A Rational Fear Lite : Charlie Pickering + Peter Kalmus + Van Gogh + Dan Ilic

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We’re gearing up for a big 10-week season of weekly A Rational Fear Podcasts — but before we hit full steam, enjoy this chat with one of Australia's most prominent satirical broadcasters. 

From ABC's The Weekly: Charlie Pickering.

We also speak with NASA Scientist and Climate Activist: Peter Kalmus

This is a big discussion about civil disobedience and what actions may or may not work when it comes to shaking up the narrative of climate action. Dan also pushes Charlie on how he covers climate, and his thoughts on reaching the ABC audience.

Leave us a review here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-rational-fear/id522303261

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Dan Ilic  0:00  
G'day, welcome to A Rational Fear, another special episode of A Rational Fear light as I call it's not the full A Rational Fear. It's just a slimmed down version that is the least amount of effort to make to maintain your Patreon support. That's all it is. That's what we're doing. And we've got a great guest, Charlie Pickering needs no introduction, but I'll give you one in a second. Anyway, here we go. I'm recording my end of A Rational Fear on Gadigal Land of the Eora Nation. sovereignty with never ceaded, we need a treaty. Let's start

Simon Chilvers  0:29  
the show. A rational fear contains naughty words like bricks, Canberra, and gum and section 40 of our A Rational Fear recommended listening by immature audience.

Dan Ilic  0:43  
Tonight the CEO of Star City casino says that even though the casino license has been revoked, customers will still be allowed to leave their kids in their car unsupervised. And Kanye West agrees to buy in principle, Paula and I agree in principle to not buy anything from Kanye West. And in a shocking misstep, Scott Morrison has signed up to a speaker's bureau initially wanted to sign up to a meandering rant bureau. Instead, it's the 19th of October. And this is A Rational Fear

Welcome to A Rational Fear I'm your host, former president of China, Dan Xi Ping and joining us onA Rational Fear light is the host of Foxtel's The Mansion it is Charlie Pickering.

Charlie Pickering  1:39  
That's great. It's great that some remember by some

Dan Ilic  1:42  
people that worked on the show is of that show? Yeah, it was great. Don't Charlie, one of the best moments in show business in my life. I was having lunch with you in Manly one day, and you saying, Hey, man, I've got a show coming up. Do you want to come and work on it? And I'm like, yeah, that's my chili peppers, my cherry picker impression.

Charlie Pickering  2:02  
It's pretty accurate. It's pretty

Dan Ilic  2:04  
good. Don't often I don't often do

Charlie Pickering  2:09  
more of them come and be

Dan Ilic  2:13  
waiting here by chamber impression. It's great. Yeah, I don't often do my impressions to the people who do the impressions of

Charlie Pickering  2:20  
it shows extreme confidence when that's your absolute confidence with an impression used to do it to the person.

Dan Ilic  2:27  
I did do my Andrew Denton impression to him at a rap party once on the microphone. And it was it went down. Well, I think Andrew was like, that doesn't? That doesn't sound like me at all. What do you what do you try it? Like? Why are you implying that I make people cry? Yeah. Hey, thanks for joining us on irrational fear. Charlie. I really appreciate I've been meaning to get you on for a long time. But you, you know, one of the busiest man in showbiz. You're like the James Brown of Australian comedy showbiz.

Charlie Pickering  2:55  
Hopefully, you're talking purely about work ethic and not

Dan Ilic  2:58  
talking about your work. busiest man in China,

Charlie Pickering  3:01  
yes, well, I think I've done I've done very well to cultivate the image of busyness. And I think that's been probably the greatest achievement of my career. So far. Everyone thinks that I've got a lot on

Dan Ilic  3:12  
Yeah, tell us easier. It's perception at a distance, you've done a great job. That's right. I kind of wanted to get you on because you're, you're always thinking about the big issues, and you kind of have to as a person who runs a inflammation refinery that is the weekly. And with a lot of the civil disobedience stuff that's been happening around climate, I thought it might be good to have a little chat with you about about your thoughts on it, and how, as someone who runs an inflammation distillery, the weekly, how you go about covering climate, like, you know, the weekly has been on for so many years now. And you've covered it in so many ways. How, let me ask you, first of all, how do you think about approaching climate stories, because it's a story that just keeps on going? I don't

Charlie Pickering  3:55  
think we do it a lot. Because we do it with a philosophy of, we want to change minds that need to be changed. And if you actually wade into every single argument about climate change, based on every rhetorical thing that a conservative politician has said, or every single story that enters the news, you scream about it. People will stop listening to you and you end up changing no minds at all people stay in their positions. And it's it's funny, I've always tried to find unique arguments against the prevailing rhetoric of the conservative side of the climate change argument, I'd say conservative, it's not as the opposite of conservative because it's destructive. Like it's not conserving anything. But you know, the more fossil fuel driven side of the the, the political debate, and so the yardstick we measure our stuff by is Could someone with an open mind, have their mind made up by this, or are we just preaching to the choir voted and driving away the converted.

Dan Ilic  5:02  
Are we at a point now in in climate discourse where that feels like a, I feel like that's a eight year old argument. And right now you as someone with a platform on the ABC, and you might not be changing the mind of the 65 year old demographic who watches the ABC, but you have this enormous platform to change the minds of people who are actually in power to actually inform an electorate in a way that can pressure them to put pressure on the government to do more to, you know,

Charlie Pickering  5:29  
push it. It's interesting that you say that, because if you have a look at the last federal election, in Australia, and this is all through an Australian lens, the threat to the conservative power base was less what labour said or the green said, and more about the fact that the penny dropped in places like KU Yan, that that one of their priorities was climate change. And they affected an electoral change. Now, I live just down the road from Google. And I know those people will. And I know that screaming at them was never going to make up their mind that but a rational argument, and an irrational understanding of things is what made them prioritize climate change at the ballot box. Yeah. And it's, it's just interesting, it's just a matter of approach because I'll be really honest, I know my demographic at the ABC. They're not on tick tock. You know, what, around 1% of my viewing audiences on Twitter 1%,

Dan Ilic  6:33  
that's it. Yeah.

Charlie Pickering  6:34  
I mean, or at least that was what I was told, when I started the network. And they said, Hey, don't worry about what people are saying about you on Twitter. But if we're going to survive this, and if we're going to make the changes, we need to as a society, I think it's a multi pronged approach. And I think it's understanding where your audience is, and what changes you can affect in that audience. Now, I don't know how you get on truth, social, and convince them that climate change is real. But I've got a pretty good instinct for the the television audience of the national broadcaster. And the fact that maybe it's not about making someone believe that climate change is real. But maybe it's it's been about convincing people that climate change has to move up their list of electoral priorities and determine what they do at the ballot box. And I think to candidates being elected, has been one of those things that has taken climate action into the realm of actual possibility.

Dan Ilic  7:41  
Yeah, I agree with you there. And that's something our audience knows a lot about. We've been closely following those campaigns for two years. Now. What about you know, when you're holding when you've got this platform? Do you? Do you consider yourself a part of journalism, in a sense to hold governments to account to do more on action on climate? Dude, do you have that perspective?

Charlie Pickering  8:04  
I do. But more than that, I feel that I have an opportunity to hold media to account. Because a lot of the way my show works, and to be honest