Rare Air with Meri Fatin

"Overshoot means we consciously and willingly allow to go above 1.5 while waiting for the right technology...to then rapidly bring down the overshoot.  It would fulfill the goal laid out in the Paris Agreement however the damage done on the way is tremendous. The obligation of scientists is to lay out different ( plausible) scenarios.  Its governments and industries who then take these plausible scenarios and insist that we have the luxury to wait because technical solutions will save us in the end. The reason why this interpretation is so flawed (and I think this is when I cracked on the IPCC 1.5 Special Report) was the realisation that an overshoot...could mean an eight degree warming for the Arctic."   Petra Tschakert is Professor of Geography and Global Futures at Curtin University where she has recently begun her tenure. She is a human-environment geographer, motivated to use her research to strengthen resilience in communities experiencing disadvantage. She does this working at the intersection of a number of elements: climate change adaptation, sustainability, livelihood security, and climate, mobility, energy, and multispecies justice. And the inter-disciplinary approach Petra has taken to her education will give you a good idea of how she can function in all these spaces.  Geography and French in Austria led to working in community development in Senegal and then to a dissertation on soil carbon sequestration, also in Senegal, a PhD in arid lands resource sciences and applied anthropology in Arizona …the list goes on. Petra was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group 2 of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), and contributed to its Summary for Policy Makers and the Synthesis Report, all of which fed into COP21 and the Paris Agreement. Then she worked on the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees global warming post-Paris. Petra now co-chairs the National Strategy on Just Adaptation, led by the Australian Academy of Science and Future Earth Australia, and leads the Energy Humanities Initiative at Curtin.

"We changed the world to start to see that automobile dependence was not a good thing...we were much hated by the automobile associations, the vehicle companies, the oil companies.  They used to run people who would follow us everywhere. And they were given money to write papers attacking us." Professor Peter Newman reflecting on his work in the US with colleague Professor Jeff Kenworthy  _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ WA Scientist of the Year in 2018, Peter Newman AO is Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University where he established CUSP, the Curtin Sustainability Policy Institute. He’s one of those people it’s hard to introduce because of the sheer volume of his achievements. As well as being a renowned authority on sustainability in WA, and an adviser at a Federal level, Peter’s international work includes being co-ordinating lead author on a number of reports with the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He’s authored hundreds of publications including over 20 books, some of which are used as texts in the USA. His primary focus is transport and the solutions that would vastly improve the liveability of our cities. Peter began his career as a foundation lecturer in Environmental Sciences at Murdoch University in 1974 and consequently is a senior knowledge holder and champion in the overarching story of environmentalism in WA.   Recorded at RTRFM, Beaufort Street Mount Lawley Western Australia on August 23, 2022 Mastered by Adrian Sardi at Sugarland  Theme music by Blue Dot Sessions

If you follow thought leaders on the energy transition, you’ll be familiar with the hashtag Electrify Everything. The argument is that a huge proportion of ‘global energy needs’ can be met with electricity sourced from renewables – and to use it we simply need to – electrify everything. This is the message of Australian inventor and engineer Saul Griffith – recently returned from two decades in the US where he’s advised, among others, NASA and the Biden Administration. Saul Griffith's book, “The Big Switch – Australia’s Electric Future” details some very clear thinking that could drive Australia's energy transition pathway.

"I think it’s a scandal in this country that so much wealth is being extracted and Aboriginal people are no better off." Paul Cleary is author of "Title Fight: How the Yindjibarndi Battled and Defeated a Mining Giant".  For over a decade he followed this story as a journalist, before finally sitting down to the task of recording the complex and troubling detail of this tale in a book. If ever a story was worth telling, it's this one.  It highlights an organisational culture in FMG that on one hand revered and respected Aboriginal people, but on the other used the courts and a vast array of unconscionable tactics to secure below par compensation native title agreement with traditional owners. And it reveals the tenacity and vision of Yindjibarndi people and their leader Michael Woodley who in 2020,  after a thirteen year dispute, secured exclusive native title over the land FMG has been mining.

The power of great storytelling has never been more evident than in the fight to change hearts and minds around sustainability, environmental care and climate action.  The people who can sweep us along in their enthusiasm and can-do attitude offer solid foundations for optimism as we witness the earth struggling …and the solutions seem too much for us as individuals to contemplate.  Matthew Evans is one of those people.  Matthew is a chef, food critic, TV host and farmer, and increasingly across his career he has spoken and written the truth about our food and its journey to our tables, always leaving us with the tools to choose better.  A couple of years ( but just a few episodes) ago Matthew joined me on Rare Air to discuss his book On Eating Meat. It was great to be getting together again to chat about his new book “Soil:  The Incredible story of what keeps the Earth, and us, healthy”

It began with a deep sea cod. David Carter and Jeff Hansen are people who have the courage of their convictions. What’s surprising about their alliance is that at first glance one might struggle to see HOW their convictions are aligned. David Carter is CEO of Austral Fisheries. He’s spent 42 years with the company, working from the ground up as a graduate and thriving under inspiring mentorship. His commitment to sustainable fishing practices has defined his career. This year David was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marine Stewardship Council and Austral Fisheries has been carbon neutral for four years. Jeff Hansen joined Sea Shepherd Australia in 2006 and was instrumental in the success of two anti- whaling expeditions in the Antarctic before being offered Australian directorship by Sea Shepherd founder Captain Paul Watson. It’s Jeff’s passion and regard for the ocean and it’s inhabitants that has focussed his efforts into eradicating illegal fishing, plastic pollution and mitigating climate change. It was an appearance at a Senate inquiry about Australia’s future activities in the Southern Ocean, that led to his auspicious meeting with David… because of a shared concern for a deep sea cod - the Patagonian toothfish.

There’s a whiff of hope out there.  Sounds like a strange thing to say as Australia comes to grips with the early days of the corona virus pandemic as this episode is recorded.  We are a nation that has literally NO IDEA what 2020 will be like. Yet, there’s still hope and author Andrew Wear has tapped into it. Andrew is a very experienced public policy expert from Melbourne.  He’s worked for Government across a vast array of different policy areas from Planning and Community, Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources. But his view is global. And that came in handy when he decided to write a book that looked at how some of the world’s biggest problems were being solved.  The Book is called SOLVED  - and it details how ten countries solved ten big problems from climate change to multiculturalism.

Can meditation really save the world? Tom Cronin thinks so. Big ideas and the people who chase them are captivating. Tom Cronin’s big idea is to bring an ancient practice, meditation, and sweep the message of it's benefits across the globe using the even more ancient art of storytelling.  The practice of meditation is tens of thousands of years old and of everyone who takes it up, relatively few become teachers.  For many, personal enjoyment of the multitude of benefits is enough.  And of those who become meditation teachers, no matter the strength of their personal practice, or conviction that meditation improves wellbeing, even fewer feel compelled to reach a global audience.  At 29, as a stressed-out bond and swap broker, Tom Cronin took up meditation.  As he developed his practice, he’d work days on the trading floor, and over time, nights as a meditation teacher. The transformation for Tom was extraordinary, but can be illustrated like this. At 29 his biological age was measured as 37.  With the help of meditation, by the time he was 42, his biological age was just 34.  Tom became so passionate about the profound change meditation could effect, that he built a new career taking this information to the world, hosting retreats, mentoring, speaking publicly, and in 2019, releasing a book and a film, both entitled “The Portal : how meditation can save the world”. The book and film use the stories of a wide range of people whose lives have been utterly transformed by their meditation practice. In this episode of Rare Air, Tom explains how meditation changes a human being, and how it has the power to defuse the tensions affecting humanity today.

The idea of an artificial womb – a place where a prematurely born baby could continue to safely gestate closer to full term, is one scientists have worked on intermittently since the late 1950’s. Until recently it’s been considered a wild card, a fairly unorthodox angle on dealing with pre-term birth. Currently there are a handful of teams around the world working at various stages of development, including here in Perth, through the Women and Infant’s Research Foundation (WIRF).  The Western Australian team, based at the University of Western Australia is headed up by New Zealander Assoc Professor Matthew Kemp and collaborates closely with researchers at the Tohoku University Hospital in Japan among others. It’s hard to conceptualise but Assoc Prof Matthew Kemp describes it this way: “At it’s core. Our equipment is essentially a high-tech amniotic fluid bath combined with an artificial placenta.  Put those together and with careful maintenance what you’ve got is an artificial womb." The implications for the successful development of an artificial womb cannot be overstated. Being born too soon is the single largest cause of death and disability in children up to five years old in the developed world. It’s also a major burden not only on the child, with ongoing health issues, but also on their families, the health system, schools…the list goes on. And imagine the hope it offers to terrified parents knowing their baby will be born on the very cusp of viability.  In this conversation, Assoc Professor Matthew Kemp discusses the determination, dedication and serendipity that has gained the artificial womb project significant recognition.

Dominic Smith’s fourth novel, the New York Times best seller "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos" won both Indie Book of the Year AND the Australian Book Industry awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year in 2017.  For Rare Air, he joins me to discuss his most recent novel, The Electric Hotel. Set around the birth of cinema, as the Lumière Brothers sent commission agents around the world to demonstrate their cinematographe, The Electric Hotel introduces us to French filmmaker Claude Ballard. One of the original Lumière commission agents, then silent film heavyweight, now in his eighties, a dedicated mushroom forager and long-term resident of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. It's a truly captivating story, beautifully researched, where even the most staggering human experience feels entirely plausible. Smith says his goal was to fall in love with silent film.  He watched over one hundred of them for research.  Preservation of these films has been an issue.  It was reported by the US Library of Congress in 2013, that 75 percent of silent films made in the US between 1912 and 1929 had been lost. This formed part of Smith's motive to write a book set in the era as he tried to imagine a comparable situation in the world of literature.  In this conversation Dominic Smith also speaks about the formation of his writing discipline and muses about being an American, born and bred in Australia. He spoke to me from his home in Seattle, WA.

Eighteen years ago, when I started as a student of the Pilates method, I had no idea how quickly it would become a significant part of my daily life. A few years into my practice, I qualified as an instructor in Sydney, but didn’t last long as a teacher, finding the effort of giving so intensively in the studio was a tough offset to my job as a mother of four little kids at the time. My very first instructor was Elizabeth Wilson at her fledgling Perth Pilates Studio. Today, with over 25 years teaching experience, Elizabeth is a senior Educator at Polestar Pilates Australia, and is the Director of the Perth Pilates Studio, which has grown exponentially since the day we first met.   Liz is without a doubt one of the most intelligent people I know and I love hearing her get nerdy about Pilates. This conversation was recorded at Sugarland Studios in 2018.

As a former food critic, chef, author and TV personality Matthew Evans is not new to the ethical sourcing of food.  It’s been a passion for well over a decade, and the first book he published on the topic was 2010’s The Real Food Companion.  Fast forward through many beautiful publications, and numerous TV series and we arrive at his most recent book – On Eating Meat.  For us as consumers it’s easy to turn a blind eye, but Matthew is completely unafraid to take on the biggest players in the food industry about the -  at least concerning  - and sometimes appalling -  practices that bring food to our tables. Nor is he afraid to ask US to examine how we support these practices through our buying and eating power. Recorded at RTRFM Mount Lawley, Western Australia, July 4, 2019 Mixed by Adrian Sardi at Sugarland Studios Music "The Summit" by Blue Dot Sessions from freemusicarchive.org Image: Alan Benson

Professor Nadia Rosenthal has devoted her distinguished career to the understanding of how humans might harness the regenerative powers of some animals, to combat the vagaries of injury and age. Professor Rosenthal's research focuses on the role of growth factors, stem cells and the immune system in repairing injury and her primary focus is on heart muscle. Her book, Heart Development and Regeneration, is upheld as a definitive document in this field. I'm fascinated by the process of ageing, by all aspects of ageing. There are plenty of ways in which we are advised we can slow the process from the comfort of home – for example by fasting, by reducing inflammation … but regenerative medicine takes the notion of reversing damage, of holding back time… to the realm of science fiction. Currently, Professor Rosenthal is the Scientific Director of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. She also holds a Chair in Cardiovascular Science at Imperial College London. Her PhD is from Harvard Medical School, where she later directed a biomedical research laboratory, then established and headed the Roman campus of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). And then there’s an Australian link – Professor Rosenthal is Founding Director of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University in Melbourne and founded “EMBL Australia” as its Scientific Head.

Joe Williams would be the first to agree that he won the genetic lottery in a lot of respects. A proud Wiradjuri man, born in Cowra, west of the Blue Mountains in NSW, he was spotted early as a naturally gifted rugby player.  Joe was recruited at thirteen years old and played with the NRLbetween 2004 to 2008.  After switching to boxing in 2009, Joe won two World Boxing Federation World Junior Welterweight titles.  But the biggest challenge for him hasn’t been an athletic one – it’s been the battle with mental illness, addiction and acquired brain injury.

When I was looking for inspiration, I came across @lisatamati a genuine legend of the ultra-running scene. Similar age to me, she has run over 140 ultras, over 70,000 kms, all the while battling asthma and back that was broken when she was 21. While she epitomises the gritty competitor, she is also a deeply compassionate, community minded person. Easy going, approachable, never exaggerating or glorifying her achievements. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this conversation (and thanks a million Lisa).

“I think I knew on some level that I wasn’t conventional, that I wasn’t an acceptable kind of girl and I worried very much (as a young woman) about how that might affect me…and it took me a very long time to realise that it was a waste of time trying to control how other people responded to me.”   I met Jane Caro at the 2019 Perth Writers Festival just after the publication of “Accidental Feminists” her exploration of the fortunes of a generation of women swept up in the social changes brought about by second wave feminism. For our conversation that day, the room was full to the brim of avidly connected people, mostly women, there to be in the presence of someone whose courage to speak up publicly has given THEM a voice. They were there for the ideas, but moreso for Jane Caro herself.   Curious to hear more about how Jane’s work life is built around her strongest convictions, I invited her to speak with me for Rare Air.  In this conversation, among MANY things, Jane discusses the challenges of being an honest woman on social media, the value of “preaching to the converted” and her commitment to using her privilege to be a voice for those less safe to speak up.

It's essential there's mystery around the life of a sex worker. No need to explain why. When a worker and client are in the room together, what transpires can feel deeply positive, therapeutic, even, over time, transformative. But outside the room, that exchange is weighed down by layers of societal judgement that can render it degenerate, immoral and dangerous. New Zealand-born sex worker, now sexual healer EJ Love has recently gone public about her work and is writing a book that she hopes will shift the shame and blame around sex. In this candid interview EJ talks about what led to her being in the industry, her own attitudes to sex and the deeper meaning in her work. Three Gates Media thanks EJ for answering all our sometimes naive and curious questions.   Recorded at RTRFM, Perth Mastered by Adrian Sardi of Sugarland Studios

The word is "repartee". Anglican priest Father Chris Bedding has it by the truckload, yet he's extremely careful to make sure that his significant comedic and improvisational talents are kept out of the Church context. Called to the priesthood while still at school, there's no doubt Chris takes the complex and demanding role as parish priest very seriously. But in the eight years since he arrived in Perth from NSW he has also found a supportive artistic community in which he's been able to develop his other passion - improvisation, comedy and acting. In response to Chris voicing his guilt about making time for this passion, one of his parishioners said " Honestly if we were getting one hundred percent of your creative energy we wouldn't be able to cope! It's good that you have another outlet." With fellow comedian and trainee Uniting Church minister Paul "Werzel" Montague, Chris has developed a comedy act called Pirate Church, which has toured nationally, melding the "inherently hysterical" comedic potential of religion and piracy where nothing is sacred and "progressive leftie hipsters like us" are the first to be pilloried. In this interview Father Chris also reflects on the responsibilities of his role, his commitment to issues of social justice including marriage equality and the current challenges of being a member of the clergy. This interview was recorded in 2016.  Much has happened in Fr Chris's career since then. Recorded at the studios or RTRFM in Perth, Western Australia

Composer Cat Hope has been described as “a superstar of Australian new music” best known for her graphic scores and new score-reading technologies.   It’s fascinating to wonder how the daughter of a military family with no especial leaning towards the arts has ended up being an internationally recognised authority on experimental music. Despite the bass guitar being her first love (instrumentally speaking), Cat Hope began as a flautist - it was the main instrument through which she achieved her undergraduate degree at the University of Western Australia. She has always been a political animal, and described herself in her university days as being, to all intents and purposes -  “a punk”  - studying classical music by day and attending thrash gigs and engaging in active anarchic action by night.   Yet it was at UWA that Cat's ears were first tuned to new (experimental) music, where she realised that classical and new music are not completely separate…that new classical music is often an outcome of new political happenings and that some of it sounded a lot like the punk music she was already listening to. A long time spent in Europe, particularly in the heady days of post Wall Berlin, Cat refined her bass playing, learned how to write a solid pop tune and finally settled back in Perth in 1997, continuing to play and compose in her groundbreaking style here despite the creative brain drain and cultural cringe of the time, forming bands including Gata Negra, Lux Mammoth and Decibel. Two decades later, as an established member of the local, national and international arts community, one (as she says) with “the privilege of a full time job”, Cat Hope has visibly returned to her political roots, taking a stand against the Federal Government’s severe funding cuts to the arts and actively promoting women in the new music arena. In 2017 Cat takes up a brilliant new appointment as Head of the Sir Zelman Cowan School of Music at Monash University in Melbourne. Find examples of Cat Hope's music here on her BandCamp page.  Three Gates Media thanks Cat immensely for this conversation. This episode of Rare Air was recorded in 2016 at the studios of RTRFM 92.1 in Mount Lawley, WA Mixed by Adrian Sardi of Sugarland Studios Music "The Summit" by Blue Dot Sessions from freemusicarchive.org

Ever wondered what it means to be Sikh? In Harjit Singh, we couldn't have found a better or more patient explainer. Harjit was a little kid when he came to Australia (Perth) with his family. Growing up there were times when he wondered if it were possible to be an Aussie and Sikh at the same time, for example after 9/11 when people assumed he would be happy about the terrorist attacks in the US because he wears a turban. In his broad Australian accent, he tells how he negotiated those doubts and plenty of other prejudices. Guided by Sikh principles instilled in him by his parents, he set up Turbans and Trust, an organisation that attends public events to tie turbans on those with inquiring minds, while answering every question you've ever had about the religion. This episode of Rare Air will reshape misconceptions in a profoundly positive way. Thanks Harjit for spending the time. This episode of Rare Air was recorded in 2016 at the studios of RTRFM 92.1 in Mount Lawley, WA Mixed by Adrian Sardi of Sugarland Studios Music "The Summit" by Blue Dot Sessions from freemusicarchive.org