Hamish Macdonald

You know, Sydney's been really, I think, on edge, probably before the terror attack, but particularly so since.

I think, you know, we've also felt very distant from a lot of the problems of the world being in Australia, this big island continent that's physically a long way away from things.

I think it feels less far.

Mm-hmm.

And that's in part because some of these big, terrible things unfolding in different corners of the planet are now also in the palm of our hand, right?

So I think inevitably that creates an emotional response.

If you watch a video of a child being harmed or starved, you know.

it would be hard, I think, for most of us not to have some reaction to that.

I think the American academic, Marianne Wolfe, that we spoke to, she says, you know, an active resistance in this world is just to pick up a book.

Like, I think you can get overwhelmed by the whole thing.

I don't think there are easy fixes to these huge challenges, you know, like,

threat of AI and what that might do to our world is sort of almost too big for most people, I think, to think about, you know, in any really way that grasps the scale of it.

But I think there are individual things that we can all do.

And I suppose that's what I keep coming back to in this is the idea that you can step away from things.

You can put a device down and

You know, you can leave social media or just dial down your usage of it.

You can control what you can consume.

You can read a book.

You can read a newspaper article, right?

I'm sorry.