Join us for a thought-provoking episode as we delve into the world of chemophobia and its impact on society with renowned science communicator James Kennedy. Discover the historical roots of chemophobia and its prevalence in today's world. From debunking myths to exploring the influence of social media on education, we explore the intersection of science, perception, and media. Tune in to gain valuable insights, challenge your perspectives, and uncover the truth behind the fear of chemicals. Don't miss this engaging conversation with James Kennedy that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew
Bio
James Kennedy is a British-born science communicator with a Natural Sciences BA(Hons.) and MSci degrees from the University of Cambridge, U.K. He has a wealth of experience in science communication and speaks at corporate events about how to tackle an irrational fear of “chemicals”. His 2021 book, Everything Is Natural, was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has since released two chemistry textbooks and multiple sets of chemistry education materials.
Time Stamps:
0:51 Sponsor message
1:31 How James Kennedy made the viral banana poster and introduction to chemophobia(Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome)
6:25 Is the fear of chemicals a new thing or is there a history behind it?
8:52 What is 'provenance' and how do objects carry stories
12:15 Why are adults more chemophobic than kids?
17:29 History of Chemophobia in the United States
22:14 The "Running Girl" Photograph and its Influence on the World
23:42 Post-modernism and uptick of Chemophobia
26:14 How is social media impacting education across the globe?
31:34 What is your stance on artificial intelligence and tools like ChatGPT?
37:06 Sponsor mid-roll
37:57 Will AI completely change the education system as a whole?
44:25 How are kids being influenced by social media in schools?
50: 30 The dystopia of TikTok mental health issues in kids
54:21 "Everything is Natural" blurring the lines between natural and artificial
55:47 Final plugs
Plugs
Links
Website: https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/
Kennedy College: https://kennedycollege.com.au/
Course: Chemistry for VCE
Twitter: James Kennedy (@JamesKennedyEDU) / Twitter
KG Food Company: KetoGeek | Official Site – KG Food Company
Shop Energy Pods(Our sponsors): Energy Pods – KG Food Company
Transcription:
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Introducing James Kennedy, a British-born science communicator and author with a wealth
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of experience in captivating audiences with his insights on tackling irrational fear
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of chemicals.
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I trained as a chemistry teacher initially, right?
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I did natural science at Cambridge and then went to do study education here in Australia.
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This banana poster was the first slide of my first ever chemistry lesson.
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And I just wanted to try and show that chemistry is relevant and interesting and is everywhere,
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and that's what the poster was about.
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I had no political agenda at all, right?
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It was literally a hook, we would call it, an education like to get everyone's attention,
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to get some discussion going before we get into organic chemistry, which is the topic.
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So I chose a banana as one of the most recognizable fruits, and then just analyzed
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what was in it, not from my own experiments, but from literature that's already been done.
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People have already done this work.
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This is the later posters I made have references on the back.
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If you turn it over, there's all the academic references on that, but these are published
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later on what's in a banana.
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And it's interesting the way that it was perceived.
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So students found it interesting like, "Oh, I recognize some of those things, but some
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of them I own, they started a bit of interest in the students."
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What surprised me was when I put it online, it just literally went viral.
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I got reposted everywhere and modified and decoded newspapers, New York Times, even and some
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others.
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What was fascinating was people assumed that I had some kind of political agenda.
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I was trying to show that one of two things, either that modern bananas are not real,
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like some kind of there is a fake banana industry that is cobbling together like fake bananas
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because they're cheap industrial synthetic banana.
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That's what some people assumed.
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And the other people were pro chemistry.
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They were like, "Oh, yeah, good, good, I need to, they got the message basically that I was
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trying to show."
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But this dichotomy really emerged.
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I knew we started to get, you know, as usual in the Twitter comments, it's back and forth
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of extremes.
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And that really alerted me to this fact that some people are, I actually want to say
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paranoid about the prevalence of chemicals around them.
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It's stifling for those people and it's a small number of people, it's a small percentage,
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but it's up to 10% who will go to extreme life for a void.
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What they see as like chemical contamination, they perceive it as everywhere.
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And then it just got me down this rabbit hole of research.
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It was a summer holiday by this point and I was just looking into the fear of chemistry,
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you know, Michelle Frankl's work and there's a lot of other researchers who've looked
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into this five or ten of them, the fear of chemistry.
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And this became my thing.
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Why are some people so afraid of chemicals?
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And it turns out there's sort of three groups of people and it comes to the perceptions
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of chemistry you get.
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The ones who are pretty open about chemicals appreciate the good that they do most scientifically
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litter people will be in that group.
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Then you've got the middle, which is the biggest group.
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The middle is sort of uninformed, it doesn't really care that much.
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They'll sort of maybe think that chemicals are usually a bit bad, but they're also happy
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to use them.
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They don't have any strong opinion.
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Then you've got the other sort of 10% that I mentioned, which are in chemophobic and
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I really don't like that word, by the way, but they have this fear of chemicals.
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There is a, there's a clinical word for it actually better than chemophobic.
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And then there's multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome or something like that.
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It's a psychological, right?
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It's proven psychological.
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It's like the fear of Wi-Fi.
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It's that kind of thing that's an experiment along this way in the way that it's help people.
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There is Wi-Fi, very strong Wi-Fi in the room and they get symptoms even though there's
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no Wi-Fi in the room.
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Yeah, it's a psychological thing.
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So, this became huge.
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It became a discussion topic and it became basically the next ten years of...
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Inferences speeches and trying to engage the public, trying to educate journalists on how
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not to push people into that category and how to working with bloggers, influencers who
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are often not science trained on how to communicate chemical stories appropriately.
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Obviously, teaching the whole time, trying to get the middle sort of 75% up into the loving
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chemistry part that's been a bulk of my sort of bread and butter as well.
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Yeah, this, this, but it all started with banana, really.
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Just zooming in on banana.
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It's also important to notice here is that my journey really, really interwoven with what
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you were making as well because once I remember that when I was browsing around on Facebook,
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that's I think the first time I got exposed to one of your infographics.
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And I was like, holy moly, the brain just lights up immediately.
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You realize that everything is actually chemicals.
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What am I doing?
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What am I doing with my life?
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What am I doing with my brain?
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So, let's dial back time a little bit.
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Let's talk about where the origins are.
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It has this chemophobia of some sort or man, there's a different, difficult term that you
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mentioned.
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I don't know if I can use that, the psychological term.
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But going back in time, is there like some connection where there's origin, there's an origin
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story here or have we always been afraid of chemicals or is this just like a new thing?
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It's, it comes in guys, right?
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So at the moment where it's dipped during COVID, we were not afraid of chemicals during COVID,
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we were afraid of the virus more or less and the lockdowns and the vaccines and everything
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else and the fear of the chemicals themselves actually dipped because we were, we were, we were
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buying more chemicals than ever to try and it sizes bleach and other things and soaps.
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So we, they were a little, the smallest of our concerns.
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But it's rising again now, it comes and goes, it's always been there just it depends
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on to what extent.
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So if you go all the way back, I like to go all the way back to ancient history because
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I think about that as a sort of a lens to view many of the things that we do as humans,
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I think it does explain a lot about what we do now.
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We evolve telling stories in the savannah around campfires essentially and that, that image,
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I have that image on my wall of like humans, early humans just around a campfire and
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the savannah just in the evening, they're telling stories, they're, they're cooking food,
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they're learning from each other in order to try and have a better hunter-gatherer experience
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the next day.
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And then we're talking 200,000 years ago now, but that's, that's the time when fire was
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becoming widespread, language was becoming widespread as well and our brain developed and so
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we really separated from animals.
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It's, it's a long process, but sometime around there, that's when we became fully sort of
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human.
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And why do I mention all of this?
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Because the stories we would tell would be stories of the hero's journey.
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So the hero's journey sort of archetypal story is, it's, it's the template for all our
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stories right now.
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Like every, every movie you go and watch is basically a hero's journey story and what happens
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in the hero's journey story is you've, you've got a hero who meets some kind of adversity
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comes back changed, having defeated that adversity where they come back, but they, they come
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back to where they started, but the, the, the places are a bit different.
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They are different because they've been victorious.
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What's interesting for me is there is usually an object involved like a talisman we call it,
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that's gone on the journey itself and that object comes back different too.
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So, so relating this back to like the hunter gatherers sitting around the fire, we would
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have brought memory aids, I guess, souvenirs, I suppose, from our hunter gatherer trips during
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the day and we would have used those as memory aids to look at show and tell, like, like,
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like what I found, I got a, I killed an ox.
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I, I got a, I got a, I got a something, I went to the far away place, I got, so I got
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a rock.
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These, these objects that we carry with us help us to tell the story.
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But what's interesting is there's a, there's a psychological phenomenon called provenance.
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And provenance is the idea that the story is actually in the object itself.
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It's not just a memory aid, but by going on a journey from somewhere exotic or dangerous
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and back to your home, that object contains a story physically.
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Now, scientifically, we cannot detect that.
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There's, there's actually nothing that's happened through the object.
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It's just moved, but we act as if it's true.
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We act as if objects that have been on an interesting journey have more value.
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And it kind of makes sense.
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Like, if you, if you think about this, say that there's an actor who wears, who, who carries
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a, a, a bag or a, a shirt or something, that's in a, in a film in a movie, that particular
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item will sell for a lot of money.
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But the identical item that's being sold down in target would sell for 12 bucks because
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it didn't go on that journey to, to the movie set.
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And we, there's lots of examples of this, you know, there's a, I remember, Lady Gaga's
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nail clippings for like $10,000 and stuff.
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It's ridiculous, but we do act as if we act as if these things are true.
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If an object goes on a journey, it's somehow embodies the, the journey in it.
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Okay.
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So how does this link to chemotherapy?
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Well, we believe that if we can see that an object has gone on and on pleasant journey,
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we see that thing as unpleasant now permanently.
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And this, and there's lots of other psychological things that, that, that's been to this, which
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I'll get into later on, but like, if we can see that say a, a compound or a, let's say,
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food, a food has had something from a laboratory put into it, we act as if that food is now
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tainted or if it's been through some kind of industrial food processing facility, we, we,
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we perceive it as unpleasant for whatever reason, then we see the food as being tainted.
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And a couple of interesting, um, other points which, which we could go into is we believe
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once it's tainted, it can't be purified.
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It cannot read it of that, that experience that the, the, the object all the food has had
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or it could be a skincare product or whatever it is.
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So once it's been on that journey through a sort of artificial laboratory type setting,
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it's permanently tainted, um, as the idea of contagion.
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And we believe that the, yeah, the, the idea of adding anything sort of industrial or chemical
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is, is going to increase its toxicity.
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So over processing and, um, yeah, industrialized chemical, but there's another whole reason
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for that as well.
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So putting all this together, we get this idea that, yeah, foods and cosmetics that have
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been processed industrially, especially with any kind of anything synthetic added are
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permanently then bad for you and gross and to be avoided.
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And I could unpack any one of those in the detail, but the sort of explains we've evolved
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from, from a, from a long time ago to have the sort of hardware ready to be scared of chemicals.
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It's just a matter of, do we activate that or do we learn that it's wrong and overcome
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it?
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That's a lot of wrong stuff, right?
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So we have to, but we have to come most of it through education.
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It's just that the fear of chemicals is, we are prone to that.
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Oh, one of the questions Corey handles our production and I was talking to him about
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him earlier, like what kind of question should I ask James this time around?
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And he mentioned something really interesting and it sort of ties into what you just said,
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is that educating students seems to be a little bit on the easier side.
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Perhaps you have a better inside entered, but as people become older, it seems to become
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even harder to sort of re-educate them towards, like accepting that food or anything that we
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consume is made of chemicals.
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So what's going on there?
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Well, people learn about chemistry in three ways, right?
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So when they're young, they get it from school and you have a monopoly then as a teacher,
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all the kids ideas of chemistry are taught between, we will take grade seven and grade
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twelve.
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For most people it's grade seven and grade ten because most students don't choose science
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the senior two years.
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So while he's here, it's the case.
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So at all, they don't do any science, most of them.
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So you've got basically grade seven to grade ten, a monopoly on their knowledge of chemistry
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and you can, and they come in, yes, they have a knowing nothing at all.
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So that's seven, eight, nine, ten, as four years.
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You can deliver lessons that promote chemistry as a discipline of, and I use these two words,
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creation and purification because I believe that it's almost a spiritual thing.
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But it elevates chemistry to, like, some kind of transcendent, spiritual good, right?
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Or I believe chemistry should be promoted as a discipline of self-creation and purification
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because by the time they finish school, they get their chemistry knowledge from two different
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places, no longer from school.
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Obviously they get it from marketing, right?
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Product labels and advertisements and they get it from mass media.
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So water, white, etc.
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You know, the evil chemists in, in TV shows and marketing tends to swerve towards the
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chemicals are bad, therefore by our product.
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That's a common, you know, you make something of villain and they say, oh, that doesn't contain
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that.
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You can do this with any particular chemical.
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You can find any particular food group and write a book about a diet that doesn't include
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that.
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And it's a template for being a, you know, you can do that.
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They're not all based on science.
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So they learn from that when they're adults and that's very difficult to control.
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You know one person has them anopoly on that, like that's the, that's an entire industry
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and there's no space for, as a teacher to go in and educate the adult because they're
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not actually learning chemistry from adults, like from teachers, sorry, they're learning
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chemistry from marketers.
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And then you've got the mass media that does nothing we can do about that, at least not in the
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short term.
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But when you've got Neil de Grasse Tyson and Brian Cox representing physics, right, they're huge,
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huge like physics heroes.
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And there are many others as well.
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Right.
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But then you've got David Attenborough and you've got, of course you could, you could put Richard
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Dawkins in there.
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Perhaps the evolutionary biology.
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There are others, but David Attenborough is really the king of biology and under, again,
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there are others, there's the, you know, the, the, the bear grills and the others.
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I suppose they're biologists too, but there are these really.
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Sort of respectable people representing biology and physics.
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And I said the respectable because they're knowledgeable.
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You, you want to watch their entertaining, their, their wise, their, they're also like pleasant
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characters like you, you feel like they're good people beyond just being scientists.
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And then you've got Walter White who, who doesn't know what he's doing at the beginning.
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And he, you know, kills a lot of people by like the third episode.
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And it's just evil, completely evil.
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And unfortunately he's the most famous chemist there is.
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Who else is there?
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Like I ask this every, every single time I do a keynote on this, I literally ask who is more
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famous as a chemist than Walter White.
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And I never get an answer.
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The, the one answer that people do attempt is they say, are the presenter of chemistry
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of volatile history.
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It was a British documentary series, but the, um, presenter of that was Jim El Calilelli,
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who was a physicist, right?
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So the BBC did a documentary series on chemistry.
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Firstly, they named it chemistry a volatile history.
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That's hardly a flattering title.
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Secondly, they never got further than three episodes, which just introduces the periodic
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table and that's it.
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No more.
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So it would be like a, a, a food documentary where you're just studying episode one, flower,
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episode two, eggs, episode three, milk.
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And you never actually look at any recipes, building compounds together.
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So on the third thing is he's a physicist.
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He's a professor of physics.
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So he's, you know, they couldn't find an actual chemist to present it, right?
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So, yeah, I don't think there are any more famous chemists than Walter White.
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And that's another problem in the mass media, though, that the only way we can do something
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about that is, is long term find another chemistry hero and make something that is bigger than
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breaking bad.
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But that is just such a huge challenge who, who's really able to do that.
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I know one person, I'm talking of, well, it is, it costs a lot of money like it, it's, um,
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and to make it engaging and it would, it would be a team of a hundred people and, and it
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would take many, many years, but, uh, some people say Bill Nye as well.
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So I looked into Bill Nye, but I'm, I'm a big fan of Bill Nye.
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A lot of kids grew up watching him this generation as well.
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They still, they still popular now.
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And, uh, if you analyze the topics of Bill Nye's episodes, they're almost all physics and
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engineering.
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There are, I think, two chemistry episodes out of five whole series.
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So he's not a chemist at all.
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He's not even, I wouldn't even call him a balanced scientist across all the disciplines.
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He's very much physics and engineering, which makes sense.
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That's his background.
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And I think third place was biology as a theme.
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So, so yeah, I don't count Bill Nye.
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He's not, he's not more influential than, uh, than breaking bad and marketing, which is
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where adults learn and we can't, at the moment, compete with that.
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Yeah, you're right.
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It's very difficult competing with mass media because at the, at the whim of some entertainer,
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you'll have a flood of hundreds of thousands of people doing what they want them to do.
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It's, it's almost like magic that we've created these monstrous sort of entities within
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our society.
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Um, sort of to sort of backtrack once more, you mentioned something happened during
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the 1960s, which sort of amplified the whole bullseye towards chemicals.
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What was that?
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Well, a couple of things.
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There was, we, we, we just backtracked to the 1950s, right?
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So 1950s, Kimophobia was at a low and the reason was, I think, post Second World War in
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Europe, we were, um, I mean, many more adults, particularly women get back into the workforce.
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We were looking for things, ways of saving, um, saving time, also conserving food for
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a long time.
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Society was changing in many ways that meant we had a need for time-saving plastics, particularly
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single-use plastics.
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They were, they were essential at that time.
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Um, it's a shame now we've forgotten how good they are, but, you know, just people were throwing
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them in the ocean.
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But anyway, we, um, in the 1950s, there was, there was, it was, it was a low.
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We get into the 60s, it starts to rise again because in the 1962, uh, a Rachel Kosson wrote
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a book, right, Silent Spring.
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So if any, if any of the listens haven't read Silent Spring, I recommend actually
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getting it.
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It's, uh, it's a PDF online.
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You can, it's open, open source.
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You can just, uh, Silent Spring, we're Rachel Kosson, but bear in mind the following things,
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right?
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So Silent Spring is a, it's a dystopian, it's two, it's two parts, right?
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The introduction is a dystopian fiction about a completely unrealistic future where Earth
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has become devoid of all life because chemicals have taken over and the, the earth is dead.
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Basically, that's chapter one, and it's fiction.
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Really unrealistic.
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Then the rest of the book is nonfiction, and it's about real concerns about DDT, mostly
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and other things.
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So this book got put on the nonfiction shelf because it is 90% nonfiction.
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However, anybody picking it up is going to start reading a chapter one because it's a
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nonfiction book and this, and they're working through the, the fiction part, the first
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bit of the beginning, not realizing that is fiction.
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And I've got some quotes from the book.
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You can find these online.
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It's a very short first chapter, by the way.
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It's like three pages.
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And they, they're still horrible, the script is harrowing about all birds of died and, and
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people have died and, and the rivers are all poisoned and dried and it's horrible, but
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the fact that it was on the nonfiction shelf scared people so much.
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Maybe that was what, what she wanted.
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I don't know, but she has, I mean, very much, she wrote this, this book for multiple reasons,
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I mean, we could go into that, but the book was tainted by her own personal experience,
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I think.
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The author was on, was on chemotherapy at the time, 1962 chemotherapy, where it was not,
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not particularly pleasant, it wasn't as a fancy today and she was suffering a lot.
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So her book against chemicals in society was really a reflection of her own suffering
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against the chemotherapy symptoms, but she sort of projected that onto the world.
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And it, it is very sad actually when you read it, but the book was massively influential,
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1962, Rachel Carson's book.
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And it, it is sort of made chemotherapy a peak again.
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And then a few other things happened in the 1960s, so obviously the space race is getting
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on.
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And this, the spot the way the space race wouldn't have been happened without, wouldn't
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have happened without all the new materials and the plastics and everything else that made
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it possible, right?
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So, so on the one hand, we're saying chemicals are evil, but at the same time, we're loving
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the space race.
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Like, that's, you know, we're, we're taking advantage of all the materials of chemistry
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and chemical industries made for us.
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Then you get to 1968.
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1968 was, I think it was a hollow eight where they, they went around the back of the moon and
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took a photo of Earth for the first time and I got that photo on my wall.
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So that photo is called, um, Earthrise, Earthrise, it's called Earthrise and you can see the
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Earth appearing to rise over the moon.
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And it was massively influential picture.
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That was the first image of the Earth as a whole from a distance, it's hard to imagine
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there was a time when we'd never seen the Earth as a whole, but that image changed people's
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perspective.
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And it, it made people realize that the Earth is sort of wholesome and beautiful when you
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can't see the people on it because you zoomed out far enough.
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They took, they took a sequel, I suppose, in 1972, it's called the Blue Marble and the
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Blue Marble was better because it clearer, it's bigger and you can see the entire Earth,
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they took it from the right angle.
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So the sun is on the entire front of the Earth and it's all lit up rather than the first
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one was like half lit, like a half moon type, half Earth, I suppose, half, half light,
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half dark, but the, uh, this one, the, the blue marble, 1972.
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Whole Earth and Nildegrass Tyson makes a really interesting point about this.
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He says that in that photo, that's the first map, person was world map where there were no
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borders, written on it.
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And he's got this great video, he gives a speech, a keynote speech in the US, and he lists the
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effects that they had on the environmental movement as people realize the Earth is beautiful
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as a whole without the sort of the marks that we've drawn on it to try and divide us.
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They made people feel united and a worship almost mother earth that became a, but one
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of the most famous photos of all time.
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What people don't realize though is that was on the front page of the New York Times.
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Within weeks, you then had running girl, I don't know if you're familiar with the running
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girl photo from Vietnam.
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So this is a photo taken.
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Yeah, it's a horrible photo, but it's, it's the photo of the aftermath of a chemical weapon
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attack on a Vietnamese village.
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And there was a, a Vietnam half, a half Vietnamese half American photographer went in and took
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this photo of people fleeing the chemical attack.
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And, um, those two photos were, they were both.
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On the front page of the New York Times within weeks of each other.
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So that juxtaposition in 1972 made people realize mother earth, beautiful, whole, untouched,
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pristine, and people evil using chemicals cause death and destruction.
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And that juxtaposition really just accelerated the fear of chemicals.
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And from then on, you had, um, everything that the Environmental Protection Agency was founded,
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the, the whole catalytic converter thing, um, the, the, the mandates I guess came in with
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got the clean air act came in.
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You also had all sorts of other lawsuits and cleanups for chemical disasters that might
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have been ignored 50 years before.
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You know, oil spills and all these other things as well.
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So it's, uh, yeah, that, that's basically what happened in the 1960s.
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A whole sort of series of social events, which accelerated it.
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And then I think by the, by the late 80s, we've forgotten again, somewhat.
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It went.
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We were busy.
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I don't know what were people doing in the late 80s, um, worried about East versus West
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politics and, and busy making money, I suppose, but then it's, it picked up again.
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And, uh, here we are today.
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So again, it comes and goes, but the 60s was a particularly interesting time.
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I think that with the advent of social media, the whole thing seems to have come back.
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Is that what your observation has been?
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Oh, totally, but it's been a long time coming.
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It's before social media.
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So I mean, I got a chapter in, in the book that I wrote on this.
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It's, I actually called it post-modernism.
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And I, I called it out like in 2015.
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The first time I had a slide, I found a slide from a keynote.
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I blamed post-modernism for the recent uptick, um, back in 2015.
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And back then, what I said was, it's actually about how I bring up the slide here.
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I read it too.
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Okay, this is, this is from 2015 before it became a, uh, a skateboard for everything today.
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Um, experts are no longer automatically trusted.
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But cult of the amateur has emerged.
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Scientific truth is just one opinion.
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Wow.
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So, and I, I don't like to overthink things, right?
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But the post-modernism movement, it's a bit broad.
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It's, it's, it's hard to define exactly, but one of the things that we're seeing recently is,
434
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:27,080
in my perception, and the listeners will, will chip in and they'll comment and go,
435
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:28,520
"No, no, no, that's not post-modernism."
436
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:29,520
And that's okay.
437
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:30,760
I'm interested in having that discussion.
438
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:35,840
So, is renegotiating the norms that we've constructed through the modern in Stereo?
439
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:36,840
Just renegotiating everything.
440
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:40,000
Just knock it all down, a rebuild, a different scratch, just in case we go anything wrong.
441
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:44,720
That includes not automatically assuming that experts and educated people should be trusted.
442
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:48,520
At the top, we should renegotiate that and figure it out from first principles all over again.
443
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:51,720
And what that's resulted in is, like, knocking down the domino, knocking down the house
444
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,920
of cuts, and just saying, "Okay, we're all on the bottom, now we're all equal."
445
00:24:54,920 --> 00:25:00,720
The doctor is, his view is equal with this blogger's view, which is equal with the president's
446
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:02,520
view, which is equal with my uncle's view.
447
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:03,520
They're all equal.
448
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:07,600
And social media has allowed that to happen, but that mindset came first.
449
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:08,600
We wanted that.
450
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:13,320
We wanted that equality of views and equality of exposure of views and equality of respect
451
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:15,880
of all views, even if they're ridiculous.
452
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,320
And we wanted that before social media came.
453
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:20,160
Social media just provided that.
454
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:21,960
And now we're thriving.
455
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,680
Well, we, we, we, we, we, we're not.
456
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:28,160
We, we, we are lapping it up even though it's really not good for us.
457
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:32,680
We really should be trusting educated opinions much more than uneducated ones.
458
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,360
But you know, you know what's going on out there.
459
00:25:35,360 --> 00:25:39,520
There's all sorts of nonsense, not social media, the proliferates, and people listen.
460
00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:45,000
So looking at the global educational landscape, like, for example, you're down in Australia,
461
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:48,720
and you've also taught in China for, for about four years as well.
462
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:53,760
So could you do like a side by side comparison to sort of analyze what your observations are,
463
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:58,880
especially pertaining to chemistry, like, what is the global situation and where's the net effect
464
00:25:58,880 --> 00:25:59,880
going towards?
465
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:03,200
Are we moving in a positive direction in different countries?
466
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:08,400
Or is it going to be sort of a big problem in the near future when it comes to education
467
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:12,840
and learning and especially taking into the context of the power of social media and the
468
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,200
same effects that you just mentioned?
469
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:19,720
Social media is a major problem and that's a problem that we are facing, I say, in, in the
470
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,840
West, I don't like the term the West, like I don't like the term, Kimophobia, right?
471
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:25,320
But, I mean, how else do we?
472
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:31,120
The G7, I suppose, I mean, the sort of democratic open wealthy countries, right?
473
00:26:31,120 --> 00:26:32,840
These, it's a problem we have.
474
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:37,720
It's a serious problem, social media, and I have spent four years in China working there,
475
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:41,320
and you know, I speak fluent Chinese, and I will always keep it up with developments
476
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:42,800
in China and see the direction is going.
477
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:43,800
I love China.
478
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:45,600
I want China to thrive and succeed.
479
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:51,480
I want it to be one of the world leaders culturally, economically, to be safe and stable and a great
480
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:53,400
place to live and all of that.
481
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:58,000
One thing that they're doing, I don't want to say well, but better than us, is managing
482
00:26:58,000 --> 00:26:59,600
fake news online.
483
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:05,160
And I don't think they've got it 100% right, but fake news can't really spread that fast
484
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:06,160
through China.
485
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:12,240
I mean, I'm all for free speech, but when, you know, it's, we are suffering from the consequences
486
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:15,640
of too much exposure of freedom of speech.
487
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,920
I think that summarizes, I believe in freedom of speech, but we are having algorithms that
488
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:23,320
amplify dumb things, and that's what China wants to allow.
489
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:28,480
So you can say whatever you want in China on social media, but you limited, each group is
490
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:32,960
limited to 500 people, and celebrities can't have more than, there's a certain number of followers
491
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,240
of the way it just kind of, sorry, so I understand the number of likes on a post that kind of
492
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:37,240
mixes out.
493
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,680
So you can't, nobody's more famous than say 100,000 likes.
494
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:46,280
It just says more than 100,000, you don't know who's super huge and who's just slightly huge.
495
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:48,440
So this is a thing, they're doing a few things.
496
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:53,000
Yeah, once you get to 100,000, you don't, it just says 100,000 plus, you've reached fame,
497
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:55,600
and you don't know whether it's millions or tens of millions, you don't know.
498
00:27:55,600 --> 00:28:00,640
It creates a sort of equality at the top with a little still freedom of the, I'm not saying
499
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:01,640
it's a perfect system at all.
500
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:02,640
It's really not.
501
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:06,000
There are lots of things I've done like about that system, like there's lots of information
502
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,360
you can't find, and Google doesn't work.
503
00:28:08,360 --> 00:28:12,240
There's lots of other services that don't work, but yeah, it's not, it's not perfect at all,
504
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,720
at all, but we are suffering from the consequences of doing the opposite, which is just complete
505
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:19,000
freedom and, um, it's not the freedom of the problem.
506
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:24,880
It's the amplification of misleading things and, and then large actors are playing the
507
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:29,520
system to look like a large number of small actors and manipulate people into thinking
508
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:34,000
stuff, but we wanted it, that's my point, we wanted it before social media came, we wanted
509
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,200
equality of thoughts, everybody's thoughts to be treated equally with equal respect and
510
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:39,200
equal air time.
511
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:40,720
We actually wanted that before it came along.
512
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:44,800
I know we've got this problem where, which exists here, not, not so much in China, which
513
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:48,280
exists here that some, that science is just an opinion, that you can go through the
514
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:53,720
rigor of academia and years, you know, master's degree, PhD, the, the rigor of a scientific
515
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:58,440
study for many years and come out and you've got then somebody just saying, no, fake news
516
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:03,440
or no, no, you can just make in something up and it gets treated with equal respect among
517
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:04,440
an educated audience.
518
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:10,080
And I think, I call it postmodernism, I call it postmodernism, it's one of the 10 is postmodernism,
519
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:14,960
we just don't trust a hierarchy we've built, which was actually based on ability and education,
520
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:15,960
we've brought it right down.
521
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:19,400
But the Chinese don't have this so much, they're quite happy to look up to experts and again,
522
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,400
not a perfect system, but they look up to the experts and go, yep, I agree with that.
523
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,760
Well, yeah, that's also not, that's also not right, you've got to be skeptical.
524
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:27,760
Yeah.
525
00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:30,440
You know, what happened here, like, what, what, I really, it's very unfortunate with
526
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:35,320
our system here, we had experts here saying, don't wear a mask and then you must wear a mask
527
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:39,320
and then we also had, no, no, no, how dare you say it came from a lab and then I came from
528
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:40,320
a lab, right?
529
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,880
So, and there are other things now, I could, I am not going to say what they are, but I've
530
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:48,280
got a list of predictions of things which I think will become untrue in the next couple
531
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:51,720
of years, things you cannot say right now.
532
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:58,240
But come back in 2025, we'll be like, I should tell you offline, but things that the, the
533
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:00,160
way the official narrative will completely change.
534
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,600
So, no one's doing a perfect job at this, but we are suffering the consequences of social
535
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:09,440
media and having everyone's opinions taken equally, I don't know what the solution is.
536
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,960
I really don't, but more discussion is certainly one of the parts of the solution.
537
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:19,200
One of the ways I look at it is that America, for example, our country has really tied
538
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,320
influence to monetary gains.
539
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:22,560
That's a huge problem here.
540
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:28,160
And I think that's a, that's a powerful driving force where science gets trumped by someone
541
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:29,840
saying with large falling.
542
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:34,280
So, yes, I do think that influence is a huge issue.
543
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:38,360
And another thing is just to add to the whole freedom of speech concept here is that I'm
544
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,160
not against it either.
545
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:46,600
But the way I think about it is when you enter the industrial age, we had ways to sort of
546
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:51,840
expedite processes, we had rules in place, we had everything streamlined.
547
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:56,120
We're in the information age right now and I think we don't have the right tools to sort
548
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:58,640
of navigate the waters.
549
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:03,720
Like for example, if somebody who's been working 40, 60 hours a day, they're going to go online
550
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:07,680
and look up something that their friend mentioned at the work and they are going to find the
551
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:12,360
most popular thing because maybe popular is the best and it seems to work.
552
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:17,800
So by that proxy and sort of pipeline, these people get brainwashed or indoctrinated in
553
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:22,760
bad information, which brings me to a very interesting question for you, which is the rise
554
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:24,520
of artificial intelligence.
555
00:31:24,520 --> 00:31:31,040
So what's going on with their, what's your sort of outlook on it and are there any concerns
556
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:34,480
that you have or do you see a positive light at the end of the tunnel?
557
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:37,480
Oh, definitely positive, very much pro AI.
558
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:38,480
I use it.
559
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:45,960
I subscribe to chat to you, and it's mind blowing the pace of advancement.
560
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:48,800
So we have to embrace it like every other technology.
561
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,000
It's not as scary as people admit.
562
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:52,800
I'm not as scary as people say.
563
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:59,080
So it's probably as world changing as maybe, I would say somewhere between the invention
564
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:03,600
of DVDs and the invention of the internet, I'd put it somewhere between there.
565
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,880
It's less influential than the internet, but it's more influential than DVDs.
566
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,640
You know, the ability to watch high-rate digital movies.
567
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:12,320
It's another tool and we have to use those tools.
568
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:13,320
This is our human history.
569
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,520
Again, I go back to ancient humans, evolutionary history.
570
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:24,040
The pattern of human evolution has been always to concentrate more energy use and more knowledge
571
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:26,600
into ever smaller units and use them faster.
572
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:30,000
That's been an exponential, that's been the pattern of human development.
573
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:32,920
So then it's just an exonological step.
574
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:37,120
So I mean, AI comes out of sort of predictive text and cluster analysis machine learning
575
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:38,120
for statistics.
576
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,200
It's only a step above that.
577
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:43,400
It's just gone from being a tool for professionals to public, right?
578
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:47,080
And then the T-PT just made a public, but they're not just out the blue, like, from me,
579
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:48,880
fierce, sort of, from the sky.
580
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:53,040
They were already tools and then one step more and now they're public.
581
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:54,720
From for chat T-PT, for example.
582
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:56,440
We did think about predictive text.
583
00:32:56,440 --> 00:33:00,440
We've had that before and no one was afraid of, you know, at least a couple of years ago,
584
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:01,440
nobody was afraid of it.
585
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:04,480
Maybe at the beginning people were worried that your phone was learning what you say and
586
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:05,880
then giving you the next word.
587
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,480
But it's essentially, the chat T-PT's a glorified version of that.
588
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:14,480
And we don't know what is trained on large amounts of text on the internet is the next logical
589
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:16,240
step and we have to embrace it.
590
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,880
And the people who don't embrace it will be left behind.
591
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:19,880
It's inevitable.
592
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:21,280
I mean, we could agree it's going to be good.
593
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,200
It's going to be bad, but it's just the trajectory of human development and we have to
594
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:26,960
be on board or will be left behind.
595
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:32,520
It's like, you know, some, particularly older people did not get on board with the internet.
596
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:38,400
And you know, not being able to use the internet now, it's a bit of a problem causes inconveniences.
597
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:42,720
And you know, you've got to walk into the town centre to do everything.
598
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,840
But those who don't get on board with AI will have those kinds of problems in the future
599
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:46,840
as well.
600
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:50,720
It'll just be harder to do stuff or won't be easier like it is for the other people.
601
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:54,120
No, a big fan of AI, self-driving cars.
602
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:56,000
We've got to get the policy on board though.
603
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:58,040
So two things we've got to be aware of.
604
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:01,160
Number one, firstly, first we get on board with it.
605
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:03,920
Or we don't really have to be like, but the two things we've got to be aware of, we
606
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:07,800
need to have always a human being on top of the AI.
607
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:14,080
Always we have to have a human, one human responsible for what the AI does legally.
608
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:18,800
So, you know, in the same way that we could build a tool, an AI is just another tool.
609
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:20,080
We could build a hammer, for example.
610
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:25,920
You can't sue the hammer company if you injure sale for good cause damage to you, the product
611
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:26,920
you're making, right?
612
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:27,920
It's the person's fault.
613
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:32,440
The person has to take on that responsibility of using the tool and be legally responsible
614
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:35,680
and be able to be punished for anything bad of the tool does.
615
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:39,880
The tool malfunctions and hurts someone has to be the users fault and it doesn't work any
616
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:40,880
other way.
617
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:44,920
I'm not saying that's like ethically the right thing to do, but legally it doesn't work any
618
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:45,920
other way.
619
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:49,480
Otherwise we're in this quandary of like, oh, machine did something.
620
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:52,400
Nobody's responsible was going to happen again then.
621
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,480
And then the machines take over.
622
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:57,320
We have to have one, yeah.
623
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:02,520
People when one person is responsible for each AI tool that is being used, so, you know,
624
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:03,920
they'll be careful with it.
625
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:04,920
They'll exercise restraint.
626
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:08,960
They'll put their human judgment onto it and say, do I really want to put this up?
627
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:14,680
So everything I've used, AI for, I've ultimately put my name on and said, I will be responsible
628
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:16,160
for this if there's anything better.
629
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:17,680
Check it, obviously for that reason.
630
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:21,240
But if I wasn't sitting on top of it, if I wasn't legally responsible for what the AI
631
00:35:21,240 --> 00:35:24,440
makes, I'd copy paste without reading it and put it out on the internet and that's
632
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:25,440
where we get into a problem.
633
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:26,720
There's another problem as well.
634
00:35:26,720 --> 00:35:30,880
If people start doing that and then there's nobody sitting on top, it's like sitting on top
635
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:32,280
of the horse in a way.
636
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:38,280
Like you can't have an extremely powerful, capable horse with nobody on top of it controlling
637
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:39,280
it.
638
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:41,360
Like it's just going to do what it wants and ruin the village.
639
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:44,440
So we need to have a person sit on it, responsible for what that horse does.
640
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:48,640
And then if that horse does something wrong, the rider gets punished, right?
641
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:51,880
It's the, I mean, in religion, he said, AI doesn't have a soul.
642
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:53,520
Like animals don't have souls, right?
643
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:57,960
And in the religious context, meaning it's like they're not responsible legally for their
644
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,240
actions because they're not conscious.
645
00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:04,960
And then the scientifically, whatever, it's just an analogy to say, AI is like an animal.
646
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:09,400
In a way, we have to own it and control it and be responsible for everything it does
647
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:10,400
like a pet owner.
648
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:12,280
You've got to dog the bite someone, it's the honest fault.
649
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:16,600
Right, if my AI writes misleading information, puts it out, put someone, my fault.
650
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:18,080
Right, so I put my name on it.
651
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:19,520
We have to stay on top of the AI.
652
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:21,320
So what does that mean for like self-driving cars?
653
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:23,320
Well, someone's got to be responsible.
654
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:29,240
And it would have to be either the driver, which I think initially it has to be ultimately.
655
00:36:29,240 --> 00:36:32,160
You could say, see Elon Musk, although he's going to have a lot of a lot of trouble going
656
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:35,240
forward if he takes responsibility for all the self-driving cars.
657
00:36:35,240 --> 00:36:40,440
So probably for a very long time, the responsibility is going to be within the hands of the driver.
658
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:45,680
You are an expert communicator and at the same time as you've taught in various different
659
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:46,680
schools.
660
00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:50,360
I'm just curious about 50 different schools.
661
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:56,800
So I'm just curious, what do you see is going to happen in the future when it comes to, for
662
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:02,920
example, artificial intelligence, teaching, are we entering a new phase of education as we
663
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:03,920
speak?
664
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:07,520
This question I've seen many times.
665
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:12,960
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666
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669
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674
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675
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And now let's get back to our inspiring guest.
676
00:37:57,720 --> 00:38:02,160
With every new technology that people think of this new technology is going to revolutionize
677
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:04,280
it, it's going to revolutionize every education.
678
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:06,440
And the answer is no, it won't, not that much.
679
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:10,440
There will be a small change, a small incremental change to what we already do.
680
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:14,520
So think back to what's the first big change possibly?
681
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:18,080
Well, you could go way back to using paper versus using slate.
682
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:20,280
For example, is this going to revolutionize education?
683
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:21,600
No, it didn't.
684
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:27,440
You can whiteboard instead of blackboard to revolutionize, not really, not massively so.
685
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:31,120
Keep going forwards, you've got how about this spell checkers?
686
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:34,400
So that was a big debate back in the day, like when I was a kid.
687
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:35,400
Turn off your spell checker.
688
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:37,800
If you're typing your work, you should know how to spell.
689
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:41,160
And then we realized actually, just going to turn it on anyway.
690
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:43,800
They'll have it off when the teacher's there and they'll quickly turn it back on and
691
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:44,800
turn it back off.
692
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:47,880
It's very difficult to turn off the spell checker now.
693
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,880
But these would be a button that you have to press to do the spell check.
694
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:55,480
And so they ended up being, we went from being, no, no, no, we can't do this.
695
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:56,480
The students will cheat.
696
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:00,080
They won't learn how to spell to encouraging students to use it.
697
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:04,920
And now as a teacher, if I see a typed essay that's been badly spelled, I'll just say
698
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:06,600
check the spelling using word.
699
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:08,680
I'll encourage them to do that.
700
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:09,680
And that's the pattern.
701
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:13,720
We tend to go from skepticism to opposition and then encouragement.
702
00:39:13,720 --> 00:39:17,000
And for every technology that comes into education.
703
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:18,320
So yeah, spell check was one.
704
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:19,800
Then laptops was another one.
705
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:21,320
Well, I pads and then laptops.
706
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:22,800
The ultimate became laptops.
707
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,200
So laptops in schools became a thing.
708
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:29,280
It was maybe 10 years ago, roughly like that.
709
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:31,840
Where now the students are on their laptops all day, every day.
710
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:33,520
I don't know what it's like in America.
711
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:35,240
You know, what are they doing in schools?
712
00:39:35,240 --> 00:39:38,080
Like here, pretty much every school all day.
713
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:39,920
I'd say maybe not literally all day.
714
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,320
There's like four lessons out of five in the day.
715
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:43,520
They'll be on their laptops.
716
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:44,520
Yeah, sport.
717
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:50,120
Yeah, I remember when I went to college and that was like any many years back.
718
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:51,760
We were using laptops regularly.
719
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,600
I used to personally own a laptop myself all the time.
720
00:39:55,600 --> 00:40:01,960
I'd imagine now we just throw probably phones and tablets into the mix, probably tablets
721
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:03,160
more so.
722
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:07,600
So I'm not sure, but I can totally see that it's probably very similar over here as well.
723
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:08,600
Probably.
724
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:13,060
What's happened here is it's now become compulsory to have a laptop in the students school
725
00:40:13,060 --> 00:40:16,180
bag all day from grade seven onwards compulsory.
726
00:40:16,180 --> 00:40:18,620
Like all the learning materials are delivered via the laptop.
727
00:40:18,620 --> 00:40:20,300
The laptop is open every lesson.
728
00:40:20,300 --> 00:40:21,460
That's the main means of learning.
729
00:40:21,460 --> 00:40:26,420
You also have a notebook, but most of the learning is done on the laptop and you can tell
730
00:40:26,420 --> 00:40:29,500
because the school's printing budgets have plummeted.
731
00:40:29,500 --> 00:40:33,780
There used to be, you know, 50 grand a year, whatever, and there'll be now like 12.
732
00:40:33,780 --> 00:40:38,540
There's no printing anymore because most of the 12 will be into here, nice brochures and
733
00:40:38,540 --> 00:40:39,540
stuff.
734
00:40:39,540 --> 00:40:42,340
So everything is delivered electronically and the kids are on the laptops all day and
735
00:40:42,340 --> 00:40:46,220
we thought, oh, they're going to get, remember we used to be worried about like, was it like,
736
00:40:46,220 --> 00:40:47,660
was it, you get square eyes?
737
00:40:47,660 --> 00:40:48,660
Remember that?
738
00:40:48,660 --> 00:40:49,900
Thanks to be a worry pad.
739
00:40:49,900 --> 00:40:54,660
There's a lot of those man.
740
00:40:54,660 --> 00:40:59,340
So yeah, you get square eyes, they'll have hunched over a posture and all these issues.
741
00:40:59,340 --> 00:41:03,980
We went from skepticism to oppositions, let's embrace it.
742
00:41:03,980 --> 00:41:04,980
Let's just do it.
743
00:41:04,980 --> 00:41:09,540
It saves the planet and they learn better and also an interesting upside of laptops was
744
00:41:09,540 --> 00:41:10,820
the discipline improved.
745
00:41:10,820 --> 00:41:18,540
So when you have kids who are a bit agitated, fidgety, usually their boys might be a difficulty
746
00:41:18,540 --> 00:41:24,140
engaging in the task for a long period of time, they get a Chrome extension for a little
747
00:41:24,140 --> 00:41:28,260
game because the school can block, the school's going to block the game sites, they can block
748
00:41:28,260 --> 00:41:30,100
steam, they can block all of that.
749
00:41:30,100 --> 00:41:34,700
But for some reason, they can't block Chrome extensions and they, you can get Tetris and
750
00:41:34,700 --> 00:41:36,660
stuff on the browser.
751
00:41:36,660 --> 00:41:41,500
So these fidgety kids, instead of like pushing and stealing rubbers and erasers and pushing,
752
00:41:41,500 --> 00:41:46,540
sorry not rubbers, we call them erasers off the table and stealing pens, whatever, causing
753
00:41:46,540 --> 00:41:50,220
a little minor chaos in the classroom, they'll just get onto play Tetris and Pac-Man
754
00:41:50,220 --> 00:41:53,780
on the Chrome extension and discipline actually improved.
755
00:41:53,780 --> 00:41:58,380
Those kids who are disengaged no longer bother others and the same thing happens during recess
756
00:41:58,380 --> 00:42:03,180
and lunch, like, there's a downside, right, there's less physical play.
757
00:42:03,180 --> 00:42:07,980
Now, there's a lot less sport happening, voluntary spontaneous sport of recess and lunch because
758
00:42:07,980 --> 00:42:10,060
everyone's on their devices, on their laptops.
759
00:42:10,060 --> 00:42:15,900
So yeah, the upside was physical bullying went down and disruption in the classroom definitely
760
00:42:15,900 --> 00:42:18,620
went down with the introduction of laptops and now we encourage it.
761
00:42:18,620 --> 00:42:20,780
So the same thing will happen with AI, so what will happen with AI?
762
00:42:20,780 --> 00:42:24,260
We've gone from no, no, no, they're going to cheat on the essays and lowless block in,
763
00:42:24,260 --> 00:42:28,220
Italy blocked it and then reversed it and the government schools here blocked it, the
764
00:42:28,220 --> 00:42:31,700
Catholic and private schools encouraged it.
765
00:42:31,700 --> 00:42:34,580
And here we have a three tier system, right?
766
00:42:34,580 --> 00:42:39,320
So the bottom, it's, I wish it wasn't this, it's like a French flag, I wish it wasn't this
767
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:44,420
stratified here, but we have three types of schools, government schools, I mean, oversimplifying
768
00:42:44,420 --> 00:42:48,380
here, therefore the low socio-economic groups generally, there are very few exceptions,
769
00:42:48,380 --> 00:42:53,780
then you've got the middle Catholic schools, the middle group and then for the richest 20%
770
00:42:53,780 --> 00:42:54,860
go to private schools.
771
00:42:54,860 --> 00:43:02,060
So the top two sort of layers of schools encouraged it, the bottom one band and that tells me
772
00:43:02,060 --> 00:43:04,020
that's just going to widen the gap, right?
773
00:43:04,020 --> 00:43:07,700
We need to get government schools here on board with chattyBT, get teachers, because teachers
774
00:43:07,700 --> 00:43:12,020
use it, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm on LinkedIn teachers groups, I'm on Facebook teachers groups,
775
00:43:12,020 --> 00:43:14,060
they're always using chattyBT to plan their lessons.
776
00:43:14,060 --> 00:43:18,420
At the same time, banning the students from using chattyBT is going to widen the gap,
777
00:43:18,420 --> 00:43:21,500
you know, some of the kids here haven't heard of chattyBT in government schools.
778
00:43:21,500 --> 00:43:25,540
Meanwhile, Catholic schools and private schools are encouraging its use and teaching them
779
00:43:25,540 --> 00:43:30,860
how to make good prompts and how to get ahead using AI and that's the right side of history
780
00:43:30,860 --> 00:43:31,860
to be on.
781
00:43:31,860 --> 00:43:36,760
Jump the skepticism and the opposition, get straight into the embracing it, like every other
782
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:41,380
tool throughout human history, even, you know, even nuclear weapons, right?
783
00:43:41,380 --> 00:43:44,460
I mean, they could be argued as like a thing we don't want to use, but we are using them
784
00:43:44,460 --> 00:43:47,580
as a, as a deterrent, they're extremely effective.
785
00:43:47,580 --> 00:43:51,020
We don't have to, you know, press the button for them to be useful, they're just every
786
00:43:51,020 --> 00:43:54,100
tool, including those have been embraced.
787
00:43:54,100 --> 00:43:55,580
So let's do that.
788
00:43:55,580 --> 00:43:57,180
Let's not be on the wrong side of history.
789
00:43:57,180 --> 00:44:01,860
That's absolutely true and I'm totally on board it and I'm so happy that there are many
790
00:44:01,860 --> 00:44:04,740
people who have actually started to embrace that.
791
00:44:04,740 --> 00:44:08,860
One of the questions I have is when you and I probably went to school, we didn't have anything
792
00:44:08,860 --> 00:44:09,860
called social media.
793
00:44:09,860 --> 00:44:13,820
Nowadays we have things like TikTok and Instagram and all of these kind of things.
794
00:44:13,820 --> 00:44:20,220
Now, how is schooling be affected by that and how is the interpersonal relationship between
795
00:44:20,220 --> 00:44:25,180
kids being influenced by that and the relationship perhaps between the parents and the children
796
00:44:25,180 --> 00:44:26,180
as well?
797
00:44:26,180 --> 00:44:27,180
That's an interesting one.
798
00:44:27,180 --> 00:44:33,340
Well, firstly for the kids themselves, so Jonathan Hate, HAIDT is his surname.
799
00:44:33,340 --> 00:44:39,180
So Jonathan Hate's probably, as far as I can tell, the world leader on this, and I follow
800
00:44:39,180 --> 00:44:40,180
him on the sub-stack.
801
00:44:40,180 --> 00:44:41,980
And I recommend your listeners do as well.
802
00:44:41,980 --> 00:44:46,980
Jonathan H A I D T and he's got a book coming out soon on exactly this, on the effect
803
00:44:46,980 --> 00:44:52,980
of social media and he's got lots of data, studies, massive sort of, he's got a Google
804
00:44:52,980 --> 00:44:56,700
doc where people can pull and put in extra studies that have been done on this and he's building
805
00:44:56,700 --> 00:45:00,460
up a picture that is going to go into a book that's coming out in roughly six to 12 months
806
00:45:00,460 --> 00:45:02,420
time, something like that.
807
00:45:02,420 --> 00:45:07,940
So he's talking early to 24 roughly, the book, but it's on the effect of social media and
808
00:45:07,940 --> 00:45:10,460
exactly how and who it affects.
809
00:45:10,460 --> 00:45:16,820
And the reason there are so many conflicting studies on this is some studies look at
810
00:45:16,820 --> 00:45:20,420
screen time, just generic screen time.
811
00:45:20,420 --> 00:45:23,700
And if you look at just screen time, it turns out it's not that bad.
812
00:45:23,700 --> 00:45:26,380
So there's worries about square eyes and stuff where I've blown.
813
00:45:26,380 --> 00:45:30,740
In multiple ways, people's wellbeing academic results, they're not affected really that much
814
00:45:30,740 --> 00:45:32,420
by having more screen time.
815
00:45:32,420 --> 00:45:38,180
What matters is who is watching, so some demographics are more affected than others.
816
00:45:38,180 --> 00:45:44,260
So girls more than boys, poor more than rich and liberal more than conservative, open to
817
00:45:44,260 --> 00:45:48,740
new ideas coming at them, even if they're ridiculous.
818
00:45:48,740 --> 00:45:53,780
And the, so so who's watching and what you're doing on the screen makes a huge difference.
819
00:45:53,780 --> 00:45:57,620
So it turns out watching a movie on the couch with a friend, that's screen time, but that's
820
00:45:57,620 --> 00:46:01,100
actually good for your mental health.
821
00:46:01,100 --> 00:46:03,820
And they found a different types of screen time are not equal.
822
00:46:03,820 --> 00:46:08,340
So when you break it down, so what Jonathan hates does and he says that so the people who
823
00:46:08,340 --> 00:46:11,300
go, no, no, no, this study found no correlation with blah, blah, blah.
824
00:46:11,300 --> 00:46:13,100
And he goes, no, no, look at what study was measuring.
825
00:46:13,100 --> 00:46:18,620
Is it screen time or was it specifically social media dooms growling?
826
00:46:18,620 --> 00:46:23,980
Because in terms of a hierarchy, the worst thing you can do is dooms growling through influential
827
00:46:23,980 --> 00:46:29,860
TikToks, when I'm being very specific here of glorification of mental health problems.
828
00:46:29,860 --> 00:46:31,500
No, I don't, I don't know.
829
00:46:31,500 --> 00:46:32,500
TikTok doesn't give me this.
830
00:46:32,500 --> 00:46:36,940
It might be that I'm the wrong age bracket, but I've met with young people who've shown
831
00:46:36,940 --> 00:46:40,780
me their TikTok for you page and every roughly fifth video.
832
00:46:40,780 --> 00:46:48,660
So you get four funny videos, four interesting funny videos, some farmer planting trees and
833
00:46:48,660 --> 00:46:54,620
double time really fast and then you get some cool sort of eclipse effects, some cool stuff,
834
00:46:54,620 --> 00:47:00,980
just relaxing brain downtime for those video, short video, something funny.
835
00:47:00,980 --> 00:47:06,100
Then every roughly fifth video is a glorification of a self-diagnosed mental illness.
836
00:47:06,100 --> 00:47:08,100
And it's oddly specific.
837
00:47:08,100 --> 00:47:12,300
Each person gets pushed into this sort of different niche of mental illness.
838
00:47:12,300 --> 00:47:17,380
And I don't know whether it's done deliberately by TikTok, I don't think so because usually
839
00:47:17,380 --> 00:47:20,580
these things happen through an negligence rather than malice.
840
00:47:20,580 --> 00:47:22,220
That's my, my Occam's razor.
841
00:47:22,220 --> 00:47:28,060
I just assume negligence first before I have resort and assuming it's malice.
842
00:47:28,060 --> 00:47:32,380
But I think the algorithm is just realized, people lap that up and you need the four nice
843
00:47:32,380 --> 00:47:33,380
funny videos.
844
00:47:33,380 --> 00:47:37,940
Otherwise, it becomes a horrible and palatable because it's all, but it literally
845
00:47:37,940 --> 00:47:38,940
is.
846
00:47:38,940 --> 00:47:40,700
Every fifth video is like a glorification of a mental illness.
847
00:47:40,700 --> 00:47:48,180
And so for example, let's say, like an eating disorder, and there'll be somebody who just
848
00:47:48,180 --> 00:47:54,340
proclaims to have this and shows what it's like and hashtags and all of that.
849
00:47:54,340 --> 00:47:57,780
And then, but they might actually have it for real, but what's interesting is people then
850
00:47:57,780 --> 00:48:01,500
start imitating because they realize that gets followers, they'll self-diagnosed, other
851
00:48:01,500 --> 00:48:04,900
people who don't have it will self-diagnosed make videos about it.
852
00:48:04,900 --> 00:48:08,740
So the point that they actually start getting it and you get this thing, they call it a social
853
00:48:08,740 --> 00:48:14,220
contagion and they wish it wasn't real, but please do read Jonathan Hayd's research on this.
854
00:48:14,220 --> 00:48:19,900
This kind of stuff within, so Tiktok does, there was a study done recently, they got a thousand
855
00:48:19,900 --> 00:48:25,860
AIs actually and they randomly gave the AIs different interests, really specific interests.
856
00:48:25,860 --> 00:48:30,540
So they told the AIs, you're a thousand, you know, Tiktok accounts, a thousand SIM cards,
857
00:48:30,540 --> 00:48:35,580
a thousand, and each AIs had its own specific set of interests like rabbits jumping over fences
858
00:48:35,580 --> 00:48:38,220
or something really specific.
859
00:48:38,220 --> 00:48:43,140
And the AIs just went through Tiktok and the AIs were judging, what's in the video?
860
00:48:43,140 --> 00:48:44,460
What can I see in the video?
861
00:48:44,460 --> 00:48:45,460
Do I like it if I do?
862
00:48:45,460 --> 00:48:49,380
I'll stay on that for longer, if I don't know rabbits growl.
863
00:48:49,380 --> 00:48:54,700
So 30 minutes was the average, so 30 minutes, 30 minutes Tiktok could just put through randomly
864
00:48:54,700 --> 00:48:58,260
showing you stuff, but figure out what you want, reach of these AIs.
865
00:48:58,260 --> 00:49:02,700
And what was more interesting was that after that 30 minutes, if you changed the preferences
866
00:49:02,700 --> 00:49:05,700
of the AIs, Tiktok didn't change its algorithm.
867
00:49:05,700 --> 00:49:06,700
What?
868
00:49:06,700 --> 00:49:10,260
The ones you're pushed into that, you're stuck.
869
00:49:10,260 --> 00:49:14,300
Like so you might go in on a bad day, you're like, you're feeling like, I want to know,
870
00:49:14,300 --> 00:49:17,220
you think you've got some mental health, whatever, you're stuck there.
871
00:49:17,220 --> 00:49:21,420
It gives you that then, even if you change what you want, now Tiktok has released a reset
872
00:49:21,420 --> 00:49:25,420
button somewhere in the settings, so you can reset the algorithm and start again, but
873
00:49:25,420 --> 00:49:27,100
it, who's going to do that?
874
00:49:27,100 --> 00:49:31,180
Like it learns so much about you, it pigeonholes you in 30 minutes and it pushes you down
875
00:49:31,180 --> 00:49:35,820
this rabbit hole of, um, celebrating mental illness and it's very strange.
876
00:49:35,820 --> 00:49:39,700
I, I encourage you to read Jonathan Hayt's work on this, um, get on to Tiktok if you have,
877
00:49:39,700 --> 00:49:43,220
if you're not a young person who you can trust and show you their genuine for you page,
878
00:49:43,220 --> 00:49:48,220
because a very personal thing, um, have a look at what's on it and it's literally glorifying,
879
00:49:48,220 --> 00:49:50,980
celebrating mental health issues.
880
00:49:50,980 --> 00:49:54,780
Beyond awareness, I'm all for like awareness, it goes beyond that.
881
00:49:54,780 --> 00:50:00,860
It goes towards glorification and phomo, like if you don't have one, you're, you're out
882
00:50:00,860 --> 00:50:02,020
of the crowd.
883
00:50:02,020 --> 00:50:03,020
You need one.
884
00:50:03,020 --> 00:50:04,700
Like it's, it's gone way too far.
885
00:50:04,700 --> 00:50:10,540
And I'm all for acceptance, of course, uh, understanding education about it, awareness,
886
00:50:10,540 --> 00:50:11,700
but it's gone way too far.
887
00:50:11,700 --> 00:50:15,100
And some of these people are, they look like they're mocking the mental health issues,
888
00:50:15,100 --> 00:50:18,540
because you can look at them and go, nah, that's not real, but it doesn't look really doing
889
00:50:18,540 --> 00:50:21,900
this for the followers, the likes, the views, but it's very strange.
890
00:50:21,900 --> 00:50:26,580
And some of these mental health issues are, we've gone from nearly zero to being quite prevalent.
891
00:50:26,580 --> 00:50:30,020
Yeah, the most common one was, uh, I think it was the end of last year or the year before,
892
00:50:30,020 --> 00:50:32,380
um, but the Tourette's thing, did you hear about that?
893
00:50:32,380 --> 00:50:34,220
No, I barely used TikTok.
894
00:50:34,220 --> 00:50:35,580
Yeah, Tourette's.
895
00:50:35,580 --> 00:50:36,580
So real, right?
896
00:50:36,580 --> 00:50:39,620
This is, it sounds like, this is, it sounds like a black marionette.
897
00:50:39,620 --> 00:50:41,420
This is a stupid nightmare, man.
898
00:50:41,420 --> 00:50:44,780
What were, are kids are there and adults don't tend to know, like they don't browse the
899
00:50:44,780 --> 00:50:46,180
for you page of it, right?
900
00:50:46,180 --> 00:50:49,460
But as a teacher, occasionally, here's about been to so many schools, since thousands
901
00:50:49,460 --> 00:50:55,020
of students, I've, literally, um, I've seen this, um, so, so the Tourette's thing was this
902
00:50:55,020 --> 00:51:01,380
one specific example where it was in the US only, not Canada, was in the US, where some,
903
00:51:01,380 --> 00:51:05,660
one of the mental health issues, the spread for whatever reason, was Tourette's and that
904
00:51:05,660 --> 00:51:11,940
just became, again, ring, niche, sort of quite a minor issue, like it's not, not very prevalent,
905
00:51:11,940 --> 00:51:13,260
but it rocketed.
906
00:51:13,260 --> 00:51:18,900
And people started presenting to GPs suddenly within two months of having Tourette's.
907
00:51:18,900 --> 00:51:22,980
On the sudden onset Tourette's, by the way, like they never had the history of it and they're
908
00:51:22,980 --> 00:51:23,980
suddenly got Tourette's.
909
00:51:23,980 --> 00:51:28,980
Then they realized the GPs were, um, there was a pattern in this sudden explosion of diagnosis
910
00:51:28,980 --> 00:51:29,980
of Tourette's.
911
00:51:29,980 --> 00:51:34,280
And that's, so these were, tiktok addicts, and Instagram addicts, social media, doom-scrolling
912
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:35,280
addicts.
913
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:39,100
And what they found was that they had been, when they interviewed them, they showed that,
914
00:51:39,100 --> 00:51:42,220
oh, actually, I've been shown loads and loads of Tourette's videos.
915
00:51:42,220 --> 00:51:44,320
Now I wish it wasn't, but true.
916
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:49,580
But some mental health issues are amplified through repeated exposure by the algorithm and
917
00:51:49,580 --> 00:51:51,800
the algorithm knows that and it shows you more.
918
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:55,840
And I'm not saying China does these rights, but China shuts stuff like that down.
919
00:51:55,840 --> 00:52:00,080
Now I'm all for freedom of speech and freedom of press.
920
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:04,360
But when you're amplifying stuff to the point that it's causing mass harm, I do ask question,
921
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:09,360
you know, there was, yeah, like for example, the way that China treats its, you know, China
922
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:14,480
has occasionally, not very often, but they'll have like a, you know, mass killing, like
923
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:18,320
in the US they happen all this, sorry, they do, they happen all the time.
924
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:21,960
But within China, when that happens, the press just doesn't mention it.
925
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:26,480
Now all they mention it like this once, somewhere, and then they don't talk about it constantly
926
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:31,320
and ruminate on it and make it look normal, which is I think the amplification is possibly
927
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:35,960
too much, maybe, because it doesn't seem to be working, it's still happening in the US.
928
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:40,640
The amplification of these issues does not work.
929
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:41,840
The Chinese just keep it quiet.
930
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:45,360
Now whether they have fewer of them will never know if they keep it quiet.
931
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:49,440
So we don't know whether that works either, but certainly what we're doing is not working.
932
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:50,440
We amplify these issues.
933
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:54,000
They spread, and the Tourette is the most famous one, but there are others and some of them
934
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,440
are so oddly specific, but they spread through TikTok.
935
00:52:57,440 --> 00:52:59,240
They're crazy, man.
936
00:52:59,240 --> 00:53:00,240
Yeah.
937
00:53:00,240 --> 00:53:01,240
It's crazy.
938
00:53:01,240 --> 00:53:04,760
So they've banned smartphones here now in schools across the board.
939
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:07,840
Obviously in China or in your side of the...
940
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:10,080
Here in here in Australia, I'll state.
941
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:16,000
Anyway, I'll state it's just banned smartphones in schools for kids.
942
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:17,160
That's man.
943
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,240
I hope things get better over time.
944
00:53:19,240 --> 00:53:20,240
Yeah.
945
00:53:20,240 --> 00:53:22,240
Well, it's like...
946
00:53:22,240 --> 00:53:23,240
What do you do?
947
00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:26,840
I think the easiest fix is just get TikTok to tweak a few things.
948
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:27,840
That's all.
949
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:30,040
Make the algorithm automatically reset every week.
950
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:31,040
Something like that, I don't know.
951
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:32,840
Yeah, I don't know, man.
952
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:34,920
I didn't realize this problem was this bad.
953
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:36,920
You see it as a teacher.
954
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:42,000
The adults have not seen it yet, I think, but the fact that I mean classrooms with grade
955
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:44,640
seven, the grade 12, I see it.
956
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:45,640
And I'll notice eventually.
957
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:48,560
The adults will notice eventually when these kids graduate the Commander Society in five
958
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:49,560
years time.
959
00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:50,560
Oh, man.
960
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:51,560
And those are...
961
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:52,560
All right.
962
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:54,480
We can start wrapping things up a little bit.
963
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:56,920
We probably have another podcast.
964
00:53:56,920 --> 00:54:00,480
We're going to do another one because I have these topics that I really wanted to delve
965
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:05,240
into you, but that can wait for the next one and we'll keep it all going.
966
00:54:05,240 --> 00:54:06,240
But I really want to...
967
00:54:06,240 --> 00:54:10,960
First of all, before we get into the final slides, I want you to give me a paper trail of
968
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:16,360
all the books you've written because in case somebody's interested in hemophobia or any
969
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:19,920
of the topics that you've covered in detail, I want them to go check it out.
970
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:20,920
Yeah, absolutely.
971
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:21,920
So...
972
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:22,920
I would say...
973
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:24,400
I'll give you one, right?
974
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:25,720
Everything is natural.
975
00:54:25,720 --> 00:54:29,360
Everything is natural as my book, but it's published with the role of society of chemistry.
976
00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:30,360
And everything is natural.
977
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:31,360
It's 2021.
978
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:32,360
I've published that.
979
00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:33,360
And it's on...
980
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:37,520
It's blurring the lines between natural and artificial and saying that actually humans have
981
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:43,760
been engaged with nature and utilized it and manipulated it and actually improved it
982
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:45,080
thousands of years.
983
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:46,080
Let's not forget that.
984
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:47,880
Let's thank our ancestors for doing that.
985
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:50,000
We are just continuing that journey.
986
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,680
The extra processing and manufacturing we are doing.
987
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:57,160
Yes, we have to look after nature for sustainability, but from a sustainability perspective.
988
00:54:57,160 --> 00:55:01,960
But we've been using nature to our advantage and improving it for its own good and survival
989
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:02,960
for a very long time.
990
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:04,480
We've been tending the landscape for a long time.
991
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:06,000
Let's keep doing that.
992
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:09,880
Not let's go back to wilderness and hunt together at times.
993
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:13,240
Let's celebrate the work that our ancestors did.
994
00:55:13,240 --> 00:55:14,240
Everything is natural.
995
00:55:14,240 --> 00:55:18,080
And it talks about the history of how we became fearful of chemicals and the sort of recent
996
00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:23,040
question marks over human influence on the earth and sort of tries to elase some of
997
00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:24,040
those fears.
998
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:25,040
So everything is natural.
999
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:26,840
I've got other books as well, but they're very academic.
1000
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:28,840
So I'd recommend just that one for listeners.
1001
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:33,400
The others are like, no, knowing me, I might just go and sneak into your academic sort of
1002
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:35,160
list and start reading those books.
1003
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:36,680
It's chemical equations and stuff.
1004
00:55:36,680 --> 00:55:39,000
I'd rather, yeah, everything is natural.
1005
00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:40,000
That's the one to go.
1006
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:42,040
I'll put that in the show notes as well.
1007
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:45,680
And speaking of show notes, how can people find you and reach out and communicate with you?
1008
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:46,680
Yeah, good question.
1009
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:54,400
So I would say go to my website, so James Kennedy monash.wordpress.com and you'll find
1010
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:58,080
the sort of summary of recent stuff that has done all the books around there, any podcast
1011
00:55:58,080 --> 00:55:59,080
appearance.
1012
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:00,080
How about this?
1013
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:01,080
Twitter.
1014
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:02,080
You can give me Twitter handle in the description as well.
1015
00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:04,520
James Kennedy EDU sounds fantastic.
1016
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:10,080
Well, thank you so much for the nukes of information that you threw at me and blew my mind.
1017
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:14,720
Like, I, dude, I just feel like I just came out from under a rock.
1018
00:56:14,720 --> 00:56:16,680
And so thank you.
1019
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:17,680
Well, thank you.
1020
00:56:17,680 --> 00:56:18,680
It's always a pleasure for that.
1021
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:19,680
It's great.
1022
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:23,320
Get ready for an adrenaline-fueled adventure.
1023
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:28,800
Our next episode features Jesse, an energy-bott, customer with captivating and mind-blowing
1024
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:32,560
stories from his incredible journeys across the country.
1025
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:37,280
Prepare to be hooked by Jesse's captivating tales of adventure, excitement and inspiration.
1026
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:41,040
Don't miss this thrilling episode coming to you next week.
1027
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:48,440
Thank you for listening to our podcast.
1028
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:53,480
If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review and subscribe to our energized Explore
1029
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:57,640
Enjoy podcast on your favorite podcasting platform.
1030
00:56:57,640 --> 00:56:58,640
See you next week.
1031
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:08,640
[MUSIC]
1032
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:10,340
(floor sound)