Trump's oil advice and a legal ruling on social media

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Do you think you'd never be caught out by disinformation?

Well, cast your mind back.

Remember that big story about the bed bugs at the Paris Olympics?

Well, that was actually a very effective Russian disinformation campaign.

So effective that most people still believe it to this day.

Good day.

It's Hamish McDonald here.

And I've learned that disinformation can be surprisingly subtle and hard to spot.

If you want to join me in interrogating the dark world of disinformation,

stream the matter of facts now on ABC iView.

Jules, happy April Fool's Day?

Yes.

We've got some news though, which is not a joke.

No.

And it's about the part.

Yes, and we're taking a pause, Jules.

We're going to take a little break because Jules, we've both decided that we've got a few other things on the go.

Yeah.

I'm taking long-service leave and I'm doing some writing.

I've got a book I've been wanting to do.

Yeah.

I'm doing a book.

I know.

But this will be so profoundly anticipated by so many of your fans.

I'm kind of excited.

Yeah.

I'm going to miss talking to you every Wednesday.

I know.

I'm going to miss this too.

But watch this space.

I'm Jules a bit.

And I'm Jules Fernandez.

And this is not stupid where we talk about the news of the week

and the stuff that's grabbing your attention on your feeds.

I want to talk to you about what's happened with the social media stuff lately

because there's incredible findings holding social media companies responsible for the momentum.

The pushback has happened.

We're watching it now.

But before we do, Jules, I mean it was great to have some advice from the American president, wasn't it?

Because we're all struggling with the oil, there's shortages.

The concern about food supply, food security, fertiliser.

And yet he said, well,

you should build up some delayed courage.

If you want to get some oil, go and get it yourself.

So this is because he's now considering, among the range of things,

he's contemplating, considering withdrawing from the war in Iran.

Yes.

In the next few weeks, that's the latest take.

Without necessarily having the straight secured, by the way.

Yeah.

And he says, look, you're going to have to start learning how to fight for yourself.

The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us.

Iran has been essentially decimated.

The hard part is done.

Go and get your own oil.

But funnily enough, this is not what the Iranians view of things is, right?

They released, did you see during the week?

They released this video clip.

It was sort of like a trailer of the Trump war,

except he's a Lego character.

And it just plays out this whole kind of narrative about how he's lost the war.

And this was an act of arrogance.

And it labels him a loser.

And I can imagine how that would have gone down with him.

And they've also depicted him as a telly-tubby, haven't they?

Playing with planes on the floor of the office.

So it's not a good look.

He's approval rating has gone down further.

And it just is incredibly obvious.

As you and I've been speaking about for weeks, Jess,

the problems with not just unilateralism.

He didn't have the support of Congress.

Like the whole case for this was not made.

And you cannot help with suspect if you consulted your allies,

or I don't know, experts,

generals who'd been in the Middle East before,

they might say to you,

you cannot go in there without securing the straight of homeless.

Well, Benjamin Netanyahu has this week said

the war has achieved half its aims,

but he's not putting a timeline on when the full mission might be a company.

You mean his aims?

Yeah, exactly his aims.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, and now we're being castigated because we don't want to be dragged into a war

about which its strategic goals have always been unclear.

What's the measure of success here?

But we are dealing with the consequences, aren't we?

Because the government's had to kind of consider fuel rationing.

They sort of start to put a plan together

or what that might look like.

And who would get priority, things like utility companies,

emergency services, healthcare providers.

And also the fuel excise.

It's been cut by 26 cents a litre.

It kicks in today, which is Wednesday we're recording this,

but it will take some time to flow through,

because it's not as if the petrol that's already in the tank at the petrol station

is without the excise.

So it'll kind of be phased in over the coming weeks.

But we are already feeling the impact of hundreds of petrol stations around the country

out of petrol, out of diesel.

So we're feeling the effect.

Try telling the farmers who are trying to pull together the crops.

Try telling the truckers,

people whose livelihoods are dependent on crossing the country.

And try telling people who are in rural and regional Australia,

who need to drive for a couple of hours when they're in labor, for example,

or when they're ill or sick doctors,

or try telling them to just go and get your own oil.

Do you know what's been really interesting?

There's been this public interest in electric vehicles

and electrification of the economy.

And also this week I've noticed a number of sectors of the media,

particularly on the right,

and the New South Wales Labor Premier Chris Minnes,

kind of for having this eat the rich attitude

about that electric vehicles are not just for the rich,

we've got to make them, you know,

democratise the availability of electric vehicles.

It was like, how did this turn into a class issue?

I find that really interesting,

because this, I mean, yes, electric vehicles

and converting to electricity and batteries in your home, very expensive.

But it's turned into a class issue

that now this was, that the rich insulated from this crisis

because they got on board with EVs,

because they could afford it.

I find that really fascinating

that in this scramble to kind of rethink our dependence on foreign fuel.

Right.

It's turned into a domestic class issue.

Yeah. Well, it pits people against each other.

Yeah.

You can't help but laugh when you see people like Tina Brown

who's sub-stack has really, is really great.

She writes a piece about where is Trump at this week?

And the headline to her article,

These are the fog of war between Trump's two years.

All right, James, it's really easy to get a sense of overwhelm

at the moment, I think.

Like, that gap between what we're worried about

and what we're capable of doing something about, right?

So what's happening with climate?

We just had another cycline going through X-Mouth,

Ningaloo, like the destruction, for sale, all that.

And there's a big, big Gulf of helplessness in between, I think.

Helplessness, yeah.

And I think it feels like that, you know, the war with Iran.

You know, and other things like tech addiction

and what it's doing to our lives,

how it's capturing our attention spans,

how it's kind of monetizing our brains

and all the evidence, which is growing,

which is it's really diminishing our cognitive capacity.

But I did see a sign of hope with this,

that people are pushing back and saying,

we know this is bad, and it's not all our fault.

So there was a really important case about it.

An absolutely landmark ruling in California this week,

that basically found meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing

addictive products that harmed one young user.

So there was this one young user's case

against the social media companies.

The jury in LA found that the tech companies were negligent

and that they failed to provide adequate warnings

about the potential dangers of their products.

And this is significant because this is a first time a case

is successfully argued that technology companies could be held accountable

for their platform design.

This has gone to court before.

It's kind of the argument's not quite landed.

This is the first time it's landed,

and it's being called social media's big tobacco moment.

Which is so interesting.

That sense of you had the research,

you knew that what this was doing, you'd be muddying the waters,

and there was court case after court case with big tobacco

before they actually had to pay a lot of compensation.

But I think what's interesting here is that there is

long been a legal shield for social media companies

about content.

It's part of the communications decency act from 1996,

and it's a speech protection.

So it says that these platforms can't be held responsible

for what their users post.

So you can't make them accountable for the content.

So their argument was always that they're just a platform.

That's right.

They're just the intermediary.

That's it.

And then just kind of delivery service.

But then we now have a different argument,

which is we're not talking about content.

We are talking about design,

the way you have deliberately designed things like the infinite scroll,

notifications, to pull people in and add it to them.

Do you remember the days when you could scroll

and then reach the end of the scroll?

Oh my gosh, yes.

I mean, scrolling wasn't even a thing, right?

You'd have to click out of a thing and then go into another video

and then click out of that.

And then they brought in the scrolling,

but then you would get to the bottom of the scroll.

And this is how the design has evolved over time.

It means that you can scroll infinitely

and everything that comes across your feed feeds the algorithm,

which then gives you more of the same.

Of things you've paused on before.

And actually we've been designed to mimic like slot machines,

poker machines.

So just tell us about Kaylee,

who was at the center of this campus.

So let's lay out some of the facts of the case.

It was a 20 year old plaintiff.

She was known, given the name Kaylee GM.

So she took the tech companies to court arguing

that she had become addicted to YouTube at age six.

Instagram at age nine.

And by age 10 had become depressed

and was engaging in self-harm.

It was alleged that her social media use caused her

to have strained relationships with her family and in school.

By age 13, Kaylee's therapist diagnosed her

with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia,

which Kaylee attributes to her use of Instagram

and YouTube in particular.

Now, when Google, by the way,

which owns YouTube and Meta,

which owns Facebook and Instagram,

with how liable for this is for a considerable amount.

Yes. So after 40 hours of deliberations,

the majority of the jurors awarded Kaylee

$8.7 million Australian dollars in damages,

the majority of which will be paid by Meta.

And the other portion, the 30% by Google.

The other tech companies that were subject

to the legal actions had settled before the trial begins.

Same smart now.

But they're not going to be fully out of the crosshairs here, right?

Well, they're already appealing.

So they found that they acted with malice, oppression,

or fraud, with harming children.

And that is where the big tobacco thing is,

are we being lied to?

And the other problem is,

are you actually going to...

Irrespective of what happens in the courts,

are you going to be losing public opinion now?

Is there going to be just basically a consensus

that you are screwing with our kids?

And not just our kids, by the way.

They're not the only ones who are addicted to this.

We talk about children because, you know,

they're obviously more vulnerable at that age.

We have a lot of people that have restrictions.

One of the interesting things about this court case

was some of those internal documents

that came out from the social media companies.

These were documents that were basically held in private

and that were subpoenaed as a result of this trial.

So an internal report at YouTube, for example,

found that 45% of respondents were watching for longer than intended.

And they identified in that report in 2019

that excessive video watching was similar to substance abuse.

And there was an internal dialogue from meta

that was tabled in court as well,

where an employee says to another,

we're basically pushes.

And at the trial, at the same time, you know,

you've got these internal dialogue taking place

where they recognise the addictive nature of what they're doing.

But a trial saying, actually,

the blame rests with the user.

This is about personal responsibility.

And it's interesting, too.

You see a lot of the comments sections

and talk back calls about this issue.

People saying, how can a six-year-old become addicted to YouTube?

How does that happen?

Where are the parents?

I think it's a fair question.

But it speaks to again that initial point about design.

Yes.

That there are features of these apps

that facilitate addictive and problematic behaviour.

Yeah, they'll still say it's a correlation thing.

And they're going to be appealing it, right?

But you mentioned that research.

Remember when we found out that they were actually targeting young girls

and if they wrote something in that indicated they were depressed

or they were miserable,

it would be feeding them kind of images of like skinny girls

or it would actually have some kind of built-in alert.

Yeah.

There's a depressed or vulnerable kid here.

Let's go.

Let's play to it.

And I think that's kind of the information that we really need to know.

And like the whistle blows that come out of these cases,

like the case in New Mexico.

So yeah, this coincides with another case,

a state case in New Mexico in the US

where Meta was ordered to pay $375 million for misleading users

over the safety of its platforms for children.

And it's another jury case, too.

Yeah.

Completely separate trial.

It was very briefly.

This was about whether kids were safe online

and you had Mark Zuckerberg getting up in court

and saying, we're very proud of how we protect children online

while at the same time being presented,

the court being presented with evidence

that kids were being exposed to all sorts of things online

and that the verification processes were simply not there.

Well, even worse, there was a, in that case,

there was a former engineering leader from Meta.

He quit in 2021.

He became a whistleblower and he said that he himself

was running various experiments on Instagram

showing that underage users were served sexualized content.

And there was internal research that found that 16%

of all Instagram users had reported being shown

unwanted nudity or sexual activity in a single week.

So that's significant.

I am longing to see more of this internal research

and more whistleblowers tell us what's actually gone on here.

Can I put an alternative view here?

There is not a consensus in the medical community

about whether social media addiction is an actual addiction.

And some experts say that addiction

has some very particular clinical connotations

and they prefer to use the term problematic behavior,

which is a sort of a broader description of things

that include things like addiction,

but they prefer the term problematic use

to kind of describe compulsive use

with negative impacts on your life, your relationships.

And recognize that some people

suffer worse than others.

Some people are kind of predisposed

to be falling into these traps, right?

So it's an interesting thing because there's not a consensus

about how to label it

and there's not consensus about how to deal with it.

So when we come and talk about the social media bands

that are rolling out across the world,

we'll get to that in the moment.

There's not really consensus there

about what the best answer is,

whether blanket banning kids from social media

is too blunt a force

because there are positive impacts

from interactions via social media as well.

See, when I hear that,

I think of like the classic tobacco industry ploy

of there's a bit of uncertainty.

Science is uncertain.

You know, they sponsored all that research

and they were like to just throw in the question

if we can't be exactly sure in any particular issue.

What we can be sure of

is there's an impact on kids' brains

and their behavior is dramatically modified

and there's a demonstrable link to mental health

and I think that's enough.

And the body of evidence is still growing.

This is the thing, right?

So the UK has just announced a trial of I think 600 teenagers

who voluntarily agreed to go on a social media ban

as part of a study.

It's led by the UK government

but this is part of their consideration

about whether to bring in a social media ban.

Now overnight, the French Senate

has just passed legislation banning social media.

They become the third country in the world

after Indonesia and Australia,

which was first.

Manning social media for young people.

So under 16s.

Austria is considering the same thing.

Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Malaysia,

all considering the same thing.

So that point we made before,

that there's momentum building here

and the French President of the Manu and Macron

said in the passage of this legislation,

our children's brains are not for sale.

Which takes me to the research,

which has come out actually from a quarry university

and neuroscientists called Mark Williams.

Really alarming findings here, Jez.

He says, the more time kids are on devices,

the less the white matter in their brains develop.

It becomes kind of less dense.

Showing signs that are similar to the early stages

of Alzheimer's and dementia.

So they did this meta-analysis in 2024.

Of 34 studies looking at screen addiction

and children and teenagers.

Strong evidence of impacts on attention, focus,

and executive functioning.

But you actually can see,

on these brain scans, there are changes in their brains

that are visible with the loss of grey and white matter

in the area of the frontal lobe

that are associated with learning and memory, for example.

And so what is it from the brain that's disappearing?

Grey matter.

Or not being developed.

Right, okay.

Right, actual cognitive capacity.

For example, things like,

they looked at this as on 60 minutes recently,

but the fact that we don't use,

we don't remember how to get around anymore

because you can always just look at...

You remember sitting with the road map in your lap?

It's arguing about where the results are down.

Exactly.

The Gregory's or...

But we're not even using that part of our brain, for example,

anymore like spatially, how to navigate around.

So remembering the average Australian teen

spends four to six hours a day on social media

and a total of about eight hours a day

for leisure, a third of the day.

So Williams wrote in the in 2024,

brains are very much a user or loser organ.

If you challenge yourself through thinking,

problem solving and learning,

you develop new connections in your brain,

and if you don't challenge yourself,

not only do new connections not form,

but the old ones start to die off.

And it's not just the kids, like he's actually...

No, I'm feeling a bit judged here.

Oh, no.

I think everyone can relate to this.

I think everyone can.

I feel like I relate to this.

Okay, tell me, Jess.

I mean, like most people,

I think I kind of sit there on scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.

Yeah.

And I'm kind of mildly entertained.

And then I go,

hang on, it's been half an hour.

What am I doing with my day?

Yes. And just half an hour is pretty good.

And actually, sometimes that happens to me,

and I don't know how I got there.

I'll pick my phone up to check.

Oh, I've got to send someone to a message.

And not only will I have not sent them a message,

I'm somehow back on a platform,

where I'm being entertained, and it's funny.

And I'm sending it to you, Jess,

look at this person dancing in the street.

And it's become...

This is really interesting, too,

because over time,

the social media platforms

have become direct messaging,

video call, phone call platforms as well,

which pull you back into the app.

Into the app.

Even just to use it,

that's why I like to read physical books, for example,

because I'm just away from actual screens.

So I find that incredibly alarming,

and let's not forget that the rates of early onset dementia

are going up as well in the 30 to 44-year-old age bracket.

That is actually really scary.

It is scary.

I just like...

Because dementia is, I mean, very serious.

Yes.

And it's not how recoverable...

I knew you were going to ask me a medical question.

In my vast experience of neurology,

I don't know,

but I think we are at the cusp of something really, really important.

We can see this research, and we know it.

And we can push back on the social media companies.

We can do things like pressuring the government

for an opt-in algorithm method,

which I think there's one campaign for underway at the moment,

which I think is kind of important.

But then we get to another branch.

And by the way,

when we're talking about challenging the social media companies in court,

there are thousands of cases.

Currently, in the US, waiting to be heard.

On this matter, hundreds in California.

Which is why this interpretation of the law is so significant.

So important.

And what's the way to see what happens in appeal?

That's the way to see what happens with the next one.

In the meantime, we are, like Australia,

is globally pioneering the social media ban.

Other countries in our following suit.

What do we do for ourselves?

How do we push back on it?

And there was a really great piece in the New York Times recently,

which was by Cal Newport.

He's a professor at Georgetown University.

And he argues that we need to be thinking about our brains

in the same way we think about our bodies,

once our lifestyles became more sedentary.

So we're like, oh, we're not getting out into the fields,

or I don't know, doing physical labor anymore.

We have to exercise.

Our bodies require that exercise.

So now we're going to have to do that with our brains

to maintain cognitive capacity.

We're going to have to log off.

We're going to have to engage in long-form content.

So he calls it ultra-processed foods.

But before that, I had to look through some of this research recently,

just quickly.

Researchers say the greatest decline in our attention occurred when.

When do you think, if we look through history,

if we look through the last couple of decades,

it was a sudden, when would that be?

I'm going to say television.

No.

In the advent of the iPhone.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Because I remember the time when television was the kind of equivalent evil, right?

Yeah, but television you turn on and off,

and it sits in one room in the house.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the different.

There was one study of attention.

So they looked at you on your computer and toggling between different tasks.

And so they had these participants shattered with clock watchers.

In 2004, the average attention span on any screen was two and a half minutes.

2012, it was 75 seconds.

And now it's about 47 seconds.

Holy moly.

And also, the more we switch attention, the more likely we are to be stressed.

And there's also something called the switch cost.

You have to refocus and kind of get back into something.

And we know that.

All these things constantly demanding our time.

And even if we are not using our phones, but they are in the same room,

we are still distracted.

They did a study with participants with it in the room and not in the room.

And they had less, again, cognitive functioning.

I feel like that about my fridge when I'm working from home.

Yeah.

Same thing.

I feel like it helps my function, my fridge.

But it's an interesting thing because I feel like I multitask really well.

But concentrating takes a very special effort.

That's it.

And this is where we're seeing that sort of decline in capacity,

in things like concentrating and focusing on a single task.

Yes.

And I take some of these studies very bad news for me personally, honestly.

I do too.

There's a meta-analysis, again, we love the Metas.

And this was from almost 100,000 participants across 71 studies.

Increased use of short-form videos, largely found on TikTok or Instagram,

associated with poor cognition, particularly attention and inhibitory control,

and poor mental health, particularly with stress and anxiety coming through.

And we just work more slowly.

And we're not reading as much.

That's very well documented how much we're reading.

So, Cal Newport is saying, look, in the world of physical health,

we know now we should largely avoid ultra-process snacks,

like Doritos and Oreos, which are franken foods,

made by reconstituting stock ingredients like corn and soy,

with hyper-palatable ratios of salt, sugar, and fat.

Much of the digital content that ensnairs our attention in the current moment

is also ultra-processed,

and that it's the result of vast databases of user-generated content

that sifted, broken down, and recombined by algorithms into personalized streams

designed to be irresistible.

What is a TikTok video, he says, if not a digital Dorito?

So, he advocates stepping away from these platforms,

saying that sugar-high benefits aren't worth the cost.

And then there's also, he says, the cognitive equivalent of aerobic activity is contemplation.

So, focusing on a singular topic, or a singular book,

like, how are we going to be able to work out our brains?

And all of this makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't remember what we've spoken about traveling overseas

and you're off your phone and it feels like you've opened a window

and air can come through your heads.

I feel the same when I switch from scrolling to reading a book.

What about, okay, so you're about to embark on this process

where you're about to write a book.

Tell me about your preparatory kind of mental health fitness

before you go into that sort of process,

because I don't imagine that writing,

particularly something that's so personal and so, you know, deeply focused,

is compatible with scrolling through real after real.

How do you kind of manage that?

So, when I write, I have to, I use an app, which blocks as my internet.

So, I just can't get it.

I once took my laptop to a max store and said,

can you just block it so I can never get the internet again?

And they wouldn't.

Isn't that weird?

Anyway, so.

So, and I tell you, the moment I put it on,

because I'll be like, I'll just look at this.

I'll just look at this.

I'll just look at this.

Or I'll toggle.

I'll be thinking, but I'll just check in my email, whatever.

It's a tick now.

The moment I put it on, I feel like,

okay, I'm thinking completely differently now.

Like, I'm just, and you can put it in for three hours.

But then I have to get my phone and put it in another room.

I was listening to a podcast, the editor of the New Yorker,

David Remnick, did with Jonathan Hate,

who's written a lot about attention spans.

And David Remnick, who reads for a living

and is completely passionate about words,

has to go and put his phone in the kitchen.

I kind of have to do that too.

But the joy of it is, you will reach a point

where you get completely absorbed.

And it is so delightful.

Is there a hump to cross over?

Do you feel a sense of withdrawal?

Like an addict?

Does I'm not saying you're an addict?

But do you feel a sense of withdrawal?

I think we all are a bit addicted to it.

Because I do.

I kind of, like, when I do that, like on a day off,

I'll put my phone off and I'll go,

right, I'm just going to cook and just do nice things

and look at the view and whatever.

I feel a sense of being really lonely and detached.

And I kind of spend a few hours

not quite knowing what to do with myself

and it recurs every time I do this.

I can't have to say to myself,

will you calm down?

Well, you've got your music on.

But I feel a sense of detachment that's,

you know, I kind of need to be connected

to something and be on top of things.

And it's weird, because no one's missing me.

Yeah, what about someone?

I'll thank Paul, I've got my phone back.

He's like, oh, really, actually nothing happened.

Very much.

But yeah, I mean, I think I've probably got enough muscle memory

and I also find it relaxing to pull away.

And I've done it kind of repeatedly

through my life when I've detached to write things.

But I do notice that that's when I start

to pull in and make connections

and just it works better on a creative level.

And I can't even put my finger on it.

So I think it's a really great concept to go,

okay, you're going to have to work out your brains now.

And exercise it like a muscle.

Exercise of my muscle.

Make yourself read a book.

Yeah.

Make your kids read a book.

I don't know, bribe them, whatever.

You know, I tried that once.

My daughter just didn't, she just read anyway.

So I'll give you five bucks for every book you read.

And she was like, yeah, I'm reading anyway.

Like just, it was quite...

It would have been scooping that out.

Yeah, that's interesting.

But remember, my son got bribed to stay off social media.

And he still wants it.

And it's worked.

Yeah.

Which is kind of, anyway.

Follow the money in your way.

We're landing on bribe.

But I do, I am seeing signs of hope in all of this.

We feel so impotent.

Yes, I'll sign those terms and conditions.

Yes, I'll, whatever.

I will accept the negatives because I want to have

all the positives of being online.

But to know that people are getting a lot more literate

and suspicious about the research that's on here

and being a lot more suspicious about,

whether or not we're being lied to by these companies,

we can see the impact on our kids.

You can see what happens when you take a phone away

from an addicted kid.

It's an absolute nightmare.

And for busy parents, that's a killer.

But we know it.

We know it to be true because we feel that ourselves ultimately.

Don't you think?

A hundred percent.

All right, just time for Pick of the Week.

Now, Jules, were you any good at sport as a child?

No.

No.

That was a terrible hand-eye.

I was never selected for any team.

I was.

Me too.

I feel last person.

We love to dance.

No way.

I could run.

You could.

I could run until I heard it.

Of course.

I'm on your desk.

Yeah.

Look at this.

Yes, but team.

No.

I would just be letting the team down.

Yes.

I could run like the wind.

Yes.

But that was about it.

The hand-eye coordination was terrible.

Long, angly arms.

Kind of, you know, stretched out, you know,

further.

My armspan is longer than my height.

I wasn't made for sport, particularly team sport.

Yes.

And I'm fine a frame.

And so easily crushed on the field.

Yay!

But I want to introduce you to something that I think will be right up your alley.

Please.

It's a sport.

And I use that term very broadly.

Great.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

Yeah.

It's called disco foot.

And it's dance.

I like the sound of this already.

Meets soccer.

The rules of soccer.

Oh.

But there's one golden rule.

What?

You're not allowed to run.

You have to dance.

Oh.

Wow.

And so this was initially conceived in 2016 for the UEFA European Championship.

Yeah.

As a bit of a side show by a ballet company, a modern dance company in France,

where they got a bunch of dancers to play soccer in gold hot pants.

Sweet.

Two sides, red team, blue team.

Yeah.

Some choreographed moves.

Okay.

Some freestyle.

Yeah.

But you have to also play the game.

But you are scored on how many goals you kick.

Okay.

But also the quality and the artistic merit of your dancing in between.

So it's technically, I think, possible to win a match.

And not get goals.

Okay.

Or no goals.

Do we need the goals?

Why involve with the ball?

This is exactly the point.

Yes.

Can I show you a video?

Please.

Oh, it's a, it's a mirror ball.

Okay.

That's amazing.

I like the little shorts.

I noticed that the people in the middle are barely, no one's barely even dealing with them

because they're like busting the moves around the end.

At some points of the match, they're all like here.

They're in formation on the ground, like, you know, doing their moves.

The ball is completely still in the middle of the pitch.

Because it's not really about the ball.

Oh, that is absolutely brilliant.

I assume you've shown me this because you think we'll be great at it.

I reckon we'll be out time.

I don't want to.

Yeah.

I don't want to.

No, we just need to get a mirror at soccer ball.

Disco for it.

We could bring it to Australia.

I reckon we could.

Yeah.

But I do think we would dispense for the ball at some point pretty quickly.

Get out of the way.

But I think that's part of the game.

Yeah.

And I think we'd get high points for choreography.

An artistic merit, as they say.

I mean, we can combine that with the Guinness Book of World Records.

Most people doing disco foot.

Disco foot.

Yeah.

Tournament.

Yeah.

Because it's normally eight aside.

I'm going to keep that dream alive.

Now, Jules, time for your pick of the week.

What have you got for me?

Now, if you could name one scientific study that we've probably laughed about the most on this pod,

what would it be?

I don't know if it qualifies as a scientific study, but the inquiry dictionary word of the year.

Oh, yeah.

And shittification.

That was it.

I laughed about that for weeks.

And it's so true.

All the time.

Yeah, exactly.

There was something else.

There was a particular scientific study that made you a little bit uneasy, personally, just.

I can't remember.

Right.

Let me remind you.

Look at it out of my mind.

It won an ignoble prize for physiology.

And it was a method.

A backup method for providing oxygen to patients with blocked airways.

Pun absolutely intended a backup method.

They tried it on pigs, rodents, turtles, and fish.

When they need it, they can chug some up their bottoms, some oxygen.

Oxygen, yeah.

Now, you will like, if I get the flu, I'm locking my door and you're not coming over.

Now, I understand this, but obviously there's some, if people have problems breathing,

or like they might actually need, or kind of think, wait no longer, Jeremy,

they have just conducted the first experiment on humans.

Really?

It's 27 healthy men in Japan.

And found the process to be safe and well tolerated.

Hang on.

So it doesn't replace normal breathing.

Don't get carried away.

But if you're in respiratory distress, or failure, it could provide a backup.

Just recap for us how this works, please.

Well, let me just spell out what actually happened in this trial.

It wasn't testing how well it worked.

It was about actually whether it was safe.

So I got these blokes in Japan, and they had to hold between 25 and 1500 milliliters

of a non-oxygenated version of the liquid in their rectum for 60 minutes.

No serious adverse effects were reported, although participants taking the highest volumes

did feel some abdominal bloating discomfort and pain.

Seven participants weren't able to hold their breath for the full hour.

I don't know if that counts as breath.

Well, if you're breathing that way, then yes.

So we had a judge.

So that's huge, Jess.

We've been waiting for the human clinical trial when you they did it in pigs, and that set you off.

I feel like I need more evidence here.

For I.

It feels really uncomfortable.

I think to COVID, it was kind of like great new, a great promising new research.

Innovation.

Yeah.

Okay, well, you look really concerned.

Well, I also want to mention something really quickly that I absolutely loved this week.

It was a piece by Gia Tolentino, who's a fantastic essayist at the New Yorker.

And it just goes to show when you write about something you know and love really well,

and she wrote about Robin.

She's coming to Australia.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Gia Tolentino has written the most incredible piece about her.

Goes to see her over in Sweden, and she really analyzes her music,

and she's been into her music for a long time and gone to a lot of clubs.

And she talks about how there's something because she sings about like that song.

I'm dancing on my own here in the corner.

But I'm still dancing.

There's something about the music that is lifting me up.

And Tolentino writes about increasingly the feeling of being alive today.

Sorrow is the content, ecstasy is the form, which is kind of like, like Nick Caden away.

And I thought that was really smart.

So she has these really upbeat songs that have melancholic lyrics.

David Byrne, who did a version of Dancing on My Own with her for Saturday Night Live

for the 50th anniversary, said there's something in that song.

It's this insistent pulse that says, you'll be all right.

The music will lift you, keep going.

I like that very much.

So it's trying to over adversity.

Songs immersing us in the problem and its solution at the same time.

She says, the person who wrote Dancing on My Own is a really lonely person.

Who used that loneliness to get herself out of her sadness.

I started to love that I was able to do that, to respect it again, to not see it as a weakness.

But a way of surviving.

There's something really struck me about this profile, which was just really smart,

which actually says something about where we are now.

And how you manage to find capacity to dance or embrace joy or just friggin' keep on going.

Despite it all, I think there's something in that.

You know, musically, too, the way it's written,

the chorus resolves into a major key,

and the major key is to broadly describe it, is your happy sounding music.

Right.

Which jars with the lyrics are right.

Yeah.

But it finishes in a major key.

And I think it's kind of suggestive from that point of view, where it should leave you.

Yeah.

With all those sentiments, here we are finishing on a major key.

Yeah.

As I said, I saw that in Nick Cave.

I saw that in Hamlet and Chloe Zhao.

And it's people right now, the ones who can speak to kind of navigating that precipice

between a full awareness of everything we're dealing with in the world,

and all the problems we have.

And they're also a full embrace of everything that can sustain us through it.

Art and love and beauty and dance.

Now, we've got an extra little pick of the week for our listeners.

A special treat of our silent partner in all of this.

Not that silent, honestly.

Silent parent sometimes.

Madeline, Jenna, welcome to the show.

Well, I wasn't being very silent then, because I was about to tell you,

there's an amazing Robin and Gracie Abrams video live concert in L.A.

We'll put it in the show notes, because it's just the most fun you all see.

Awesome.

She's so good.

That wasn't my pick, though.

You do have a pick of the week.

Yes.

Okay, so my pick, it's going to be a bit sappy, given this is the last show.

But when we started this show, when we started talking about making this podcast a couple of years ago,

which are more than 100 shows, I think it is,

we really wanted to make something that was a bit different when it comes to how we talk about the news

and something that gives us a bit of hope in the endless omnishambles that exists at the moment.

And so my pick is going to be the audience.

The listeners, the smarties, as we were calling them ages ago,

because when I started this show, I put the inbox for not stupid on my phone.

And we talk about this all the time.

We talk about how you should leave your phones.

I mean, we've been talking about it today.

Yeah.

We talk about how you need to put your phone away.

But actually, having the inbox on my phone just means I get the most delightful messages from people

at all times of the day and night.

A lot of people listen at 4 a.m.

Really?

Yeah, quite a few.

And it's just, you just put a spring in your step every single time.

And I will miss that.

Because it's just like so many people.

Yeah, it is something particularly about the community, right?

That's what I've kind of loved.

It's that way of you have of like finding each other.

Like we really need to find each other.

Because there's so many, like just and talk about the decency and talk about the cake

and talk about the good stuff, right?

I think that social media often lies to us about who we are

and the way we relate to each other.

And then you're like, oh no, we're actually all in the nanosphere.

Yeah, exactly.

Actually, we've had a whole bunch of new emails about the nanosphere.

Oh, yeah.

Everyone is joining.

Everyone is keen to join.

I haven't even shared all those ones with you.

Oh, yeah, can you?

Yes.

But obviously, this all brings me to cake because everything in this show really comes back to cake.

I have been up baking.

But it was making me think about it.

So I mean, Jeremy, I feel like you've done enough Swiss buttercreams in your time

that you would know this bit.

That when you make Swiss buttercream, every recipe tells you this.

It says it's going to look curdled.

It's going to go funny.

It's not going to be at all right.

Keep going.

And sometimes it feels, I was doing this last night and going.

I've stuffed it.

I'm going to have to start again.

And it just comes good.

I love it.

And every edit, every Wednesday.

Every Wednesday we make it come good.

And I love that.

And on that note, there's a cake.

Oh.

Madeline is like the queen of cake.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my goodness.

Madeline.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's got, okay, I'm just going to describe it.

So buttercream, it's like what, three levels high.

It's vanilla.

It's got pink around it when lots of pink.

They low roses.

The nine-year-old helped me with those.

They're a bit dodgy.

They're amazing.

Then it's got these like stripy straws sticking up.

And between it is bunting, saying a little bit stupid.

Fat chick.

Possibly.

Yes.

We've always admitted to that.

And we're okay with that.

That is.

That is.

I try.

A sterling effort, Mads.

How beautiful.

Thank you.

And with a metaphor woven into it.

I know.

Just keep going with the buttercream.

Thank you so much for all the work you've done on it.

That's okay.

It's been the best fun.

And cinnamon as well.

Nippard, who has been producing us for the last few months.

And, you know, we just are very attached to this community

that has kind of coalesced.

And grateful for it.

Our inbox remains open.

So please do get in touch.

Not stupid at abc.net.au.

Mads will keep us in touch with all the emails that come in.

Yes.

We are leaving you for now.

But do look out for me.

Jules, I'm already sorting out my kind of ABC special events

to come for the rest of the year, which I'm really excited about.

Continuing on the 7pm news in New South Wales.

You're going to be writing for the ABC News website.

And more importantly, I think, the book.

So yeah, getting off my phone.

Yeah.

And watch this space, Jules.

That's it for now.

Lots of love.