121: Nicky Woolf | What Is Havana Syndrome?

THE SOUND w/ Project Brazen & Nicky Woolf- https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sound-mystery-of-havana-syndrome/id1662594800

🎙️: https://atlasgeographica.com/nicky-woolf

Nicky Woolf is the host and investigative journalist behind Project Brazens latest investigative podcasts series, a story, which much to the consistency of the Project Brazen tagline, is one where again we are reminded the the truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

The podcast is about Havana Syndrome, what we expect from this series and Nicky Woolf even drops a few of the salacious, geopolitical and gossipy details about the story.

We then speak about what it takes putting together an audio production like this, Nicky Woolf's life in journalism, we nerd out on podcasting, audiobooks and as well, speak about the media landscape. 

Topics Within The Curious Worldview Podcast Mentioned.

• • Bradley Hope - Project Brazen
  • Investigative Journalism Starter Pack

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• 00:00 - Introduction
• 02:12 - What Is Havana Syndrome?
• 06:16 - The Power Of Suggestion
• 16:41 - Setting The Scene For Us... An Introduction To Havana Syndrome
• 19:52 - The Geopolitical Angles
• 28:37 - Theories For Havana Syndrome
• 36:52 - How Scary Is The Underworld Of Experimental Weaponry?
• 40:59 - How Can Sound Physically Impair You?
• 46:06 - Bring It All Together, The Future Of The Story & Working With Project Brazen
• 54:08 - Changing Journalistic Landscape
• 1:10:04 - Podcasting & Audio
• 1:32:20 - Investigations Not Being Given Oxygen & Australian Journalism
• 1:45:43 - Hero's, Christopher Hitchens & Anthony Bourdain
• 1:58:56 - What Is A Country Nicky Is Bullish On?
• 2:11:45 - Conversation Between Any Two People Of History

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Nikki Wolf is the host and investigative journalist behind Project Brazen's latest investigative podcast series, a story which, much to the consistency of the Project Brazen tagline, is one where again we are reminded that the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. This investigative podcast series is called The Sound, and it is an exploration of the Havana syndrome phenomenon. Some of you may be aware of Project Brazen. For those who aren't, it is the independent media company started by the co-authors of The Story of Joe Lowe and the great Malaysian 1MDB scandal, A Billion Dollar Whale. And Project Brazen has been the inspiration for several guests on this very show, including episode 101 with Christopher Turner, The Life and Lessons from a 25-year CIA veteran, today with Nikki Wolf, and soon to be as well the likes of Mitchell Protero talking about the Dutch potentially becoming an arco state and cocaine in the Benelux. They published several newsletters, all of which are 100% in the wheelhouse of the Curious Worldview audience. But in this podcast today, Nikki introduces us to Havana Syndrome. He explains what we can expect from this series and drops a few of the salacious geopolitical and gossipy details about the story to serve as a little bit of a hook to go over there and have a listen yourselves. We then speak about after in the end, there was maybe you could consider this a two-part um podcast. We speak about in the end what it takes putting together a production like this. Nikki's life in journalism, nerding out, him and I nerd out on podcasting and audiobooks, and then we speak about the broader media landscape. So the sound released its first episode on Monday. It is absolutely magnificent. The link to the show is the top link in this podcast description. So go ahead and listen to the sound and leave a review on that podcast as well. Plus, furthermore, write in your review that Ryan sent me. Because if you write those words in your review, I may be able to build a little bit of cred with old Project Brazen. And so rather a review on my own show today. This is the coolest thing you could do for this podcast. Leave a review on the sound and comment that Ryan sent me. Alright, with absolutely no further ado, here is Nikki Wolf. Well, let's do it. Are you ready to go?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Alright, mate. So what's going on? There is a microwave frequency sound that is poisoning diplomats all over the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Right. Well, that's skipping a few steps. So here's what we know. We know a bunch of diplomats are getting sick. And this started in 2016 in Cuba. And when we say diplomats, those first few were CIA officers. We know that now. The first thing that got said, and this was when it went public in August of 2017, was that some kind of sonic energy was involved. That was what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. Quickly, a lot of people started poking holes in that theory. So then a whole load of investigations started gearing up. You've got the FBI sending a team in, Cuban governments investigating themselves, State Department commissions over the course of a couple years, I think four investigations, and CIA is doing its own. They all start coming to wildly different conclusions. So quickly, when a tape of uh the sound that the diplomats were hearing when they were getting sick got released, um, a team of entomologists identified it as the sound of a cricket. Um, so that complicated matters. Um, there's a huge theory that we we hear from that um the whole thing might be psychogenic. The power of suggestion on the human brain is incredibly strong and capable of causing a wide range of symptoms. Um so uh going going into this, we had to start triaging all of these different theories. We spoke to experts in in all of the fields, um and quickly were able to rule out a few. Um the the idea that like a sonic weapon, which do exist, sonic weapons um, for example, are used for crowd control, or something called uh uh LRAD, a long-range acoustic device. But it's you know it's freaking loud. Like this is not the kind of thing that would be subtle. Um the uh what a lot of the diplomats experienced was that the sound was very tightly focused. So you could almost they they describe being able to step in and out of the beam and it comes and it goes. Um, and that points um because of something called the Frey effect, which is where a pulsed um pulsed radio frequency, which which is microwave, um can cause the experience of a sound in the brain without there being a sound outside, without it kind of going uh in through the ears. Um so that's a very strong theory, um, and also the psychogenic theory is um is very strong. So uh yeah, not to give too much away about the show, but those are the ones we start to zero in on. Um, and then we had to test it. So um we had uh a mentalist, which is an interesting word because um in the US that's you know, uh we're we're talking a Darren Brown type, whereas I know mentalist in the UK has a kind of colloquial uh meaning as well, of just sort of a lunatic. But um, yeah, so he he demonstrated the power of suggestion on me, which was very um very interesting. But we also uh um had a physicist friend build some test devices, um one with a phased sound array to demonstrate um what what the word when we say phased, what do we exactly mean? It means lots of different emitters milliseconds apart. So it sort of creates a focus point, um, and also a focused um microwave energy device. We are not allowed to call it a weapon um because that's illegal, obviously. Um so yeah, so we so we then start to zero in on these theories, and uh I think at the end of the show we're able to make a quite convincing case.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Talk a little bit about your experience with with the mentalist and this sort of psychogenic route that you want to take.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

So I I came into this. I'm a reporter who spent a lot of time reporting on conspiracy theories. So I'm I'm aware of how much the brain can do. Uh so we look into there was a fascinating case in 1972 where a whole bunch of workers in an office in Illinois all became sick and had smelt something weird, and the theory was that this was a gas attack of some kind, um, until some researchers came in and mapped who the victims of the gas attack had been. And these people were vigorously sick, you know, fainting, vomiting, um, all that kind of stuff. Like you would in a with some kind of gas attack, and they were hospitalized. Nine nine people were hospitalized. Um, but it turned out that once you mapped it against a social group, you could see how the idea of getting sick spread directly along a social network. So the researchers could map it almost perfectly, and that demonstrated how powerful a psychogenic spread can be in a way that I hadn't even hadn't really been able to visualize before. Um, so that's what I was coming into this with, but it also um kind of the more research we did, the more it became clear that that didn't quite that didn't cover everything. There were some bits that just didn't quite fit. Um so, for example, the first um certainly the first five cases, maybe the first few more after that, didn't know about each other, had been specifically told not to tell anyone else within the embassy community. Um, and so it's um as we spoke to one researcher who was part of the um who was leading the National Academy of Sciences um uh investigation at the State Department commissioned, that they they looked at this and they thought, well, how can there be social contagion if patient one doesn't know about if patient two doesn't know about patient one, patient three doesn't know about patient two? Um then when it spreads around the world, and um we've also heard from there are civilian cases, um, that's very hard to triage. We're we're taking all of the cases very seriously. I think we're we want to come into this from uh a standpoint of not dismissing anyone out of hand. Um but certainly there's there's a triage that you have to do as to what fits a certain pattern and what might not fit a certain pattern. Um and the pulse radio frequency um Frey effect theory, um to me, and and obviously that you know we've just dropped the first episode, yes, the investigation is still very much uh an ongoing investigation, but at the moment that's that's what seems the most compelling to us. Um but I think it's one of those stories that's that's more complicated than that. There's a lot of different things going on at once. Uh, and so it's unpicking all of this stuff and unpicking it from the politics as well, um, because this was happening in the early days of the Trump administration. Everything is extremely chaotic. Um so yeah, there's a lot of untangling that that we uh that we needed to do there.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Just to linger for one moment on the psychogenic aspect, uh, what has been some particularly concerning insights that you've been told or learned about uh from your experience either dealing with the mentalist or the power of suggestion? I think that Chicago example was uh terrific, but I wonder if there are maybe even more absurd examples.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I mean there's the when you go back further in history, there's things like the German dancing mania, which is a really famous case where um people across this German city just started dancing. And that sounds a whole lot of fun, right? But we're talking dancing until they died is compulsive, and that was another social um contagion um that again killed people. I mean, this is this is serious stuff. Uh and so we got this mentalist, this uh guy came in and did uh something with me that um hold a key on a string, like a pendulum, um hold it entirely still, and then think about it moving while thinking about keeping my hand still, and it starts to go round in a circle. And so he explains to me that what's happening there is when even when you're not consciously moving, when the idea of something moving is implanted in your head, you have a um what's called an idiomotor response, which is that entirely outside of your control, the the thought process causes these tiny movements. And so the keys started to move in a circle, and I found that very eerie. Um, and then the other way demonstrated suggestion was by um taking the letters of my name, writing them on cards, laying them out, mixing them up, and having me, and he gave me this whole spiel, having me kind of move the key over it, pick a card. And you know, this is a lot of card tricks and how kind of stage magic works a lot of the time. Um I picked one letter, he turned all the other ones over, and they were blank on the other side, and then the one I'd picked had an X on it. Um, and now with a magic trick that just stops there, and you're like, wow. But then he sort of was explaining to me, um, and we go back in the tape to listen to this, and he had implanted the letter C in a lot of what he was saying. So he was like, we'll do this, and then we'll see what happens. You'll see what, and it sort of does this over again and says that he was so sure in this demonstration that that meant I would pick the letter C, and indeed I did. So that that was a really stark, I think, thing, showing me how much not entirely on the level your your brain is is being with you at any one time. Um, and so yeah, I I think there's a huge powerful psychogenic aspect to this story, um, but and and that was what I felt going into it, but I don't think that's uh I now don't think that's the whole story.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Did did you learn anything about uh the differences between people being susceptible to that type of psychogenic um or or or suggestive behavior? What actually would might make a person more immune to it than another? And I just want to tie that into you must have an extremely interesting take, or at least worldview, when it comes to looking at the uh conspiratorial phenomenons. You've worked uh, for example, on the QAnon phenomenon. To me, there's a very obvious link between these two things here.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah, I I would say that a lot of people think, and it would be so simple to if this was the case, that there was a certain type of person more vulnerable to suggestion, more vulnerable to falling into these um kind of rabbit holes. But what we found both in this and um with QAnon was that there is no no one is safe. Anyone can uh can fall into this kind of thing. It's not uh people people love to think, oh, I'm too smart for this, that could never happen to me. In in all cases with psychogenic transfer, um, and again, I I don't necessarily think psychogenic transfer explains all of what's going on in Havana syndrome. Um, but with psychogenic transfer and with QAnon, anyone is vulnerable. And in the right circumstances, the the brain can be led down these pathways. So yeah, it it could happen to you.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

That's a that's a really um I think a really nice, sympathetic way to look at it because uh I think with the conspiracy stuff particularly, um, if you all of a sudden are just absolutely convinced, uh, like a really good friend of mine is that the vaccine is is is part of a j a big global uh new world order conspiracy, that they must be really dumb or they must just be really weird. And it turns out that no, there is something else at play, and and and and it's very hard to articulate actually what it is, but this uh actually might provide a really nice way to respond to it.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah. And and I think the differences also are illustrative. Um Havana syndrome is something that has spread um naturally. Uh there's there's not a um like you get with QAnon, there's not an ecosystem of essentially scammers pushing this on people. Um because it's um as the the psychogenic hypothesis um would hold, is that um it's simply an idea that spreads. Now QAnon is also an idea that spread, but it was being fueled by people who had a vested interest in that idea spreading. And I think that's what makes this what what makes Havana syndrome not a conspiracy theory story. It's not people trying to be moved into a certain political position for the gain of the people who can exploit that. Um what this is is the the differences between a um a conspiracy theory and a psychogenic tr a psychogenic illness is that no one is pushing a psychogenic illness. It it is its own thing. That's what the psychogenic hypothesis uh holds. And that's demonstrated in it in a lot of examples. Now again, is that exactly what's going on here? That's that's what we um that's what became difficult to to unpick. Um because I think there is certainly in parts of the story that kind of thing is going on, but I no longer think in all parts of the story that's going on.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

So set the scene for us. You know, what are we actually talking about here?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

So in the first episode, we hear from Kevin Coates, who um along with his wife Karen were working in the um embassy. And uh in March of 2017, Karen became one of the um, I think she was patient number 15 or 16, one of the first 24 in that Havana cohort to get it. She was hit in that same way we've heard described, as in a very focused beam in which she experienced a loud piercing sound, which she um describes as like a whistling kettle, and that she could step back, and that immediately went away. Um she uh very quickly develops these symptoms, which are um she was essentially bleeding from the eyes. She had uh she got checked out, she had detached retinas, um, she got medevaced out to Miami. Um they check her out, they're like, this is the kind of stuff we only see when people have had a traumatic brain injury, like a car crash. But they can't find anything else, so she got sent back to Havana, then gets hit again in exactly the same way, and over the course of this is starting to develop more underlying symptoms. So um trouble with memory, dizziness, insomnia, vertigo, nausea, and is finding it harder and harder to work. Then Kevin and Karen get hit um together. He doesn't seem to get hit as hard because he it was just the once, but she is deteriorating quickly. She eventually leaves again, goes to the University of Pennsylvania, which had um taken over from the University of Miami in treating a bunch of these patients. Um and that's how it began for for those two. And I think it it was a similar story for a lot of that first 24 cohort. Um and to this day, she remains severely disabled. I mean, this is not something that's that's tailed off. In fact, uh, and we go into this a bit in episode two. Um, the reason we hear Karen's story from Kevin is that she is still unable to sit for an interview, unable to even really be in a room with electronic equipment without intense pain and and suffering. And also she feels, and we've found this with a lot of the sufferers, um, an enormous sense of shame about not being able to find the words, not being able to tell the story. So um Kevin was was telling the story on her behalf. Um, but yeah, the the impact, it was quickly clear to us that theories about what may be causing this aside, the impact this has had on people is uh enormous.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

That's incredibly sad. And um the symptoms that she was that were being described of her by her husband were also just harrowing, you know, totally harrowing, life-destroying, um, especially career destroying. Um, but it crucially uh in part of setting up the story, these were US diplomats, right? And could you give the very brief um from Obama the history of relations between the US and Cuba because there's a giant sort of geopolitical explanation that I think people want to try and make here, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Yeah, and this is the other thing, this is the backdrop against all which all this is playing out. And it goes way back. I mean, we're the um US ended diplomatic relations with Cuba and dropped an embargo in the 60s under JFK. As you know, this was one of the focal points of the Cold War. You had the Cuban Missile Crisis, you had the Bay of Pigs, which is where the CIA funded an attempted and eventually botched invasion of Cuba. Um, and so relations had been just frozen in this um absolutely aggressive Cuba being a pariah state for decades and decades. And then finally, after a long period of very secret negotiations, in 2015, President uh then President Obama opened up diplomatic relations. Now that didn't mean lifting the embargo, because the embargo was an act of Congress, and that was never repealed. So what Obama was able to do was use executive branch functions to lift um, to effectively reopen um relations. So the US Embassy in Havana was reopened. Um tourists started absolutely flooding in, I mean, uh by an order of magnitude. I think there had been tourists in the tens of thousands before to the hundreds of thousands now. And people in Cuba, this was a m like a hugely needed injection of um tourism and revenue, and people coming and uh visiting, hotels started being built, cruise ships were docking, um, and then just a year later, all of this starts to happen. And um the Trump administration had come through and And had filled his administration quite a lot with old school cold warriors, people like John Bolton. Um, and this was the perfect excuse for them to roll back on what Obama had done. So they expelled Cuban diplomats from uh from the US, um, they pulled their diplomats out, um, they re-put Cuba on what's called the state sponsor of terror list, um, which is just has devastating consequences. For example, um, not just American tourists not being able to come, not just Cubans not being able to anymore go to the um US to visit their families, but also if you're a European tourist, if you go to Cuba, you're no longer able to then get into the United States on a visa waiver program. So it doesn't just affect um Americans going to Cuba. It basically returned Cuba to the state of a pariah. And so when we visited um Havana, the effects this has had on people there are has been devastating. Um it feels like a country that that's now been hollowed out. The the economy is in free fall. Um, you know, we're paying for things in in bricks of of uh banknotes, um, inflation has gone crazy. Fucking hell. Um and people are just leaving. There's a there's a huge exodus of young people because from all of the hope that that was happening in in 2015, that hope doesn't exist now. And the Biden administration has done very little to roll back on what Trump did. So the situation still remains the same, you know, even what are we, two and a half years into a Democrat administration again?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

It's horrible, eh? You've got the absolute center of um wealth creation gravity in the United States, just 90 miles off your shores, and you've got some of the most fertile land in the world, and um you can't trade with them. Was that immediate reversal all in response to the sound, or were there other factors at play as well?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Uh it was in direct response, yeah. Um, although there is an argument to be said, uh and we heard from um Trump administration officials that it was something they they wanted to do anyway, that this this was a pretext more than a reason. Um but yes, we it's it's hard to if there hadn't if this hadn't happened, um maybe there wouldn't have been that pretext and they they wouldn't have been able to do this this immense amount of damage to this um to this country.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

And I read in um some of the descriptions of the show in promotion that it is this phenomenon of diplomats succumbing to health ailments because of hearing some type of sound is not exclusive to Havana. It's actually happened in a lot of other cities around the world. So um what's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, so it's started to spread, um, especially, and this is a point that the that people who um talk about the psychogenic um argument make is that it went big after it goes public, right? Although there are some holes in that, but it it did start spreading though the as recently, you know, new cases have been cropping up as recently as last year, um, but it's now on every continent um except Antarctica. There have been cases, there have been big spikes in Vienna, Hanoi, Gwag Xiao was a was an early one, um focusing very much on American diplomats, although it's worth saying, especially in Havana very early on, Canadian diplomats were being hit as well. But as it spread, it has remained focused on this diplomatic community. Although, as I say, we have been hearing from a lot of people who um believe themselves to have also been hit, and we we also want to look into that because as I said, we're not um we're doing our own triage, we don't want to dismiss anyone's story um straight off the bat. So uh there is a huge global spread and uh reported cases, confirmed cases. The I think the US's number is in the nine hundreds of cases that they confirmed is a strong word. Every US agency seems to count their own numbers differently, uh, use their own confirmations differently, but um just in the diplomatic world, we're talking between one and two thousand cases and then thousands more claimed cases um across the across the world.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

And is there a part of the suggestive um suggestive behavior sort of line of argument because culturally the US, maybe rightly so, sees themselves as really the most important sort of center of the world geopolitically, that US diplomats might be more s uh suggestive to thinking that someone's out to get them versus, say, some Australian diplomat in a country.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Well, I mean, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Or am I clutching at ways to make sure?

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Well, I mean, that's exactly what America is, frankly. They are the the global geopolitical hegemon. Um in, and this is obviously before the war in Ukraine, but in even uh before that, the US-Russia relationship did seem to be drifting towards um a more Cold War-feeling um era. Um but it has been interesting that it has remained quite focused on US diplomats. I we've heard stories of s of some Australian um diplomats, some British diplomats, but it hasn't caught fire among um other diplomatic communities in this way. It has stay it has remained um and and this speaks on the other side to the the idea that it's a targeted attack, um, with Americans as as being the major target.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Okay, so we've got this noise, this sound that people are hearing uh throughout Havana shortly after a new American political regime comes into office, and that has spurred on across the world a lot of people reporting uh physical aim once because they've heard a a noise, a sound themselves. Um what are some of the theories that you tr uh pull on throughout the investigation to explain what's happening here?

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Um so uh we follow um the early investigations that the US government did. Um, and we follow the ones that they look at, the ones that they um uh rule out, the ones that they um can't rule out. So early on they looked at the idea that it might have been some kind of toxin. Um this was during a Zika outbreak, so there were mosquito mass spraying going on. Um that uh I think investigators ruled out um quite quickly because when the patients uh were investigated, they had full tox screens. They were um, you know, they had full blood work, uh, no evidence of that sort of thing was found. Um there was it was also thought that there might be some kind of um water um problem, uh that some kind of illness had uh had come in through food and water, that simile um was ruled out. Um then theories came out around the sound itself. Um because certain types of sound have been shown to cause um certain types of injury. If you're exposed to very low infrasound, that can that can do damage. So it was investigated as to whether some kind of broken machinery, perhaps an air conditioner, um, might have been behind this. Um quickly, that didn't work as well, partly because of the way the onset of symptoms was being described. Um when the recording was made, well, another person we speak to, Doug Ferguson, made a recording of when he heard the sound and it was identified as the mating call of a type of cricket. Um, that's caused a lot of problems for investigators who um and the National of Science, the National Academy of Sciences investigation, uh, as well as a secret State Department investigation by a group called the Jason Group came to a frustrated conclusion that the sound on this recording was a cricket, but that it was not possible that a cricket sound could be causing those symptoms. So that was stuck kind of a pin in. Um we've looked at ultrasound, um, ultrasound is sound at very, very high frequencies, and infrasound, which is sound at very, very low frequencies, both of which can be um used to cause damage, and both of which are used in in other ways pretty commonly. So, for example, you can get just off Amazon a little thing that's an infra sound, um, you plug it into the wall and it keeps pests away, like rodents. Um the problem is sound uh sonic weapons, ironically, um, are able to be kind of ruled out because either intrasound or ultrasound aren't you know audible to the to a human. So ironically, sonic weapons become unlikely because of because the victims were hearing something, which they wouldn't be able to hear if it was a sonic weapon.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

And then there were different kinds of radiation, all of which we um have to go through in in um in detail because there's um once you get into the radiation band, all radiation, and I sort of didn't realise this, is sort of along the same frequency band. Light at one end, something else at the other end, microwave frequencies partially in between. I we have we have real scientists describing this to us. I'm I'm uh obviously entirely out of my depth once we get to to um waveform.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

The physics of uh quantum of uh of radiation, okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Um but it's all along the same spectrum, and so different types of that at different parts of the spectrum can cause different um effects. Um and so and parts of that spectrum, you get something like radar, which is itself a pulse radio frequency and and bounces back. Um but yeah, that was um the one of the main theories that that we're um digging into and and have been um have been digging into throughout this. And then of course there is the psychogenic hypothesis that we um that we look into.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

And the uh sort of low-hanging geopolitical explanations. What was the reason behind this?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

What do people suspect are the uh the the culprits so the Trump administration immediately blamed Cuba um and we think this is part of the wanting a pretext to to roll back on uh on what Obama had done. Um no one we've spoken to in a serious way suggests or even suspects that Cuba might have been involved, um, because it entirely wasn't in Cuba's interest to do this. They'd worked very hard on um getting to this point with President Obama. They were very nervous about what the um change in administration might mean for them. Um and then in terms of geopolitics, when there's shady ship going down, there's obviously one major name that uh that obviously comes to mind. Um and that's Russia. And Russia has, it turns out, quite a lot of form in in this kind of thing. Going back all the way as far as the 60s and 70s, they had been firing microwave energy at at US embassies. We spoke to some people at the US Embassy in Moscow who'd said they're in the 70s and then up as recently as the 2000s, who had all experienced um not necessarily exactly the same thing, although more recently we have heard from people who um experienced this kind of thing in Moscow as well as multiple other places. But um, yeah, in the 60s and 70s they were there was something called the Moscow signal, which was a radiation, they just bathed the US Embassy in radiation, and that was designed to um activate passive listening devices, so so bugs. Um but it turned out that that also had health effects. Um so we've spoken to people who's had quite a lot of the people I served in um at the embassy got very sick and remained sick. And so another of the theories might be that what we call Havana syndrome, and the term Havana syndrome is very problematic, by the way, for exactly this reason of the effect it's had on Cuba. It's sort of the same problem as calling um the coronavirus the China virus type of thing. Um but uh yeah, so there is a history of microwave energy devices being used by Russia in this way, and then also there's a history of Russia doing all kinds of shady stuff. I mean, the assassinations on British soil of Alexander Lipnanko and um all of that kind of thing, the Novichuk, uh it fits Russia, you know, it fits the pattern of the kind of thing Russia does. Um so we're um looking quite closely into that. Um and you can see how if at some point Russia discovered that their listening device caused harm, you could totally see Russia not just not particularly caring about that, but figuring maybe this is a good intimidation tactic.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Now you've investigated all of this, how scary is the underworld of experimental weaponry and sound weaponry and this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

It's it's in that fantastic little region between utterly terrifying and utterly hilarious. There have been some wild things that have gone on. We we've um looked into there's a guy in the 50s called Vladimir Gavreau, um, who hypothesized that there would be this thing called the black noise, and that's infrasound. Sound way, way below um human hearing. And for this being the 50s, there is remarkably little known about Vladimir Gavreau. Um, but there is um evidence that he patented and built this device, um, and rumors that several of his researchers were killed in the process of testing it. Now, evidence is quite scarce. We sort of um talk to a bunch of people and and look at the evidence either way. Um but the problem with Infrasound is that the device that Gavro built was fully 75 feet long, required enormous power to push air through what was essentially this ginormous whistle. Um and it was a he there was talk of creating a black noise bomb. This was interestingly something that David Bowie became very obsessed with. There's interviews where he talks about this uh black noise. Um so we there's lots of fascinating rabbit holes like that about what people were trying in the cold war and throwing at the wall and seeing what might stick.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Okay, so what about this? Uh I don't know if this is true, but you one hears these things said that we can only see about a fraction of the light that actually is happening. You know, our human eyes have only evolved to see X amount of light that's actually in our environment. And is the same true with sound? Where you've said ultra and yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

So um the the human ear hears within sort of the middle of the of the band range. Um ultrasound, the another use for ultrasound, of course, is is in um scans for when you have a baby. So you have an ultrasound detector and it bounces off. Um and you use that to build a picture of what's going on within a you know within the womb. Oh, that's what it is. Um, sound is is simply molecules moving together. The difference between the sound range and the radiation range is um that sound is moving air molecules, physical. Um, whereas radiation is its own, it's it's radiation. So there's a lot of quantum stuff that goes into explaining what what radiation is. Oh, yeah, let's get into the quantum. Um we we have uh a um physicist expert in quantum optics uh who helps us out with that. And um I have to say I uh haven't retained the uh a PhD level definition of what defines radiation. Um but sound is the same in that in the middle of its band, the human ear can perceive it. At the very you know, you know, uh I think I say this in episode one, but but an explosion, a shockwave, is a type of sound. It is a compressed wall of of moving air molecules. Um and sound that we would hear in the audible band is much less than that and moving faster. So that's that's the frequency. The faster they're moving, and the shorter the distance between these waves, the higher the sound we perceive. Um but yeah, the human ear can only uh can only hear in in the very middle of that um of that band.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Okay, so the idea is is that the weapon, whether it is a weapon or not, or the phenomenon, is either a type of radiation or a type of sound. Um how can sound physically impair you to the point of uh Karen's ailments, for example? Do we know how that's physically possible, for example?

SPEAKER_00 41:20

So something like a powerful intrasound could cause those kind of symptoms in very specific circumstances. So say um you're standing next to a very powerful source of infrasound, um, what it's doing is vibrating your brain until it turns to jelly, essentially. Um the problem with that is that sound radiates.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Yeah, it literally moves, like you said, sound is moving molecules, so it is actually a physical force that just enters through the ears.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Yeah. And and so it is it is physically possible for that to have these effects. Now the problem with that is sound is very difficult to focus into a into a tightly focused beam. Um so that causes problems in terms of um this particular instance. Um But if you're standing next to a car that explodes, um you get hit by a shockwave and it can do you know considerably even more damage damage than this. The difficulty with this is the damage is within a very subtle and specific range, whereas with a powerful blast of of say infrasound, um first of all, it would radiate outwards rather than being tightly focused. And second of all, you would expect to see a wider range of severity of symptoms based on how close or how far to the source um people uh were. So that that was part of how we um evaluated that particular theory.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Alright, so we're only one episode in, um, which is why you're holding back uh quite a lot of maybe your suggestions or where you want to go, because I would love to know what you exactly think it was, and you sort of said off-air that you kind of come to a pretty firm conclusion as to, you know, this is actually what I think happens. I'm really looking forward to seeing what that is in the end. What is something salacious and gossipy that you can say to us now as uh a hook, an extra hook to get in and actually uh watch all the episodes as they are released?

SPEAKER_00 43:37

So I think one of the most important parts of this story is the geopolitical one. Um and we sit down with John Bolton, who's Trump's national security advisor, and we were very lucky enough to be able to put some of these things directly to him. And um some of what he was saying in in terms of How much of a pretext and how almost gleeful the Trump administration was to have this fantastic excuse to um to do what they wanted to do was. Just how much of a political tool this became um was one of the things, which is strange in in a story with so much weird science going on, in some ways it's the politics of it that I found the most shocking.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

What have been some of the broader geopolitical implications apart from just the direct distress um US-Cuba relationship?

SPEAKER_00 44:31

It's had a real dampening effect on um global diplomacy, because there is now this sense of real danger for taking overseas posts. So we've heard that intelligence agencies are really struggling to fill some of those posts. Um the uh people don't want to take overseas postings with their families because people's children have been hit by this. Um and so it's really impacted the ability not just of of the American um agencies and um and uh diplomacy uh to do its work, but that dampening effect has spread because everyone's afraid of this now.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

And I believe you said it um the first case was 2016.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Yes, although we've looked back into the history and we now think similar things were happening before that. As I said, it as far back as this.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

Just because that would be the most uncanny coincidence of timings.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Yeah. Yeah. Um it we think it was less of a um certainly this was the biggest event um of this in in sort of recent times and really captured the both the public imagination and the attention of of the um of the media and and the government. But this we've found um and we think is simply the the latest chapter in in a much longer story.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Alright, so let's talk a little bit about putting it all together. Um this is an ongoing investigation. So what do you see for the future of this story?

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Um I think uh there isn't going to be, certainly not now that Russia is involved in a shooting war, any real opportunity to put these questions to the Russian government. Um and again, since since there is the Ukraine war ongoing, um that really complicates any attempts to report in Russia or investigate on Russian soil. So we um are able to do historical investigations, but if we uh get to the point where we're reasonably certain Russia is a culprit, sadly there there doesn't seem like there's going to be much opportunity to um to hold them to account. Um that might change, and there's always things we can do from abroad, but you know, it's it's not like uh it's not like the Kremlin is is going to answer our emails.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Yeah, how does one even go about contacting the uh the Russian state officials? Uh fm gmail.com. Yeah. And and they simply flattered at k KGB.com.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Right, exactly. They but they um uh yeah, holding holding a nation to account where which is so based on secrecy and so based on uh intimidation and they want people to be scared. Um Right. So uh you know this has been a tearing success for them. Um short of catching someone in the act, uh, which currently no security force has been able to do. Um there there's been a lot of talk from from government officials that we've spoken to that this would constitute arguably an act of war, which is a very serious allegation to make. Um and I think that rightly the burden of proof is is extremely high on that. Um and that's ultimately a decision for the US government to make in terms of its response. Um but it does seem like the US government is taking this seriously. There's the Havana Act, which has provided um you know money for medical services for affected personnel. So they're they're not um they're not ignoring this issue. Um if uh if Russia eventually ever admits it or is busted doing it, then I think that's a going to be a ginormous geopolitical crisis. And it's it's scary to be even in uh adjacent to that.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Well, yeah. Do you yourself feel uh threatened at all?

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Not gonna lie, there's been some moments where I've heard a strange sound and and become a little paranoid. Um I I doubt somehow that uh podcaster is particularly worth the FSB's time. Um but it's it's yeah, it's less being scared in you know a literal sense and more scared for what this means globally. I mean this is um like a whole secret ray gun war going on that we don't know about. And if that's even partially the case, that's incredible. I mean that's that's truly Becker's belief, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Yeah, my God. Alright, so putting this all together, when did the Havana syndrome story come on your radar, and then what put you in a position where you could produce it with Project Brazen?

SPEAKER_00 50:07

So Project Brazen actually approached uh approached me with a story. Um and uh so Bradley Hope, one of the founders, Bradley and Tom, um we went to the pub and we sat down and we had this conversation, um, and we said, Well, you were looking for stories that um that we could make sound really good. We've made sound design and the music a really core part of the of the production, and I think both almost at the same time Havana syndrome. That's the one that it's it's such a it's such a deep mystery, and has this kind of and we we try to avoid the the easy traps of like Hemingway style, you know, our man and Havana. Um which is not Hemingway, that's Graham Green. But there is a romance to this kind of spy versus spy story, um, and obviously because of the sonic element, it really lends itself to to the kind of beautiful sound design that the that the team has been able to um to put together. So it was sort of all the um everything came came together perfectly all at once in terms of this this story idea.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

And uh anyone who listens to just the first episode will see how well put together it is. I I can tell you, as now you've gone into audio as well, um, just how deep of an appreciation I have for whoever edited that podcast. It's incredible, it all works together so well, the sound levels are all so perfectly mixed.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

And let me let me shout out at this point to Max, Becker, Megan, Ian, the whole team at Goat Rodeo, who have done a spectacular job, and also especially Attacker Quartet, um, who produced this stunning musical soundscape um for uh for us to use. Um they've just done they've all done a fantastic job, and I'm I'm really lucky to have got to work with them.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

And so Bradley's an old mate of yours then. How did you end up at the pub with Bradley?

SPEAKER_00 52:16

No, he he um he messaged me out of the blue, in fact. We we've sort of moved in adjacent circles. Um but yeah, so I was coming off the back of having done Finding Q, and he he sent me a um, I think it was a a Twitter DM almost out of the blue and said, Hey, you know, what are you doing Wednesday? Do you want to come and come to the pub? I've got something I want to something I want to run by you. And I think what what they're doing at Project Brazen is really exciting. They're they're really prioritizing that this kind of production value and and this kind of storytelling in a in a way that um that is just really impressive.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Yeah, and I don't know whether this is just my own um proximity bias or my own preferential bias, but I think narrative journalism is the most entertaining, let alone interesting, style of storytelling. Um, all of Bradley's uh books so far, and as well the the projects that he's produced, they all have so much wider and broader potential for big HBO TV shows, um, you know, books, podcasts, like you say. So there also is an incredible business underneath all of Project Brazen as well.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Yes, and I won't pretend to know exactly how the sausage is made. That's uh that's above my uh above my pay grade. Um but yeah, it it does feel to me like like they're really building something like a new and exciting way of doing things. Um I'd also say that I I've been extremely lucky in in my career in general to have also worked with um with Tortoise um previously on on the Finding Q show, who are also just a terrific outfit. It does feel like we're living in a real golden age of of audio storytelling, um, which is just fantastic, and I'm incredibly incredibly glad I I found my way into this.

SPEAKER_01 54:09

Have you been a journalist your whole career?

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Yeah, I started started out as a on the student paper, um, then uh worked as a did sort of desk sub shifts at The Guardian, hung around the office until um until they let me stay, and then worked in magazines a little bit, worked for GQ, worked for um The New Statesman, and then The Guardian in in the US. Um and yeah, the the life of a sort of daily newspaper is very different from podcasts. We have the incredible luxury of having months and months to work on a show, whereas as a newspaper I'd wake up each day and have to be on a news story and turn it around in in hours. So there is that real ability to um to go deep into something and and tell something in a in a way that's not just giving the news, but is also presents something that's exciting to listen to and hopefully um hopefully quite fun as well.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

So so having spent a whole career in journalism, what are the conversations that you have with fellow journalists about the changing media landscape, about say writing for a newspaper, about the economics of being a journalist at all, about freelance, about the potential of audio. I'd really love to hear behind the scenes how you guys see it all.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

I mean, this is a huge question, right? You've got um we've had 10 years where it feels like every other week another big media organization announces huge layoffs. Um the newspaper industry, especially has really struggled to find a business model that works. You've got predatory venture capital firms buying up small local papers, and even, you know, as big as the Baltimore Sun or the Chicago Tribune, and then asset stripping them, destroying their ability to do journalism, really talented people have lost their jobs. Um, it's it's really tough out there. And the people who lose out obviously are the the journalists who who lose their jobs, but also the the reading public who are just end up being worse informed than that. And I think the exciting thing about um emerging mediums, light podcasting, although it's hardly an emerging medium, right? I mean, when did the first serial series come out? This was what 10 10 years ago, maybe now. Um but as a still young medium that's finding new ways of thing. Yeah. And and it's fascinating because there's um everyone's really experimenting. So um everyone's business model is is different. Um Audible from it, the first show is a paywall model. Um, this is uh PRX distributed, so this is going to be ad-supported. Um for example, we're dropping episodes week by week. The Audible show, the QAnon show, we dropped all the episodes at once. There is, as far as I can tell, no good data about which of those is is the best approach. It's still such a young medium that nobody nobody really knows this kind of thing. So we'll it's exciting that we're all experimenting.

SPEAKER_01 57:29

There is a there is a huge um market opportunity, but as well, shortcoming with podcasting, that there isn't a central authority. Not even an authority, a a central data source that actually uh you pay to w to to get access or whatever, but uh actually has a proper statistics who listens to what show, where, who finishes the show, how do ads actually do. It's like everyone's uh sort of just uh what's the word?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

There's a survivorship bias to it, right? Yeah. Well, I was gonna say it's it's sort of the same with newspapers, right? Every each newspaper digitally counts their own numbers differently. Um there's some use the metric of page views, some measure how far down the page people read, um, some use the metric of unique monthly browsers. Um in in the digital world, I think everyone is is struggling to narrow down audience behaviors and really develop the kind of insights that um that will help get people the right journalism at the right time in a way that um that's financially sustainable. So it's all it's not just in podcasting that that this data is is you know kind of all over the place. But you do get a sense um, you know, we we find out how many subscribers we have, we know when um uh kind of if Apple Podcasts is is featuring us, if we get to the most listened um lists, all that kind of thing. And then you sort of get a f a feel for what the the buzz is. So you can in some in some cases tell just how many people are getting in touch, how many people are uh talking about the show. Um so yeah, so that's that's what we that's what we love to see.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Absolutely. Um do you have a a goal in mind or a sort of actually it i I can edit this out actually. In fact, I will edit it. I was gonna say, Well, I mean I'd love everyone to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 59:35

That's the the goal is yeah, no, totally. Yeah. But you can keep that in, yeah. Everyone, everyone, everyone to listen to it. I'll chop it out.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

I'll chop it out. It doesn't it doesn't make sense. I'm I'm giving it a big plug in the in the introduction uh that that you'll see and hopefully send them over. And I want them to to leave a little like a little signature that shows that they came from this podcast. So hopefully I can you know you can see some people actually came from from here.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

Is that something you can do? I didn't even know that was possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

Well, no, I mean it's not an actual signature, it'll say like from Ryan or something like that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

No, but I mean but that kind of thing like that would be fantastic. If someone could build a software program where you could know where a referral has come from, that'd be amazing. I mean, as far as I know, no one built that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

That's a very good idea. That's a very good idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

But it would be the people who'd be able to build those, presumably, are people like Apple, people like Spotify, who are the act who are in control of the infrastructure. Um it's it's another question entirely whether the information would then be given to content content producers, right? I think I think the Guardian's able to do that. This is this is a whole sidebar. I don't know if I don't know if any of this is interesting enough to get it in. When I was at The Guardian, they have a go. Quite sophisticated software that does allow you to see where people have come to an article from. Um and I think the Washington Post has something similar, I assume places like the New York Times do. But they're big, expensive pieces of software to to produce, so it kind of is only the big dogs who can who can afford to do something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Yeah. Um, this is a much broader question, but do you think you can have broad journalism that is profitable?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

God, I fucking hope so. Um I don't know how you feel like it's a few more. Let me add more swearing secondary here.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

No, no, swearing's fine. But um more context might be you said predatory VC firms are buying them up and stripping them of assets. Everyone is worried about um clickbait, just getting people onto the site to get some type of revenue to hopefully convert them with a pop-up into something else. The content of the article is is almost not important at all. You look at an organization called news.com.au, you know, it's one of the greatest hack websites of all time. Every day I enter like three or four of their articles, and it's pure cheap dopamine. There is nothing good about it. It's usually about a Harry and Megan or some ridiculous cricket scandal that I'm so susceptible to clicking on, you know? And um so I would I would classify that as not very good journalism, but then you have a guy like you know Walt Bogdanovich, who is this amazing, incredible investigator journalist, you know, or a guy like Bradley Hope, um, who are really outliers, and so there's work for them at these big giant institutions, but then in the middle, you know, this is what I mean. Can you have broad journalism that includes the middle? The the outliers, the exceptional people, you know, the meet this modern media landscape only gets better for them because they get more and more audience, more and more opportunities to monetize it. But the broad middle, can it be possible that you can have good journalism there as well? Or is it just nice, incredible journalists, clickbait all the way down? What are the two what's it gonna be?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

I'm hopeful. I I think that um obviously the the clickbait boom is is a huge problem, and it's you know, it's not just your Daily Mails and your news.com.au's that um have problems with this. You know, um, you know, the New York Times New York Times food section is a great example of this, because everything they do is a troll, you know, they'll they'll do like, oh, this is a British dish, baked beans on on sourdough, and the the design is to make all British people kind of hate click on it. And you know, the the Guardian or or the BBC aren't uh aren't above running Harry and Meghan stuff, and a lot of people are interested in that, it's worth saying. Um, but I think ultimately people will always want to know what's going on. There isn't a case in which people's attention and people's interest in real stories and important stories will go to zero. Um it's about um, and and I think Bradley and and Project Blazen are a good example of this because they came from this you know, big um journalistic institution, um, the Wall Street Journal, and have made their own startup and are doing, I think, a really good job at using um using that startup to appeal to new audiences. And I think podcasting is a really good tool for that, because in some ways trying to build this sort of delightful listening experience that that's part of making a show like this, is to bring people in almost as the the lure for delivering uh you know journalism. Um and you see this also with things like Netflix. I think, for example, Tiger King, um, which the this kind of huge phenomenon during the um Netflix show that came out during lockdown. That's that's another that's journalism. That was a that was a great story that told um a really interesting narrative that had a lot to speak to about um you know American life and was huge, you know, big budget. Um, but they don't always start out like that. Some of these things start out, you know, someone with a camera, and then you persuade somebody to invest in it. Um whether the media landscape will look more like small individual creators, so we've seen, for example, Substack and and newsletters uh the rise of that, um, rather than you know, a Murdoch style big international media conglomerate um being the the people who dominate. Ultimately we don't know. But I I do think people will always want ultimately to know what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:53

It really seems like a um glass half full versus half empty question. You can really spin it any way you want to. Depending on how optimistic you are. Has this been a conversation that's always happened throughout your career?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:07

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, um, I've been part of media organizations that have downsized. I've I've had my fair share of taking voluntary redundancy. Um, I've seen the kind of boom bust where a publication will invest hugely in something and then run out of money and pull the money in a way that I mean everyone talks about the the big example of Biff being the pivot to video, which is when Facebook started um promoting video content and all newsrooms invested hugely in video teams, and then Facebook changed its algorithm and and all of that stopped working again and everyone was left high and dry. Um there is a massive problem while distribution is controlled by a very small number of unaccountable Silicon Valley social media companies. Um but you're also seeing, I think, a resurgence of people. You know, I know young people getting subscriptions to print paper newspapers and going back to having a Sunday morning, you know, sipping a coffee and actually reading a newspaper, doing the crossword, things like that. Um there's there's hope. They must be outliers. I don't know. I I think um, you know, certainly newspapers like the The Times or New York Times or The Guardian sell enough copies and also make enough money from online to to do well. Um I hope things don't conglomerate too much. So I think it's always a bad thing when when too much of this kind of power is concentrated in in a few hands. Um but also there's lots of startups doing lots of interesting things.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:48

How do you see the podcasting landscape?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:53

To me, podcasting is the equivalent to radio that um streaming has been to live television, right? It it just it makes sense that people want the same listening experience, but on demand whenever they want to listen to something. And I think that's there's a lot of growing there because a lot of people spend a lot of time listening to audio and have a there's a huge appetite for for listening to things. Um and a lot of old school radio programs, BBC, for example, had uh, you know, their long-running um Desert Island Discs, not a news show, but you know, a big important interview show, has made a fantastic transition into podcasting, as has uh a lot of news shows. Um, and you also get podcasts that are interesting discussions, um something like uh The Rest is History or Behind the Bastards, and then you get podcasts which are you know one person who knows an incredible amount about a subject telling you about that subject, you have something like they're the best, The Constant or Hardcore History, or and there's there's just so much out there for people to listen to. Um and because in some ways, at one end of the spectrum, um it's it's extremely easy to start a podcast. You you know, you don't need expensive fancy recording equipment, just a voice, a story to tell, and um you know, some editing skills that you you can pick up on on YouTube. It's a the barriers to entry are very low. Um so I think it's a lovely medium. I think it's um it's got a ways to grow. Um because yeah, I I think people are it's it's becoming in integrated into people's lives. People people have their podcasts that they listen to religiously almost.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:56

Yeah, definitely. Uh you'd be hard pressed to find someone more bullish on podcasting as a genre than than than than me, but I think that last point is is so so true. There is a uh stickiness to them, like an obsession to them. If you find a a show that for whatever reason you end up listening to most of its library, you will you will listen to whatever that person decides to do. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:25

Um I'll listen to there are podcasts where I'll listen to one episode, fall in love with it, and go back and listen to a thousand hours of of this. You know, you exactly. And I think the the other important thing to say about podcasting is that it's an incredibly intimate medium. You're you're speaking to people directly into people's ears during their downtime, you know, whether it's people are on a long drive or um on their way to sleep, even. Commuting. Um there's something really, really personal about that. It's almost like you're you're for a for a brief time um you know, being inside their heads almost. Or or alternatively, when it's sort of a more chatty podcast, just like they're in a group of friends, like people you really feel like you're there in a way that you just sort of don't get from from reading reading a newspaper article. I mean in a sort of similar way to a um a long-form, like a big New Yorker magazine article or um where you you really develop a relationship with the um with the writer, with the with the creator. I think podcasting is is a turbocharged version of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:53

Yeah, similarly with um audiobooks as well, I find you you you almost this person becomes your friend because you took a walk through the park, you know, listening to something that they were terribly interested in, uh delivered in such a good way.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

Audiobooks is fascinating to me, because in some ways, I mean it obviously mainly I'm picking as I only listen to to audiobooks. I I have almost stopped reading in paper, which it's an awful thing to say, but partly because when Well, I I intake so much words, you know, when I'm researching and reading, and so I I have this kind of scan style of reading. Well, I find if I'm reading a book on paper, I'll have processed a page and beyond to processing the next one, and found I'm I wasn't allowing myself the time to kind of enjoy the book, right? Whereas with an audiobook where you're going at a walking pace and there's that element of performance, you know, a good book combined with being read by a good actor, it's just a fabulously rich experience. Um and sort of its own art form. And there's, I mean, this is all right, I'm gonna get into the weeds here because I've been working on this theory. There are some types of book that that just don't work in that. And the two examples that I have come across, and they're examples from the complete opposite ends of the of you know the book spectrum, one of which is uh American Psycho, and the other of which is the handmaid's tale. And both of those use, I think, a literary device which which uses repetition. In the case of American Psycho, it's the you know, every time a new character comes up, here's what he's wearing, it's the brand, you know, this is the kind of um business cards they have, or whatever. And in the case of the handmaid's tale, it's the chanting and the the kind of almost um soporific religiosity of it. That your eyes, when you read on the page, are supposed to glaze over. That's the the impact it's supposed to have. And suddenly, when you're hearing that at a speaking pace, it it just simply doesn't work. Um because there's there's no way to glaze over. So, yeah, that's that's my my audiobook theory is that there's just occasionally the odd um thing it just doesn't work for.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:28

Yeah. It's not as bold of a take as I was I was hoping for. I mean, I agree, there are definitely cases where the audiobook isn't that good. Uh, for instance, Andy Circus read uh all three Lord of the Rings in promotion for the Amazon's um Ring of Power show. And I just it's my just favorite thing of all time, The Lord of the Rings. So I chopped all three of them back at the end of last year. And the first book in The Lord of the Rings has less songs, uh less sort of mythical creatures, and it's uh it's it's the most perfect listening experience ever because Andy Circus's voice is incredible and he's an actor, so he does all the voices so well. Um, but then in the second book, there is a lot of talking from the ent, and there's a lot more songs, and you're kind of like, can can you get a fucking move on at some stage? And I actually found myself, you know, skipping, skipping the songs, which is totally blasphemous, you know, to to admit. But it it was the case that you know, even Andy Circus, someone who you couldn't get a better voice actor for this particular uh series, even him doing it, putting his heart and soul into it, uh, it didn't work. It just totally didn't work. Um because again, those songs on the page, like to your theory, you're not singing, you're just sort of reading through. Oh, a couple of these words are cool. This is the point of the song next.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:52

Um I'm sure you're aware in and on exactly this of the BBC full cast radio dramatization of of Lord of the Rings, right? You've you've listened to that? No, I'm not. It is magic. It is the cast is unbelievable. I'm gonna, it's Ian Holm, as in, who played Bilbo in the movies, is Frodo. Um BBC Lord of the Rings. I had this on on tape, which I would listen to um in my on my Sony Walkman back in the day. Um BBC, it was it came out in 1991, um and it is um uh and it was and I think NPR broadcast it. Um where's the so yeah, Ian Holm, Bill Nye, John Lemasure, um Michael Horden, Robert, like all of the great actors of of the era, and it's a full orchestra. Um it I mean it is truly I I would be something else. Immediately very relevant to your interests, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:08

Yeah, um you talk about uh listening to it in your walkman. Uh a nice anecdote that I that I really appreciate, especially when I'm listening to biographies, listen to a lot of biographies, in Barack Obama's back in the day when he was taking these really long drives as a as an up-and-coming uh Illinois politician, uh, he would just be chopping through audiobooks, which is very much ahead of his time and and and quite a cool it's kind of like you can almost you feel a little bit connected to him because uh hey, I listen to audiobooks too, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:42

Yeah, and it's long drive. I used to do lots and lots of long drives. I was reporting all all across America, so yeah, I was I was burning through audiobooks at a rate rate of you know five or six a week, and I would just be um just constantly, and I would I would wake up and immediately hit play on whatever I'm listening to, and if I'm not you know socializing or doing something else, I have audio in my ear all moments of the day until I go to sleep listening to um whatever I'm listening to and pick it straight up in the morning. I mean it's it's it's it's an absolute part of my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:19

I I'm I'm exactly the same. Um, so I imagine you have similar thoughts over how much is this a detriment to me? Like I should take out the headphones for just 10 minutes, or more than 10 minutes, a few hours, right? Um surely you have these thoughts with yourself like, am I just doing the easy thing here? Is this the cheap dopamine because I know I can settle into it? Uh, or is it always a benefit?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:48

It's always a benefit. There's no, you know, more reading, more more listening is always a good thing, I think. Um although I do wonder um how differently we lay down memories of things that we hear versus memories of things that we read. Um, and that's another of those things we really don't know much about.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

Yeah, yeah, because some people will you know swear on it that uh visually your uptake is better versus and some people are auditory learners, some people are visual learners. But yeah, you're right. We actually there's no definitive conclusive evidence on that, is it? I guess it's more repetition at the end of the day. How many times have you gone through something? Did you think about it while you were going through it? It's not simply a case of which sense did it come through. It'd be funny if they did that, and then you got like braille readers involved as well. They're probably the ones with the best uptake because they're really thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:44

That's very true. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, I'd be fascinated to um and and also whether someone who has uh who was say uh born blind has a different relationship with listening than me, for example, who has gone from reading books on paper to uh listening to books in audio. I'd be I'd be very interested to speak to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:12

I mean that that would be very interesting to know as well. Uh I have an anecdote kind of in that ballpark. Interviewed a guy called Brian Bashin, who's the CEO of the Lighthouse Foundation, which is the biggest private charity for blind people in the world. He is himself blind. Um and the premise for us doing the podcast was to speak about the great British traveler James Holman, who was in the golden age of exploration, a blind man who just went everywhere around the world, was totally self-reliant, just truly one of the most incredible characters from history. Um and this fellow Brian Bashin was uh uh the authority, living authority on James Holman. And one of the details from James Holman's life is that uh wherever he went, even though he was terribly ugly, uh not a not a physical specimen, didn't have any money, he women swooned over him because he could listen better than anyone else, right? And he could notice things that the sighted people would totally miss. And that's because of, you know, uh from deep intense listening, you can sense obviously a lot more. And Brian, as well, who's a blind man, um, said that a hundred percent, you know, uh it's it's even like a meme in the blind community that sighted people are such shit listeners.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that makes total sense to me. And and similarly, I um I would imagine um the deaf community uh able to notice things, you know, the relationship with what they're seeing is is obviously different as well. Um I had a fascinating experience um Evel Wellbeck. There's a great brewery just outside Washington, DC, um, where I think the founder is deaf, and it it's um uh they hire a lot of deaf staff, and it's become kind of a hub for the deaf community. And we were there, I was there with some friends, and um it started at some point to pour down, you know, one of these kind of downpours that you see occasionally gets. So everyone crowds inside. And the experience of being in a crowded room of people all speaking at once, but you know, in sign language, the kind of susuration of that and how everyone's able to like the triage of of sound being different because it's um visual, was I thought just a really beautiful moment, a really fascinating experience that I hadn't really kind of considered before.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:45

Are you uh are you sort of you said before you're a bit embarrassed to admit it, are you sort of judged by your journalistic colleagues or even friends for not ingesting your information as much through the eyes as you do through the ears? Or is it a prejudice you don't really give a shit about?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:00

Not particularly. I mean, journalism I still, you know, I still read newspapers, I still I don't um interestingly, I don't get my direct news necessarily from podcasts. I mean, there's a lot of really great news podcasts around. I mean, something like um John John Sopel and Emily Maklisten's The News Agents, or obviously The Daily from the New York Times. That's the Economist one is fantastic, Guardian's one is fantastic, and there's you know, there's lots and lots out there. I use those less. I I tend to when I'm listening, have the the kind of long form, kind of deep podcasts or or audio books. Um, I and actually this is the shit this is the thing that I and everyone who does this should be ashamed of. I get most of my immediate daily news from Twitter, which is obviously a toxic hellhole, which I should not be doing. But yeah, I I use non-algorithmic, just straight time timeline just to get what's happening up to the minute, and that's an addiction, that's not a choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:03

Totally. No, it is it is the greatest form of achieved dopamine. I find myself in every like free minute uh swiping over and and checking it, and it is such a time suck, and the the cost of the close. It's terrible, yeah, or deleting it. I've I've deleted it and downloaded it multiple times in a day. Like, that is terribly addictive behavior. Uh anyway. Yeah, yeah. Um Nikki, uh, we've sort of hinted at it, but I'd love to know what your your podcast diet is. Could you just name a couple of shows top of mind that you you you uh listen to all the time?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:45

Um so I want to give a shout out to my favourite of all time, which is a show called The Constant, um, which is made by this guy, Mark Chrysler, and it's just it is the one which causes me immediate joy every time it drops into my feed. Um I listen to a lot of things like um uh The Rest is History Behind the Bastards, um uh hardcore history of um, of course, Dan Collin, which is terrific. Um and then I I quite like a sort of there's some great panel shows, um No Such Thing as a Fish, um, which is kind of a interesting facts podcast where they just sort of talk about cool shit, um and a couple of BBC shows. So um well, tell you what, let me just show you what's in my podcast feed right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:42

So coming out in my feed, I have so not many investigative uh sorry, not investigative, uh interview shows in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:52

So yeah, some of them are. So um Behind the Bastards is an interview show. Um, holy moly, there's a new hardcore history. Um and then things like uh Sweet Bobby, which is Tortoise did, which is fantastic, Karina and the King, which is another Project Grazen show, which is just a delight to listen to. Um there's a new episode of Constant, which is fantastic. Um, and things like Cautionary Tales, um, which is uh BBC show with Tim Harford, um, where each episode they take a um you know like an interesting moment in history and and sort of he's a he's an economist, so he's sort of looking at the behavioural um things of that. Oh, the infinite monkey cage is the is a BBC discussion kind of talk panel show about science, um, which is uh really, really good. Um and then when I've loved a sort of mini-series podcast, they'd um so for example Sweet Bobby, which is another Tortoise podcast, which was really good, they'll often introduce um you know whatever they're working on next, and that'll sort of open up a whole new um new mini-series. You're right, and I don't listen to just straight out one person interviewing another person podcast as much. Behind the Bastards is a very good one. But yeah, I I like, and this is oh, Helen Lewis's The New Gurus um is really good. Revolutions is really good. Um it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:28

I I I've heard of so few of these. Um, I would recommend a constant. Yeah, I get the sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:38

Okay, I it's he's really just one of the most talented storytellers around, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:44

Cool. I'll definitely check him out. All right, well, Nikki, how about we wrap it up with a couple um final questions, including some that I like to ask as many guests as as possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:58

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:59

Um and I was thinking that because the there were in the questions that I prepared, you know, asking more specifically about the investigation, your time in Cuba, people you spoke to, and and I was thinking j just before we asked them, it might actually make more sense to ask that once the series has concluded, so you can speak about it more openly and not worry about giving spoilers. Yeah. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:20

Yeah, I think that would actually be a really cool way to do it. It's it's like another thing that we don't have really good data for, right? Like I don't I don't know whether the best thing to do now is is kind of give away the farm. Although because it's a live investigation, there you know things we're we're still waiting to hear from sources, we're still uh avenues that we that we're exploring. But I I don't know the the exact tone of that will make someone go listen to the podcast, whether whether I'm telling them exactly what to expect or being more mysterious like that. I just don't know. Um and I I don't know that anyone really knows.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:02

What do your instincts tell you?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:06

I've been trying to kind of tow kind of the line to give people a sense of what the story is and and where we're going with it and what we've found. Um but maybe once we get into the later episodes, maybe not um not get to the point where I'm fully resting my case yet in uh in interviews. So sort of before my closing arguments. Um because we're thinking about this in some ways like like lawyers, you know, laying a court case, you know, like um marshalling the evidence and then building a narrative that that we feel is the most uh most probable and then and then presenting it to people as you know, listen, this is this is what we think happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:53

Alright, well let's uh let's wrap this up with a couple of uh general questions and then um yeah check back in in a couple of weeks when it's when it's all out. Right. So, in uh your opinion, what are some great investigations that are not being given enough oxygen or potentially not even being investigated at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:19

Oh god. Um pass. That one's gonna take me some thought. They I know Paul Lewis at the Guardian is working on well actually Heidi Blake's book, which was about the um Russian assassinations on on British soil, um I think didn't get nearly as much attention as as it should have done because it's completely wild. Um you do sometimes you can get something like Ukraine, which sucks up all the news oxygen, um, but is also like a hugely important story, so it's it's not to say that people shouldn't be paying attention to it. Um there's there's always it's always the kind of little things that people like the British and and US government are doing that that are by nature boring, but also by it's the sort of banality of evil stuff. So the way Britain is um and it's been in the news, but the way Britain treats its uh migrants and refugees, um, and you know, the way Australia and the US and and other countries treat uh treat the migrants and and refugees, I think there's no such thing as too much attention to be to be paid at stories like that. I mean, for example, you're you're Australian, right? I'm I'm guessing that right.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:49

Um, you know, the I feel like I read uh stories a while back about um that island that Australia sends migrants to, but I haven't seen a huge amount of Nairu, yeah. I haven't seen I don't know whether that's still going on, I haven't seen that followed up a huge amount. Um Rikers Island in in New York, people keep dying in Rikers Island, held in pretrial detention. Um and again that that gets in the news, but I think should be you know something we're constantly talking about. In some ways in America, it's exhausting because you know you take a topic like police violence, and by the time you've finished telling one story, it's happened you know, ten more times. It's impossible to keep up. Um and these things never get followed up. Rape statistics in and the number of uh unfollowed up rape cases, untested rape kits that that lie around, the the extraordinarily low prosecution rate um for sexual assault um is a ginormous story that I think um people should be talking about more. Um and there's lots of things like that. I mean, the the way that our states operate. And then some of them, the problem is that, as I said, the type of story is just fundamentally so boring and inaccessible because they involve government budgets and allocations and um, you know, following money trails that may not lead anywhere and are really difficult stories to tell, um, but remain really important. We we have there's kind of especially with podcasting where you're making a narrative, it would be really hard to make a show like this about a story like the slow drip drip of cut funding cuts to the British NHS, right? How do you how do you make that uh a long-form narrative podcast? How do you how do you get audiences interested in something that's that's not like one massive romantic crime but kind of death by a thousand cuts to a public service? The they're difficult stories to to cover and and even more difficult stories to get an audience interested in. But they're they're the the really important ones, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:14

Do you have a theory for why so few investigative journalists or journalism comes out of Australia?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:26

I mean, I think you guys do all right for yourself, right? The um the barely think of it. I mean, I it's uh to my shame not uh Australia not a because I've been an America specialist basically my my whole career. Um I uh used when I was in San Francisco, we would hand off a lot to um the Guardian Australia office. Um so I I know a few of the people who work there, I know they've got some fantastic journalists and do good work.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:56

I I just say because there is a um there is just as a you know signal of the culture that I see, there is a YouTuber who is a comedian um who occasionally talks about social issues um and made a couple really nice videos uh talking about say the dredging of the Murray River to um to um irrigate some cotton fields in Australia, one of the most drought-ridden countries in the entire planet, um, for really no good explanation except for corrupt local interests. And you know, he the the the he sung a hero. Um it's like why has no one ever spoken about this? And it's like, you know what, why why do you not hear these great stories? There are there are Australia is a deeply interesting country with a deeply unique uh history, especially when you think about what the Australian culture is in relation to who the indigenous people were when they came in relation to the British government, all the crazy uh commercial shit that goes on, our ties to China, the like there is so much there. Um and I just um I don't know anyone who writes about it necessarily that maybe has a big international profile.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:18

Um I I would say a lot of my Australian news comes from uh Van Van Baden, who's a Guardian columnist. She um her Twitter feed I think shares a lot of uh how I hear about what what um goes on in Australia. Um but yeah, it's it's it's a fascinating place because in some ways it's sort of like the America of the Southern Hemisphere, right? There's parallels there in that it's a a white, fundamentally British occupying population who uh you know brutally oppressed an indigenous um population. Um there's the same exposure to the Anglophone internet, which I think leads to some of the same political um phenomena that we see everywhere that that Facebook has, so there is you know QAnon was um present in Australia, you get that kind of thing. Um but the one thing is I have no idea how your government works. It feels like there's a new Australian Prime Minister every couple weeks. What the hell's going on over there? But genuine question, we have who's who who's the prime minister right now? Is it Scomo still?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:39

No, it's a fellow called Anthony Albanese. Um, election that happened last year. Yeah, Scomo's on the out, but there was a five-year period there. I can't remember the exact five years, but there was a five-year period where we had five prime ministers.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:55

Right. And I mean Britain's just had that as well. I feel like we've we're we're, you know, we can't talk at all about political chaos.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:02

Yeah, that's true. You went through three last year.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of them barely counts because she was there for about 30 minutes. Um poor that happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:16

Um I've no idea. I've no idea. I'm not in touch at all with um New Zealand politics, barely in touch with Australian politics. Um didn't she just step down because of she was maybe overwhelmed by the job? Um I think she honestly, I don't even know. I shouldn't say anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:36

It was it was quite um it was quite impressive because she she said, you know, I've served my term. I'm not Prime Minister to because just I want to be, in the way that, you know, like a Boris Johnson is. She she said, I've I've served my country, I have um, and it's time for me to step down and and um let somebody else have a I don't I don't think it was that she was overwhelmed, I think she um came to a very mature decision that her um that it was time for for a change. And I think we should see you know, we should want more of that in um in democracies rather than people like the British government who are wildly unpopular clinging to power for the sake of it. Not that that was true of just a new Arden, because for intents and purposes, she was hugely popular.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:23

But isn't that just a a problem uh of selection bias of people that want to be politicians?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:29

Yeah, and how many of them makes Arden so unusual.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:35

Yes, yes, that's true. That's true. Uh but no, I don't know what's going on there. I I think New Zealand as well is a deeply, deeply interesting country, less so than Australia, just because they don't have the same uh sort of geopolitical soft power and uh commercial interests. You know, we genuinely provided the coal that uh grew China. Um I think per capita, Australia is the highest uh carbon emissions per person country in the world. Um there is there there is there's something to the standard of living there. Like you you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that Sydney isn't literally the greatest city in the world. Um it's and and there are so many interesting things about the country anyway, and I just um I just wonder as someone who lives in Sweden, like you, you when you leave your own country, maybe you experienced this when you lived in America, you know, you start to form a whole new opinion of where you grew up and the culture that shaped you, and where you sit in relation to it now, and you become more interested in maybe what's happening there from a perspective that you never would have even uh brushed up against had you just remained in the country the entire time.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:50

Yeah. I actually do follow on Instagram and very much enjoy. I don't know if you've come across this. There's sort of an Australian version of the onion called the Batuta Advocate. And it's a it's a sort of overall I I love it because it's it's always very funny, but also sometimes completely incomprehensible. I mean, the the working on five separate running joke premises, none of which I get, but I I really enjoy it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:20

That's amazing. No, though those guys are so funny. Um they're also big and they were yeah, they were early in the podcasting um game too. Um, I didn't know they had a podcast. Yeah, I think they've got that. I think they've got a couple, um, and they also are local, huge local supporters of a bunch of other podcasts in Sydney. So, you know, they they played a huge role in bringing what is my favorite podcast called Hello Sport, um, from this obscure, you know, duo between two fellas who started off as a sports channel, it just became like lifestyle. Um, and it was, you know, they did it for three years, and now since Batuda lifted them up quite a bit, they've just completely blown up. They're one of the biggest podcasts in Australia, and it's um it's so for for for me to it's impossible for me to not project onto it quite a lot because I've been through there for their entire journey. But then as well, I'm here, an Australian, trying to make a podcast uh to see the potential of where it can go um with enough consistency, with enough time spent. And um anyway, yeah, Batuto are incredible, incredible, incredibly funny couple of blokes, but as well savvy. Um, because you know they don't they don't miss out on monetizing all that um audience and exposure that they're getting um and influence as well. You know, they they 100% play a role in Australian politics now, um whether they like it or not.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:55

Yeah. In the same way that the onion is is very powerful. You know, people they they use comedy to make real important political points.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:06

Yeah. Do they still do they still go? I I I just know they're like great early 2000s videos on YouTube. I don't think I see anything from them these days. But maybe this is because they're still very taken that over my sarcasm.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:20

Yeah. No, they're they're doing they're still doing great work.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:23

Well, that was an interesting tangent from great investigative stories not being told. Let's move on to the next one. Who are your journalistic heroes, people you admire?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:35

Uh as in current or historical? Wherever you want to take it. Um I mean, obviously the sort of the the big um you know one of one of my lodestone books, I think, is um The Journalist and the Murderer. Uh the The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm. Um so that that kind of era of you know big investigative the the time when you could get the money to write to you know spend two years on a book. Um And then in the modern era, I think um Paul Lewis and the Guardians investigative team are doing really well. Um my memory is just not the kind that can that produces names off of off the top of my head. This is sort of my my endless problem is I have I could go through and send you a list, but I I just struggle to to push names out. Um there's a couple of people doing really good work on um on Capitol Hill. Um yeah, I'm terrible with names. Um The New York Times always does good work, The Guardian always does good work, um Washington Post always does good work. Um there's lots of good journalism out there, um, you know, fundamentally.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:12

Speaking of Capitol Hill, how what years were you living in Washington?

SPEAKER_00 1:45:20

Ooh. Alright, so I started The Guardian in New York in 2014. I think I spent um well, I was I was doing cover for the um for our Senate side reporter. So I think I was maybe three months in 2015, and then the end of 2015 I moved to um San Francisco to cover Silicon Valley out there. Um but sort of all reporting in America is political reporting. But I tried to, especially when I first moved there earlier than that in 2012, where I was covering um Obama's uh re-election, I went rather than covering it from Washington, I went to um Defiance County, Ohio, sort of embedded in Ohio, because it was one of those counties that's picked the winner for um you know a century or something, uh bellwether. Um and I I like doing the kind of reporting where you get out and you sort of meet real people. I think there's in in Westminster and in Washington, you're just sort of there's lots of great investigations to be done, but you're also kind of at the mercy of the of the bureaucracy as well, who will either allow you access or not allow you access. Um and I think political journalism often has that that problem because it's a really tough um tough circle to square, right? You don't want politicians to stop, you know, telling you things, but that to some extent means that in some cases you don't want to do anything that could upset them, and that that's a that's a real dilemma, I think, that that's sort of endemic to to political reporting. And and also people you know, it often gets reported on like a like a sport, like a game, right? Who's gonna win, who's gonna lose. And I think Trump certainly was able to hack that um and get the attention by being so crazy and so um out there that the journalists had to cover that, and that meant he dominated the coverage. So there there is there's a sort of problem there, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:31

I was just curious to see whether you had any um crossover time with Christopher Hitchens, a fellow Englishman who moved to America.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:41

No, he he had um already passed away, sadly, by the time I by the time I got there. I would have loved to have met him.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:48

Was this person um at all in the back of your mind as a as an inspirational figure for when you make your own move over?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:57

As as a writer, yeah, absolutely. I mean, just the the way he turns kind of words is is fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:04

Um if Hitchens could have just done 20 more years and really, really soaked in the podcast revolution because the best thing was his voice. Yeah, it would have been Trump would have been magic.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:24

And then actually, if we're talking heroes, um my ultimate hero, the kind of lodestar of anything I I'm doing when I'm writing, and um uh may he rest in peace, obviously sort of very sadly passed away. Uh, but it's Anthony Bourdain. I I think Anthony Bourdain is a masterclass in all things, and and there's sort of he's he's the person who in my head is like, what would Anthony Bourdain do? It's the that's fascinating sort of mantra.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:53

So he was on your mind uh while you were you know strolling the streets of Havana. Like how would Bourdain view this moment?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:02

Yeah, completely. I mean I I almost I worship him. I mean he's my absolute hero.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:09

I uh watched uh only a few weeks ago for the first time, uh what was it called? Roadrunner. Uh I'd never watched any of his cooking shows. Uh I did read Kitchen Confidential, uh, didn't finish it. Uh but yeah, watch Roadrunner was like, yeah, the the man was uh captivating, if nothing else, you know, and and what is it that makes you so captivating? Why was he so captivating to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:35

Um, I mean, any of his shows are just written with such empathy and elegance and intelligence and a sense of how food is a window for him into understanding a sense of place, which is why I think he truly was a journalist. Um there are episodes I uh episodes of of parts I've known, for example, where he goes to Vietnam. And I think it's the second time, sort of 20 years after he first went there. And he sits down with with President Obama and they have this conversation about Vietnam and the effects of the war, and he visits the the kind of sites of the atrocities of the Vietnam War. Um and just the the way he can capture the story of a place, I think, is is peerless. There's no one never been anyone like him.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:30

And and how did he do it? What was it about him that made him capture it so well? And and and I suppose so vividly say exactly how you want to feel about something.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:43

It's an impossible question, right? How do you quantify genius? I mean, he just was.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:06

If you admire him so much, I I suppose one day you'll have to eventually watch Roadrunner, though I do admit I emotionally I don't know that I can Yeah. Yeah, and and I'm not sure if actually it paints the picture of this great admirable man the way that um I suppose, you know, one would like to have him remembered as.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:34

Yeah, I I would prefer to keep watching his work rather than because you know, thinking thinking about uh because you know it's it's one of those how where depression and and this kind of thing is such a horrible and awful sort of disease that can you know affect anyone. And I'd I'd rather that not be how I think about Anthony Bourdain for for you know how he died. I'd you know, much prefer to keep watching and and will always keep watching his work and um have him in mind when I'm scripting and and planning stories and and scripts and things. But yeah, I'm I'm not sure I'm not sure the movie about him and how he how it that turns together. I'm not I'm not sure I want to watch that, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:29

Similar to to Hitchens um with Bourdain, there you almost feel like it's a it's a really non-intellectual conversational style of being told something. Um how do you employ in your own writing when you're putting together a story that sense of intimacy, that the that turn of phrase which grammatically should not work yet delivers the message you want?

SPEAKER_00 1:53:02

I I think, and especially with audio, um the thing that I'm always bearing in mind is how would I tell the story if I was telling it to a friend? You know, what what would I and and you sort of catch yourself when you're writing, especially coming from print writing, I keep catching myself in these formalities that when I come to say them out loud, I just it's just not how anyone talks. Um so I I try and re when it's useful, I think, to when I'm um writing, I find to say it out loud and say, yeah, that's a that's a weird turn of phrase. No one would ever put it that way. When I was an editor, for example, I would edit out lots of things where people would be like, that is, or um, you know, it is where people speaking out loud say that's an it, right? Like that's what's going on. No one actually says that is what's going on, unless it's a you know, a specifically for emphasis, right? Like conversational speaking is different from from the kind of formal uh stuff you get in in a lot of writing. And so I that's that's what I keep trying to bear in mind. And sometimes that means that when I'm in studio recording, we leave room for kind of ad libbing it. Because when it's only when you come to sort of say it that you look at the script and you're like, actually, no, I'm gonna you know say this like I like I would say it. And did that happen much in this experience? A lot of ad-lib? Oh yeah, and and always, and we're not talking ad-lib like whole sections, it just mean somewhere where I've said, um, I don't know, like this is what happened. Um when I come to say it, the the way it feels right to say it is being like, listen, this is what happened, you know, it's it's it's this and it's this and it's this, and not, you know, not the way on the page it makes sense. Because it's a spoken medium, right? Like you've got you've got to have that sense that you're listening to yourself back, otherwise it comes out as robotic.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:11

That's what made Dan Carlin's series so sticky. Um and he admitted to this in I think the Tim Ferris interview, but he actually does not even go in with a script, it's an outline and bang, record, I'm gonna talk to you now. And obviously that's an incredible skill in the street. Five hours.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:32

I mean madness. Yeah, does the man even go to the toilet?

SPEAKER_01 1:55:38

But but like if it had been even if you you you know the the greatest writers, whatever, if they had written it down and he'd read it verbatim, it's impossible to say because we can't A B test it. But there is a sense that the the ad lib, the audience instinctually respects and rewards that level of authenticity, yeah. Um and and that that maybe is a bit of a as a punk is such a cliche, but that as a as a sort of rebel undertone to what podcasting maybe might be. Yeah. Because like you said, absolutely no barrier to entry.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:21

And I think that comes from his long years of practice in talk radio, right? He's that's that was his background, so he's it it's in his blood almost, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:34

Nikki, two questions I like to ask every guest that comes on the show. The first is what is a country that you're particularly bullish on?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:43

You know, having come through the pandemic and the Trump years, I think America's I can't believe I'm saying this, but in some ways, not looking in as bad a shape as it as it has been. The the Trump wing of the Republican Party seems to be at war with the other wings. There's a sort of a falling out of love with with MAGA-ism in a way that seems to be hilariously completely, you know, eating the Republican Party from from the inside. Joe Biden just had the best midterm election performance from a Democrat in 90 years. Um he's had an outstanding legislative record. Um I mean, I I have been wrong on this exact thing dozens of times. Um but I think there's there's hope for the future of America in a way that I wouldn't have said um, you know, even as recently as as 2020. And certainly, you know, January 6th, 2021, right? Um Britain less so. But there'll be an election eventually, and Britain's government is, you know, a mess. Um other countries, do I think? Um I I don't know about bullish about because I actually don't know a huge amount about its politics, but I've recently fallen completely in love with Mexico. Mexico City is, I think, truly one of the world's greatest cities. I I adore it. Um that is my answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:19

Um Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:22

Nice. I so I I don't actually know much about, you know, for example, the economy or or things like that. So I I'd love to know more about and the history of Mexico as well, because it's I mean obviously fascinating. I'm I'm quite poorly travelled in South and Central America. Um I'd love to spend more time traveling around. Um but I've yeah, I've been to Mexico City, and as soon as I landed, I thought, oh yeah, this this is as this is a place where I'm I'm gonna love. What are the places you're bullish on?

SPEAKER_01 1:58:52

What what what's well yeah, what's me and my missus are talking about moving to Mexico City.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:59

Oh wow, yeah. I mean I would I would in a in a hot second, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:03

I'm uh yeah, I'm food is I'm um completely unbelievable. It's an incredibly green city, it's beautiful. Um and I I always had a prejudice that it had shocking uh air uh air quality. I lived there for five months and I just thought, okay, sunk cost, the air quality is shit here, so be it. I'll live with it. Um and when I went back last time, I was telling this to my missus and and she fact-checked me on it, and it's not even in the top 50 or something because they've got so much plants. It's this huge um carbon sink. Uh that's why it's so green everywhere throughout Mexico City. Um, anyway, but the the bullish case uh economically for Mexico is that they're a populace of about 150 million people. Uh they're an incredibly well-educated workforce, as much as two times more educated than the average Chinese person, and they have to their north the hungriest, most aggressive consuming society in the entire planet. So the only reason that they are not already top five GDPs in the world is because that same that same culture as Europeans, as Australians, as Asians have a insatiable lust and demand for cocaine. And that is the source of the majority of the political corruption and then as well the social corruption and the social degradation in um much of the most popular states, which are the ones that just are up near the border there, which should be the biggest manufacturing states. Um, and so you take away the the cocaine variable, the already top five GDPs in the world, you leave in the cocaine variable. I think they're the 15th at the moment, um, but they have a culture that rewards hard work. You know, you you you derive a lot of your value as a as a man, as a woman, as a family from having a good job that's respectable, that you that you that you get up early and struggle for. Um, and that which you've seen the same thing in China, that is an incredibly, you know, like that's a variable you can't discount in how prosperous is it is a nation or a country going to be. I I think people often discount it in America, but the idea of the American dream or the idea of in America that you're a lot of your value and status comes from how successful, how hard you work is a huge, huge uh discounted variable for what actually makes for an incredibly a good economy in a good country. Anyway, so that's kind of a very short reason why Mexico uh you should be bullish on them economically. Um culturally, I think they're just incredible, they're so nice, there's there's so much hospit hospitality. Um truly, the one thing that fucks them, and it fucks them really hard, is the insatiable lust for cocaine and the fact that uh Mexico are the the the the the medium of delivery, um and that the cartels seemingly have um maybe moved away from what may have been more community moralistic sentiments in the beginning, where you wouldn't, you know, murder a whole man's family because he switched sides, you would just murder the man, um, where you wouldn't ship fentanyl, where you wouldn't ship manufactured drugs that you know are gonna kill people. Um, you know, they started off uh just shipping in weed big time, they just shipped in tons and tons of weed, um, and then obviously things escalated from there. But anyway, that's I think the nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:40

Yeah, I think as as cannabis legalization spreads in the US as well and and becomes normalized, I think that's going to be both um a huge kind of moral and societal benefit. You know, you're not gonna have you know young black guys uh arrested for cannabis possession. I think that you know literally everybody um, you know, does and has huge medical benefits as well, you know, for dealing with PTSD, for dealing with insomnia for things like that. Um, and also huge economic benefits. I mean, the state of California makes a ginormous amount of tax revenue from from um legalized weed, as does Colorado, as does Washington, and now New York has just just joined them. And it's it's truly baffling to me that that Britain, for example, hasn't um hasn't yet done the same. It seems like it's just such an obvious single policy that could that could make so much difference.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:37

Yeah, the weed question is interesting. I I I as well don't know why. It hasn't spread throughout Europe as quickly as they might have thought. Maybe there's this idea that Europeans then smoke weed.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:48

Um there was a fascinating um case in the UK under Theresa May's government where um she, as Prime Minister, personally intervened in the case of a woman who'd been arrested importing medicinal marijuana for her son who was epileptic. And I'm epileptic, so I I you know follow this case very closely. And I really thought that was going to be the moment because all of the newspapers, you know, it doesn't it's not often that the Sun and the Daily Mail and The Guardian and you know, all of the spectrum of British newspapers all agree that something is morally the right thing to do. And I really thought that was going to be the moment that would lead to to change, but it it it doesn't seem to have been so far.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:34

The whole issue of uh drugs and legalization and cocaine specifically, if you check in the annals of the podcast, uh actually is a really strong theme. I am I'm I'm the rare Australian you'll come across who isn't deeply obsessed with cocaine. Um, and so I think it is actually a like a uh the the most singular cancerous supply chain and product that um infects the entire global that infects every that infects the entire globe and specifically has particularly harmful effects in Mexico, a country which I love.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:17

But again, these are this is a problem that um legalization or semi-legalization and and regulation would go a long way to solve. And I, you know, it it's not it's not my choice of poison. I have a wide range of others though, but um but the the I the idea that any of this stuff is the idea that alcohol is legal and the rest of the stuff isn't. I I can't really and and scientifically, so I I studied this a little bit. I did this weird joint degree in journalism and neuroscience, and one of the modules I did in neuroscience was um kind of drug neuroscience. Alcohol is miles ahead in terms of physical damage, even of things like crystal meth and heroin, um, and societal damage as well. You know, people um, you know, like the the violence that alcohol causes, the societal problems that alcohol causes, and which again, I'm I don't think means it should be illegal. I just think it means that it undermines the argument for everything else being illegal and regulated. Because we all of the stuff you're talking about with with the way it fuels organized crime is exactly what happened in the US and during prohibition. We just still have prohibition for those substances, and it's just as disastrous.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:35

Yeah, the do you think we could ever have maybe not in our own generation, but maybe in one or two generations after us, you could come to a world where drinking is as rare uh and maybe even socially stigmatized as something like um you know uh an LSD or a party drug, um, for instance. Do you think that's possible? Like if if is is a trend, do you see a bit of a trend? I don't know, in Stockholm I definitely see that trend, but it's just one signal in the whole globe. I mean, you're from famously one of the greatest boozing nations of all time, so it could it happen in London? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:16

The numbers do seem to imply that that Gen Z drink less than than previous generations. Um I don't know if it'll lead to it being you know stigmatized. I I hope it it leads to certainly there being more care available for addiction services, and that means properly funding things like the NHS. Um, but I I hope we're going towards a world where everything is is not stigmatized, but the care is there for for people who because it's not like you know drugs being illegal stops addiction, but it just it just does.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:50

Evidently not, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:51

Yeah, yeah. So I I hope we're going towards a a situation where um you know and Portugal, Portugal's already trying this as an experiment. By all accounts, it's it's going fantastically. You know, people get the care that they need um and are not criminalized for you know something that is essentially done properly, um, not necessarily harming other people, especially if the the supply chains are no longer attached to all of these kind of huge and damaging criminal enterprises. I think as a as a as another example, I think um Australia's position on sex work, for example, is very forward-looking. And I think that too is something that that should be should not be criminalised and should not be driven underground, right? Like and that's that's also been quite successful, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 2:08:41

Yeah, I'd I I I guess so. Um you didn't hear about it much. It is that you you it's illegal to buy, but not illegal to sell, right? Is that the position?

SPEAKER_00 2:08:51

No, I think currently in Australia there are legal brothels.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:55

Okay, okay and it hasn't led to the street. But that's an interesting dynamic. Yeah. Um okay, well, um I'm just looking at the time.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:09

Solve the problems of civilization there.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:11

Uh absolutely. I mean, let's just forward this on to the heads of states around the world. Um final question, Nikki.

unknown 2:09:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:20

That I like to ask as many guests as possible. If you could witness a conversation between any two people of history, dead or alive, no language barrier, so you're listening to a podcast, who is it between?

SPEAKER_00 2:09:39

As in two people who were having a conversation at the time, or two any random two.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:45

You you choose two people, they don't have to have anything to do with each other. It could be it could be, you know, I don't know, fucking Cleopatra and Bourdain, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:09:58

Yeah, well, that's a solid shout. I mean, I'd love to like mix things up because you could get some really funny ones, right? Like, I'd love to watch Joe Rogan interview Napoleon, you know? Like that sort of thing. Um yeah, or uh um then there's all the you know having someone like I don't know, Oswald Mosley, like a Nazi supporter being like interviewed post post the war when you could be like, yeah, you lost dickhead, like see the the look on their faces type of thing. God, there's infinite options with that. Actually, similarly, I was having this conversation um with some friends about uh if you could go back in time for one day to watch one historical event. Um wow. And I was thinking I I've always wanted uh I my answer to that was I want to go back and watch the Battle of Cable Street. I don't know if you're familiar with the Battle of Cable Street.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:01

No.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:02

Um it was uh a Nazi rally, the British Union of Fascists, the British Fascist Party, was before the Second World War, did a big march through um London's Jewish East End and were met by a huge counter-protest of um an alliance of the kind of Jews and communists and trades unionists who just kicked the shit out of these guys, and that was the end of fascism in in the United Kingdom. I'd love to see that. And then also, I think another good answer to that is I'd love to go back and see like a Roman chariot race. I think that would be great fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:36

How about you? What's your well the conversation is uh someone with Hitchens, you know, Bordane Hitchens would actually be a very good one. Um Pit Hitchens Hitchens uh Hitchens interview with Hitchens Vidal.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:52

Oh, Hitchens Vidal. I actually just saw Best of Enemies in um in London. Uh there you go, yeah.

unknown 2:11:59

How good.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:01

Oh, it's a really, really good play. It's it's terrific. Yeah. And I only see it. Yeah, they made a play on the graphics documentary. The documentary is amazing as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:12

Nice. Yeah. Um, no, um uh Hitchens his uh actual his intellectual hero was Gore Vidal. Um he he really modeled himself on him. Yeah, uh they were until um Hitchens uh went pro-invasion on uh everyone's course, yeah. Yeah, he just dropped a bomb in his entire social life and political life um and did but that was you know that was that was a part of his uh his entire persona it was to be the contrarian, even if it meant but I mean I'm projecting onto it, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 2:12:52

Um but I mean I would love to watch Donald interview Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:58

The thing is, is uh as would I, but I I'm worried about would it be a great interview? There's potential for it to be a very interesting discussion, but does does Donald have within him an interesting long-form interview? I don't know if he does. I think he's just got you know very entertaining short takes. But I I like your question about if you could go witness one day in history, there is this incredible account of what the markets of um Tenor Chitlan, I can't pronounce it, but the place that Mexico City is uh was when the um when the old fellows were there before the Spanish came. There is an account that a uh it's the Aztecs. Aztecs, yeah, I think it's the Aztecs. Um the Incas were the Southern. It's either mine or Aztec. I think it's Aztec, and the Mayan was Central America, anyway. Um there's a there's a recording, you can find it on YouTube, a great channel called uh voices of the past. They take these uh historical texts and then put an animated video and a voice narration over it, and there's one of a Spanish sailor um giving his account of the markets, um, and it's just incredible, you know. At the time it was the most popular city in the world, you know, and they just came in and it had functioning markets and it had uh it had imported goods, you know, very, very fascinating. Um so I don't know, to see something like that or to see ancient Egypt in its prime or Rome in its prime, I think I'd want to go way far back and like see just stroll around for a day.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:44

Uh Archimedes, Athens.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:48

Yeah, yeah. I mean, imagine. Imagine seeing the what is it, the Acropolis in its prime and just sort of sprawling organized streets leading up to it, it'd just be incredible, absolutely incredible. But uh Nikki, um thank you for thank you for that. I uh we we've definitely this is two separate podcasts in one um and thank you for making it so so so discussional. Uh I really I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on like I said, I haven't done it. Yeah, this has been great on it before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:24

So and yeah, let's check in down the line when the when the show's more out.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:29

Absolutely, and people know where to find it. It's the very top link in the podcast description, and they should say that Ryan sent me. Uh, so I can so Nikki knows how many people actually came from listening from this podcast. I think that would be uh very cool. Um, and yeah, I listened to episode one today and I'm hooked already. I think it's incredible, it's so well produced, the story's fascinating, your narration is great, and it's got the Project Brazen name attached to it, so you know it's gonna be really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:04

Thank you so much for having me. This is great fun.