Mike On A Bike Episode 1: Marty Parker

In ep1 we're pushing through poor audio technology and novice editing with a promise to spend some cash on better microphones for episode 2. (Which we did!)
Marty and I cover a lot of ground on this one with no particular theme except for satisfying my intrusive thoughts. 

In 30 minutes you'll know if we succeeded in creating something you like.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to episode one of the Mark on the Bike Podcast. Well thanks for the invitation, sir. Week one. Eight or nine years? And today we're riding mountain bikes and we're headed for River Catherine National Park, which is our local national park, um here in the Hunter, and it's split into three pieces. Um we're gonna ride probably the most well-known piece of it, which will be known to locals and tourists alike. A beautiful area still, isn't it? Beautiful. Probably um a far show area, so a lot of uh the vegetation really goes still in its infancy. It's probably only 30, 40, 40 years on maybe, and you can see coming back from uh send a bit of a roll off and recreational high, in there. Maybe we'll run past the minus high. And by the time I got a clear the same should be more than the trend defined by three. Well, here we are at the forestry hut. And Marty was just sharing with me a story about one of the blacks or one of the founders of the original Mongols, Mongols. We might mention his name, but we'll call him the captain.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

So the audio cuts out here, but let me show you the story. So the captain boss of the Timberfellon crew and they worked out of this hut that you can see now. The captain would lay out the uh the Newcastle Herald um on the table. And if there was three spots of rain uh on the newspaper, then they close it up and go inside uh the hut for the day because they didn't work in the rain.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

And if you look at the girth on the trees, there's nothing major out there, they're all regrowth, there's nothing much bigger than a man's waste. Very few trees who are bigger than what we're looking at now. They're all regrowth from uh formerly being deforested.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

From here. So we've only got 30 years maybe of growth.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Absolutely, yeah. There's no trees with significant hollows through here.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

If I've got this right, the wildlife live in the hollows, for example.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

And they're more productive in terms of pollination and uh pretty much all that. The old other trees are better better pollinated than the younger ones.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Increases their chances of survival.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yeah, and the the grip on the earth is a lot more subterranean stuff and all three than the young ones. We wouldn't have much hangar.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

And shortly after this, uh unfortunately, my audio recording hardware gave up entirely, so we went back to Marty's um and we sat and his lovely wife Denise made us a cup of tea, and I got a plate of biscuits.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

I was asked to go out for lunch with Tara Moss once, and I did, down to Newcastle at a restaurant. And the next week she was on the gong ride, and she was an ambassador for that. And I took a couple of young blacks riding with me, and we're riding on the gong ride in amongst the 10,000 people, and I rode up towards Tara Moss and said, Hello, Tara, hey, oh Martin, that's you. And the young blacks were pretty impressed.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

What I'm interested in is what people think will happen when Australia becomes isolated, functional, but isolated from the rest of the world. I don't know if people will think of that. I'm interested in what people um what people think the impact of that sort of isolation will be on their field of interest. Because not everything is about bicycles, right? And I have to keep reminding myself that. We have a football today. Because Australia, for example, and the reason this thing where it all started was I was talking to um one of my friends who lives in Bathson, and I said, How long will it take Australia to produce an electric car if we have to? Right? We don't have a domestic automoth uh automotive industry anymore. We've still got the pieces of of technology. There will be there will be Australian companies who have battery technology, there'll be companies who have um motor technology, technology, coach buildings, there'll be uh there'll be companies who could build a wiring harness, there will be there are companies who can build wheels and make tyres and those kinds of things. I'm it kind of came from how long will it take Australia to build, if we have to, if we are isolated from the rest of the world, how long before we can produce uh an electric car for domestic consumption? And then I start thinking, hang on a second, if we're isolated, why is it electric? Because this is what will happen, right? Is if the rest of the world's dead, most of the carbon emissions are gone. Right, exactly. There you are, you thought of it. There's no climate change problem anymore. The world digged the fuel up. We can keep on digging up the ground and turning it into petrol. Now we don't have current. There are two oil refineries in Australia, but neither of those two oil refineries process crude oil that we um that we produce here. Our crude oil, 85% of it is shipped overseas to be processed, and we buy um most we we buy most of the crude oil that we um that's either refined the ore that we refine here, one in Brisbane, one in Melbourne. So if we're isolated, what effect does that have on the healthcare industry, right? CSIRO makes vaccines, but do we domestically manufacture vaccines that but we've still got to deal with all the other things that we have um immunisation for? So Which mostly come in from overseas, which is not going to happen anymore.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Right. So Moodle isn't gonna come back in.

SPEAKER_03 8:41

We don't have to worry about those things.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Well that barnavirus and uh and next one bar and all those other things come from mosquitoes, we might have to. Do we have the technology here to make those things? Well we we have the technology we've certainly got the technology to do it. Do we know what the recipe is? And we've got the production productive capacity to do it, or the laboratories to produce it on a on a production scale. But we can certainly do all of we can do all of the vaccines that they're uh produced in the world, I I believe. Because we have the information and the technology. Right. We've got the we've got the collaborative stuff with the Israelis and the Spanish and all that. We're doing all that now. We know the emerging stuff and we know how to create a vaccine for most things.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

We just choose not to do it on a scale because it's done in Spain or it's uh it's much cheaper to buy from overseas. Yeah, but we could make it here. So okay, that that piece of the problem. Good. Immunology, we will probably survive, no problems. Medicines generally. So pharmaceuticals. Is there a pharmaceutical industry in Australia that's capable of producing Australia's pharmaceuticals that do all of the things?

SPEAKER_02 9:56

We're technically capable of all that, but productively incapable. Either looting it all or following it.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

So, what about the impact of um corporate protection on optimism? I'm not talking all of well, that's alright. Um, because at some point I'll talk to a pessimist and maybe we'll get different to them. Um the nurse that I'm going to talk to, who is also is in um she's a midwife. All right. So that's going to be interesting because what I want to talk to her about is babies. Um we know how to make them.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Um we're behind on the replacement rate. We are below replacement.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

I think the whole world is behind on the replacement rate.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

North Africa and South America, but Australia is. And it's to do with our epigenetics and our acquired infertility through later birth. Epigenetics is the theory of passing on um a trait based on your life experience as well as your line on exposure. So they first found with the Holocaust sufferers that they were obviously depressed, but two generations later were equally depressed because they pick up this epigenetic trait for depression.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

So it's a combination of nature and nurture.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

It is. And um with um with the replacement rate fertility, people have children later when they're less fertile. Male and female are both less fertile, so they're less able to conceive, so they have more interventions to have a baby. And because that intervention is in a less fertile state, the next generation is less fertile. So it's not just that we're choosing not to have three babies, it's that we're choosing to have one and a half, means that the next generation might only be able to have one and a quarter. And it's not because we can't go back to having an 18, because our genetic um material's been altered through epigenetics to be less fertile anyway. So the fertility rate isn't just a matter of choosing to go back, it's it's that it's almost too late to go back.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

That could be true or not true.

SPEAKER_03 12:25

But the you would have to say that um if we had to choose between whether we're becoming more fertile and having more children or having less, that certainly the future of the planet wants us to have less, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:43

They did.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Because we're at about seven and a half billion?

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Not anymore. Not anymore.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

What's critical mass for the curve population?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

The curve's not just dipping, the curve's going down. And there's there's a pool of uh slices that says that's the biggest threat we've got is um population decline.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

Is that right? So tell me what you think the um um the isolationist impact is gonna be on the careers of people. Because we're gonna have a lot of people that we don't need them to do the jobs that they were trained for or that they want to do. Well, thankfully, we're always gonna need bike shop owners, right? So tick, that's good. But we're not gonna need we're not gonna need satellites. Well, we are gonna need farmers, right? We're gonna because we're not gonna be able to buy as much produce as as we have. So we're gonna have to grow it, right? Are we?

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yeah, we're a net exporter.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

A net exporter?

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Across all products, we're an ex net exporter. Yeah, okay. Across all products, we're a net exporter.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Right, so we grow a lot of wheat all and protein, cable, soup. Okay, so news is good there.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

They'll get fertilizer to um to ground, and it's coming mostly from the Ukraine and Middle East.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Why do we get it from the Ukraine and Middle East?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Because we just haven't got it. It's a petrochemical um output urea, and it's coming from there.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

So we import fertilizer.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Absolutely, yeah. That's why carrots are going to go up at the moment because urea went from a thousand dollars a tonne last week to fifteen hundred dollars a ton.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

Um is that because of um the rise in um petrol prices? Just supply that ad blue goes up?

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Just yeah, well, if fuel goes up, then most crops would use urea or um sulfate of ammonia.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Right. So how do we make it?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

How do we make it?

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Well, how do Ukrainians make it?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

They make it from oil.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Make it from oil.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

Well, we've got oil reserves.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

But no refineries.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

But my well, we've got two refineries, but my research said, suggested that in ten years both of those refineries will be shut down and we will import 100% of our own oil. If the current situation wasn't there or if the well, on current trends, in ten years' time it's gone. We go from 85% to 100% imported. Now, if we're talking about an isolationist, um, and I I don't know what my end goal is for this isolationist concept, but the reason I'm interested in exploring it is because it keeps on being the thing that um right-wing governments talk about, right? Um and it's a big part of Trumpism. America first. Um and it's you know, it's it's not just the Americans that talk about, it's every right-wing politician takes these natural talks about it. Let's get rid of that foreign A because we've we've got to let's not spend the money on those countries, let's stop buying their oil. Um, let's we we should do it ourselves. Well, this this hypothetical is exploring the idea of doing it ourselves. But if we're going to do it, what uh what happens if we properly do it, right? Which is we're just gonna shut the borders, there's no planes going in or out, there's no boats coming in or out.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Yeah, we have famines. Do we have famine? Because we won't be able to produce the food on through our current technologies and our current agricultural systems without imports, and we won't be able to live the lifestyle we've got without exports. And all of our foreign aid now is mostly soft diplomacy anyway. We give $60 million to Papua New Guinea to put a footy side in, that's got nothing to do with the footy side, that's to do with buying favour and the earth.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Which is what nations have always done forever. It's not new. We have to export to earn the money.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Yeah, for wealth. Yeah, we're we're a net we're a net exporter.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

Because none of the rhetoric you ever hear says that. That we sell more than we buy.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Yeah, that's right. All these people who say, let's stop sending it over to there, we'll keep it ourselves. Yeah, okay. And they'll say, if they're keeping that, we won't have to stop buying iron ore of them. We're gonna stop buying wheat off them. Because at Newcastle Harbour is the biggest export harbour in the world. Coal and wheat.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Yeah, it's just churning the stuff out.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

When you said that we that famine we can't, we won't be able to afford to feed ourselves, if we're not exporting it, then can we not consume that domestically?

SPEAKER_02 18:08

No, uh well if we can produce it, yeah. If I mean we we're exporting cattle at $2,000 a head now, but if we uh and we can't afford to eat that, that's going to Middle East or Indonesia or somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

But all prices are artificial, right?

unknown 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:27

It's just uh it's just a head of cattle.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

The whatever the market's going to pay for it, is an artificial.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

So Drina Reinhardt, who's currently got I don't know, too many head of cattle at that value, says uh they're only going a hundred bucks an hour. I'm not in this anymore.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Well, the government has already decided that. The single country party that we already talked about, run by the enigmatic but slightly unhinged leader, has already decreed that okay, you you're still going to produce cattle, but it's going to be used to feed Australians. It's not going to be used to feed wealthy um Arabic.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Was it Joseph Stalin or was it?

SPEAKER_03 19:13

You can pluck a name out of the air. Um we're in a political situation now where there's a very real chance that crazy right wing um political party, which we won't mention, um, stands a good chance of um you think so?

SPEAKER_02 19:36

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Mate, the rules got changed in 2016 because Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Oh, that's I didn't believe that either. It could never happen.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

And I that's what I said. It's never gonna happen, and if I'd have had to bet my house on it, I would have said it's never and it's not just happened once, it's happened twice. And it's not just the US that is elected um crazy right-wing isolationist um nutbags. We've got one of our own.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

And our homegrown nutbag is gaining traction, not losing it.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

We'll probably find that out tonight.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

What's happening tonight?

SPEAKER_02 20:17

South Australian elections on today. Yeah. So you'll find out what a real chances are.

SPEAKER_03 20:25

The likelihood of them becoming more powerful and hopefully not powerful enough, but the likelihood of them becoming more powerful increases as the viable opposition to the government that we currently have, and you know, this this nation's built on swapping governments, right? Change is part of the process, and they're not that much different between you know red and blue. But orange, orange is different, and as long as as long as the blue continues shooting itself in the foot and eating its own babies.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

So this is where my life of yours is different. I just look out the window and there's a bird flew past there.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

I wonder what kind of bird was that. Yeah. Well, I got too much time on my hands, Marty, which is the problem, right? Because I don't have to mow lawns or I don't get a chance to look at. It's just me and the dog, and her her grasp of English isn't she's not good at carrying on a conversation.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

So, but who's in charge then?

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Well, yeah, she's a good listener and I'm in charge. There's the truth.

unknown 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

So I don't know, I I I don't see the Holocaust coming. I don't see the yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

Famine is the problem, right? Because famine is what brings um a loss of social code. Right?

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Oh yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 22:01

Because when people haven't got enough food to eat, then they'll start murdering each other, right? And I I keep on saying we are we are constantly discovering what are the things that people will do when they know they can get away with it.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Oh yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_03 22:21

What we know that kids will do when they know they can get they can get away with it is 30 of them will tear up a golf course on their electric motorbikes, right? Because they know they can get away with it for now. Famine is the and one of the people I want to talk to is a copper, and I I don't know if it will be possible to talk to him and give him this, you know, the dog flu scenario and say, tell me what happens to policing in this.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Is that well we made short of it with COVID, didn't we? The borders and the and the and the all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

People went to their homes and they pretty much stayed there. Well the majority. There were some crazy voices that the majority did. The majority did, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:06

And I think that was a little bit of um uh to do with leadership, but it was whoever it was, and I thought as much as I disliked Morrison done a good job. He stood up every day and chanted whatever he was told by the World Health Organization by the C S IRA or the or whoever it was that was looking after the real pandemic. I thought he done a good job of presenting and and doing. I thought that like he and Tasm um Victoria did, um Daniel Andrews.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Daniel, and and uh I think our navigation of the of the COVID era was excellent.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

But we had a good result.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

We got it.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

And if you look at what happened in other countries.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

No, no, that ever happened again, though.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Well, I don't I think I don't think I've any trouble behaving away the same way I do. A lot of people saying they're not having the flu vaccines because of what happened with COVID. Yeah, there's there's not there's nothing background to that.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

So people actively not re-vaccinating, not just a passive like me, I'm just too lazy to go and do it.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

If they walked in the door of the shop and they said, Listen, do you want a COVID vaccine now? We'll give it to you. I'd say, yeah, no, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

And we'll make our appointment in April, I think, to that month, but yeah, but they're we've got friends and it's their their choice. Obviously, disappointed in people who've got pillaries for their views and expressing their views just because it was their view. By people who have another view.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Once you start proselytizing about anything, yeah, or all the bets are off, right? If if you try and tell me that Jesus is Lord, then okay, it that's it we're allowed to talk about this now. We'll put a book about it. We'll stay we'll stay quiet on the subject until you try to.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

That's a better position to take because it does start hooding your life sometimes, do you? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

I can probably only think of a couple of people now who I remember were hard anti-vaxxers.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

We have people who lost their jobs. And one person was a paramedic, and and you would think in the health industry that would he would have been pro-vaccination.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

And he's a beautiful black medicine.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

He gave up his one of the best paramedics in the home.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Excellent job. Excellent practitioner, great black kind. Just said I'm not gonna I'll don't want to. Yeah, he changes tires. Yeah. And he and he won't go back on principle. But there was only a few. That's it it's astounding, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 25:43

They go that far, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

You're but they were right in their own minds.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Yeah, they're right in their own minds. But I I also you know, the human nature thing says there must be other stuff about their life that they didn't like. I can't see that. And this was just a catalyst.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

I can't see anyone that's gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Do you think that the the position is built way more on principle than it is on knowledge or understanding?

SPEAKER_02 26:09

It's got to be I think we've got to be there.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

And you know, we do this funny thing where and climate change is a great example of this, where where 98% of the scientists say that climate change is about to ruin everything, and the 2% we have to give them equal airtime, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:29

I think if someone's saying something simple, like, no, that's not true, you want to hang on to that because it the other side is too complex.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

So, do you approach this on the basis of these scientists know way more than I do who your ego fellow is, ma'am?

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Well, we've Denise and I've got a thing with some people that's proud in their research, which means they've beautiful. And they make decisions about their health. But I I my and Denise gets the shits on me a bit about it. If I see something like the replacement layers down, what's that and they find out? Oh, not enough baby band, well, why is that on all things to epigenetics? What's that because I've I've my ref search is to kind of rig something meaningful and and and buy someone who's got some credentials. I think I think that's it.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Do you trust the scient the scientists and their credentials?

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Genuine scientists would never say they're right. They say they'd say this is what I find. What what we're seeing today is that A plus B is easy to C. Yeah. Um but two years ago it was it was a different equation. Yeah. And this is what we're we're gonna we're gonna test this theory. I believe then. And and they would turn around, I think if they found that wrong, they'd turn around and say, gee, we've got that wrong. Um something was wrong there. So not blind, not blind trust in science, um interest in it. But where do you get it from? I've I've read some scientific journals, but only someone interested in that.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

Right, and here's the problem, right? Um, is um the the opposition of the argument will say just go to the internet, you'll find it. The truth, you know, the truth is there. And and I think, hang on, I'm not I'm not I don't have the knowledge or the education or the experience or the wisdom to know whether what I'm looking at is true or false. So I'm gonna leave this to the people that win Nobel Prizes, I'm gonna leave it to them to be an expert in their field. You bring me your bike and I'll fix it. But if you tell me how to fix your bike, take it somewhere else.

unknown 28:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Um we've got friends who uh went through this big scare on hormone replacement. Don't take it because it's gonna do all these things to be able to do. Because breast cancer.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

There's a generation of women my age who have severe osteoporosis because they had no estrogen at their years, because they didn't take any hormone replacement, because some of the whack TV shows said an adverse reaction to being proven that it's not true.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

And it was suited in their brain then, and they kept believing despite their doctor saying it's not true, or not doctors on the doctors say so we were when I cut the hand there last year, we were sitting at the handling trying to have a review, and it was practically the handling.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

I said, Mom, just stop and look around the waiting room, the demographic in this waiting room. It was women at my age, women in their 60s, we're broken up.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

They were falling down the steps or like a bike or tripping over in the bathroom and they all come in in the sling or maybe just because you bank next to wow, that's poor. Because of some pseudo signs. So yeah, I think we're all in this together. Actually, Captain said to me yesterday at that funeral, I was just thinking about this funeral. He said, I wonder what yours is going to be like. He said, What do you mean? So I hope you're dead before you're gone.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

I want to go to yours before you go to mine.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

It's a funny thing to say, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 30:12

But I agree with him, I think your funeral would be pretty interesting. Probably 15 years ago, I finally figured out that the thing that I should have done is become an anthropologist.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

Because people are the most interesting thing on the planet. Their ability for good and evil is such a massive spectrum. It would have been the subject that would have interested me my for a career. Fixing bicycles, maybe there's still some anthropology in that. Who knows? Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Isn't it? Yeah. And I when we get away on a long ride and you see someone suffering, I'll go up to them and say, Look, I'm just gonna talk shit, and if you want me to go away, I will.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Thanks, mate. Thank you. Well, it's been a lovely conversation, thanks very much. This week's podcast episode was made on the lands of the Wanarooa people. We acknowledge them as the traditional custodians of this land and pay our respects to their elders past, present, and future. I would list the authors, producers, sound recorders, editors, and directors of what just happened, but we all know it was me and that I was assisted by the dog. In the next episode, we travel to Bathurst to ride with a crazy bloke who says he knows that he's not crazy because his mother had him tested. Tune in for that episode after Easter. Stay safe and keep riding.