Life Uncut - Is Fast Fashion Killing The Planet? Uncut With Natalie Kyriacou

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Climate is something that we know people care about. It’s something I think a lot of us have anxiety about and feel somewhat helpless around.  It’s also not usually the most sexy or humorous topic; but today’s guest has somehow found the ability to interconnect all of those things in her brand new book “Nature’s last dance”. Today we are joined by Natalie Kyriacou! Natalie is an award-winning environmentalist, writer, public speaker, and company director. She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and the Forbes 30 Under 30 honour for her services to wildlife and environmental conservation in 2018. Today we wanted to speak about our environmental footprint, some misunderstandings in how we view nature, and whether we are completely f*cked when it comes to climate. But we actually start this chat by Nat telling us that it’s likely the current prime minister thinks she vaginal steams…  We chat: Why younger generations seem to be more passionate about climate change and nature destruction The big organisations and systems that point the finger and tell you to use a reusable cup The fashion industry’s impact on our environment Conspicuous consumption - the peacocking of social status Are the damages to our environment too far gone to ‘correct course’? How climate disasters disproportionately affect women What we can all do to help “Greenwashing” and being brand aware Why the price of chocolate is going to skyrocket because of nature Animals and the cute curse The ejaculation helmet Bonobos and their giant clits   You can get a copy of Nature’s Last Dance  Follow Nat on Instagram  Join her on Tiktok   You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. Now we have an interview that's a little bit left of field for Life Uncut, being that normally we talk about relationships and normally we talk about things like relationships with, you know, romantic partners or your parents maybe. Situationships. But today we're talking about climate and the reason for that is because I feel like

it's one of those topics that everyone has a general concern or anxiety about unless you're a climate denier, but like don't put your hand up if you are. But it's something that a lot of us have a lot of feelings about, but it's also that thing that kind of gets parked because it's a little bit too hard basket and it also feels like it's quite in the future. It also feels like it's a problem that's so big that it's almost insurmountable to tackle on an individual level when it seems like government should be doing so much more. But in this instance, I mean, during the last election,

it was discussed so highly how much people care about what is happening in terms of politics and climate. And the real question is, is how fucked are we actually when it comes to climate change? So we're going to tell you you're doomed. No, we're joking. Hopefully it's not just doom and gloom, but we have Nat Kiriakou here. Nat has just written a book.

It's called Nature's Last Dance. And Nat is an award-winning environmentalist, writer, public speaker and company director. She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and the Forbes 30 Under 30, just have some more accolades, why don't you, Honour for her service to wildlife and environmental conservation in 2018. Nat, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

Nat, we are going to get into some, I mean, some lighthearted stuff and some very serious stuff. But before we do, we kickstart with Accidentally Unfiltered. So your most embarrassing story, what have you got for us? I've got quite a few, but one of them that's, I guess, sort of appropriate. Sort of. I think the Prime Minister thinks I do vaginal steaming. That's all you need to say.

That's fine. Also, why does Albo know if you do or you don't? It was a series of unfortunate events. But for some reason he follows me on Instagram. I don't know why. Because he thinks you vaginal steam, that's why. And sometimes, like a lot of the time I post really smart stuff, policy stuff, environmental stuff.

But sometimes I post things about sex, wildlife, sex, or you know other things and he always sees the inappropriate ones he never sees a smart post but one day I went and did an ice bath and then I made a joke that I now do vaginal steaming and nobody got the joke so then I got all these Instagram messages saying that asking like if I really do vaginal steaming it's not good for your vagina and then people like you meant to like sort of crouch over a bucket with essential oils and it was really weird but anyway the Prime Minister was the first person to see that video and then I panicked because I was like oh god I don't want him to think I do vaginal steaming. Well, I don't want all of these policymakers follow me. And I'm

like, I don't want them to think I do vaginal steaming. So then I tried to correct it by letting everyone know that I actually don't do vaginal steaming. And then I just went down this rabbit hole where I started explaining to people why vaginal steaming isn't bad. You could have just deleted the story. Yeah. I didn't even think to delete the story. So it was six posts and me just talking about vaginal steaming and he watched every single one of them and so it's so funny you know what's funny you know what's funny when you see like someone has love-hearted a story I'm just imagining Albo being like well done with the heart no the heart like flutters up in the air there you are in like an absolute fucking mental

spiral what is it that made you passionate about the environment and sort of go down this track in the first place uh I mean a few things all the regular stuff I spent my childhood outdoors camping all the time. I used to go camping with my family every second weekend. And then on the weekends we didn't, dad would pitch a tent in our backyard and we would camp outside and pretend we were in a rainforest and there were bears and things. But there was a pretty standout moment for me. I spent a few months living in the Bornean jungle, working at an orangutan rehabilitation center. And that experience was pretty life-changing for me. I had an orangutan steal my underwear. Like I got into a tug of war contest with the orangutan and I've got photos of this

orangutan wearing my underwear around his neck. And that was the moment you knew. And that was the moment I knew this is my new path. This is where I'm going. But yeah, I think it was just a combination of just really giving a shit. I really cared about the environment. I saw it as a human rights issue. I loved animals. I loved wildlife. I wanted to have a nice planet for everybody to live on, spend a lot of time outdoors. But then I got to have these really incredible experiences, both in Australia and abroad, where I was sort of seeing firsthand some of the destruction, but also the joys of nature. So I wanted to protect that. Do you think in terms of where we are in Australia and in terms of the government's

perspective and policies around it, are we doing enough? Or are you of the thought process that actually we're heading towards a real disaster? I mean, things aren't great. It hasn't been a good year. I don't think the government's doing nearly enough. I've been quite disappointed with their policies or their lack of policies. I think there are some countries, there are a few countries in Europe that are, I mean, doing really well and we've got a lot to learn from. So I don't think, I mean, we're not in a great state. I don't want to say we're heading towards disaster, but we sort of are heading towards disaster, but we can stop it. I mean, there is so many, so many stories of the most incredible people, grassroots communities, NGOs, policymakers doing

truly phenomenal things to protect nature, to try to limit the effects of climate change, of young people who have really loud voices now and who are doing incredible work to change laws, for example. So it's not all doom and gloom. There's amazing stories, but no, our government is not nearly meeting its responsibility, particularly to future generations. Do you think that there's a bit of an age disparity in the conversation in that young people are the ones taking it far more seriously than, say, our past generations? Yeah. I mean, I think we have people, environmentalists of all generations, but I think young people, well, they were born into a society that had largely accepted the science of climate change. And they're also the generation that is most heavily impacted by climate change and by nature destruction. So they know that their futures will be bleaker unless we stop this. So they're more engaged. Yeah, and it's also just exposure to different levels of education.

Like our parents' generation, while you knew things were damaging, they don't have the research that we have now, they don't have the evidence that they have now, and the accessibility to new information, what other countries are doing, they didn't have that. So there was nothing to compare it to and nothing, for want of a better term, like to fight for. There's been five mass extinctions in our lifetime,

all caused by natural things. And not in our lifetime. Sorry, in the world. Well, since the world's conception, no, not humans, before humans, prehistoric. Sorry, when you said in our lifetime, I was like, well, in the last 37 years. Prehistoric, like in the world's lifetime. There are a lot of people that, I don't know if it's a scare tactic that people are using. I don't know how much truth to it is.

There are a lot of people that are saying we are heading towards another extinction. From your research, what do you think about that? Yeah. So, I mean, Earth has existed for over four and a half billion years. the five extinctions the last one was the most famous that's when dinosaurs went extinct and that was about 66 million years ago most scientists now say we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction which does sound quite scary but how you not ideal is it it's not good so what it actually means is when 75 around 75 percent of species of life on earth becomes

extinct in a small amount of time but a small amount of time in life on earth is about two million years or two or three million years. So the rate, we haven't reached 75%. So 75% of our species on earth have not gone extinct, but the rate in which they have gone extinct, that's the problem. It's been in the last 200 years. So we're talking normally changes happen over millions and millions of years. Humanity is sort of- It's like expedited now. Yes. And all of the previous mass extinctions were caused by natural events. So volcanoes, astronauts here it's the exception in the sixth mass extinction it's humanity that's causing it

we are the only species in the history of life on earth to cause a mass extinction event and destroy life on earth to such an extent sorry i'm i'm not good at dinner parties it's not fun but i think it's i mean it is scary because it is easy to say that yeah we have a history of it it's a natural part of life's evolution but yeah it hasn't happened before where we've done it to ourselves. I find it really funny because we are the only species to actually debate whether or not we should maintain the conditions necessary for our own survival. And people say, you know, extinction's natural. And that's also true. So extinction has always existed, but usually it's one species goes extinct per million species. Now with humans, it's 1000 to 10,000 species per

million. So the rate of extinction is thousands of times higher than the natural rate. So that's the problem I think for a lot of people though and I mean I don't want to bottle everyone into the same sort of group but it feels like it's one of those problems that are so big and that there is so much to it but it doesn't feel like it's something that can be contributed to on an individual level and I know we're all kind of we're all kind of led to believe recycle reduce your plastic waste but then when you actually get into the nitty-gritty of in terms of like what huge mining companies are doing or manufacturing companies or what the governments are doing on large scale, it doesn't really feel like sorting your paper from your plastic is

actually going to be enough to make any indent change at all. Do you think that this is something that sits on an individual responsibility or is it something that has to be overarchingly policy change? Yeah. One of my biggest pet peeves was when a lot of the oil and gas companies came out and started telling everybody it was their individual responsibility because what they were essentially doing is saying, we're going to continue our business as usual, but it's up to you to not drive your car so much. And I just thought, that's crap. Of course, all individuals have a responsibility.

We should all try and work in our own ways and use our own power to make change. And I can talk about how soon, but it really, we need to change these underlying systems that create harm. And we have companies in Australia who, fossil fuel companies who are able to dictate what policies get through in government.

They have a huge amount of influence over government. We have companies that are sort of breaking laws, polluting lands, harming people, yet we're still saying, okay, no, this is up to the individual. That 11-year-old girl isn't recycling her coffee cup properly. And I just don't think that's fair. We all have a role, but some people in some organisations have an outsized role and outsized impact. So my focus is how do we change these systems? How can we change our political systems to have more integrity, to look after young people, protect young people? How do we change our economic system. So we don't have an economy that is based on endless consumption and

endless production. So I'm really focused more on systems rather than saying, oh no, that 12 year old girl, it's all her fault because she's hasn't recycled well. It's funny that you like even mentioned the coffee cup debate. So I mean, it would have been like five years ago now where like every single influencer online or people were like yelling at each other about people not using keep cups. Does anyone remember this? It was when keep cups first came in and there was this rule like you can't be seen on social media not using a keep cup because if you were then you were the problem and it's like I understand that that all is helpful and by no means am I trying to disregard the efforts that are made on an individual level but it feels as though when

you don't have a person to target we target individuals we say well that's the problem rather than being like actually collectively but it's much greater than what the individual person can do the individuals are the problems as well it's just that that can make a small dent in a bigger problem. It's the big conglomerates that are going to make the huge amount of change. But that's not to say that each individual, like everything adds up. A lot of people think that I'm just one person. What can I do? It's the same idea as if you're like, how can I help this charity? I don't have any money. All I can give is a dollar. If a billion people gave $1, that's a billion dollars. So it is the same idea. Absolutely agree. It's both. It's all of it.

My focus is on more on systems, but we need individual action and it does play a huge role. It's interesting what the shaming thing is really interesting because I agree with you, but there are cases. So in Europe, flight shaming is a thing where you sort of shamed for flying too much in aeroplanes and it has worked. And people opt for, I mean, they have better train systems, but people opt to catch the train and they can reduce their emissions easier. So I don't really encourage people to shame, but if we do encourage these sort of positive behaviours at an individual level, that can lead to systems change because what we see is cultural shifts and that's really, really important. I mean, we see it with celebrities now as well.

This whole like, you know, people tracking flights and understanding the carbon footprint of what individual celebrities or powerful people are able to have. We have such a huge female audience, like our listenership. and I know that one of the leading contributors, I shouldn't say leading, but a huge contributor is the fashion industry. What are the impacts that the fashion industry is having on climate change?

Yeah, so fashion overall contributes about 10% of global greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. It's enormous. My T-shirt, just this T-shirt, 7,000 litres of water were used to make it. It's about three kilograms of carbon dioxide were emitted and that's not including the packaging that it came in or the transport for one t-shirt for one t-shirt you also all of the chemicals that are used to

make it they end up leaching into waterways and impacting marine habitats and marine life so everything that we wear it has an impact and that's not to say that you need to you know sit in your bedroom nude and crying but it's just understanding that everything we use has an impact and we we consume at an enormous rate like far beyond anything any of our sort of predecessors consumed. We don't need wardrobes filled with hundreds of different outfits with their tags still on them. We don't need that. So we need to be rethinking. And I think we're seeing this movement now, but how can we share clothes more? How can we reuse clothes more? Can we make op shops cool? That's my next question. It's a perfect leading bit about conspicuous

consumption and how it shows up in our day-to-day life. But you've just made me realize, and I don't quote me on this but I believe it was Japan that not that long ago brought in like a travel clothes swap where you could go to Japan and you don't have to travel with clothes you can go to a store there that gives you like that loans you the clothes while you're there right then you loan it back and so the idea is you're you're not buying as much you don't need to travel with as much you need to take as much oh that's so cool yeah have a look at it but yeah anyway back to conspicuous consumption talk to us about how that shows up in our day-to-day life so conspicuous consumption it was it's a term that was coined by this guy called Thorsten Wieblin and basically he

said that wealth and power it's not enough just to have wealth and power you must put it into evidence because wealth and power are only really important once they're seen so people know that yeah yeah so it's like it's wealth and consumption activism really like it's peacocking but around your consumption habits which when you think about it it's quite a strange thing but you see like if you on dating apps might be guys that are sort of casually reclined in a first-class lounge or leaning against a Porsche or showing off their wealth or it might be designer handbags on Instagram, whatever it might be. It's demonstrating your desirability.

And so evolutionary psychologists have basically waded into this and said this could be an ancient mating ritual. And so then there was all these really funny studies about whether we're all peacocks and sort of like fluffing up our tail feathers to impress other people. So there's a biological underpinning to this in that we do want to put our best selves forward. We want to show off our worth and our attractiveness to society, to both attract a mate, but also

to gain social standing. So it's very real. And this isn't meant to shame anybody because we all do it to some degree, but we don't need to do it by buying super yachts. That's not encoded in our DNA. Oh, send mine back. So it's sort of society dictates how we demonstrate our worth. So whether we demonstrate it by designer handbags or whether we demonstrate it by acts

of kindness or whatever it might be. So what we're getting to now is a state where you have the world's wealthiest people, they emit more than the rest. I mean, they emit more than small countries or large countries, actually, where it is just this sort of endless consumption of super yachts and really extreme lifestyles. Looking at you, Bezos, that's who we're talking to. In terms of establishing just how grim the situation is with climate change, I think it's important to have a real perspective on what that looks like and what at the moment, if we're on the current trajectory, where's the world going to be in 50 years or 100 years? Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry in advance. We've got 1 million species that are facing extinction. 69% of our wildlife populations are declining by the year 2070. And this is based on leading climate science. By the year 27, kids would be going to school wearing masks. They wouldn't be able to just play outside. We would have artificial domes for them to play in by 2070.

and if they can make it to school at all, because there will be more disasters than ever before. There'll be more displacements. Insurance costs, there won't be insurance anymore. Insurance will be utterly unaffordable. Bleeding insurance have already come out and said that, I mean, people that don't believe in climate science, you don't really have to just listen to your insurance company.

They're saying we cannot insure these cities anymore because there are too many disasters and they are too extreme. The mental health toll on children will be severe. And that's not that far away. It's not that far away. The pollution levels outside, it won't be livable for many parts of the world. We would have some islands that are already underwater, increased mass migration for millions of people around the world.

We already have one in six people around the world that die from pollution. This is the greatest, in my mind, this is the greatest human rights abuse the world has ever experienced and we don't talk about that aspect of it it is it's because it at the moment it's happening to the world's poorest people people that are largely invisible but it is very real it's also because it's happening to in the future it's not tangible to anyone right now like it's not going to affect people in our lifetime but it's our kids and it's our kids kids because 2070 2075 is not very far away yeah which is really scary but you only need to see Like the number of natural disasters we have here in Australia now compared to even 10

years ago, the natural disasters we just saw, and I'm going to use one really specifically that was horrific, was just a few weeks ago was the flash flooding in America that came within 20 minutes. There was no way and all of the, so many people died and all these school girls died and there was no way that they could have been protected. It just happened. Like that stuff never used to happen. Of course, flash flooding was a thing, but flash flooding was a thing when you knew the

storms were coming, when you could predict that it was going to last this long. Like these kind of things are setting a precedent for things we have never seen before. And I can't imagine how much worse that is going to get in the next 20, 30, 40 years. I guess the big question though is, is it beyond a point where we can correct course? No, it's not. I mean, I'm not giving up. We know that the future, because the way the greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, We know that the future will likely be a bit harder for young people.

They're probably, they will have to live with more climate-related disasters, but we have a huge opportunity to build more resilient lifestyles to sort of undo a lot of the damage that we've done. So it's not over. But on your point, I just want to also add, this is a huge issue, particularly for women and girls. In times of these climate disasters, we see rates of domestic violence increase markedly, But we also see the survival rates of men far outweighing that of women.

So, for example, in India, during a natural disaster, a climate disaster, men survived women by four to one. And it was because women hadn't been taught to swim or climb trees, so they couldn't escape. And often women will have kids with them, which slows them down a little bit. It's a gender disparity. Yeah. So it's a real issue for women and girls as well.

What do you think is the most important steps that we can take? There's quite a lot. Knowing where your impact and power is. So if you work for a fashion company and you are, I don't know, a buyer, can you help or you have access to a decision maker? Can you ask them to start shifting some of their supply chain or getting them to buy from companies that are more sustainable or have a real verified commitment to improving nature or climate outcomes? If you are a mum, can you talk to your school and find out what their education programs are around the environment? Can you connect in with your community? Is there anything you can do in your community to get electric vehicle batteries, charging stations set up? Can you shop at op shops more? Can you share clothes with your friends more? I think it's just donating to charities.

There are so many incredible NGOs doing really important work and they're heavily under-resourced. So donating to them, engaging with politicians, emailing ministers, emailing brands and just saying, why am I receiving this outfit that is in, you know, bucket loads of plastic? And so it's annoying and it's time consuming and all of those sort of things. But even if you just make a daily habit to do one small thing, it starts to rewire you a little bit and you start to live it more. When you go, like I go on walks with my mentor and we just walk and pick up rubbish on the way.

It's just little things. Just pick up one piece of rubbish when you walk to the coffee store. It's just, I think it's starting to embed those habits of just trying to make a small difference, not feeling overwhelmed. There are, seriously, the extraordinary efforts that people are going to to protect nature is so inspiring. It really is. So just starting anywhere.

You just mentioned, you know, emailing brands and sort of questioning what they're doing, how they're doing it. I think that this is a really good time to go into greenwashing and talk to us about what greenwashing is, but also how we as a consumer can be more hyper aware and I guess being alert. Yeah. So greenwashing is basically when a company makes up or overstates their environmental credentials. So you'll see a green label. So it could be as simple as a bottle that is green with a state that says sustainable on it or a brand name that sort of eco something. Like misleading advertising. Yeah. Which gives the impression that it's green or more extreme

examples when you'll see fossil fuel companies saying this is climate friendly oil or you know stuff like that it can be so there's a whole range of different sorts of greenwashing and one of the problems with that is that it's just eroded trust with consumers and it's made people think well I'm not even going to try anymore because even when I do try it doesn't work so it's a huge disservice to consumers but also now we also have a situation where we're so on top of greenwashing that we accuse everybody of greenwashing so it's almost like we need to give companies a chance to try to improve, but hold them to account as well. I think it's so deeply problematic when a company is using it as part of their marketing pitch, you know, and I

think there's obviously like you establish there's different levels of it, but in terms of like a marketing look and feel, it's very easy to look branded as though you are naturally conservative or you're naturally inclined or whatever those things are without actually having to be at all. And like you said, you know, from like, it could be the fact that just the colouring of the brand and the tones are earthy and tonal and everything else that we associate with something being more environmentally conscious. What are the, in terms of packaging or in terms of brand standards that we should look out for and able to go, okay, well, that one doesn't really conform to what's needed. Yeah, it's quite hard. So at the moment, so if I was going to look at a product and I was going to dig really deep, I would go into their sustainability report. and I know not everybody wants to do that and I would look at if they have done things like are

they run by renewable energies where do they get their products from are they starting to look at their supply chain to see if there's any deforestation in their supply chain so I would usually try to go look so a lot of them will say we are aiming for no deforestation in our supply chain or we do not invest in fossil fuels so it's usually the sustainability report but even they can be a little bit misleading. What I think we need to push for, and this is pushing brands and politicians, is for environmental labelling. So that in the same way that we look at when we see new food products and we know exactly what we're eating, we should see what's their greenhouse gas profile of this product? How much deforestation was involved? Do they track their supply chain

for human rights abuse? Having product labels like that, I think we need a lot more transparency. So it is very difficult for the consumer, but I think we put in a lot of effort to look at the sort of trends that are online or, you know, find the right outfit. We can do the same. It just takes a little bit of effort online. I mean, people do it now in terms of like what toxins are in their skincare. Like if there's, I wonder if there's apps that exist for this because like you can now scan a skincare barcode and it will tell you exactly what's in it in terms of whether it's toxic for your skin or not toxic. I wonder if there is an app that exists that allows you to scan products that tells you like what's the environmental impact of that product.

There is a few. There's also one that's called Trace ID and I think they work with companies, but the aim is to basically trace every single product to see so companies can start being more transparent about what's in their product. But that just circles back to why it's so much more important that we have policy change, not individual change, because there are so many people that just heard what you just said about how in-depth you need to go to look at one product and where it's from. And I can just tell people rolling their eyes now being like, I'm never going to do that. I go online and shop at midnight. I look at something, I press order. Like there are so many steps that are then put on the consumer, whereas really the

responsibility should be on the conglomerate or the company to make the policy changes so that we know that they're going to be safe and we don't have to spend half an hour for every single thing that we buy trawling through it. I mean, it's a fair point. And I agree to an extent, but individuals can still, if we want, we can do a little bit of research and find our top five favorite brands that we know or we can also just shop a little bit less like go to go to an op shop wear your clothes more than once a lot of the time we're shopping to buy clothes to impress someone that we don't even like so do we need to can we um which is a whole nother problem but also i think it's the standard of clothing though now as well i mean like you know there

used to be that whole adage of like you buy something more expensive and it's better quality and then you wear it more times like it's the price point of clothing it's become so so disposable You can buy a t-shirt from Kmart for $15 or $10 and it's like the quality is terrible. So you have to buy more. They're great for a few wears, you know, but then after a few washes, they start to fall apart. So you have to buy something more. But having said that, a lot of the designer brands are made in the same factory as the

cheaper brands as well, just with a high price point, which circles back to Nat being like, we're wearing this stuff for people we don't like or know. Like, who are we trying to impress? We'll take a little pivot to something very serious. The world of chocolate, the decline of chocolate is like chocolate under threat? Yeah. So you see wine, chocolate, olive oil, coffee, you see their prices, well, the prices are rising everywhere, but those prices are really spiking and they are, it's because things

like chocolate are directly impacted by climate change and we're already seeing evidence of that. So chocolate's really interesting because, you know, like Mars Incorporated, you know, chocolate, their entire business model, all of their profits are entirely dependent on this one little insect called a midge. Midges are like the ones that fly in your mouth if you go for a run. They're like those tiny little. Oh, tiny little. Yeah. They're amazing creatures.

They are the only insects that can pollinate the cacao plant. So without them, chocolate doesn't exist. So Mars Incorporated is freaking out now and they're trying to find other ways to pollinate because the midge is vulnerable to extinction because of climate change and because of deforestation. So you have this really interesting situation where we have 70% of the world's cocoa is developed throughout West Africa, but they have mass deforestation, a lot of it to make way for chocolate plantations or cacao plantations. They also have climate change, which is sort of taking away the ability for rainforests to be rainforests. And you have the midge, which is vulnerable to extinction that can't pollinate. So it's sort of all of these environmental-related crises are happening in West Africa, and it's impacting the ability for us to produce chocolate, which is increasing the prices. Not to mention it's impacting hundreds of millions of people whose lives are dependent on farming.

The chocolate industry. Yeah. But in that case then, is it not a situation where companies have to pay attention because their very livelihoods are being affected in this sort of round circle moment? Yeah, exactly. This is why it's mad. This is why I'm like I'm talking about your own survival.

When we talk to these companies, they are every single company in the world, every single one of us, we are dependent on nature. We need it to breathe. We need it to run our companies. It's the thing that allows us to live, which is why it baffles me when we argue about it because I'm like how do you think staying alive yeah it's you know I had an interesting conversation with someone recently we were doing a renovation right on the house and we went into a stone supplier where they

obviously mine quarries for stone and I was talking to my husband and I was like it is crazy how much we take from the earth like it is crazy when you think about all these varieties of stones coming from all different quarries and like as a jeweler we work with stones all the time like it is not lost on me the volume of which is taken from the earth and i was talking to the sales rep at the store which i will not mention the store name but it's a massive distributor of stone she was like oh yeah they mine the quarry and then once they've taken it out they close it so it can regenerate and i was like do you have any concept of how long it takes to regenerate a stone quarry i was like it doesn't it doesn't regenerate they've just taken everything out of it there's

nothing left and then they move on to another area they're saying they're letting it regenerate but But this is the thing, like we don't have this unlimited source and I think we still live in an era where we're treating this as though the sources are unlimited and that we can just keep digging further down and find more and more and more. Yeah, and we can't. We've already actually, I mean this is a bit negative, but so I think it was four days ago we reached Earth Overshoot Day

and that's essentially when the time of the year when we've already used up all of the yearly resources for nature. So now it's sort of this, we're in overdraw. So we've taken too much. So six months of debt. Yeah, basically. So, but that's accumulated. So if everybody on the planet lived like Australia did, we'd need four and a half planet Earths

just to sustain us. So we are just taking far, far more than the Earth can allow for. And we have a growing population as well. So we are, we're going to have to live really differently and also support innovations that, I mean, there's huge, even in the fashion industry, there's huge innovations that are allowing us to think about what sort of materials we're using and if we can use materials that are, you know, extracting less from nature. So there's a lot that can be done. You talk about something called the cute curse with animals, especially in terms of like social

media. What is that? And what is like, what is the problem or I guess like the reasons why the cute curse is such an issue? Yeah. I don't know if you guys ever saw, there was a video of a slow loris on Instagram. It's like this primate, it's a primate from South East Asia and it had its arms in the air it's really adorable big eyes yeah yeah and it had its arms in the air and someone was tickling it under the arms and everybody loved this video they thought it was adorable it was called tickling a slow loris what happened was everybody then wanted a pet slow loris so the clip went viral it's all these videos of cute wild animals being tickled and we found out later that having its arms in the air meant that it was in extreme distress it wasn't being cute was

traumatized but then everybody went out and tried to get their own pet slow loris and wanted to buy them so poaching increased they're now in an endangered species because poachers in the area or traffickers would take them send them around the world and ship them to people as pets and that's the thing with social media sometimes it glamorizes especially cute animals we're not appreciating them in the wild we want them for ourselves as pets and they so even when i see you know there's gorgeous videos of somebody cuddling orangutans and I just think that's not how orangutans are meant to live they're meant to be wild we are not meant to be touching them as much as you want them as a pet it's not it's not great for them I mean we've all seen Tiger

King we know how it goes yeah but also there's such an interesting like alternate take on that where we value the existence of some animals over others because they're cute you know we care more about whales or we care more about koalas or we care more about like specific animals that are going extinct more than we care about insects or things that have you know or a midge you know like yeah overarchingly i don't think that there's many people who are going to listen to this podcast who have thought about a midge this week you know yeah whereas they might have thought about another animal that's either large of scale or is very adorable and there feels like a greater tragedy to have an earth without that animal yeah so i'm an ugly animal activist can i tell you sorry i get

so excited can i tell you about the vulture great yeah so in india they have vultures and everybody hates vultures because like well first of all they piss on their own legs to keep cool which isn't very attractive and but they also eat rotting carcasses so you know they're not in beauty magazines like the panda you think of them from the lion king yeah the lion king sort of made them yeah famous i guess yeah and they're not known to be like super cute or sexy or anything like that. But anyway, they have the most incredible role. So in India, their population started declining and they declined by 90%. So they were plummeting towards extinction and no one could figure out why. And then after a few years, they realized that it was actually a

veterinary drug that was being used in cattle. And then when the vultures were eating the dead cattle, they were getting sick and dying. But in that period where vultures hit near extinction, it caused the deaths of 500,000 people in India and cost the economy, I think it was around $30 billion. And that's because vultures are nature's cleanup crew. They play a really important role. When they clean up the rotting carcasses, they're also preventing the spread of disease and rabies outbreaks, and they're controlling other populations. So without them, it actually severely impacted human health and cost the Indian government a huge amount of money. So these amazing species, we might think they're ugly,

but we should still be an advocate for these ugly animals because the role they play is just incredible. But then there's that adage of like one species goes extinct, it doesn't matter what it is, and the entire food chain changes, the entire world changes, and that's like a prime example of why every single species we have is so imperative. Yeah, absolutely. What ended up being the flow-on effect of that story?

What did the Indian government do to step in? So they banned the drug that was being used by vets. Vets complied straight away, obviously. They care about animals. And now the vulture populations are rebounding. There are so many success stories, even the humpback whale. They were plummeting towards extinction and now we get to see them all the time. There are so many success stories that are really incredible of people that are just

policymakers working with volunteers and activists and NGOs that are turning things around. You have a lot of fun anecdotes in your book. And I know it's something you've even in this episode, as you're speaking about it, you've said it a few times, like, I don't want this to be doom and gloom. I feel like you can't talk about climate change without it being doom and gloom. And I kind of think that we would be doing a disservice to the conversation without having those conversations. And I think anyone who deeply cares about climate change, who's listening to it, or people who want to be more educated would feel like it's missed opportunity if we didn't have those more serious chats. But you do talk about a lot of lighthearted stuff in the book as well that you've written. One of those things is an ejaculation helmet.

The other one is talking about bonobos with bulging clitorises. Why, in terms of your approach to climate change, has it been so important for you to try to not make it too heavy? I don't want people to give up. I don't want them. And I can see when I talk to people, you know, when you mention climate change or mention nature and they just sort of doze off a little bit. I don't want that.

I think to really make change, you need to fall in love a little bit. And so part of that means finding the joy, finding something that you feel connected to and also feeling like it's not so overwhelming that you can't do anything. So the reason I wrote this book is because I wanted it to be the sort of book that can make nature feel mainstream, like not something where I say it and people like, oh, she must like hugging trees. I'm not into nature. I wanted to have stories in there that could really appeal to anybody and everybody, whether

you're a farmer or you're a teacher or you're a hairdresser or you're a university student, it should be able to appeal to anybody. So I cover a lot of, there's a lot of tragic stories in there, but also there's a lot of funny stories and inspiring stories and lists of things that people can do to take action and a lot of weird stories. So what I like to do is find weird stories and then connect that into a bigger themes. Like Pablo Escapado and his hippos, Oh, with cocaine hippos? Yeah. Yeah.

So did you want me to tell you about the ejaculation helmet? I don't think I can say ejaculation helmet and then not get a clarification on that, just FYI. People are like, you left us hanging with that one. Okay, so there is a parrot in New Zealand. It's called the kakapo, and it's the world's heaviest parrot, and it also is the only one that can't fly. So it's the heavy, flightless parrot.

It's got the short end of the stick. Yeah, and it's so funny looking. So it's this huge, flightless parrot. There's only 250 left in the wild, so their population is in crisis. So scientists are going to extreme lengths to try and save them. But the problem is the male kakapoos, their mating strategy isn't great. They sort of like waddle up a hill together and then start bellowing into the dirt and hope that the females will come to them

and the females don't. Shocking, shocking. The females are like, go away. But it's not very good evolutionary skills. Like surely you'd think as a species, okay, we've been trying this for a couple of hundred years, let's try something different. Yeah, so what they've started doing is humping. They try to mate with other things.

Sometimes they'll mate with other species of birds, but a few times they've tried to mate with human heads. And so the kakapo became famous because I think there was this BBC clip where the kakapo started humping a TV presenter's head, and it's a huge bird. Anyway. How? Just jumped up on its head and started flapping about.

Did the presenter realise that it was mating or did they kind of just be like, oh, wow. Yeah, and it got millions of views and they had a heading like world's heaviest parrot shag's head. So then scientists in New Zealand from the Department of Conservation, they're so amazing, they were like, okay, well, if he wants a human head, then a human head he shall have. And so they got this scientist called Kate McInnes.

She built an ejaculation helmet, but she was like, okay, I need to get the right helmet because this is a really heavy parrot so she went and got a rugby helmet and turned it into an ejaculation helmet which is essentially a helmet of condoms and then she ventured into the forest and just waited for a kakapo to come and hump her head and then took the sperm yeah and she says she just sat there for hours getting her head and via getting her head bonked by this kakapo but it's also she's like it was quite difficult because not only are they the world's heaviest parrot but they also have sex for a really long time, longer than most birds,

so they can go for an hour. She's getting pounded in the head for like an hour. Yeah, and it didn't work. Oh, it didn't? I thought this was going to have a great success. No, it didn't work. That is devastating. Yeah.

That is devastating. But just the heroism of that woman. She really tried. Also, I don't know if I'd share that. I don't know if it worked. If it worked, I would tell the story, but it didn't work. So I think that I would take that to my grave. Hey, guys, if anyone else was thinking about having your head fucked

for hours on end, don't. Yeah. Well, they put the helmet in the museum, so it's a national treasure now. Why? I actually read on Instagram the other day that sloths, just like male, no, female sloths, like climb down the tree and then scream until a mate comes to them. And I was like, that sounds like me and my husband.

Do this. I was like, maybe it's not all terrible, but it does sound like some animals really are not helping themselves out when it comes to how they're reproducing. Yeah. You have some species like the ibis, which is considered a generalist species and, you know, they're the bin chickens. They thrive, like they've managed to adapt and thrive.

And then other species like the koala, they're specialist species. So they can only live on a specialty arrangement of conditions. So they don't thrive. Now, in your book, you labeled the bonobo and its clitoris a feminist icon. Now, I don't think people would put those things in the same sentence, generally speaking. Talk to us about why this clitoris is a feminist icon. Okay, this is my favorite topic.

So bonobos are one of our closest living relatives. They look like a chimp, so we share most of our DNA with them. But essentially they're really different. Their communities are different to chimp communities. So chimp communities are really violent. They demolish each other. Bonobo communities are really peaceful and they live in solidarity and the women are equal if not dominant over men.

And the reason for that is because of their big bulging clitorises. They actually waggle when they walk. So what the bonobos do, the females rub their clitorises together and it's a form of bonding and it has become so beneficial to their species that they've evolved giant clitorises because some people say it allows them to overthrow the men of their species, but essentially it's seen as a way to have social cohesion in their society. So bonobos are a peaceful society because they rub their clitorises together and now people are studying it and studying like workplace relations

and team building and like women's roles. So like you guys could do it if you – I was about to say don't even think about it, Laura. Imagine if someone came to work and said I know the way to make this more harmonious workplace. We could all rub our clitorises on each other and we'll be great. You'd go to prison. Yeah, unfortunately I think it goes against some

of the workplace standards at the moment. Look at this picture. When you're saying they're the closest to us in terms of DNA history, that literally looks like an AI human. You guys need to Google this. That is incredible. Literally even the musculature of that animal looks like a human. They're also really interesting because they're upending our understanding

of male-female relationships and all of evolution. So Charles Darwin, he had the theory of evolution. And the way that we have come to understand it is that male species are dominant, men are dominant and tough and women are weak. And we're actually uncovering a huge amount of bias because Charles Darwin was hampered by his own bias. He was living in Victorian era England where women weren't really allowed to vote or have bank accounts. They weren't permitted into any of the major scientific institutions or anything like that. So he only looked at the males of the species and completely overlooked the females of the species. He called the females of the species wives, said there were

less than men and so that's come to shape what we think about men and women today so there's this group of amazing female scientists that are going around studying the females of species so it was female scientists that discovered the clitoris in bonobos and that are looking into okay what can we learn about women and then a bunch of aussie women four aussie women discovered that snakes have clits and that is despite all of so most of the researchers for snakes are men they never found the clit. It was not shocking. Didn't even think to look for it. They didn't even know what they were looking for. That's why they're like, what's that? Women came in, found the snake's clit. And now we're saying, oh, okay, let's study more female species because we've only studied the

males of species. And we're like, oh, look, it's a wolf. It's a wolf pack. Men are like wolves. We haven't studied orca societies where we can see women and the powerful role they play and what we can learn from that in human society. Yeah. There's heaps of animal species we've discovered in our fun fact animal facts that we do here on life on cart heaps of female species just like kill their spouse when they're done yeah but it is interesting to hear that i've never actually heard anyone say darwin was sexist yeah he yeah he was really sexist yeah but he was very sexist at the time like i mean in terms of the society and the yeah but still he that's all we learned as kids his generation like it's pretty impactful yes but it also isn't surprising when

you think about it in terms of like even from like a medical perspective like so much research is done on how medicines or treatments or whatever it is affect men in general. I'm talking about human men, not animal men. But, like, there's so much skew in terms of, like, research that's done on how it affects men versus, like, now it's like we've woken up to the idea of, like, oh, but actually how women respond to this is different

and now we have to go back and redo the research. Yeah, but I feel like there's a few, like, standout characters in society that, generally speaking, you trust. Darwin was one. Like, for me, he was always someone I really trusted and I don't know how I feel about it now. Are you okay, Britt?

Probably not. No, it's like literally everything I learned as a kid has just been flipped on its head. No, he contributed a huge amount. It's just understanding that he sort of forgot the clitoris and the clit. Yeah, he couldn't find the clit. That's so funny. That does check out though is like because as women,

like generally speaking in the day-to-day, obviously not in same-sex relationships, but we don't rub our clits together. I do wonder if maybe we would have had bigger clitorises if men spent more time finding them and spent more time on them. Like maybe that's the research. This is the start of a movement. Nat, thank you so much for coming in.

Is there anything else that you feel is really imperative and important that you might not have been able to touch on in this conversation? Look, I think we covered. It was pretty broad. We went on a journey. We're going to put show notes if you guys want to go and find out more. It's an incredible book.

We're going to put all the links in our show notes. So please go and find Nat's Instagram, buy the book, read it for yourself, have the conversations with friends, find out what more you can do in your own life and don't be so overwhelmed that you think one little change that you're contributing is not enough because if there's anything we've learnt today, it definitely is. Thanks, Nat.

Thank you.