Speaker 1: I got a welcome to another installment in the show.
Speaker 1: Of course, it is the Project Tiffany, and Cook is
Speaker 1: not here. She's in the hammock, she's in the jacuzzi,
Speaker 1: she's anywhere but the virtual studio. But I tell you
Speaker 1: who has rocked up driven straight to the virtual studio
Speaker 1: in his ten year old Volvo station Wagon, which I
Speaker 1: said I wouldn't talk about on air, but fuck it.
Speaker 1: David James, Kevin Patrick Gillespie.
Speaker 2: Good I mate.
Speaker 1: I did ask you randomly off air what kind of
Speaker 1: car and you were You were amused by that, and
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, just because you're a kind of
Speaker 1: a practical functional dude with a practical functional car, so
Speaker 1: I wasn't surprised at the answer. You've never been a
Speaker 1: You've never been an ausy bogan concern with zero to
Speaker 1: one hundred and the horsepower and Newton meters and all
Speaker 1: that shit.
Speaker 2: No. No, as long as it gets me from A
Speaker 2: to B, then job done.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you been having a squiz at the Olympics.
Speaker 2: I have. I have, indeed, because of my involvement with handball,
Speaker 2: which I think we course once or twice. You know,
Speaker 2: it's good having a two week long handball competition that
Speaker 2: you can just tune in and watch for free on
Speaker 2: Telly and with an English commentary no less, oh.
Speaker 1: Really of course? And who's I mean who did well?
Speaker 1: Like I didn't see one minute of handball.
Speaker 2: So it's so Denmark won the men and Norway won
Speaker 2: the women, which and neither of those were particularly unexpected results.
Speaker 2: But a lot of them are full of people who've
Speaker 2: been there for a good decade or so, so it's
Speaker 2: going to be a changing of the.
Speaker 1: Guard, okay. And who how many countries in the world,
Speaker 1: Like if we look at you know, like for example,
Speaker 1: I worked with the Melbourne Dixens and Melbourne Phoenix and
Speaker 1: some of the Australian netballers and Collingwood in the National
Speaker 1: Netball League. But if we look at netball as an
Speaker 1: example as a sport globally, you know, it is an
Speaker 1: international sport, but there's probably about four or five countries
Speaker 1: that are really good at it, four or five that
Speaker 1: are pretty good, five that are emerging, and then no
Speaker 1: one else in the world gives a shit. What's the
Speaker 1: equivalent with handball? Like how many countries really play it
Speaker 1: and really are good at it?
Speaker 2: There? Well, all of Europe play it, which is what
Speaker 2: it tends to be called European handball. It's the I
Speaker 2: think it's the third biggest participation sport in Europe behind
Speaker 2: soccer or football as people like to call it, and
Speaker 2: I think the other one there is basketball is a
Speaker 2: big one, but so handball's behind that. The professional leagues
Speaker 2: there are absolutely huge. A lot of the players that
Speaker 2: were running around at the Olympics of you know, earning
Speaker 2: tens of millions of dollars a year playing handball. There's
Speaker 2: three million people in Europe play it. It's huge in
Speaker 2: South America as well, probably the European influence there. North
Speaker 2: America is pretty much like Australia, which is what's regarded
Speaker 2: as a developing nation where you know, I guess, I
Speaker 2: guess what Zimbabwe is to netball is what we are
Speaker 2: to handle. Yeah, but it's massively bigger than netball. Netball's
Speaker 2: wildest dreams couldn't be that big. I mean the gold
Speaker 2: medal match, so the final four matches in the women's
Speaker 2: and men's comp at the Olympics were at a capacity
Speaker 2: stadium with thirty thousand people, so you know, each each
Speaker 2: match thirty thousand people. So it's a big sport.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy, I am. I'm just trying to find
Speaker 1: something now. I put up a post the other day
Speaker 1: about about the relative kind of per capita medals. Like
Speaker 1: a few people have put up a few things, but
Speaker 1: at the time that I wrote it, which was I
Speaker 1: think Friday night, nine pm or something, New Zealand with
Speaker 1: a population of five million, they were doing very well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they finished with nine gold medals, like five million.
Speaker 1: You know, there's more than five million people where I live,
Speaker 1: like in Melbourne, right, it's yea. And I'm thinking, then
Speaker 1: I extrapolated that out, and I'm thinking, well, China has
Speaker 1: when I looked to give or take one point four
Speaker 1: and a bit billion, you know, And I was thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: if they had a similar kind of per head ratio,
Speaker 1: they'd be up to fourteen hundred gold medals, right, and
Speaker 1: like if it was if Obviously it doesn't work that
Speaker 1: way and there's a lot of variables around it. But
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, while I'm very proud of Australia and all that,
Speaker 1: clearly I did no fucking work, neither did you. I
Speaker 1: find that a funny thing. How oh, how well are
Speaker 1: we doing?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I'm not doing anything I'm just the people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny how we take ownership.
Speaker 2: But anyway, and in my case, I'm not even watching Australians.
Speaker 1: Well that's exactly right, but you know there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that. But yeah, they ended up with nine gold
Speaker 1: medals in a country of you know, five million people.
Speaker 1: When you think there's something like forty million people that
Speaker 1: live in California or something. It's you know, it's fucking amazing.
Speaker 2: But you always punches above their weight. I mean you
Speaker 2: just look at them in the rugby for starters. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, they're always they are a sports mad nation.
Speaker 2: They they're the sports crazy state of Australia. They don't
Speaker 2: like being referred to that way, but that's pretty much
Speaker 2: how I think of them.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious.
Speaker 2: And what did you make of the Big Girl controversy?
Speaker 1: Oh do you know what? Okay? Everyone, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about the breakdown, to which in the Olympic call it breaking.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get in trouble.
Speaker 2: I just gone have an opinion.
Speaker 1: Harp, No, well my opinion, you know, like so part
Speaker 1: of me is like, well done. You had to go
Speaker 1: when I first saw it, honestly, and this is just
Speaker 1: I didn't know if it was a parent or if
Speaker 1: it was I don't know. I don't know. Look, I
Speaker 1: think good on her for having a go, But and
Speaker 1: people like I saw people coming out going, oh, stop
Speaker 1: stop putting women down, and is that like for me,
Speaker 1: it's got nothing to do with gender. It's got everything
Speaker 1: to do with skill and ability. And yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to sit on the fence because I don't want to
Speaker 1: get in trouble. But yeah, well, clearly, clearly she wasn't
Speaker 1: at the same level as the other competitors. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's just isn't that Isn't that the equivalent of saying,
Speaker 2: you know, qualifying for one hundred meters knowing that your
Speaker 2: best time in one hundred meters is twenty seconds, and
Speaker 2: you're going to be racing against people who do ten
Speaker 2: seconds and then and then rather than running against them
Speaker 2: and doing your twenty seconds, you decide, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm going to skip. Yeah, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's what happened.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean obviously, well, you know, we're we
Speaker 1: think about the Olympics. I'm generalizing, we think about the
Speaker 1: best athletes on the planet with the best fitness, best strength, power, speed,
Speaker 1: skill like the elite of the elite, and I don't
Speaker 1: know like good on a like. I think good on
Speaker 1: A for having a go, And I think if she's
Speaker 1: happy and people enjoyed it, then I think it's good.
Speaker 2: Well, I worry. I mean, I don't know breakdancing from
Speaker 2: anything else. I know zero about breakdancing. I don't know
Speaker 2: how good bad her and different her performance was. All
Speaker 2: I'm talking about is a controversy about it. And the
Speaker 2: thing that concerns me coming from I guess a sports
Speaker 2: administration perspective, you know, being involved in handball is who
Speaker 2: missed out on that place? Is the question that occurs
Speaker 2: to me. You know, I struggle to believe that there
Speaker 2: are very you know, I suspect there's a lot of
Speaker 2: dance schools around Australia with lots of people who do breakdancing.
Speaker 2: I presume I don't know anything about it, but I
Speaker 2: presume there must be where there are no other people
Speaker 2: to choose from. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I think the answer to that is again,
Speaker 1: so anyone listening to these two are white middle aged men.
Speaker 1: We both will acknowledge it. We both acknowledge we do
Speaker 1: not know anything about this, No, but what I think
Speaker 1: I do know is that I think there was like
Speaker 1: essentially trials, and she was she won.
Speaker 2: I think she was the best, and then she deserved
Speaker 2: to be there, didn't she exactly exactly?
Speaker 1: So if that was the process and she came out
Speaker 1: and she was the best of the people who tried
Speaker 1: to qualify for the team, and she won that well,
Speaker 1: got through that process being number one, then han't absent.
Speaker 1: She deserves to be there.
Speaker 2: Then really the only critique critique people can give her is, well,
Speaker 2: you know, if you came through a fair trial process
Speaker 2: just like everybody else, and you and you were the
Speaker 2: one selected, then you have just as much right to
Speaker 2: be there as anybody else. And and and then what
Speaker 2: you're really doing is critiquing the artistry of what she did.
Speaker 2: And given that this is a dance thing, not not
Speaker 2: I mean I might inflame people by saying this, but
Speaker 2: it's dance not sport in my view, then artistry is
Speaker 2: part of the deal. So what you're really saying is
Speaker 2: I don't like the routine she chose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think also, you know, the artistry slash
Speaker 1: creative expression, like you think about like I've literally tried.
Speaker 1: I've trained a bunch of Olympic athletes and one of
Speaker 1: the girls that I trained was in I can't of
Speaker 1: remember which games, but anyway, she was a synchronized swimmer.
Speaker 1: Her name is Bethany Walsh. And honestly, when I her
Speaker 1: dad approached me and went, would you work with my daughter?
Speaker 1: She's an Olympian? And I went, what sport? And he
Speaker 1: told me and I went, not a sport, though, is it?
Speaker 1: You know? I didn't really I didn't really think that.
Speaker 1: I just my idea and then I I was completely wrong.
Speaker 1: By the way, before anyone sends me an email, I
Speaker 1: went and watched them, tray, I went and watched what
Speaker 1: these girls have to do and how fucking strong and
Speaker 1: fit and talented, and I mean, it is a demanding sport.
Speaker 1: But then there are other things, like you know, I
Speaker 1: think like we have these like contrasting events like the
Speaker 1: Wimmens one hundred meters you know, or blokes hundred meters
Speaker 1: where it's just power speed like which you know, is
Speaker 1: like a completely athletic it seems to be event. And
Speaker 1: then other things like you know, the rhythmic gymnastics, which
Speaker 1: is still very strong, very fit, but a much more
Speaker 1: kind of creative subjective.
Speaker 2: There's no clear subjective elements, don't but it has objective
Speaker 2: elements to it because it's part of the gymnastics stuff.
Speaker 2: But it's also got some artistic subjective elements to it,
Speaker 2: doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, Yeah, and I then there's the sports like you know,
Speaker 1: weightlifting and rowing and basketball and sprinting and just watch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's someone's whoever's got the best or the right number,
Speaker 1: the lowest time or the heaviest weight or the most
Speaker 1: points on the board that they just win as long
Speaker 1: as they work within the rules. But then there's this
Speaker 1: other thing where we go and even diving, Like I
Speaker 1: look at the diving and I go, oh, that was
Speaker 1: fucking incredible, and then they're like scored lower what do
Speaker 1: I know? And someone else who I think, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was You.
Speaker 2: Can tell that there's a lot of subjectivity in something
Speaker 2: like diving because you see them even the way they score.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know how many judges they have,
Speaker 2: but it's like seven or eight judges, and then they
Speaker 2: knock out the highest and lower scores, which tells you
Speaker 2: that even the people who are professionals are judging this
Speaker 2: get it wrong from their perspective, and that's why they
Speaker 2: take out the highest and lower scores. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, also even in the boxing, I watched fair bit
Speaker 1: of boxing, and there was numerous times where of the
Speaker 1: five judges, three awarded it to the blue corner and
Speaker 1: two awarded it to the red corner. And they just
Speaker 1: watched the same thing. And I'm like, sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the judges said Brian one and forty said fucking Dave one,
Speaker 1: and they just watched this. Yes, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? So it ends up in a split decision.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't think you and I intended to
Speaker 1: bang on about the Olympics, but.
Speaker 2: There we already didn't know. I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 1: Look what it is is, it's a phenomenon that you know,
Speaker 1: a few people have spoken about, let's just keep going
Speaker 1: with a few people have spoken about the reality that
Speaker 1: it generates billions of dollars, but the athletes don't get
Speaker 1: any of that. And then then you look at the
Speaker 1: even within countries, like if you win a gold medal
Speaker 1: in Australia, I've seen two different reported numbers, but it's
Speaker 1: either fifteen or twenty thousand bucks, which to me seems
Speaker 1: fuck all for an Olympic gold medal, but especially when
Speaker 1: you if you're a first round loser at Wimbledon, I
Speaker 1: think you get seventy or eighty grand if.
Speaker 2: You're to get to winner. Pardon the trick is to
Speaker 2: get to Wimbledon, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but there's still like yeah, but still
Speaker 1: you know it's you're losing a match of tennis and
Speaker 1: you're getting one hundred or whatever. I guess so, But
Speaker 1: but then you're winning an Olympic gold medal for Australia
Speaker 1: and you get fifteen or twenty grand. Live in Singapore,
Speaker 1: you get seven hundred and fifty grand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although if you are at least an individual who
Speaker 2: wins a gold medal at an Olympics, yes, you're probably
Speaker 2: going to be able to turn that into some money
Speaker 2: through sponsorships, endorsement, speaking career, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, Like I think the technically all gold
Speaker 1: medals are Olympic gold medals, they're all equal, but financially,
Speaker 1: commercially they're definitely not all equal, are they in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, like a a friend of mine is
Speaker 1: an Olympic gold medalist, Lauren who won the Lauren Burns
Speaker 1: who won the Taekwondo Olympic gold for US Australia in
Speaker 1: the two thousand Olympics. And you know, she's a great athlete.
Speaker 1: She deserved a gold medal. She's amazing. She's also got
Speaker 1: a PhD. She's also a corporate speaker. But you know,
Speaker 1: she will tell you she earns about nine dollars thirty
Speaker 1: a year through that gold medal. You know, it certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt, but you know she has to work, she
Speaker 1: has to study, she has to grind.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'd heard of her, so it's worth something.
Speaker 1: Oh have you heard of her?
Speaker 2: When you said her name? It rung a bell with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I think yeah she was. Who's
Speaker 1: her dad? Was it Ronnie Burns? I think the Australian anyway,
Speaker 1: So let's just quickly talk about what we were going
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 2: We're actually going to Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 1: You mentioned to me the just about chatting about the
Speaker 1: what seems to be the increasing prevalence of you know,
Speaker 1: people being people pulling knives on police and the subsequent
Speaker 1: you know, goings on of people with mental health issues
Speaker 1: who are you know, either being tasered or shot or
Speaker 1: and it seems like is it disproportionate in Queensland or
Speaker 1: we just get more exposure to it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't done any sort of comprehensive
Speaker 2: analysis of it. But what prompted me to raise this
Speaker 2: with you is it's been on the news a bit
Speaker 2: here in Queensland on the weekend because there's been a
Speaker 2: police shooting of a fellow who pulled a knife on
Speaker 2: police in a hospital and I think he survived it,
Speaker 2: but there's been a lot of reporting about it because
Speaker 2: they are saying this is the sort of third time
Speaker 2: it's happened recently, and I think the Queensland Police Union
Speaker 2: are saying there needs to be there needs to be
Speaker 2: an inquiry in relation to mental health in Australia that
Speaker 2: most of what police are dealing with when they go
Speaker 2: out on calls now is dealing with people with mental
Speaker 2: health issues. Now. He didn't cite any statistics for that,
Speaker 2: so I don't know, but just going on his word,
Speaker 2: and I guess head of the Police union probably knows
Speaker 2: something about it, it does seem logical that a lot
Speaker 2: of what police spend their time doing is dealing with
Speaker 2: people with mental health issues in the community and So
Speaker 2: what I did do is going to have a look
Speaker 2: at the statistics on this and have the rates of
Speaker 2: reported mental health issues in the community increase. So when
Speaker 2: you talk about mental health issues in the community and
Speaker 2: you start looking at the health statistics on it, they
Speaker 2: divide him into sort of three groups, which is anxiety, depression,
Speaker 2: what they call effective disorders, and drug abuse related disorders.
Speaker 2: So mental health is a kind of a vague word
Speaker 2: to use, and the media uses it a lot, but
Speaker 2: it really only means those things. Right. There's people who
Speaker 2: are schizophrenic slash psychotic and people who aren't. And this
Speaker 2: is all seen as a spectrum. So anxiety is at
Speaker 2: the light end of that spectrum. It progresses towards schizophrenia
Speaker 2: and are sorry to psychosis, which is an isolator or
Speaker 2: a single event of extreme paranoia, through to schizophrenia, which
Speaker 2: is recurring events of extreme paranoia. Now those are all paranoia.
Speaker 2: Is another way of saying anxiety about the intentions of
Speaker 2: other humans. Right, So if you think about what anxiety is,
Speaker 2: anxiety is an overestimation of risk. So you look at
Speaker 2: the environment, and you all of us do this all
Speaker 2: the time. We look at the environment and we estimate
Speaker 2: a potential danger to us in that environment. And people
Speaker 2: who don't have mental health issues, I guess you want
Speaker 2: to call them normal. If you want estimate, to say,
Speaker 2: the environmental risk. You might be looking around you now
Speaker 2: and thinking about the environmental risk and see nothing that's
Speaker 2: particularly threatening to you and nothing that's putting you in
Speaker 2: fear of your life or any sort of danger to you.
Speaker 2: But a person who is suffering from anxiety is overestimating
Speaker 2: that same risk set in your environment. So I don't
Speaker 2: know what's in your environment. There might be some electronics
Speaker 2: to do with this podcast, for example, and a person
Speaker 2: with extreme anxiety might be looking at those electronics and
Speaker 2: be worried about being electrocuted. Even though you might say,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm assessing the risk here as load and
Speaker 2: non existent. What anxiety does is change the risk assessment
Speaker 2: materior in your brain. And we've talked about before how
Speaker 2: that happens. So that's because too many hits of dopamine
Speaker 2: caused by either a too stressful environment or addiction raises
Speaker 2: are tolerance level, which adjusts the input values for your
Speaker 2: brain in terms of assessing risk. So the higher that
Speaker 2: threshold goes, that is the more stress you are under,
Speaker 2: or the more addiction you are exposed to, the worse
Speaker 2: you become at assessing assessing environmental risk. So the more
Speaker 2: addicted you are, the more stressed you are, the more
Speaker 2: likely you are to significantly overestimate the risk in your environment.
Speaker 2: And we call that anxiety, which is stress about risk
Speaker 2: overestimating the danger to you. Now, what happens is that
Speaker 2: if you allow that to go for too long, that
Speaker 2: then transfers into an overestimator of the overestimation of the
Speaker 2: dane of other humans. So you start to worry about
Speaker 2: the intentions of others. So you might be in an
Speaker 2: environment where there's nothing there other than another person, but
Speaker 2: you are overestimating the risk of that person. You start
Speaker 2: thinking that they are there to do you harm, even
Speaker 2: though there's nothing to a normal person sitting in the room,
Speaker 2: there's nothing about them that suggests that they might do
Speaker 2: you harm, you know them or whatever. As this risk
Speaker 2: assessment gets pushed out of whack by addictional stress, you
Speaker 2: start to have fears about the intention of others, and
Speaker 2: when that becomes extreme it gets called a psychotic event, right,
Speaker 2: which is that you are so upset or in fear
Speaker 2: of your life because of the intention of another person
Speaker 2: that you are forced to act against them. So you
Speaker 2: are in a place where you've got to stop them
Speaker 2: before they hurt you, even though there's nothing that would
Speaker 2: suggest they are going to you know, in a normal assessment,
Speaker 2: that's their view of things, and often when police called
Speaker 2: out that's what they're encountering. They're encountering someone who's in
Speaker 2: that state. So a person who sees the police as
Speaker 2: an imminent threat, and obviously they are, But to a
Speaker 2: normal person, it's all I've got to do is stop
Speaker 2: behaving weirdly and the police will stop being an imminent threat.
Speaker 2: But that calculation is not possible when your brain's risk
Speaker 2: assessment capability is out of whack. So the question is
Speaker 2: has there been an actual increase in the things that
Speaker 2: are being measured here, And the answer is very definitely yes.
Speaker 2: So if we look at the last time it was
Speaker 2: surveyed in two thousand and nine, estimated that there was
Speaker 2: about eleven percent of the population we're suffering depression, anxiety,
Speaker 2: or other serious mental illness, so usually drug related about
Speaker 2: eleven percent in two thousand and nine at any given
Speaker 2: moment in time, right, So, well, it's actually reportab within
Speaker 2: the last twelve months. So in twenty twenty one when
Speaker 2: they did the same survey again, it was nineteen percent. Wow,
Speaker 2: that is so acid. So that's almost doubling in a
Speaker 2: ten year period. So that's significant. You've gone from one
Speaker 2: in ten people to one in five people in ten years.
Speaker 2: And if that's what's going on in the environment, it's
Speaker 2: little wonder that police are finding themselves increasingly facing people
Speaker 2: who have no control over the fact that their brain
Speaker 2: is telling them that these people are an imminent threat
Speaker 2: to me, not just the police, but everybody around them,
Speaker 2: and to me, that's a concern. It's a concern that
Speaker 2: this is a surprise to anyone. It's a concern that
Speaker 2: it isn't headline news every day of the week. And
Speaker 2: it's a concern that the best anyone can ask for
Speaker 2: is a Royal Commission into mental health. We don't need
Speaker 2: a Royal Commission into mental health, which is what the
Speaker 2: police union fellow was asking for. I could look at
Speaker 2: those stats. I don't I'm not a Royal commissioner. I
Speaker 2: just looked up the stats on the Australian Institute of
Speaker 2: Health and Welfare's website. It tells the story immediately, which
Speaker 2: is something is going on here. Now. You and I
Speaker 2: have talked in the past about why would that be,
Speaker 2: Why would suddenly the incidents of this stuff have doubled,
Speaker 2: And we know the answer. We flooded the population with
Speaker 2: the very things we know are just that threshold measure
Speaker 2: of risk. We know that when you make someone an addict,
Speaker 2: which is why, by the way, drug related psychosis is
Speaker 2: lumped in with these mental illnesses, when you make someone
Speaker 2: an addict, you are just that threshold determinant of risk. Now,
Speaker 2: before two thousand and nine, that was relatively rare. It
Speaker 2: only affected one in ten people. Since two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: it's gone off like a rocket. What have we done
Speaker 2: that has introduced massive amounts of addiction into the population
Speaker 2: since two thousand and nine. Any clues?
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, I would think tech technology, scraps.
Speaker 2: We've importantly, we've put access to software designed to addict
Speaker 2: the human brain in the hands of every teenager in
Speaker 2: the country, which is the point in life where this occurs,
Speaker 2: that is where all addictions start. We've put devices in
Speaker 2: their hands that are the equivalent of a dopamine button
Speaker 2: that gives repeated, continuous hits of dopamine the thing we
Speaker 2: know are just risk tolerance, and then we are surprised
Speaker 2: when that is exactly what occurs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder, I mean like when I listen to
Speaker 1: you break this down, which I've listened to similar things
Speaker 1: with you before, and it makes complete sense. Is there
Speaker 1: anyone else sharing this gospel or sharing this this line
Speaker 1: of thinking? Like is anyone else drawing these putting these
Speaker 1: jigsaw pieces together like you do?
Speaker 2: Like because yeah, you know you go on, you know
Speaker 2: you finished and finish.
Speaker 1: I was also this is like an adjacent conversation. But
Speaker 1: the other thing that occurs to me with all of this,
Speaker 1: and so andswer which one you want first, is that
Speaker 1: like on top of the people with elevated anxiety and
Speaker 1: paranoia and situational whatever that the cops go into, then
Speaker 1: there's the cops themselves that have been anxious and traumatized
Speaker 1: and potentially elevated. Like I work with police, and that
Speaker 1: there aren't too many cops who don't have their own trauma.
Speaker 1: Who are you dealing with something? Because of they need
Speaker 1: to be perpetually hyper vigilant.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, remember the other way to induce this
Speaker 2: state is of stress. So they're going the other pathway,
Speaker 2: which is if you're constantly exposed to stress, then you'll
Speaker 2: have the same thing. Now that's by design, by the way,
Speaker 2: because you want to be hyper vigilant and hyper alert
Speaker 2: if you are in an environment where you are constantly
Speaker 2: in very real danger. So that is a pro evolutionary thing.
Speaker 2: It's not good for your mental health, you know, which
Speaker 2: is why.
Speaker 1: It's it's good for in the moment survival, But it's
Speaker 1: a nervous system all for anything over the long time, no.
Speaker 2: Because it leaves that risk. The risk assessment doesn't change
Speaker 2: as soon as you are in a non threatening environment.
Speaker 2: So it's it's the same thing as happens with addiction,
Speaker 2: which is that you are left with that risk assessment
Speaker 2: set too high. And so the other interesting thing is
Speaker 2: that there's massive crossover then between someone who's in that
Speaker 2: state and addiction. So a person exposed to chronic stress
Speaker 2: is most likely to be addicted to something. Someone who
Speaker 2: is addicted to something is most likely to be in
Speaker 2: a situation of chronic stress. So there's massive overlap between
Speaker 2: those two things.
Speaker 1: Well, obviously there's no quick solution, but and this is
Speaker 1: very left field, but do do police in Coinsland carry tasers.
Speaker 2: They do, yes, right, and and the use of those
Speaker 2: has increased. I think I saw in the story about
Speaker 2: this that the use of those has increased massively in
Speaker 2: the last year or so.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean it's a you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure no one wants to be tasered, but I'd
Speaker 1: rather be tasered than shot with a bullet.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the guidelines for use of a taser
Speaker 2: is a policeman is only supposed to draw it when
Speaker 2: they feel under imminent threat. Yes, so under personal threat.
Speaker 2: So it's so the fact that it's being used more
Speaker 2: frequently tells you that there's more threat. It's a more
Speaker 2: threatening environment. Yeah. So, you know, the problem we've got
Speaker 2: here is that we now have, you know, in the
Speaker 2: space of a decade, double the number of people in
Speaker 2: the population who are likely to be a threat, and
Speaker 2: we are doing nothing about that. We are you know,
Speaker 2: we've done it using a device designed to create exactly
Speaker 2: this issue, and we are doing exactly nothing about it.
Speaker 2: So don't expect solutions to appear soon, no matter how
Speaker 2: many Royal commissions are held.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, the use of tech is not
Speaker 1: going to go down. No, No, people are not going
Speaker 1: to be using these things less.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, because because it's addictive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. So what's the answer then,
Speaker 1: or what's part of the answer.
Speaker 2: The part of the answer is exactly the same answer
Speaker 2: as if we were having this conversation I don't know
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago when I first wrote about sugar, the
Speaker 2: answer would be exactly the same. Stop using it. Understand
Speaker 2: And people say, well, you know, how do I do that? Well,
Speaker 2: you have to understand where it is and how you're
Speaker 2: ingesting it. You know, if you talk to a smoker,
Speaker 2: for example, no one accidentally shoves a cigarette in their
Speaker 2: mouth and lights it. They understand exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 2: And when we have this conversation with people, like I
Speaker 2: said fifteen years ago about sugar, you know, it's the
Speaker 2: accidental ingestion. It's not understanding what you're doing that's the problem.
Speaker 2: And once you know what you're doing, people are smart
Speaker 2: enough to stop it. You know, people are smart enough
Speaker 2: to stand back from an addiction once they understand that
Speaker 2: it is an addiction and do something about it. Most
Speaker 2: people will People are not self destructive. Most people will say,
Speaker 2: I actually don't want to do this. I don't want
Speaker 2: my brain messed with. I want to step back from it.
Speaker 2: But at the moment, the prevailing narrative is not only
Speaker 2: is this safe, this is necessary, and we have to
Speaker 2: give our kids these devices to use in schools. We
Speaker 2: have to be able to step back from that and
Speaker 2: realistically say, no, oops, sorry, made a bit of a mistake,
Speaker 2: accidentally distributed highly addictive stuff to school children. But it's okay,
Speaker 2: we're on it. We'll stop doing that now.
Speaker 1: But I guess the difference between you know, in the
Speaker 1: cigarette analogy, the difference is that you know, technology is
Speaker 1: integrated into every like literally every component of our existence now.
Speaker 2: But a person who smokes a cigarette today knows exactly
Speaker 2: what they are doing and they don't care. Okay, they
Speaker 2: know what they're doing, they know the potential damage. They
Speaker 2: know it's addictive, which is why there's only about thirteen
Speaker 2: percent of people who still do it. But and there'll
Speaker 2: be a component of that no matter what you're talking about,
Speaker 2: people who will say, you know what, I know it's addictive.
Speaker 2: I don't care. I enjoy it. It's a pleasurable thing
Speaker 2: for me. I need it. I'm doing it anyway. I
Speaker 2: don't care but the vast majority of people who indulge
Speaker 2: in addictive behavior don't want to be doing it, and
Speaker 2: once they know that that's what they're doing, they will
Speaker 2: take steps to stop doing it.
Speaker 1: I feel like with and this is just a feeling,
Speaker 1: not a bloody fact, but I feel like with technology,
Speaker 1: you know, people will be listening to this, nodding along,
Speaker 1: going yeah, people should do something about that, but it's not.
Speaker 2: Well, there's an asset test, isn't there, you know, And
Speaker 2: this is the one I put out to people when
Speaker 2: I speak to groups, which is people will often say,
Speaker 2: I'll say, you know what all you've got to do
Speaker 2: is stop doing it, you know, stop using Instagram. People
Speaker 2: not their heads and say yeah, yeah, I can stop
Speaker 2: doing that, no worries at all. And I say, oh, excellent,
Speaker 2: all right, so just delete the app from your phone.
Speaker 2: I'll go, yeah, yeah, I can do that, and you'll say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's good. But you know, I know you're thinking in
Speaker 2: the back of mind, I can just reinstall later if
Speaker 2: I get desperate. So now delete your account then, and
Speaker 2: people start having a rob.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's different, isn't it. That's different.
Speaker 2: That's permanent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So so I know we're going to wind up.
Speaker 1: But pursuant to this, your honor, have you been and
Speaker 1: I know your kids are mostly older now, but have
Speaker 1: you consciously kind of created framework or rules or you know,
Speaker 1: standards in your house with your kids around all this stuff?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, absolutely so. One of the books I wrote
Speaker 2: about this teen Brain, which was the first one I wrote,
Speaker 2: I think, came out twenty sixteen something like that. It
Speaker 2: actually described what we do in our household and we unfortunately,
Speaker 2: they attended a school where devices were mandatory, so hipads
Speaker 2: were mandatory. So it took every gram of willpower and
Speaker 2: sticking to the cause approach to things to regulate their
Speaker 2: use of those, because they come home with the device right,
Speaker 2: and then they're off to their bedroom or whatever. And
Speaker 2: unless you're prepared to ride them like a pony on
Speaker 2: this stuff right and get that device back and put
Speaker 2: it in a public place and make sure it is
Speaker 2: not touched again and keep monitoring it, then they're just
Speaker 2: too quick and it's too easy and too portable unless
Speaker 2: you are. So. One of my kids, the eldest, who
Speaker 2: were sort of pre this area, created a little stand
Speaker 2: he made out of wood which which they could all
Speaker 2: sit on to be charged, and it was just made
Speaker 2: it really really easy to keep an eye on, you know,
Speaker 2: you just had to be able to count. Then, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's four kids and there's four devices. That's it. They're
Speaker 2: all in that in one place. I know it. If
Speaker 2: one's missing, you know, you've got to go hunting. But
Speaker 2: that's just what the device the school required them to do.
Speaker 2: With phones, we ban them entirely, not in I mean,
Speaker 2: they had phones, but they were the twenty dollars cheapies
Speaker 2: you get from came up. But all they can do
Speaker 2: is make and receive phone calls. They didn't have the
Speaker 2: kind you know, they didn't have smartphones, and which was
Speaker 2: fortunate because when the only thing a phone does is
Speaker 2: make and receive phone calls, it gets lost a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it was good that they were cheap, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: And now that now that there will some of them
Speaker 1: are how old is your youngest?
Speaker 2: My youngest now are twenty Well they're turning twenty one
Speaker 2: this year.
Speaker 1: Okay, so all your are adults, and do they ever
Speaker 1: talk to you about growing up in that environment and
Speaker 1: their pleasure or displeasure or at that, you know, is
Speaker 1: it like I'm glad you did that, dad, or you
Speaker 1: were a fucking tyrant dad.
Speaker 2: I don't ever expect to be thanked for stuff like
Speaker 2: this by your kids. I they now because they're adults.
Speaker 2: You know, they have their own phones, they use them,
Speaker 2: and they probably spend way too much time on them.
Speaker 2: But I think I can detect that they're not addicted
Speaker 2: to them. And that's because a critical thing to remember
Speaker 2: about this is it is growth stage dependent. All addictions
Speaker 2: start between the onset of puberty and about eight to
Speaker 2: nine years later. So that's because that's the particular part
Speaker 2: of the growth of the human brain when something that
Speaker 2: protects us against addiction is turned off, and that is
Speaker 2: turned off to allow puberty to happen and to allow
Speaker 2: a certain part of the brain to grow. This has
Speaker 2: been known long before we had devices that all addictions
Speaker 2: start in the teens. Alcoholics became alcoholics in their teens.
Speaker 2: All smokers became smokers in their teens. It's not just
Speaker 2: you know, anecdotes, that's what the evidence says. So it
Speaker 2: is singularly the worst possible time to expose anybody to
Speaker 2: anything potentially addictive, and yet that's exactly what we are doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's when the door's open widest last one before
Speaker 1: we go with all of these what seems to be
Speaker 1: an upsurge in knife attacks if we're correlating it to
Speaker 1: you know, in some way, and the increase in mental
Speaker 1: health anxiety, depression, drug related mental health to doubling in
Speaker 1: ten years, blah blah blah, and one of the byproducts
Speaker 1: of that might be these knife attacks. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, or it's just interesting to note that the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the knife attack ers men. So yeah, like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not true, but like I rarely, you know,
Speaker 1: all of the stuff that we see on the news
Speaker 1: is invariably it's men with knives.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if you've noticed, Craig, but there's
Speaker 2: a difference between men and women, and it's.
Speaker 1: A lot when you're sarcastic, it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: you're in another state. You on the nose.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a key difference. It's a really really
Speaker 2: important difference. It's a little hormone called testosterone, and testosterone
Speaker 2: has a significant effect on impulse control. So when you're
Speaker 2: loaded to the eyeballs with testosterone, as any male, particularly
Speaker 2: a male between the start of puberty and sort of
Speaker 2: their early thirties. Is they have significantly less impulse control
Speaker 2: than a female of the same and I'm talking massively less,
Speaker 2: which is which is why violent crimes tend to be
Speaker 2: committed by people who fit that age and gender. And
Speaker 2: it's it's that when you wire someone to consider the
Speaker 2: world more dangerous than the average person would regard it,
Speaker 2: and then you dial their impulse control down to zero,
Speaker 2: predictable things happen.
Speaker 1: M So I mean, yeah, so it's that combination really,
Speaker 1: because we're not even though women are subjected to the
Speaker 1: same stressors and I would think anxiety depression and you know,
Speaker 1: is as high or higher in some instances, but they're
Speaker 1: not running around with knives. So another significant factor is
Speaker 1: that is that is testosterone?
Speaker 2: Well absolutely, and you see it come through in suicide statistics,
Speaker 2: so yes, you see. I mean I really don't like
Speaker 2: referring to it as success, but success suicides are more
Speaker 2: often performed by males.
Speaker 1: And such a crazy term that that isn't it? It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that is the term, So don't send us an
Speaker 1: email because that is the term that is used everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's it's the same thing at play, which
Speaker 2: is less impulse control, more testosterone, more ability to complete
Speaker 2: the act. And you see that in the methodology of suicide.
Speaker 2: It's chosen as well. So females frequently will choose a
Speaker 2: you know, like an overdose or something that doesn't involve
Speaker 2: a violent, you know, attack on themselves, whereas a male
Speaker 2: will will have no concerns about it being a train whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't want to talk about this in detail, but
Speaker 2: it's but there are very obvious differences to that. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of research on why, and it does come
Speaker 2: back to that difference in testosterone loading and impulse control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, amazing. Well we started on a high and
Speaker 1: finished kind of on a low. But it's all interesting.
Speaker 1: It's all interesting, and just quickly back to something momentarily
Speaker 1: more positive. Thirty seconds. So, how did the Australian handballers go?
Speaker 2: There were no Australian handballs Australia for an Olympics in
Speaker 2: a pink fit honestly, Oh really, So there's I think
Speaker 2: there's sixteen countries make it qualify to the Olympics, and
Speaker 2: the qualification pathways very long and through various pathways. Australia
Speaker 2: would have almost zero hope of it. We were there
Speaker 2: in two thousand because we're the host country, and we'll
Speaker 2: be there in twenty thirty two because we'll be the
Speaker 2: host country. But that'll be baud it. I'd say, all right,
Speaker 2: might appreciate you as year later.