The first question that Stuart and William wade into in today’s episode, comes from Ray in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, USA - “None of us are getting out of this alive. We’re all heading in the same direction. Don’t you think there's something profound in that?”Right off the bat, William agrees with Ray, that none of us are getting out of this alive. He goes on to make the point that we like to avoid the subject of our own mortality. Stuart feels there is a profundity to the fact that we all eventually die, and how it is the one shared experience that we all will have.Stuart then tries to bring the conversation around to the environment: if we have very few shared experiences, how can we hope to live sustainably? Both he and William find this a tough question to even begin to answer, it is a big question.There are always two listener questions per episode, and the second one comes from another Ray, this time from Newmilns, Scotland - “I hear people talking about the Cocaine trade, and the submarines arriving in Spain, smuggling the drugs from Latin America. I’m also hearing the drug trade in UK prisons is worth a reported 1 billion pounds a year, which is interesting when set aside something like the UK carpet industry, which I know is worth just 900 million pounds a year. It's reported that some prison wardens themselves are smuggling drug packages into prisons as they know how to bypass checks, and that they are paid £400 per package. Now, what I want you to explore on this podcast is, corruption amongst those tasked with administering positive change, in the prison system and also in the climate change world, is seriously damaging. How can the rest of us manage the impact of these disruptors?”Stuart starts off the conversation, talking about how some prison wardens are good, some are bad, but these drugs are getting into the prisons somehow. He likes how Ray has spun this question towards the environment.Stuart recognises the corruption among those people who are tasked with making a change. He knows people who have been through the prison system, are going through the prison system, will go through the prison system, and their families think they'll be rehabilitated. And if the people who are meant to be rehabilitating the prison prisoners are corrupt in themselves, the point's been missed. He feels that you can’t avoid corruption, but it just needs to be flagged up, and the boil lanced.Stuart carries on the point that we need to openly talk about this issue, and instead of getting annoyed, we need to be proactive, remove the disruptors, and get better people in.William follows on this point, how we as humans can be easily motivated, particularly by money. This is sometimes because we need the money, or it could be that we are bullied into it. It is part of a system which the prison officers are quite literally locked into.Stuart and William conclude the conversation about vetting processes, and how they can be used to weed out the disruptors.What do you make of this discussion? Do you have a question that you'd like us to discuss? Let us know by sending an email to
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