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The haze is back in Southeast Asia and Indonesians are on the front-line breathing in the toxic smoke, with neighbouring countries, Singapore and Malaysia, experiencing particulate matter pollution in the dangerous range. The last major haze event was also during an El Niño year – 2015 - and this year the expectation is the fires and haze could persist into October or early November, as delayed rains prolong dry conditions. By the end of August, satellite monitoring estimated nearly 896,000 hectares burned, which is about a third of the 2015 total, but it’s still early days. Suffice to say, it’s not pleasant being exposed to this toxic smoke.

To help us understand why it keeps happening and what we can do about it, we are delighted to welcome Wally Tham, who helps organisations navigate complexity and create powerful stories for change. Beyond his work, for more than a decade, he has worked on practical protections for communities exposed to severe haze, including public education and air-quality measurement, to building the first haze shelter in Palangkaraya, Indonesia. He delivers low-cost and local solutions, including sealed, filtered concrete rooms that balance smoke filtration with heat and carbon-dioxide management. He’s expanded this work into a network of 22 operating safe rooms, offering an immediate layer of protection where larger institutional responses have fallen short.

After that, we’re going to dig into the maelstrom of news around AI, or should we say Super Intelligence? We’ll also look at the forthcoming extreme weather events predicted due to the El Niño, including the estimate of nearly 450,000 excess deaths by December. Then we’ll finish sitting with the despondency some of us are feeling, and we’ll talk about what we do to manage those feelings. It’s not an easy time.

It’s news from the front lines, as well as wider world issues, so we hope you can join us, and bring your friends. We’ll be going live Friday, 2nd October 2026, kicking off at 8am UK, 9am EU, 11am UAE, 12.30pm IN, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations, and no doubt about it, we’d love your support.

The Sh*t Show is a Livestream happening on the first Friday of every month for now, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh*t show.

#TheShitShow #UncommonCourage

You can find me Andrea T Edwards | The Digital Conversationalist and Welcome - Uncommon Courage - An Invitation.

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

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Welcome back to The Sh*t Show, we’ve all enjoyed the break. For the remainder of the year, we’re planning on doing a show once a month, but we’ll focus on one big topic that impacts all of us. This month it’s retirement, and we’re going to get into the details on the risks we face and what we can do about it.

We won’t be looking at it just from the perspective of how to prepare and afford retirement – we’re sure you’ve got an expert to help you there. No, we’ll be looking at risks to pensions due to the planetary crisis, the fragility of our economies because of pension pressures, what people closer to retirement should be thinking about, including those already in retirement, and we’ll also look at the younger generation – will they even have a pension as the planetary crisis gets worse? Then again, should we retire at all? No other living being on the planet retires, what makes us special?

There is no doubt that affording retirement is a massive issue for many people, especially as the social safety net continues to crumble around the world, with birth rates plummeting in practically every nation on earth, and when looking at it from all perspectives of the polycrisis, retirement is one of the big elephants in the room no one wants to discuss, but we should be discussing it.

We’ll then discuss three big pieces of news, starting with the devastating destruction in Nepal and Tibet, asking if we should even rebuild in an area where this will happen again (and again, and again). Then it’s onto the US hitting $40 trillion in debt, the Iran war, and more - what does it all really mean for the global economy and us? Then we have the Hugging Face AI scandal – are we too late to rein in AI? Three big news items, and yes, some of what we say will be uncomfortable – but that’s the time we are living in.

If you care about your future, this is a must-listen, so come and join us, and bring your friends. We’ll be going live Friday, 4th September 2026, kicking off at 8am UK, 9am EU, 11am UAE, 12.30pm IN, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations, and no doubt about it, we’d love your support.

The Sh*t Show is a Livestream happening on the first Friday of every month for now, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh*t show.

#TheShitShow #UncommonCourage

You can find me Andrea T Edwards | The Digital Conversationalist and Welcome - Uncommon Courage - An Invitation.

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Send us Fan Mail

It’s our last show for the season, so come and join us as we delve into the chaos of the world’s news, along with a deep dive into understanding China. So, what happened this week? Well, Trump announced a 20% fee on The Straits of Hormuz and then backtracked, meanwhile Lindsay Graham died and the conspiracy theories proliferated. He wasn’t the only death, with UK politician Anne Widdecombe murdered, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, known as the architect of modern Qatar dying, and of course, actor Sam Neil died unexpectedly too. Not Mitch McConnell though. Yes, he’s still with us, and the conspiracy theories continue.

Extreme heat continues across the Northern Hemisphere, where Europe’s nuclear power plants can’t beat the heat, rivers are drying up, 10,000 are officially confirmed head, and June was the hottest-ever since records began. We learned that Trump has left instructions if he’s assassinated, although he’s expecting a jolly good turn-out at his funeral, with the Borrowitz Report saying: Trump said that “nobody cares” about Khamenei’s funeral, and that he’s expecting the turnout at his funeral to set records, noting, “Every day, people say to me, ‘Sir, I can’t wait for that day to come.’” Chortle. But the big news is the El Niño surge, which could cause a global food price shock lasting into 2028, and a whole lot more.

This week, we are delighted to welcome Kenny Lim, who’s known as The China Whisperer. Kenny has a framework called China Decoded™ and he helps boards and the C-Suite understand how Chinese companies think, compete and scale. We’re going to discuss his framework, apply it beyond executive ranks, and we’re also going to discuss Chinamaxxing, which is now a thing. What does it mean? Come and find out.

It’s going to be a fun and informative show, so hop along and join us. We’ll be going live Friday, 17th July 2026, kicking off at 8am UK, 9am EU, 11am UAE, 12.30pm IN, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations, and no doubt about it, we’d love your support.

The Sh*t Show is a Livestream happening every Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh*t show.

#TheShitShow #UncommonCourage

You can find me Andrea T Edwards | The Digital Conversationalist and Welcome - Uncommon Courage - An Invitation.

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar