Hi out there, how goes it? My name is Nathan Robertson-Ball and welcome to the finding nature podcast. Today is a huge episode and one I’ve been excited to share with this audience for months. Nina Jankowicz is one of the world’s leading authorities on disinformation and democratisation - and what a time to be having this conversation. Nina was recently in Australia and after having the privilege to speak with her for the first time in 2024 getting to do so again was a thrill.

Nina’s own career charts well beyond this moment of political, social, moral and cultural crisis we seem happy to slip further and further into. As a Fulbright Scholar her work and research focussed on how Russia organised and deployed mis and disinformation across many parts of Europe through the late 2000s and early 2010s, before undertaking a huge operation in the lead up to the 2016 US election. Her first book - How to Lose The Information War is both one of the best and worst books I’ve ever read - I no longer see the world the same way having read it - simply, it pierced the trust and confidence I had in what was real. And when everything could be fake to me, and when everything could be fake to you, and my truth is this and your truth is that, how do we do anything together? At a time when we’re bombarded with the impacts of simultaneous crises occurring now, how are we meant to address any of them if none of us have a shared set of facts and a common understanding of reality? The answer - what’s happening here and around the world every day.

It’s hard not to feel dispirited about a tonne of different issues and challenges right now. Both here in Australia where mainstream media institutions seem intent on platforming anti-reality and far right politicians on a daily basis, where protest has been met with unprecedented police violence, where coal mines keep getting approved, and to where a lot of this chat focuses - the USA, which is difficult to comprehend and sad to observe from afar.

Nina is a valiant. Courageous and wise beyond her years. What she knows, we all need to know.

Links to check out and support Nina's work:

• American Sunlight Project
• The Wayfinder - Nina's Substack
• American Sunlight Project Substack
• How to Lose The Information War - Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict
• How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment and How to Fight Back

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Now imagine receiving a life threatening health diagnosis and not only ignoring it, but speeding up the underlying causes and drivers of what’s making you unwell in the first place? Or imagine subsiding a product with public money that everyone everywhere knows contributes to and worsens that life threatening health diagnosis? Can you imagine getting that diagnosis from 97 to 99% of the doctors on earth and hoping it just works itself out? Well you don’t need to imagine it, do you? We’re doing it - our society - be that the deniers, the stagnant political class, or just all of us as one inter-connected species.

202 years after the greenhouse cycle was first discovered, 170 years after its existence was categorically proven, the first warming scenarios presented 130 years ago, the knowledge of and momentum around understanding the science and impacts of a changing climate only increase. But like the addict committed to just one more hit, here we are - next time, next week, next year. Record emissions, 2025 as the third hottest year on record, the seventh of nine planetary boundary passed. The statistics are extensive and grim. On the show is someone who knows more about the scientific process than just about everybody else in this country and understands deeply the effects of a changing climate on our health - Doctor Nicholas Talley.

Nick Talley is a gastroenterologist who’s published more than 1,000 scientific papers over the course of his remarkable career, being part of the pioneering group of experts globally who have sought to understand the complex yet magical world of the human microbiome - our gut health. Nick’s not on the show to chat too much about gut health but is here to speak in his capacity as Chair of Doctors for the Environment Australia - the DEA.

For more than 20 years Nick has applied his masterly intellect to better understanding the science of climate change and its effects and risks to the human body and its health systems. Doctors and medical professionals played a critical role in dispelling the many deleterious risks of smoking, many forms of toxic and poisonous chemicals, and products like asbestos, and thousands of doctors here in Australia and around the world have turned their attention to carbon molecules and plastics. Through the medical fraternity - and their individual and collective commitment to doing no harm - a path of potential climate action may be more productive than many others. Taking lessons from other now banned or severely restricted products, perhaps doctors offer a salvation of irrefutable evidence in the battle against the fossil fuel lobby and their commitment to mis and disinformation about their product.

What struck me is the commonality between the human health system and our microbiome and that of the world of climate science, climate change and its myriad risks and impacts. A common sense, first principles perspective offers us as individuals and a society a clear path of action - three meals a day with plenty of fresh produce, movement and enough sleep to the act of restricting fossil fuel industry expansion and ultimately hospicing the industry, supporting the transition of affected communities and ending the subsidies they receive ASAP. Maybe it doesn’t need to be as complicated as it always seems to be?

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Something I’ve been mulling over a lot the past couple months is this last point - what do we do if we can’t relate to each other? What if our information systems are fundamentally different on a person to person basis? What do we do without a shared set of facts and sense of reality by which to agree upon and then work to address any issue or challenge of concern? To help me better explore this is today’s guest, Miah Hammond-Errey. Miah is an expert in national security, emerging technology and leadership and has built a career to date in the investigation of how intelligence is collected, made sense of and used in decision making in high stakes environments.

I wanted to chat with Miah to understand how the best in business do this and how that applies to me and the Finding Nature community to help us all chart a course through mis and disinformation, an overwhelming information and data system, and what do we all need to do more of to focus on the signal and shut out the noise. Miah’s work is not only vital but accessible for the lay person like me, and her podcast, the Technology and Security Podcast is a fantastic examination of how a world that most of relate to through pop culture like movies and books operates on a day to day basis. Bringing fact to dispel the myths helped me appreciate again the necessity for how we can all do a better job of taking the time to remember that all of us are essentially allies on the same team, that being in right relationship is a fundamental necessity to maintain a stable society, and the consequences of what happens when we don’t invest in taking the time and putting in the effort to be curious, open and non-judgemental in trying to appreciate and understand the views and opinions of others - especially those we don’t agree with.

We cover plenty in this chat, so settle in and prepare to be further educated on how intelligence agencies and systems apply age-old principles of sense making, how new technology is changing the intelligence game, the already present and future threats to nation states and individuals in this new digital age, and what we can and probably must do to play an active role in shaping the information, privacy and digital landscapes we are all participants in.

Support for the show comes from:

• Reposit Power - get $500 off your installation
• Altiorem - get 25% off your annual subscription with code findingnature25
• Jamberoo Mountain Farm Tiny Home - get Hot Tub Sunset Package for free when you add Finding Nature to booking comments.

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Get in contact via info@findingnature.com.au

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