EP.260 - NATALIE ROBERTS

Adam talks with the UK executive director of aid agency MSF, Natalie Roberts about working in conflict zones in Yemen and Syria, the fraught conversations that led to MSF calling Israel's actions in Gaza a 'genocide', why the humanitarian emergency in Sudan gets so much less attention than it should and her experiences providing medical assistance at Glastonbury for over-emotional Lana Del Ray fans and pregnant women determined to give birth at the mother of all festivals. DONATE TO MSF https://msf.org.uk/adam-buxton-podcast FORTHCOMING LIVE SHOWS https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/events Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for additional editing Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Listen to Adam's album 'Buckle Up' https://adambuxton.lnk.to/BuckleUp Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ Sign up for the newsletter on Adam's website https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ (scroll down on homepage) RELATED LINKS WHEN IS IT GENOCIDE? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-philippe-sands.html - The Ezra Klein Show - 2025 (NY TIMES) Philippe Sands discusses how to think about the tragedies in Gaza through the lens of international law. EAST WEST STREET https://www.google.com/search?q=PHILIPE+SANDS+EAST+WEST+STREET&oq=PHILIPE+SANDS+EAST+WEST+STREET&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQLhgNGIAEMgkIAhAAGA0YgATSAQg2MDc5ajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f5bd8316vid:YmKQS9mbokost:0: On The Origins Of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity - 2018 (YOUTUBE) A talk by writer and lawyer Philipe Sands at the Holocaust Living History Workshop and the Library at UC San Diego in 2018. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Buxton?

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buckston. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcast? It's Adam Buckston here. I'm reporting to you from a crunchy Norfolk farm track under grey skies that are actually, oh, no, look, over towards the west. The cloud is clearing and the sun is out. Got some blue skies over there. That's good, isn't it, Doglegs? I'm here with Rosie. She's my best dog friend and her enthusiasm levels today, I would put at around five. I'm wearing shorts. That's how not too bad the weather is out here today. On the very last day of September 2025, as I speak,

• 1:16Adam Buxton?

  I'll talk a little bit about what I've been up to at the end of the podcast. But right now, let me tell you about the main conversation in today's episode, which is with Natalie Roberts. She is the UK Executive Director of the international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, aka MSF. Regular listeners will know how much I admire the work that MSF does and how much they rely on donations from the public. So when people say, as they sometimes do, Buckles, oh, please tell me how I can show my appreciation for the podcast. My reply is, that's very nice. If you please support MSF and donate what you can by following the link

• 2:00Adam Buxton?

  in the description of today's episode. And they say, oh, OK, I was thinking of like a hug or a homemade badge. Oh, I say, that's awkward. Well, those sound nice, but if you were able to make a donation to MSF. I guess that would be my preference. So anyway, I was going to tell you about the actual conversation with Natalie, which inevitably, considering the work that MSF does, touches on not just the war in Gaza, but the conversations around it. And incidentally, as I'm speaking on the day after Donald Trump announced a new peace plan for Gaza, regardless of the effect that plan ends up having for the region, MSF will still try

• 2:40Adam Buxton?

  to be there providing humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people and whoever else they are able to help out there. Okay, here's some Natalie facts for you. Natalie Roberts was born in nineteen seventy-nine and grew up in Wrexham, North Wales. When she became a doctor, Natalie specialised in surgery before moving into emergency medicine. In twenty eleven, after having worked in the NHS for eight years, Natalie attended the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where she got her diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene, which was a compulsory part of her joining MSF. And just to remind you

• 3:22Adam Buxton?

  what MSF does, I quote from their website, "Since nineteen seventy-one, we have been treating people caught in complex crises and chronic healthcare emergencies around the world. From our paediatric nurses to our off-road drivers, we are experts at working in fast-moving and highly insecure environments. So whether it's launching a rapid response or delivering community care, we go wherever we are needed most." It was during Natalie's first placement with MSF in January twenty twelve, responding to an emergency following a typhoon in the Philippines, that she found her calling. And for the next four years, Natalie served as an emergency doctor and coordinator, responding

• 4:06Adam Buxton?

  to crises in Syria, Yemen, East Ukraine, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Pakistan and the Philippines. After her extensive field work, Natalie worked for MSF in Paris as head of emergency programmes, where she managed emergency teams responding to crises worldwide. In October twenty twenty-two, Natalie moved to London to take on the role that she currently holds of executive director for MSF's office in the UK.

• 4:38Adam Buxton?

  My conversation with Natalie was recorded face to face in London at the beginning of this month, September twenty twenty five. And as well as describing some of the experiences she's had working in conflict zones out in Yemen and Syria, she told me about the conversations at MSF that led to their decision to start talking explicitly about Israel's attacks on the Palestinian people as a genocide, as MSF have been doing since December twenty twenty four. We also spoke about why it is that a no less serious ongoing humanitarian emergency in Sudan gets so much less attention than it should. And more lightheartedly,

• 5:19Adam Buxton?

  Natalie told me about providing medical assistance at Glastonbury for over emotional Lana Del Rey fans and pregnant women determined to give birth at the mother of all festivals. But we began by talking about Wrexham and the TV reality show in which American stars Rosie... Don't bark at the deer, that is unfriendly to the deer. Anyway, what are you gonna do about it? Even if I let you off the leash, you are not gonna be chasing after those guys. No disrespect.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Some taken.

• 5:51Adam Buxton?

  What was I saying? Oh, yes, the TV reality show, Welcome to Wrexham, of course, in which American stars Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds take over the running of the Wrexham football team. More waffle at the end, but right now with Natalie Roberts of MSF. Here we go.

• 6:50Adam Buxton?

  How often do you go back to Wrexham?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  I go back quite often now. It's one of the reasons I moved back to the UK because I go back to watch the football.

• 6:56Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Got a season ticket, so.

• 6:58Adam Buxton?

  Did you watch that show? Welcome to Wrexham.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  It's quite weird because there's people on there that I've known my whole life. It's quite strange. My brother's girlfriend's uncle is in one of the episodes and stuff. It is a bit weird. We were a bit worried actually because Wrexham's just, you know, it's not sleepy. It's it's an interesting place. It's quite a poor place, you know, it's quite, it's had a rough times and we thought they maybe make us look a bit stupid. But um my whole family's from Wrexham, so but actually in the end we were like, no, it's okay.

• 7:24Adam Buxton?

  Ryan Reynolds wouldn't make you look stupid.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  I don't know. That kind of whole, you know, Hollywood movie stars come to savour town.

• 7:31Adam Buxton?

  Sure, I know. Yeah, no, it had patronising written all over it.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  It did. It's not as bad as all that.

• 7:36Adam Buxton?

  But no, I think they were fairly sensitive, weren't they? And they certainly seemed to have that concern in mind.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Adam Buxton?

  As they were making it. But now Wrexham is smashing it. Am I right?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  It is, yeah. We're in the championship for the first time in since, well, the second, you know, the second tier since, first time since the late seventies, I think.

• 7:53Adam Buxton?

  Right. I started to watch that show.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:56Adam Buxton?

  And then my total indifference to sport got the better of me and I was unable to finish watching it.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  It also gets a bit samey, to be honest. It's a bit like, oh, look, you know, tell someone's story and it's good for me because I know the place.

• 8:10Adam Buxton?

  So you grew up in Wrexham?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Hmm. I did.

• 8:14Adam Buxton?

  What did your parents do? Are they still around, your folks?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are. So my dad was a social worker and remained a social worker for his sort of whole life, social services. And my mum, actually, I'm one of five, so she didn't work. They got married really young, so she actually stopped her education and they had five kids. And then she went back to university later, studied at Manchester, did, you know, a degree, got a top first, you know, started a PhD.

• 8:41Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:41Adam Buxton?

  Brain box family.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Well, maybe.

• 8:44Adam Buxton?

  Did your dad talk about his work as a social worker?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  He didn't talk about it when I was younger so much. Um we used to bump into people in the supermarket and he'd talk to them and then I'd ask him who they were and he'd say, oh, just somebody I know. Um but. It became more apparent when I went to secondary school because then a lot of the kids, he worked in children's social services, so quite a few of the kids knew who my dad was. Then when I was deciding I wanted to go and be a doctor, he did start talking about it a bit more, just I think to try and put me off a little bit.

• 9:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, how old were you when you started thinking about that?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  I was really quite young, I think I was like twelve or thirteen, and I don't quite know where it came from, because no one's medical in my family, I think I just got this idea in my head. And then my dad started kind of, you know, introducing me to pediatricians and people he'd met through work, and then telling me stories about, yeah, a case, not details, but just, you know, being a doctor isn't a case of just going and saving people's lives, it's about being engaged in their lives, and you have to understand that people's lives are quite complicated. Didn't really work, it didn't put me off, but you know.

• 9:46Adam Buxton?

  What were you imagining? Do you remember what the thing was that attracted you?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  I mean, my dad would insist, it was, it was about the same time as ER came on TV.

• 9:53Adam Buxton?

  I was gonna say.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  And my dad would insist.

• 9:55Adam Buxton?

  Mid nineties.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, sort of mid nineties, early, early mid nineties, and my dad would insist that it's because I liked George Clooney. Um, I, I'm not sure, and now I would say, no, of course it wasn't, but maybe, maybe he has a point, I don't know, I think you don't really understand the reality of it when you're a teenager, you just think, oh, it's gonna be good, I'm gonna be helping people, and, you know, it's gonna be really cool, and and everyone's gonna really thank me for, for everything I'm doing for them.

• 10:21Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And, and yeah, that, that doesn't happen.

• 10:23Adam Buxton?

  But you do live a very intense life, that's one thing that is true, isn't it? I suppose it's, it's more banal in some ways than an episode of ER, but it is lived at a fairly intense pitch, I would suppose.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  It is.

• 10:37Adam Buxton?

  Especially emergency medicine.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I actually initially went and trained as a surgeon after medical school, so I was doing surgical training, and actually the reason I switched to emergency medicine was because surgery's a little bit. Uh not to be too flippant, a bit like being a car mechanic or a or plumber or something. You essentially, your aim is to do the same thing um every time. So it's like quite procedural being in the operating theatre. And I kind of wanted that bit more liveliness where you're kind of constantly trying to diagnose someone. You you're constantly being a bit of a detective and trying to work out what's going on with someone and what you need to do about it. And that's what you get more in emergency medicine. You're kind of constantly making those.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  You don't even realise you're making those choices, but you're making choices about, well, what do I think's going on with this person and therefore what should I do next? And then how do they respond to what I've done? And then.

• 11:29Adam Buxton?

  More kind of detective work.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not just in terms of the procedure. You don't just kind of go, oh, I think this person's having a heart attack, so I'm going to give them these drugs. A lot of it is very social and that's another thing with surgery is you're not, your patient's asleep on the table half the time. Whereas in the emergency department, you talk to someone and they might come there saying, I've got a headache. But actually underneath, the problem is something else. It's not that they've got a physical problem. It might be a mental problem. It might be a psychological problem. It might be a social problem and you have to kind of have all of that in your mind and and you know, there's huge parallels between that actually and humanitarian work. In that you, the same thing really is you kind of see what you can do at that time. And you can't address the root causes necessarily. That's not your job and that's not your role and

• 12:17Speaker 02

  it can be quite frustrating, but you have to just kind of go, well, I can do something right now about this.

• 12:21Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  And that's, in some ways, you have the luxury of saying, well, my job is to do something right now and not have to think about the the picture, which is in some ways, yeah, quite a privilege, I guess.

• 12:31Adam Buxton?

  Yes. I wanted to ask you about being in Yemen. So twenty fifteen you were there, is that right?

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, and then I was there again actually in twenty sixteen. Yeah, I went, I went to the north and I went to the south.

• 12:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:43Adam Buxton?

  And so that's an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  It is. It's slightly changed. It evolves. I mean, even between twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, I was in. Two different places. So when I was in the north, it was really a situation where the, at the time, a sort of Saudi-led coalition was sort of bombing all over the place.

• 13:02Adam Buxton?

  Attacking the Houthis.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were attacking the Houthis who'd kind of started a rebellion and were controlling most of the northern and central territory.

• 13:10Adam Buxton?

  Because they didn't like the president at that point.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a president in Sanaa, the capital, and the Houthis had driven the president out. And then the president had fled to Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis had started then attacking the Houthis on his behalf. But there's a whole lot of geopolitics going on behind that.

• 13:29Adam Buxton?

  Houthis are also backed by Iran.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  The Houthis are backed by Iran and some others. And the president that was outgoing was backed by Saudi and some others. And there's a lot of sort of other issues going on in the region. I think it is important to understand, you don't need to understand the big geopolitical situation. I think it's almost better to go in with and talk to people, you know, and talk to people around you and try and understand a bit what's going on. And of course, bearing in mind that no one's objective, right? I mean, they're living in that situation. But you try and piece up a little picture of who is who, what's going on, who actually really controls the power here.

• 14:07Adam Buxton?

  And how do you find that out, though? Have you got a team at MSF who say, okay, you're going out next week, here's what you need to know about how things work out there. You're going to be in an area that's controlled by Houthis. Here's how to deal with them.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, to the, to, to a big extent, yes. Particularly in places, there's some places like Yemen, we've been working for a very long time, you know, Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, we've been there for decades. MSF is only fifty years old and, and we sort of almost started in Nigeria and we've kind of almost been there ever since in different ways. So there's always people who will brief you, and it was part of my job at one point of time to brief people. I was head of emergencies. So I would be explaining to people who were going out there, what was going on, what we were doing out there, who some of our contacts were, you know, it wasn't just a here's your job description, go out. And you try and get people to, to have an understanding of what's going on. Also, because

• 15:05Speaker 02

  essentially, often we're working in very dangerous places and you don't want to send people, it's almost a duty of care to not send someone somewhere if they don't feel informed of what risks they're taking when they go out there. It can be a little bit more complicated when you're maybe the first person going somewhere, and particularly where it's somewhere we haven't worked before. So I was one of the sort of early groups of people going into northern Syria and MSF hadn't been working in Syria before. And I I ended up being the sort of one of two people going into an area where we'd never been before.

• 15:37Adam Buxton?

  When was that?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  That was two thousand and twelve, so actually very, very early on in my MSF career.

• 15:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  I didn't, we didn't have any contacts on the ground. We had a few kind of names maybe, but otherwise we didn't really know what was going on there. And then you have to be a bit more cautious and take your time.

• 15:55Adam Buxton?

  Can you remember, like, I'm interested to know how do you fly, where do you go to, who transports you, where do you stay, what do you eat, like, what's the routine like?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  We didn't have permission from the Syrian government to enter the territory of Syria. So what we were doing was flying into Turkey and then flying down, so changing planes in Istanbul and flying down to the border, a town near the border with Syria. And then we had two different ways of getting in. So the first time I crossed, um, it was kind of unofficial border crossing into northern Syria. You know, that part of Syria was no longer, the territory had been taken by the rebels, what they called the Free Syrian Army at the time. And there was just a gate in a field. So you used to go at like, you didn't go during the day, hardly visible. You just kind of took a little local taxi down to the gate in the field with a rucksack and then you kind of crossed through this gate

• 16:48Speaker 02

  into Syria and then, you know, walked a little bit through a field and then got picked up by another car on the other side and then driven to at that point that we'd just started operating like a little mini hospital in a house, actually. So it was unmarked and we had the the operating theatre in the dining room and we had the emergency department sort of on the patio outside and it was all very rough and ready and it just started. I didn't spend that long there. I then got asked to go and open a new project somewhere else in Syria, nearer Aleppo, the city, the other side of Aleppo. So I crossed back out through this gate into Turkey. And yeah, drove along, got a taxi to drive us along the border.

• 17:28Adam Buxton?

  Just a regular taxi?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Just a regu-, yeah, a regular taxi company, basically. I mean, we had people in Turkey facilitating some of that, but we weren't. Because we weren't working in Turkey, you know, we were just had a sort of support team in Turkey. Yeah, drove along in this sort of regular car to the next border crossing, which actually had been in until the week before, I think, or two weeks before I crossed, had been an official governmental border crossing. So that was more of your kind of classic, you know, border crossing from the movies into a war zone, I guess.

• 17:58Adam Buxton?

  Guys with machine guns slung across.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, except it only recently been taken by the rebels. So everything there was all left behind by the government of Syria. They'd put up a sort of quick sign that said, welcome to free Syria. I've still got it somewhere. In in English, there's some spelling mistakes and stuff. It was quite quite fun, sort of over on top of the welcome to the Syrian Arab Republic. There was a sort of new sign. But otherwise, they looked at my passport. I mean, the rebels actually didn't really speak any English and I didn't speak Arabic and we didn't have a translator with us there, so couldn't really ask me too many questions, sort of showed them, you know, a few, had a letter in in Arabic explaining what I was doing there.

• 18:39Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Showed them that. And they stamped my passport with the official Syrian governmental stamp, so.

• 18:44Adam Buxton?

  That they were still using.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  That they were still using. And then you have to walk, and there was a, then next to it was a duty free shop, which was no longer functioning. So I thought, oh, that's interesting. And then you walk another few hundred metres to the other side and we had a contact of a person who knew we were coming and he came and picked us up and we sort of started from there really and and worked our way along.

• 19:06Adam Buxton?

  And then where do you stay? Where were you based?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  So that time we were based, um, a little village near the border initially, where we were looking at opening a hospital. And so they gave us sort of the Free Syrian Army and the people, the civil society, I guess, so the sort of local local groups, local community groups who started running their own. Services to some extent had welcomed us with open arms and said you can open a hospital in this kind of this area where there's some, I don't know what it was before it was a hospital, but there were some buildings, they said you can use those to convert into a hospital and.

• 19:39Adam Buxton?

  So yeah, you've got a little gang of fixers and allies.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:43Adam Buxton?

  And they say, okay, look, I, I think I know I can find a place for you guys to stay. And so they're sorting out all those logistics.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, they help you basically, and they've become part of your team.

• 19:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  And at the beginning, you start working with that small team. And then as time goes on, you develop what's your action plan, what are we trying to do? And then you recruit the people either locally or you bring more international staff in and you build up your team and then you, with your team, you have to build up your processes and things become a little bit more institutional, I guess. But those first early days in a new place, particularly where you don't know anybody, they're probably quite dangerous, but they're also some of the most fun, I think, because.

• 20:18Adam Buxton?

  Getting to know the personalities and.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:20Adam Buxton?

  And are they people, are they the equivalents of people like you? Are they doing it for the same sorts of reasons?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  It's difficult to know motivations and I always think it's a bit difficult to judge motivations. And actually, we have to be quite careful in the humanitarian sector to not assume that people are coming to work for us because they want to do good for the world. I mean, that's a nice ideal, right? Everyone wants to work as a humanitarian because they really committed to the ideals of humanitarianism. But we have to recognise that we've seen, you know, anywhere where you have access to vulnerable populations, people's motivations might be something very different. So we have to always keep an eye on that, you know, the people with nefarious intent. You know, we've, we've seen it in the Church of England, you see it in youth groups and you could see it just as easily anywhere we work as well.

• 21:07Adam Buxton?

  People who take advantage, basically.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  People take advantage. And then, to be honest, the majority of people locally that we work with, particularly in the most extreme settings, they're doing it initially because it's a job. You know, they might, over time, start to ascribe to the principles of humanitarianism. And, and a lot of people who started MSF as a job locally, you know, twenty, thirty years ago and now in very senior positions in MSF, but. They might just be doing it to earn some money, you know, I think our driver at the beginning, he just wanted some cash and there's no jobs in a war zone, so. You know, there's it's different motivations for working together.

• 21:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And then how do you handle interacting with? People who are directly involved with some of the conflicts that you're dealing with the results of, like if you're, you know, the obvious. Example now is Hamas in Gaza, but also the Houthis in Yemen and whoever it might be. And you're having to interact with these people who are in control of those territories.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 22:07Adam Buxton?

  And yet you're aware that they are to varying degrees responsible for the crisis.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  I mean, you do have to interact with people because first and foremost, you have to negotiate your own. Safety and your own security and your own access. And so you can't do that without engaging with with people and that might be. You know, the my my arm groups in the in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo or that might be the local council. And it's important to engage in all levels, the same way we also have to engage with the government. I mean, even in Syria, we we tried to engage with the government. Of Syria, they didn't want to talk to us, but but most times we will sort of say, we want to talk to you. And it's not a judgment, it's not a judgment of we support your ambitions, you know, we're apolitical.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  In some ways, but we have to be political with a small P because we have to understand what's going on around us. So we engage with people.

• 23:02Adam Buxton?

  But you're not pursuing a a larger political.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  No, we're not, we're apolitical and that we don't have a political agenda, but we have to engage in politics.

• 23:10Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Because otherwise we wouldn't be there. So it's one of those things where it's difficult to teach people how to do that.

• 23:17Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Somehow, I mean, I I don't know if I was ever really taught, I accompanied other people who are more used to doing that over and over time. Got a bit of a sense of how to talk to somebody when you're, you know, when they're really quite scary and and you're going to a meeting somewhere and you're thinking, God, this is a really scary character. But you do have to talk to them and the way you talk to them is really about sort of explaining what you're doing there. And rather than kind of saying, and this is good for you, because you assume they're not stupid. You assume they can see the interests in you being there.

• 23:49Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  And if they clearly state that they have no interest in you being there, then you have to think again about whether you are there or not. But what you can't really do is say, well, I'm refusing to speak to that one because I don't support his, you know, his political project because. It's not about supporting or or not supporting this political project, it's about you negotiating your own presence on the ground and and the fact that you want to assist people. And that can be some of the most complicated conversations is when you're meeting somebody and telling them that you want to assist a population. That they're actively attacking and those can be some of the most complex conversations you have because, you know.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Right now it's extremely difficult to engage with the Israeli authorities because they don't particularly want us assisting. Palestinians in Gaza. At the same time, they can't say that, you know. They can't say, oh, we don't want you to go and assist Palestinians in Gaza.

• 24:46Adam Buxton?

  Well, the narrative from a lot of pro Israelis is that you're actively assisting Hamas. And that you are enabling them to stockpile aid, et cetera, and that's the reason that.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we're confident that we're not.

• 24:58Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  And so we can say quite clearly because we're on the ground, we are not assisting Hamas, we're assisting, you know. The population of Gaza and the Palestinians in Gaza and you can't equate every Palestinian in Gaza with Hamas and that. That would be extremely problematic for many reasons and that essentially is genocidal language, so. If we're going, when we do have to negotiate with the authorities in Israel, we have to work from the basis of they can't say you're not allowed to assist Palestinians in Gaza because they're all Hamas. And we have to make it clear why we are confident that we're not assisting Hamas and come to that shared agreement of there are people in Gaza who need assistance. But if fundamentally the actor is not acting in good faith, then you you you don't have trust in that conversation necessarily.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  And that can be more or less complex, depending almost on the level, there's international politics, there's local politics, it can be a bit more complicated. You know, if you're working in a village in in Yemen and you're trying to explain, okay, well, actually, we're going to go and help this group of people that are kind of pretty much outcasts. And people go, but they're outcasts. I don't want you helping them. I want you helping me. You have to really convince why you're prioritizing that group of people and not helping, you know, the group of people that he might want you to help.

• 26:17Adam Buxton?

  Right, so you're just trying to assess it on the basis of who needs care most urgently?

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty much. You you know, you have to sort of prioritize and that's where I think the parallels are with working in an emergency department. You know, you you're constantly triaging and and it's triaging on the basis of need, it's also.

• 26:36Adam Buxton?

  What is, what is the definition of triage?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Triage is like a concept, it's a, it's actually a concept from war zones. I think it came from from war zones originally, but we use it all the time in A and E in Britain. So I I was really familiar with it before I joined MSF.

• 26:49Adam Buxton?

  Um. Is it a French word?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  It is. I think it is a French word, probably. We use a lot of French words in a, in a weird way. Um. There's another one, témoignage, which MSF loves, which essentially means to bear witness. But it turns out that even in French, it's not the right word, really, but we use it anyway. But yeah, triage is is that, you know, the way it's applied in British emergency departments is that nurse, the, you know, you go into reception and you say, this is my problem. And then you'll see a nurse and the nurse will categorise you. And we'll sort of say, well, your top priority and your lowest priority. The way it's applied in MSF is a little bit different because, you know, if you're looking at a situation, you can't say, well, we're going to do everything here. So you have to kind of go, well, let's try and get a sort of understanding of where the priorities lie.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Match that up with what we can provide because we can't always meet different needs. So we can do this. This is what they need. How can we match those up? And that can be really difficult if, for example, you've opened a hospital, it's a maternity hospital. And then somebody comes in with a gunshot wound and you say, well, we just don't have the capacity to deal with you. So. It's an ongoing process and it's again, a little bit, I guess at times can be traumatising, but you just have to kind of. Live with your choices and be ready to kind of review your choices. You you make choices and then you have to go, well, actually, was I right?

• 28:08Adam Buxton?

  Sure. I mean, this is, I guess mistakes must be made all the time. And and your enemies will kind of focus on what they see as your worst mistakes and hold those up as typical of.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 28:20Adam Buxton?

  Your shortcomings.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  And if you have an individual case where, you know. What can be really problematic for your safety and your team's safety is if. If somebody comes in with links to the group that's controlling the territory, either, you know. A combatant from the group or more likely just a family member or something. You know, you might have a a woman who arrives too late in in childbirth. And then the woman dies or the baby dies. That can be really, really problematic for for your own security and your own presence on the ground. Whether or not you could have done anything about it, because they will hold you responsible for that, because that person died.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  In your hospital and that's something that you, yeah, it's, you just have to assume that that can happen at any time. You can't mitigate for everything. You can't negotiate everything in advance.

• 29:11Adam Buxton?

  Are you able to talk about the conversation at MSF leading up to. MSF calling the situation in Gaza a genocide?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Um, I can actually, yeah. I mean. It was a long conversation. I think there are some people in MSF. It was a difficult conversation because we're a big organisation these days, you know, we have something like twenty seven or more, actually thirty odd offices around the world. We have sixty thousand staff who come from huge number of nationalities, different backgrounds. We have a huge range of political opinions and thoughts. We have, you know, a lot of people who are Palestinian as staff. We have a lot of Jewish colleagues and they've been very emotional discussions. I think everyone's been having those same kind of emotional

• 30:00Speaker 02

  charged discussions about what is going on in Gaza and how do we put aside our own kind of feelings and look at the situation at hand. And I, you know, particularly about calling it a genocide is a big thing, you know, it's you know, arguably maybe not our role as a humanitarian organisation to call out a genocide. We've done it a few times. We did it in Rwanda. But we don't do it very often because we're not really in some ways the experts to judge. And that's why some of our colleagues felt we were too slow because some of our colleagues believed it's been a genocide for, you know, since nineteen forty seven and and people were bringing in other elements into the conversation that that ended up being debated, you know, that weren't kind of objective elements.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  The reason we decided to call it a genocide was really based on our objective evidence, the fact that we have been working on the ground in Palestine since, you know, a very, very long time now for decades. We have about a thousand Palestinian staff in Gaza. We have forty international staff in Gaza and, you know, we were witnessing daily things happening and actually our staff were experiencing things happening that we just said in the end that you can't say it's not a genocide essentially. Rather than taking that approach that maybe the UK government is taking of, well, we don't have enough evidence to say it is a genocide. It's like, well, you don't have enough evidence to say it's not a genocide.

• 31:22Adam Buxton?

  I mean, the the the idea is that it's notoriously hard to prove genocide because it's all about the intent to eradicate a certain group

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 31:31Adam Buxton?

  of people and that's so hard to to prove. Did you, did you ever read that book East West Street?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I haven't read that one.

• 31:38Adam Buxton?

  Do you know, it's Philippe Sands, who's a humanitarian lawyer. And it's all about how those terms were developed by a couple of men after the Second World War. And how they were used in the trials at Nuremberg.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:55Adam Buxton?

  And the kind of relative merits of the idea of genocide versus crimes against humanity. And the potential problem that genocide has of creating kind of hierarchy of suffering.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 32:10Adam Buxton?

  That ignores the horror of crimes against individuals or crimes that, you know, are not necessarily perpetrated against groups of people.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 32:21Adam Buxton?

  So it ends up being this kind of political tool.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Genocide is one of those words, like famine. Famine's another one.

• 32:28Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  And actually, one of, part of our thinking about it and part of my thinking about it was in conversation with people like, there's a scholar called Alex de Vau.

• 32:35Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Who writes a lot about famine, actually. And we invited him to come and speak at one of our conferences and, and he explained, he cut down to some of the simplistic concepts of kind of saying, well, technically to prove a famine, you need to have the data that proves mortality, farm malnutrition. So it's not just, oh, we're seeing a lot of starving people. Look at this picture of starving people, you know. But you need to have all this scientific proof and it can take, in some of the places where famine is happening, you'll never get that evidence, essentially. And he was, he started saying, and probably the same thing with genocide. It's a debated term. It's a contested term, you know. How do you prove intent? And is it, kind of, he was sort of, actually challenged us back. Is it your job to prove that intent?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Or is it your job to go back to some of the basics? He did challenge as well a little bit on what's the point of calling it a genocide? And I think that was one of the conversations as well that was quite difficult to have of, what would be the point of MSF calling this a genocide?

• 33:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because then you sort of step into a political arena. There's nothing, there's no way that you can pretend that you haven't done that. Because you are implying that there is intent on behalf of the Israelis to eradicate a.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  And speaking from the perspective of MSF UK.

• 33:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  You can express your moral outrage in many different ways. You don't have to call it a genocide to express your moral outrage about the fact that 12 of our colleagues have been killed now and, you know, every single one of our colleagues has been forcibly displaced. And, you know, all the horrible things that, that even our own colleagues are experiencing, never mind the rest of the Palestinians. And there are plenty of ways expressing moral outrage. Speaking on behalf of MSF UK, one of the the reasons we really supported calling it a genocide was because there is international law around this. There is that international commitment and that's been signed up to by the UK government along with others to act to prevent genocide. And what we can see from the UK is they are kind of

• 34:35Speaker 02

  they're now focusing more on that. Well, there's not enough evidence to prove intent, so therefore we can't judge it a genocide and we'll have to wait for the legalistic definition to be proven, which might take two, three, four years. In which case, you know, it's too late to for them to meet their commitments to prevent it. So we are entering a political arena with that. But it's a political arena because we think, well, actually there's nothing else we can do here. You know, we still have teams on the ground, but their capacity to actually have any form of impact on this is so limited, so.

• 35:08Adam Buxton?

  So it becomes a case of when you're thinking about triage and when you're thinking about what the most urgent course of action is, it is inevitably political to some degree.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Yes, that's where we got to, was the only way this needs to stop. That was our conclusion. This needs to stop now. And we've tried to pull all the other levers we've got to try and make this stop, and it's not stopping. So where are the levers where we haven't pulled yet and the lever we hadn't pulled yet was was political. It doesn't mean it will work necessarily. But it really was, you know, on behalf of our Palestinian colleagues, we are going to pull that big lever that we don't do very often, but we we did feel it was it was that time.

• 35:45Adam Buxton?

  And I know a lot of people were happy that you did as well as there being people who were who are going to be

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:52Adam Buxton?

  critical of you. And I suppose some of the things those people would say is that you're then compromised going forward and you will you'll never really be able to claim that you are an apolitical organisation going forward. Do you worry about that?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  I don't worry but too much about that. I've heard it from people. I also think we have been supported in our stance by so many people, not just, it's not about whether you're left wing or right wing on this one. You know, when we did come out and sort of state it very clearly, not just that it's a genocide, but in the UK, we said, we think the UK government is complicit. We were a bit worried about that. We weren't worried about the risks. We were worried about how the general public would perceive that and whether people would feel somehow that we were letting them down. We got a few complaints. We got a few people who said, well, yeah, we think you're entering a political arena that shouldn't be your arena to enter. We got a lot more support and conveniently, well, or, you know, I'm not sure if it was convenient, but it's.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  It coincided with Alistair Campbell and the rest is politics, you know, kind of. Essentially saying the same thing, having that conversation on this, you know, huge podcast, the massive audience. Sort of saying, well, actually, looking at their argumentation, I I agree with it really, and it doesn't mean we should all believe what Alistair Campbell says either. But it just helped people to think through the steps of how we got there. And so we had some people saying, um, I don't fully support it, but I understand why you've said it. We had a few people said, actually, before you said it, I didn't think it was a genocide, but now, when you put it like that. Yeah, I do. And it was really interesting to see those coming from even friends of mine who aren't.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Political or who are not necessarily sort of left wing or whatever, or activists at all, kind of saying, well, actually. I think it was right, you know, and I think what we've seen overwhelmingly is support for us doing that. Doesn't mean that we won't make some people unhappy, but I think we've had seen more support. From people who said, well, actually, thank you for doing that, because somebody has to start saying it now, and it needs to not be seen as a controversial, extreme opinion. So. You can't please everybody all of the time, but I think we, on, looking back, I think we. At the moment, I think we've made the right choice and I think, you know, we stick by that.

• 38:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that is how I felt.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I I'm, I do wonder whether. Whether some of my colleagues are right, that actually we were a bit late, a bit slow. I mean, we've been writing to the UK government for a long time without calling it a genocide, calling out. Things like, you know, breaches of international humanitarian law and asking the government to explain to us. Exactly how they were involved in this and what support they were providing to this and. It didn't get much attention, it didn't get much traction and almost like, was we had to use that big word to get attention and traction? We still haven't. Managed to have that engagement from the government, but it it seems to be kind of. We needed to use that big word to kind of get the traction, I guess.

• 38:51Adam Buxton?

  There's a really good episode of a podcast I like Ezra Klein.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 38:56Adam Buxton?

  New York Times journalist. And he talks to the guy that wrote that book I mentioned.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:01Adam Buxton?

  Philip Sands. And it's, I would really recommend it to anyone. Who's, um, you know, thinking about all this stuff and, and. The idea of genocide and the really complicated history of it and the way that it is. Being used now and all the. Head scrambling factors that are at play, especially around Gaza and Israel.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  It was a conversation I had the other day with, we have legal advisors, obviously, and, and. Even this kind of concept of international humanitarian law and what does that mean? It's so ambiguous in some ways, technically. The basic principles that contain within there are completely valid. But there's always a way of debating the ambiguities around it. And in some ways, you know, I, I know an academic called Neve Gordon, he teaches. Nearby and he was sort of saying, well. In some ways, international humanitarian law can be weaponized to kind of excuse why you did something. You're not allowed to bomb a hospital. Except if you believe the hospital is being used for military purposes, but the burden of proof for that. Falls currently in Gaza on.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  The people working in the hospital and the people, you know, and the patients and the Palestinians and the people trying to assist the Palestinians. The burden of proof is not falling on. Israel to prove that they had a strong belief that the hospital was being used for military purposes. And they had evidence of that. They don't have to, currently today, they don't seem to have to have any evidence of that and. You know, looking back through history. Hospitals have been bombed. We had our hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan was bombed and we had. Uh, when I worked in Yemen, a lot of the hospitals were being bombed and you can kind of see. That the way international humanitarian law is being interpreted in a very technical way. It gives that space to warring parties to say, well, I, I, I assumed it was being used for military purposes, so I bombed it.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  And they don't have to then provide any form of evidence of that.

• 40:58Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  And that's where we need to have those bigger conversations about how do we get back to the basic principles of. What this looks like, you know, how society can kind of work together in, in a global sort of sense.

• 41:10Adam Buxton?

  Within MSF then, are you able to have these kinds of conversations and disagreements? With your colleagues in a way that doesn't just explode, are people able to keep it together in a way that I, to me, it doesn't seem they are on social media, for example?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Um, I, I think, I mean, we're used to having debates about topics. It's, we have this culture of debate in MSF and I worked in the, you know, in the Paris office for, for six years. And even though MSF is an international humanitarian organisation, it started in France, right? So you have this kind of almost French culture of debate and discussion and putting things on the table and being able to disagree with each other and then being able to go to the bar afterwards and, you know.

• 41:53Adam Buxton?

  Have a go was.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Have a go was, exactly. And it hasn't changed that much in France. So, yeah, pretty much that. I don't, but they do. Um, but yeah, that kind of having those big conversations and challenging each other. And I, when I first moved to Paris, I found it a bit intimidating at first, you know. But what you realise is you have this debate, you have this discussion, you go round and round and round in circles. By having that, then you get the kind of buy-in, I guess, from everybody. I do feel though that Gaza has been something exceptional, even in the way we talk about it, in the way that people really struggled to engage in that debate with some modicum of respect for the other person's opinion. And that's including within MSF. And we've had some really,

• 42:37Speaker 02

  it's not just about people getting upset and emotional. We've had, you know, really some people gone beyond the limit of accusing each other of complicity and whatever. And if you don't use the right words, you're somehow complicit. Or if you don't believe it's a genocide, somehow you're, you're responsible. And, and I think that's, if even in MSF with our culture of debate, we're, we're there, then, then I think, you know, it must be so much worse maybe in, in other organisations. And, and we've had to, in my role, I've had to kind of try and take a bit of time away with the people who feel really, you know, disillusioned by all of this. And I think we will lose people through, through this debate. And we will lose people who feel that they weren't respected and listened to.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  And it's kind of sad that we didn't manage when we really had to to control to control that debate with within the.

• 43:28Adam Buxton?

  Right, when you're when ultimately you're presumably focused on the same thing, which is trying to help people.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  But that's what, you know, that's what I feel is that at times you start losing that good faith that everybody's engaging in it because they want because they recognize the dilemma and they want to, you know, they want us to take the right choices. But at times it can feel that people are engaging in bad faith. They're not engaging because that's their objective, they're engaging for another reason. And I think that's where we need to kind of rebuild a sort of trust that everybody's voice can be heard, but not everybody can be in charge of making the decisions. And like anything else, in some ways, we have to trust each other to listen to each other and then take actions in good faith. And I think it's going to be a bit problematic to rebuild some of the relationships after Gaza.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  I I hope we can. I think most people recognized it was just such a really complex discussion to have. But I think, you know, there there's a risk that some people might um might feel still feel disillusioned and and kind of feel they don't want to be part of of MSF anymore. And and that's a real shame.

• 44:35Adam Buxton?

  And presumably you didn't have similar conversations around aid in Sudan.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  No, and that's what's also quite sad and a lot of.

• 44:44Adam Buxton?

  Because that's a a I mean, a crisis that.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  It's awful.

• 44:46Adam Buxton?

  In numbers terms, sort of dwarfs everything else.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's only you can't think of equivalence and and, you know.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Gaza is tiny and it's a really small area of land with the, you know, a couple of million people. And Sudan is huge with millions and millions and millions of people. But what's happening in Sudan is a travesty and and what's happening in Sudan is not getting enough attention. And that becomes part of the debate as well internally, but it also becomes part of the challenge is how do you get the same level of attention on Sudan as you do on something like Gaza or Ukraine.

• 45:19Adam Buxton?

  And what is the situation in Sudan currently?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  So in Sudan, essentially, I mean, it's described as a sort of. A civil war, but again, there's massive amount of geopolitics going on. So you have a group called the RSF, who in the old days would be called the Janjaweed, who control parts of Darfur. And then you have the Sudanese Armed Forces, so the government of Sudan, which was extremely unstable anyway, um, running up to all of this, who are essentially fighting with the RSF, and that's the sort of simplistic picture. In reality, what we see today is there are parts of Darfur where there is famine. Famine has been declared, where humanitarian actors can't access safely, where there are massacres of the population happening, huge levels of violence.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Some of that violence is ethnic violence, so there are groups of the population who are being massacred because of their ethnicity. And tens of millions of people are living in extreme crisis. And those warring parties are being supported by big states around the world from one side or the other. And what is kind of a travesty with Sudan is that so people know, oh, there's a problem in Sudan, but they don't really understand the scale of the problem. And again, they're not really engaging with, well, how can we support Sudan, you know? And it was a debate and discussion that we wanted to have more publicly, but people just weren't interested in engaging in that debate publicly. People were going, oh, it's bad over there in Sudan.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  There is something different about somewhere in Africa where people are these, these people over there in Africa, not really thinking that Sudan is, has a highly intelligent cohort, the population has huge academic institutions. It's not some kind of people's vision of what Africa is. And I do wonder whether sometimes, yeah, exactly. People's vision of Ethiopia in the eighties and even that wasn't quite the real vision anyway, but um, I think that's part of the problem is people do, and it's normal, people do struggle a little bit sometimes to empathize with.

• 47:22Adam Buxton?

  With something so foreign with, with a culture they can't relate to, et cetera.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  And also the media, I mean, you know, it is more difficult for the, and I, I'm not blaming the media here, but it's difficult for the media to get into those parts of Sudan. In the same way, it's difficult for us to get into those parts of Sudan.

• 47:45Adam Buxton?

  Hey, it's me again on The Walk with Rosie, just reminding you that if you are able to make a donation to MSF to help support them in the work they're doing in Sudan, in Gaza, in so many other areas of conflict around the world, there is a link in the description of today's podcast. Thank you, I appreciate it. Right now, back to my conversation with Natalie.

• 48:13Adam Buxton?

  What are the times that you remember as being some of the hardest and some of the most rewarding? Like, what were the days that were hardest for you?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that the toughest ones were probably the places with the sort of the most extreme levels of violence. So, you know, I talked about Syria and the north of Yemen and somewhere like Central African Republic, where I worked in 2014, I think it was, yeah, when it was in the midst of like an extremely violent civil war. And you're working, you know, you're despondent because you're working alongside local colleagues who are experiencing this. It's not just that they're, you know, like me, I can get in and I can usually get out. It's not always so simple as that, but I'm there because I've chosen to be there and they haven't chosen to be there. And so, you know, like in Syria, when we were going to support Aleppo, we were living in a sort of house that didn't

• 49:06Speaker 02

  have electricity and didn't have running water. We didn't have any mobile phone networks and we were under the sort of missiles. And we were sort of essentially sheltering in a kitchen because that didn't at least have windows. And you're there with your Syrian colleagues who are sort of sheltering with you, kind of, and they don't know what's going on. And they have things like, you know, maybe one of their family members has been arrested and detained, or maybe someone's been killed. And you're sort of there going, what are we doing here? I mean, what are we trying to achieve by doing this? And it can, it just makes you feel a bit helpless and a bit hopeless. And you think, oh, you know, the worst thing that could happen here is that I get killed. And then probably MSF would think again about whether we can safely work here. And then any form of assistance

• 49:51Speaker 02

  we're trying to provide would be pointless. It's almost a bit futile to put yourself in that, in that situation.

• 49:57Adam Buxton?

  What keeps you going then in those moments when you're having those feelings?

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Because they're sometimes the most funny, ridiculous moments as well. So again, thinking about that kitchen in Syria, we had quite... It becomes just so kind of crazy, little things become hilarious. So you become a bit hysterical, you become a bit like, whatever. You know, there's that kind of mash, kind of comedy that goes on, which is, you know, all a bit sort of tongue in cheek and a bit cynical and whatever, but it. It kind of keeps you going somehow. You're sort of there crouching in this kitchen and you're going, this is stupid. Why, why is the kitchen safer than the, than any other room or. In Yemen, when planes would fly around in the sky, the staff in the hospital that was working at, they weren't MSF staff, they were local staff. For the, well, the Ministry of Health that wasn't functioning anymore.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  And they would, every time they saw a plane, they would run out into the, into the grounds of the hospital. And there was a waste pit that we dug there, where they put all the kind of hospital waste. Old dressings and things like that. And it was covered by a mattress. So, you know, we did fix it. But when we first arrived there, it was just a pit in the ground covered by an old mattress. And they would run out and jump into this pit and put the mattress over their heads. And I would, it was somehow like comic, it was just ridiculous. And afterwards, we'd have to have that kind of frank conversation about, well. You know, the hospital has a staircase and there's therefore sort of three levels of concrete above you and, and the stairs and everything. So isn't that a bit safer? Than sheltering under a mattress.

• 51:22Adam Buxton?

  In the medical waste pit.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. But it becomes a bit comedic or, you know, in the kitchen in Syria, we'd start, we'd. Light up a shisha and, and then sort of sitting around going, well, if we're gonna die, we may as well, you know, be smoking a shisha and doing all the things that I. Wouldn't normally do, but you just think, well, it may as well. So that kind of bonds you build with those people in the most, in the most difficult circumstances kind of keep you going, I guess.

• 51:45Adam Buxton?

  And what else do you do? Like, do you get a day off in those circumstances? And then what do you do with a day off?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  You try to. I mean, it's, those are the most extreme ones. And a lot of places we work are not that extreme. So I don't want to paint a picture of all doing that. Those are the. Kind of the worst and the best of times. A lot of times you actually. Running a humanitarian project is a bit like running any other kind of thing, activity, and particularly if you've become like the project manager. You have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of frustration and tiredness is just from kind of filling in forms and sending emails and responding to emails and all their usual stuff. And so you make people have days off and there's never a moment when you should say, oh, you can't have a day off, you need to keep working. I've had times it's happened to me where people have kind of gone, oh, you're getting a bit frazzled, you need a day off. What you can do on your day off is a bit, can sometimes be a bit limited, it depends

• 52:36Speaker 02

  where you are, you might be lucky and working in, you know, in Addis Ababa and you can go and eat in some restaurants and go and see some music, or you might be working in like the bush in Central African Republic like I was, where somebody said, you need a day off, here's my laptop, here's my hard drive, it was full of like all the classic movies and I sat there and watched, you know, The Godfather one, two and three, back to back, just because it was something to do really. But you do have to force people to take that time out and if you're staying long term in a place, we make sure that people leave and go somewhere else and go and, you know, go and sit on the beach somewhere or go and do something different.

• 53:13Adam Buxton?

  Go to the gym.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, go to the gym, not feel guilty about it, really.

• 53:16Adam Buxton?

  Right. And is it possible to engage with things that are totally removed from where you are, like to listen to stupid podcasts or whatever it might be?

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I always do, I mean, when I first joined MSF, you know, there wasn't streaming so much and I didn't have the internet, but my iPod was like my, my biggest thing and I would go and like download particularly music, I'm, I'm big into music and stuff like that. And the one rule I had when I joined MSF was, um, I used to work as a medic at Glastonbury Festival and when I joined MSF, I was still doing that and I worked as a medic on the stages actually.

• 53:51Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  So, yeah, it was amazing, I mean, I used to work in the medical tent and then over time got that slot of being the doctor for the pyramid stage and the other stage. And you would work like a couple of six hour shifts, which meant you got to watch the bands and then otherwise you were free to go to the festival. So when I joined MSF, they said, oh, sometimes people are a bit like, oh, they need Christmas off or they need certain times off and I was like, I need Glastonbury off.

• 54:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  And it became a bit legendary because, you know, I would be somewhere and they would go, oh yeah, so, and I was in what was called the emergency team, so you have to respond, you know, you, you sign a year long contract and they can send you wherever they want, but I had it sort of written almost into my contract that I would be. I would be coming out for Glastonbury and sometimes your places where it's quite difficult to get out. The second time I went to Yemen, we got there by boat from Djibouti, you know. And the boat only runs twice a week and I was like, no, I need to be on that boat because I need to get back and I need to go to Glastonbury.

• 54:44Adam Buxton?

  Emily Evers comes and picks you up in her chopper.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  It's weird because I actually haven't been to Glastonbury for years and years now. I go to Green Man instead, but um.

• 54:51Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  I'm older now, but yeah.

• 54:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, Green Man's nice. Also End of the Road. Have you been there?

• 54:56Speaker 02

  I have. Love End of the Road. Great.

• 54:58Adam Buxton?

  Who are some of the people that you remember seeing from the side of the stage at Glastonbury that you were thrilled to?

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Uh, I saw the Rolling Stones.

• 55:04Adam Buxton?

  Oh, right.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was pretty incredible. I think Arcade Fire was one.

• 55:08Adam Buxton?

  And did you have to administer emergency assistance for any of the Rolling Stones?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I mean, the stage medics, to be honest, I also used to work at Reading Festival and mainly your role for the stage medic. I mean, you have to be ready and it's covering those first few rows of the crowds.

• 55:23Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Particularly because while you've got sort of first aid tents and stuff back there, if you're trapped in those first few rows, you you can't get out. And what happens, the worst memory of being side of stage was Lana Del Rey. I mean, I quite like Lana Del Rey's music, but live, not such a huge fan. But it was quite a long time ago. She was on in the daytime. She wasn't headlining. It was quite hot. And a lot of teenage girls had been like waiting to see Lana Del Rey and they were all on the front rows. And I think they got the impression that if you come over the barrier, somehow you get lifted over the barrier, then somehow you get run off backstage.

• 56:01Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  And so we had all these teenage girls sort of fainting. And I'm not sure if they were really fainting because they were seeing Lana Del Rey or they were false fainting. It was a little bit unclear. But they were all kind of getting hauled over the barriers by the security guards. And then they get run to the side to get assessed, usually not, but it is a kind of a lot of nurses and first aiders. And there's only really one doctor, so I didn't have to assess them so much.

• 56:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  But they're, yeah, they're getting assessed and then they kind of, you know, they really want to stay there. They're really like, oh, no, no. And so they're kind of still kind of going, oh, no, can I, can I just go, I don't feel very well. Can I lie down backstage? And like, even if you go backstage at Glastonbury, you're not going to meet Lana Del Rey. She's in her like truck somewhere. She is not. But so most of what you end up doing is really if there's something, a crush at the front, or if someone actually comes over and is sick. So um, most of the time you're not doing very much at all. You're just watching the bands.

• 56:50Adam Buxton?

  Right, right.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's great. It was the best job.

• 56:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And then if someone is listening to this and they're thinking, I want to work for MSF.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 57:00Adam Buxton?

  What kind of attributes do you think they need to have? Do you, what do you screen for when you're uh talking to people who want to join?

• 57:08Speaker 02

  It's a really good question. I mean, first of all, we're not all doctors. I am a doctor, but that's actually relatively unusual in the job I'm doing now, which is more sort of, you know, executive management or whatever, but uh we're not all doctors. We do medical things, so we have a lot of doctors and nurses, but we also have all those other support people. So we do need people to be expert somehow, mostly, and experienced. We're not taking in the medical side, people out of medical schools. We're not taking people in their first few years of medical school. I worked for the NHS for sort of eight or nine years before I joined MSF, and I wonder now if I would have been recruited because they might have had someone with more experience than me.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  So there's the kind of technical side of things of, you know, demonstrating how you're going to be useful if you work for MSF. And then I think there's the, they sort of, the recruitment is quite interesting because it's not a sort of test, it's more a kind of discussion. And they start talking to you about, you know, what is your experience of working in difficult environments of living maybe in rough conditions, things like that. And they're, they're quietly judging you about how much do we think you're going to be able to cope if you actually go out there?

• 58:18Adam Buxton?

  Have you been to Glastonbury?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Well, I did use it.

• 58:21Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  I used Glastonbury in the medical tent, particularly the medical tent. The stage is a bit different, but the medical tent at Glastonbury, I mean, it is a bit like working in a war zone, you know, if you can work under a tent, I mean, the luxury of Glastonbury is you have a helicopter on standby, but you're still having to make those judgment calls in a field of people who are maybe taking a few things or drunk a few things. Glastonbury was weird. You'd have people who wanted to give birth at Glastonbury. It was one year I had three pregnant women in labour come to the medical tent and say, oh no, I want to have my baby here. And you're showing them this like dirty medical tent with people with, you know, gastroenteritis, you know, lying on the floor and then, no, I want to have my baby at Glastonbury because they feel it somehow spiritual and mystic and whatever.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  So I told that story and they were like, oh, if you can do that, you can probably survive South Sudan or somewhere.

• 59:11Adam Buxton?

  Fair enough. What kind of perception do you think people have of the work that you do? I mean, I suppose. People like to bandy around the word heroes when you're working in those kinds of situations. Is that how you see it?

• 59:25Speaker 02

  I really hate the concept of humanitarian heroes. I I really, I just kind of detest it. There's a whole thing about it, and I get why humanitarian organisations do it, to try and convince people to support their work. But I I really don't like it. For me, I went to go and work for a humanitarian organisation to go and see something a bit different and go somewhere a bit different. And there's a need for people to do that, but there's also a need for people to carry on staying, working in the NHS and doing the job I did before. And there's no better or no worse. I think sometimes it's almost a privilege to be able to go and do that, though, with the world being in such a, feels like it's such a giant burning mess right now, that I'm lucky enough to be able to think, oh, I'm I'm somehow directly helping people. I mean.

• 1:00:10Adam Buxton?

  You're on the frontline.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  I'm on the frontline or less directly helping people now, but still working for an organisation that is helping those people. And it can sometimes feel like for everybody else, oh, God, they're they're better than I am because they're doing that. And I think there are different ways for everybody to kind of express their solidarity with people living in crisis and to do something about the situation that's going on in the world. And of course, you know, my job is to say that people can always support MSF and that helps, you know? And we're very reliant on people, you know, particularly financially supporting us. That's not the only way they can act, I guess. And you can act by engaging in something really simple, like your local community or whatever. And, you know, the concept of humanitarianism doesn't need to be these kind of international aid workers.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Humanitarianism is essentially about humanity and and just kind of putting that principle of humanity first. And I think that's why I hate the whole humanitarian heroes kind of slogan, because I think it really demeans all those other people who are doing such amazing work elsewhere.

• 1:01:08Adam Buxton?

  I won't use it anymore then.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Please don't.

• 1:01:12Adam Buxton?

  No, I get it. I think that's a worthwhile thing to say.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  I'm very worthwhile. Very worthy.

• 1:01:17Adam Buxton?

  You're my hero.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Wait. This is an ad for Squarespace. Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace, but because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month, and I look forward to getting enraged by that, so I should hope. Em, em, em. Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace and the website

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right. The Union Jack top hat is a big seller, but they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing. Anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at Squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit Squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book. Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.

• 1:02:53Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:03:04Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcast. That was Natalie Roberts talking to me there, UK Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières. I'm very grateful to her for making the time to come and talk to me. Final reminder, please, don't forget, there's a link in the description if you are able to make a donation to MSF to support their work. Thanks also, if you came along to the Mannington Book Bash at beautiful Mannington Hall in North Norfolk. Last weekend, I was there waffling with the owner of my local independent bookshop in Norwich, The Book Hive.

• 1:03:47Adam Buxton?

  Henry, he was talking to me about I Love You Bye. And yeah, we had a good chat. I played Pizza Time on my guitar with a backing beat. I don't know, it was fine, but it was a bit like seeing one of your very young children doing a recital at a school performance. Anyway, it was nice to meet some of you afterwards and sign some books. And it was great to meet Nigel Plainer, actor, comedian, writer, and of course, star of The Young Ones. He played Neil the hippie. And I was interviewing him about his book that he's just written, a memoir called Young Once, in which he talks all about his career with particular focus on

• 1:04:31Adam Buxton?

  his time with the comic strip gang, Peter Richardson, Alexi Sale, Adrian Edmondson, Rick Mail, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders. Amazingly talented group of people, so many of whom featured in The Young Ones. Which was a really important show for me and a lot of people of my generation. We were just exactly the right age, I think. It came out in nineteen eighty-two, so I was thirteen.

• 1:05:02Adam Buxton?

  And I think I was initially a little bit scared by it. Or maybe just put off because my dad hated it so much.

• 1:05:10Adam Buxton?

  He thought it was uh...

• 1:05:13Adam Buxton?

  I don't know what he thought. He just thought it was frightening because it was anarchic. And they used to say before the show would go out, now time for anarchic comedy on BBC Two or wherever it was. I think it was BBC Two, with The Young Ones. And my dad would stand. Over in the corner of the room and go anarchic and then shuffle out. So much of that show is now ingrained in my consciousness on quite a deep level, at many lines. And at one point in my conversation with Nigel, we were talking about the fact that there was a certain amount of snootiness in the alternative comedy scene when it came to

• 1:05:57Adam Buxton?

  American performers and just the tone of American showbiz in general, the kind of glitzy, slightly insincere sheen of performers like, you know, the Rat Pack and Dean Martin and that kind of thing, which along with the kind of prevailing entertainment culture of blokes in suits telling mother-in-law jokes that there was in the UK, they were in opposition to, I suppose. Anyway, I said like, was it you that was in that sketch in The Young Ones, Nigel? Where it's these two cheesy entertainers and they're playing golf or something maybe? And they start singing this weird song.

• 1:06:39Adam Buxton?

  I'm tying my dog to the railroad track. Choo choo train's gonna break his back. They used to call him Spot, but now he's called Splat. It's a fairly dark song, sorry Rosie.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Doesn't sound very funny.

• 1:06:58Adam Buxton?

  It's a satire, Rosie.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Not funny.

• 1:07:01Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, but Nigel said, oh, I wrote that bit. And for a few seconds, we started singing it together. And afterwards, I was remembering that Charlie Brooker really liked that bit as well. I think when Charlie was on my podcast, I think we also sang that together. Anyway, it was a kind of surreal moment, but it was good fun. I really liked meeting Nigel and I recommend his book. If you're a comedy fan, definitely worth picking up.

• 1:07:27Adam Buxton?

  And then I was on Radio Two, talking to Sarah Cox, who's filling in for Scott Mills. She was asking me about the book and she played Doing It Wrong. So that's cool that Doing It Wrong's been on Radio Two. I guess we'll be playing Doing It Wrong, as well as many other great tracks and perhaps a couple of covers, maybe even a new number or two, on the 13th and 14th of October at the Norwich Arts Centre, where I'll be performing with the Adam Buxton Band, who are Joe Mount of Metronomy, my producer on the album, plus Gabriel Stebbing and Michael Lovett, former

• 1:08:09Adam Buxton?

  and current members, respectively, of Metronomy. I think the 13th is sold out, but there may, as I speak, still be a few tickets left for the 14th. Hope to see you there. But before that, there's the Wimbledon Literature Festival, I think there's still a few tickets left for that, me and Samira Ahmed on stage, talking about I Love You Bye and other bits and pieces, followed by signing. That's at the end of next week, as I speak, 10th of October, at 8pm, at the New Wimbledon Theatre. And if you can't make that, or even if you can, I'll try and keep it varied and dig out

• 1:08:50Adam Buxton?

  some other stuff for my appearance at the Royal Festival Hall, at the London Literary Festival, on the 26th of October, at 7.30. That'll be a show made up of two halves, in the first half, myself and a moderator, I'm not sure exactly who it'll be yet, but hopefully someone, a nice friend of the podcast, chatting to me about I Love You Bye and TV in the 90s, that kind of thing, more clips. And in the second half, I think I'm going to play a song or two with Michael from the Adam Buxton Band on stage, as well as taking questions from the audience and then signing books afterwards. So I hope you can make it along to one of those.

• 1:09:35Adam Buxton?

  Links in the description for tickets.

• 1:09:39Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it's quite hot now, isn't it, Doug?

• 1:09:45Adam Buxton?

  Okay, that's pretty much it for this episode. Thank you very much, once again, to Natalie Roberts and all at MSF. Thank you to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for additional conversation editing and general production support. Thanks to everyone who works very hard at Acast, liaising with my sponsors. Thanks particularly to Joe Copman, who is leaving Acast after being there over a decade, and Joe is one of the people who welcomed me to Acast originally, all the way back in 2015, and has been one of the people who's really looked after me since. Thank you so much, Joe. Wishing you all the best for whatever you do going forward.

• 1:10:30Adam Buxton?

  But thanks especially, of course, to you. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for listening to this episode, as well as all the other episodes, and listening right to the end. You are a special friend. I think we both know that you're a cut above the average listener. I appreciate all of them who dip in, but it's different, isn't it, to the hardcore who go right to the end and listen to this stuff. I appreciate it. Come here, let's have a creepy hug.

• 1:11:08Adam Buxton?

  Good to see you.

• 1:11:11Adam Buxton?

  You're the best. And until next time, we share the same aural space. Please go carefully. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye!