TRIBEathlon Podcast
Episode 48: Sarah Davis and Tara Lal are two ladies who are doing extraordinary things; they recently cycled across Australia together, raising money for suicide awareness – a subject that Tara wrote about in her successful book ‘Standing on my Brother’s Shoulders: Making Peace with Grief and Suicide’. Sarah, on the other hand, came to it from paddling the 6853km length of the Nile and also the Murry River.
In this fascinating conversation, Sid and I got the opportunity to chat to them about cycling great distances unsupported, risk managing expeditions and how we can better deal with and prevent suicide.
Podcast I’ve Been Listening To
Our chosen charity for the year is CALM, a mental health charity with particular focus on suicide prevention, and given the last 18 months, this seemed even more appropriate that ever. In my research for the TRIBEathlon podcast above I listened to an interview of Tara focusing entirely on suicide prevention entitled The Ripple Effect of Suicide.
In our interview we spent some of the time discussing suicide prevention, but if you want to drill a little deeper, check out her book Standing on my brother’s shoulders, which I haven’t read yet, but will.
What I’ve Been Reading
I have previously recommended that everyone read Bill Gate’s book How to avoid a climate disaster, and I have just finished reading A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by David Attenborough, which I have to say falls into the same category. Ideally read both, but please do read one at least – all our futures depend on it. Gate’s book is more focused on the technology that is needed, whereas Attenborough’s more on the strategies we need to employ, but they are both singing from the same hymn sheet.
TED Talk I’ve Found Interesting
You know I love bikes and cycling, but it turns out that it’s better for our health than even I had realised. Tony Desnick, in his TED talk The Amazing Way Bicycles Change You, makes the case that bikes are saving the world from itself. Bicycles really do change you and, in amazing ways, change the community around you. A 17-minute talk well worth the investment.
3 Quotes, from David Attenborough
“The fact remains that man has unprecedented control over the world and everything in it. And so, whether he likes it or not, what happens next is very largely up to him.”
- From ‘Life on Earth’ 1979
“Our imprint is now truly global. Our impact is now truly profound. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world.”
- From ‘A Life on Our Planet’, 2020.
“Real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.”
Finance Theme I’ve Been Considering
Having read Bill Gate’s and David Attenborough’s books on climate change and the planet recently, it strikes me that there are some recurring themes on what we can do to help that really won’t make a big difference to us but could have a huge impact on the future for children and our planet. The low hanging fruit appears to be:
- Embrace low green premiums; anything where the cost of going green is little or none, take it. For example, when you change your car buy electric, when changing your boiler go for a heat pump, or when changing your utility provider choose green. The long-term cost to you will be small but the impact on the planet will be big!
- Eat less meat and fish, but when you do, opt for higher quality local options. If we build on this trend, we can make a huge difference to the planet in so many ways, like reducing carbon emissions, increasing biodiversity, and protecting the seas.
- Walk away from the single use, throw away culture. Reuse, repair and recycle.
- Invest in the technologies that will help us get to carbon zero by 2050. The best way to do this is to put the money in your investments and pensions to even better use through ethical investments selected by the experts. Not only can we save the planet by doing so, but given the going momentum of this movement, you are likely to benefit personally from this approach in the longer term too.