**The below is AI generated**
Ever been cornered at a family feast by Aunt Marge, who can't help but comment on your third helping of pavlova? We've all been there. Join Chris and Jane as we stir up a candid conversation about the holidays and the unwanted side dish of fatphobia they bring. From the cultural anthems like Paul Kelly's "How to Make Gravy" that bind us, to the personal and societal pressures on body image that divide us, we're unpacking the complexities of festive food politics. We reflect on our nation's identity and how holiday cheer often comes with a side helping of guilt, especially when young, impressionable ears are at the table.
Imagine sitting across from someone who, between bites of turkey, preaches about their latest diet. Awkward? Absolutely. That’s why we're navigating the choppy waters of body and food judgments with care. Sharing tales from Southeast Asia, we tackle the cultural variances in body image perceptions and the art of respecting diverse dietary choices without imposing our own. Our discussion isn't just about the food on our plates, but also the deeper societal norms cooking in the background of our health and financial conversations. And yes, we're going to touch on those public health campaigns that often leave a sour taste during the sweet holiday season.
Now, onto the myths that just won't go cold—like the idea that a shiver in an ice bath will shed the pounds. We're chilling out with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz's enlightening thread debunking this frosty fallacy. And if that's not enough, we're slicing into the debate on office cake culture with the same scrutiny as a controversial Jerusalem Post article that – believe it or not – linked conflict to weight loss. By the end of our chat, you'll be seeing Christmas metaphors in a new light, peering beyond the festive facade to the sometimes harsh truths they obscure. So, grab your mug of mulled wine, and let's cut through the holiday hullabaloo together.
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
**The below is AI generated**
Ever been cornered at a family feast by Aunt Marge, who can't help but comment on your third helping of pavlova? We've all been there. Join Chris and Jane as we stir up a candid conversation about the holidays and the unwanted side dish of fatphobia they bring. From the cultural anthems like Paul Kelly's "How to Make Gravy" that bind us, to the personal and societal pressures on body image that divide us, we're unpacking the complexities of festive food politics. We reflect on our nation's identity and how holiday cheer often comes with a side helping of guilt, especially when young, impressionable ears are at the table.
Imagine sitting across from someone who, between bites of turkey, preaches about their latest diet. Awkward? Absolutely. That’s why we're navigating the choppy waters of body and food judgments with care. Sharing tales from Southeast Asia, we tackle the cultural variances in body image perceptions and the art of respecting diverse dietary choices without imposing our own. Our discussion isn't just about the food on our plates, but also the deeper societal norms cooking in the background of our health and financial conversations. And yes, we're going to touch on those public health campaigns that often leave a sour taste during the sweet holiday season.
Now, onto the myths that just won't go cold—like the idea that a shiver in an ice bath will shed the pounds. We're chilling out with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz's enlightening thread debunking this frosty fallacy. And if that's not enough, we're slicing into the debate on office cake culture with the same scrutiny as a controversial Jerusalem Post article that – believe it or not – linked conflict to weight loss. By the end of our chat, you'll be seeing Christmas metaphors in a new light, peering beyond the festive facade to the sometimes harsh truths they obscure. So, grab your mug of mulled wine, and let's cut through the holiday hullabaloo together.
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Watarong peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Iroha Nation in Sydney. Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Jane Williams. Okay, so welcome to what is likely to be the final episode of Undisciplinary for 2023. Who knows, we may sneak another one in the next 11 days. So today is the 20th of December. How are you going, jane?
Speaker 2:Going very well.
Speaker 1:It is my late grandmother's birthday.
Speaker 2:I've been thinking about her all day. She was excellent.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's very nice to remember your grandmother on this day, the 21st of December. The 21st of December have any significance for you?
Speaker 2:It doesn't.
Speaker 1:You don't know about, on the 21st of December, gravy day.
Speaker 2:You're going to have to sing the whole song now. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1:Gravy day. It's another one of these secular, sacred civic religion aspect of Australian society. So it's about. It's based on or drawn from a song by Paul Kelly the musician, not the right wing columnist.
Speaker 2:Or the what is it Minister for Health?
Speaker 1:Yeah, or the Brownlow medalist for the Sydney Swans in the early 90s. No, the Paul Kelly singer-songwriter wrote a song called how to Make Gravy and it's a letter written from a guy in prison to his brother. I think you know talking, you know who's going to make the gravy at Christmas, because I'm in prison, and it's a song that people listen to on the 21st of December because that's the way the letter starts off with and people get a little more to learn about that, and I think it sort of taps into this myth of Australia as being, you know, a bunch of prisoners who are, you know, I think, sort of celebrate the, the battler and the person who is perhaps doing it rough, and that's, you know, at Christmas time, a sentiment that comes out, and so this letter talks about the family Christmas. Who's going to make the gravy? He's apparently a master gravy maker and so he outlines this recipe and some people sort of make gravy on the 21st of December. I'm not sure how good the gravy tastes once it gets to the 25th of December, when they want to eat it, but, and I wonder if they roast something. Anyway, I digress, but what? I guess the link that I'm going to make here.
Speaker 1:So hold on to your hats is, I think, from my experience and I suspect from a lot of other people who I talk to, family, whether it's a Christmas lunch or just an end of year, non-religiously affiliated Festivus celebration, these these kinds of lunches are obviously beautiful and wonderful, etc. Etc. But there tends to be, I would say, a lot of fatphobia. Just to throw that out there. It's a. I haven't seen you in so long. You're you look, maybe you look good.
Speaker 2:No, because they're not going to say you look fat.
Speaker 1:No, no, that's right, they're not. Well, no, I had a few aunts and I had a few aunts and great aunts who would certainly let you know if you had put on a few kilos. But people may say, if they're going to be more polite, you know that you've lost some weight, or those sorts of things. You're looking great. You're looking great.
Speaker 2:Have you been going to a gym?
Speaker 1:Well, very well, yeah, and I think that this time of year in general, whether it's in in in the family context or whether at workplaces, people really talk a lot implicitly most often about bodies and diets and whether they've been eating too much or whether they're trying not to eat too much at this time of year. And it can be for me, quite irritating to you, because I was sitting in a cafe just, I think, a couple of days ago I may have even sent you a text message, jane, about this when I I had to leave the cafe because I just started overhearing this conversation of a man in his, I would say, late fifties talking to his friends and telling them about the the virtues and benefits of this new sugar-free diet that he was on, and how he's cut fruit out of his whole diet and how it has been.
Speaker 2:Hopefully soy sauce as well. Sugar and soy sauce.
Speaker 1:I should have chipped that one in. And yeah, and his friends were, you know, being, I would say, implicitly suggested that this was a diet for them as well, like he was sort of making gestures about at our age group, moving into this stage of life, sugar's no good for us and it just just grated on me. I thought why don't you just start a podcast if you want to start telling people your ideas on things?
Speaker 2:So I reckon the whole the whole fat phobia thing around Christmas is so ingrained that I keep reading things about Christmas food in in the Guardians say and quite often they say things like Christmas is the one time of year when you can eat whatever you want you know, and it's such a pervasive, pervasive message, and it's also not true.
Speaker 2:You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, you know yes but there's the whole kind of do whatever you want for a bit and then a tone because, goodness, you don't want to be not looking well next time you see the relatives or whatever. And it is really difficult. It can be really difficult, I think, as a parent to to I wanted to say stomp on certain kinds of conversations around food. You know, stomping on perhaps isn't quite the right thing, but redirecting and trying to, I guess trying to just disrupt that really really normal narrative, feels like an important thing to be doing at this time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think that idea of the disrupt is important. I've been trying to think of this term that Patty Thile introduced me to when she was here and we had an interview with her earlier in the year on weight stigma. Check it out if you haven't, but she was talking. I don't think it was in that episode, I think it was after that, off air, if you like. About these, this kind of thing that can happen, I think, often at sort of these gatherings where you haven't seen people for a time and when people give you a compliment that is, within it, implied something about weight, that you know you've done something well and disrupt that by not the social norm and what they're expecting you to say is well, thank you. Yes, I have been, you know, minding what I've eaten or I have been exercising more, or all those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:What about? Thank you, I got Botox.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's not okay, yeah, well, that's because I guess that's you know cheating, or something like that I don't know yeah. But to sort of yeah, I forgot the term of it but essentially to disrupt that by neither agreeing nor necessarily disagreeing, just like this is not a point of praise or a point of conversation that.
Speaker 1:I want to be engaging and obviously it can be harder and more hurtful if people are saying things. Well, I mean, I guess that's the work. That sort of anti-fact position needs to sort of not make that hurtful, to sort of reject the assumptions about that. It should be hurtful If someone says you know, you look like a husky fellow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as a person who used to live and work in Southeast Asia, particularly when I worked in Cambodia, people would tell me that I was fat or fatter or looking fat or whatever, and that was not hurtful.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, it was just was. I guess yeah.
Speaker 1:Just taken as a sort of macro cultural difference or something.
Speaker 2:I guess I don't know, I don't know why, I don't know why I just didn't carry that same sort of that I would have experienced at that point in my life, had like an auntie said it or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it.
Speaker 1:I think these kinds of discussions about diet and bodies at Christmas and end of year times also play out in in related adjacent areas, if you like of just whether it's particular food choices that people are avoiding, or maybe alcohol, you know, which I think sort of cuts both ways. It's a bit more complicated in the way that there is, you know, significant social harms and good reasons, many good reasons, why people would be wanting to reduce or remove alcohol from their lives. But it can also be, you know, if it done in certain ways, that is sort of, you know the worried, well, sort of policing the behaviors of other people and I guess this comes to a question that I have for you, jane.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is. You know how, how can we be both open and not judgmental regarding people's bodies and food choices so not caring, not making it an issue, all of that sort of stuff but then at the same time be, I guess, critical and disruptive? I was just going to say, or to say STFU to people who are, I guess you know, perhaps for the want of a better word preaching their conversion to a new diet or regimen and suggesting how fantastic this is for them. You know, can those two things exist? Can you be both? Yeah, we're not judgmental and wanting to be open, allow people to sort of choose their own dietary regimens, but then also like, hey, pipe down with the Miami diet, south Beach diet, please.
Speaker 2:Well, because they're different things, right, like genuinely could not care less if you know a fellow at the cafe wants to eat fruit or doesn't want to eat fruit. But I think the point is that when you start talking to other people about their life choices or trying to suggest that you have the right way and other people could really benefit from listening to you and changing what they do so that it's more like you you know that's the kind of behaviour that we don't accept in other environments.
Speaker 2:So, for example, you know, like sorry to beg on the Jehovah's Witness, but I'm just thinking if someone knocks at the door and wants to talk to me about why it would be good for me to worship in the way that they do, then I'm just going to be like, yeah, no, I'm not interested in having that conversation. And it's not dissimilar if somebody talks to me like that about the way I should eat or maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that is obviously a good and related example because it's got that proselytizing dimension. Maybe another example in its sort of everydayness is we don't tend to, in our society and culture, talk about our finances in the same way at least not in the circles I move in, where someone would start talking about what they've done with their finances and then start encouraging their friends. I mean obviously this happens with. Bitcoin and crypto and all of that sort of stuff. But there seems to be a lot of things to be.
Speaker 1:That's another area where there's norms around what is acceptable and unacceptable for other people to be engaged with.
Speaker 2:So I guess maybe moralizing around food is different, because we already have so much internalized moralizing about food, which is obviously the bit you're trying to disrupt when you make a real effort to think differently about food and your body and the way that you talk and think about food and your body. It seems I was just having this conversation with my personal trainer. I would like to tell you that I go to the gym. Chris, I have a personal trainer. I think you should do the same.
Speaker 2:No, my point is that she was saying to me oh, you know, some people need to eat more so that they can gain weight, so that they can gain muscle. You know they're doing this thing and I tell them that they need to eat more. And they don't want to hear it. They really they reject that advice and I don't understand why. And I was like how can you not understand why? She was like genuinely confused and I was like people have spent their entire lives being told that they eat too much. Someone telling you that you need to eat more. It's going to be a real adjustment. You know there's things aren't neutral. It's not just advice that comes from nowhere.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean, I imagine for some people that kind of advice would be getting towards probably not as extreme as you know drinking more or taking up smoking or something like that. Yeah, Considering, yeah, the pervasiveness of eat less.
Speaker 2:Of control around overeating yeah.
Speaker 1:I may have told you this before and it may not be of interest to people, but my PhD took a significant turn during a Christmas lunch. When when would have this been? It would have been like 2000,. Must have been about 2009. I was over in Western Australia at a family Christmas lunch and it was just at the height of the measure up public health campaign that was making people aware of their waistlines and how this was connected to their mortality and morbidity.
Speaker 1:And I remember after lunch going outside and seeing my uncles and aunts and I think my parents were there with one of these government issued tape measures measuring themselves. And that then, I think, was one of the things that led me to then in my book I'm not my PhD which then became a book to focus on that measure up health campaign because clearly this was a pervasive thing and maybe, you know, instead of just wrestling with that quandary right there and then of how can we be non judgmental but also critical of people's food choices and critical of these public health messages, I wouldn't have needed to do a PhD or written a book about it. But you know this is, you know, some. Some people go to therapy, some people write long books about their family measuring their wastes after Christmas lunch.
Speaker 2:And so was there a was there a chart with their winners and losers.
Speaker 1:Fortunately, I don't think there was a chart, but we all know who the winners and the losers are.
Speaker 2:I was hoping, like you know, the height thing on the, on the, yeah, we can do something like that.
Speaker 1:But yes, that's, that's you know. Merry Christmas from my fat phobic family to yours. So, moving on, I guess, from Christmas to perhaps thinking about the year of bad health takes, and these are going to invariably revolve around weight. We didn't put enough research into thinking of the ones throughout the year that didn't revolve around weight, but in March 2003,. We didn't talk about this on the podcast, but I do remember wanting to talk about it.
Speaker 1:So in March 2003, a paper went viral viral on the Twitter before it became X, and it was being used to support claims that two minutes of cold immersion to the up to the neck led to and this is a quote from a prominent Twitter who I won't name it led to significant reduction in abdominal fat and waist circumference in men, but there's more. It also led to psychological improvements in stress and wellbeing. So you could, if you had a ice bath, you could sort of jump in that for two minutes I think it was two minutes a week, so not long up to the neck and it would do wonders for your abdomen. Or you could just take cold showers. So this isn't new, these ideas. But this was supposedly a article published in. Let's see if I've closed the window. Have I closed the window? No, here it is. This was an article that was supposedly going to prove this and it was published.
Speaker 1:The suspense Christmas music in there Jingle Bells, here we go. It's a PubMed publication. I can't get the actual thing up at the moment from the tweet because embedded in the tweet. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:On face value, I got two questions. Well, immediately I'm like what happens if you put your head under? They seem very Well, I guess it's sort of.
Speaker 1:I would think of refresh your brain, so I feel like that might undo everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you might have a stroke or something, maybe. Yeah, yeah, sounds plausible, chris, sounds plausible. Okay, it does not sound plausible. It freezes all your fat bits, I don't know. Freezes your fat bits?
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe that's the way it works. But epidemiologist and colleague of yours from the University of Oolongong, gideon Merowitz Katz, sadly debunks this. So he is on the tweets as health nerd, if you want to follow Gideon and he does an extensive thread showing that not only is this just baloney. The paper actually argues for precisely the opposite of what these people are claiming that it argues for, so hopefully not too many people.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess it just. Maybe it creates some kind of abdominal. I mean, I didn't go into the details of the paper, but I'm trusting Gideon on this one. Oh, yeah, I would and I could imagine that it would make me a bit stressed, I think, having cold showers every morning. But look, maybe that's just me. I mean, maybe I'm just a snowflake, but if I were a snowflake I'd probably quite enjoy a cold shower.
Speaker 2:If you're a snowflake, you'd be skinny Because all your fat to be frozen.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think that these kinds of I mean the thing about this. It's similar to. You know, we talked about a Zempick throughout the year. Just these old ideas Like this is not a new idea, this is just like old school stoicism right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yeah, and just old practices of white loss, like those sweatsuits and different sorts of things like that, like they're just I guess you could call them sort of zombie remedies. They just keep coming back, but just shows that. And so the guy who did tweet it is a he does have a PhD, but he's a very prominent influencer, blogger who lots of the youth, lots of the male youth, follow. This guy and that's why I'm not naming him, because I don't want to lead anyone astray down. I'm very paternalistic on this podcast.
Speaker 2:Yep, well, good on Gideon. And honestly, if people are like, okay, cool, I'm going to go buy an ice bath and make sure I only go in up to my neck and I'm going to, very importantly, tell all my friends that I'm doing it and that they should do the same, then get on them, they deserve them. They reap what they sow.
Speaker 1:Well, and speaking of sowing, I do also wonder what it does for testicular health, but we can leave that to the experts. So one thing, that one news item that we did discuss and people discussed with us after it in, I believe, both positive and less positive ways, was cake at the workplace. Do you think, just before we get into cake at the workplace, what's the worst? Take ice baths or cake at the workplace being like passive smoking, I should say ice baths, because you know ice baths are used for a whole range of things. Ice baths for the purpose of reducing waste circumference. That's folks, before people start sort of getting upset that you know we're giving short change on the benefits of ice baths.
Speaker 2:This is primarily ice baths, because it makes no sense. And if it does make sense, then that's just weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you think the cake ones. Ok then.
Speaker 2:No, but I would like to announce that twice in the last week I have taken cake to a workplace sort of workplace. The first one was my actual workplace and it all got eaten. The second one had you taken a pack of windfield blues.
Speaker 1:I'm sure they would have all got spoken to.
Speaker 2:There you go. Actually, I might try that next year and see what happens, just as a week like controlled experiment. Second one, controversial. Now I will say at this point that I am really talking up my gym situation, actually.
Speaker 1:I wanted to come back to the gym.
Speaker 2:I took a cake into my trainer, right, I think oh. I wonder how that will go down. However, she also had something for me, and it was some special Italian. She's from Italy. Italian pastry with ricotta and something, and in it.
Speaker 1:Sounds fancy. Was it a cannellini?
Speaker 2:No, it began with S F something and it was a really long word.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's from where she's from, but I don't. She's from somewhere in the south, I know nothing. Anyway, it was a lot. What I gave her was a large gingerbread that you could probably have killed someone with if you'd bang them on the head. No, it was delicious, and she just picked it up and took a bite right out of it, didn't even use a knife. Wow there was no complaint about cake at her workplace.
Speaker 1:That's good to hear because I have some complaints about Jim and Jim culture. I mentioned last time about a man running on the treadmill in his jeans. The other thing that I really dislike at the gym when I go is people having phone conversations while working out Like the loud, the talking loudly, and I find it mildly irritating. But I also just wonder would I want to be talking to somebody?
Speaker 2:while the heaving and breathing like that, so you're not hearing the other person's side of the drink, because I'm like I would probably find that very mildly entertaining, unless it was like abusive or something which no no, and then they kind of just sit there on the equipment for a bit, just having a long conversation. Oh yeah, that's annoying.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then yeah, but there's this one guy in particular who'll be sort of in between his reps. Okay, so Take in the workplace passive smoking has. Has your views or opinions on this changed at all since? So, for those who are only joining us for this episode, Susan Jeb, prominent public health person in the UK, made headlines by saying that bringing cake into the workplace is something is akin to passive smoking. So people shouldn't do it because you're the similarity being, you're providing or creating an environment that is going to lead to their excess calorie intake and they're going to come become fat and sick.
Speaker 2:But it's kind of weird, right, Because I'm sure we discussed this at the time but taking cake to the workplace doesn't mean that somebody then has excessive calorie intake because they got to actually eat it. It's a middle step there which was missing from the smoking one. But yeah, I don't know, man, I reckon baking's nice.
Speaker 1:It is and it's also, yeah, tasty community building those sorts of things All right. So the last one, then, and this is going to sort of take the conversation in a somewhat more serious and grim direction, and this is a continuation from the brief comments and discussion that we've already had about Israel and Gaza, but things have moved on so dramatically since then since that conversation, which I believe was late October perhaps, but on the 7th of November, so a month after the initial attacks from Hamas, the Jerusalem Post tweeted an article.
Speaker 1:The article was called how to use the stress from the Israel Hamas war to lose weight. And then in their tweet they said fears of rockets and missiles amid Israel's war with Hamas, putting millions of Israelis in a constant state of anxiety and stress. But you can actually use this stress to lose weight and stay healthy.
Speaker 2:Stay healthy part seems a bit of a reach if you're also, you know, having rockets and stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But, I mean, I feel that there's not a lot to say other than it seems that fatphobia and the desire for a skinny body that is then seen as a healthy body kind of knows no bounds and there is no grass conversation that it won't enter. I mean, we saw similar things during COVID. I remember like lots of things about how not to get fat during COVID and lots of concerns about that sort of stuff, but it seems just on so many levels that that kind of host and that kind of article was not reading the room.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and what you know. In some ways, I want to think oh, you know, people always have to come up with. You know, this is the sort of shit that people click on and read and that's what it's all about. Somebody's going to come up with a fresh, new take on something that, like that, must have had to have gone through a number of eyes, right, a number of pairs of eyes that were like yeah, you go ahead and publish it. It is inconceivable to me. You know, it's like somebody telling you that they're going to have to have cancer treatment and you'll go oh, that's cool, you can lose a bit of weight. Hmm, which was what happened? Which was what happens.
Speaker 1:I have no idea. Not that it was like that, but I was recently at a Christmas or end of year celebration and somebody who had been away for two years came back and they were had markedly lost a lot of weight and people were commenting on this and praising this. And then this person talked about how they had been seriously ill. They didn't say with what, but the joke was oh, that's great. And then someone was like oh, I wouldn't mind getting a bit ill if I could.
Speaker 1:You know, Jesus, yeah, which, I guess, yeah, comes to the question of moral seriousness and, you know, awareness of the realities of people's lives. I mean, in this context, we don't know what this person was sick with. In this context, I mean, yes, the Israelis and the stress of rockets and uncertainty within Israel, but then obviously, the Gars and Palestinian people who are having, you know, their lands and lives utterly destroyed through this war. And so I think, in sort of closing, this sort of end of year wrap-up I think it's, you know, can't be ignored. This is the way things are progressing, and or declining, I guess, in that almost you know, 20,000 people, 20,000 Palestinians, have died in these past, you know, two months and a bit of this war, and that almost half of those are children.
Speaker 1:And I think, you know, the thing to be mindful of, or the thing that keeps, you know, I keep on having to remind myself, is like sometimes those things seem inconceivable, like it just seems like there would be more outrage, there'd be more people talking about this, and clearly there are lots of people talking. I'm not saying that no one's talking about this, but I'm talking about from mainstream, dominant discourse. There still seems to be this sense that it's an exception when, say, channel seven, channel nine, one of these sort of mainstream news outlets, or a mainstream member of, say, cabinet in parliament criticizes what the Israelis are doing. And I think what's interesting to me is that there are starting to be a number of ordinarily, I would say, quite conservative mouthpieces, if you like, or institutions that are starting to sort of draw attention to the atrocities, the you know, ethnic cleansing, genocidal activities, genocide, whatever you would like, whatever you sort of euphemism that's being used.
Speaker 1:But the Lancet, for instance, did publish an article to say that there is no evidence of inflated mortality, reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health. This was in December, an article was published. So you know, a classic sort of move in these kinds of wars and, as I say, the loss of truth in the fog of war is to sort of claim propaganda on each side. But an organization like the Lancet is historically a pretty conservative organization and publication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can you explain a little bit about what they mean by that? Is it as literal, as the numbers haven't been reported and therefore it's not happening, or like I think what the point is the public skepticism about?
Speaker 1:so the Gaza Ministry of Health, so the Gaza Ministry of Health has been providing the reports of deaths that are occurring in Gaza, and so some people, particularly people with vested interests or ideological interests or conservative commentators, are saying that's exaggerated, that's not being there's no evidence of that.
Speaker 1:You know there is no evidence of that. Or, of course, the Gaza Ministry of Health would say that because that's sort of creating a favorable narrative for them in this conflict. This is part of the PR conflict to be able to show that Israel are claiming that they're waging a smart war and that all their targets are clearly military and strategically justified targets. Gazans are saying you're just indiscriminately bombing refugee camps and hospitals, and the Gaza Ministry of Health is saying and there's been, you know, at that time I think, like 10,000 deaths, and so people had disputed that. And so the Lancet has published an article to say that there is no evidence of inflated morality, mortality.
Speaker 1:Sorry reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and that was published by Benjamin Nguyen and Elizabeth Chin and Paul Spiegel and the other I guess you know conservative voice in this is the Pope who, after two Palestinian women, a mother and a daughter, were shot by an Israeli sniper in a churchyard in Gaza, described these activities as terrorism, whereas the US spokespeople and the Australian and Richard Miles, my local representative, will say well, israel has a right to defend itself, and just repeat that over and over again. So I don't know. Last time we talked specifically about the way that medical facilities and health care workers have been targeted, journalists being targeted as well, and the situation is very grim, yeah. And I guess, while we Joke about cake and the, these conversations, not to sort of downplay the that like the context of sort of fatphobia and judging people's food choices, I think there are these wider issues that somewhat dampen the festive time of this year. So, in closing, finishing up, I don't know, jay, is there anything you wanted to know?
Speaker 2:It's devastating, it's awful and I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, I thought it would be good to finish this year off with the words of a Palestinian poet, a Palestinian American poet called Mandy Shunaru, who's based in Columbus, ohio, and the poem's called Ars Poetica of Partridges and Palestine. Ciddo told me once our last name means Partridge, that sweet little bird in the pear tree. Every Christmas I'm looking for metaphors on Wikipedia again. It's easy to write poems about birds. With so many species of partridges, national Geographic says 43 of those species are decreasing in population, something Palestinians know all too well. People like poems about birds more than they like poems about Palestine and actual Palestine and her endangered people. We just won't go extinct quickly enough. But I digress, that's not the metaphor I'm looking for. Just yet they interviewed an avian ecologist who says partridges are ground dwellers unlikely to roost in pear trees.
Speaker 1:Those first day of Christmas, birds of the family, façadeye presents from one's true love, were put in pear trees against their will, branches like an open-air prison the world ignores because at least they can still see sky. Some might say I'm reaching. But that's what metaphors do. But inside them there's always a feather of truth. This I know. When it comes to partridges and Palestine. The pervasive popular messaging around us both is false. The difference is one knows senselessly killing birds is wrong.