Bri Lee - Babies+Climate=Anxiety

Is climate anxiety affecting your decision to have kids? 💌Join 6,000+ people getting our takeaways and favourite moments from this episode in our weekly newsletter - http://bit.ly/45NyQDy Joining us in the Vulnerabilitea House is Bri Lee; prolific author, advocate and change maker. Answering the question, “what moment from your life are you grateful for that profoundly changed you?”, Bri talks about the research that lead her to the South Pole, and how she learnt to prioritise love above all else. Bri asks the question to Hugh, Josh and Ryan, “what does it mean to live a good life, and what do we owe each other?” This chat explores the philosophies of anti and pronatalism, whilst being grounded in examples from the guys’ and Bri’s life. An intentional and judgement free zone, this conversation delves into the morality of should’s and shouldn’ts, and what it means to do the right thing. As Bri says, hope is something that you earn through action, and we are all feeling a bit more hopeful after this episode. 0:00 – A Bri-Lee-iant guest 9:42 – The Seed of The Idea 15:08 – What are you grateful for that profoundly changed you? 27:10 – Prioritising love 32:27 – Should I have kids? 41:43 – The morality of shoulds and shouldn’ts 52:43 – Some positivity, please 55:59 – Policy and bodily autonomy 59:22 – So, how’s the reckoning going? 1:03:46 – The weight of responsibility 1:08:43 – Finding action in the overwhelm 📺 to watch this full episode on YouTube, follow this link - https://youtu.be/vUQMkMvyeMY 🫖Other episodes of The Imperfects mentioned on this episode Ryan Shelton - To breed, or not to breed - https://bit.ly/3PbhEmR Ann Davidman - Should I have kids? - https://bit.ly/4brc477 📖 Things to read Seed, by Bri Lee - https://bit.ly/3PhepKv Eggshell Skull, by Bri Lee - https://bit.ly/473kvV4 Who Gets To Be Smart, by Bri Lee - https://bit.ly/4bwOAh1 The Work, by Bri Lee - https://bit.ly/4rzflar Beauty, by Bri Lee - https://bit.ly/3NMnrPf Love 2.0, by Barbara Fredrickson - https://bit.ly/40ylOYp Better To Not Have Been, by David Benatar - https://bit.ly/3NmtHx5 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report - https://bit.ly/3Phc7Lt Ipsos Perils of Perception Climate Change - https://bit.ly/4cP32mT 📺Things to watch An Inconvenient Truth - https://bit.ly/4bPolUk 💻Things to check out Freadom Inside Project - https://bit.ly/4bhVxnm Peter Singer Pond Proximity thought experiment - https://youtu.be/Gu-WUHD6mKg 🩷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

  Hope is something that you earn through action. People wait to feel better so that they can then act. All my life, it is the acting that has allowed me to feel better.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Highlighted within the spotlight of the Me Too movement, Bree became a voice for victim survivors around the country. Bree's latest book, Seed, is a fictional novel which grapples with climate anxiety, value-based living and the prospect of having children in an unsustainable world.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  It's not necessarily that I wanted kids. What I wanted was the freedom to make that choice for myself, free of climate anxiety. And I will never experience that. Humans are capable of extraordinary courage and generosity when they are motivated by love. Where that seems to fail is when humans exist at the scale and rate of growth that they currently are. And when we cannot sort of see the impacts of our actions. What does it mean to live a good life? And what do we owe each other? If you change the world for one person, you've changed the world for them.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Just because you're not the hero that gets to blow himself up in the planet, doesn't mean you can't save the world.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  The Imperfects invites you into a very safe place.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  A place where we share without judgment

• 1:30Speaker 02

  and drink heaps of vulnerability.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Grab yourself a cup. This is the Vulnerability House.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Well, if you were tuning into this week's episode and thinking, "God, I hope this, I hope this guest is good this week. I hope it's a good one." I can assure you, she is gonna be brilliant.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  Brilliant, brilliant.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Once more, please.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  That's good. Brilliant.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Have you ever thought of that or heard that?

• 2:15Speaker 00

  No, never, never.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  How long have you been thinking about it?

• 2:18Speaker 03

  Too long, too long.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  I get a lot of cheese puns, obviously, Bree. Yeah, I like that you didn't take the easy road there.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Never do, never will.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Always strive for the hard pun.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  No, that's just a bit of a cheesy joke, but I will, I will try and stay highbrow.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  The first thing I thought of was I was so jealous of your name because as someone with 17 letters in my name, Josh, you've got 19.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  But I just, every time I think back to doing exams and I always just felt unfair because I could tell I was still doing my name when people were reading the first question. I always thought that was unfair. And for you, you've got six letters to do, that's great.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  I have been told that book cover designers love my name.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I would.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  Because there's so much, yes.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  It just looks so good on a book. It looks like that is a real author already, just from the name. There's something just so strong about the name.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Are you, are you good at tearing along perforated lines?

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  That's the combo because I was also bad at tearing along perforated lines. So you write your name and then you have to tear your.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  I'll be fascinated to see how this is contextual.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  In an exam, back when I did exams, I don't know what happens now, but you would have to, you'd write your name, then you'd tear off that part of the paper.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  And someone would collect that and I could, it took me so long to tear along a perforated line without ripping the whole thing. So I had to deal with a long name, then I had to tear along a perforated line. And if you'll go to tear along perforated lines and you have a short name, you had a hell of an advantage in exams.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Would you like to choose one of these cards to talk about?

• 3:55Speaker 03

  I think also the look on Bree's face suggests that she's a lot younger than you, Hugh. Her exam experience probably has been upgraded since you were tearing perforated lines.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  It was pencil and paper for the record, but no perforated paper, yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, anyway.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  Good start.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're so lucky to have you in here, Bree. I'll just, I'll do a quick bio for those of you who don't yet know Bree. So. When overthinking about the current state of the world, Bree Lee finds comfort in taking action. Bree's first job as a judge's associate, hearing repeatedly about child abuse and sexual assault cases, completely upended everything Bree thought she knew about the Australian judicial system and her own sense of safety within it. Bree's memoir, Eggshell Skull, was published in 2018, a response to her own experience inside the court system as a victim of sexual assault. Highlighted within the spotlight of the Me Too movement, Bree became a voice for victim survivors around the country, rightly bylined as a changemaker and a leader of reform. Eggshell Skull was biography of the year,

• 4:58Speaker 01

  the Australian book industry, and in 2021 was quoted during a parliamentary debate regarding reform in the Queensland criminal justice system. Bree's other works include Beauty, Who Gets to Be Smart and The Work. In 2021, Bree founded Freedom Inside Project alongside the grassroots community organisation Women's Justice Network. Which is so incredible. It provides incarcerated women and girls with access to books in New South Wales. What an incredible thing to have you named to. Bree's latest book, Seed, is a fictional novel which grapples with climate anxiety, value-based living and the prospect of having children in an unsustainable world. Bree, you have a rare way of putting language around experiences people often carry in silence, offering care, clarity

• 5:42Speaker 01

  and a sense of being deeply understood. And we feel so lucky to have time with you today.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  That's such a beautiful introduction. I really, I really appreciate that. Thank you.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's all true, obviously.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  Can you pick the bit which was made up? None of it was made up.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is two truths and a lie. Which of those books did I not write?

• 6:04Speaker 03

  I've never written a book. No, many books. She's written many books.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  One of the things you've obviously done as you were thinking about incarcerated women and how important it is for them to read, can you tell us a bit about that? Because I find that amazing.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously when Eggshell Skull came out 2018 and I had been thinking a lot about Me Too and consent law reform, you know, the way most people think about that is trying to put people in jail, right? But what myself and frankly, a lot of advocates in similar positions learn as soon as you come up against this system is that sentencing is not the answer. The longer somebody goes to prison, the more likely they are to re-offend once they come out and... I just don't, I don't support a carceral state like Australia. Putting essentially a human being in the kind of torturous naughty corner and just somehow miraculously

• 7:00Speaker 00

  expecting them to fix themselves while they're there. We have all the data, that's not how it works. And then when I started learning more specifically about women and young girls incarcerated in Australia, they just like, almost all of them, you're talking about high 90% are themselves survivors of physical, sexual assault, domestic and family abuse and violence. And what is so frustrating is that we demonize these people. And then when they come out, they, it's almost impossible for them to get housing and they can't just miraculously rehabilitate themselves. And I connected with the Women's Justice Network who do extraordinary work.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  They have a mentor program in particular that tries to support women as they're coming out of prison.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  And it came off the back of, brief tangent, I had written Who Gets to Be Smart? My second major nonfiction work about inequality in Australia's education systems. And then I was doing so well at my PhD that I won a $1,000 book voucher. It's just like, oh my God, this is literally my book in action. Like, I'm fine, I don't need this, like, who needs this? And I, yeah, I'm doing so well, I get more resources to keep learning.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  To be clear, that wasn't a voucher for a $1,000 book. That was $1,000 worth of books.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  But I had been doing some little things with Women's Justice Network and I had this voucher and I sort of emailed them and I said,

• 8:32Speaker 00

  how do, how do women in prison get books? Do they get books? What even happens? Do they want more books? Could they use this voucher? And it just sort of snowballed from there. So stage one of the Freedom Inside project, and for anyone interested, it's spelt Freedom, F R E A D, like read, freedom inside.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Great name.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, good pun also, yes, thank you.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Brilliant.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  So the first stage, we got like $50,000 worth of books purchased and donated to the New South Wales Correctional Services, like, library facilities. And then stage two, we crowdfunded to run a year of book clubs in prisons, run by women with lived experience of incarceration to go back in and run those book clubs. And they have been a phenomenal success. They, you know, they have a sort of signup sheet for them and that signup sheet is just full immediately. The demand is there. And the next stage is figuring out how we get sort of multi-year funding to make that program sustainable for the Women's Justice Network. That's, that's on the 2026 to-do list.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  It's so incredible. We had a lot of people contact us wanting to talk about the thing that you have gone and researched and written about, which is, I guess, the theme around climate anxiety. I mean, we're just the summer just gone. We were down the Great Ocean Road in Victoria and we had, we had to evacuate at some point for fires. And then two days later, we had horrific flooding where cars and caravan parks were washed away two days after it. And it just, trying to explain that to a nine-year-old, a six-year-old and a three-year-old who were, they, yeah, I mean, they were anxious, like explain that we were leaving because there might be fires. And then also talking about when we go back very close where there's been floods.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  It was such a confusing thing, but in the end it led to anxiety for kids. That's a very specific example around kids, but what you have looked at is, I think, what a lot of people around the world right now are really struggling with, which is how do we, how are we meant to be and how are we meant to live with this overhead just hanging, this uncertainty and fear around what's happening to the climate. So, yeah, I'm so excited to have the opportunity to chat to you about that today. Has that been something on your mind you've wanted to write about for a long time?

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely. The big catalyst for me and where the sort of, like, oh my gosh, so cringe, the seed of the idea for the book that then became Seed began. I turned 30 in 2021. And, you know, when you turn 30, you're like, oh, is it, should I adult now? How would one do that?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Definitely not, not yet.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  You know, and my peer group had started either having babies or think, you know, talking seriously about what their plans were to do that. And in 2021, two huge reports came out that really profoundly impacted me. One was the IPCC Red Line for Humanity report. That was the one where it basically said that we are heading towards a 1.5 degree increase in temperature and we are doing nowhere near enough. And as a response to that, you know, a pram, someone set fire to a pram out the front of Parliament House in Australia. We had Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, who had taken a lump of coal into Parliament.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  There was very much the sense that like all of the science is telling us clearly what we need to do. And in Australia, we have a government that is Doing the opposite. Exactly. Not just not doing anything, doing the opposite. And the other report that came out that I, that still sort of haunts me is the Ipsos Perils of Perception Climate Change Report. So they do these reports, which are fascinating, basically showing like the gap in any given topic between what most people, and this is like around the world, 35 countries, tens of thousands of participants, what people think versus what really is. Perils of Perception. And the 2021 report was about climate change.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  And it, the report listed the, the things in order that we can do to reduce our like sort of carbon footprint, to reduce our individual impacts on the planet. And then listed what people thought were the most impactful things we could do. And there was almost no correlation there. So the top thing that the report noted was having one less child. That was the number one most impactful thing anyone could do to reduce their impact and their sort of carbon footprint. The second and third were owning one less car and taking the equivalent of one fewer, like around the world aeroplane trip per year.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  And only 10% of people picked the child. Very few people picked car or aeroplane. Almost half of people thought that recycling was like the most impactful thing that they could do. And That was really shocking to me because I was in school when an inconvenient truth came out in cinemas.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  That was the Al Gore documentary, yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  It has been, like, it had been 20 years or so since this conversation went mainstream.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Hang on, that was 20 years ago.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  20 years ago now, from now.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Isn't that nuts?

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, ages ago.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Ah, that's makes me scared and depressed.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Exactly, scared and depressed because that's how long this conversation has been in the mainstream. And we still have this huge gap between what people think is having an impact and what actually is. And those two reports at that time in my life, and I just, when people were having this conversation about whether or not to have kids and it, like, I'll never be able to undo how interwoven those things are, like that, that question with that issue. That's, that's my, that's my life now.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And having known you for a short amount of time, I feel like we should probably also acknowledge that, like, there are a lot of parents listening right now or people who are not parents or trying to work out what to do. And this is absolutely, you know, there's not, there's no judgment in this conversation. It's just the, it's the exploration of, of what, of, you know, the work you've done.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And there are very few places that, and it's like, it's a, it's a huge compliment to you, what you have created, that this is one of those places where you can have difficult conversations that aren't just pointing fingers.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And this is a, this is a vulnerability house, as you know, Bray. So we have got cards and I hope we can continue talking about this. So for those who don't know, the vulnerability house is, it's a place, it's a safe place, like, like you just sort of alluded to, Bray, and there's some cards here on, on each of these cards, um, is a question that might invoke some, hopefully, vulnerable story or part of your life that you want to share.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  But before you pick it up, it's always feels kind of cringey saying this, but thank you for everything that you're doing. It's like, it's really, it's such a selfless service.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you. That's really beautiful. Okay. I'm going to pick three and then pick the one that I want. So, um, option one, what impact do you want to have on the people around you? Option two, when has trusting your gut slash intuition significantly helped or hindered you? And number three, what moment from your life are you grateful for that profoundly changed you?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Three goodies.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  I'm gonna pick number three, the moment from my life that I'm grateful for that profoundly changed me.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Does it, what comes to mind, is it in the same ballpark or world that we've just been talking about?

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  Although it's literally at the South Pole.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Technically same world.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  So.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  This will be our first ever story about South Pole.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Oh, great. Hey, how exciting.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  We haven't Santa Claus on before, so this is the other North Pole one.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  So when, you know, talking about like 2021, when I started asking myself these questions, that was when I knew that I want, would need to, would need to write a book about it to, to, to figure it out. Because that's what I do. For me, books are like sandpits and I sort of build a structure and then I figure out what I think and feel by writing into them for multiple years, like big questions, big undertakings. And I wanted, I knew it needed to be fiction, like a made up story because the topic, this question of whether or not to have children is so sensitive. It just, the horrible human history of, you know, group A telling group B that

• 17:28Speaker 00

  they can't or shouldn't have kids, like that, there's just too much weight there. It's too fraught. And I didn't want it to be finger wagging or like, you know, judgmental. I wanted it to be like a safe place that would really, you know, really challenge people, but also give them an opportunity to think for themselves and hash out these difficult questions. And that's what a novel is built for, to like, ask the biggest questions about life and love.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  So I went to Antarctica.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Because. I knew that the character, the main character in the book, his name is Mitch. He's a climate scientist. He specializes in, he's a biologist who specializes in the plant life that has already or will go underwater due to sea level rise. So he is very much, you know, it's not theoretical to him. It's not, and, and global warming is not kind of just sort of far away outside somewhere where there isn't air conditioning. He is at the front lines of what it is costing.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Pun, but he's at the coal fires.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, no, really. And so I went to Antarctica. It was just, I'm so grateful. Well, that's, that's what, that's what comes springs to mind is that trip changed my life. The boat went, left from the southernmost tip of New Zealand and went across the Southern Ocean, down into McMurdo Sound and that area of Antarctica and back. It took four weeks after three days.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Four weeks to get to.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  No, no, four weeks total.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  But, but about a week to actually just get down, you know, to cross the Antarctic Circle.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Not the point at all, but did you get seasick and was that horrific?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  How bad's that? Seasickness are the worst.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  It's not, I, I had good medication and when we went, the seas were like 10, 12 meters, but the trip that had just come back was like 15, 16 meters. And a guy cracked his rib from being thrown out of bed and across the room. Their passage was so bad. Yeah, the Southern Ocean is notorious. It's pretty gnarly. Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  You're really gonna wanna go.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but you, but I did and it was amazing.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, it's like when I went to Rottnest Island, but it's not at all.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Go back to the moment where you were gonna say it.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  I see you were angry that day, my friend.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  But one of the big things, and this is what's like relevant to answering this question, is that we lost all like phone reception and internet after three days at sea.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  So for

• 20:02Speaker 03

  And that's uncommon, or is that just part of the trip?

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Um, it, we in 2021, I think they've even like sort of um updated connectivity capabilities since then, um, which really I actually think is a shame because part of what made the experience so magical for me was being completely disconnected from the outside world as I saw these landscapes that I, you know, until you see them are beyond your comprehension because humans are not supposed to live there. We cannot exist there without extraordinary feats of engineering and science and regular supply drops.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  And if anything goes wrong, we die. Like that's, it's not like another continent. It's like another planet down there. And, and I, I mean, I didn't sort of lie to anyone, but um on the boat, I just introduced myself as Brianna and said I was a PhD student. I didn't say I was writing a book and nobody else knew me and I was there essentially by myself. Um, and the, what I'm like profoundly grateful for that um changed me was not just what I saw outside the boat, but actually um the people on the boat.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  So going to Antarctica is really expensive. Um, it's a huge undertaking and that meant that like on the journey I was on with about a hundred and twenty guests on this big icebreaker ship, there was me and kind of two other people who are youngish and then every single other person was at least my parents' age, most of them my grandparents' age, because that's who could afford the ticket to go.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  And I watched a lot of these people, in particular men, not coping.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  And there were, there's sort of two things I want to mention about it, which is why it changed me so much. Um, when you're looking out at the Antarctic landscape, there's nothing, there's nothing there that you can anthropomorphize. Like, and what that means is, you know, if we look at the landscapes we're used to, say, like the beach or the um the bush or like a jungle, there are plants, there are animals, there is movement, there's some element of like story there that we can kind of, it, it, it catalyzes thought and feeling and reaction in us.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Like familiarity, is that what you mean?

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, it can be, and it can be anything. It depends. It just, it's something that sparks your imagination and lets you sort of think about um hu- humans and stuff.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Um, and also just to make sense of what's happening right in front of you.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. Thank you. When you look out at like the polar plateau or like the real white expanse, because there's nothing there upon which your consciousness can like kind of gain purchase.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Nothing to hook into.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. It, the way I experienced that was it forced a meditative state. You have to just go into memory and reflection and deep sort of thinking because there's nothing else there for you to do.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Is it, is it kind of like acceptance as well, just accepting the thing?

• 22:59Speaker 00

  If you're lucky.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Right, really? Is it that powerful?

• 23:02Speaker 00

  It's, this is what is so powerful about it. And when you combine that with, for most people, the first time in at least a decade that they've not had any contact with the outside world, no news cycle, no email, no text message, no phone call. I watched a lot of people who were at like the latest stages of their lives,

• 23:30Speaker 00

  not coping.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  And so what did that look like? So how were they not coping?

• 23:33Speaker 00

  So, um, well, they told me about it.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Someone literally said, we're not coping.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they didn't say those words, but it was clearly the vibe being given off. So these were a lot of people who were coming up to big times in their life, like, say, like their eldest kid had moved out of home. Sorry, their youngest kid, thank you, yeah. You know, they were, they were at that transition or they were, it was a retirement trip for them. Like they were at these later points in their life. And it was like they were screaming on the inside.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  And I met, and I'm talking about world renowned transplant surgeons. I'm talking about one guy who had had his like, you know, glittering military career and now did some kind of digital cartography in the UK as a consultant, like really respected and frankly, rich, rich, high achieving men. Who then would come to me at the bar and tell me about how their marriage had broken down. And that. The impression I was given is that they were looking out at this ice and just full of regret that they had prioritized the wrong things in their lives.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  And by contrast, I met a woman and I was, she and I were chatting and I was like, oh, you know, this is the longest I've gone without talking to my now husband. And she's, she told me her first husband had been in the Vietnam War and her second husband was a ship's captain. She was like, babe, this is nothing.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  And she had lost both her husbands, but she wasn't screaming on the inside.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  So I went back to my cabin. This is like week three. People are kind of losing their minds. Some people are totally fine. And I thought, why, this is a gift. There is something happening here. All of these 50, 60, 70 year olds, half of them are clearly having the time of their lives and half of them are not okay. What's the difference here? And what can I learn from this? And all of the people who were well, even if they had had loss, it was that they had prioritized love in their lives.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Wow.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  And oh my God, Goosey's just thinking about it. And I just, I will never forget

• 25:49Speaker 00

  feeling what a gift it was to have received what I believe to be like really hard-won wisdom that a lot of people don't get until that later stage of their lives. And saying to myself, you need to live that. You need to live that now. Like it is such a gift to just receive that wisdom from people who've like already lived it in order to learn it. And I just really have tried to, have tried to live those values since I came back.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Is it something that you felt like you have or haven't done previous to that? Did it resonate with you because you thought, I haven't done this over the last however long in my life?

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, because if you're someone who is.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Driven, if you're someone who is ambitious and, you know, I'm a really, the joke in my household is that enthusiasm is 80% of my personality. Like, I just, you know, I like doing things. I like learning and I like challenging myself and always on the go, go, go. And that, you know, if you're enthusiastic towards the people you love, sure, that's one thing. But I think often we can fib to ourselves about what is actually driving the choices in our lives. And with hindsight, I think I was fibbing to myself and I try to be a lot more honest about it now.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Wow, that's a pretty amazing reflection on yourself, the fibbing part.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  I think when you say love and prioritizing love, I feel like for many people listening, you automatically go to a certain thing of what that means. But it seems like a big catch all for so much. What do you see as defining or what is encompassed in prioritizing love?

• 27:40Speaker 00

  To me, it's like, it can be both simple and wide. So there's a different woman I met and she was there with her sister. And, you know, so all those other examples I gave were people's, like, wives or husbands. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that. It can be friendship, it can be other family and kinship networks. But I think most people can probably feel intuitively whether it is love or not, that is the thing sort of driving them or helping them set their priorities.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  There might not be an answer to this question, but how do you define love?

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Hmm. It is outside oneself simultaneously to, um, yeah, the fire that is inside me that is also outside me and shared at the same time somehow.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, beautiful.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, she can answer the question.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, like if I'm on the spot, well, it just says something.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Oh God, what is love? Um, it, we feel it in ourselves, right? And, but it is all, like, it is shared.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  Um, you can, and I actually, I think self-love is a different thing. I know we use that word like self-love and, and I think what that often means is self-care or self-regard, but I think my personal definition of love is it must be with others and for others and, and be giving and yet receiving simultaneously enlarged by them.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's fascinating because I can imagine that a lot of people on the fibbing thing, a lot of the people that you talk about who have achieved so much and done so much, like imagine the surgeon, for example, could be, I think could fib to themselves that what they're doing is an act of love, but it obviously hasn't nourished something or it's missed something along the way. And maybe it's, maybe it's the piece of the puzzle of that connection with other people.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  But where it becomes tricky as well is like, so a transplant surgeon, right? This is the perfect example.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  That, you know, he's saving lives.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  That's, you know, he's not like, you know, some coal lobbyist, like it's just, you know, extraordinary. But what is also true is that that is a well-remunerated, highly respected, lauded career.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  Well, that's the thing, there's a, there's a really interesting context there because it's like, nothing can take away from the transplant surgeon that he's doing, he's doing great things for people. But it's like, yeah, is he saving, in his mind, is he coming at it from a place of like, I'm saving lives or I'm doing my job?

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Hmm. And it's again, proof that it's not for any of us at this table to be able to, to judge for him. Only he knows whether or not it was driven by love or not.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  And it sounds like from the conversations, they had potentially, they weren't.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other big, the thing with love is that it's.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Because I agree that it involves other people. Um, and it's scary because it's, it's, you can't control it.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  It's sort of, it's, there's this sort of like inherent uncertainty that you can only, or you can't even necessarily control your side of it. It's just like, it's, it's like this, like bouncing back and forth constantly, uh, energy, uh, that unlike a career or, um, whatever job you do, that you maybe, that is just up to you. Maybe you can control that a little bit more. You can control the environment, you can control the context, the circumstances, how much you commit to it, um, when you leave, when you stop, when you start. There's so much you can control with a lot of life in that sort of sense with particularly around ambition.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  But with love, it's scary because it's, it's inherently uncertain and uncontrollable. And that's terrifying for us.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  And I think a huge mindset shift for me, um, has been that just because I can't control it, doesn't mean, um, that it's sort of not as good.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  And that actually often when I look back and try to be really honest and not fib, the things in my life that have most enriched it, that I'm most grateful for were not the things that I controlled the outcome of. And it may, even if you have a great love and you honor it, it may still result in loss. Like the one inexorable truth about all of us is that we will die. Like it's, you can't, yeah, there's no box that you can tick. It's much harder than that.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Um, I've thought about love a lot over the holidays just gone. And I, it's so relevant to this conversation. So I think potentially what I'm hearing just from the paper you spoke to was like, my thoughts have been heavily influenced by a lady called Barbara Fredrickson, who wrote a book called Love 2.0. And her definition of love is they are, she said, it's not being in love with someone. It's, they are micro moments of positive resonance.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  And so for me, I was thinking over the holidays, the way you get those micro moments of positive resonance, because I'm thinking about it from the point of view as a dad and being a family was, there are two things that will lead to that, it's time and it's presence. And I feel like if, if we are so driven by a career, they're two things that we probably don't get to, we don't have much time, we don't, it's harder to be present, I feel. And so over the holidays, I had three weeks just with family, nothing in the calendar at all. And I had so many micro moments of positive resonance, because I was so there and I just had time, like, there was just time, there was full days where everything planned, a lot of time the trampoline, a lot of time at the beach, a lot of time wandering around, trying to work out what to do with the day. And in those moments,

• 33:38Speaker 01

  that's where I had those micro moments. And, and that, to me, was that, that felt like that, that was love. And I just feel like hearing the stories of the people on the boat, potentially, they've done incredible things and created love and, and what they do is incredible, but maybe there, there wasn't that time and presence with the people that really mattered to them, the people that were closest to them.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  I love the word resonance in that definition, too. That's a much more articulate way of that inside-outside thing.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Fire inside-outside is much better.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  A resonant inside-outside fire.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Mix them together.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  That's beautiful.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  We, we said at the start that you turn your, your, your anxiety into action.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  And obviously this trip where you had this life-changing realisation or, or the, the grateful moment that, that changed you. What, what else did you learn about, um, I guess, the ways that we can deal with our anxiety towards, and those who are listening wouldn't have seen it, very big eye roll there.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  Put it in closed captions.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  But yeah, just the environment like you've probably thought about a lot more than the average person around climate anxiety.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Well, it's a contrib like it's one of the reasons that made me so heartbroken was having these big realizations about love and wanting to prioritize that. And then, you know, I think it's fair to say regardless of what people choose and regardless of whether or not it's even a choice for people and we should be really, um, I want to be really gentle about this. We're talking, we're going to have a conversation about whether people want to have kids or not. That is a completely different thing to whether or not people can. A lot of people are forced to carry children that they would rather not, particularly in America at the moment. We can't have this conversation without acknowledging that, but even in Australia.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  And also a lot of people who would love to have children can't. And that's, that is a valid and weighty subject that is not what today is about.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  But what I felt frustrated by was I think it's fair to say that whether or not you want to have kids is one of the biggest sort of love-based decisions that you will make as a person traveling through the world. And to have, to have the weight of the climate emergency enmeshed in that very personal decision is, I experienced that as agony.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Something I wanted to mention as well is the last time the three of you talked about this topic, I think it was 2023.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  I listened to that conversation and like, to be really honest, and it's a bit not embarrassing, but it's hard to be honest about. I felt a lot of envy because in an hour or so of chatting, everyone talks about what they wanted and what they didn't want. And there was no should or shouldn't. And for me, the question about whether or not to have children has from the beginning been affected by should or shouldn't.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  And envy can be, if you're not, I find in my life, try to speak for myself.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  If I'm not honest about envy, it can turn to resentment, right? Like someone's got something that you don't have. And if you're not honest, able to be clear on that for yourself, you resent them for it. Instead of what envy can be, which I try to have it be, is very enlightening. Envy shows you what you want. And it is not necessarily that I wanted kids, listening to two out of three of you talk about having already had kids. What I wanted was the freedom to make that choice for myself.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Free of climate anxiety.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  And I will never experience that. And, and just having to, um, like, accept that, to make peace with that, that, oh my gosh, it's like, to paraphrase Gandalf. You know, we don't get to, we don't get to choose the time we're born into. All we can do is try and make the best of the time that we have.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's such an interesting point. Cause I, I was thinking about that a couple of days ago in sort of preparing for this, that how quickly. Um, and may, maybe it's just because in my, in my mind, it's something that I've always wanted so much that maybe irrationally I haven't listened as much to the, or opened my, I did, opened my mind to the reality of the climate dilemma with kids. But I also think that it feels like the change is in the amount of anxiety around it happens so quickly that we're only a couple of years different in age, like maybe, I think, I'm guessing here, I think about four years. You're, you guys are a little bit older.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're not counting.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  But it feels like it's not quite a generation, but it just, for people a little bit older than me, I think the climate thought is just not as present. And it's ramping up really fast. And that for yourself and that for people a few years younger, it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger as a threat. And I, yeah, and I, um, I totally see what you're saying in how much it sucks to be born at a time when that muddies an already difficult, complicated thing.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  It's hard and, um.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  I've spoken to a lot of people of older generations who have said that they, you know, who have expressed the opinion that, you know, when nuclear war was sort of on the brink, that that would have been a similar feeling. And with the utmost respect, I can't imagine what that feels like. But there is a fundamental difference with the climate emergency because we are all implicated. It is not something that, it is not a kind of on off switch that somebody else is controlling over there that will either be flicked or not. This is something that's getting worse day after day. And we live in Australia, we live in a representative democracy and our leaders aren't doing anything about it. We're certainly not doing anywhere near enough.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Even, you know, Richard Dennis from the Australian Institute was saying the current Australian government makes more money off HECS than it does from the petroleum tax. Like even, you know, it's not just left, right, you know, we have two major parties. It's not just left, right. It's that no one is doing as much as needs be done. And so what I think a lot of young people are left with is a feeling of betrayal. We, we like to believe that, um, you know, and it's something I think about, like if I did want to have a kid, why is that? And what would I hope to, to give or to do? And it's a pretty foundational thing that most parents want to have their kid have a better life than they did to give the kid everything you had and, and more.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  And that is something that our society sort of has taken for granted. And yet with this huge thing, young people have been left with the ruins. That, you know, and as, as, you know, turning 30 and seeing my elders just the absolute dereliction of duty on this particular issue has, um, it's, it's hard to come to terms with that. It's hard to know how to feel about the sort of collective inaction at that scale.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Do you mind if we just pop back a few minutes to when you're talking about the should versus the shouldn't shouldn't as opposed to the want?

• 41:43Speaker 03

  You've obviously thought so much about this. And if you feel comfy to really help, well, first of all, to make anyone like you feel properly seen and also to help older generations understand what you, what you feel like the thought process and how you're feeling around that, that, you know, referenced the episode we did a few years ago. Well, you know, I'm still, Jam, my partner and I are still kind of like deciding what we want. For us, the decision is by is nowhere near, nowhere near as much as it is for you and many others guided by climate.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  But it's so crucial. I'm so interested to know how you've, how you've felt and how it's changed, how it started, even like how you felt growing up in terms of like thinking about yourself in your future and family and how that's changed or not.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  I would say something that I think is really good that has changed generationally, and you guys touched on this when you last spoke, is the presumption shift. And it's, you know, we live still mostly in what can be described as a pronatalist society. There is a presumption, not only is there a presumption that we will all at least try to have kids, but that that is an inherently good thing. And therefore, if you can't or don't, that there's sort of something wrong with you, that you're not with the program. And obviously, there are a myriad of ways in which that's offensive and hurtful and unhelpful.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, which may or may not be people's intention, but that is certainly how it often feels.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yes. And when I was thinking about this stuff myself and asking myself difficult questions, I realized through my research in this sandpit of this book, that there is a thing called antinatalism or antinatalism. And That it's not sort of widely known, but there are at least a dozen books in English published about it, where people have sort of found language, you know, words and phrases that were helpful to help me shape and frame my thinking. So all antinatalists share the basic belief that it is morally wrong to decide to have a child. But there are also all kinds of questions that antinatalism raises.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Three of the big ones, for example, are, is it ethical to bring a person into the world without their consent? Another one is, are humans inherently bad or inherently good? And does that mean we should or shouldn't make more of them? And the third one is, you know, what obligations do we have to each other and to the planet? And does that change if you have a child and are thinking intergenerationally? Or shouldn't that change?

• 44:34Speaker 00

  I know there are some things that I agree with and some things I don't agree with in antinatalism, but I think it helps to describe very briefly the kind of two broad umbrellas. Because like any ism, there's a lot of infighting and, you know, disagreement was like kind of within the movement about what it is. But broadly speaking, you have misanthropic antinatalists and you have philanthropic antinatalists. So I'll go philanthropic first because it's like more intense. A philanthropic antinatalist, this is the kind of quite academic esoteric belief that because it is inevitable in human life that we will all suffer to some amount, and you

• 45:15Speaker 00

  can't sort of ask someone whether or not they want to be born, it's safest to not sort of like inflict consciousness on someone else when you can't check with them first. So it's not at all about.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  You know, trying to sort of like quantify suffering versus joy. It's just that, you know, the human condition is one that is often difficult. And the fact is, lots of people wish they hadn't been born. And if you've never felt that for yourself, love that for you. But it's, you know, you're sort of gambling. And you can't check. And you can't check, yes. So that's philanthropic, which is very, yeah, very sort of philosophical existential. Yeah. Misanthropic is the one that is more commonly associated with the climate emergency anxiety stuff. And that looks at the damage that humans do to the planet, to animals and to other humans. And sort of says, with that frankly, like terrifying wall of evidence of how destructive,

• 46:16Speaker 00

  how uniquely destructive the human species is, is it ethical to make more humans? There are parts, there are sort of issues where the two overlap. And actually, I think the climate emergency is one of them because

• 46:33Speaker 00

  children born today will be facing a planet

• 46:38Speaker 00

  that has so many more challenges and so much more suffering than we can currently imagine due to the climate emergency. But also, we're all sitting here making this decision in somewhere like Australia with huge per capita carbon emissions. And we are not the people at like low sea level island nations whose villages are already going underwater.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  The suffering is is much higher. And then also, we are, we keep doing this suffering. And then also with the misanthropic argument, it's pretty powerful to say, why don't you adopt? You know, there are many really powerful academic intellectual arguments for anti-natalism. And to like, bring it all back to the sort of overarching theme of the day, though, I went and listened to David Benatar, who's probably the world's most famous anti-natalist. He spoke at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney a couple of years ago.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  And I went and listened to him and in my memory, and I'm quite confident of this because I was listening for it, he didn't mention love.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  And so that is the challenge I have with antinatalism as a like, you know, philosophical, um, a way of thinking or a way of an inquiry, a lens which we can use to look at the world is that when I talk to people and when I think and feel the one constant they all mention, whether or not they want to have kids is the L word. And it's you cannot externalize something that foundational and that like fundamental to the human experience. If your life philosophy can't account for the thing that makes us the best version of who we are, can you say it's a valid theory? It's really hard.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then when you run that against your profound insight, when you're on the boat of seeing people who seem disconnected from love when faced with a with nothing but themselves, finding it impossible to to, or just what I can't remember the word, not coping, but it seems like it got even more dramatic than that in some cases. That seems like a pretty interesting lens with which to look at antinatalism through that experience.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it doesn't, it's not like an equation where you can sort of plus or minus and get a result. These are the most kind of impossible existential questions that a person can ask. In my opinion, the two biggest questions that philosophy has always asked since the beginning of kind of human expression in the language that we now recognize in all cultures is essentially, what does it mean to live a good life? And what do we owe each other?

• 49:35Speaker 04

  What do we owe each other? Never heard that. That's fascinating.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  That's how I would put it in plain English. All of the philosophy sort of schools or or methods of thought and inquiries and lenses that I've ever encountered come down to either both or one of these questions. What does it mean to live a good life? What do we owe each other? And in my opinion, the climate emergency.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Just brings those questions to such a undeniable like sort of forefront. What does it mean to live a good life at this late stage of the climate emergency? In terms of what we prioritize, what we consume, how we act and what do we owe each other? What do we owe each other intergenerationally? What do we owe each other internationally? Like that's, that's it.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  And what do we owe future generations of ourselves?

• 50:27Speaker 00

  Yep, exactly. Regardless, and also regardless of whether or not we have kids, even if I never have a kid, I'm still thinking about the planet. It's, it's not fair to say that people who have kids are sort of automatically more kind of altruistic. It can, it can be always true. It's just, it's not that simple.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Doesn't come with it.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Sort of, it sort of feels a bit like, like particularly with the what do we owe each other? Question like weirdly, it makes me think about like those end of the world movies like Armageddon, Deep Impact and Interstellar to a certain degree.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Because often in those films, there's usually the hero is usually the cat or heroes are the characters who sacrifice themselves for the good of the rest of humanity. They fly the spaceship into the meteor, basically, so the world can continue. And it feels a bit like what, what comes from that and why probably a lot of people have put their head in the sand essentially or, or do.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Is that for the, for the good of future generations, we maybe have to sacrifice the things that we, the way that we just want to live our life. And we have to like, think about things that we don't necessarily want to think about. And we have to do things that we don't necessarily want to do, not because they're necessarily hard or, or you're not flying into an asteroid, but they're uncomfortable or they're just, I don't know, like.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  I think most of the time they're just inconvenient.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Inconvenient is what it is. It's like, I'd rather watch Netflix than think about like, that's hard to think about that. And it's totally fair. But it's like, this is why it's just, it's so hard to talk about and scary and heartbreaking. Um, I mean, and also to stay the obvious, what the fuck do I know? But also, but also it's kind of reminding me of that feeling of like the sacrifice that one, two, three generations have to make for the good of the generations following that.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Hmm. Something else, this is like a brief tangent, but the way I have come to try and think about it a bit more positively than all kind of like sacrifice and I can't have fun stuff anymore and, and we're all evil is, um. So when I was researching about the South Pole, I'm in Antarctica, I'm reading all of these stories about the great polar explorers and adventurers. And the most famous sort of part of that story that has lived on is the race to the South Pole. So you've got R F Scott, who is the British sort of gentleman navy sea captain guy. And then you've got Roald Amundsen, who is Norwegian.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  We would probably say these days, some kind of neuro spicy, like totally kind of committed, um, absolute evidence based.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  And one of like the main reason that Amundsen not only won the race to the pole, but did it keeping his entire team alive? Was because he went and learned from the First Nations people up near the North Pole, how they live and survive and thrive in that environment.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  And from them, he learned how to use huskies, for example. To the British mind, R F Scott at that time, dogs were ungentlemanly and it was inconceivable that he could have anything to learn from such a quote unquote savage, basic peoples.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  His team died.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  We are still making the same mistake. There, we in Australia live on the lands of the oldest living culture in the world. And their way of thinking, and I'm not speaking for them, but their way of thinking about humans having the capacity to be custodians of the land.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Not the way we think, which is either we're getting from it, or like we're either taking something, or even when we talk about sort of carbon footprints and trying to reduce our emissions, like trying to like kind of remove our effect from the planet.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  In none of these conversations are people thinking about what good we could do for the planet.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  What the way First Nations knowledge talks about symbiosis of human with planet, that is the way forward.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  And that is how we can begin to think in positive constructive ways that don't just, to your point earlier, don't just make us feel that we have to sacrifice and we're not allowed to watch Netflix anymore.

• 55:18Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  We just, humans keep making the same mistakes again and again.

• 55:24Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Are there modern day examples of cultures anywhere in the world or countries around the world who are doing that?

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah, as soon as you start sort of scratching the surface, a lot of the most exciting developments in like gathering and catching ocean plastics are coming from these island nations.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  There are so many examples out there of ways that a human being can be an agent for good environmentally instead of either an agent for bad or just trying to sort of erase the footprint.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  Does anti-natalism or the anti-natalism movement predate in a large way the climate emergency?

• 56:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  So I've interviewed David Benatar and the way he described it was, and he's, yeah, sort of the most famous one. One of his book, his probably most famous book is called Better to Not Have Been Born.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Better to Have Never Been Born. And he said that the sort of environmental movement broadly put has sort of, you know, like put fuel on the fire of

• 56:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  antinatalism because of those dual concerns about suffering and then, well, suffering felt and then suffering caused

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  by humans. And something that I find really ironic is that, you know, we've mentioned that we live in a pronatalist society, but none of the antinatalists that I've spoken to want to sort of enforce their beliefs on other people. None of them want to see antinatalist principles in public policy.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  They're not trying to tell you what you can or should do. It is, it is a, it is a lens. It's a philosophical tool. They would love to convince you, sure.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  But it's not about control. And why that's ironic is because in particular, for example, in America right now, we have Vance, we have Trump, we have the Musk's, who are all very outspoken pronatalists. And the way they go about that pronatalism is by controlling other people, is with public policy that, for example, most obviously removes bodily autonomy from women.

• 57:34Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Um, and it's just so, it's just so striking to me that, um, antinatalists are often, if people have heard of them at all, they're often dismissed as, um, somehow like degenerate thinkers, or it's still really taboo and kind of mean and misanthropic to, uh, even ask these questions. And yet, from where I sit, the pronatalists in charge are doing a lot more damage.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

• 58:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  But in its essence, it's about suffering irrespective of climate.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  The suffering of a life.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. It gets really grim when you start looking into this stuff. There's a website called The Animal Kill Clock, which just tracks how many animals we Kill for just for consumption, which in this day and age, we don't need to. We can get all of the nutrients we need elsewhere. That's totally voluntary and something we do for tastiness and for convenience. And if you start going down the misanthropic anti-natalist route, and I did for the research for this book, it is, that is a hole that is incredibly hard to dig yourself out of. It leaves you with a very, very grim view of, of how much we are capable of and how often we harm.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  I mean, the amount, the amount of research you've done and information you're carrying in your head is like, I imagine it's like a privilege and a burden in many ways. I don't know if that's right or am I?

• 59:11Speaker 00

  You make me sound like a wise sage.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  On this topic, not many people that I've ever met at least have know this much about it. And I'm just, without wanting to jump ahead too much, where are you at then with like, in terms of trying to have children and reckoning with this yourself?

• 59:33Speaker 00

  The issue I have now is with scale. So I believe that humans are capable, because I have seen it and felt it, capable of extraordinary courage and generosity and wonderful acts when they are motivated by love in all of its forms.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Where that seems to falter or where that seems to fail is when humans exist at the scale and rate of growth that they currently are. And when we cannot sort of see the impacts of our actions. It's just, for humans, it is very difficult to, to sort of deal with anything that's not right in front of us. It's just how we're programmed and it is both the best of us and the worst of us. It's like in.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  I don't know what to make of like how it's sort of a requisite, right? For me to live amongst my peers that I have a smartphone. And yet, most of the cobalt in our smartphones is mined by children in slave-like conditions in the Congo. And when we get needless phone upgrades, we are exacerbating that. And yet, I have witnessed throughout my adult life, extraordinary acts of selfless generosity from adults to children. You know, there's just something about scale. That's where I'm at at the moment. I have faith and I have belief in humans on an individual level and even at a community level. What the challenge is, is what we do once we're sort of at mass level.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  That's where I'm at, which is, sorry if that's not very

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  conclusive or helpful.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  But amazing answer.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, what you brought up makes me think of that Peter Singer thought experiment, the pond, the child in the pond. Do you know that one?

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Please, but you should talk about it, though.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Well, I think it's an interesting one to bring up and we're getting into probably more philosophical areas than I'm, well firstly, than I'm qualified to talk about, but also that we usually do. But the idea

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  You can read my book, What the Fuck Do I Know? If you want to know about it.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I've got a few, I've got a few of them in print as well. But the idea being, and I'm, see if I can get this right, that it's a thought experiment that the Australian philosopher Peter Singer came up with quite a long time ago now, I think in the seventies, that you're got a really nice pair, you've got a fantastic pair of shoes on, you're in a good outfit, you're going to work or something, and you walk past a, very expensive shoes is the point, you walk past a child who's drowning in a pond, and you have the choice to save the child or not. But if you stop to take off your shoes to save the shoes, you won't save the child, the child, you have to go in and ruin your pair of shoes.

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  The idea being that anyone who tried to save those shoes, we would consider a monster and morally completely apparent. But the choice to buy those shoes and not use that money to save lives in a place where you could, if they say their shoes cost $500, the amount of lives you could save by Buying malaria nets for beds in Africa or in certain countries in Africa, I should say. The choice to buy those shoes is somewhat apparent in the first place and that there's a proximity effect and no one is judged for buying nice things. And maybe we shouldn't be judged for buying nice things, but there's a double standard there in

• 1:03:24Speaker 04

  that the proximity of the child and the children that we could save changes the moral equation completely. And is that, does that sum it up pretty well?

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  Absolutely, perfectly. And like, that's decades ago, we're still having the same conversations. Like, these, these are existential questions that don't necessarily have clear answers. They are things that the meaning of our life is to grapple with these things and decide for ourselves what our priorities are.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  And I, I own many pairs of expensive shoes.

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, as do I. Yeah, yeah. One thing I thought, think is quite interesting that,

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  I think is a, that I find really difficult when raising children, having made the decision to have children and on the love point, nothing is, nothing has provided me personally with more love or an experience of love. So I think it's, I just think it's so wonderful that you look at this from a, I don't know, it works for me. It really resonates with me that love is such an important thing across all decisions. And I'm not saying that you have to have children to feel love, but just that for me and my personal experience, that has been the right decision for me. But as someone trying to raise children, I find it really difficult

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  that climate anxiety is a huge one, but that's not the only one. And there's like the threat of, as you said,

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  People like to make the comparison of what it was like to choose to have children in the Cold War, but for me, that one hasn't really gone away either. It's just label. It's it's still there. And it's like, there's climate, there's nuclear Armageddon, there's AI and what that's going to do to employability and and the

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  Everything.

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  Everything. So it just feels like there's more and more layers of uncertainty and anxiety and stress over the world that we're creating for future generations of ourselves, regardless of if you're the one putting another child into the world or not.

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  And probably other things that are more present in the household than like worries that are more present, like internet, social media, although

• 1:05:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, cost of living.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  As opposed to the greater fear of the future, maybe.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  For a little while, I started sort of thinking like, oh, okay. Well, you know, in terms of this scale question and that Ipsos report that having one less child, you know, is the best way you can reduce your footprint. For a while I was like, oh, okay. Well, if I do decide to have a kid, well, then I will just make sure that I do these other tasks that, you know, reduce the

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Your carbon offset.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, carbon offset my child.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  And make sure that kid only has one car so I can have two.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. And then I realized the faultiness of that thinking for a start is that if I am capable of making those changes in my life or doing those sort of activist movements in my life, why do, why do I have to have a child for me to to action those things? If I believe that the planet is that important, why would I not say like reduce my consumption and increase my community participation, regardless of whether or not I'm capable or decide of having a kid?

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  It just, it's just that the kids dial everything up to 11.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  Makes it personal.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then there's this whole other level, which is important to acknowledge, that even the idea of an individual carbon footprint is actually like fossil fuel propaganda created by BP a couple of decades ago to make us think that we are individually responsible for what is in fact

• 1:07:02Speaker 03

  Corporate responsibility.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Corporate responsibility. So in Australia, one of the reasons Australians per capita have such high carbon footprints is because of how much we export, which in my personal opinion is nowhere near adequately taxed. So that if we are going to do that kind of dirty business, that at least there is Income coming into it that we can invest in, you know, ethical ways.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  Me even having one less car or taking one less around the world trip in a world of one percenters and lobbyists who actually make those decisions. You know, it simultaneously should make you feel kind of more angry that the planet is being burned by such a small number of people who carry so much disproportionate power over that decision making and also lighten the load off your shoulders a bit because it is propaganda. You know, there is a lot that we can and should do as individuals, but we're not all automatically bad guys.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  Hmm. It's tricky, isn't it? I feel like that lessens the shame over not being perfect.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  But I also feel like regardless of whether it has an effect, a noticeable effect or not, I should do those things just because it's the right thing to do.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Bingo. Which brings us back to this thing of just what does it mean to live a good life? And what do we owe each other? And regardless of the other choices we make, well, what are our priorities and how do we live those?

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Brilliant. Really brilliant. We've discussed a bit about anxiety around many topics and climate being a big one. One thing that I think I personally struggle is when I have the, to use a phrase that's not mine, but the power of facing, when I summon the power of facing really uncomfortable truths about the world, I find myself to be often overwhelmed to the point of inaction.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  But you seem like, and maybe I am holding you to an impossible standard, but you seem like someone who is able to face things that are uncomfortable and put that anxiety or feeling into some form of action. And whether or not that you might not, you might feel that that's unfair to say that or not, you're not worthy of that, but you're clearly doing things and facing these truths.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  What, do you have any insight into your sort of methodology on, into how you can turn anxiety into action? Cause I feel like it's such an important skill for people. And I would love to know myself of how you do it.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  Um.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  For me, and this is a lesson I learnt from my, like the work that I did, started doing 10 years ago around like consent law reform and just law reform, full stop. And, and that are completely other sort of sphere.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Hope is something that you earn through action. I think a lot of people mistake this, and I'm not, I'm saying this because I find it genuinely helpful, not as a finger wagging exercise. People wait to feel better so that they can then act. All my life, it is the acting that has allowed me to feel better.

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  When you take even the smallest step and reach out to the infinite number of community groups that exist in this world, the other, even individuals that you know who already care.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  When you take those steps, that is when you start feeling better. And that has just always been so true for me. When you phrase this question, and when you talk about what you struggle with, which is a completely valid and understandable thing. The kind of picture you paint is one of like frozen stasis.

• 1:11:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it's how it feels.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you're waiting for something outside of yourself to change that, or you're waiting for a feeling to change before you take a step. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that you take the step and then the good feeling comes.

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  I think it's not just feeling for me. I think there's an, I'm waiting for an intellectual light bulb to spark as well.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  Like what? Can you give an example?

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  In the face of, okay, climate, for example, the, the idea that um my individual action won't have an impact. Well, we'll, we'll have such, we'll have a tiny, minute impact. I think there's part of me that's waiting for, and I, and just to be clear, I think I do the right thing most of the time because it's the right thing to do, but it, that feeling of it still not having an effect on the world is somewhat depressing.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  And so I think I'm waiting for the intellectual idea of what is the idea I could do that would really have some impact? To, to start to move in that direction, but I, I think you're, I think what you're saying still works under that premise because you got to start doing things to find out what that is, or even if you don't find out what that is, you're still acting more in a way that is

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  good.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and there are other, two other things here, which is like a big one, which I think is fair, is just like, what lets me fall asleep at night thinking that I'm a pretty decent person?

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  And even small actions give you that feeling of self-respect, to know that when you had an option to do nothing, you did something. That is all a lot of us need to feel, to be lying in bed, trying to get to sleep and go, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm not a dick. Um. But the other one is that I know it's a real cliche, but if you change the world for one person, you've changed the world for them. And I remember when I was really tits deep in law reform work and like trying to get politicians to do stuff is like really hard.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  Um, and, um, but I was so lucky during that time to receive correspondence from people who's, who said that my writing had changed their life. And

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  Again, we're just come back like it's it's hard to feel like those two things could plug into each other. That you could change one person's life and not yet have changed legislation. But that um it's not about those two things being equally as important or equally valid. But those are two things that would not have been done if not for you. It's just um they are still important and they are still real and profound. Just because it just because you're not the hero that gets to blow himself up in the planet doesn't mean you can't save the world. Stop like stop A um main character energying yourself to that extent.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  But B, putting that pressure on yourself.

• 1:14:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Speaker 00

  We actually all can't, none of us can do that. Like, that's in the movies. Stop putting yourself on that pedestal while simultaneously whipping yourself while you're up there.

• 1:14:54Speaker 03

  Hmm, so good.

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  It's perfect, but I think also to even like drop it down a level from that. Cause that's obviously the watching the movie, seeing Bruce Willis do that or whatever. You go like, oh, well, I'm, how am I ever gonna do that? The small thing I'm doing is not gonna make a difference like they. But I think people look at like their friends, like very outspoken friends or active friends on even social media and be like, well, I'm not them. I can't, I can't do what they're doing. Um, like people like yourself who like write books and it's like they're doing incredible, but I'm not, I can't. You know, I mean, I I put out my yellow bin and you know, that's, you know, I do that. But what else can I do? Like, I think people are kind of a bit overwhelmed by the incredible things that people are doing in their community.

• 1:15:41Speaker 03

  That like in that comparison go like, well, I'm not them.

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, but also like they're um not all of us need to be leaders in every space.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  I mean, that's the, that's the thing. That's the truth of it. But I, yeah, and I think that's hopefully what people can get from what you're saying.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the two things we've talked about today is like the environment, sort of a climate emergency.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  And Bruce Willis.

• 1:16:03Speaker 00

  And Bruce Willis, absolutely, and Gandalf. And like some of my long ago work in law reform. There are infinite other issues that we haven't talked about, that I never do anything about, that I'm not a leader or a follower in those spaces. We can't all do everything all the time, nor do we have to. Um, but the question for each of us to ask ourselves is.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  Like, do I currently respect what I am doing? And being able to be honest with yourself about whether you have capacity to do a bit more or a bit less somehow. That is good, hard work for a person to do. And also, the final point I want to make about this, like, driving oneself into a planet and exploding. I think there are two different types of courage. Now you are actually finger wagging. Oh, sorry.

• 1:16:58Speaker 00

  For those listening, Bree was waving. I was, yes, it's true. That's good. Sorry, I retract those fingers. I withdraw, I withdraw.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  I do believe that there are two different types of courage. And the courage we get from movies and TV shows and even books sometimes and just even just sort of stories that we tell ourselves and each other is this kind of like instant version of courage. A firefighter running into a burning building. It's a moment, because that's what suits, you know, a lot of our storytelling methods. You know, this sort of build to a climax point finish. It is, I believe, comparatively easy to do one big burst of courage than what I think is actually much more profound, which is what I call quotidian courage, everyday courage.

• 1:17:51Speaker 00

  Turning up to something that is hard every single day. A really powerful example of that, frankly, is caring. In particular, a friend I made on the ship in Antarctica, he would be, say, my granddad's age now. I call him Mr. Universe because he was an electrical engineer and he explained all of the stuff about planets to me.

• 1:18:12Speaker 00

  He and I are now pen pals, it's really great. Not because he's a bodybuilder. No, he's like, has all the knowledge of the universe, he's amazing.

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  You know, he's, his, his wife, the love of his life, who he's been with his whole life, is um, living through dementia. Her mental sort of capacity and state is declining each week. And every day, he has to find the courage to, to turn up to that relationship. And, you know, this is a whole other heavy topic of, of caring guilt and care is obligation and, and caring ethically. But what I was talking to him about in this context was that it just frustrates me so much that we just have these kind of like, big bicep firefighting heroes who only have to do something once.

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  Actually, most of us know from experience, doing something every day, 365 days, is much harder.

• 1:19:10Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  And that is the type of courage that is required of us when we are facing the climate emergency.

• 1:19:16Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  Beautifully said.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. That to me feels like the most incredible place to finish. Uh, you are incredible. I am so happy we got to spend time with you today. I feel like I've, I am, I usually during the episode, spend time thinking about, a little bit of thought goes towards how do we, how do we sort of summarize this episode? But I was so deep in reflecting on everything you're saying, I haven't really done it. So I haven't thought about how to finish it, other than I'm gonna say tits deep, a lot more.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  Well, it's deeper than balls deep.

• 1:19:44Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  It is. Wow, that's, that's maybe the most profound thing of the episode. Incredible.

• 1:19:53Speaker 00

  Paraphrasing Gandalf again.

• 1:19:54Speaker 04

  She'll change your thinking.

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  So you are incredible. Um, this has been one of my all time favorite conversations and such an important one, such an important conversation to have. So thank you so much for being here today, but the incredible work that you do.

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me. You've made a really special place with this show and it's um, I think it's elevated the, like, the, not the caliber, the, well, the kindness that people, everyday people are capable of. And your reach and your influence on men in particular, um, don't ever underestimate the, um, how meaningful that is and how that spreads organically in the world. So thank you for your work as well.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  It's a lovely thing to say.

• 1:20:40Speaker 04

  It'll be the kindest thing anyone's ever said to me. So thank you.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Thank you, Ray.

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  If you enjoyed this episode and want a little more, you might enjoy our subscriber only apps, available on Patreon and Apple Podcasts. If you want a little more but don't want to pay anymore, then you can join our newsletter at theimperfects.com.au. And while you're there, you'll be able to see the names and faces of all the incredible people who help make this show. A show made on the lands of the Wurundjeri Wurundjeri people, and we pay our respects to elders past and present. 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 131114.