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Adam Spencer Australia_S All Rounder Is A Comedian Swans 1 Ticket Holder And Lifelong Numbers Nerd

I hope you enjoyed this chat with one of the great minds of Australian entertainment, Adam Spencer, a legend of Australian Breakfast Radio.

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Published 9 days agoDuration: 2:062039 timestamps

2039 timestamps

I hope you enjoyed this chat with one of the great minds of Australian entertainment, Adam Spencer, a legend of Australian Breakfast Radio.

In this chat here, Adam gives great insight into the opportunity of artificial intelligence and what it offers to improve our kids' learning.

He talks also around AI-generated misinformation leading into the US election and his fears for what may come as a result of that.

How respecting the process and preparing properly has helped him to become the world debating champion and one of the most respected speakers in the world.

And it's people like Adam who inspire the work we do at Alita.

Love you to check out our signature Alita Connect program where we're bringing together groups of five or six people from different and diverse backgrounds around Australia and around the globe now to learn and to lead and collaborate,

whether they be from sport or from the arts or unique people like Adam that shared learning.

And he's also a member of the Alita Connect team.

The Alita Connect environment facilitated on a regular basis is something that we're really excited about.

Love you to check it out.

Book a discovery call.

Head to alitacollective.com for that and check out Alita Connect.

Huge thanks as always to Jason Nicholas and his team from Tempur, Australia and New Zealand.

They are the world's leaders in betting.

It is a mattress like no other.

And we've got great respect and thanks for them for helping to bring conversations like this one with Adam Spencer to the table.

People who operate at a level like Adam will understand that sleeping properly and effectively,

is one of the great keys to a happy and successful life.

So selecting a mattress like Tempur, a mattress like no other, is a great life decision.

Adam Spencer is one of the most interesting, intelligent, entertaining and unique people that I have ever met.

A genuine math genius, legendary breakfast radio host for more than 15 years,

won the World Debating Championship in 1996,

a multiple bestselling author of books based on the endless possibility of numbers,

and one of the world's most sought after MCs,

and keynote speakers whose TED Talk, which is brilliant by the way,

with the title, Why I Fell in Love with Monster Prime Numbers,

has been viewed more than 2.3 million times.

Aside from that, Adam is genuinely one of life's great people,

and it's always a great pleasure and privilege to spend some time with Adam Spencer.

Adam, really appreciate you joining me today.

Lovely to be here, Luke.

Really good to be on the pod.

Can I just quickly, at the top, very flattering introduction.

On behalf of genuine math geniuses,

I should put,

I should put my mathematical ability in perspective.

I'm a very good popular mathematician.

I did all right.

I started a PhD at uni and didn't finish it.

The way I like to think of it is in a room of randomly selected people,

I'm a math genius.

In a room of maths PhDs,

I'm as dumb as a box of hammers,

but it's not so hard to avoid being in a room of maths PhDs.

To use the sort of sporting analogy that you might understand,

just say,

I was a handy club footballer at like University of Sydney level,

and then for some reason the Swans said,

look, come and have a couple of games.

And halfway through my second game,

they had a bit of a look and said,

this guy really can't play at the super elite level, can he?

But now I'm on Fox footy on the weekend commentating,

and I'm hilarious explaining what guys who could never,

you know, do what I could never hope to have done,

are really doing.

That's sort of where I fit in the mathematic world.

But maths is so intimidating for some people.

It's very easy to give the impression that you exist on a completely higher

plane to them.

Well,

certainly in this conversation,

Adam,

you're a math genius compared to where I sit on that spectrum.

And I find what you do quite extraordinary because to me you do exactly that.

You turn numbers and fractions and algebra and stuff that I genuinely have no

interest in.

And then until I hear you talk about it,

and then I'm instantly fascinated.

And to me,

is that the problem with someone who hated maths at school like me?

Is it because it's not taught in an interesting enough way?

Is that the problem?

There's a real challenge and I don't beat up on teachers because teachers are amazing and it's a noble and

dignified profession,

but there's a real challenge having enough qualified teachers who have a passion and real understanding of maths at crucial stages in kids'

high school.

I like to say,

you give me your,

kid and make me their French tutor and in six months,

I'll give you a kid who can't speak French.

Make me their tennis coach and in six months I will give you a house tennis player because I don't understand how to run the

weight up through my back leg so that it's a top spin.

I just don't know how to do it.

I would not be able to teach anyone else.

They estimate up to 40% of kids do a year in high school,

somewhere between seven and 10 year 10,

seven and 10 probably where they're taught by a teacher who's not qualified to teach maths.

That must be so tough for that teacher.

But you hear the stories of just the look,

do all the questions on page 35 mark them in the back of the book yourself.

Get back to me.

We'll be back here tomorrow.

That's just not the way to teach something as beautiful,

but at times challenging as mathematics.

And that's what I love about passion,

Adam.

I love how it shows up in,

in unique ways.

And you're a man full of passions that I want to get to,

but the love of numbers is obscure.

It was that something that's in your DNA.

Did you just,

love that from an early age?

Where'd it come from?

Yeah.

From the earliest stages I can remember,

it just,

it made sense to me.

So again,

my mates used to say,

you're just lucky.

You're just a genius at maths.

And I guarantee you in primary school and I had some natural ability and I was going all right,

but I guarantee you I did more than they did because I loved it.

I just,

I could,

I used to the teacher and say,

do the 10 questions in the book for homework.

Why would you do 10 when they were 50?

What about the other 40?

And I'd just do them and I'd bring them in and occasionally say,

look,

I think there might've been a misprint in question 37 because I've done it three times and I'm pretty sure I've got the right answer.

But I just,

I fed on the stuff and in the same way that if you've got a couple of kids,

one who kicks a footy a couple of times a week with a local suburban club,

another who trains three hours every day because they love it and guarantee you they're going to be better than the first kid as long as they're getting quality coaching and instruction.

So I,

I loved doing it.

I had some natural smarts,

but I did the 10,000 hours or whatever you need.

Just loved doing so.

And I think that gave me a real headstop.

And I can't remember an age.

I can't remember back in second grade,

third grade saying things that would have teachers stare at me a little bit because it was just,

it was just a world I loved living in.

And Adam,

my mind's going as you're saying that to a conversation I had walking my kids to school with another dad in junior school and brilliant guy.

I think he was in the fruit and veg game and he had three boys,

but one of them,

the middle one was just obsessed with coding and he could not understand where it came from.

He said,

it's beyond any of the DNA of my wife and I,

but he asked to become a border because he didn't want to waste time leaving school and the wasted time to get on the train to go home.

So they were finding a way to get it when he could be coding and he would be reading these textbooks at him out of love.

And he'd get to page 376 and he'd say,

Hey,

you know,

that's written by a professor at Melbourne university,

but I think they've got that wrong.

And so he'd be firing off emails to said professor just innocently thinking I can help you here.

And now that had been picked up by some algorithm at Google and Sergey and Larry had decided that was a good thing to fly this family to Google because they're saying,

don't worry,

don't worry about this kid's 14.

He's thinking in a way that we need to think about.

I wonder if the world had have been Adam Spencer might've trajectory might've been slightly different.

Yeah,

I think there was,

I mean,

I never,

I never went to any schools where they did enrichment and additional stuff.

So I only ever just loved doing what I was doing and doing all that.

I do.

I do wish if in around year seven or eight,

a teacher would come to me and said,

look,

you're pretty handy at maths at this school.

There's lots of other kids made at other schools,

or just as handy as you.

And did you know Adam,

you can actually do maths Olympiads.

You can represent Australia in mathematics.

And if someone had said to me at a younger age,

you might have the potential to maybe go close to representing Australia or whatever.

But to be honest,

Adam,

I don't think you'd have the guts to work hard enough.

If somebody just wave that flag in front of me in year seven,

year eight,

I'd be fascinated to know where I would have landed with that sort of stuff.

And I think a lot of the time in life,

I would,

I would always,

always prefer to have had an absolute best crack at something and lost or fallen short.

Or when I started to do my PhD at university,

I realised,

in fact,

because I decided at fairly last minute,

yeah,

let's go to that next level of study.

I did not have the tools in the kit bag to do original mathematics or research.

And once I started to realise that and looked around and I stumbled into the radio thing,

I genuinely don't know

if from first day,

first year uni,

I'd had a PhD or something on the horizon.

Genuinely don't know if I could have completed one or not.

And I'd much rather know,

yeah,

you probably wouldn't have quite got there than genuinely not knowing if I would or would not have done so.

That sort of frustration of never having really known where your limits were in something.

I do have a little bit of that,

but that's fantastic for your boy.

It's like that with these popular books I write,

they appeal to a lot of,

it's not high school maths.

It's just beautiful stuff from all over the place.

Some of it's stuff you might not see until second or third year uni or never at uni.

They're just little beautiful moments of maths and trivia.

And they appeal a lot to kids on the spectrum

and the parents of kids on the spectrum who just give them one of my books and say,

go away for two months.

I'll see you when you're done.

And I did a book launch once for one of my books

and we went to questions in the audience and all these kids raised the microphones.

This girl who would have only been about 11 or 12 asked this question.

She said, look,

in your last book on page 43,

you asked this question and I've done it so many times

and I just keep getting the same answer.

And it's not the answer you've got in the back of the book.

You know, what's going on?

And I said, was it the question about blah, blah?

She goes, yeah.

And I said, yeah, back of the book's a misprint.

It's a total misprint.

You're correct.

And she stepped away from the microphone

and just gave herself a little fist pump

and then just walked back to her seat.

And she wasn't walking around going, look at me.

But just this moment of affirmation,

because she just could not understand how she hadn't got this right.

And she'd really done the work on it.

And I said, no, you're right, mate.

It's just the book's wrong.

And she was walking on clouds for the rest of the event.

You know, there's something, the young curious mind,

when it hits a challenge and then realises they were right,

it's just a beautiful moment.

And I love what you just said then around,

you know, there's an ever-growing community of, on the spectrum,

you know, different discussion for another day probably,

but I've got dozens of families,

families that I'm connected to that, you know, are dealing with that.

But what you're describing is the beauty of it at times as well.

There's, you know, it is a spectrum.

So there are kids that have enormous challenges at one end.

And then there's this incredible ability to use the mind in different ways.

Is that something we need to celebrate more?

You're probably fairly neurodiverse as well.

Mate, when you and I were in primary school,

those kids were just called the spazzers.

And you had a bit of a laugh at them and you might,

hopefully looking back, weren't part of the group,

but there was a group who just picked on them.

And there certainly wasn't the, you know,

you'd have the one in a million case of then the kid would sit down by the piano

and everyone would realise they were the next David Helfgott or whatever.

But these kids just didn't get the sort of learning support that they needed to flourish.

And which is really unfortunate for them.

And also for us as a society,

because when you get into the spaces where these kids grow into young adults and really shine,

they can do things in computer coding and cyber security

and the creativity in those spaces in particular,

that a lot of people who aren't on the diverse spectrum just cannot do at all.

And it's really encouraging.

I'm more often these days might go to a school or something

and you'll be doing a session and it's moving up towards lunch.

And you'll notice there's a few kids who are already out in the playground with the big headphones on,

being allowed to have a bit of their own rec time because if they have lunch,

when there's 350 kids running around and playing British Bulldog and all that sort of stuff,

it's just a little bit too much for them.

So even that our systems are flexible enough now to realise,

some kids just get a little bit overstimulated or intimidated by massive crowds and noise.

So let's just let them have lunch 15 minutes earlier or later than everyone else.

So even that's a small step in the right direction,

but the workforces and the communities that harness the potential of everyone are the ones who are going to do best.

And the new,

the first community is still a massively untapped resource.

And Adam, I love having conversations.

You've met to a couple of topics that I want to ask you about.

And you spoke about cybersecurity and coding and stuff that I know when I bounce it off you,

I'm going to have a better understanding myself.

And so there's a selfish purpose to this particular podcast.

But starting with ChatGBT,

and it's brought for me artificial intelligence straight to the mainstream almost overnight.

Microsoft,

buy it for $10 billion.

I think for 50% is maybe the numbers that immediately gets this high profile.

We're suddenly playing with artificial intelligence on a daily basis.

Can I ask you,

I want you to put your futurist hat on for a moment.

What does artificial intelligence play in our lives going forward in the next 10,

20 and 30 years?

Yeah, it's really interesting and it has been a crazy ride the last six months.

I mean, most parents first heard of ChatGBT,

when they got a letter from their kids school saying,

don't panic.

We've banned ChatGBT.

And half of us were thinking,

yeah, cool.

Is that like some flavor of vape or something?

What is it?

And I okay about it.

Well, please explain to me.

Yeah, because when they released version four after version 3.5,

it was explosively better in a lot of tests,

a lot better than they did.

The jump from 3.5 to 4 was larger than even the people who created the model.

It's expected to be.

That's what got everyone talking.

But artificial intelligence in many other forms had been around for a long time before these language models.

So previous to language models,

most of us dealt with artificial intelligence when you turned on Netflix and it said,

you watched this,

here's eight other things you might watch.

And those things were surprisingly almost unnervingly accurate.

When Spotify just throws up a channel and goes,

well, if you like these three artists,

you might like this.

That's all artificial intelligence.

That's algorithms.

What are you watching?

How long are you watching those things?

90% of the people who watched this also watched that and that and watched it,

not just for the first few minutes,

but to the end,

that's a suggestion of those sort of behavior models.

And also other things like the algorithm that taught itself chess from scratch,

played 5 million games against just parallel versions of itself.

And in four hours,

just four hours became better than the world's best dedicated chess,

computer that we had designed,

right?

That sort of neural network machine learning model is now applying itself to examining how proteins are folded in three dimensions and creating these complex.

Chemical substances that used to take an individual an entire PhD or maybe years of their career to work out the shape of.

We're now going to the researchers going,

look, it's going to look pretty much like that.

Why don't you start from there?

It's revolutionized.

The field of protein folding,

for example.

So in areas of medicine and things like that,

new network machine learning models are already fast-tracking the world of medicine.

You won't recognize,

you know,

1520 years from now,

the degree of personalization,

the ability for things to scan people and in real time,

give feedback to doctors and practitioners and that sort of stuff.

And then there's the chat GPT language models.

They're going to change everything,

but the massive field,

they're going to change the two things I'll give you.

Education both on behalf of the teacher trying to assess where 20 people are at until recently.

You've had to give them the same exam with the same 10 questions on it.

And you know,

the old maths exam,

you have five easy questions,

five medium,

five harder,

and then the five I used to run straight to at the end,

the real brain busters,

right?

If a student gets the first three easy questions wrong,

is there any point going on to the medium and the hardest stuff?

Now,

let's stay there and find out.

What's going on?

If someone hits the first three easy questions over the fence in five seconds each,

do we really need to try the medium stuff?

Now,

let's spend this hour we've got with them probing deeper.

So you'll have a class of kids and no two kids will do the same exam at the same time.

They'll all do an exam that hones in on and the teachers will get feedback of following five kids probably shouldn't be in the class.

These kids going.

All right,

these two kids that you're giving 90% to.

Well,

she really gets it.

She's brilliant.

She's just a bit lazy with the working.

He goes,

all right,

but to be honest,

I think he's just crammed the formulas into his head.

I don't know if he really understands whether this really nuanced focused learning and on the student side of things,

you'll have a a tutor for life.

The sort of thing that you will learn with and do your homework with at home in primary school will stay with you through high school through uni or a trade or whatever.

And all throughout your career when you then micro credentialing and and there's something else that you need to learn that you don't even know.

You don't know.

Yes,

it will be prompting you going with you should really upgrade your skills here and here and it will know how you best learn.

Are you visual?

Are you verbal?

Do you like short closed sentences?

Do you need to be told something 50 times before you get it?

Etc.

You'll have these things just walking you through life.

And the second big one that no one's talking about my is we must only be a couple of years away from a world without a language barrier.

They just think about that for a second.

But it's it's very soon.

I'm sure between you will just speak into the phone in English.

She will hear you in Icelandic.

She will speak in Icelandic and through the phone or your airpods or whatever.

You will hear her in near perfect English.

Imagine a world where our kids can't think of a place in the world.

They wouldn't visit because they wouldn't know what people were saying.

Imagine how much humanities been held back because just a language barrier makes someone seem like a natural enemy.

Or a weirdo or a wog or whatever.

Imagine if you could talk to or work with or whatever anyone in the world at any time.

Large language models are going to evolve quickly to the point where through portable devices in real time.

You'll just have and you can still go and study ancient Greek if you want.

Knock yourself out.

That's a great thing to do.

But you will be able to communicate with anyone on Earth.

We've never had a world like that before.

The amazing Adam.

I love where your mind goes to on that.

I was thinking of a day I had lucky enough to go over to the World Cup Soccer in Brazil doing breakfast radio.

And I had a full day in Chile as the flight connection came.

And I got out.

I'm not going to waste this day.

And so I hired a driver.

I'm going to make it a full myself.

I speak Spanish, don't I, in Chile?

Or they're speaking whatever it was.

Anyway, Google Translate out.

And so I had this driver.

And I swear to God, Adam, I said in Google, where can I get a good coffee?

It was the first thing I wanted.

I knew it would start the day with a coffee.

He took me to his brother's strip club, Adam.

So I said this to my wife.

And she said, sure, that's what you said to him.

So I'm not sure that was quite working.

But I'm with you.

Imagine in real time being able to just converse.

And that's not far away.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah.

I don't think so at all.

And I mean, there'll be an interesting gray area.

And in the early phases of these technologies, there will be funny and embarrassing.

And embarrassing mistakes and things like that.

And you won't instantly be able to argue the semantics of Shakespeare or something like that.

But sufficient to be able to say, where can I go and get a coffee and not get taken to a strip club?

Or to be able to work with people.

If you're in an organization that's got an international footprint and it's actually based in Japan,

you'll certainly be able to work with people to the point of, okay, I'll have the report for you by next Thursday.

Can you just give me those figures?

I'm pretty sure the March ones.

Are 30% under.

Can you check why there seems to be a gap there?

And you'll absolutely understand what everyone's saying.

And the big implication for people in Australia, for example.

I'm sure a lot of people listening have been on that call where there's someone in New York,

someone in London and you or whatever.

And it's never the person in New York who says, don't worry, I'll get up at 3 a.m.

for the next call.

It's always the port.

We're in a really weird time zone.

That's only going to get more pronounced.

Our kids, if they work in an organization with an international footprint,

will be expected to be able to work with anyone in that organization anywhere around the world any time of day.

And certainly the sorry, I don't speak Dutch will just won't be an excuse anymore.

It's just going to be fascinating.

And you'll be able to at least in a basic way read,

you know, the famous novels of any culture that's ever existed.

You'll be able to share stories and tales.

You'll be able to understand just the beautiful idiosyncratic sayings that people have in different languages and things like that.

We've never lived in a world where everyone could speak to everyone.

I genuinely think it's coming.

And Adam glass half full, which you genuinely are as a person for the entrepreneur

or someone who wants to be ahead of the curve on AI.

What are some opportunities for those that are early adopters in this space?

Yeah, well, it's really it's really challenging because it's exploding so quickly

and it can seem like it it's just everywhere.

I think the challenge the key is the words you use there about early adoption in whatever way impacts your industry or your work.

You have to be open to trying to find out what that is.

Now, you've got to be careful.

Some of the people online who are talking a big game in this space.

If you look back through their social media history six months ago,

they were talking a big game about crypto and five years ago,

they were talking a big game about where you can get discount,

you know,

Viagra and stuff like that.

But others are genuinely informed.

So there's quite a few commentators on Twitter and things like that,

who are fellow who at the end of each week ago,

here's the 10 most amazing things I've seen this week.

This famous graphics things been updated now,

so you can do X Y Z keeping a pulse on a couple of those things is worthwhile.

If you're an older person in an organization and this really does,

it's just not your natural game.

What I think this changes,

that that traditional power pyramid where you all work to the boundary.

My dad worked literally the one job for 40 years and three days,

and he certainly came through a generation and I did to it.

Most of my mates.

I went to your high school with a working at least in the same industry.

Now as they do,

they might have changed once and then you get to a place and you stay there.

And the longer you've been there,

the older you get the gray,

you get the bigger your business card gets the smarter you get you get the really nice office on.

The corner.

And then all the kids come around and they just they drink from the chocolate fountain.

That is your wisdom.

And there's still a role for corporate memory and a bit of wisdom and straightwise and that sort of stuff.

But that parent pyramids been inverted or smashed open now by these sort of technologies.

When you feel 64 and a half and you're looking at retirement at the end of this year,

you can probably bullshit your way through a lot.

But if you're 35 to 50,

and these technologies don't come naturally to you,

but you've still got 10 20 30 years in the workforce.

You've got to keep abreast of it surround yourself with the younger people in your organization

because they're the ones for whom this is far more likely to be natural.

If I was a manager in a medium-sized organization,

I'd be reaching out to the four or five younger geekier punks who seem to get this

and I'd be saying okay every Thursday 9 to 9 30.

You're coming in you're pitching to me and the other three leaders of the group here.

Just tell us two or three.

Cool things you found.

And the other important thing is with so much amazing shiny stuff out there.

Don't make the mistake of seeing some incredible piece of AI going.

Wow, my mate who works in financial services uses this.

We've got to use it in my graphic design organization.

No, no, no start by looking at your organization

and ask what's not working here.

What are the pain points? What are the opportunities?

What are the challenges?

How can I help us with that?

So start looking in and then look out for the solution.

Don't look out into this sea of solutions.

Some of which are brilliant.

Some of which are dubious and then try and you know shoehorned into your organization.

If it's not really solving a problem in the first place.

So at the other end of the scale and you have Elon Musk and I'll misquote him

but along the lines of if we don't have an off switch for artificial intelligence humans have the potential.

To be reduced to the status of a domestic cat.

Should we have some fear in the in the mix as well?

Or is that a wild statement?

Looking he's not one to trade on the slightly more nuanced side of a tweet all day long,

but he is absolutely onto something the speed at which this accelerated from 3.5 to 4 really caught people by surprise.

We can.

We can take comfort in the fact that some very smart people are thinking very hard about this

and certainly have flagged it as a bit of an issue.

But some of the challenges some of the major challenges around when content is out there.

Is it possible to even label it in a way where you can tell if it's AI generated or natural things like watermarking and things like that.

They seem to be actually quite challenging technical problems.

Early on there's the risk of scams.

There's the risk of eventually an artificial general intelligence going wild like a Will Smith movie or whatever,

but they're all you know in the future and reasonably hypothetical.

But I think at the moment the biggest one of all of them is just the risk of disinformation misinformation people generating stuff.

That simply isn't true to try and win a political argument or destabilize a situation deep fake videos.

Things like that of all the stuff going down or to be going down in the near future.

For me next year's US presidential election is just going to be a misinformation disinformation hit show.

It's you've got you've got the perfect storm.

You've got two warring parties many of whom are deeply deeply connected to their own base.

They they're naturally easily led and by they want to believe certain things.

They've probably don't have the objectivity dialed up as much as it should be.

You've got a new technology that can generate fakes and things like that,

that they haven't really had to test their objective minds with yet.

And you've got the biggest prize in the world up for grabs.

Probably be faced off again by two really polarizing figures outside of their own parties.

And it won't be Luke. It won't be like I've said this to someone the other day.

It won't be a video of Joe Biden going.

Well, I'm Joe Biden.

I really like having sex with farm animals or anything like that.

But it'll be Joe Biden looking straight down the camera and saying a thousand percent convincingly.

Obviously, as we transition to a green economy, there's going to be some pain in traditional coal mining states.

But these are our brothers and sisters.

They are our fellow Americans. We'll put our hand out and we will walk with them.

And ninety nine percent of American voters will never see that deep fake attack ad. Right.

But if you live in one of four swing states and your social media suggests you've never really bought the whole climate change thing,

you will be belted, belted with that little bit of misinformation.

And when I guarantee you at the end of next year's president, whoever wins,

the other side will just bring forward hundreds of examples of bogus ads and deep fake videos and all that going.

You guys lied and cheated. We just refused to accept the result.

Whoever won will then produce twice as many deep fake videos.

But the losers produced. Neither side is going to accept the result.

And that one really worries me because we're nowhere near mature yet at looking at stuff and thinking.

That looks a bit dodgy. I might go and see if there's a second or third source to correct that.

You see it on Twitter. It's true.

And you get angry or you get excited. But the disinformation piece really concerns me.

Given that both parties haven't agreed on the last election,

Adam, as we head into this election, your point...

At the moment, Ron DeSantis, who's trying to stop Trump get the nomination for the Republicans,

he released an ad where he was saying that he thought Trump was too soft on Fauci.

Trump should have just sacked Fauci early on, is Ron DeSantis' position.

So there's all these images on the ad of Trump in press conferences and cozying up to Fauci.

It's my understanding that there's one screenshot of that where of the six images,

three of them are deepfake video that never happened.

It's 18 months out from the election and these two guys are on the same side.

And they're running disinformation against each other.

When it becomes Trump v Biden or whomever it is,

you won't be able to believe what you read and see on social media for six months there in the States.

Mining for truth is going to be an industry itself, isn't it?

How do you actually even get to agree on facts before you can have a debate?

That's already happening, isn't it?

And for a generation of us, it's hard.

For kids coming through, education has to realise these large language models are here.

We can't just ban them.

We have to respond and use them creatively.

But a portion of that has to be kids being told get your chat or whatever to write you an essay

and then market yourself.

Go and look at other independent sources and work out did it get anything wrong?

That critical thinking, that check a second source,

does that really sound right?

That sounds like a pretty amazing claim.

Let's see if there's any more evidence for it.

It's going to be more important now than it's ever been.

I want to ask you about cyber security,

another industry that's just come an enormous way.

I remember the emails you'd get from a Nigerian Prince Adam saying,

I'll guarantee a million dollars.

Just hand over your bank account details.

But now it feels like every day we're all getting bombarded with really sophisticated,

smart potential hacks.

What do you think is the cyber security industry?

Oh, so one stat that Telstra alone blocks something like 300 million dodgy SMSs

and 400 million dodgy emails in Australia every year.

That blocks them even getting through, right?

Add all the other carriers, add the other ones.

There are billions of attempts just raining in on the firewall of Australian consumers every day.

You talk to people who work in the big tech spaces.

Our national infrastructure, banks.

You saw some of those places that got hacked and data breached last year,

just under constant attack.

Excuse me.

Some of it by 16-year-old kids in their basement,

but some of it by professional crime gangs,

some of it and a lot of it by state actors.

There are several countries in the world,

and you can probably name most of them,

who just make a profession of this sort of stuff.

And it's become a genuine weapon.

There was a chart I saw that when the Russia-Ukraine crisis

looked like it was getting very serious,

and they sat down at this negotiating table

to try and find a way out of war.

Ended up not working.

But on the same day,

like at the same time as they're sitting at the table going,

is there anything we can do about this?

Russia commenced a gigantic cyber bombardment of Ukraine,

of critical infrastructure,

of banking and finance, of health systems and the like.

So it's become, even between nation states,

an accepted weapon of war.

So it's bigger than it's ever been.

It's more believable.

Something like 95% to 98% of all ransomware attacks

involve a moment of easily avoidable human error.

So these things do what's called social engineering.

They just encourage you to do something you wouldn't normally do.

Click on a link.

Click on a link or provide a password.

And they're getting more and more well put together,

lacking the spelling mistakes.

The email looks far more legitimate.

They will trace your other social media

so they'll know what the particular hack is for you.

They'll know the sort of advertisement

that's more likely to get you to click.

People are going to have to be more and more worried

about this sort of stuff,

both organisations and individuals,

because it's not a problem that's going away anytime soon.

It's that traditional arms race.

We're getting better things to defend it with,

but we have to because the attack vectors

are getting nastier and more informed all the time.

You'd like to think you've got a decent radar yourself,

but you're right.

When a text comes through on your NAB banking feed

that's the same line and it's asking you to do something

and you're busy and you think,

I'll just click on that link.

The thing called spoofing,

where they can hijack a phone number

and so it is the same phone number

that in the past CBA have sent you an account update

or put in this six digit number.

Now it's not,

but they've managed to fake that it is.

You've got to be,

it's called zero trust.

You've got to have a zero trust mentality

unfortunately at the moment

and you're better off within your organisation

than ringing that person from finance

or popping up to their office and saying,

just checking,

this was you who asked me to park a million bucks

in an account we don't normally put it into.

Yeah?

And run the risk of the girl from finance going,

I'm really busy.

Yes, it is.

An irritating horse.

An irritating horse slightly

rather than sliding something across.

There was an example last year.

A Guardian journalist took an AI voice synthesiser

and she didn't even talk into it directly.

She just gave it access to a couple of blogs

and a couple of interviews she'd done.

That voice synthesiser faked its way

into her Centrelink account.

Voice was meant to be your fingerprint.

No, not anymore, baby.

That is extraordinary, isn't it?

Changing gear, Adam introduced you

as the world debating champion in 1996

and you've got a whole range of other credits

in that space.

I've seen you share the stage with Hollywood A-listers,

John Travolta and captains of industry

and CEOs and internationally renowned astrophysicists.

But I generally think the hardest thing

you have ever had to do is

emcee the Sydney Swans post-grand final

after their loss, 81 points to Geelong in 2022.

And for a bit of context,

those that don't know Adam Spencer,

he's wearing a Sydney Swans beanie as we see.

He's a former number one ticket holder.

No one loves the Sydney Swans more than Adam Spencer

and their post-game function,

you've got the players, you've got the coaches,

you've got the families of the players,

you've got the most emotional room

you could possibly imagine.

Now, this is something I want to play

because the genius of Adam's words

and the way he was able to find the right tone,

it only goes for a couple of minutes,

but I need to play it back

because I want to talk to you about it, Adam.

You hit a note that very few could

and I reckon one of the hardest times.

Have a listen to this.

Ladies and gentlemen, as Andrew said,

today was tough.

But it is important to note that if anyone in this room

thinks they're hurting any more than any of the players

or the coaches at the moment,

you are kidding yourselves.

But as we sit here, I just want you to take a moment

and put all of this in perspective.

Because if you told me six months ago,

at the start of this season,

that in the week leading up to the grand final,

we'd be universally agreed to be

one of the best two teams in the AFL,

I would have broken your hand shaking on that deal.

If you told me in 1982

that we would celebrate the 40th year

of the Swans in Sydney

as the nation's most supported

sporting club of any code,

if you told me in 1993

in the middle of a 26-game losing streak

that we were only a couple of years away

from a grand final appearance,

and a period of finals and grand finals appearances

that would be the envy of any club in the competition,

if you told me the day the momentous deal was signed

that nine years later

I'd be standing with a childhood friend on the SCG

in 2022

celebrating with 30,000 fans

during a game

while Dane Rampey had a picnic nearby,

I don't think I would have believed

any of that.

And while today hurt,

it really hurt,

I know one thing,

that I'm not going to let the triumphs

of the last 40 years,

the last 20 years,

the last decade

and of season 2022

be stolen away from me

by two cruel hours this afternoon.

Tonight, it is our job

as lovers of this great football club

to pay our dues.

Because if we rejoice in the victory,

if we celebrate in the highs,

if like me,

you let a win on Friday night

put a spring in your step

for the rest of the week,

then tonight,

we put our arms around the ones we love.

We take our pain,

we put it aside,

and we make it known to these boys

how much we love them,

how much we are in awe of them,

and how proud we all are to say

that we are supporters

of the 2022

AFL Runners-Up,

the Sydney Swans.

Adam, that is a gift.

Do you see your ability

to find the right words

at the right time

as something profound?

Because you generally do it better

than most I've ever heard.

Oh, thank you, mate.

I remember that night clearly.

It was, you know,

obviously a horrible night.

Some people would think,

why would you have the party?

But think about it,

you can't at 5.30

when you realise you've won

the grand final go,

okay, let's organise

a celebratory dinner

for 1,200 people

to start 90 minutes from now.

So this is all booked in in advance.

And it's the great gamble you take

as an MC agreeing in advance

to do this.

And I've done it more than once.

And I have done one winning time.

I did the mighty 2012 grand final

after the Swans dealt with the Hawks.

But I've done more than one

where we haven't come out

on the right side.

And there's,

yeah, it's immensely sad

and downbeat.

And we were even,

when I was in the room

minutes before the players arriving,

it still wasn't confirmed

who was going to speak,

how it was going to go.

I'd been told to keep my bit really short

and just get out of it

and not even do anything like that.

And it was during

one of the other speeches beforehand,

which was understandably very downbeat,

but was really downbeat

in a room of 1,200 people

who were then going to sit around

feeling pretty glum about themselves.

And it just came to me

that obviously that really hurt.

But two things.

One, if you think you're hurting more

than any of the players,

you're fooling yourself.

And two, why did it hurt?

It hurt because we love these guys so much.

And it hurt because we know

how much happiness they can also bring us.

And so if you're going to take the happiness

and if you're going to walk around on clouds

for a week when you win and all that,

then you have to accept sometimes

you're going to take the biggest bumps of all.

And it did.

It wasn't like we all then just went off

and partied like nothing had happened.

But I do think it probably managed

to put a bit of a more positive spin on the night.

But what meant a lot more to me was

I know having spoken to some of the players since,

those who were able to focus

and listen on what I was saying,

it did mean something to them.

It did come across as genuine.

It put in some small way

how bad they were feeling

in a slightly more positive perspective.

And that was the most important part, I think.

I had the past players hat on there, Adam,

and I always just imagined being in that room

and thinking that's what you want someone to say.

And so for you to be able to do that in real time,

you can't prepare that speech.

That one comes post the result.

And so I just think it's brilliant

that you're able to capture that

in the moments that you have.

Has there ever been someone that's intimidated you?

Have you ever sat down on a stage and thought,

wow, this person's thinking in a way

that I'm in trouble here?

Has that ever happened to you?

Oh, that can happen reasonably regularly.

But I'm lucky in that the role I'm normally playing

is not that the audience are also just as expert

and I'm the one who's out of my depth.

I'm normally trying to tell that person's story

to an audience of lay people

where I'm quite possibly the person

who understands this subject matter or story

second best in the entire room anyway.

If I had to interview a world-class astrophysicist

at a world astrophysics convention

about their latest research,

I'm in all sorts of trouble

because I'm the dumbest guy in the room

by a long, long way.

But if I'm interviewing a world-class astrophysicist,

in a room of people,

practically none of whom are world-class astrophysicists,

then as long as I listen,

anything I don't understand

is probably something that most of the room

don't understand.

If I've done my basic homework,

where I'm lucky, I think,

is the questions that naturally pop into my mind

tend to be the sort of questions

that the average person in the room

would quite like the answer to.

One of the skills sometimes,

if it's an area you know a little bit more about

than the average person,

sometimes the skill is to put your whatever away

and not try and show,

I'm pretty much as smart as this guy

because one, you're not,

and two, that's not the purpose of this exercise.

It's to take people with you on the journey.

A mate of mine was recently on a podcast in the States

with a gentleman,

a gentleman called Preet Bharara.

Preet was a former New York Attorney General

and he's now got this politics and podcast.

He interviewed an old uni mate of mine

about the American,

Aussie guy,

but a world-class economist

about America pushing towards the debt ceiling

and whether that was going to blow their budget

and all this sort of stuff.

And I got in contact with my mate afterwards

and said that sounded fantastic.

And gee, Preet was good at asking questions

but gave the impression

that he had absolutely no idea what you were talking about

and needed it explained to him.

But I'm pretty confident Preet knew a lot more than he let on.

And my mate said, yeah, absolutely he did.

But he asked perfect questions on behalf of the average listener

who doesn't know much about the debt ceiling

and can you bail people out with super bombs

and things like that.

So sometimes there's a bit of just not really feeling

you could keep up with how the interview subject's mind works

isn't necessarily the problem.

Bigger issue is if they just don't want to be there.

And you used to get that more,

you had a handful of interviews back in the old Triple J radio days

and all that where halfway through you're thinking,

well mate, I don't particularly want to talk to you either

if you don't want to be here.

I don't understand why either of us.

I did have one train wreck interview with Macy Gray,

the soul singer,

where I'd done breakfast that day.

They were in town

and they were going to perform for us in the afternoon.

So I'd come back in to interview her

and she came in and sat down at the microphone

and they got her to do a quick sound check

and she went, you know, one, two, three, one, two, three,

one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five.

And I just said, you're awesome at counting.

You're not just a great singer.

You're really good at counting.

She goes, counting's great.

I love counting.

And we just had this awesome chat.

It's wonderful.

Jokes flying everywhere.

Then the interview's about to start

and she insists on one of her bandmates coming and joining her.

You know, I didn't know who he was.

He didn't want to...

And it was just an absolute train wreck.

And I remember just thinking during it,

like, you clearly don't want to be doing this.

That's fine.

Don't put us both through it.

But also, please don't turn up

and just be unbelievably engaging and lovely

and really funny and a bit of a smart-ass

in a great way for a few minutes beforehand

to show me what you can do

before then going into rock star,

difficult-to-handle status.

Brilliant.

I had a second listen to your TED talk,

which is brilliant.

I encourage everyone to do it.

And you quote Galileo in that,

amongst other brilliance,

that the universe is written in the mathematical language

is one of the quotes that you use.

And I was reflecting on that

and given your knowledge and understanding of that,

how likely is it that there is other life

on other planets in the universe?

Can you put that into some context for us?

It's a really good question, mate.

That there is other life in the universe,

I think,

almost absolutely guaranteed.

You only have to look at how quickly

life arose on Earth

once the conditions were possible for it to happen.

But basic life doesn't seem to be

that much of a ridiculous fluke

once you've got certain temperature

and a bit of liquid water

and certain elements in the atmosphere.

And those conditions of planets in that temperature zone

and what we can tell about their atmosphere

and the distribution of elements throughout the universe,

those sort of preconditions

should exist on a lot of planets.

I think there's been countless times

in the life of the universe so far

where you've got some basic microbial life.

But the interesting thing was

that on Earth we had that microbial life.

Now the Earth's,

let's say the Earth's four billion years old

and within a couple of hundred million years

you look like you're starting

to get the beginning of something.

But that lasts for billions and billions of years.

Before it then becomes

what you might think of as interesting.

So it seems as though

the really basic microbial stuff

that seems to happen fairly readily.

But even if you found a universe,

a planet in the universe

where there were trees

and evolution had got as far as say

the equivalent of fish,

that would be mind-blowing.

But places in the universe

where there are other beings

sitting around asking each other,

do you think in the vast expanses of this universe

there are other people out there

who could think the sort of things

that we're thinking?

That's a completely different ball game.

And the unfortunate thing there is that

however likely it is that that exists,

I think it's massively more likely

that we'll never encounter it.

Because the universe is just too big, too far.

The sort of distances you'd need

to get to anywhere else

are so far to traverse,

there's not much incentive

to try and do it in a bizarre way.

I think it's conceivable

that your SETI,

search for intelligence,

will one day hear something

that suggests

there's communication going on there

and we could even communicate that.

We might one day,

with incredibly precise instruments,

scan you and see a planet

and see what's happening in that atmosphere

and go, wow, that sort of stuff,

those elements don't occur naturally.

They only occur when you burn certain things or whatever.

Wow, there must be some sort of industrial problem.

There could really be something smartish out there.

But whether we'll actually ever

have the aliens on a slab

with the US government operating on them

and keeping it all secret

because the UFOs have crashed on Earth,

that's such a massive step beyond

do those things exist

and even could we ever have

basic communication with them,

that the odds start getting,

unfortunately, witheringly small.

But I think within our lifetime,

we will detect some sort of life,

quite possibly,

within even our own solar system.

Underwater lakes

or under methane lakes

on some of the moons in our solar system,

we could well find something really basic there.

And what would be super, super exciting would be

if there was a degree of similarity

between those things.

Now, one of the questions people ask is,

if we did find life elsewhere,

how much does it have to be like us?

And some people think, to be honest,

if you look at the way that animal life developed

on lots of different continents

that were completely separate,

a lot of the animals came out looking very, very similar.

That's like running lots of experiments at the same time.

You may well get things,

it may well be quite natural

for advanced life to have arms and legs

so it can move around.

It probably has things

so it can interpret things visually.

Once you start getting into those specs,

I don't really care if the alien's got six arms

or is shorter and fatter or whatever,

but it's quite possible other life forms

are not incredibly dissimilar to what we've got here.

But whether we ever meet them

is another thing altogether.

But somewhere in the universe,

if we find on another planet somewhere,

some really basic microbes or bacteria or whatever,

and lots of that DNA is similar

to what we've got here on Earth

and in species here on Earth,

that's really interesting

what it says about the commonality of life.

If it's a completely different form,

it's really interesting again.

I think we could,

fingers crossed,

we could well find something like that

in our solar system,

but we're far more likely to find

what most people are just going,

oh yeah, come on,

you're calling that life,

in our own backyard

than advanced life anywhere else

in the infinity of space.

As always,

I love your answer to a question.

You frame it in a way

that has me engaged every single time.

Passionate about leadership

and what it looks like, Adam,

in different settings.

And I've had great pleasure on this space

of talking to people from the world of arts

or sport or from industry

and a range of different people.

And yours is such a unique story, Adam.

I love it.

I'm going to call you a math genius

because you are in this conversation

and you're one of the most articulate people,

but your brain works in a unique way.

So I'm fascinated to ask

these set of questions to you.

The idea of self-leadership for me, Adam,

is something we're a bit obsessed with.

It's hard to have an impact

on someone else as a leader

or in any space

if you don't have a sense

of your own leadership.

Does that term resonate with you?

Yeah.

And an awareness of your own strengths

and weaknesses

that you bring to any situation

is a really powerful thing to have.

And, you know,

in some ways,

as an athlete,

when you're being constantly measured

and prodded and probed,

you as an athlete could say,

OK, look, I know my strengths are

I can run really long distances

and I don't get tired.

I can catch the ball

very high above my head.

My weaknesses,

not as fast as I'd like to be

over 15 metres.

If someone punches me really hard,

I tend to retreat out of the game.

Those sort of physical parameters

are quite easy to measure.

Knowing how you perform

as an individual,

as a leader

or the impact

that your behaviours

and demands have on other people

is probably a lot,

almost by definition,

it's a lot harder

to get data and a read on.

But it's really important

to try and have.

And I think people's willingness

to search for their own deficiencies

and educate themselves on those

and try and improve them,

whether you're leading

in a business situation

or even just in a caring relationship,

with a partner

or good friends

or anything like that,

is crucial.

Self-awareness

and self-leadership

can only happen

once you have that self-awareness.

I think that's a big part of the puzzle.

And we see people really conscious

in the space that we're in,

in the community of growing leaders

around how they impact people

on a daily basis,

how they go about having

a positive impact.

Is that something

that you've thought about

or something you do daily?

Yes.

Back when I was host

of a breakfast radio show,

especially my second incarnation,

which was on the grown-up adult ABC,

and I was the sole announcer there

for eight years,

and I had a team of three producers

with me on air at any day.

Now, a pretty core group of three,

but there were probably

about five or six people

on replacements on holidays

and all that sort of stuff.

Very small team.

At any given day,

working with three of them.

In really interesting circumstances

where everyone,

as you would know,

permanently exhausted

really physically

and mentally challengingly.

The situation of working,

getting up and working

when you're tired,

and not just a little bit,

but when you're really tired

on some of those days.

And the challenge for producers

who aren't the stars of the show

who get all the plaudits

and everyone rings up

and wants to talk to, et cetera,

but their role

and their performance

is absolutely crucial

in the show being any good.

And the willingness of a producer

who would have every right

to go home if they wanted,

because they've done that

in their hours,

to go,

eh,

I could do one more edit of this.

I could tighten this up

a little bit more.

And it would go from being good

to being really good.

Now,

how big is their incentive

to put in that extra work

when they're really tired,

just to essentially make me look like

I'm better at doing the interview

than I was at the time

that I did it?

You're only going to get

that sort of buy-in from people

if you have a really healthy,

good relationship with them

in the first place

and where they both

buy into the concept of the show

or whatever the business is

and want to do that

as well as possible.

But also,

there has to be a degree of

respect for you as a person

to also make them want to make

that sort of commitment.

You don't have to be

their best friend.

It doesn't have to be,

you know,

I'll do anything for Adam

because he's my buddy.

But it has to be,

yeah,

he's the sort of person

who I would happily

do that bit of extra work for.

I think one of the big determinants

of how,

you can engender

that sort of relationship

with people

is absolutely

the way you treat them

and the respect you show

for them as individuals.

If you don't do that,

I think it's,

you cannot,

you know,

you hear stories of people

in some of those

intense work environment,

creative work environments

who do just bully people

into getting results.

Sometimes it works

for a period of time.

It can't be great

for anyone to be involved in.

Healthy,

respectful relationships

are the only way

I could ever imagine

doing that sort of stuff.

Yeah,

my mind,

Adam,

brilliant to hear you

share that by the way,

but we share

a great mutual friend,

Will Anderson,

who you did Triple J Breakfast

with for six years.

And I worked on Breakfast Radio

with Will

for a couple of years

and I,

coming out of an environment

where feedback

is just something

that's given and received

daily

in professional sport

and you don't have time

to,

to think about it

on the field

or,

and it tends to flow

into your life afterwards,

in some ways,

positively.

But when you then go

into other environments

where people aren't used

to that,

I remember

that was my default position.

If I saw something

I didn't think

we were going well at,

I would confront it

straight away.

And I remember

having a chat with Will

and he was like,

mate,

that's pretty confronting

what you do.

It's,

I come from a world

of comedians

where we talk

behind each other's backs,

you know,

regularly,

but no one's going to,

and I respect

what you're doing,

mate,

but you need to

come a bit too,

mate,

you need to.

And I remember,

I remember Will telling me about,

because for people

who aren't familiar

with the show,

it was yourself

and Eddie McGuire

and Will,

and Will was the comic foil

and Eddie is,

yeah,

Eddie has a very sharply

defined,

distinctive character

and in a show

like yours,

as the comic foil,

there's going to have

to be times

when Will

has a go at Eddie

just because

Eddie's got to be

the butt of that joke

or Eddie's just

in a position

where he's the one

to take the pot shot at.

And if you're going

to make a living

doing something,

a portion of which

is seeming

to be taking

the piss out of someone

or hitting them

in bits where they're

a little bit uncomfortable

and really,

you know,

not backing off,

then that person's

got to respect you

and,

and respect

your right

to do that

and know that it comes

from a place of

this is how we do

this show the best,

Eddie.

This is not me

trying to humiliate you

otherwise,

that's not going

to last long

at all.

And so absolutely

in,

in that sort

of environment

that,

that connection

and respect

for each other

has to be there

even though you can

then go on

and do stuff

that's pretty full.

I mean,

you know,

if,

if feedback

is coming

from the right place,

then it,

it,

it can be uncomfortable.

It,

it can be,

it can be a little bit

more difficult

than you think.

But,

but I,

I think

it's,

it's a,

I think that's

a good question

to answer.

I think that's

a good question

to answer.

Um,

I think

oh it was the speakers oh the footy was on in the other room when you're just dying with the pigeon

joke for the fourth night in a row and no one's got the courage to go mate that either needs a

lot of work or it just doesn't make any sense oh that sort of honesty and feedback in something as

public as as broadcasting and and the creative arts is absolutely crucial yeah brilliant and

you're right the fine line isn't it when you're in that environment of the respect and and the

prodding part it's a it's a delicate dance but uh when it with my with my producers because

they're always coming back to me with ideas and all that sort of stuff and there used to be a sort

of unofficial uh moment with a new producer where they'd say look i'm thinking of you know this

thinking of doing xyz and i would just say mate i don't care now if you first hear that that's

i don't care it was my way of saying all yours mate you don't need to bother me with those

details i'm back that you'll get this right and it was a sort of little badge of

you

you've made it the first time you've got an i don't care from adam now anyone else listening

in you just go well of course you should care mate it's your show no no no i don't care was

my way of saying you don't need my endorsement or authority to do this mate i absolutely back

that you've got this off you go no need to bother with me anymore and if it's not up to

scratch it's my fault for trusting you at this stage but i'm sure it'll be fine

that needs a bit of clarity though around it too doesn't it otherwise it can be misinterpreted

i like it uh creating and sharing a vision we see people really conscious about how they do that

uh those that are consistently successful how have you gone about that in your many different

areas um when you're leading a team like a creative team that's a really important part

of the process and it yeah it's it sounds so obvious but it is true first of all you have

to have some concept of what that vision is and how you're going to do it and how you're going to

do it and how you're going to do it and how you're going to do it and how you're going to do it

yourself and i think a lot of people when they arrive in a new gig for example not certainly

when i started on set i came on the 702 which was called now abc sydney after a period of real

um an announcer i've left in the middle of the year before and by the time they appointed me

as the full-time replacement in the seven or eight months since 10 different people had sat

in that chair some of whom were just filling in for the next couple of weeks

some of whom were auditioning for the spot some of whom thought they were auditioning for the spot

and actually probably weren't they gave the position to someone who then when they realized

they have to do their own paneling on the desk didn't have the skill set to do that so

would remove themselves from the position after only three weeks it was really shambolic um

and so when i got there and they threw me in it was just early on a case of let's just

let's just get

through to the end of this shift without the wheels entire and also i've come from triple j

so i've gone from being the sort of young punk who was probably a bit young to be on triple j

sorry a bit old to still be on triple j to this crazy young kid who'd listened to rap music and

hip-hop and was on 702 so there yet for the first few weeks it was just seat of the pants stuff and

i was learning really really quickly but the moment we got a bit of a feel for who i was and

how it would work yeah we absolutely had to

um come up with a concept and a vision and and communicate with each other about what we thought

that show was um once we had got through those first couple of weeks and it wasn't a debacle

then we had to actually ask you what is this show how does it work what are my strengths what do i

bring to it and yet you sort of have to do that in the creative arts because it's default the show

was defined by me so we had to have a vision for how it works and what we could do best but you're

right that it's important for any

organization and you would have said this in sporting teams as well core principles and what

this organization stands for if people buy into that then you can get little things wrong

occasionally in the execution of some little plan or someone can make a mistake but if everyone's

pointing in the one direction of what it actually means to be doing what we are doing at the moment

that's that's absolutely critical in a group of people moving in one common shared direction and

then you can get some great wins in the short term but if you want if you want something to last

when it's challenged when it's difficult when people have their own other issues outside of

work etc to deal with as well you've you've got to have clarity around what you're doing and why

you're doing it yeah brilliantly said uh curiosity is a word that we speak about a lot and through

curiosity it's how we find people approach their

activities and what makes it best for us and what we do better is that we can use it in general

to help others and learn and develop and learn and improve and that goes back to the physical

quality that we want to have in our business and that in the gaming community yeah that's

absolutely critical and I'd say that's why i think that's really critical that you've got

it right there's not much that we can do in our team and so i guess we've got time for themes

that we want to make sure that we go through and i think it's really important that we make sure

that we make sure that we're really focused on the things that we are going to berahed

by so that you are able to have very clear and consistent learning and improvement is that something

that you've thought of

What I don't understand about you, Adam, is you can walk out on stage

in front of 2,000 people with a script that deep down you know

is probably not ready to go or without full faith in the tech around you

and an event that's being held together by tape,

and you just walk out confidently and you'll take that

and everything will go fine and you're one of the best people

they could have doing that thing.

But if your daughter says she was going to get on the 4.15 bus

and she ends up on the 4.22 bus, you wig out and you just stress out

in a way that is totally disproportionate to the situation.

And she's so much too control freakish and a much too –

we're going out to the World Cup football on the weekend

and we're bringing our kids from – and it's a little bit confusing

as to how we –

there's a few options, buses, trains,

but I've just gone too far into the matrix of –

well, if we park – now, if we park the car there,

we could all get on that bus.

If my daughter brings her other car, which holds more,

we could transfer to that car, get back,

we'll miss the first couple of legs of the train

because that's where the traffic blockage is going to be.

We can then rendezvous with the bus.

That should get us back to where the first car is parked,

swap cars.

That could be eight minutes more efficient than just getting the train.

That's an algorithm unfolding before our very eyes, Adam.

I love it.

I can see that happening.

We talk about communicating with clarity as a dimension of leadership

and I'm talking to the world-domating champion,

one of the most articulate people.

But the genius for me is you, is the way you use your words.

Do you think about it?

Is it something you communicate for a living?

Is it a strategy that you've put together

or is it just the way it unfolds for you?

I do think –

my mind works fairly quickly with words.

It can find words

and I am starting to plot out often an answer to a question

when the question's halfway through.

It does sort of race like that.

But the amount to which communication

and effective communication is practice

is really undervalued and misunderstood by people.

People talk about the nervousness of public speaking.

I genuinely believe when you're nervous public speaking,

most of the time,

it's not the eyes looking at you that are making you nervous.

It's the fact that for the next six or eight minutes,

you're going to hear nothing but your own voice.

And that doesn't happen all that often.

Even in this conversation we're having here,

we're constantly jumping in on each other.

It's very rare that you just speak for seven minutes uninterrupted.

I think that is a big part of what makes people nervous.

And if someone before,

before an event and I say,

have you got the script?

They go,

mate,

I've read it 10 times.

Right?

Have you read it out loud?

Have you read it out loud from go to woe?

And without being facetious,

I'm really comfortable with the sound of my voice.

It doesn't make me feel weird.

I don't feel self conscious.

And I'll do events where if I'm hosting an awards night,

and obviously the awards section is unique.

I've never done this night before.

But my opening joke about this is a non-smoking venue,

blah, blah, blah.

It, trust me,

is the best non-smoking venue joke on the corporate circuit in Australia.

I'd suggest the world,

right?

I've done that joke 50 times.

When I,

the night before any event,

I will read through the entire script out loud.

And I will read through that joke again.

It's just the muscle memory that accumulates from saying words,

from looking at the page and seeing words that gives you the ability to

look up around the room and come back and,

and know where you were on that page,

because you've seen that very page in front of you multiple times.

But if you're going to be speaking where they're going to be putting prompts up

on a screen below,

get copies of what those prompts are and practice talking to them.

Now there are some people are more shy than others.

Some people have voices that are easier to listen to than others.

Some people are more intelligent,

might have a better vocabulary and the like,

but to become the best communicator you can,

requires,

practice.

The number of times a big corporate events I'll see,

and this is not just the monthly sales,

this is the big one for the year and it's full of 2000

people.

And if this event goes well,

the sales that might flow through from these pipelines are in the millions or

tens of millions of dollars.

And you see one of the C-suite 20 minutes before they go to

present,

walking out of the tech group going,

I want to make a couple of changes.

It's on this memory stick now.

Now,

unless that presentation needs time sensitive stock market information by law,

you have to say what the share price was at five o'clock yesterday,

or you're going to jail.

Then in what circumstances have you not locked that thing away a week ago or

fortnight ago and performed it six or eight times in exactly the version it's

going to be to a group of close friends and EAs and other C-suite around you to

make sure you're ready to absolutely smash this.

Now you're busy.

I know you're busy,

but you're going to try and do it anyway.

Do it in advance and give this the best it can be.

The number of times I've just seen people not respect the process as much as

you have to,

if you want it to be the very best you can do.

I think you've just given people a great insight,

isn't it?

You listen to someone at your level and you think,

oh,

wow,

what a,

to be able to do that with ease and just turn up and,

and,

and find a way they're underestimating.

Uh,

you mentioned buddy Franklin with your swans beanie on it.

He's one of the great goal kickers,

but he does more goal kicking practice than anyone as well.

And it doesn't just turn up and happen.

It's why you go to a wedding and you often see a car crash because someone's

written a perfectly good speech that was appropriate and fine.

And then they maybe have a couple or they see someone being funny and they

think I can overreach here and go for more.

And then the car crash happens because you're going off.

And you've got no idea where it's going to end up.

It's amazing.

And within that,

I mean,

yeah,

a bit of humor never hurt or anything,

but if you're not a naturally hilarious person,

but you've really connected with the subject matter and a couple of people

have given you a couple of tips of things that are bagging.

If you just speak with passion and,

and,

and show that,

you know,

this organization and you're the right person that they,

these people should do what you're suggesting because you know what this

place is about.

That's going to win you as many friends,

uh,

as a couple of hilarious gags in a presentation that otherwise you didn't

really seem comfortable with in this.

And you fell out of order and didn't have a,

an overarching now practice,

practice,

practice.

It's amazing.

The difference that can make.

And how important is collaboration been for you in your life?

That's interesting because some,

some of the stuff I've done,

I really have done by going alone,

but when I've had to collaborate,

I've,

I've loved it.

Like the breakfast radio with Will and I was entirely collaborative.

Uh,

and,

and there was a real,

there was a real sort of,

uh,

it was a real art to giving the impression that was all just on the fly.

Or we were two people who had a lot of fundamental differences with each other.

And in some ways almost didn't get on.

And will was remarkably good at giving the impression.

He was not as bright as his subsequent career,

hosting multiple television shows and all that.

Any,

any,

anyone who got the impression that I was the science genius and he was the

dumb,

Hey,

see the yokel who,

you know,

did,

didn't understand what physics was or whatever,

uh,

you know,

fell well and truly into our trap.

Um,

can I just jump in and say,

they're sorry to do that because I've had the pleasure of being around you and

will and Mick Malloy and,

and the guys that are like you consistently funny are almost the most intelligent

people you meet.

I think the skill to do that,

you look at the great creative gene to do that regularly.

There's an intelligence behind that.

And we'll,

Anderson's got that as Mick Malloy does.

And the others have worked with,

sorry,

I just needed to jump in because you're right,

isn't it?

There is a skill to make,

making it look off the cuff,

but it takes a lot of intelligence to do that.

Well,

And it's also,

it's funny that when you get,

and I think Mick's a profound comic talent,

but when you get,

that's why I love the people like Mick who play the every man.

And it is,

he is in some ways,

absolutely an every man,

but I think in a lot of circumstances,

it's not in Mick's interests to let people know.

That he was ducks of his school,

you know,

that not many people will understand.

Remarkably intelligent individual that he is.

I've been lucky.

My life's been a great balance of collaboration and doing my own solo stuff,

writing the books,

you know,

the people help with graphics and all that,

but those Matt's books were essentially me picking up the ball and running with

it,

but the television shows and the right essence.

So to do a radiation,

you obviously collaborating with your producers when you're putting stuff together,

but to have done two radio shows,

one of which was in a genuine time.

I'm one of which is made.

This is,

this is,

this is a lot of,

this is going to rest with you and you alone today.

I've quite enjoyed the balance.

The balance of that.

And how about the greatest leader in your life?

Adam,

who's that been?

The greatest leader in my life.

That's a really good question.

If I went around and thought about it in depth,

I might come up with someone else,

but I was lucky enough to be at the ABC when a guy called Mark Scott was the managing director.

And Mark did,

I think he did a couple of five year terms.

And then moved on and he gave a great speech at his farewell event where he reflected on when he started at the ABC and he sat down and drew himself up this sort of five year plan and the 10 big items that you had to,

he had to really focus on and he said,

I was looking back at it and it wasn't a bad plan.

You know,

there were a couple of things I didn't have on my list that turned out to be reasonably important.

Then he spent the iPhone streaming.

He took over the ABC.

And within moments we just jump into the new digital age of smartphones and connected devices and things like that.

He was the first one to make a call of we need something like iView,

something where people can just stream.

Why would you,

why would you make it easy for people not to watch the seven o'clock news at seven o'clock?

Because the seven o'clock news is at seven o'clock.

That's why it's called the seven o'clock news.

Why would I,

why should I be able to watch it the next day?

He was the first visionary to see that sort of stuff.

And the amount of stuff that he,

the amount of change that he helped that organization navigate in the time that he did.

And with the ABC in particular,

because it's such a national treasure of an organization,

when you're walking around being him,

you're just as likely to get a question from Senate estimates about some budget item as you are some kid complaining about the new announcers on Triple J,

as you are some 75 year old woman going,

I can't find the second episode of,

of heartbeat from the other night on the app,

what's going on and he's his ability to be across enough stuff that he could at least maintain a conversation on every one of those leaders.

I've seen in those hybrid organizations,

something like a national broadcast that you have to run as a business,

but as a clearly defined role outside of that,

you would notice that the people who run footy clubs,

they're running a footy club is like running a,

a listed company,

but one that has an AGM,

well in fact has 23 AGMs every Saturday afternoon at 4pm for the space of six months.

And it's really clear at the end of each AGM,

whether you won that AGM or not,

but it's,

it's in the business of winning football,

but it's a multi million dollar business at the same time.

Universities where your essential role is to teach and create knowledge and research,

but you've got an annual,

I was on the Senate of the university of Sydney for a few years,

but now annual budget was well,

well over $1 billion.

Yeah.

I'm in awe of people who can keep their eye on,

you know,

two North stars at the one time.

So I'd say Mark Scott,

I'd say a guy called Gavin Brown,

who was the vice chancellor of the university of Sydney when I was there and took it from

really being in the doldrums to being a world-class institution.

Again,

they'd be the first couple who pop in.

What Andrew Pridham's doing at the Swans and the team there and Tom Harley and all that.

It's,

It's really interesting stuff to watch.

And I love hearing it, Adam.

I love asking that question because I could tell you really took some think music there,

but to recognise people that have been that in your life and you're the maths ambassador

for the University of Sydney and you've been a great contributor there and incredible

contributor to the ABC and the Sydney Swans.

So it's great to take the time, isn't it, and see the respect for great leaders who

have that impact.

We love celebrating that.

Also obsessed with collaboration.

I love that, you know, I know that you've worked in isolation.

I've also seen you on stage with Karl Krasinitsky or doing incredible tours with visiting other

academics and astrophysicists and amazing hosting sessions where you've been able to

collaborate brilliantly.

Has there been one person that you thought, good, that's the person I'd love to just sit

there?

And any of your passions, any context, is there a name that you'd love to collaborate

with?

I was really lucky a few years ago.

I got to do a session with Gary Kasparov, the world's greatest chess player.

I'm an absolute mug chess player, but I love the game.

And Gary Kasparov, when we was talking to him about the burgeoning field of AI, because

he was the first world champion to lose to a computer.

He was in that age where computers got to that level.

And when we'd finished the chat, they then set up six chess boards and a group of us

got to play against Gary.

So I got to play chess against the greatest chess player of all time, right?

Now, the result.

The game is not the important part of the story, but just to, to, to just be there while

like the greatest ever was doing his thing was just like, you know, hair on the back

of your neck, goose bump, tingling, just watching the, the master.

He crushed me in 15 moves.

It wasn't important, but just, just to watch his cognitive processes rolling forward as

he just walked down the line and just played.

All of us was just, there was just a, there was just an electricity about being there

while that happened.

And he'd have six games going and his decision-making could look at the board and, and with not

even like a reflex action.

What was interesting was he occasionally would stop at your board and sort of stare at it

a bit.

And there's part of you thinking, wow, like I've got him in a position where he's thinking

of it.

That's pretty cool.

And I spoke to him about it afterwards and he was actually more likely to be asking me

and asking himself, what's the earliest in my chess playing career I can ever remember

seeing exactly that position on a board.

Would that be when I was eight playing that?

What was that guy's name playing back in Moscow 47 years ago?

Like these, the photographic memory these people have is, is the very, very limits of

what humans can do.

And it's just, that in itself is absolutely fascinating.

And I find spending any time with you incredibly fascinating as well, Adam.

There were so many areas to cover.

I could go on for another couple of hours because it's always interesting to get your

thoughts on anything that's unfolding in any discipline.

Really appreciate you taking the time today.

It's been something that I've loved and enjoyed and appreciate it as always.

Thanks, Adam.

Man, it's been a pleasure and congratulations on what you're doing here.

You're bringing together a really interesting community of people and there's just, there's

something that's really exciting about having your thoughts challenged a bit, having questions

answered that you might not even have thought to have asked.

The number of times I've listened to this pod, I'll hear you ask a question and my head's

already running like, oh, I think I'd answer this.

What's that person?

There's something, there's something you've got here that's really, I think, timely and

it's been a pleasure to be part of it.

Very kind of you to say, Adam.

Thanks again for the time.

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