreciate it. And I can't believe that it's been 10 years. It's, yeah, I always started doing this as a as something fun and something that might be you know, something to get a bit of a release and was been a bit of a class clown. So I thought it was like, you know, something to sort of keep that, that alive. And it's, it's a privilege to be able to do it. You know, and thanks to you also, for the work that you do with irrational fear. You know, really, I think we're all helping in some small way to unfuck things. So

Dan Ilic  58:45  
that's beautiful. And that's, that's now my personal quote. JOHN Fox thinks juice media. Thanks, Jay. Well, that was your dad. What do you think of Joe Dad? I

Linh Do  58:54  
love it. I love when someone's like, awesome on video. And then like also in podcast, as well. So like, I understand how these juice media videos get made.

Dan Ilic  59:03  
Yeah. Giordano, I had the privilege of you know, we recorded that inside your danos house in his studio, where he records every single one of those fake

Linh Do  59:13  
magic happen. Yeah,

Dan Ilic  59:14  
yeah. And he's got this. He's got this green screen, he rolls out for it. And there's cards, there's like, kids have got like crayon drawings all over the walls. It's just amazing. So it's a very homemade scrappy operation. And he but he has so much rich. Love it. Next up is rod contact. He's an absolute legend. But like we said, it's a little depressing. So I understand if you switch off, Rod, first of all, thanks very much for joining us, the greatest model podcast of our generation. To invite me not just anyone gets to come on this is this is a podcast where we talk to climate leaders from around the world, just for you know, half an hour or so about, you know, leading people in climate and I can't think of anyone better to talk to than right now during comedy festival season then yourself. I remember Doing a panel with you about satire and politics at the Paramount of Riverside theatre sometime I know probably 2008 2009, with which the great drum pinda organised. And I remember you saying one line that really stuck with me ever since. And it was that you have changed the entire way you do comedy, in that it's all about climate change, because there's nothing else to do jokes about. And I thought that would be the great place to start. because ever since you said that line, I've been feeling exceedingly guilty about the kind of jokes I'm telling, and have progressively made them mostly about climate change. You're

Unknown Speaker  1:00:36  
a good man, Dan, you're a good man. Talk me through that journey. In 2007, I got what used to be called the Keating, a Australia council fellowship, which I had a choice of doing over one year or two years part time, and I chose to two years. And the idea of that programme was that in 2008, I was going to be 60 years old. So I thought what I wanted to do was a project that looked at the world. From the day I was born until 2008. It wasn't autobiographical in any way, it was just to look at how the worlds evolved over that time. And I'm a very literal person. So I did it chronologically. And around, I got to 1973 I think it was the great oil shock. And I realised then that we were extraordinarily vulnerable to problems with oil, particularly running out of it. But I also started to see references to climate change. So I got really interested in that. And I have an extraordinary admiration for science, my hobbies, generally reading about science or mathematics, and neither of which I can do that I can read about them. And as I read about it, and I just read about it, and I just read about it, I just saw that it was an extraordinarily overwhelming problem and existential threat, which is now you know, in a within a year or so I worked out that we're heading for those six major extinction. And in 2008, I really thought well, what you got to do is tell people that the climate is changing, and it's a really big problem. So it wasn't

Dan Ilic  1:02:35  
an eight that was that seems as as not not so long ago. That seems like a time before this kind of reach desired. Guys, you were very much ahead of your time. And I think for talking about this, you know, within the general population, you said your impression

Unknown Speaker  1:02:50  
of that. And it remains what it was then it's just another item in the news. Okay, it gets it gets overwhelmed by Prince Harry going back to England, gets overwhelmed by buddy Franklin's groyne and flubs here. And very few. Very few commercial interests, in their news coverage have mentioned climate change as a factor in weather disasters,

Dan Ilic  1:03:20  
98% of Australia's foreigner might have gone extinct, but there was a footballer that passed in a dog's mouth. So it's actually really focus on that.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:29  
I've stopped blaming anybody or mad I blame the people who know when deliberately obfuscate. But the other side of it is that it's not just climate change, it's a systemic problem. It's the way we live, and it's the way we consume. And it's the way that the propaganda of capitalism keeps lulling us into thinking that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. And so there's no I've given up, we're gonna we're gonna have a mass extinction. It's going to become unlivable in parts of Australia in the very near future, because nobody's doing anything, even the countries like Germany or, or and I think of another one that might be doing something and not doing enough. And because really, what you have to do as a policymaker, in dealing with climate change is you've got to say to people, you've got to have less. And politics is really based on telling people they can have more. And the first person that says you've got to give up your V eight Holden for a car that just go and doesn't go. Those people are not happy with the idea of transitioning to a low carbon economy. And we now probably have to reduce our economic output by more than 10% a year to reach any sort of feasible goal by 2030. And that's just not going to happen. So I'll look into why I still do stuff about climate change. Nobody wants to hear it. So I don't get many bookings.

Dan Ilic  1:05:09  
Well, that was my that was my question like, how did you? How did you feel when you made this kind of commitment to do this back in, you know, oh, eight? How did you feel about the rest of your comedy career?

Unknown Speaker  1:05:23  
Well, look, I've always done stuff that's been, as Andrew bolt labels me, I've always been a far left comedian. Most people aren't interested in politics, people don't know enough about politics for you to make really sophisticated jokes about it either. I remember I was doing a show many years ago about, well, just about politics in general. But a woman came up to me after the show, and she said, I love your shows, because it means I don't have to read the newspapers for a year. And that's what I do. I mean, it's probably what you do you read things that the general public don't read, you follow stories, and issues in a way that people who go to work nine to five, and then find the cheapest cocktails in central Sydney, don't have time to do. So that's what I did. And because of, you know, personal issue for my family's health, I don't get to get out much anyway. So I just tracked myself down this horrible rabbit hole, which I'd never really wish I'd never gone down. And at the beginning, back in 2007 2008, when I started introducing climate change, and the Limits to Growth into what I was doing, I really did think it was just a matter of telling people. And I chose, I'm not a writer I've made I never write a show. So it's difficult for me to paint a 10,000 word essay about climate change, although I've tried,

Dan Ilic  1:06:51  
I don't know about that, right. I've been to plenty of your shows. And I can see the amount of writing you do during the show.

Rod Quantock  1:06:59  
my hard drive, I got a terabyte of stuff on climate change everything from a wonderful programme that David Attenborough did in 2006, on climate change, telling us exactly what I've been telling you now, never shown in Australia, and nobody paid any attention in the countries where it was shown. And then I saw all these scientists who are writing popular articles in magazines and newspapers. And I thought, well, that territory is pretty much covered. And it doesn't seem to make any difference. And I, one of the things I thought at the time is you can't, you can't change people's minds in five minutes. And you can't even change their minds in an hour. If you really, really need to get them to commit to understanding what you're talking about. And very few people do that. I look, I know. Like, I've made a few climate change friends over the years who share my despair. But we've stopped talking about it to each other. So it's got to that level, I mean, I still need to make a living. And if I'm going to go and talk to people, I'll talk about climate change and peak oil. And you know, the fact that 96% of all animals on the planet now today are either humans or the animals they ate. It said, we have so overshot the limits of the planet. And there's just no way back. So, look, it's really distressing. I had a time there about six or seven years ago, when I thought, Well, look, this is the problem. All the people I talked to and you know, you don't buy tickets to a show that you're tech What are now about so that people who can, you know, down the path. But what I saw was a lot of great, good, wonderful people who were basically giving all their spare time, and a lot of their personal wealth to trying to transition to a carbon neutral economy. And I knew it wasn't going to happen. And I knew they were wasting their time. So I tried to redirect their energies in if you like, not into changing the global economy, not into changing the Australian economy, not even changing the Victorian economy. But to find ways to live sustainably within small groups, which is that's the future that's what's going to happen. And if you can't live sustainably within small group, if you remain dependent on the system that's crumbling, you going to die is just going to die and the next pandemic. I had a job at Melbourne University for two years back in 16 and 17, I think, as a research fellow, and I did a lot of following, and I did a lot of researching. And I sort of got to the point where I didn't want to know wedding more. I knew too much But I did produce, it's not finished ever, I've never get finished because I'm not a writer. But I did produce a long form document, which included predictions for the period 2018 to 2030. And one of the things I predicted in that back in 2017 was a global pandemic, viral pandemic in 2023. Now, why, well, if you do the reading, you don't have to be, I'm not a genius. I'm just somebody who reads a lot and has, particularly my admiration for the scientific method is overwhelming. But it's like everything that humans do, and has a has a dark side with that prediction.

Dan Ilic  1:10:47  
What What were the steps that led you to that prediction? What were the things that you concluded that, you know, 2023, roughly, would be when a global pandemic would have?

Unknown Speaker  1:10:56  
Well, this was, I can't remember when SARS was. But there had been a number of diseases which had passed rapidly the mainly because of aeroplane travel that had passed rapidly into a global environment. And so I, you know, I read about that, as one of the problems we faced and the literature I read just said that this is going to happen, it's going to happen very quickly. And there will come a strain, which is COVID. And there'll be worse than COVID to come. Because viruses are very clever. So it just, I apologise for being three years out. But for anybody who who did the work that I did that perceived logical conclusion of where we were heading in terms of these things. And then other things like, you know, they bushfires of last year, I sort of left that a bit open in terms of when it would happen, but I knew that was going to happen within a few years as well, because that's, you know, the great thing about science is that you stand on this on the shoulders of giants. And each little increment that you make, to their understanding can then be you can project in ways that you can't project with the financial market for in Germany can take a gamble on saving at Amazon stock to buy. But in terms of climate change, it's a very simple equation, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes the temperature to rise, and the more you put in, the higher the temperature will go, which changes the whole weather patterns of the globe. And it also, much more slowly changes the patterns of oceans. So do you might remember the group called 350 dot org? Did you ever get

Dan Ilic  1:12:54  
to see a dog started by Bill McKenna?

Unknown Speaker  1:12:57  
That's right. And it was 350 was the maximum amount of co2 in the atmosphere before we hit a tipping point?

Dan Ilic  1:13:07  
350 parts per million? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:09  
Now, it turns out that that was only a sort of nice round number to call something, you know, if you wanted to run an organisation, I mean, you know, 312 point five.org just doesn't matter. So it was an approximation. And they were wrong to think 350 parts per million wasn't a problem. But they had to start somewhere. And now I didn't look I've stopped looking, but we're probably close to 420 parts per million at the moment of historic or certainly in terms of human evolution, a historic baseline of around 280 parts per million. So we're so far over the scale. And you can see, you know, with the floods that you have in Sydney, and people in Queensland have experienced it in the cyclone on the other side. And now they're bushfire alerts in South Australia today. It's just gone crazy. The weather's just gone crazy. And if you live near the coast, don't. I mean, that's all I can say. But you know, those things of rising sea level, which come with thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of ice caps, and so on. Those now we're pushing salt water up into rivers that never had salt in them before. And they're pushing salt into arable land that didn't have salt on it before. And, you know, it's no mystery, you know, no accident that the Romans when they conquered somebody salted the land, to make sure that no other people could use that land to build an opposition to the Roman Empire. So it's everything. It's just everything. So, you know, I like I have days where I, I think I shouldn't talk to people about this. Because what's the point of fatal knowing? Is it better to just eat, drink and be married? But it's something that, I think certainly, I remember an article by Andrew bolt, I don't really have any more press, he gives me an ulcer. But he was talking about Tim Flannery talking about sea level rise of a metre by 2100. And the line he had in it was trading 100, long after we'll be dead. Was that lack of any empathy for generations yet to come? And you saw it? Again, I did read a bit of Bob during a pandemic, and you would have saved ended America, people saying, Well, the only people who die are old people. And Andrew bolt actually had a statistic that said, the average length of stay of an elderly person in a care home is nine months. So really, what's nine months with less on your life, when you write your nine terrible, so let's keep the economy going. And these are the people have to pay the price for the younger people. You know, if you stand in the way of a man and these profits, he'll crush you. And that's what's happened with the climate debate.

Dan Ilic  1:16:11  
This is a really strange kind of attitude to have. It's only really realised that conservatives, the only thing they're conserving is their money. But that's the only thing.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:24  
Very strange word to use for them. But say these are the people who are buying bunkers and fortresses in New Zealand. These are people who think they can buy their way out of any problem.

Dan Ilic  1:16:34  
This kind of does this speak to your your idea of living within small groups, as opposed to on your own or in the big systems earlier?

Unknown Speaker  1:16:44  
My there are people who literally do live on their own. And I'm sure there's, you know, 10s of 1000s of them around the world who have chosen that path. And they've been I did look at the sort of utopian sort of 6070 ideas of communes, but they never lost because people are people. And that, that's the overarching problem. The if, if I die, or when I go, I shouldn't say if we haven't died, I want to have put in the Oxford Dictionary of quotes. Rod Quantock said, the problem with people is they're only human. And that's the problem is people you know, we were malleable, where we've got why oregano crackles and breaks. And, you know, we just started there. There's no other species on the planet that has such a diversity of mood, temperament, and, and lust and greed and the seven deadly sins. You just never see a greedy lion. You see a lion, they've had enough to eat and they go to sleep. So we are the problem. And it's been a battle. It's a philosophical battle that goes back to the very beginnings of humans, the battle to understand where we sit in all of this, and what our obligations are to each other and to the surrounds. And the one book I always recommend to people is a book by a guy named Daniel Quinn, who wrote a book called ish my L. and ish, my L. My buddy had too much that, that Ishmael is ends up being a sort of psycho Socratic Socratic dialogue between a captive gorilla and writer who's sort of wondering why the world's fact and should he try and fix it or button he do. And it's a dialogue about humans place in nature. And Quinn draws a line between two ways of living with the advent of agriculture. Basically, prior to that people did live in small groups, they didn't fight much because everybody knew everybody else in the working group had a way of dealing with people that like Aboriginal people laughed at, in their sort of traditional way of living. They'd laugh at people who did things I disagreed with the humiliation with laughter, replacement head ways of dealing with it, but what agriculture did, first of all, it formalised the ownership of land and prior to that nobody owned anything, they shared it with everything else. And then it developed systems to protect their ownership. Because an acre of land given over to crops can support a lot more people than 10 square miles of the equivalent amount of crops. Population started to aggregate and accumulate and grow. And then of course, you needed hierarchies because there were people in that community that you never saw that could come around and kill you tomorrow. So there were systems of law and systems and politics and higher Rocky and, and of course religion came into it. So there just was that time when we went from being part of nature to trying to control nature. And that's what we've done ever since. You know, I live next door to people will ask growing up. He used to he used to back in the lawn. Like as I go out, and rather than rake the leaves, I'd actually vacuum them up. And I made a blow up. Yeah. air conditioning is another way of how we've tried to control nature. I mean, everything we do is to keep nature at bay. It's just it's a place that frightens and terrifies us. And but it's also a place to exploit. And we've done that, you know, to the ultimate peril of the planet. It's really sad. And look, I at different times, I tried to float above at all and try to be that wise fool that looks down on you all it goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, look at you silly little Lance. But your cat, you're in it, you're part of it. And so as I said, I don't put any much more time into studying these things. Because I'm only learning what I already know. I'm not being arrogant with this. But I think the one thing I bring to what I do always is some sort of intellectual honesty, I suppose. And I've always tried. Yeah, there came a time in my comedy career not very, not done. Not really, since the 60s, have I done comedy that autobiographical. I'm not interested in my relationships as a public event. I've not interested in my family. As a public event. I'm not interested in lots of things as a public event. But I'm interested in public events as something to talk about. And I've finally got to the point where I realised that comedy is a tool.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:06  
And that it is a privilege to be able to get up in front of now six people but what used to be five or 600 people and talk to them using comedy as as sort of sugarcoating about things that are really important.

Dan Ilic  1:22:23  
When you were doing climate comedy. What was what made you feel the best, like when you were doing the comedy? What what kind of gave you a sense of either progress or change or achievement. Can you remember a moment?

Unknown Speaker  1:22:39  
Not a moment I as I said, I talked to the converted. So in one way, it was a safe space for me to do this up. But I used to do corporates, I used to do corporate stuff before they woke up to me. And I did of all things I did a conference for plumbing suppliers. Right? So I talked to them about water and climate change. I talked to them about urban fabric and climate change. I talked to them about plastics and climate change. I talked to them about it. And like I think I'm a reasonably good comedian. And I did make them laugh. But I did make him think and a few of them did come up to me afterwards and talk to me about it, and are great. So, you know, it would have floated out of their mind by now I'd imagine. But in that moment, they did get the feeling that you've done something positive and good.

Dan Ilic  1:23:36  
Did you ever did you ever think when you started doing climate comedy that you could make a difference?

Unknown Speaker  1:23:41  
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I, I my first thought with it all is as I said, you can't change people's mind in five minutes. You can't change people's minds if I told that the the extraordinary flooding that you've had up there in the last few weeks is contributed to by a large degree. And I would think within a week or two scientists will tell us exactly what proportion of that rain was generated by climate change. Just doesn't add up for people until it even if it hits your own door. I mean, I've seen people in America standing in the rubble of you know, Katrina or hurricane Harvey or those things saying I don't believe in climate change. And they're the same sort of people who say I don't believe in the Coronavirus. It's just too difficult. So, so I thought the only way to do it is in some sort of long form way and making it personal. realise there's nothing like a live performance or television never there particularly in terms of comedy never carries that extraordinary feeling that an audience and you as a performer get from being in the same room. But yeah, all I do now, fortunately, is I scared they Okay, I used to get bookings in high schools. And I did do a primary school, which was great fun, but I did a high school be 10 or 12 years ago now. And my mother contacted me afterwards. And she said, we have Dare you tell my son, we're all going to die. And I thought at one level, well, somebody's got to tell him, but at the other level, What right have I got? But I've tried to hide people. Well, it's a it's a,

Dan Ilic  1:25:32  
is it? Is it people like this that discourage you from doing it? Or is it? Is it something else?

Unknown Speaker  1:25:38  
No, like, what do you what discourages me is that even if the whole world turned around today, it's over. Just, it doesn't matter how much you cut carbon emissions with 400 and say, 20 parts per million today, and it goes up, you know, it seems insignificant, but it goes up two or three parts per million every year. And it just rockets along, you know, and, and, but there's a lag, there's a lag between the molecule of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, and in its capacity to fully express the energy it's catching. So that's quite a lag, it's, and getting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is short of some technological miracle, which I can assure you will never appear, it's going to take 1000s of years to get the climate back to what it was, and then many, many 1000s of years for life to evolve in that new stable climate. And by then there's probably going to be another Ice Age. So you know, we had one shot at what's called the Holocene, the Goldilocks era of life on this planet to only geological period and four and a half billion years that has said, a stable climate at this global average temperature of 13.7 degrees Celsius in the history of the planet. And it just turns out that it's ideal for humans, we are the size we are, we are the shape we are, our metabolism works the way it does, because of this climate that we have. And the the way we ate the way we lived, everything is based on that underlying stable temperature. And you know, each degree it goes up Mira, you said something earlier about how many species have gone extinct? It's, you know, it's 100 a day or whatever. People don't know, because we still don't know everything that there is in nature. And a lot of it, we'll never know, because it's already gone. And we didn't notice it was there in the first place. So So I've had this sort of moral ethical dilemma as to what right do I actually have to tell people that this is going to happen, and there's nothing you can do about it. And I've tried tried really, really hard to find what you can do about it. And I came down to small groups of people living away from other groups of people, particularly people with guns, and existing sustainably.

Dan Ilic  1:28:25  
13 years ago, Rod, you inspired me to do more comedy about climate change. Sorry, Dan. Now, and now I'm inspired to go join a commune. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:36  
No, that's a pleasure. But look, clearly there are things that maybe keep kept talking about. But do you think your pessimism stems from you know, what

Dan Ilic  1:28:46  
you've learned plus where you are in your life? No, no, no, because I because I feel like I feel like without that said, A disrespectful, I've got a few more. I've got a few I've got a bit more of a longer runway ahead of me that you do. So I have to remain hopeful.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:00  
Yeah, no, no, I understand that. It's not, I'm not pessimistic in the sense that you mean it and not being in any way superior to anybody else. When I say this. I'm just being realistic. And my one regret is I have a credible curiosity. My one regret is I won't be around to see what happens. On my land level. I don't want to be that at the other level. And I don't know whether it's an I told you so attitude for quite sure. But, you know, what we're looking at is in geological terms, were looking at something never happened before that one species has managed to change the entire nature of the planet. In a very short space of time. I mean, literally, but 1750 the beginning of the Industrial Age and the burning of coal From that time on, we have managed to destroy most of what's valuable. You know, I personally feel sorry for as David Attenborough because, you know, how could you do a show about nature when there's no nature left, but are made and you can see and him something that what I have is that hope, or hate the word Hope you're hoping for something stupid. But anyway, that hope that, you know, something, you say, may trigger a switch that that makes changes. But yeah, you know, so I've put, I'll put my life and soul into this for the last more than 15 years, I suppose now, not disappointed because I didn't have a lot of faith in humanity to begin with. And that's, I suppose the problem and that came out of part of that research I did for the Australia council fellowship. I was born in 1948 1948 was a year that Israel became a nation at the expense of the teleste Indians. That is still a Festering Wound 73 years later, 72 years later, or whatever it is, 73 years later, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was declared that year, that's my not a jot of difference. Velcro was invented in 1948. And that has revolutionised the shoe industry. But there was that period, just immediately after the Second World War was in a way that most devastated but most optimistic generation, my mother lost her husband in the war and married my father, after the war. That was when things like welfare came in, in England nationalisation of industries, a genuine attempt to reward the ordinary people who'd suffered through that war, with a share of the good life that was coming, you know, and the average manager of business made seven times more than the average worker in that same business today, they make I think, it's more than 70 times on average do earns real wages haven't gone up for 3040 years or something. And yet the wealth of the wealthy is so concentrated that now I think three people now own half of the wealth of the world. And that's not what my parents invested their lives in achieving. And the 60s was that their children rebelled against consumerism, and they rebelled against, obviously, the Vietnam War. But they had ideals which have been crushed out of favour now they've, and it's been done at an industrial scale, though, the use of propaganda, marketing, PR, psychology, you know, there's not a toy in the world today that isn't designed by psychologists, you know, everything is is aimed at your behaviour, everything you think and do is harvested in some way, by somebody who could then just press particular buttons in new that you will respond to. And I think last time I read the lady need eight data points to work out your sex, your race, your income, level, your age, and God knows what else. And you know, you know, I'm you know, I'd like everybody else. If you don't turn up, you turn off your pop up blocker, you suddenly start to get things that seem very interesting to you, because they deliberately they're because they're interesting to you. We recommend this people who'd like this also like that, and

Dan Ilic  1:33:54  
yeah, there was a there was a case of that story in the US where a local target sent a teenage girl, a whole catalogue on baby stuff. And her parents found out and because the target knew that she was pregnant before she did.

Unknown Speaker  1:34:12  
Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, so how do you know when, when the traditional media is so corrupted, when politicians are corrupted, when the internet only takes you where they know you're opposed to where you want to go? And they everybody's a prisoner now, they know too much about us. And, you know, they're Freud. I blame Freud at all Freud felt upset enough.

Dan Ilic  1:34:50  
Row rod, thank you so much. I really appreciate the healthy dose of realism that you've given us. The greatest moral podcast of our generation, gender, Have a more positive forum generally a more hopeful podcast, but not this one. You know, you've restored the balance show today. Let me ask you as someone who I look up to, and it's been a mentor of mine, and what do you think I should do with my comedy skill set? Well, with what I have to offer, do you think I should even bother continuing? Or is there something else I should be doing? Well,

Unknown Speaker  1:35:26  
look, I guess it comes down to the fact that you'd need to, you need to think you're doing something. And so I mean, I, you know, without getting to mutually backslash B, I really admired you because of the path that you've taken with your comedy. So lucky. I haven't given up in the sense that I don't continue to try and talk to people and make people see what's going on. But as I said, you know, you can now wherever you live, we go to the Bureau of Meteorology, or the CSI row, and I'll tell you how much rainfall you're going to get in 20 years time. I'll tell you how, how much the average temperature where you live, will go up in 20 years time. It'll tell you, I used to think Tasmania was the place to go. But Tasmania is future isn't great. So I, I recommended What was the name of it. So southernmost town on the southern island of New Zealand, but I told too many people about real estate prices have gone up. So I want to go there. Look, there are places but where you are isn't the place. You know, if you're in a high rise building that depends on air conditioning, and mechanical ventilation, and a lift, you're not going to stay there, you can't live there. You can't expect, you know, the pizza delivery boy to climb 18 flights of stairs to give me a paycheck because he can't be bothered going out to buy the ingredients, or everything, just everything will be different to what it is today. And, you know, to get people to understand that is, you know, it's an important first step. And that's why I did the thing, the Tim jam, I really tried to make it personal. And that's why, you know, I'm gonna tell you what you should do or how to do it. But it's about making it personal. It's about taking it away from you know, polar bears will become extinct the ice capsule now, it's not personal to people. Everybody's got a DVD of David Attenborough standing next to a polar bear. And that's all they'll ever know about polar bears. And I'll always have the DVD if they if they ever want to see a polar bear. I forget who said it, but like I think it was it was a science, climate scientists or science communicator or activists who said people are gonna start really caring when the footpath start melting. Yes. Right in

Dan Ilic  1:37:55  
the town you're thinking of I think that's Invercargill. Yeah. McCargo it's, it's got the best name in New Zealand Invercargill. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:38:04  
Lovely and it's a little town and very, very remote. I keep telling people in small country towns if they've got an ANZAC Memorial with a cannon in it, clean it up and pointed back down the road towards Melbourne because when people start fleeing is a last resort anyway. And if

Dan Ilic  1:38:21  
we saw that we we saw that during the pandemic is a pandemic hit the cities Iran hit the countryside. Yep,

Unknown Speaker  1:38:28  
absolutely. And toilet paper that make your own toilet. Oh, yeah, there's an idea. I've got to never worked out a way of monetizing my concerns but but maybe

Dan Ilic  1:38:43  
you could do a masterclass on how to make toilet paper. So that online

Unknown Speaker  1:38:47  
Yeah, please don't use poison ivy if you get stuck.

Dan Ilic  1:38:52  
Rod, thank you so much for joining us on the greatest moral podcast of our generation. It's always it's always even though you may you may think you're being a realist for me, it was absolute joy. Good idea. Bless you then bye. And that's it for the greatest moral podcast of our generation. big thank you to the Bertha Foundation, road mics, all of our Patreon supporters and also please come along to our bigger shows and our New Castle show and later on our Melbourne and Sydney shows. June five in Newcastle June 13 and bigger June 24 in Sydney and July 10 and 11 in Melbourne. Of course inshallah, I mean, who knows what Melbourne's gonna be like,

Linh Do  1:39:34  
we don't want to be in town state potentially either. It's a time so. Yeah.

Dan Ilic  1:39:41  
I mean, this is we are recording this on Thursday, Thursday morning. Do we know how long the press conference is gonna be? Is it going to be locked down? What's your bed?

Linh Do  1:39:50  
Having come from like, what was it 112 days of lockdown last year, five days is nothing. So that's what it takes. Five days versus 100.

Dan Ilic  1:39:58  
Thanks for listening. Thanks. subscribing. Let us know how you feel about this podcast on iTunes with a five star review or four star, you know, whatever. Thanks a lot, fiver

A Rational Fear on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ARationalFear

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If Patreon isn't your thing, and Apple Subscriptions are too Appley — chip in with A-Cast here: https://plus.acast.com/s/a-rational-fear-1.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.