Lacking In Soft Skills

Josh: It's a very low barrier to get into the Gronk Squad.

Tommy: That's crazy! We've committed to do The Daily Talk Show for 10 years.

Josh: Hi guys. Hi guys.

Tommy: Put it in the calendar. I'd just like to cheque the temperature in the room. I told you my squeegee story.

Josh: It is outrageous.

Tommy: Come on, let's go. It's The Daily Talk Show episode 996.

Josh: It is ep 1000 week. Yeah. GB said that to me this morning. I thought that's a great way to sort of build the hype within ourselves at 1,000 week.

Tommy: He was also pointing out that this feels a lot like COVID time last year.

Josh: Yeah. So we were in lockdown a year ago in that hard first lockdown in Melbourne, and it's very much gone in terms of their lockdowns and stuff for Melbourne. But it's not like that around the world. We got an email from Felipe. We're talking about lockdowns last week and we're saying if you're in lockdown right now somewhere in the world, let us know. Felipe, Brazilian, half Australian, half Brazilian, and he's in full lockdown right now. So, it's still that vibe. And Charlotte over in France, still working, but it's a different kind of lockdown, but it is lockdown. But the feel, it's, you know what, it's interesting because the smell of heaters turning on And in Melbourne, it's been fucking freezing. It has been really cold. Well, we're big babies because last Thursday was 29 degrees and yesterday was 9 degrees. And so, it's all over the fucking shop. This is the case, though. There's a guy who does subsistence living.

Tommy: What does that mean?

Josh: Well, subsistence.

Tommy: What does that word mean?

Josh: Subsistence.

Tommy: Can you have a guess?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Subsistence, meaning subsistence, meaning using the re— See, I know what I know what people do when they are doing subsistence living, living off the land, living off the resources of what's around them. It's not— it's probably off the grid.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: But it's fishing, it's, you know, getting your own water. It's almost like taking— doing what was done, uh, self-contained. Yeah. So the action or fact of maintaining or supporting oneself, especially at a minimum minimal level. If you're a minimalist, you're not subsistence living. This is like Glenn, this guy Glenn who was on Life Below Zero, lives in Alaska in a cabin and he's got— he's a kooky dude, but he's great. He's like a fucking absolute legend. Eats one meal a day. Eats this big, you know, big piece of hunted meat and/or big piece of fish with these, you know, vegetables. But he's subsistence liver.

Tommy: What is he? Where have you watched this on?

Josh: That was a documentary series that was made a long time ago, but they did like 6, 7 seasons.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: It was on Netflix. Probably still is. We got right into it. And then Glen has been on Joe Rogan. He's an absolute loose unit. Like he wanted to, he wanted to in one of the episodes because he, they basically make them themselves. Sometimes there's a producer that comes out and shoots stuff for him.

Tommy: Okay. So, he films it himself.

Josh: He does a lot of filming himself. Because he's out there for so long. But then there is parts where they do come and film, so they get all the epic shit. But he's like, okay, I'm going to climb up to the top of that mountain to get some shit. And then I want to hang glide all the way back to my cabin. And they're like, absolutely not. That's too dangerous. And so he went and did it by himself. But he's a maniac. And then they kicked him off the show. And there's like, how did they—

Tommy: What's like Survivor? How did they kick you?

Josh: No. Basically, he didn't get recast.

Tommy: Okay.

Josh: But it's like, it's so funny. This is so such human behaviour. If you think you're in a job right now and you're like, it's the job, it's bitching because of the industry, or there's like, it's a headache and this and people are such fuckheads because of the industry. Like, because I'm in building or because I'm in fucking whatever, radio, PR. It happens everywhere. You end up, imagine it like there would be people would come—

Tommy: Office politics. Is across the board. It doesn't even have to be in an office.

Josh: It could be in a stable, like a barn. You could be milking the cows, but there's still fuckhead Gavin.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: That always rocks up late, smokes on his smokes. So he has like 10 breaks a day. And I've— and you've spoken to HR and, and it's annoying.

Tommy: So why did he get kicked off or not recast?

Josh: You know, I reckon it's because he's a loose unit and they're just like, this guy's too risky. We bring on other people. But he was entertaining.

Tommy: Well, I think you would love that ghost town YouTuber that I was talking about from Cerro Gordo or whatever.

Josh: I reckon I've watched all of his good videos.

Tommy: Oh, really?

Josh: About 2 of them. Remember how I asked you, has he made another one? And you said no.

Tommy: And I was like, he's died down the mine, hasn't he? It's most, most weeks.

Josh: He actually does do it.

Tommy: He does one a week. And they're really high end. Like, he does a good— Like, for a guy who's not a filmmaker, he puts a lot of effort into them.

Josh: Do you think it's his little secret though? Like he is actually a filmmaker, but he—

Tommy: I think that he came from like a marketing background, I think. So he probably knows a bunch of the stuff. But now, like, if you think about it, point the camera. Like if you're not worrying about exposure and like when you would film, would you ever shoot manual when you were starting out?

Josh: Always.

Tommy: Always shooting manual. Yeah. Oh really? That surprises me.

Josh: Yeah, but fucking the settings. Yeah. Like not Um, but not understanding point and shoot.

Tommy: You were doing a bunch of point and shoot stuff.

Josh: Never manual on a, on a point and shoot camera. There's actually no point. There's no point. But anytime it was on a DSLR, I've never run manual settings, uh, automatic settings on a DSLR. I actually don't even know how to. Like some of our cameras do, but they just— I can't work. It's actually harder for me. We were talking about If you, you've got to appreciate, I know you don't like reels.

Tommy: No, you don't like. It's just lowest common denominator stuff. Like it just has the vibe of regression.

Josh: So reels on Instagram, we're talking those 30-second time brackets. You can edit in the app, you know, people pointing at fucking stupid. They're the dumbest. It's the dumbest content on earth. Yeah. But I will say that if you know how to make reels and you're doing it like, you know, the putting shit on the screen, transi— transitions, hats off to you. The thing is, it's like, um, becoming great at drug dealing. You could, you could be— make a lot of money through drug dealing. You're actually quite good at business, understanding supply, demand. You could channel that into being a business person, running a legit operation. And so you're a drug dealer if you're a real professional, R-E-E-L. Real professional, you're a drug dealer.

Tommy: Are you? I feel like you can— I feel it makes more sense for you, it's closer in line with the sort of content that you like to make though.

Josh: But my point is that I can't— I won't spend the time learning how to do real because I can just edit in a professional programme quicker and better and make it look better than in the actual programme itself. I still don't understand it.. So I make a video in Premiere Pro and export it out. It's quicker. Same thing. And so, but my point is, these are like, most of these people don't want to have to get out of Instagram, but the amount of time they'd be spending in that, if you put that into something like Premiere Pro, you'll actually come out the back of it. Um, you'll probably start a video production company.

Tommy: Well, it's interesting because we don't know what the future is going to be. So obviously Premiere Pro or even Final Cut Pro before they made all the changes. These were the Avid— these pieces of software were the standard. And so you'd be able to go in, the idea being you could go to any post-production house, and if you knew those 3 pieces of software, you were, you were good.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: But yeah, it is an interesting time where, like, you know, it reminds me of when I was younger and there would be kids who would just learn on iMovie and they would get really good at hacking it together and working within the constraints of iMovie, but then they would go out and they couldn't work beyond that. They didn't know how to, you know, they didn't have layers, they didn't have all these other things.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. And so there's a, there's a skill set that goes beyond just its initial application.

Tommy: Well, it depends though, but, but I guess the point is, like, maybe it will get to a point where it's like Instagram editing within Instagram is the professional thing, if that makes sense.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't imagine— yeah, Premiere Pro specific for a certain type. You can get— you could, if you were impressive in the Instagram app, like you knew everything about it, you can get hired based on that. But where it then falls over is if that needs to go beyond. So I'm not saying that you shouldn't understand any of these things like Instagram and how the editing works, but I'm kind of like, for me coming in the other way, there's no— because if you didn't actually understand how the editing works in Reels and you didn't want to do it, but you then didn't want to do Premiere Pro, a harder pro program, it's— you've lost.

Tommy: But if you can come in one way Do you feel like you're getting old when you see things happening? Do you feel like the older guy?

Josh: Well, you feel like the— Maybe when— Maybe because it's thing. Yes. The answer is yes. But maybe it's because the age bracket of people getting good at the thing that we, that we do is lowering. So, there's, you know, you were a outlier at fucking 12 using Premiere Pro, whatever you're using editing. There's now kids proficient at Premiere Pro at 12, little gamers.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And, and that's outrageous. But, and so at that point it's like, fuck, that's, that's common.

Tommy: And so what's the skill then? So I wonder about like soft skills. So if you think about where everything's going, I'm curious in, okay, well, what are the things that still are missing So if everyone— this, this is how I feel with After Effects in some regards. Like, I never took on learning After Effects in a big way because I felt that the time that I'd put into it to become a button pusher in the software, there's going to be young people who watch all of the tutorials and become really, really good at that. Yeah, but then they might not be good at a bunch of other things. They might not be able to organise a crew of people or be able to provide creative direction to a team.

Josh: Yeah, if you're really good— and so that's the hard skill, right? Being great at After Effects is the hard skill. There would be so many— I reckon it's probably more common these days that young kids are getting these hard, like, great at the hard skills because it links to something they love or as passion. But then you're right, they're missing the comms, the ability to just to communicate with people, make connections, build a, build a, build a, you know, community of people. Not even relating to audience, it's just fucking a network.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And then doing a job audition, a job, um, what are they called? Job audition? Not an audition.

Tommy: A job interview.

Josh: Job interview. I haven't done one that long. A job interview and they shit themselves. Or, um, they'd definitely be capable of writing a, a, uh, a CV, but it's too scary then what you have to do after it, which you'd think are just like life skills that you should be—

Tommy: Yeah, you just, you wonder what, like, future of work. Yeah, what's, what's it going to be? The, um, like on the Instagram thing, part of it is also just keeping up with whatever the technology is. Like, it's changing so much. Yeah, it's resetting so much that if you were an expert at social media a year ago, you actually went and went to, um, sort of Greece for a year and disconnected, came back, you'd have no idea what was going on, right? Like, that's the weird— But then what I don't like about it is staying relevant staying connected to this thing, which is what we would consider like keeping your skills fresh, knowing the latest, is actually programming you as a creator to be like, this is the type of content. Yeah, yeah, you should be creating, because then people will look at a video and say, oh no, what needs to, you know, do this, this needs to flash up here, it needs to do that, which is actually just an algorithm telling you what to do. And if you get really good, if you get really good at the algorithm, I wonder how fulfilling that is.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, because it's going to change. That's, that is the problem. But then you might get good at spotting trends. That's your, that's your hard skill. But then it's all, I mean, people don't know, but like the algorithm, they're not releasing and saying stuff. It's all just like people seeing.

Tommy: And well, Instagram comes out, like Instagram came out and said if you, if you have a TikTok watermark, oh yeah, you won't be pushed— your videos won't be pushed within the Instagram platform. So Instagram are even being more obvious. And, and even when it comes to advertising on things like Facebook, if you haven't— have an account manager, they will tell you, okay, you need to, um, you know, you need to get with you know, to the product within this amount of seconds. You need to make sure that all of your videos start off differently. Like, there's all that stuff.

Josh: That makes sense if that's your job, to then your skill set being able to understand those things. I mean, they're probably getting told, but it's interesting, it's changing. Gary Vee, if you've ever been following him, he posted recently a photo put him— he's always pointing. The guy's pointing at everything.

Tommy: Yeah, or doing this. How many? Holding up 5, which is his favorite, uh, player, I think. Is that what he's— yeah, 5.

Josh: Oh, I was wondering what the fuck that was. But then other people start doing it in the photo. Just come on, dude. Now, how many photo shoots has Gary Vee done where he's just like— it's called the, the point and shoot. It's like, it's him just like fucking pointing every direction, just giving Giving options booked into the calendar. Imagine getting it, that you're the— you're DRock.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And in, it's like, photo shoot pointing. Yeah, just 5 at the hand, the 5-hander. Anyway, he's pointing at like a photo of an Instagram feed and— sorry, Instagram, uh, home page that's got the tiles of all, you know, all the photos. And on it says, stop treating your Instagram like a fucking art gallery.

Tommy: He's been saying that for ages. In regards to the tiles, it's this idea of what you— what's your, um, theme? What's your Instagram theme? Yeah, some people it's like, oh, you know what, I've got desaturated blues, or it's—

Josh: yeah, and thinking that is the game changer for you. And he's— and he says post what you want, not why— not why you think it needs to be. The number one misstep on Instagram— number one Instagram misstep right now, um, is thinking there's a right. Exploring and posting what you feel is the game.

Tommy: I mean, when he came to Melbourne and we went and saw him live, he was saying, um, 100 pieces of content a day on social. Do you remember that? Yeah. And where there was a time where we were on Instagram, you cannot give a fuck about what you're doing. Well, I mean, it just becomes a, um, this becomes your life at that point. Like, I haven't been— personally, this is probably the best I've been at just sort of disconnecting from the platform, disconnecting from social media, being in there a little bit. Like, um, the problem is DMs. People are still DMing, and then I'm like, fuck, I haven't checked DMs in a week, and there's people like, hey, do you want to catch up tomorrow? Yeah, I need to get, get people away from the DMs.

Josh: You've got to hit them back up with a text. Yeah, not even reply to it, you know. So then they're like, that just, that grooms someone into understanding your, your way of playing.

Tommy: Yeah, I don't need to groom anyone.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Tommy: But, um, the, yeah, it's, but I don't know, like the, when I hear advice on about social media, how to do social media, even things like Twitter. So I like going on to Twitter and, and just seeing what's happening, but just the, um the game of trying to be funny or trying it like, you know, you're doing it for this audience, right? But then I think about the audience that's on Twitter. I just can't be fucked. But what I do like about it is so all the stuff that's happening in South China Sea, you know, there's— I was on news.com.au and I'm like, let's be honest, I need some— I got rid of my Economist subscription because I was like, what is that? It's a newspaper, but it's, it's on the more expensive side. And I'm like, if I'm going to play golf, I don't need to be spending $120 every 10 weeks or something on a— what, a thing? Yeah, it's— I think it's— that's maybe every 12, 12 weeks. Maybe it's a quarter.

Josh: Do you get physical? Anything physical? That's a digital subscription.

Tommy: Digital subscription.

Josh: It's—

Tommy: I think it's $180 or something for the physical one, but it got rid of it. Yeah. Um, and so I actually still have it until May, but it's that funny thing of I've got the subscription but I'm not going to build the habit. I've just stopped using it because I'm like, I know I don't have this in a few weeks' time. And so, I got it on that introductory offer type of thing. But anyway, Economist, very good, high-quality journalism. The Age, I've reached my limit. Like, I go onto The Age and I'm getting paywalled on everything because I've seen the maximum amount of articles.

Josh: They give you 5.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Then you just got to sign in from some new IP.

Tommy: Is that? Yeah.

Josh: I don't know. But I don't know how it works because sometimes I go back there and I've got a fresh 5.

Tommy: Yeah. And so anyway, I can't be bothered with that. And so, but one of the things I was doing was looking on Twitter for journalists who are covering the things that I'm interested in and just following them. And so then I can get— because when you read some of these news articles, they're just embedding these tweets anyway.

Josh: Yeah. I wonder if, um, you could get rid of all your followers except for those, then it just becomes like your little your home page.

Tommy: So that's what lists are.

Josh: So, oh, Twitter lists.

Tommy: Twitter lists are awesome. So when I was, uh, still a thing. Yes, I'd say so. That'd have to be. Um, but yeah, Twitter lists.

Josh: That's an old man thing.

Tommy: I know. No, no, no, no, no, no. It was a great feature of Twitter. So, um, when I was younger, I had like a screenwriters list and I had like a my favourites list was just like mates and people that I wanted to catch up. And so I had all of these different types of lists, the people that I follow, but also it could be hashtags as well. So I could have a hashtag that wouldn't necessarily get that much traction, but I could set up push notifications. So if anyone used that hashtag, it would actually push to my phone. There was a— it doesn't seem as popular nowadays, but there was TweetDeck. Did you ever use that within radio? I'm sure you did.

Josh: Yeah, because you could tweet out from scheduled tweets.

Tommy: Yeah, well, it was a, um, I think the only reason I used it— Twitter, I think, actually bought it and they made it a web interface. But it was one of those ones where you would download it onto your Mac, um, or your PC, and it would have all the different columns. And so you could have different lists in those columns.

Josh: Okay, yeah, yeah.

Tommy: And so this would be very big at the moment. You know what's actually replaced this, I would say?

Josh: What's that?

Tommy: Things like, um, is it Signal? Or what was the one— what was the crypto stuff that you were saying? Ah, There's a, there's a, or WhatsApp groups. Is it Signal or what's the one I'm thinking of?

Josh: Yeah. Telegram. Telegram.

Tommy: Yeah. Telegram, Signal. Like, I think these apps are some, some of them are actually replacing this Twitter list idea, which is specific lists or groups around a certain topic.

Josh: Yeah. I, I bumped, I bumped into, I didn't bump into him. I saw him. This guy at the local supermarket.

Tommy: Yes.

Josh: Had this cardboard cutout and he looked kooky as hell. And on the sign it had a QR code and it was something about COVID isn't what they've made you think it is. I'm like, oh wow, this is amazing. This is like someone down the local shops sort of yelling. He was sort of talking this, not aggressive, but like sort of—

Tommy: What shops?

Josh: This was just Bulling Plaza, dude.

Tommy: And, um, what's the cutout? So the cutout—

Josh: Here we go, this is him. Can you see him?

Tommy: Okay, yeah, sure.

Josh: So it says, this is a vastly smaller pandemic than we are told. And then it had like a graph, QR code. And I went up—

Tommy: Even the conspiracy theorists are loving QR codes, dude.

Josh: I mean, I think, you know, coronavirus really brought out the QR code and he's now benefiting off the QR code.

Tommy: Maybe it was actually the pandemic was created by Denzo, who created the QR code.

Josh: Anyway, I, I went and took a photo of his QR code.

Tommy: Yeah. And what does it say?

Josh: Um, but then they have a Telegram group and so I joined, and I've never joined a Telegram group.

Tommy: Um, so now you're a—

Josh: It's the Telegram group is called like Freedom Team. But you can see it's got like 1,400 subscribers in it. They're posting. You can see how often— Oh, I've missed 120 posts. I don't look at it. This guy was an economist, worked for the government here in Victoria, and he quit when the pandemic—

Tommy: Subscription cost too much.

Josh: He quit because he's like—

Tommy: That was an economist joke.

Josh: Yeah, you got it.

Tommy: From before. Did you actually get it?

Josh: No, I didn't.

Tommy: It was, yeah, half-assed. Yeah, go on. So, he lost his job.

Josh: No, he quit. He quit.

Tommy: He quit. Okay.

Josh: He quit. He resigned because of all this shit, and he's now like wanting to be a local politician who's pushing for like, you know, any, all that shit. But it's really interesting. He, um, they're, they're movers and shakers, you know, on the Telegram using the QR codes.

Tommy: Yeah, I mean, the, um, uh, on the vaccine stuff, I saw, um, someone say stop comparing vaccine, like apparently because in the US there's a few versions, right, you could be getting And it's almost become like, which iPhone do you have? Oh, yeah.

Josh: Which is it?

Tommy: And so, there's—

Josh: You got Mr. Johnson's. What is it?

Tommy: Johnson Johnson. Johnson Johnson. You know, but there's a status game happening that someone was like, this needs to stop, like, stop doing it. But human nature— I get it. I banned. No, but I 100% get it. I think about what um, even is happening in Australia. And, uh, with my lack of knowledge in vaccines and all that sort of thing, you hear the stuff around the blood, blood clotting, and there's definitely a part of me that's like, oh, is it like, how long? Like, what is the alternative? Not I'm not getting a vaccine, but oh, like, if we— how long?

Josh: Like, 'If we wait a tiny bit longer, could we get this other vaccine that's got way less risk associated with it?' I mean, you can, you can also be not an anti-vaxxer by saying, 'I'm not getting the COVID vaccine anytime soon.' I don't think that's anti-vaxx. Like, I think—

Tommy: What is it then?

Josh: I think it's someone who, if you're willing to, be able to make— if you're right, if you believe in being able to make your own choice on this stuff and you are willing to take the risk to get infected and get through it. So, if you're young and healthy and are willing to say that, willing to— I mean, you're okay with getting it, meaning that you're willing to fight it off. Well, so, whatever.

Tommy: But this is where the problem is with it. The— I was watching a vaccine, uh, doco last night. They're talking about herd immunity with the idea that if you have 90% plus people that have either had it or vaccinated— this is just across— they were using, um, measles as the example, that measles, uh, people getting measles start to go up in the US because of, um, people not vaccinating. What they're talking about is, so there's a group that are bystanders. They're people who cannot get the vaccine for whatever reason. So, whether they've got cancer or they've got certain sort of immune problems, like they just can't get it. The problem being that if you can get it and you don't get it, you end up putting those bystanders at risk. So, the thought is that it's not, it's not like you saying, you know what, if I choose not to wear a helmet when I ride my bike, that's up to me. Not getting a vaccine, this expert was saying, was— is like not only saying, uh, I'm not wearing my helmet, but you're not wearing a helmet either. Um, which I thought was interesting. The other thing too around vaccines is around that 90% mark, the difference between 1% is huge. So if you go from like 93% to 92% or 91%, each percent, the clusters become so much bigger. Because if you think about it, it's sort of, it's almost, I guess, like compound interest or whatever. If you think about it like that, it's like more people can get it, so they get it, and then it pushes on and all of that sort of thing. But I just, I think the psychology of it is very interesting. I think that—

Josh: Well, think about all the media articles you've probably read about it, and you're referencing the clotting and It's like there's— the media are now doing a great job of scaring people about the vaccine, if it's not that scary.

Tommy: But so, the thing is then, what I find interesting with all of this sort of stuff is, so, there's the— I guess the idea of there's people who are at any cost with all these things, right? Which is like, no, like, don't, don't give any other side to a storey or things like that. I just feel like there's a, um, there's a risk in— so say on the clotting stuff, like, it would be good to— would— so think about this. Think about when the pandemic was happening and the CDC was saying, um, they weren't pushing masks when we first— when the pandemic first started, it was all about surfaces it was all about like making sure that not only you're washing your hands, but when you're getting your Uber Eats in, wipe it down, all that sort of thing. The surface stuff isn't a thing.

Josh: Like, who are you saying that?

Tommy: Yeah, yeah. And then the band.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They came out.

Tommy: Human Nature. Still alive? Who? I'm not sure. But yeah, I just think the— but there's been a bunch of things of like when stuff is moving when things are moving along, like, surely it's okay for us to be having these conversations in the public around this stuff. It's not—

Josh: of course they can't not broadcast that stuff, but it's interesting to see how much exposure, you know, comes around the, the failed, um, the failed rollout of the vaccine. Like, we've—

Tommy: but it actually— so the, the interesting thing is though that if you look at, um, I saw Kevin Rudd doing some social posts about this.

Josh: Oh, he gets fired up, that guy. But ex-Prime Minister of Australia just blows up on other people.

Tommy: Yeah, so his point being, uh, the media has understated how much of a fuck-up the rollout has been, the whole vaccine thing, being because it is a Liberal government and sort of the thinking is Murdoch's— Murdoch media supporting the Liberals, they haven't been as critical as they should be on all of this sort of stuff. I mean, it's like, I think where we're coming from is a place of this is the conversation that most friends and family are having.

Josh: Without— We're talking about talking about essentially. Yeah, I think people are probably just talking about whatever they're reading. Have you heard the Claude Scott stuff? Did you hear that DMX died of a heart attack? But what they didn't tell you is that he had the COVID vaccine one week before that.

Tommy: Well, so there's— Well, there's— So, they're just talking about that. Well, so, I mean, the other thing too is the conspiracy theory. Like, so there's a difference between— So, there was in this vaccine doco, it was done by Vice. They had like a series on all different—

Josh: Recently?

Tommy: Sort of things. I'm not sure. It was just on SBS On Demand. You could go and watch it. But there was an 18-year-old kid whose mum is an anti-vaxxer, and, um, he's— the kid decided to get the vaccine. Sorry, not, not even— this is probably pre-COVID— to get vaccinated on some other things. And, um, uh, he was going and doing the rounds, interviews and stuff, talking about why vaccination is important, um, I don't know where I was going with that.

Josh: He's alive.

Tommy: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: His mum's still an anti-vaxxer.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: They've probably broken up. It's probably their friendship shattered.

Tommy: He was talking about within conspiracies, it's normally anecdotal. So his mum would say things like, a friend of mine had a son who this happened to and then this happened. Because the other thing too is, so for instance, like you hear some sad stories, right? Like, so they would have an anti-vaxxer on who's saying, oh, you know, "My son had the vaccine, not COVID, had, you know, measles or whatever it was, had a vaccination, ended up, you know, diarrhoea, blah, blah, blah." Like all of these sorts of things. And the problem is with those conversations, that's really sad. That's not great. But the kid ended up being okay. But if one person dies in a car crash, we don't then say, okay, we're not going to use cars. Like there's a— If you look at the population of it, like there's probably a bunch of people who have choked on a banana. It doesn't mean we stop eating bananas.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. And so, it's interesting where we end up. Like I've got to get a vaccine for whooping cough shots. Amy does too for the baby inside of her, but also Bode needs to get it. I don't even think about it. I'm just like, oh, we've got to get that. But it is, I guess it's normal to start questioning something that's pretty new.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: I don't know. I think it's so weird because we're in a position where the country doesn't have a great deal of COVID I've seen friends celebrating that they got the vaccine, like fully vaccinated in the US.

Tommy: If you're in the US, it's a different story, right? Like if you're in the US, like, um, like even watching the Masters, uh, golf, like so many people in the crowd. You definitely, you wouldn't feel safe being anywhere like that. Like if that was, if that was an option. The thing is that where we are in Australia, the, the amount of people who are being vaccinated is like super low.

Josh: So low.

Tommy: Um, obviously there's the fur— like, but then the other thing too is like the strategies thus far has been um, lockdowns, all of that other stuff which has bought us time. But then I guess part of it feels like we've fucked the, um— it seems like in my uneducated view, it feels like we banked on one thing. So for instance, like, think about, um, we only have AstraZeneca or whatever it's called, right? We've only got the one vaccine. If you look at the States, there's like 4 or something. It feels like everything has been put on this one vaccine. Um, and so yeah, like you look at the, the US and what's happened, and then you look at Australia, and then you look at the position we're in. I guess there is the version which is giving shit more time to—

Josh: if we're locking the borders and we're not You know, I said there was a grid. I love a good fucking graph in the paper. And it was about when the country's population will be vaccinated, fully vaccinated. Or it was like South Africa, 10+ years. How long until the population gets to full or 75% vaccination or something like that? Indonesia's like well behind. When I'm looking at that, yeah, you're right. South Africa, very slow. And then America is quite quick for the size of the population, but they're in trouble. But it's like, how are you— how are we going? When I want to go to, um, I want to go to South Africa. When's that fucking happening? That's years away.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Of just being like— if that's the case, if you're looking at that graph. But that's what people are doing, looking at these and going, well, what's travel look like for them? Um, yeah, dude, what a time.

Tommy: Yeah. What I find— what I find interesting with all of this stuff is it's like, um, how do you So for someone who is critical in their thinking with things, how do you look at something with a critical but empathetic lens? Or realise that, like, we don't know anything about— I don't understand how vaccines really work. So, but the thing is that if you think about anything in life, how much of— so for instance, like the weather, when we're told about what the weather is going to be and it's like it's going to be cold or sunny or whatever it's going to be. We make a bunch of decisions based on that.

Josh: And dummies, when it's the coldest day in Melbourne, all of a sudden decide to play 18 holes of golf.

Tommy: We did play golf. It was good fun.

Josh: And get rained on.

Tommy: It was good fun. Baby's got a golf cart. We had golf carts. The— No, but think about that.

Josh: Think about that. So, you have the information.

Tommy: So, think about— No. Think about how many things that we know the top line information So we like— so for instance, it's like, um, the whole, um, you know, it's 19 degrees or whatever it is, the thoughts on global warming, 1 degree up, right? And that's like, we're fucked, or whatever. Or, you know, they talk about like the increments are so small, I can't even compute in my mind like how that necessarily works. And so the weirdness in all of these decisions is we make all of these decisions on— Like, I drive my car. I don't necessarily understand the science of driving the car.

Josh: Or the phone. Or you're picking up a phone to make a phone call. How the fuck does that work?

Tommy: Instagram, Facebook. Like, we don't understand, like, how it works. We just use these things. And the funny thing is, the more we learn about this stuff, it becomes this— Then we have more decision to make, right? Like, so this is the hard thing is it's like, With all the stuff that's happening at the moment where it's like deciding on, you know, health and medical stuff, it's like, how far down the rabbit hole do you go?

Josh: Trying to understand it to make your formed—

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Well, think about like a decision or—

Tommy: Because we can— Because we can look back and we see where we've gotten things wrong before. So, think about like, uh, the war on fat. Was there a war on fat?

Josh: Yeah, that's after the war on terror.

Tommy: Uh, that was before, sort of in between the war on drugs.

Josh: Look, fat's been a terrorist for years.

Tommy: So the war on fat, it was, it was no, uh, low, uh, low-fat products that were pumped with sugar, right? So when, when I, in the early 2000s, late '90s, when I was a chubby kid, it was all about low-fat mayo, low-fat yogurt, low-fat, all this sort of stuff. And then we, we then work out, oh fuck, um, they're pumping it with sugar, which ends up being worse for us.

Josh: It's so funny that they just put the word fat in there and people just immediately think, that's what I don't want to be, so let's fucking get rid of that.

Tommy: And so this is the thing that's like, um, I empathise with people who are struggling with these decisions. I empathise with even people that go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy Theories, because there is a bunch of unknown— like, I guess conspiracy theories are people trying to make sense of something that's complex and that's hard to make sense of. And so, the difficulty is, say on the vaccine stuff, is people are looking at it because of the, I guess, the amount of communications there have been around all of this sort of stuff. Everyone is like overwhelmed with information and they're trying to make decisions from like this medical perspective, but that we don't have any experience in doing this.

Josh: Um, so yeah, it's hard to navigate. It is. The, um, the world is hard to navigate just in life in general without a fucking pandemic.

Tommy: But even things like, even speaking to, um, even speaking to someone the other weekend about guns Right. Like guns in the US. It's like, for me, it's so clear in my mind around like, just let's have less guns. But this person was like, you know, oh no, you— Everyone needs a gun.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: If everyone has a gun, then it sort of, you know, evens each other out. It's very like, this is the problem. And then, and then You go like, these debates are so annoying because then they say, you know what, a mass shooting, what they count as them, like everyone's blaming the media for all of this shit. Yeah, the media is to blame. But the thing is that, so for instance, I got into the, the Active Defense YouTube channel.

Josh: Not a great channel to get into.

Tommy: Yeah, if you're going to get into anything, it's like sort of this pro-gun channel. And I was just curious to see like, but they would show these situations where. And it was like daily occurrences, right? Like showing videos of people with guns and how they'll deal with the circumstances and all that sort of thing. You know, they're very graphic. Yeah. Their famous line is, you know, what is it?

Josh: Your— The eyes are a window to the soul.

Tommy: The hands are the window to intent.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Always look at the hands when there's a gun involved. But the thing is, watch it like— So that is— That isn't mainstream media. That is law enforcement, pro-gun YouTube channel.

Josh: That probably gets more views than Channel 10 in Australia. Yeah. So technically mainstream.

Tommy: And so you watch all of that sort of stuff and then you see some of the, the, the stuff around that that seems a bit toxic. But then you have conversations with people and they say, oh, a mass shooting. They count a mass shooting any more than one person or two people dead. Like, it's a mass shoot. Like, all of a sudden, like, they're trying to bring it down.

Josh: I mean, yeah, I have seen the mass shooting thing come up a bunch recently because there's been a bunch of shootings in the US and I've been surprised by the number. But I also understand that it's like they want to get the comms across that it's fucked up and there is a real problem. And the term, God, if you're getting bogged down in whether it's—

Tommy: That's exactly it.

Josh: You're missing the point. Like you're missing the point of it was a horrific incident based on the fact that there's guns so readily available.

Tommy: But then people use the same— that whole thing that I said about the car thing. With guns where it's like, how many people are dying in cars? Are we going to ban cars? But it's like, well, a gun is used to hurt people. That's like the idea of a gun, right? Well, it's outside of the— Like, this isn't talking about like—

Josh: It's a weapon. Cars aren't built to be a weapon unless it's an army vehicle built as a weapon.

Tommy: The problem is that where people go is like, do you know how many people you could kill with a car?

Josh: Yeah, a lot.

Tommy: Yeah. Like, and so then they're saying, well, so why do we have to—

Josh: Why take our guns away?

Tommy: A bunch of these.

Josh: Arguments. The thing about— and I've never had a conversation with a like flat-out conspiracy believer. I've got a friend—

Tommy: Conspiracy Jimmy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh: But that's his nickname's almost just a bit of fun because he does look into a bunch of stuff. But imagine meeting someone who is 100% believing that the earth is flat. People would get in a bit of trouble having a conversation with somebody who was really educated about a conspiracy.

Tommy: Because educated is a weird word.

Josh: Educated on— It's their own learning.

Tommy: Yeah, they've done their own. They're further down the rabbit hole. And this is the whole thing. This is the hard thing with all these conversations is it's like you have a conversation with a mate. If they are really into it, they will— They've got the stats, they've got the shit to make it work. The more reasonable you are, the less you are good at a debate because you're not sitting at home fucking trawling through to try and— and, you know, it's— people talk about it as like research. It's like, no, you just watch the same fucking YouTube people and went down a massive rabbit hole with this sort of stuff.

Josh: Yeah, a great little, uh, doco, it's like 20 minutes, uh, by Logan Paul of all people, uh, on flat earth. He, he, um, like, didn't go that big, did it? Like, nah, he spent a bunch of cash. I mean, he's got a bunch of money, but he, um, infiltrates a flat earth community pretending to be a flat earther but using his him as the character, as Logan Paul, who's now a conspiracy theorist believer, like, of flat earth. But he goes to this conspiracy— he goes to this flat earth event, like, mic drops, they're all fucking clapping for him because he said he's on their side. It's great, but it's, it's worth watching.

Tommy: But then also, like, you mix all of this conspiracy stuff, um, with religion as well, and you think about, okay, like, what you Uh, you know, the different religions of the world and all this sort of stuff. It's like, oh, there's, um, there's so many versions of truth and people's realities. It's like, I don't know if, um, I don't know if society is designed for truth. It's a daily talk show. Have a good one, guys.

Josh: See you tomorrow.