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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.

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Speaker 2: Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters

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Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.

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Speaker 1: Hi.

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Speaker 2: I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily news podcast,

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Speaker 2: The Quickie. Late Friday, we learned that the second of

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Speaker 2: Tuazsi teens who'd been poisoned with tainted alcohol while traveling

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Speaker 2: in Lao had sadly died. Holly and Bianca are believed

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Speaker 2: to be the victims of methanol poisoning. With so many

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Speaker 2: Australians heading to Southeast Asia on holiday, we're all wondering,

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Speaker 2: how do I make sure this doesn't happen to me?

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Speaker 2: And how would I even know if it did. Today

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Speaker 2: we speak to someone who survived methanol poisoning and a

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Speaker 2: doctor who can give us insight as to what to

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Speaker 2: expect if we too are exposed. But first, here's the

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Speaker 2: latest from the Quikie newsroom, Tuesday, November twenty six. According

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Speaker 2: to Australia's watchdog for Family and Domestic Violence, the nation

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Speaker 2: has turned its back on Aboriginal women. Domestic Family and

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Speaker 2: Second Violence Commissioner Mikaela Cronan says she's distressed by how

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Speaker 2: little national attention they've seen after an inquiry into the

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Speaker 2: killing of four women, Kumanjai Heywood, Negea, ragurk miss Unipingu

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Speaker 2: and Kuman Rabuncha by their partners, the findings coming just

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Speaker 2: weeks after the ninth Aboriginal woman was killed in an

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Speaker 2: alleged domestic violence incident in the Northern Territory in just

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Speaker 2: the past six months. The commission, which found systemic police

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Speaker 2: failings and a lack of funding, made thirty five recommendations

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Speaker 2: after looking into the deaths, suggesting a peak body be

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Speaker 2: created to address domestic violence, calling out the NT as

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Speaker 2: the only jurisdiction without one. French prosecutors have called for

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Speaker 2: the maximum twenty year sentence for Dominic Pelicot, who admitted

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Speaker 2: to drugging and raping his wife Giselle for years and

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Speaker 2: inviting strangers into their home to also sexually assault her.

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Speaker 2: Fifty other men also stand trial for their role in

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Speaker 2: the abuse. Prosecutors, who will over the next two days

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Speaker 2: advise of what sentences they seek against the co accused,

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Speaker 2: rejected arguments made by many of the men that they

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Speaker 2: didn't realize they were raping Giselle saying they're just trying

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Speaker 2: to shirk their responsibility by saying they thought she'd consented.

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Speaker 2: That's despite video taken of the assault showing she's clearly unconscious.

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Speaker 2: The verdicts and sentences are expected to be handed down

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Speaker 2: around December twenty. The Menendez brothers will appear in court

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Speaker 2: virtually today as a judge hears evidence that could lead

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Speaker 2: them to being released from jail. Lyele and Eric were

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Speaker 2: twenty one and eighteen when they murdered their parents in

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, claiming they suffered sexual and physical abuse

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Speaker 2: at the hands of their father, evidence of which was

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Speaker 2: barred from being included during their second trial. More than

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Speaker 2: thirty years later, The brothers are hoping that evidence will

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Speaker 2: now be included. The judge expected to weigh up the

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Speaker 2: evidence and could potentially grant them both immediate release, but

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Speaker 2: may also take some time to consider the request. A

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Speaker 2: separate hearing regarding a possible resentencing to allow both to

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Speaker 2: apply for parole is set for December eleven. The Maccrari

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Speaker 2: Dictionary has released its word of the year, and it

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Speaker 2: might be one you haven't heard of yet. En Shitification

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Speaker 2: has nudged out brain rot for the title this year,

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Speaker 2: meaning a gradual deterioration of a service or product brought

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Speaker 2: about by the reduction in the quality of service provided,

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Speaker 2: especially if an online platform, as a consequence of profit seeking.

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Speaker 2: Other words that got an honorable mention this year include

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Speaker 2: RTD or right to disconnect, giving employees the right to

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Speaker 2: not be contacted during non work hours. Raw dogging, the

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Speaker 2: act of undertaking a long flight with no electronic entertainment

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Speaker 2: devices or reading material. Brain rot, which refers to online

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Speaker 2: material that's not of the best quality. See skibbity toilet

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Speaker 2: and social battery for its tech metaphor being used to

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Speaker 2: explain cognition that's your latest news, headline's next Methanol poisoning

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Speaker 2: the difficult to catch issue that looks like a hangover

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Speaker 2: but is so much more. A few years ago, Becky

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Speaker 2: went on a family trip to Balley.

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Speaker 1: My mum actually booked us a trip, me and my

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Speaker 1: sister and her to go over with our cousins. It

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Speaker 1: was just really a trip to recharge, re energize.

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Speaker 3: We were meant to be there for two weeks.

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Speaker 2: She wasn't going too hard after first arriving. She was

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Speaker 2: saving that up for when she was going to hit

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Speaker 2: the barley night spots with her cousins.

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Speaker 3: The cousins decided to take us to one of their.

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Speaker 1: Places that they go through regularly, which happened to be

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Speaker 1: an Italian restaurant in Bali. So it wasn't really tasting

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Speaker 1: the local treats, but it was supposed to be quite

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Speaker 1: a reputable Italian place.

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Speaker 2: But when she sat down to eat, she didn't realize

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Speaker 2: one drink would change everything.

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Speaker 1: I ordered coke and vodka because I knew I didn't

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Speaker 1: want to go hard that night and I do well

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Speaker 1: with vodka. I had probably half a short glass of

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Speaker 1: drink and then just instantly felt really strange, really weird,

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Speaker 1: very nauseous. Didn't want to eat any food. I told

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Speaker 1: my mum and she was like, oh, that's okay. She

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Speaker 1: just thought it was Ballei belly that I was coming

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Speaker 1: down with. I stuck out the rest of the night

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Speaker 1: with dinner, and then we went straight back to the

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Speaker 1: hotel room and then proceeded to have about three four

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Speaker 1: hours of just constantly throwing up.

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Speaker 2: When did you draw the line and say, I don't

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Speaker 2: think this is Bali billy anymore.

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Speaker 3: I didn't really understand what was happening.

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Speaker 1: I just thought I was throwing up, and I don't

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Speaker 1: have much memory of it.

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Speaker 3: I would then.

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Speaker 1: Slip into a deep sleep and then wake up and

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Speaker 1: feel really nauseous and have to run to the bathroom again.

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Speaker 1: So it was a weird dream like state that I

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Speaker 1: was in. And then the next day, the Saturday, I've

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Speaker 1: completely lost that day. I've slept through over twenty four hours.

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Speaker 1: So this happened on Friday night. Now we're at Sunday morning.

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Speaker 1: I thought that I'd come good, so I ended up

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Speaker 1: doing some shopping.

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Speaker 3: Around for maybe an hour, and.

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Speaker 1: Then started to feel vertigo, nauseous again, really dizzy. I

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Speaker 1: actually said to my parents, I think I'm about to

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Speaker 1: have a seizure. My head was just scrambled. It was

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Speaker 1: like someone had put a wooden spoon inside my brain

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Speaker 1: and just gone for gold. We ended up having a

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Speaker 1: doctor come in and give me two IV drips. My

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Speaker 1: sister is quite a dramatic queen, so she went straight

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Speaker 1: onto Google and everything that I was saying was ticking

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Speaker 1: the boxes of methanol poisoning and me not wanting to

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Speaker 1: be a burden interrupt the holiday.

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Speaker 3: We just started. We still over a week left. I

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Speaker 3: was like, no, no, I'm fine.

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Speaker 1: I'm fine, it's fine, but I knew I wasn't okay.

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Speaker 1: Then we decided do we go to the hospital or

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Speaker 1: do we fly home Monday.

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Speaker 3: We ended up booking a flight and we ended up.

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Speaker 1: Flying home to Australia and going to hospital there.

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Speaker 2: Talk me through how doctors treated you. When he did

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Speaker 2: get back home.

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Speaker 1: I just was in the waiting area, had a drip

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Speaker 1: in my arm, was just waiting to be seen, and

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Speaker 1: it was hours and hours, and I was just getting

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Speaker 1: more irritable, more tired, more, you know, something in my

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Speaker 1: brain just wasn't right. They did say it was probably

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Speaker 1: methanol poisoning, but I was probably over the worst of

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Speaker 1: it by now, so all I had to do was

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Speaker 1: get hydrated. Looking back, I am so glad that I

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Speaker 1: only had half a glass.

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Speaker 3: I'm the type of person that.

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Speaker 1: If everyone's going out, I get a bit of fomo,

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Speaker 1: so I would keep drinking even if I do feel

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Speaker 1: a bit nauseous.

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Speaker 3: So if we had.

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Speaker 1: Been going out that night, I definitely don't think I

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Speaker 1: would be here talking to you right now.

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Speaker 2: Luckily, for Becky, she'd managed to dodge a bullets, but

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Speaker 2: others haven't been so Lucky Holly Bowls and Bianca Johans.

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Speaker 2: We're on a troop of a lifetime.

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Speaker 4: Our daughter was on the trip of a lifetime with

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Speaker 4: one of their best mates. This was meant to be

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Speaker 4: a trip full of lifelong memories.

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Speaker 2: That's Bianker's dad, Mark, speaking to the media. Over the weekend.

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Speaker 2: They were staying at a hostel in Van Vang, a

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Speaker 2: popular tourist spot, when they both drank alcohol believed to

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Speaker 2: be poisoned with methanol. The World Health Organization says that

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Speaker 2: methanol is sometimes used in distilling certain spirits because of

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Speaker 2: its low cost compared to alcohol. Sometimes it's added deliberately

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Speaker 2: to increase the drink's alcohol content, sometimes through at home

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Speaker 2: unregulated practices, it can be added unintentionally. For Holly and Bianca,

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Speaker 2: intentional or not, it had a devastating impact. After falling ill,

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Speaker 2: both girls were rushed to hospitals in Thailand, where Bianker

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Speaker 2: suffered seizures and lapsed into a coma. Late Friday, Holly

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Speaker 2: lost her fight against the toxic chemical just hours after

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Speaker 2: Bianca's life support had been switched off. Four other travelers

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Speaker 2: who also drank in the same area as Holly and

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Speaker 2: Bianca have also died as a result of suspected methanol poisoning,

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Speaker 2: an American man, a woman from the UK, and two

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Speaker 2: Danish backpackers who reportedly texted their friends saying they'd been

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Speaker 2: throwing up blood before they both died. But it's not

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Speaker 2: just tourists who were impacted by methanol poison Last month,

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Speaker 2: sixty five people died in India from suspected methanol poisoning

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Speaker 2: buying bootleg liquor from a local supplier. In fact, in

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Speaker 2: the last six months, eight hundred and fifty people across

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Speaker 2: seven countries have been impacted by suspected methanol poisoning. Two

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Speaker 2: hundred and forty six of those people died, with the

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Speaker 2: most incidents occurring in Indonesia, India and Bangladesh. The majority

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Speaker 2: of these cases impact poorer sections of the community who

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Speaker 2: can only afford to buy the cheapest alcohol. Mark Jones

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Speaker 2: is now calling for an extensive investigation into how something

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Speaker 2: like this could happen.

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Speaker 4: I would like to take this opportunity to urge the

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Speaker 4: allow government to investigate this to the forced extent to

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Speaker 4: make sure this incident doesn't happen again. Well forever, Miss

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Speaker 4: our beautiful girl and hope her loss of life has

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Speaker 4: not been in vain.

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Speaker 2: Methanol is used in lots of things, from paint stripper

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Speaker 2: to insecticides, inks and dyes. It's highly toxic and even

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Speaker 2: drinking a small amount can be fatal. Doctor Brad MacKaye

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Speaker 2: is a GP author, podcast host and medical commentator. Doctor

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Speaker 2: Brad do we see cases of methanol poisoning here in Australia?

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Speaker 2: Is it common?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's quite uncommon in Australia. A lot of the

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Speaker 5: methanol that we might use for industrial reasons has other

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Speaker 5: chemicals added to it to make peel really nauseous. So

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Speaker 5: if they do start drinking it from the bottle, which

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Speaker 5: is pretty awful, they'll feel pretty nauseous, they'll vomit everything

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Speaker 5: up and feel very sorry for themselves, but they won't

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Speaker 5: actually kill themselves, whereas in a lot of other countries

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Speaker 5: they may not have the same safety precautions involved, and

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Speaker 5: so then they may not notice the nauseous agent because

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Speaker 5: it won't be added into it, and so yeah, they're

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Speaker 5: going to be feeling pretty awful and it can be

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Speaker 5: life threatening.

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Speaker 2: We can we talk about the symptoms. How would you

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Speaker 2: know you've been poisoned with methanol.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, so methanol is very similar to ethanol, which is

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Speaker 5: normally an alcohol, so it can present very similarly symptoms

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Speaker 5: like having a hangover, I suppose, so like a headache,

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Speaker 5: feeling quite nauseated, really really hard to pick up what

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Speaker 5: the problem is. Often if you've already had a night

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Speaker 5: out drinking as well, then your body ends up metabolizing

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Speaker 5: all of the alcohol. First, your liver takes on the

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Speaker 5: ethanol and preference as you would if you'd been going

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Speaker 5: out drinking. But then once that ethanol so the alcohol

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Speaker 5: has been used up, then your body starts to move

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Speaker 5: on to looking at metabolizing methanol. So that could happen

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Speaker 5: like five hours even twelve hours after drinking, and so

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Speaker 5: it can be like a delayed effect. The following day

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Speaker 5: you could start to feel a lot worse very quickly.

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Speaker 5: This is because the liver starts to metabolize the methanol

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Speaker 5: into really quite toxic chemicals. So both formaldehyde, which is

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Speaker 5: what we use for embalming bodies, and also formic acid,

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Speaker 5: the typical acid that you hear about if you crush

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Speaker 5: ants up and take the acid out of the ant bodies.

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Speaker 5: So this can cause all sorts of inflammation in the

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Speaker 5: body in different organs that can cause organs to shut down.

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Speaker 5: It can cause the blood to become really acidic as well,

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Speaker 5: and can cause cell death as well in a variety

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Speaker 5: of these different organs around the body.

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Speaker 2: A couple of the Danish girls who've sadly passed away

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Speaker 2: in this current poisoning incident apparently message friends to say

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Speaker 2: they'd been throwing up blood. Would that be like final

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Speaker 2: stages of really serious methanol poisoning?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, not really final stages. You can still throw up

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Speaker 5: blood from just having a normal night out if you

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Speaker 5: vomit enough, and if it's violent enough, then you can

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Speaker 5: burst blood vessels around euroesophagus or even around your stomach

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Speaker 5: as well. So it's not a complete sort of like

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Speaker 5: sign of methanol poisoning. But yeah, often we'll see it

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Speaker 5: as being a sign of violent vomiting for a long

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Speaker 5: period of time.

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Speaker 2: A lot of the conversation around this too has been

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Speaker 2: around just how little methanol you can consume when it

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Speaker 2: can become deadly. So I'm saying, even like one shot

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Speaker 2: of a drink that has methanol in it could ascend

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Speaker 2: end your life. Why is methanol so deadly?

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Speaker 5: You only do need that small amount to cause a problem,

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Speaker 5: So even the amount of of pure methanol and a

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Speaker 5: shot could be enough to kill somebody over a period

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Speaker 5: of time. It's just highly poisonous. It's really how the

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Speaker 5: body metabolizes it, so breaking it down into really toxic chemicals,

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Speaker 5: which is different from how alcohol, our normal ethanol is

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Speaker 5: broken down. It's quite sad that you can have such

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Speaker 5: a small amount and that this is getting into supplies

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Speaker 5: of drinks around the world.

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Speaker 2: How do we actually avoid it though, because all of

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Speaker 2: the recommendations I've seen so far since this methanol poisoning

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Speaker 2: incident is just don't drink alcohol, because there's no way

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Speaker 2: to smell it, there's no way to taste it. Is

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Speaker 2: there any way of knowing that you've consumed it, because

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Speaker 2: as you said, it's hard to kind of determine whether

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Speaker 2: you're just having a normal hangover or whether you are

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Speaker 2: actually poisoned.

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Speaker 5: It comes down to really what's happening over the night

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Speaker 5: and what drinks people are having. So generally, like if

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Speaker 5: you're having, for example, beer from a study and you're

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Speaker 5: cracking open the top of the beer can or the bottle,

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Speaker 5: then you know that things were hopefully it's been manufactured

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Speaker 5: in a warehouse and it's been produced properly, there's going

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Speaker 5: to be ethanol in it rather than methanol. So it's

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Speaker 5: in those contained drinks that have been produced where you've

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Speaker 5: got a little bit more safety. Alcohol is not safe

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Speaker 5: in itself, but yeah, it's going to be a lot

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Speaker 5: safe for the methanol. If you've got drinks that are

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Speaker 5: just shots. There are a number of cases around the

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Speaker 5: world where people have just had sort of pure shots

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Speaker 5: of methanol, thinking that it's vodka or something else. Then

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Speaker 5: that could be a problem. If you're having a cocktail

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Speaker 5: made up and so there's a whole lot of different

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Speaker 5: bottles which are all being mixed up together, so you

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Speaker 5: might not really know what's going into your drink. That's

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Speaker 5: much more of a danger. And then we do have

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Speaker 5: sort of like some cases around the world where people

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Speaker 5: make their own alcohol, like moonshine for example, that you

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Speaker 5: may not have the brewing process exactly right, and so

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Speaker 5: you even inadvertently poison yourself from creating a different chemical

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Speaker 5: the what you're expecting. So homemade brews can be a

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Speaker 5: major source of this so it's really been careful what

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Speaker 5: you're drinking. If you're already overseas and you're worried about

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Speaker 5: being in contact with methanol, if you're wanting to have

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Speaker 5: a drink and then make sure it's from a sealed container,

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Speaker 5: that's probably your best bet.

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Speaker 2: The government's Smart Traveler website says that contaminated drinks could

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Speaker 2: include local, home brewed spirits, spirit based drinks like cocktails,

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Speaker 2: and brand name alcohol. They advise to consider the risks

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Speaker 2: when drinking alcohol at all, be careful when drinking spirits

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Speaker 2: and only drink it reputable license premises, avoid homemade alcohol,

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Speaker 2: and know that labels on bottles aren't always accurate. They

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Speaker 2: also say to respond quickly if someone shows the signs

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Speaker 2: of methanol poisoning fatigue, headaches, nausea, vision problems like fluriness,

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Speaker 2: light sensitivity, or tunnel vision. They also suggest reporting cases

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Speaker 2: of methanol poisoning to the police. So if you're traveling

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Speaker 2: overseas right now, be aware and be careful. Becky says

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Speaker 2: she didn't let her experience dim her passion for travel,

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Speaker 2: but says she definitely is more careful when drinking.

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Speaker 1: It hasn't deterred my want to travel overseas, and I've

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Speaker 1: been back to Southeast Asia.

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Speaker 3: I've been back to.

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Speaker 1: Vietnam just this year, but it's definitely been something that

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Speaker 1: I've been wary of and made sure you know, if

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Speaker 1: I ever do go back to Bali, I will if

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Speaker 1: I drink, I will only drink the Bintang beers. It's

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Speaker 1: always something that I will tell people if they ever

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Speaker 1: go to Bali, I will always warn them.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with

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Speaker 2: us today. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy

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Speaker 2: and our executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by

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Speaker 2: Teag and Sadler Es