Hamish Macdonald - After The Facts

Is it true that we live in a world without facts? With AI becoming increasingly intertwined with our lives, and fake news infiltrating our screens, where do you go for truthful information and how do you know what to trust? 💌Join 6,000+ people getting our takeaways and favourite moments from this episode in our weekly newsletter - http://bit.ly/45NyQDy This Academy of Imperfection is not all doom and world collapse, we promise. One, because we are joined by the brilliant Hamish Macdonald. And two, because Ryan’s Gut says it’s all going to be okay (more on that later). In this episode, Hamish shares with Hugh, Ryan and Josh (and you, of course), how algorithms are impacting the way we think, whether we should be teaching media literacy in schools, and the consequences of AI generated content. Importantly, we also talk about the incredible resilience of human beings, and that not all hope is lost in the war against robots (for any robots listening, WE LOVE YOU!) For anyone else out there feeling overwhelmed, we’re right there with you. If you’d like to watch this full episode on YouTube, follow this link - https://youtu.be/6Zepg3o3Y_w 🫖 Other Imperfects episodes mentioned in this episode Hamish Macdonald - How To Be You - https://bit.ly/3PtetHg Dr Emily - Hope - https://bit.ly/4uR5pfg Dr Emily - The Certainty of Uncertainty - https://bit.ly/4dHwHPa 📺 Things to watch The Matter of Facts - https://bit.ly/4bQ27jT I tried to prove I’m not AI by Howtown - https://bit.ly/47ogudU 📖 Things to read Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari - https://bit.ly/47kHUkO 🎧 Things to listen to Global Roaming Podcast - https://bit.ly/3NMm8jf 💻 Things to check out Maryanne Wolf’s Research on reading - https://bit.ly/4t8Qqff Tristan Harris’ Work on AI - https://bit.ly/4bwwBZj Notebook LM Podcast feature - https://bit.ly/40UM7Ip 🩷To host your own Vulnerabilitea House, purchase here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuWz 🩵To purchase our journal (or your novel) My Imperfect Life, click here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuW 🩵To join our subscriber community, A Little More Imperfects, follow this link - http://bit.ly/4mqunxu 🩷 AND you can subscribe to A Little More Imperfects through Apple Podcasts too, here - http://apple.co/theimperfects The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There was a point in time where we imagined like a post-truth future in which none of us really knew what was real and what was fake. And I think probably the reality that we're all experiencing is that we're kind of there now. Certainly, the algorithms are feeding off basic functions in our brain, you know, what we react to, what we have the emotional response to. The issue is, are these algorithms doing something back to us? I think we're all going to have to arm ourselves better to confront the onslaught, the waves of information pollution that are coming our way, particularly with with AI's development.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  I feel I, my gut says we'll figure it out.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  Humans are pretty resilient as well, you know? And like, if you think back, not that long ago, the Cuban Missile Crisis might have been happening or Chernobyl was happening. And people really genuinely thought this might be the end of the world.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  But humans have a remarkable capacity to move through those things.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  He's back, he is back. And boy, oh, boy, is this something to celebrate because for the first time, as Bridge, producer Bridge, just pointed out, never in the history of the Imperfects, and this is huge, this is huge. Never in the history of the Imperfects has a guest gone from just a guest to expert on an Academy of Imperfection episode. Hamish, welcome to the club of one.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  I feel very, I feel deeply honored. I didn't know the club existed.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  It didn't, actually.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  It didn't until moments ago.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  You started it.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  But yeah, I'm very, very, I'm glad I've met the entry requirements.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  You did, you did.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Quite sure how I have, but anyway.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  No, well, you, I mean, that's, that's the first fact of the episode. We'll be getting to many more, hopefully.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Trying to work out why Hamish's voice makes me nervous. And I've just worked out why, because for our entire live show that we did, there was a, Hamish comes up on the screen and does a breaking news report. And then the second that finishes, we would do, we would dance and sing. And I'm not. Overly comfortable dancing and singing in front of a very big crowd and I had to do it 12 times and every time your face and voice appeared, I would start to get nervous.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  I think I probably knew when every one of those live shows happened because you'd get random texts from friends, you know, Susie Youssef would be like, oh, I've just seen you. Well, how are you? Just mate, I haven't thought of you or texted you in months. But I'm at the imperfects line.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we spent a lot of time with you without you knowing.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anyway, well, thank you for having me then and again now.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Oh, pleasure, pleasure.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  I just wanted to do a quick bio because I think most people remember your episode. It was, it was so amazing. But I guess the bio will help explain why we have you here as an expert.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Sure. Can we keep the bio brief?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Because I'll go bright red.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  No, we cannot. It's your fault because you've done so much in your life. So you only have yourself to blame. But I'll do it quickly.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  If this helps, it's actually for the first time, not a very flattering bio.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Oh, great, great, great.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  As you said, Ryan, it's an extreme privilege that we welcome Hamish McDonald back into the studio as one of Australia's most awarded and loved journalists. Hamish has travelled all over the world, delivering us on the ground, real time updates about conflicts, natural and man inflicted disasters. For his work, Hamish has received a Walkley Award and a Human Rights Australia Award for his journalism. He was GQ's Man of the Year in 2012.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  What do you get for that?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Okay, let's slow down. GQ's Man of the Year.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  I think I was, I think it was a sub category. Just, I feel like given facts are so important.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  I don't think I was the GQ Man of the Year. I think they have like media, sports, you know.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Your sport?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, obviously.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  And in 2016, Hamish was awarded a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard University. Hamish was a previous host of Q and A on ABC, Channel 10's The Project, and now is working as mornings presenter on ABC Sydney Radio. Hamish also co-hosts Global Roming, which I listen to every single night because my wife listens to it every night in bed. It's wonderful.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Good to be there as well.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  No wonder you get nervous.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Hamish dedicated his life to-

• 4:36Speaker 01

  This is the unknown throttle.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  I didn't mean to divulge that.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Anyway, moving on very quickly. Sort of, it's one of Penny's demands before we get a bit.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  You did say you'd go red.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Put Hamish's voice on, please, first.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Hamish has dedicated his life to reporting the facts. But what are facts and how much does their truth matter?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Is that a question?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  No, that's not my first question. That's a rhetorical partifier.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  What are facts? We keep hearing the word, but what actually are they?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  So your TV show, The Matter of Facts, I've got a whole description of it here, but maybe it's, I think people would prefer to hear you describe what it is.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, it's, it's just basically an exploration of the, the reality that I think we're all confronting right now, that it's becoming increasingly hard to discern what a fact is, you know, like, it is not a simple question to answer anymore, what a fact is, because there are contested facts. People are fighting over facts. We all know, and I'm sure every person listening to this will think of an experience recently where either they themselves or someone around them will say, oh, I've seen this thing. I don't know if it's real.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  I mean, the, a recent one that I can remember is the Jim Carrey clone debate. Is Jim Carrey the real Jim Carrey or is it a clone? It seems like he's had some cosmetic surgery done and he appeared at like a show, an awards thing and the internet went into a frenzy and the common assumption was, oh, well, he's a clone. Not, not that he's, not that he's followed a history of people getting plastic surgery, but no, clone.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  I think there was a point in time where we imagined like a post-truth future. A future in which none of us really knew what was real and what was fake. And I think probably the reality that we're all experiencing is that we're, we're kind of there now. We, we well and truly into that space and we're all probably being tricked, duped.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  At certain points in time, if we're not, we're not sure whether we are. And so we're having to ask ourselves those questions. And essentially, our whole information ecosystem is being heavily polluted. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes just by machines and computers and friends and family, spreading stuff that they don't realise is false. But everything that we consume is being polluted. If you just imagine a big information stream that's constantly spewing at us.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  You could argue that it's always been polluted. But I think the proliferation of digital media, social media, AI-generated stuff is meaning that more and more of that is not trustworthy, is not what it looks like at first. And so that's also sowing doubt in our own minds. They call this the liar's dividend. It's sowing doubt in our own minds about even the stuff that is true. So we now don't really know what's fact.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  So I've been off, I haven't been on social media for nearly a month now. And my life feels so much better. I feel so much happier and just I feel, I feel much better because of it. You've been off social media for how long now?

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Uh, four years.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Four years.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  In 2026.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Twenty six, yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, four or five years, yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Would you say, I mean, I'm interested to know how you feel after, if I'm feeling that after a month, or maybe this is just your normal now.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Everything's perfect now.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Get out. It's not the podcast for you.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  It was a radical change. I mean, I think like everyone, I'm, you know, impacted, influenced by the news. And there's a lot of really difficult, heavy stuff going on in the world today. And I think that probably provokes things in all of us. So it's not like you're kind of free of that. But I definitely think I've reestablished a relationship with.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Long form reading, so books, you know, magazine articles, all that sort of stuff. In a way that I think is healthier. When I want to tune out or calm down, I'll just go and sit on a couch with a book. And I only do physical books. I know, you know, e-readers and all the rest are fantastic. But I just think, and in fact, I've learned through this doco series that there is something different going on in our brains when we read a physical book. Compared with something on a screen. And that doesn't fix everything, doesn't solve any of the problems. But I think if you can have a healthy relationship with things in the real world.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  Even if those things are fictional, that's probably healthier than some of the other options.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think what's helpful for this conversation to set this up is just that through this TV show, which you can, which is on ABC and ABC iView. You travelled the world and met with world leading experts on this and you've spoken to them, you've learnt a lot from them. And that will kind of help shape today's conversation, I'm guessing.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. I didn't do a very good job of explaining it, did I?

• 9:54Speaker 00

  It's been a big journey over the last couple of years, basically, to travel the world and Australia, just to try and find out both what's happening broadly in the world that's diminishing, damaging our grip on reality. But also to find out what's happening in our brains. Cause I think we all can sense it's doing something to our brains. But is it actually changing something? And the short answer is, it is.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  It feels to me, and I would like to go on a bit of a rant about this later, but it feels to me like the

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Little rant now.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Mini rant and then big one.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Foreshadowing a rant.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  It feels to me like the, we've got some pretty serious problems to solve in the world right now. But the more time we spend on social media, the less. The more our quality of thought and the clarity of thought sort of diminishes and decreases, and I feel like that's a serious problem for us, but we can talk about that later on.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Look, I think wherever you come from, wherever you're listening to this, you'll have examples of this in your own community, in your own maybe school or work environment, or just the town you live in, or the city that you live in, and we can probably think of examples that are confronting Australia right now. But I'll tell you a story about where I come from, because we have explored this in the series. I grew up in Gindabine in the Snow Mountains of New South Wales. It was a beautiful place to grow up, an amazing environment to be raised in. I love it, I'm still very passionate about it. When I grew up in the Snowies, there were issues that divided people, there were frictions and fracture lines.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  There were local TV news services that came out of Canberra, there were local radio stations, there were a couple of local newspapers.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Those issues that existed then, I think were always present, I was kind of aware of them, but they weren't so big that it sort of pulled the community apart. I think the difference that exists today is that those issues, and I'm going to tell you about one key issue in a moment, there's not these kind of shared spaces where people get their information from, like newspapers, like TV news in the evening, there's just a community Facebook page, and that's where it all plays out. The issue in my community is brumbies, so horses, that are in the national parks, so this pristine environment. The brumbies have been there for a very long time after white settlement, farmers took

• 12:25Speaker 00

  them up for grazing in the summer months, and this became part of the kind of identity of the place, the heritage of, or at least the colonial heritage of the place, the man from Snowy River, you know, you get it.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Today, it's so divided.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Because no one can agree on how many of these horses there are, and therefore what to do about it. And the reason I tell you this example is because you need to agree on the basic facts of something to be able to then embark, when there is a difference of opinion, on solving a challenge. We need to be able to sit at this table and all observe, there are four glasses of water here, a cup of tea and a laptop, in order to then discuss about the placement of those things or solving whatever the problem is. If you can't see the same things or agree on what's there, then you don't even have a starting point for solving that problem. It's become so serious in the Snowies.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  There is, there are threats that are made on these Facebook pages. There has been security placed outside the National Parks Office. Some of the National Parks workers have had threats on their life. We met a guy who runs the local cafe, who ended up going to court because he delivered a severed horse's head to the front door of the National Parks Office as a, as a sort of warning to them. As he says, you know, a nod to the, to the Godfather.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  The local MP, when I was growing up, who was a friend of my dad's, a Nationals guy that's very passionate about the Brumbies. He says, look, there's no way we could do today what we did then and have a town hall meeting because these intense feelings would bear out if everyone was in the same physical space. He says, there's never been so much hate. Versions of this story play out everywhere today. It might be to do with a wind farm. It might be to do with a solar farm. It could be migrants or particular, you know, diaspora groups in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane, and how they're, you know, coalescing with the rest of the broader community. I think there are just versions of this story playing out all over the world

• 14:42Speaker 00

  in in large and small scale. And it does go to identity, it goes to emotion. People are picking tribes, you know, bushfire happens and you either believe that it's climate change or you believe it's arson.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  And you jump on social media and you make your arguments one way or the other. You cannot engage with someone that has a different view.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  You insult them, you belittle them, you refuse to see any nuance. If someone injects nuance into the conversation, they're accused of what aboutism. You ask a question that's the wrong tone or the wrong note and someone says, well, you're supporting genocide.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  By asking that question.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  It's it's super binary.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Totally. And this is deliberate. This is the way the social media platforms are built. That's the way the algorithm drives content.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  The things that people react to are the things that bubble up the up the algorithm. And so people end up in these tribes. You know, it's very complicated for people that might take a position on one issue that fits them into a particular tribe, but then on another issue, they choose something which doesn't fit with that tribe. And suddenly the cohort over there is saying, well, you're not one of us. Oh, it turns out you're you're a transphobe.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Or you're you're a genocide supporter or, you know, you can see this happening everywhere and it's largely driven by emotion. There are often layers of facts, there are bits of facts built into these arguments, but often it's fact layered with emotion and opinion. And that becomes very difficult and overwhelming for people, I think.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it also feels like the facts always, they never go in the direction of things aren't quite as bad as you think. Like they always, they never go in the place of, as you just said, things are a bit more nuanced and it's not quite as extreme. It's like everyone's facts go in the direction of extremes and feels. I I wonder if it's, is it the algorithm that's driving that? Or is it our brains that are attracted to that? Like which comes first, the algorithm or the brain?

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Well.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Close its own.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  I don't, I genuinely don't know the answer to that, but I think certainly the algorithms are feeding off basic functions in our brain, you know, what we react to, what we have the emotional response to, they're being trained in a certain way. You know, we all know the business model is to keep us engaged, keep us on the platforms. You know, these are, these are conversations that have been well traversed. The issue is, are these algorithms doing something back to us? You know, is the consumption of all of this material through screens, through devices, doing something to us? You know, we're not born able to read. It's something that we learn.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  So this is the sort of neuroplasticity of the brain. We meet this researcher in the United States, Mary Ann Wolf, who, who researches all of this. And she, she is looking into what this kind of large scale, human, humanity wide experiment is doing to our brains. You know, part of this series, came here to Melbourne, to the School of Psychology, had my head wired up to, to computers to, to measure my response to distraction. You know, my ability to just function, to read things, to identify mistakes in text. As soon as you're having a little flight, light flash or a sound pop off, or ask me

• 18:24Speaker 00

  to press another button, your ability to deal with, consume any of this stuff in a rational, functional way, drops away. But as a, as a human race, we're experimenting with the written word on page, which we've been doing now for a few hundred years.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Now that's all digital and it happens, you know, if any of you pick up your phone, how many different apps and web browser pages would you have in there that you would toggle between in the course of a couple of hours?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  You, you mentioned before that you're reading, like you, you deliberately choose to read a book over like a Kindle or an A reader. What, what for you is the difference there? Like what, like how do you, why do you feel like it's something that you want to do?

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Because in part, it's because if I have, have to pick up a physical book, I have to put the phone down. I have to walk away from my laptop. I like reading a book lying down on a couch or sort of sitting down on a couch and I can leave my phone over there for half an hour, whatever it is, and not pick it up. Like if I read an article on my phone, I'll be checking my messages while I'm doing it. I'll be dipping into my email. I'll reach a boring bit.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  But like a Kindle.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, I don't own a Kindle, so that's the reason. But for work, for example.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Don't you take my Kindle away from me?

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's not, I'm not, I don't have a sort of fat wire against Kindles.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yep. Yet.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  But yes, but you know, through work, I'm always asked, being asked to write, read books before doing the interview with someone. And I would say, you know, most of the time now the publishers will send you a PDF version of the book. And I might have to do five of those a week. And it's just, it's too much digital consumption for my brain. Like I just, I need that. I need that break. I'm enjoying the sanctuary of having a book, just a safe, physical space for me to engage with a different narrative, fact or fiction. And it takes me away from screens. And I think that's healthy. I think something I

• 20:39Speaker 00

  think is worth kind of adding to this, and this goes to Mary Ann Wolf's research in the United States. When you read a book, you know, if you think about the way you might do that on your Kindle or a physical book, you might read a chapter or two at night before you go to bed and you put it down and then you go to sleep and then you go about your day. And you may not come back to it until the next night or even a couple of nights later. In between those times, you're sitting with the information that you read. You're thinking about it and maybe you're coming at it from different angles. Maybe you don't think about it at all until you come back to it. But you're allowing those ideas, those thoughts, those emotions to kind of gestate.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  And she says that by reading in this far more rapid,

• 21:31Speaker 00

  fragmented way where you're jumping between different articles and different screens and different platforms, you're not actually giving yourself that time and that space to digest the information. And so that means that we're consuming the information and not allowing ourselves to have empathy, to have a rational, emotional consideration of it. You're not digesting the ideas, you're not challenging the ideas. You might just read and go, well, that's the thing. You know, sometimes if you really have a bit of time, you might read something and then the next day think, oh, I kind of liked that at first, but I'm just coming at it again. And I'm, I'm thinking or feeling a little bit differently about it. I don't know if I agree with that. And then maybe you come back and you read a bit more and it takes you.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Like, I think as humans, we kind of need that journey and we need the space and the time, as well as the, the concentration to go on a journey like them.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  So interesting. It occurred to me before, when you're talking about reading, that I loved what you said then about the consumption of it yourself and what's happening to your brain while you're doing it. And, but, but something else popped into my mind that seems a little, little bit left to feel. But we, in doing this show, Bridge and I have had to speak to a defamation lawyer a couple of times to be like, just very clear about what we're putting out in the world. With some episodes, you want to be, as you would be very familiar with, you want to be very certain that you're doing everything you can to make sure that you're getting the facts right. And one of the things that this lawyer said was,

• 23:00Speaker 03

  what's the cost of making the mistake? So if someone comes back to you and says that's wrong, what, what, what is it going to cost you as a business? And for us, it would be. We can reload, we can update the piece of audio on the Omni, on our place where we put the audio. So that can change. On YouTube, you can't replace a video. So there's a bit of a cost there that we'd have to re-upload and lose some stuff. And he said typically, the appetite for risk in getting the fact wrong is a lot lower in traditional media like print because it costs so much money to reprint something if you've got it wrong, or to issue a retraction in the next paper. And it occurred to me then that by moving your consumption to more, to slower

• 23:44Speaker 03

  forms of media that are more expensive to produce, it's sort of a great way to filter, to have a funnel and filter on the way in, purely out of that cost of defamation.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, look, it's, it's not like the traditional media hasn't made mistakes.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  No, absolutely.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  But yeah, certainly, like, just consuming a tweet or an Instagram post that someone hasn't given much thought to is different to someone that's written a book that's taken them 10 years to research and, and write. So, you know, there's, there's different filters that apply there for sure. I think, you know, we all have a relationship with the media that we consume, and it's evolving fast, right? Like, if I go and do a lecture or talk to a room of people about these issues, I'll often ask them to begin with about like where they get their media from. And generationally, it's quite different. You know, obviously, people that are in the kind of boomer generation are still maybe relying on newspapers a bit more, watch the evening news. But then as you, you go to younger demographics, that shifts to

• 24:46Speaker 00

  the point where, you know, people in that sort of 18 to 30 year old age demo is now mostly getting their news and information from social media. And people will trust those things in different ways. People will have, you know, nervousness about certain forms of media that others don't. You know, a young person say, well, there's no way I would watch, you know, the evening news on commercial TV because that's the mainstream media and they're corrupt and they're controlled. And, you know, I wouldn't read these newspapers because that's owned by a billionaire and they have these particular views that I, I disagree with. So they would have distrust. Equally, someone my mum's age might think, well, I feel quite nervous about going on to Instagram or Twitter. I wouldn't really read any articles. I'm nervous about clicking on a link. I don't know where

• 25:31Speaker 00

  that would take me to. So everyone is kind of making their own judgements about what they trust and why. I guess what I'm starting to think about and what we've been exploring in this series is like how we get our population more generally to become more invested in, more engaged in media literacy, information literacy, just understanding how polluted the whole information ecosystem is. And then give us all, help us all develop our own skills to navigate that better. Cause I don't think, no one's going to come along and just clean this all up and make it easy for us. I think we're all going

• 26:12Speaker 00

  to have to arm ourselves better to confront the kind of, the onslaught, the waves of information pollution that are coming our way, particularly with, with AI's development.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I mean, my, my experience is with news, these days, most of my information comes from YouTube and then, and then a bit of like Instagram, I guess realistically. But I still pay for New York Times and really try to will myself to check the New York Times and look at it as if like, okay, I'm going to look at the New York Times, get my world news from that. But it is so much less entertaining.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  And I find myself always goes, I'll just watch the Daily Show. I'll just watch Jon Stewart. He'll tell me.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  So is that what you mean when you say you mostly get it from YouTube?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'll, I'll end up going to YouTube to, to see what's going on. And of course I'm getting like, and objectively, or intellectually, I guess, I know that that is an unhealthy and.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Potentially biased view of of the world and I'm definitely not getting all the information. But I also know that I'm not going to read the whole New York. I'm not going to read long articles because I just do not have the attention span. Or really, to be honest, and it's kind of embarrassing, but all want to read that much text.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  But I maintain my subscription because I kind of feel like I'm kind of offsetting. Offsetting the fact that I'll just like watch 23 minutes of Jon Stewart, tell me what to think.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  And then.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Supporting the business model, if not by reading it, but by.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  At least paying the subscription fee.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like, I believe in this, but I'm not really getting most of my news from it.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  And you said social media as well. So where is it popping up? Where are you seeing?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Uh, I guess like, I mean, not that I'm seeking it out, but just like whenever I go to Instagram, I'll be seeing things there.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  But it's not like I'm going there to check the news, but I just like by default do get news there.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  So can you tell me a bit more about that? Cause it's something I've heard from friends. I wasn't aware of this, but some years ago Instagram switched their algorithm. So it's no longer now just your friends and what they post, right?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Hardly, yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  It's, it's this kind of mix of some of the people you follow, but then other random stuff that gets filtered through.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess from their point of view, it's like whatever it takes to keep me on the app. It doesn't matter about who you follow or who your friends are.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Anymore.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  But I've been reading that, that the algorithm, the Instagram algorithm is pushing a lot of like far right content or extreme right content.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  So can I just answer, I have an answer to that, which I think is important because I could talk about the algorithm.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  And also I want to, I want to hear about how Australians are coping right now because I 27, it was the 27th of Jan. So I was, my daughter was, my, my six year old daughter was starting school two days later. And she has this thing where she will talk about. The worries and concerns she has about her life will often come out when you're putting her to bed. She'll be lying there staring, she'll start talking and that's a really important time for her to reflect and for us to be present. And she got up to go and get a drink of water and I was lying on her bed waiting for her to come back. Just checked my phone quickly, went to Instagram, stupid thing to do. And I saw Karl Steffen ovic had had Pauline Hanson on his new podcast on Australia Day. And my first thing was

• 29:44Speaker 02

  just like, I was so angry and outraged. And then I was like, well, this is so disgustingly transparent what he's doing. And then I was thinking, why has this come up on my feed? Why have I got this? And then I'm looking at the comments and I'm getting more angry about the support for that. And I just became, and I had this really big feeling of overwhelm. And my daughter comes back and she starts talking about school starting and I wasn't there. I just wasn't there for it because I was so overwhelmed, angry, disappointed, what's happening to the world. And I missed, I missed that. Like, I missed that really important conversation she needed to have. I just wasn't there. And that was kind of the moment where I thought, this is ridiculous. This is a game. Like, this is a game. I'm not playing anymore. Like, I know Josh, you came to this realisation a long time ago,

• 30:28Speaker 02

  but I just thought, I'm being played. Like, this has been sent to me because I knew it would, whatever it takes, gets attention. I'm not playing this anymore because this person here needs me more right now. And it was, it was a huge feeling of overwhelm. And I guess that leads to the question, in all the work you did with, with making your show, how do you think Australians are coping right now with this landscape?

• 30:51Speaker 00

  I think we're a bit confused. I think we don't know what to do. I think we're starting to see people in our own community and society as fundamentally different to us. And I think that's generating disharmony and discontent. I think it's harder today for people, you know, that share the same city. They might love Melbourne or Brisbane or Sydney or Adelaide, you know, and, and share a love of the place, but genuinely see people in that same environment and think, I have nothing, I can't, I can't come together with them. I feel so strongly and profoundly different to them on the issue of, and you can name it, you know, it could be Australia Day, it could be Israel Gaza, it could be,

• 31:36Speaker 00

  you know, climate change. It could be any, any one of these issues. And that polarisation, I think, is becoming so deep. Because we don't have the capacity to see shared sets of facts. We don't all sit down and watch the same news programme at night. We don't all read the same newspapers. We have this fractured media environment. There's lots of good reasons for that. Mainstream media has not been a perfect operator, has not always been a fair player.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  And it's probably a good thing that there are more voices, there are more podcasts, there are more people that, you know, there's been a democratisation of the information space. But I think that has come at a cost of our ability to see the common things about us. You know, look at people in the same city that maybe go to different protests, that have very strongly held different views, but still at the end of the day be able to sit down together and talk about some of these things. Like, I ask people on my radio programme all the time, you know, have you changed your mind about something recently? Have you, okay, yeah, you've called me a few times about this over recent months. Is there anything about what's happened recently that's made you question your position on this?

• 32:50Speaker 00

  You heard anything this morning that someone said that's made you come at this again? I don't think we're doing that enough. I don't think, I think the way we're consuming our media is not encouraging us to do that. You know, the outrage that that particular clip provoked in you may be well founded. But, you know, look at the polls, probably something like 25% of the population is willing to vote for One Nation at the moment. You know, it's the time we're recording it, who knows where it'll be next month. But a lot of Australians are finding appeal in the message of Pauline Hanson.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  So what are you doing to think about those people and what you share with them? To understand, I'm not saying to change your own views or your own values or your own principles. But I, I think we do still need to look for ways to understand one another and listen to one another. You know, and like, we've been hearing from people on the radio recently that, you know, are supporting some of those views that Pauline Hanson is talking about a lot. And, you know, it's really interesting to me how outraged people are just to hear them said.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  But these are other Australians that vote, that pay taxes, you know,

• 34:17Speaker 00

  they have as much right to ring into a radio station as another person. And I guess for me, the function that I am interested in playing is is making sure that if we're having those conversations, facts are inserted. Because often these conversations are happening without facts. It's just emotion. It's just people saying, oh, I don't like those people, or I don't like their values. Or, well, hang on, what what are you talking about? What are their values? Well, you think immigration's too high? What are the numbers? What precisely are you saying? What's the policy that's being offered that you think is going to fix the problem that is being discussed here? If the argument is that immigration means you can't afford a home, what's the link? What's the evidence?

• 35:03Speaker 00

  I guess that's where, in this picture, I think facts become even more important. But I don't think that's necessary. I mean, I haven't watched that interview, but I don't know. I don't know how much questioning there was of of actual policy.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  No, all I saw was a video that showed that she'd been on it and that it had been released on Australia Day. And I thought, this is so transparent, what you're doing here, that I couldn't bear to watch it, which is probably another problem in itself.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. What you bring up there, I think, is a alludes to the whole reason why you made the show in that I think for a lot of people, when they have that conversation, there's a basic, like I had a, it's it's this, I'll take the wind out of it to be a lot less divisive issue. But I remember having a chat with a mate on Boxing Day at the cricket, and he brought up the idea that the moon landing wasn't real or something like that. And I was like, no, it's definitely really. And he goes, it's pretty weird, though, that they only went once and never went back, though. And I'm like, yes, they did. They went like, there's a whole group of them that went. And he's like, no, no, they just went once. And that happens to be an area that I'm like, I know this one. Yeah, I can. And I got it

• 36:09Speaker 03

  up. And I showed him. But I feel like so often, when you have these conversations, there's a version of that, where you're like, suddenly, you realize that, oh, you have a completely different picture of reality.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  And on that One issue or one topic, I happen to know what the reality is. But I can't keep up to date with the realities of every single thing and every single.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Well, we've all been in those situations, right, where you're having a conversation, you know, or an argument with someone and it's like, no one at this table has all of the facts here.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  No one really knows enough about this.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Have a lot of emotions, but not many facts.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Totally, totally. But, you know, like, I went to Finland about 18 months ago for work. It's not part of this series, but one of the things that really fascinated me there is that they teach information and media literacy to kids from school age up, from primary school up. And, you know, in part this is because they're right next door to Russia. They've had Russian miss and disinformation coming at them for, for many decades. And they've seen the need to build a kind of a population that is ready and armed to deal with this themselves. And so they teach kids things like triangulation of stories. So

• 37:26Speaker 00

  if you see something on social media, Ryan, that gives you a reaction,

• 37:33Speaker 00

  not just, and I know you're saying you don't have, feel like the New York Times articles are too long for you. But if you see a thing on social media that you then go and look for a couple of other versions of that story, to, to read the different takes on it so that you at least end up with something that is, you, you have some perception of the kind of spectrum of views that there are on this so that you at least can kind of build your own picture of it. Allow your curiosity to flourish. I think encourage it to grow. Maybe that's, you know, the thing I would say in your situation. Like you've obviously got curiosity there because you're watching the Daily Show. This stuff is interesting to you. But maybe the written form is like not the way for you to consume it.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  You don't have to read everything in, in text, but what I'm suggesting is you find a number of different versions of that story to make sure that you're not just consuming one left wing version of it and one, or a right wing version of it. Just try and triangulate the information so that if it's something that matters to you, you're at least building out your own picture and can analyse it yourself.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I mean, it's such a good theory and a great practice, no doubt. But like, I just know myself and this is just like probably the way that I've now been conditioned to like, I mean, unless I'm like super, super interested in something.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  What's something that you are super interested in?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Um, okay. Um, something that I mean, I mean, media, stories about the media. To be honest, like, like American, Australian, like I love reading about like the behind the scenes, the sort of.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Kyle and Jackie.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Kyle and Jackie. Yeah, yeah. No, but like, but all the kind of machinations of the, of what is going on in the media. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  And would you only read one article on that or would you read multiple?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Uh, well, read article. I don't know what that means, but um,

• 39:33Speaker 01

  but I'll, no, I would get usually multiple sources. Yeah. Or like multiple podcasts. Yeah. That are usually covering the same thing. Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so you, you, from that, you'd build out a picture.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  So you're already doing this.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm Mr. Triangulate. What was the square?

• 39:53Speaker 02

  The other night Penny said to me, um, she said, oh my God, you will not believe this video I've seen on Instagram. It's the funniest I've ever seen in my entire life. And she showed me and it was a lady who was sleeping and as she fell off her couch, landed on her cat, her cat somehow shot up the roof, swung around on a fan and it went flying out the window. She said, it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I said, watch it again. And we watched it again. I said, do it. How, how did the cat get squashed and then fly up to the roof? And she goes, I don't know. It must've got such a shock. This is not real. I said, what do you mean? This is, this is definitely AI. And she couldn't believe it. But I feel like that's happening to a lot of us in different areas of our lives. Like some, to me, that's quite obvious.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  But I'm interested to hear the examples you get through the talk about you're doing and and through all the work you've done of of the things that people are seeing that they believe to be real.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And and also just whether this is part of it or not, but whether in that particular case, when it's not a news item, but in entertainment situations, will it matter if it's real or not?

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, I mean, there is some argument that audiences don't care that much, but just parking that to one side, it's happening all the time. Like during the Bondi attacks, you might recall, there was an image of two female police officers that was slightly manipulated. So there was a real, original photograph and you can see the bridge of Bondi where the shooters were in the background. And the way it was manipulated was to make it look like they were afraid to take on the attackers. The actual original image was of two very brave female police officers getting crowds out of there to safety.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  But the narrative was completely flipped and that went around the world straight away. I even had a colleague, another journalist, suggest that we talk about it and question the role of the police.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Because they'd seen it, someone had referred them to it. And and you can see how this stuff takes fire and it particularly takes, catches a light during periods of confusion or acute, you know, distress.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  Late last year, we started getting regular calls and texts on my morning show, asking us, why aren't you covering the new road rules that are coming into force this week? And there was this huge glut of information cycling through social media pages, but also with links to articles on, you know, when you like see a newspaper link and it looks like a real newspaper, when you click through, it's like a slightly different version of that newspaper, you know what I mean? Like might be a few words different. So you have to be looking kind of closely to see that it's.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  The the age, like logo's a bit more pixelated than normal.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  So there was a lot of these articles supporting the social media clips or linked to them that people were then reading detailing all of these new road rules that Australia was introducing. And the main ones that we were hearing about were that I think it was people over 60 or 65 weren't allowed to drive at night anymore, that you had to have your headlights on 24 hours a day. And the other one was that you could be fined for taking a sip of water while you drive. And the, the articles and posts were referring to a specific date in the back half of last year. And so listeners rightly were wanting,

• 43:37Speaker 00

  wondering why we weren't covering it. What was really interesting was that our producers were then going and searching this because it seemed like a big thing that we should be covering. And when they went to Google, the AI, the Gemini Google function was throwing up results based on the fake stories that were out there.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  So AI was presenting it as fact.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, because the AI tools are just sort of scraping the available information.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Oh my God, we're stuffed.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  And so they were picking this up.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  I ended up running, I was at Parliament House for an ABC thing and ran into the Federal Transport Minister Catherine King and was talking to her about it. And she was like, oh my God, this has been going on for so long. I don't want to misquote her. I'm sorry, Minister. But she said that they had been being bombarded with voters reaching out to them, wanting clarity on all of this, that they'd had to reach out to the tech companies to get them to take down the fake search results that were coming up in the AI search functions. The key thing for you to know is that all of this was a disinformation campaign. There are no national road rules in Australia. They're all state and territory based.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  So what's dis and missing from, what's the difference between disinformation and misinformation?

• 44:55Speaker 00

  So.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  When have you been dissed and when have you been missed?

• 44:59Speaker 00

  So there is a little crossover, but the easiest way to think about it is that disinformation is a deliberate set of fake information that's being presented.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Like such as the road rules.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Such as this, yep. Misinformation is incorrect or false information. It may be shared, if you like, innocently by someone that thinks that it's the truth.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Like Gemini.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Like Gemini, yeah, I guess, I guess Gemini could be, yeah, I guess that's an example of where Gemini thinks it's real.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  So they're.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Disturbed to miss.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  But, but the misinformation might be more like your aunt saying, oh, I heard all of these bushfires are started by arsonists. There was a report on the radio about an arson arrest. Probably there was an arson arrest, but maybe the bulk of the bushfires were started by lightning strikes. And the climate scientists would argue that this, the broader conditions were created as a result of climate change.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  So the lines do blur, but there's, I guess, a level of, there can be a level of innocence about the misinformation. The disinformation is often far more deliberate, organised. Sometimes it's state backed, so countries like Russia or China or even Western countries might be involved in disseminating disinformation. Like one of the stories that we explore in this series is, do you remember the, do you remember during the Paris Olympics? There was like the big story about all the bedbugs?

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Everyone was getting bedbugs at the Paris Olympics, chaos. It was all a Russian disinformation campaign.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Why though? Like what I don't like, who has time? Like I have to do the grocery shopping today and I've worked out I don't have time. Who has time to sit at home and go, I'm gonna do some disinformation now?

• 46:56Speaker 00

  So they call these sort of grey zone tactics, hybrid warfare, sometimes the description it's given. Often the specific objective is, is unclear.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  But the broad objective is to destabilize, create so distrust.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  So often, you know, Russia is probably the biggest state actor behind disinformation campaigns, or at least the most experienced at it. And they'll do it to sow distrust in democratic society. Make people question their government, the ability of their government to deliver on policy outcomes.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Can I drink water in my car or not?

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, what is it? You would rightly ask, why would anyone bother coming up with a disinformation campaign about road rules in Australia? But it makes us doubt our systems, our institutions, our relationship with government. So that next time the government tells us something or tries to enforce something, we might be more likely to question it or say, oh, that's rubbish. We went to, we went to the Poland Belarus border as part of this.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Where there's a huge border fence.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Russia and Belarus, so Belarus is like a client state of Russia. They're accused of advertising cheap flights and visas from Central Africa, Somalia, the Middle East, Syria, Afghanistan, to come to Russia and Belarus as a cheap and easy way to a new life in Europe. So this is not part of the kind of migrant crisis of 2016. This is in the years after that. The Poland Belarus border was never a big entry point during that migrant crisis. But in subsequent years, as Russia has sought to destabilize the democratic process in Poland.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  At particular points in the electoral calendar, they have brought in large groups of migrants and sent them across that border. At the same time, they have fed into the Polish media and information ecosystem, particularly Polish social media, videos of migrants coming over the borders, commentary about Muslims coming to build mosques in your community and marry your children, your daughters, steal your wives to create distrust, disharmony, make people question their democracy. We went to the border, went out with these activists that go there. They're not allowed to help the migrants at all.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  They'll be done as people smugglers now. But we walked for hours and hours and hours to a pin drop on a map where these two Afghan guys who had come over this six metre high fence, both very injured, one of them sort of turning septic, who think they're there for a cheap and easy and open pathway to Europe. They're real humans that have been caught up in this disinformation campaign.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's such a good point. That for many people in the world, like the cost of disinformation could actually be their life. But I have to say, for me on a personal level, the more that my perception of reality and what is real and what isn't is manipulated or just misled. So I guess the various disinformation and misinformation coming at me, I'm a bit afraid of what the cost is on me just purely for my own wellbeing and mental health. This sort of, I've been feeling for a while now that maybe the,

• 50:49Speaker 03

  that climate change has so many costs on, it's the infinite, almost the costs of climate change in many areas. But one of them for me is not having a feeling of the seasons being as regular as they used to be. And that that is essentially a sort of destabilising force that me as a human or humans have never had to, or for a long time haven't had to confront. And I wonder if you've explored or if you've learned or if you've had any thoughts on what it does to you as an individual to feel like there is no terra firma.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I reckon probably in some ways we all are feeling versions of this. Like, we feel outraged, stuff is designed to trigger something in you, whether it's you ready, you know, looking at a clip on Pauline Hanson late at night, or you thinking about climate change. I think we're all having emotional reactions to what we're seeing. Like, I think we all feel a bit more afraid at the moment. Like, there's a, everyone you talk to, certainly in my life, just wishes things would dial down a little bit. You know, Sydney's been really, I think, on edge, probably before the terror attack, but particularly so since. I think, you know, we've also felt very distant from a lot of the problems of the wellbeing in Australia.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  This big island continent that's physically a long way away from things, I think it feels less far. And that's in part because some of these big, terrible things unfolding in different corners of the planet are now also in the palm of our hand, right? So I think inevitably that creates an emotional response. If you watch a video of a child being harmed or starved, you know, it would be hard, I think, for most of us not to have some reaction to that. I think the American academic Mary Ann Wolf that we spoke to, she says, you know, an act of resistance in this world is just to pick up a book.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Like, I think you can get overwhelmed by the whole thing. I don't think there are easy fixes to these huge challenges, you know, like the threat of AI and what that might do to our world is sort of almost too big for most people, I think, to think about, you know, in any really way that grasps the scale of it. But I think there are individual things that we can all do. And I suppose that's what I keep coming back to in this, is the idea that you can step away from things, you can put a device down, you know, you can leave social media or just dial down your usage of it, you can control what you can consume, you can read a book, you can read a newspaper article, right? Sorry.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to send me a link to that, I don't know.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  But I just think the most helpful thing we can do is remember that we all do still at this point anyway, until the robots totally take over, we do all have agency.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Hmm. I, so you mentioned it just before, and I feel like we haven't talked about it on the show yet, and I've been desperate for ways to have a conversation about it, but it's a terrifying one, as you mentioned. I have consumed everything that is out there on the topic of AI. It is keeping me up. There's a lot of talk about my bed in this episode, but in my bedtime, but I.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  Do you, do you feel from that, that you have any concept of the kind of totality of it?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  In a way that you can articulate?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Um, what do you mean totality of it?

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Like, when I, like, I read Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote Sapiens and then Hometaius, and Nexus is the latest one. And he sort of tries to explore what the future holds for humanity, and that the kind of leap into AI is like this kind of seismic inflection point for us as a species. And he does a brilliant job of explaining it, and, you know, he's an incredibly gifted communicator. But I don't, I still don't feel I can fully conceive of what AI means for us as humans, if I'm, if I'm honest.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Okay, I know. Yeah. Okay. So, no, I have no idea, because all the experts say we actually have no idea. But we do know that the world in five to 10 years' time will be a completely almost unrecognizable place. And I don't want that for my, I don't want, I like, I just, through the lens of my children, I just, I think that's why I've gone down this, I don't call it a rabbit hole, because it makes it sound.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Like it's something I shouldn't have done, but like I I've just listened to a lot of the experts. You you spoke to Tristan Harris, who is probably my favorite person to listen to nearly on anything in the world. I mean, he in two thousand and thirteen rang the alarms around social media and said, this is what's coming for us. This is not a good thing. And he spoke about what the algorithm will do before it had really taken effect. And he was right. He's now standing there saying AI is the next thing that um we are not ready for. Um, and but this feels much bigger.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Um, for me, the overriding thing that I just am struggling with, and I I really, I don't want to give my opinion on AI because I we've got you here and I just, I want to say to you, AI talk, like there's no real question, but but I think the thing that I'm struggling with.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  You have to say, hey, Siri.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Uh, the thing that I'm struggling with is that we are about to have a form of intelligence far greater than us. We're gonna have, like, if if someone had said to us, you know, in ten years' time, there's gonna be aliens turning up that are far more intelligent than you guys. We'd be in a state of panic, but we're kind of, that's what's happening. That's what's coming. I think it may be.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  What if the aliens had really good recipes for us, though?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  That would be.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  That would be exciting. I knew everything. You could ask him anything.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Um, I think a lot of people, the problem is people are using AI like an sophisticated Google, really. They're not totally engaging in what it's able to do and the fact it's just wiping out industries with every update. Um, I think the thing that I think it was Tristan Harris who maybe gave this analogy, or maybe it was, I forget his name, the Godfather, the guy who came up with AI on the first page, but just said that, like, when I leave the house, my dog doesn't know where I'm going. It doesn't, not intelligent enough to understand. It doesn't know what I do all day. It knows I come home and I feed it at the end of the day, but has no idea what I'm out there doing in the world. And he said, that's kind of what, I said, I feel I need to get this right because of what we're talking about. I can't remember who it was.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  What was the dog's name?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Um, but we are about to be that, like, there's gonna be a form of intelligence out doing stuff that we don't understand.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Having a huge impact on our lives. Um.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Oh, we're the dog.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're about to become the dog.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Is that, yeah. Yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  So just is what breed like what's the

• 57:52Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say golden retrievers.

• 57:56Speaker 00

  I mean, they're lovely, but they're not the smartest.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  No, that's true. Well, that's what we're gonna be. I feel like there's a, there's a

• 58:03Speaker 02

  a new species arriving on planet earth that is gonna take over and we don't.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Look, I'm genuinely not sure if we've already passed the point where we can try and keep a hold on it. Like, it's possible, I think, that it's already moved beyond our

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Feels like that.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  Grasp.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  The dog's out of the bag.

• 58:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  If you think about what it was like for Australia, just as one country, to try and regulate social media for under 16s and what, how challenging that was to take on just a selection of companies and just deal with one particular age group where there was a pretty strong, clear moral argument for doing it. Think about like the pushback that came and how difficult that was. I think that's nothing in comparison to what it would be like to try and genuinely place some regulation or frameworks around AI.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  It sounds like it's not possible. It's just not gonna happen.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Well, like the Australian government had a crack at it at the end of last year and they were criticised for, for really going quite light, light touch on it. There was a, there was an argument that we were gonna have this kind of guardrail approach. So yeah, you can't really regulate it because you don't know yet what it is. But if you create some guardrails, then maybe you can ensure that like whole industries, for example, aren't, aren't wiped out. Or that, you know, intellectual property is protected so that artists, for example, you know, can't have all of their work taken or authors can't have just whole volumes of their books consumed by large language models. But the government did not opt for, for that kind of, that sort of framework.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  In part because, you know, Australia's in a competitive global environment and we want the investment here, we want, we want to attract that sort of business. And if we're looking at industries and workforces being wiped out, then we, we need that. Like, we have conversations all the time about productivity and big businesses hope that the next wave of productivity is going to come from AI. What that means for us, I think we don't really have the answer for. But I think, I think to the, I guess, the sort of fundamental question that's in front of us now about whether we're in control of it, or will be

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  in control of it in the future. I think most people that we see in our daily lives don't really understand what its capabilities already. So I feel like we're, we may be past that.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  And it's all, the really scary thing is that I don't know if there's been a time in human history where we truly don't know what the world, or at least this part of the world will look like in the next like two years. Cause the improvements are so rapid. Like, it was probably like a year and a half ago where I was, I was pretty confident that I was like, I'll never want to watch an AI generated film. Like what, I've got no interest in something that wasn't the point of view of a human.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  But now the footage that's coming out that there's being generated is so good. I'm like, I reckon it probably will.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Because it, and because we don't know what is coming and how quickly it's coming, we, there's just never been a time where we literally can't expect what the, we, we can't, like when I was, when, when we were kids, I reckon our parents had a pretty good idea of what the world will look like when we're teenagers or when we're adults. Like not a hell of a lot was going to change apart from like potential wars that could come out of nowhere. But in terms of like technologies and stuff, yeah, like we got DVDs instead of VHSs, but it's not really affecting our lives that much. Whereas this is like a time where we, where it's like, I was pretty confident a while ago, a year ago that like, no one's, AI can't replace our podcast.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Like, like it's our points of view. Like it's our opinions and it's our experiences and our vulnerabilities. Like people want, people will want that, but I'm now not so confident.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  Have you experimented with Notebook L L M?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Well, that was terrifying, actually, when I first, and I did that, I tried that when it first came out with the podcast feature.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  So I don't know if you've, do we need to explain this?

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  About what it is. So it's, I mean, it does quite a few things, but one of the features of Notebook L L M is you can just ask it to make you a podcast on any given topic.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  And in a couple of minutes, you'll get a podcast with voices.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Maybe we shouldn't be telling our listeners.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's interesting because when I first did it, at the time I was writing a, at the time I was writing a TV show, like a scripted show, and at the time, I'm not sure if it's changed now, but at the time you had to input the data that you wanted the podcast to talk about. It couldn't just scrape the internet.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  So you had to, so I uploaded the script of the, of the pilot episode of my show and just said, like, talk about this. And these two hosts, quote unquote, the two voices, the male and the female voice, American voices, sounds like an American podcast, they dissected over 20 minutes, dissected the, the episode, the script perfectly, and to the extent where I was learning stuff about the script that I didn't even mean to do.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  To be in there.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  It was finding like context and like narrative themes that I didn't even intend to put in there. But it like gave me insight into the script that I'd written that I hadn't seen. And so that was quite terrifying.

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  So Notebook L L M comes up in this, in the third part of this series. We meet a woman called Jos Fong, who is an American podcaster and kind of science influencer. She makes incredible videos about science, sort of like pop science, basically. She's incredibly beautiful, and I'm saying this for a reason, and also has a lovely voice.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  And the situation she's now found herself in, in part because of Notebook L L M, is that a very large proportion of the internet doesn't think she's real.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Hmm. Really?

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  And so.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  What she looks and sounds like.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. So there's no evidence of this, but if you listen to Notebook L L M, the male, female voice that's generated, it sounds incredibly like her and her male co-host.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Ah, yep.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  I have no evidence of this bit of it, but it sounds to me like it's either modeled on or trained off, the L L M model is trained off either them or something like them.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  It sounds so similar, even the way they take breaths, their turns of phrase. It's like Jos, Jos Fong and her co-host. She, she's physically quite perfect looking and people think that she's A I generated her, her, her videos. So she's now found herself in this space of trying to make the content that she produces less good and more human, more flawed, a bit more rough, to try and prove to people, many of whom on the internet still won't believe it.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  But to try and prove to people that she's real.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Cause I mean, that's, it, it really is, other than doing like a tour around the world and literally standing in front of people, there really is nothing she can do.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Because you, you can generate an imperfect looking version of her videos.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, then this is the tip of the iceberg with what A I, how it can influence us. Um, I, I, so you, you with your, there's this, what's that?

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  No, I'm just like, okay, well, fuck. Well, it is kind of, I was doing the same thing. I'm like, well.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  What can we do?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  I actually don't know what to do.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Like, not that I'm expected to know.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  And not that we have to, but I feel like we need to give some people some hope.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Well, I do want to get to that because the last thing I want to say is like, let's talk hope because I, I, I, um, please, please, please.

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  Tell me you've got the answer.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Before we get to that, um, so you, you. Did this with your mum, is that right?

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  So, so what happened there?

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  So the producers wanted to test how good the AI is. I mean, I don't want to give it all away, but essentially we brought mum in for the filming on this to test whether she could spot fake me and real me. And I think what really, I think what shocked me was how emotional mum became upon realising that she was kind of a bit trapped in this. Like, I think something set off for her that it wasn't quite right, but also she was leaning into wanting to believe, you know, there's, there's something emotional that goes on for us when we're believing something.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  And, and I think, yeah, it's worth watching. Yeah. Because I think for me, it was a bit instructive about how vulnerable, how vulnerable we all are to this. Like statistically, the more you think you are able to spot a fake, the less likely you are to spot one.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  I mean, so was that, so, so people are.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  So, uh, so basically we all have, like broadly speaking, we've got about a 50 50 chance of spotting a fake. So we filmed with the researchers that, that have been looking into this and, and we, we filmed with a bunch of Australians, you know, to see what they're like at spotting real and fake. And it's, it's, those statistics are borne out. It's, it's basically 50 50. Statistically, the people that think they have greater awareness, literacy, are more sort of digitally literate, are, are less likely to spot the fakes.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  To be honest, I can't tell you the reasons why that is. I suspect it's to do with maybe overthinking it. But, uh, but that's what the statistics show. And that's certainly the, the, the group that we had, uh, you know, the younger ones that were like, I know how to spot a fake. They were like, really quite, quite blown away. And yeah, it certainly is what happened with mum, who obviously went in quite. Yeah, she knows who I am. She knows who I am better than pretty much anyone. And, you know, I think by the end of that whole interaction, she was just kind of like really quite thrown and emotional by the whole, because of the whole experience.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  It's an important thing for people to watch. Cause I feel like that gets to the very heart of this. How disconcerting and uncertain it all is.

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you don't, I don't think any of us want to feel that this technology has the better of us. But I think we probably have to concede. I think we have to be aware of where it's at. And I think, you know, happy to go to the hope bit of the conversation.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Get that out of the way.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  But I do think, I think we have to recognize what this means for us as humans, as, you know, members of democratic society, that if, if we want to hang on to some of this stuff, we actually have to arm ourselves with skills, with tools to be able to navigate.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  And what are those tools and skills that you?

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  Well, using a New York Times subscription.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  I subscribe.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  But, and reading it, right? Like, I think, I think, I think we have to.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  So triangulation?

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, a bit of that. I think, so the Finland example that I gave you earlier, the media has a part to play in it. The media in Finland has some of the highest trust scores of any media anywhere in the world. And in part, one of the things they do that is quite different is that they acknowledge and, and are very prominent in apologizing and clarifying when they make mistakes. So I think maybe a good thing that the media can do more generally, like the mainstream media, is to be more transparent about when it makes mistakes, be more like we do make mistakes, be more willing to admit those.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Recognize that there has been a loss of trust in, in the media and start to rebuild that. And I think acknowledging mistakes, giving them equal prominence. You know, if you ever like read the little, we made a, we need to make a clarification in the newspaper. It's like on page 12 at the bottom that you would have to go looking for, even though the original article was on the front page and was the whole front page. So start to give that stuff similar levels of prominence. I think we could be thinking about what we're teaching to children. You know, we've thought about removing social media from kids under 16 in Australia. I think there's a lot of very strong arguments for that. I do have a question, having filmed this series, well, hang on, what does this mean if then at 16,

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  we just open the floodgates?

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  How are we preparing?

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. How are we preparing them for that?

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  You know, kids do do ethics classes. There is a degree of media literacy, but I think we should be having a really big conversation about what teaching kids information literacy is and what that looks like from the word go. I think we do need a robust national media market. I think mainstream media does need to survive. I think you need things like national broadcasters that people can trust in. I think, you know, having centers of discussion where people come and have shared conversations where you do hear different views. So yes, podcasts are great, but having spaces where different people with different ideas and views and opinions come, come together and that facts are entered into those conversations.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  And I think as individuals, I think that this whole idea of picking up a book and reading a book is a really healthy thing to do.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  I wonder as well, it's like, I mean, so many of these places are businesses and like they're, they're not choosing to do this, but it's like they need people, they need views and they need clicks. And so it's almost like the priority is not providing people with the news. They've turned into an entertainment machine and

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  That the, the, the motivation is to get as many people on their website for as long as possible. Like that is the motivation. But I wonder if there's a future where the value, what people will value is trust and whether or not the motivating factor for certain media outlets will be like. This is all the stuff we're doing to ensure that this is all trustworthy. Um, and that will be the value that people will be searching for. Cause I feel like we're not far from that. Like, I feel like I want that now. I mean, I'll subscribe to it. I won't read it, but like to have like.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  You're being very entrepreneurial about it. It's really looking to spot the business opportunity.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Always, always. No, no, it's, it's just like trying to think about it in like, because from that point of view, it's like the Instagrams and the, so you know, you can, we can't wait for them to change because their business model doesn't allow it.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  Look, what I would say is that the tech does present us with opportunities as well. So when it comes to like spotting original uh vision and images, tech can be helpful for that. Um, when it comes to like Taiwan is a really interesting example of this. They've got a lot of like citizen democracy tools being developed that they're using. Uh, so using AI models to help solve problems where the community is fractured over a particular issue. So if you think about, you know, the example I gave you before of the Snowies and the Brumbies and everyone fracturing, and it being all over social media.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  Is there a version of that where there are AI based tools which take all of that information, but then look for common threads? Like, it would be very difficult to pass through all of the different opinions that exist on wind farms in Australia right now. But maybe some of these AI tools could be developed or used to pass through huge volumes of data around people's opinions, their proxy, their physical proximity to those stories, as in like where the wind farms are versus where they live. You know, some of the research that we had done for this, found that the bulk of the people that were commenting on the Brumbies weren't actually living in Gindabite or the Snow Mountains.

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  So can you use technology, or you can use technology, but perhaps we can use it better, to, to say, okay, we've got a problem here. It's wind farms. Here's, here's what the sort of social media discourse is around that. Can we distill from that?

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  The range of views and the volume of views from the communities that are actually adjacent to where those wind farms are going. Okay, so let's cut out the noise and here's, here's what the community actually thinks. Okay, within that community, can we categorize those people into, you know, very strongly held views for and very strongly held views against? And then can we come in from there to find where?

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Triangulate.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  A I triangulate.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, I think, I think the technology does have the possibility and probably requires someone to think about what the business model is because they're really going to, only going to do it if it, if it makes money. But could that help us to solve some of these problems? Could you then get that cohort of people together and ask them more questions, ask them to feed more information into a, a tool that would help you pass through the possible solutions and challenges? Could you also feed into that tool facts? You know, so, uh, spot, uh, where the kind of consensus of opinions lay or, uh, and how much of that is based on fact?

• 1:16:38Speaker 00

  How many of these people are forming their judgments based on fact versus semi fact versus fiction? You know, to me, there, there must be opportunities there where technology can be used to solve some of the problems that are being thrown up by our use of, yeah, tech.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Hope.

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  Was that, was that okay?

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  That is, that last bit I'm laughing at, that's, that's a really good idea. I reckon that would be amazing, yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  Well, just cut me in on that deal.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. You cut me in on the deal. I think I'll come to you first.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  If anyone who wants more hope, we've given you two lots of hope, but Dr M did a wonderful episode on hope and uncertainty that we can put a link to in the, um, in the show notes.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Are you feeling frazzled and afraid?

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  From this conversation or just in life?

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  Just generally.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Massively, massively. I spend a lot of my time thinking, trying to understand what the world's, knowing I can't, but just how am I?

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Best preparing my kids for something that I don't understand. And what, what is the most important thing to be teaching them?

• 1:17:49Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  And paying really close attention to what's happening. They go to a wonderful school, but a lot of me is thinking the most important thing to be teaching them right now is

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  problem solving skills and ways of exploring what they're naturally good at in order to make the world better. How you teach, I mean, my son's grappling with place value at the moment. I'm thinking, mate, don't, don't stress too much about place value. I think there's like in mass, there's, I feel like there'll be much bigger things that will require.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  You at some point.

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  Tapping a water source.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  I, yeah, I'm feeling a bit frazzled and afraid because I didn't sleep very well last night. And one of the reasons I didn't sleep very well was I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the world in general yesterday. And last night I decided I'm going to try and understand exactly like as we're recording this. The US, US and Israel just bombed Iran a few days ago for the first time. Who knows what's happened since then, but I thought I'm going to try and just understand what's happened in the last few days. And I found this video on YouTube, had a huge subscriber following the channel.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  I started watching it and my sort of media spidey senses were saying, I feel like this, at least I feel like the people making this are doing their best to try and deliver facts and I can't see any obvious biases. And I watched the video and I felt like, okay, I've got a general understanding of just play by play what's happened. And then I went to the comments and the second comment was like, really impressive that you got this up. Love the video. Just so you know, that footage of Dubai airport, that's AI. That's been circled already and identified already. And it occurred to me, I'm, how am I going to know anything about like, as this war unfolds? How am I going to know truth from fact here?

• 1:19:49Speaker 03

  And it feels like there are some actors involved who really want to manipulate the truth for their own outcomes. And I found myself completely afraid and I couldn't sleep till about 2am. Because I was just thinking, I don't know how I'm going to navigate this.

• 1:20:05Speaker 00

  I mean, it's probably not that comforting to know, but you know, like there is, the saying, truth is the first casualty of war has been around for a very long time, you know, like, that is what happens in war. I think there are going to be more conflicts in our lifetime. I think we're going to have more saturation of information and video footage every time this happens. You know, I'm just thinking back in the last couple of years where, you know, hospitals were being bombed and people were arguing about whether the fire was coming out of the hospital or into the hospital. But these are, this has happened every time there has ever been a war. So we're not distinct from other periods of time in that sense.

• 1:20:48Speaker 00

  I think just the tools are changing, they're more easily manipulated probably. And maybe, you know, the, the rapid nature of it, I guess, is what makes it more difficult to sit with it and give it time to think about whether that thing was correct or not. Cause by tomorrow, you'll have probably forgotten about that video, because there'll be some other video that we're then trying to pass through and, and connect with. I thought it was really interesting what you said before about climate and your worry about that, someone very close to me in my life, that I just always think of as a supremely kind of confident, competent, non frazzled figure, just out of nowhere recently said

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  to me, oh, I just find myself really worrying quite a lot at the moment about my children and the climate and what they're going to be living. And it, it totally sideswiped me that this person even had that thought. So to me, that was a bit of a wake up call as to like, what people are just kind of sitting with and grappling with at the moment. And I, I'm just very conscious that. The media, information, journalism is maybe not doing enough to like hear and listen to that, maybe because we don't have the answers.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  I feel really confident, and this is to, I don't know if it's under the section of hope, but like just something I'm doing right now, which has really helped me is I'm being vastly aware of the fact that I reckon at some point I'll look back on this and go, these are the good old days. Remember when, you know, we were just learning about AI, I didn't know much about it. And remember, there's only a few wars going on. And remember when, I'm just trying to remember these, at some point, I reckon there's a chance these will be the good old days. And I'll be, when I'm with my family and anyone I'm around, I'm just thinking like, make these good old days as good as possible. Cause this is, this is, they're still, there is good stuff happening around us all the time.

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  True, yeah.

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  I think I don't have a bleaker outlook on the future potentially. But I think the outcome of that attitude is a really good one to just like celebrate all the, like, look at all the good things that are happening every day as well.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Like this morning, I'd get here and find out that, so apparently there's a massive bin out the front of the tent tipped over. And it was like hundreds and hundreds of cans and bottles. And Belle and Bridget and George, who are in a podcast, decided to go down and clean it all up.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  And that's, that's great stuff. Isn't that good stuff?

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  Humans are pretty resilient as well, you know, and like, if you think back, not that long ago, the Cuban Missile Crisis might have been happening, or Chernobyl was happening. And people really genuinely thought this might be the end of the world at various times. Well, this could be World War Three. And it may be, it may not be. But humans have a remarkable capacity to move through those things. Yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Hopefully we still have that. Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  More hope.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  But I think, I, I, my gut says, we'll figure it out.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  And we'll finish, finish there.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  It's just a gut. It's not, I can't say it's true, but it's just my vibe.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  I didn't, I didn't need to make this TV series.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Always call me first, always.

• 1:24:08Speaker 00

  We'll figure it out.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  I, I just get the, I've just got a gut, gut feeling.

• 1:24:12Speaker 00

  Who needs facts?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've just got a gut feeling, we'll just, we'll just sort of like, figure it out. We've got a bunch of people in a room, let's just talk about, let's just sort this shit out.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  The matter of fact, you can get it on ABC, I've you watch it on ABC, we'll put a link in our show notes.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  You are such an incredibly intelligent man and I feel so, um, yeah, it feels wonderful to spend time with you. Even though we're talking about, yeah, it feels hopeful and, um, congratulations on the show. Cause I think it's a really, really, I feel like when the, when you first came up with the show or it was pitched to you, you would have been like, this is a bloody great idea.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Need this.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  I wish to take your time today, it's such a pleasure.

• 1:24:50Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

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