[00:00:01] Speaker A: The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Natural Bridges Media or Ksqds staff, volunteers or underwriters. Ksqd. Thanks Sustainable Systems Research Foundation for supporting sustainability now. SSRF provides education, research and advocacy for regional environmental quality and sustainability, ability related problems, and solutions. For information, visit sustainablesystemsfoundation.org. And thank you, SSRF, for supporting community radio K Squid 90.7 FM.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Tropic climbs and thriving seas.
Winds blowing through breathing trees, strong ozone and safe sunshine.
Good planets are hard to find. Yeah, good.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Hello, K Squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again, and you're listening to Sustainability Now, a bi weekly casequid radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronie Lipschitz. We spend a lot of time worrying about climate change. Not that it isn't a threat, but we know that it's coming will span decades. At the same moment, there is another long standing threat that could happen at any time and would do even more damage to human society and nature nuclear war. There are many observers who fear that Russia might use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, setting off what was once called a ladder of escalation, an uncontrolled ramping up of nuclear attacks leading to planetary holocaust. My guest today is Dr. Helen Caldecott, live from Australia. According to Dr. Calldicott, the Nuclear Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is set at 100 seconds to midnight, but 20 seconds is closer to the mark. Dr. Caldecott has devoted the last 42 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction and nuclear catastrophe. She calls this global preventative medicine. Caldecott is also the subject of If You Love This Planet, which won an Academy Award in 1982 for best documentary. Dr. Helen Caldecott. Welcome to sustainability now.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: How did you get into the antinuclear business?
[00:02:49] Speaker D: Well, when I was 18, I read a book called on the beach by an Australian author called Neville Shoot, and it was about a nuclear war that occurred by accident. And everyone in the world was killed, except people in Melbourne, which is where I lived. And gradually the radiation came down to Melbourne, and parents were dispensed cyanide capsules so they could kill their babies so they wouldn't die. The horrific effects of acute radiation, illness, vomiting, and bleeding to death. And at the end of the book and the end of the story, everybody died in Melbourne. And that marked my soul. I was only 18. I was in medical school, and I was always aware from then on about the horrors of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Well, I recall that I read it probably when I was much younger. But I also recall that there were critics of the book who said it exaggerated the effects of nuclear war and that, of course, was a recurrent theme amongst nuclear strategists.
Why don't you summarize for us what would be the global impacts of a nuclear war?
[00:04:05] Speaker D: Well, America and Russia both have about 6000 nuclear weapons. And I want to describe to you the effect of one bomb dropping on a city. Okay? Yeah, it's a 20 megaton bomb, which is very huge, but there could be ten or 60 smaller hydrogen bombs on a city.
The Russians have about 200 weapons of this size, and they'd almost certainly be used on large cities like New York, Philadelphia, Washington, et cetera. So let me tell you, the bomb will come in on a missile traveling at 20 times the speed of sound.
[00:04:53] Speaker C: So you won't hear it.
[00:04:55] Speaker D: It explodes at ground level on a clear day, releasing the heat 20 times that inside the center of the sun, millions of degrees centigrade in the fraction of a millionth of a second. It will dig a hole three quarters of mile wide and 800ft deep, converting all people, buildings and the earth and rocks below to radioactive fallout particles shot up in the atmosphere in the mushroom cloud 6 miles from the epicenter. Every building will be flattened, every person killed.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Because the human body is composed mostly.
[00:05:29] Speaker D: Of water, when exposed to this degree of temperature, it turns into gas.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: There are photos of shadows of people.
[00:05:37] Speaker D: On pavements in Hiroshima, 20 miles from the epicenter. All people will be killed or lethally injured.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Most buildings destroyed this heat to vaporize.
[00:05:52] Speaker E: People beyond the six mile limit who happen to look at the flash. Their eyes will melt and run down their cheeks.
John Hershey Kirishima said there are about 30 men, all in exactly the same nightmarish state. Their faces were wholly burnt. Grasshoppets were hollow. The fluid from their melted eyes run down their cheeks. Their mouths were mere swallow, husk covered wounds which could not bear to stretch enough to admit the spout of a teapot. Other people were charcoalized. A woman who was running hold a baby holding a baby and turned into a charcoal statue.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Huge pressures will create winds of 500.
[00:06:39] Speaker E: Miles an hour, causing thousands of injuries. A normal hurricane has a velocity of.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Only 120 miles an hour.
[00:06:47] Speaker E: These winds will literally pick people off the pavement, turning them into traveling objects.
They hit the nearest solid wall or object, they'll die from internal injuries.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: These overpressures rupture the lungs, rupture the eardrums.
Glass is very vulnerable to overpressures, so the windows will popcorn, extruding outwards by these forces and shatter into millions of sharp pieces of flying glass traveling at 100 miles an hour. The shards could penetrate human flesh, producing shocking lacerations and hemorrhages. The Pentagon, in fact, has published a.
[00:07:31] Speaker E: Large book called The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, in which complex equations and formulas calculate how far a piece of glass traveling at 100 miles an hour will penetrate human flesh.
All the huge buildings will collapse. 35% of the energy of the bomb is released as heat. This radiant heat will produce hundreds of thousands of severe burns. Burns are the most difficult patients we ever treat.
20 miles from the epicenter of the heat from the explosion will still be so intense that dry objects, such as clothes, curtains upholstery, dry wool, will spontaneously.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: Ignite 40 miles away from the flash.
[00:08:17] Speaker E: People who glance reflexly at the incredible light will be instantly blinded by burns to the retina or back of the eye. Huge fires will burn over the entire area, and these fires will spread out and exceed 100 miles an hour in speed. The wind creates a low pressure area as it moves upward, surrounding oxygen. Rich air rushes in and feeds the many fires that have been ignited in houses, gasoline tanks, liquid natural gas facilities, oil tanks.
So the fires would probably coalesce across America, north to south, east and west, and the whole country will burn.
[00:09:05] Speaker C: Now, that's not just America. That's Russia.
[00:09:09] Speaker E: That's Europe. All the cities are targeted there. And the targeting, it's all set up.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: And nuclear war only takes about an.
[00:09:19] Speaker E: Hour to complete, because as the missiles.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: Are coming from one side, say from.
[00:09:24] Speaker E: Russia, they take half an hour to go from launch to land. Meanwhile, the American radar picks up the attack, sees the weapons, and the President has a three minute decision time whether or not to press his button. So the whole thing is over in about 1 hour. That's what we're facing. That's what the world is facing now. We're closer to nuclear war than we've ever been since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I got to know Robert McNamara Kennedy Secretary of State, and he said to me, Helen, we were so close, he said, to within three minutes of nuclear war. So here we are, two nuclear nations facing each other, the stupid men on each side with their testosterone poisoning, threatening each other.
Not admitting that they're threatening the whole, not just of the human race, but wonderful planetary life over millions of years. Because as everything burns, a huge cloud of toxic, black, radioactive smoke will be elevated into the stratosphere above the Earth, blocking a sun from the earth for about ten years, causing what we call nuclear winter. Temperatures will freeze, and people will freeze to death in the dark, and most organisms as well, too. So we're talking about the exploration of planetary life, and how dare these men build these nuclear weapons? And America spending $1 trillion at the moment, making every single nuclear weapon, every single missile, every single plane, every single ship in its madness, absolute madness.
And the Congress has just voted $858,000,000,000 to build more of these blasted weapons.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: These people are mad.
[00:11:24] Speaker E: They're absolute murderers. They're psychopathic, and they're ready to destroy their own lives.
[00:11:35] Speaker C: Suicidal. They're suicidal.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: What's? The current US. Stance on the launch of nuclear missiles? The Biden administration has been pretty quiet about this, but I know that behind the scenes there are strategists and defense analysts who are quite busy thinking about this.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: Oh, yes, everything is ready to go as I described. Nothing's changed. Everything is ready to go. There's always an officer walking behind Biden with a suitcase called the football.
[00:12:08] Speaker E: And in the football are the codes.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: That start a nuclear war. When Reagan was shot, they lost the football for three days, but we're on very perilous ground. I wake up each morning and look out the window at my roses and think, well, they're still here. But I've accepted the fact that I could be annihilated along with the rest of the human race, with my beloved children and grandchildren, and I would advise.
[00:12:36] Speaker E: People to watch my film.
[00:12:38] Speaker C: If you love this planet, it was a lecture I gave 40 years ago, filmed by the Canadian Film Board. It's only half an hour long. If you go to my website, Helencoldicott.com, you can download it and watch it. It won an Oscar, but it breaks through what is called psychic numbing, how we're all sort of numb to the reality of what could happen to us today, tonight, or tomorrow.
And it makes people cry, and you need to cry. It's like me as a doctor telling a person that they've got cancer or leukemia and how they could die. I've done that so many times. But I am now a doctor planet, practicing global preventive medicine, telling the whole world what could happen if we don't pull back and get rid of these weapons.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: As I was doing research for the show, I found some articles, some studies or reports about what's now called prompt global strike. Are you familiar with that?
[00:13:43] Speaker C: No.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Okay, so this is the idea of putting non nuclear weapons on hypersonic and cruise missiles and essentially sending them into the Kremlin bathroom, right?
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: So now the accuracy of nuclear and non nuclear weapons is so high that it is possible, as we have seen it's, possible to target individuals, which, of course, was not the case 40 years ago.
But what I thought was alarming was, of course, that although it's specified for non nuclear warheads, those could just as easily be nuclear. Yes.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: And the Russians would not know. So therefore, it's a fallacy to think it's any better. It's just ridiculous and stupid of these stupid men to think that the Russians would know it's only a conventional weapon and not nuclear. So I want to tell you what America's strategy is for nuclear war.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:14:48] Speaker C: First of all, they take out Moscow so that Putin can't press his button, right?
And that only takes half an hour. So that's what you do. Well, the Russians, aware that that could happen, have dug a huge cave in the Ural Mountains and put a missile in there. And if that happens and Moscow's taken up this missile, launches automatically into the sky and has the computers to launch all the nuclear weapons in Russia and it's called The Dead Hand. I met, actually the man who created that. He actually came to my house in Australia and drank coffee with me and he was extremely worried about Mean. The whole thing is absolutely clinically insane. And all these people who are involved in this, I'm saying this reasonably as a physician, should be put in psychiatric hospitals. They're sociopaths and psychopaths.
Do you know how hard we work to save a patient in the intensive care unit? We stay up all night, all day with them.
But the planet is in the intensive care unit and no one seems to give one damn, including Rupert Murdoch, who runs most of the media in your country.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Just as a note before we take a short break again, when I was doing research, I was looking at the Homeland Security website, the Department of Homeland Security, which does have websites about what to do in the event of nuclear war, which surprised me because of course, again, there isn't much you can do.
But the fact that it was there and had been updated, it's not something from 40 years ago, it's current material.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: Although I'm sure that these people are nutty.
Well, in fact, the New York City, I think, or state has just put out a video to say, in the event of nuclear war, and I think it might be on my webpage. Helencoldegott.com, in the event of nuclear war, you go inside, you stay calm, you get away from the windows and you wait.
I mean, the thing is absolute insanity. We're dealing with people who are not in touch with reality and they're the ones who are in charge of our lives and the lives of our kangaroos and wombats and emus and lions and Mean.
These people should be treated psychiatrically. And the Congress, let me say most of them are corporate prostitutes because they vote for weapons systems. Consistently. The highest they've ever voted for this year was $858,000,000,000 for more weapons of death. And the reason they do is that the corporations like Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, you name it, have been clever and put the factories for various parts of weapons in every congressional district, like the seats for the F 35 in one district, the landing wheels in another. So when it comes up in Congress to vote against weapons, jobs are screamed and so therefore, the Congresspeople vote for jobs in their district. I mean, if you psychoanalyze this, this is a period of true insanity.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: You're listening to Sustainability now? I'm Ronnie Lipschitz and my guest today is Dr. Helen Halt Kaldekott, a well known, internationally known anti nuclear weapons activist who who began her activities back in the late 1970s and continues today. And we've been talking about the effects of nuclear war as well as the system that produces them and tries to create a logic for having them.
Just to go back to your work in the 1970s, you were instrumental in the revival of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and I was wondering how did that come about and why that particular organization?
[00:19:31] Speaker C: Yes.
Well, a young doctor called IRA Helfand, who is working at the Cambridge City Hospital, came to me at my office at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital, and there was a referendum in Cambridge where Harvard and MIT are located against all things nuclear.
And that was antithetical to what Harvard wanted. And MIT, who has a small reactor on its campus, was against it too. And he came to me asking how we should confront this. And as we talked, and I think I've already written my book, Nuclear Madness, about nuclear power and nuclear war, I turned to him and I said, IRA, this is a medical issue. Let's start a medical organization.
Well, it happened that Physicians for Social Responsibility had been started in the early eighty s, and they worked to stop weapons being exploded in the atmosphere, but they died. There was a bit of fighting amongst the people, and it was dead. But someone who was formerly a treasurer said, look, I think it's still registered in the state of Massachusetts. Instead of going through all that formulaic rubbish, let's just take that name. Which we did.
And soon after we started it, I put an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine, which I created outlining the medical effects of nuclear power and the meltdown. Well, that ad was published two or three days after Three Mile Island melted down. So we were besieged by members from the medical profession. And over time I traveled all over the country, speaking in hospitals. Every week there's a session called Grandrums, where doctors all come together to hear the latest in nephrology or cardiology or neurology. And I would talk about the medical effects of nuclear war. And so we recruited, over time, 32,000 doctors. And then I taught them how to go on television, how to go on radio, how to write op ed pieces, and we gradually educated the American public. What's more, I had an agent in Hollywood who offered to work for me for free, and she represented Tom Cruise and Lily Tomlin and all of the top film stars. And so she was able to put me, a conservative woman doctor, an alien, actually, on television all over the country, also in Vogue and Time and Life. So Mr. And Mrs. Joe Sixpack, who were just sitting watching television, learned about the medical effects of nuclear war. And over the end of the Americans supported an end to the nuclear arms race. In 82, we had a million people marching in Central Park, which was absolutely astonishing, the largest march ever in the history of America. And that movement, which was then international because I traveled around countries all over the world japan, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, starting similar medical groups. And Gorbachev also learnt about the medical dangers and he and Reagan then met in Reykjavik in 1988, and over a weekend, those two men almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons, but they got stuck up on Star Wars, which Reagan was wedded to. He imagined it like a big sort of huge thing over America, and the weapons would come in and bounce off. I mean, he really didn't understand anything, and so that didn't come to pass. But it did end the Cold War. I met with Reagan during the 80s. In the Oval Office? No, in his library, in the White House. His daughter had heard me talk at the Playboy Mansion, where there were a lot of film stars. And I gave a talk about nuclear war, and she came up to me, Patty Davis, and said, look, I think you're the only person on Earth can change my father's mind. Will you see him? And I did a quick double think, and I said, yeah, I'll see him alone. I don't want any of his advisors there. So I had an hour and a quarter with him. Patty just sat there, said nothing. He said to me, I said, you probably don't know who I am. And he said yes. You're an Australian. You read on the beach as a young girl, and you're scared of nuclear war. And I said, yeah, that's right. He said, I, too am scared of nuclear war, but the way to prevent it is to build more bombs. So we were off to a flying start. He read to me from the Reader's Digest. He really was very ignorant about almost everything. And I just finished my book. Missile envy. So I was just full of facts and figures, and I would correct him and it get quite flustered. So I had to hold his hand quite a lot to reassure him, like a doctor patient relationship.
I left the meeting saying that I thought he had impending Alzheimer's clinically, which he did. If you go to my website, Helencoldecott.com, there is a little video there of me describing in succinct terms my meeting with Reagan, and that will allow you to understand who is in charge of our world today.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Well, I think I remember Reagan saying that facts are stupid things, and it's a lot like a more recent president.
You've expressed concern about the potential consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the possibility of nuclear weapons.
Can you talk to us about that?
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Yes, I think it's absolutely hideous, I mean, in this day and age, that they're bombing civilians and killing children and bombing hospitals, and it's obscene. Not that America hasn't done that since 911. America has killed over 1 million people, according to a study at Brown University in Yemen. Iraq, not Iran, but everywhere it's just been sick. So what the Russians are doing, america has been doing since 911, and killing people. I mean, as a doctor, I just can't when I was working in Casualty, I used to have to go and tell parents their child had died or been run over by a cow. I mean, it's just hideous.
And so what America's done and now Russia's doing is raining death and destruction down on people.
It's almost beyond my imagination.
And now Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons. I don't know if he will. If he does that'll, start a nuclear war. America will respond in kind, and then we're all dead. So we're on the edge of nuclear catastrophe. We're on the edge of annihilation. And we just go about our know, watching television and thinking, what next we'll buy and what food we'll the question is well, not the question, but the problem is that those people in Congress are not our leaders. They are our representatives. They're voted in by us to represent us, and we are their leaders. And what we need to do is educate them. We need to go and see them when they come back to their districts and say, look, if you don't read this book and you don't pass this legislation against this weapon and this weapon, I'll make sure you don't get reelected. Well, that was so in the 80s. We had so many people behind. I could go to Congress and Tip O'Neill, who was the leader of the House, darling Tip, would come out and say to me, what can I do for you, Doctor? And I said, I want you to play the last epidemic, which was made.
[00:28:14] Speaker E: By physicians, the social responsibility about nuclear.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: War on every single TV set in Congress. And he did. And the reason he would see me is because he knew that 80% of Americans supported what I supported. You see? So that's power, political power. We have much more power than the corporations, but leaving a vacuum. They just enter Congress and they lobby all the time, and they pay huge amounts to the Congresspeople. I think 45% of Congresspeople own shares in the killing industry. I call it Pentagon, the Department of Murder, which is what it is. It's not defense. It's murder, pure and simple.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: But let's know Putin did use a low yield nuclear warhead in Ukraine. What's the logic of that?
What's the grammar of that?
[00:29:15] Speaker C: I have no idea. I have no idea. Because he would know. He's not stupid. He would know that America would respond in kind. I don't think he will. I think he's bluffing.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Well, we didn't think Russia would invade Ukraine either.
Right.
Well, I know that back in the 60s, herman Khan, who wrote about escalation ladders and during the Reagan administration, who was it that talked about a nuclear shot across the bow if it became necessary? I think it's important to remember that the Reagan administration scared the hell out of the American public with its loose talk of using nuclear weapons.
And it does seem to me that successor administrations learned not to talk about it, because talking panics the public.
And so the real question is how does one generate renewed concern amongst the public?
I don't have an answer. I'm just saying that that seems I.
[00:30:26] Speaker C: Can tell you how to do it. Media I did it in the was everywhere, on all television sets and the radio and the newspapers educating people. And I apparently turned into quite a powerful public speaker. I suppose I became an actress in a way. And what I would do as a doctor before maybe 1000 people, I'd give.
[00:30:53] Speaker E: Fact after fact after fact after fact.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: To establish my credibility as a scientist and a doctor. And after they'd heard all that, I'd go for their well, I'd say guts for their souls and talk to them about how much they love their babies and how much smelling a rose what that means and how much they love their lives. And usually I'd end up with the audience in tears. That used to stimulate huge amounts of activity in women particularly would rise up. They'd start organizations which became national. There were hundreds and hundreds of organizations across America in the 80s opposed to nuclear war. I started Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament. I wanted to call it the Women's Party for Survival. And people said to me, don't be stupid. We've only got two parties in this country. Can't have a third. Well, actually, through the retrospectoscope, I wish I had done that because that's what we need. We need 52% of the population is composed of women and we are run by our hormones oestrogen, progesterone and oxytocin. When we breastfeed, this lovely hormone is liberated into our bloodstream. And I remember thinking when I was breastfeeding my babies, I could feed everyone on the planet. There was a very interesting experiment done by a physiologist in San Francisco who was looking at hormones and she noticed that when there was an altercation in the lab, the men would go into their rooms and fume and shut the door.
The women would come in the next day, polish the desks and the counters, make the coffee, talk and make friends. So she did the hormone levels. The men's testosterone went sky high. It and the women's oxytocin went very high. That's the difference. Now, when men are threatened, they do produce a bit of oxytocin, but mostly they produce testosterone, which is the hormone for killing. If you look back over centuries, men have killed and killed and killed and killed. The men on the Greek vases with their horses and spears.
Killed and killed. I think it's time to take a leaf out of the Greek play LASA strata where the men kept killing and killing and the women said OK, no more sex. Guess what? They stopped killing. And there's a country in Africa where a similar thing occurred just a couple of decades ago where a woman leader said okay, no more sex. And they stopped killing. Isn't it interesting that sex is more important to men than killing other people.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Well, it doesn't surprise me. I've been saying for a long time that the world is led by hopped up, crazed teenagers, men who never get any older than about twelve or 13.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: Yeah, with their testicles pumping up testosterone.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: We need to take another short break. You're listening to KS.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Well, we're getting to Etiology, or the cause of a disease.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yes. Okay, well, you're listening to sustainability now. I'm Ronnie Lipschitz, and my guest today is Dr. Helen Caldecott, well known nuclear anti nuclear activist who was very prominent in the 1980s and appeared in several films, including an Academy Award winning documentary, and is still speaking out against nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy.
One of the things that you've expressed concern about is the rapid implementation of a fully artificial intelligence controlled nuclear arsenal by the United States. Now, one of the things I recognize is that this has been a repeated trope in films starting back with Dr. Strangelove, and at any event and you mentioned The Dead Hand, which of course was the inspiration. Well, I don't know if it was the inspiration, but very much like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove. So what's new about this? About the idea of an AI controlled nuclear arsenal?
[00:35:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Speaker D: About five years ago, I read an.
[00:35:33] Speaker C: Article by Stephen Hawking, the great physicist, who died shortly thereafter. He had motor neurone disease, and he was in a wheelchair, saying, predicting that they're putting nuclear weapons on AI artificial intelligence. And he said, within ten years, it makes nuclear war a certainty because the computers are then programmed to think like human beings, but with no human input. And I thought, oh, my God. So I organized the symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences, and from that came a book called Sleepwalking to Armageddon, where I got the best physicists and mathematicians and doctors in the country to address this issue, hoping it would make a difference. Of course it hasn't.
You can get the book. All my books are on my website, Helencoldicott.com. But if you feel helpless listening to this, remember that me, I an Australian woman, an alien, actually led the movement. And we were given the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize so that any one of you can become as powerful as I have been. I was led by taking the Hippocratic Oath.
My heroes in youth were Robin Hood and the Good Samaritan.
I nearly died from hepatitis, caught from a patient.
[00:37:11] Speaker D: When I recovered, I thought, my life.
[00:37:14] Speaker C: Doesn'T belong to me anymore. I've been saved to I suppose I thought, save the world. But any of you can do that. You can. You just have to get in your gut how powerfully dangerous this whole thing is, which is I have that because I am a physician. And then set out like Joan of Arc or Joan of Arc and save the planet. If I've done it, you can.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: So how would you propose. That people start to get organized especially, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, climate change has it's a threat. But it sucked all of the oxygen out of the atmosphere, so to speak.
And people are very concerned it's interesting. People are very, very concerned about a threat which is going to develop over decades but seem very indifferent to the threat of nuclear war.
And I'm just wondering, do you have any ideas why that might be the case?
[00:38:21] Speaker C: Yeah, because nuclear war is out of the mainstream consciousness because no one's talking about it. The media will determine the fate of the earth. President Jefferson said. An informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion.
Remember y two k. And no one was worrying about it. We couldn't get the media to. Well, I was in the Herbs lecture theater in San Francisco, where the United Nations treaty was signed. Next door in the auditorium was Gorbachev talking. And I was talking to a group in the next door auditorium and Patch Adams, that clown doctor, was there. And we were very worried about Y two K because the computers may not all switch over could induce meltdowns of actors or a nuclear war. And in fact, I even went to the White House and talked to the people in charge of the Y two K problem. And they said, Everything's in order. Well, in fact, it wasn't. And the program computers in the Pentagon had not been upgraded anyway. So Patch Adams went to the market. He said, I've been telling Helen for years that we should walk naked, take our clothes off and walk across America. I said, oh, God, Patch. So I went to the market, and I said, Who'll do that? And practically the whole audience put up their hands.
So he went out to his velvet sort of entry and I thought, oh, well. So I took my clothes off, but I kept my scarf on and pearls, which hid the naughty bits. Patch Adams took his and soon about 50 or 60 people and you can look at this up on I think you can Google it were walking down Van Ness Avenue naked. And the human body as a physician is beautiful. Thin, fat, whatever. It's beautiful. And people started chanting Nudes, not nukes. Nudes, not nukes. And people were pulling up in their cars and clapping us. They didn't even know what it was about.
Finally, we went back because I didn't want to go off in a police van to the jail stuck naked. When we got back to the foyer, people were so proud. No one took their clothes off. I was talking to the ABC on the phone stark naked. And of course, the next day we were in The New York Times because that's very interesting for the media to see the naughty bits of people I mean, was ridiculous. But there are always ways to get the media attention. Always just have to use your imagination and see what they'll cover.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: So that's the key.
Well, we're coming to the end of our time together. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about that we haven't addressed?
[00:41:19] Speaker C: You've been a very good interviewer, and I thank you very much.
Yeah, I really would encourage you to go to my web page, Helencoldecott.com.
Look at the interview with Reagan.
Look at if you love this planet, get all the books that are there. I've contributed and written about 13 books. Educate yourself. Education is the key to the planet. And I think I'd like to just end by saying, who were these crazy, crazy, bloody scientists who built all these weapons of mass destruction, knowing that they're murderous and populated the planet with them? Why have they done that? What is this psychological diagnosis? And they need to be pulled in, refrained, maybe imprisoned, I don't know. But we can do it. We're the majority. And don't forget, 52% of us are women. Don't mention Maggie Thatcher, because when women some women get into power, they emulate the male ethos. But most women are loving, kind, and very good at resolving arguments. Oxytocin probably should be injected into every male nostril because that settles them down. And I guess I'll end with one funny thing. I was giving a lecture about this, and a man came up to me. He said, I've got prostate cancer. He said, I had my first dose of Oestrogen yesterday, and for the first time, I felt like shopping.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Are you still going out on the road giving talks?
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Well, no, because I'm nearly 85 and I'm scared of the bloody virus.
My daughter, who's a doctor, said, mom, get it here, and then you can go to America. Because you don't want to get sick in America, because, I mean, medical care here is free in Australia. But the thing is, I've been immunized. But you can get it again. You can get it when you're immunized.
[00:43:23] Speaker E: You can get it again when you've.
[00:43:24] Speaker C: Had it doesn't prevent you getting it again, and you can become contagious when you get it again. So it's a very tricky virus.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Well, I would encourage you, if at all possible, to make a tour of the United States because, well, I think a lot of us remember what you did back in the 1980s, and those who are too young to remember need to hear.
[00:43:50] Speaker C: You want to organize it, though.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: It's organized.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: I'm not so good at doing that.
[00:43:56] Speaker C: That's when you see that's what has to happen. Otherwise it won't happen. I can't organize it from here, but anyone listening who's got the ability to do that, we should get Wall Street sort of psychologists, madison Avenue psychologists to get together and organize. Well, just a thought.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: I want to thank you.
[00:44:17] Speaker C: I'd like to go and meet with, well, Putin, yes, but with Biden and break through his psychic numbing. And I would like to address a joint session of Congress and break through their psychic numbing and get them to cry.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Yeah, well, if you were watching the show the last week in the House of Know, good luck on that. Look, I want to thank you for being my guest on Sustainability Now.
[00:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been a joy.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you so much. And as we know, if you'd like to learn more about Dr. Caldecott's activities past and present, visit her website at www.helencaldecott.com. And thank you once again, and thank.
[00:45:02] Speaker C: You very much for having me.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Okay, when you go out into the.
[00:45:07] Speaker F: World and walk on the Earth, have.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: You ever wondered what was beneath your feet?
[00:45:11] Speaker F: Animals and plants, of course, but mostly soil. Soil is a wonderful substance, an essential element in the riot of life that covers the planet's continents. But soil is not without life of its own. A handful of fertile soil is home to more organisms than there are people on Earth, and these organisms are vital to plant and animal nutrition and growth. In two weeks. My guest on sustainability now will be Dr. Chelsea Carey, director of soil research and conservation at Point Blue Conservation Science, located in Petaluma and Bolinas, California. Join us for a fascinating conversation about the world beneath our feet. That's on Sunday, October 29, from five to 06:00 P.m., right here on community.
[00:45:56] Speaker G: Radio for the Monterey Bay region, k Squid 90.7 FM in Santa Cruz, Ksqt, 87.9 FM in Prundale, our translator for Monterey at 89.5, and Ksquid.org streaming on the Internet. And if you'd like to listen to previous shows, you can find
[email protected], Slash Sustainabilitynow, and Spotify, Google Podcasts and PocketCasts, among other podcast sites. So thanks for listening and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make K Squid your community radio station and keep it going. And so, until every other Sunday, sustainability now.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: Good planets are hard temperate stones and tropic climbs and thriving seas winds blowing through breathing trees strong old zone and safe sunshine good planets are hard to find yeah, good.
