Meet the Solutionists, with Mark Scott

Professor Greg Neely says pain is a good thing.

This might worry you when you find out he’s studying some of the deadliest snakes on the planet, but it’s all about trying to understand pain as a mechanism – and Greg’s long-term goal is to address chronic pain, which afflicts more than one billion people.

After studying infectious disease at the start of his career, Greg’s been obsessed with pain as the body’s first immune response, but pain is poorly understood. So, he’s seeking out animals that cause severe pain with their venoms to learn how our bodies respond.

Along the way, he’s also finding cheap and accessible solutions to snake bites, and investigating old potatoes...

Mark Scott  00:01

This podcast is recorded at the University of Sydney's Camperdown campus on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. They've been discovering and sharing knowledge here for 10s of 1000s of years. I pay my respects to elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Greg Neely  00:24

When we published the jellyfish paper, then this amazing snake researcher from UK, Nick Casewell, he emailed me and and said that's cool, but cobras impact way more people. So why don't you do the same thing with cobras? We'll send you some cobra venom. And I was like, totally yes, we will do that. So we went to cobras.

Mark Scott  00:47

More than 1 billion people worldwide are living with chronic pain. Scientists around the world are racing to find cures and treatments for all kinds of illnesses and injuries. But Greg Neely is focused on the pain itself, and it's turned his attention to snakes. Greg is Professor of Functional Genomics at the University of Sydney, where he runs the Neely lab out of the Charles Perkins Centre. Greg and his team are studying painful venoms, so they can better understand how pain works and what it tells us about our own bodies. This is The Solutionists. I'm Mark Scott. So, Greg, let's start about your path towards venom. In the 90s, you were looking into HIV and lung infections. What did that work teach you about how the human body fights disease?

Greg Neely  01:46

Yeah. So basically, what I learned during my PhD, during the 90s and 2000s was about the immune system. So T cells, B cells, stuff like that. HIV taught us a lot about the immune system by wiping it out, and so we learned, okay, this is really important for the human immune system. And it's a really kind of orchestrated and complex response to like a cut or a wound, and so that was just super super cool. And then when I kind of continued my studies, I wanted to know more about like how our body defends itself.

Mark Scott  02:15

And so that brought you to thinking about pain?

Greg Neely  02:18

Yeah. So when you think about it, like the immune system gets activated once you have like a cut or something or, or, or some infection, but pain is activated like even before you have an injury, like at the time, like to prevent the injury, you know. So it's like if you touch a hot pan, you pull your hand away before you get the burn, hopefully, right? And then once you have a burn, then you have the immune response. So it's I kind of see it as like the fastest component of the immune system.

Mark Scott  02:44

And it's designed to protect you, to warn you?

Greg Neely  02:49

Yeah, yeah. So pain, basically, to to sense and avoid noxious stimulus, or so to detect things that can potentially hurt us, and then make us change our behaviour before that damage happens.

Mark Scott  03:01

So that means pain's a good thing.

Greg Neely  03:02

Totally, yeah. So humans that can't feel pain will die in their 20s or 30s from 

Mark Scott  03:07

Right.

Greg Neely  03:07

A series of broken bones and injuries like that.

Mark Scott  03:10

So let's talk about how you got to Australia. You were a, a researcher working in Austria. What was there about Australia that brought you here?

Greg Neely  03:17

So I came here for a conference in 2005, actually a pain conference. And I didn't know that much about Australia, we just have, in Canada, we just have like wild Australians. 

Mark Scott  03:26

Yeah, 

Greg Neely  03:27

You know?

Mark Scott  03:28

Yeah. There are plenty of wild Canadians here I must say. But, carry on. 

Greg Neely  03:30

So I didn't know about the rest, 

Mark Scott  03:32

Yeah.

Greg Neely  03:32

Like all the other Australians. And then when I came here, it just seemed like oh, like such an amazing, beautiful city. And I went up the coast and stuff. And then also just everyone was kind of super friendly, and it seemed kind of laid back a bit. It's not as laid back as I thought it was. 

Mark Scott  03:46

Yeah. But you know, Australia is famous for venomous animals. 

Greg Neely  03:51

Yeah.

Mark Scott  03:52

That's, that's the thing that many people around the world want to talk about. Was, given your research interest, was that a driver?

Greg Neely  03:58

Yeah. So basically, once I arrived here, then I was like, I want to take the most advantage of, of what's around here. So that's when I started getting into the venoms, basically. Venoms are kind of cool because they hurt. Like if you get kind of bitten, they hurt. We don't usually know how they work, and they're they're like a chemical version of pain, right? Like basically, something in the venom when you give it to a cells or animals will trigger a pain response, and we don't often know how that works.

Mark Scott  04:24

So, what is pain? What what does pain do to us? I mean, we talk about it every day, but just just deconstruct pain as a scientist for me.

Greg Neely  04:32

Yeah. Okay. So, like, there's acute pain and chronic pain. Chronic pain is like the disease that people suffer from that we can't really treat very well. Acute pain is just what protects us. So, acute just means fast. So like the fast pain is basically under your skin. There's these nerves, and they have receptors, like basically like open and closed gates that will detect different potential dangers, like acid or heat or like a physical squeezing that kind of stuff. Then once that happens, like say you have heat, then the sensory nerve gets activated. It shoots a message, so a single nerve connects from the tip of your finger into your spinal cord and plugs it in your spinal cord, and then there it synapses, so it exchanges the information with a second neuron. That one shoots up to your brain, and then it's kind of like a prismatic breakdown of light, you know? Like the pain goes up your spinal cord to your brain, and then it's split into like there's like the spatial area, like where is the pain happening? Is it unpleasant? What's its intensity? What's it what's it like? You know, is it mechanical? Is it heat? Right? And so basically everything kind of gets broken up, and then at like kind of like a magical higher level, it gets integrated into our consciousness as this unpleasant experience. So that that's kind of a lasting pain. But you can also have pain where it just goes to your spinal cord and then back, like a reflex. Right? And so it's like like for super fast, hyper defensive.

Mark Scott  05:56

So before your brain even is conscious of what's going on, 

Greg Neely  05:58

Yeah, 

Mark Scott  05:58

Seems your body is reacting.

Greg Neely  06:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tian Du  06:06

Hi, I'm Tian. I'm a postdoc in Greg Neely's lab at the Charles Perkins Centre, and I'm going to bring you into our lab. So this is a PC2 facility. So we're just going to grab some gowns, just to protect ourselves from all the things in here. So I think as a postdoc, I spend around 60 to 70 percent of my time here in the lab, the wet lab itself. We also have an animal facility downstairs. At the minute, we're using genome editing technology to look at how venoms attack our cells. I’m especially looking at medically relevant venoms to find new treatments for envenoming. So we're looking at a variety of different snake species, and then looking into jellyfish as well.

Mark Scott  06:58

In 2019 you made a major discovery, and box jellyfish featured in this. Tell us about that research.

Greg Neely  07:05

Oh yeah, that was cool. So it's basically box jellyfish is the most venomous animal on the planet, and so that sounds really cool. Basically, one big jellyfish. So they're like three metres long. They can swim at like five knots. They can hunt. You can like video them, and they're like they're not just blobbing around.

Mark Scott  07:21

They're in pursuit.

Greg Neely  07:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super dangerous. It's scary, right? And then, like, pretty much their whole body is covered in venom. The tentacles are the worst part. But if you touch anywhere, it's bad. And then, basically, you know, they're like hundreds of millions of years old, and then they can target common pathways that we all have, like fish and animals. And then, if you get stung, it causes like damage to your skin, right? So that'll end up being like a scar, and if you get enough of it, you'll have like a heart attack and extreme pain and a heart attack and die.

Mark Scott  07:56

So, what drew you to them as a case study, and what have you learnt through your study of box jellyfish?

Greg Neely  08:03

Yeah, so I think the most venomous animal in the world was a really cool. 

Mark Scott  08:10

Yeah, if you're studying venom, 

Greg Neely  08:11

Yeah, 

Mark Scott  08:11

You know that's the one, right?

Greg Neely  08:13

Yeah, yeah. So I kind of approached it from that childish curiosity, but then also a cool thing is because they have so much venom, it's not that hard to get. Like if you imagine like a little assassin bug, a tiny thing. Like imagine getting a test tube full of venom from them, whereas the box jellyfish you just catch one and it's like enough for life to study. So it was the ease of how easy it was to get the venom was part of it. But the other thing was that it causes this extreme pain, and we didn't understand why or how, how it works like at the molecular level. So so that's why I studied it.

Mark Scott  08:41

And what did you discover through your study of it?

Greg Neely  08:44

So we basically, we did an experiment where we turn off every gene in the human genome. So there's 25,000 genes. We just turn them all off.

Mark Scott  08:50

How do you do that?

Greg Neely  08:50

CRISPR. It's pooled CRISPR, but it's basically like imagine you go into like a room and there's a bunch of light switches. 

Mark Scott  08:57

Yeah. 

Greg Neely  08:57

You just flip them all. 

Mark Scott  08:58

Yeah. 

Greg Neely  08:58

I was like, okay, that one controls the lights. That one controls 

Mark Scott  09:01

Yeah.

Greg Neely  09:01

The speakers or whatever, right? So that's what the experiment is like. It's just 25,000 times. Just like turn off every single thing and say when this gene is missing, does the venom still work?

Mark Scott  09:10

Right,

Greg Neely  09:10

Right? And we find when it doesn't work. And we collect all the cells where the venom no longer works on them, and then sequence them basically, and then it tells us what the venom needs to work, and so some of it's direct, like a receptor, and some of it's more indirect, like just supporting machinery in our body. So from doing that work, we found a receptor that we think the venom uses to, to start the pain, and then we basically found like a conserved cellular process, something that all animals have that the venom uses to hurt us. And so from that we made an antidote. Like we took advantage of that knowledge, and then just said, "Okay, if this is how it works, then we just flood the system with this chemical, and then the venom is going to be confused and no longer work”.

Mark Scott  09:54

So, is that a vaccine? How does that how's that delivered?

Greg Neely  09:57

No, it's an antidote. It'd be like cream or spray. We injected it like into a foot of a mouse, but the general product would be like kind of a topical spray or a, or a cream.

Mark Scott  10:07

And does that have commercial interest? Does that have applications? How does that work?

Greg Neely  10:11

No, there wasn't too much commercial interest, unfortunately, because like one person gets hurt per year, right? 

Mark Scott  10:17

Right, okay.

Greg Neely  10:17

So we talked. We talked to the government, all the MPs around Queensland, especially, and we went state and, and, and national, and they had support. But to basically to get it into humans, it's tens of millions. The other thing is, I've seen a video of a child being stung by a box jellyfish, and if you get a life-threatening level of envenoming, I don't know how much our antidote would help. Our antidote would help if you have a wound on your leg that's going to scar. You know, like like it works really quick. Like within five minutes, the the person in the video I saw was having cardiac arrest and then just needed CPR and breathing. And I don't think us coming in with some cream at that stage would,

Mark Scott  10:56

Yeah.

Greg Neely  10:57

Would be that helpful. I think it has to be immediate, and it's more for the damaged tissue that, that our our drug worked.

Mark Scott  11:03

So, where did your research go after that?

Greg Neely  11:05

So, when we published the jellyfish paper, then this amazing snake researcher from UK, Nick Casewell, he emailed me and, and said that's cool, but cobras impact way more people. 

Mark Scott  11:18

Right. 

Greg Neely  11:19

So, why don't you do the same thing with cobras? We'll send you some cobra venom, and I was like, totally yes, we will do that. So we went to cobras.

Mark Scott  11:24

Okay, because cobras attack and kill far many more people worldwide.

Greg Neely  11:30

Yeah. Just trying to help the most number of people.

Mark Scott  11:32

Yeah, and and so how does cobra venom arrive to you in the lab?

Greg Neely  11:37

In the mail, with like the proper authority,

Mark Scott  11:39

With warnings. 

Greg Neely  11:39

Yeah, 

Mark Scott  11:40

Do not, do not consume.

Greg Neely  11:42

Total correct permissions. You know, Australia is a bit hard to get stuff into. 

Mark Scott  11:46

Yeah, and we're grateful for that, Greg. 

Greg Neely  11:47

Yeah.

Mark Scott  11:48

But, so tell us, it arrives, and so tell us how the science evolves from that. So you've got this incredibly, you know, venomous substance. This is delivered by creatures that cause kind of very significant numbers of death worldwide. So what, so how do you then? What do you then do?

Greg Neely  12:06

Yeah. Okay. So the way the reason why cobra venom was good for our study is because it's necrotic. So it basically destroys tissue. So when you get bitten with it, it'll just kind of burn away at your skin, and you'll have this terrible wound. And so we can study that in, in cells easily because the venom basically destroys the cells, right? And so what we didn't know is if it would be possible to be to protect cells because there might be so many different mechanisms that the venom uses. But we receive the venom, like figure out how much it is, and then what we do is do the same thing. We take a human, like it's basically like 80 million human cells from a cancer cell line, and then we just turn off every gene in the human genome a bunch of times. So we have this big vat of cells that are each, like have one light switch turned off. Then we just pipe it in the venom, and it obliterates everything except for a small amount, like two or three percent of cells are left. We grow them up and sequence them, and that they tell us again what the venom needed to, to get to to hurt us.

Tian Du  13:07

So we're now in our cell culture room, and this is where we have all of the cells that we use to look at their morphology and to basically study and look at sort of in small detail how the venom actually kills the cells. Just putting on my gloves. We have to disinfect everything, so usually we use 80% ethanol. Essentially, Greg is our lab head, so he's what I like to think of as the ideas man, and I think essentially tackling the problem from a host perspective, or from the human side, as being kind of innovative in the venom space, they seem to attack our cells in the same way. And then being able to find that connection gives us hope that we can find these broad acting antidotes, is a cool idea for the future.

Mark Scott  14:05

As I understand it, your research, rather than driving you to new drugs and new innovations, set you back into the medical cabinet to old drugs to use them in a new way. Tell us, tell us what your insight was there.

Greg Neely  14:20

Yeah, so when we did that experiment where we turn off every gene in the genome and then see what's essential, for the venom to work, we got this really strong signal for something called heparin, and that's something our body makes. It's a bunch of sugars kind of linked together on the outside of a cell, and it's basically like makes up part of our kind of extracellular matrix, it's called. But basically, in between our bodies glued together with our cells are glued together, kind of like you know cement as well as the as the cells.

Mark Scott  14:49

By heparin?

Greg Neely  14:50

And a bunch of other things. 

Mark Scott  14:51

Right.

Greg Neely  14:52

But one of them is heparin. Yeah, it's called the extracellular matrix. But yeah, heparin is one of those things. And then also there's a different, just slightly different called, so it's heparan. That's what is on our cell surface. Then there's another thing called heparin, and that's in these immune cells. They're called mast cells. They're, they're all across our body, and when we have like an allergic reaction or like a insect bite or something like that, this heparin gets immediately released, and it basically it's anticoagulant, and so that's been used in medicine for like over 100 years.

Mark Scott  15:22

So, so explain how, how has heparin been used? What, what kind of incidents?

Greg Neely  15:26

Like a blood thinner.

Mark Scott  15:27

Right.

Greg Neely  15:28

Basically anti clotting, yeah.

Mark Scott  15:29

Yeah.

Greg Neely  15:30

And so it's been a super successful medicine. I mean, it's not as used anymore. Now there's like better, like there's smaller versions of it called hepnoids.

Mark Scott  15:37

But heparin's been around for a long period of time. And then, what was your insight on cobra bites that made you think heparin could be a powerful solution?

Greg Neely  15:46

So the, our own bodies makes heparin, and so we hit like in our screening, we identified like the majority of the heparin synthesis pathway as required for the venom to work. So we weren't expecting that. And then we confirmed it, we tested it, added the venom, removed the heparin pathways, and the venom no longer killed, right. And so, so we're like, there's already a medicine where we just add this thing to humans, and we know it's safe, and then we now know it's essential. So if we added more, it could either make it worse or better, right? We didn't know which. So then we added more, and it it kind of flooded the system with kind of fake targets for the venom. So then the venom was sticking to the wrong stuff, and it neutralised it.

Mark Scott  16:30

How widespread has your insight become to change the treatment of cobra bites?

Greg Neely  16:37

So you really do need to do a trial to show efficacy, like ours is just animal work, but because the drug is approved, it's possible to to just go right to patients and and give it to them. I just can't do that. One of the biggest fears of, of, from, from people like around the like some some people in the in the venom community after our paper was that a doctor in the wrong part of the world with the wrong snake will give them heparin, 

Mark Scott  17:03

Yeah.

Greg Neely  17:04

And then that will cause sickness instead of protection. 

Mark Scott  17:07

Yeah. 

Greg Neely  17:07

And so, really, there has to be some communication about when it's useful and when it's not. It's good for cobras, it's bad for vipers, is basically it. We're continuing to categorise each of these venoms that we can get a hold of. 

Mark Scott  17:19

Yeah.

Greg Neely  17:20

So there's probably like 10 different main ways that venoms hurt us on a big scale. Like when you have the whole entire venom interacting with our body, there's like one entry point or one thing that you can block, and then from there it'll kind of spread out. So we're identifying those core entry points that venoms are using, and then next, yeah, we're taking advantage of the new technologies we got from COVID 19 vaccine. So it's mRNA lipid nanoparticle, basically the same thing that we use to protect us against COVID vaccine, we're using to make drugs that'll either like block pain or help our body survive disease, but also other like vaccines for, for venoms. So basically, there's a paper like two years ago, or this guy in the U.S. He basically let himself get bitten by like 30 different venomous animals, and then created like a super serum in his body that he was protected against like a bunch of stuff, right? And so that kind of lets us know that we can actually walk around with protection. And so what we're looking at now is kind of some of the biggest threats that, that we face in Australia. So now, with new technologies we have, we're able to, we have this molecular knowledge. We can design proteins or or vaccines that will protect against some of these venoms, and so we can actually kind of give the person or a companion animal the ability to to walk around with pre existing protection in case you're out in the bush far, because when you get bit, you you have like 45 minutes to like get to a hospital, and if you're more than 45 minutes away, you might be in trouble.

Mark Scott  18:48

So you could see a scenario where, if someone was in a risky environment, or was all more likely to incur this kind of risk, that you could take a preventative vaccine,

Greg Neely  19:00

Yeah.

Mark Scott  19:00

Using some of the insights that you've developed. Talk a bit more about insights that you got through COVID work and preventative COVID work, and how that could impact on your research.

Greg Neely  19:10

So there's, I mean, there's two different ways. One is through, we're basically making functional vaccines for venomous animals, but that's kind of still early days. The other thing that we, we've done, which has been super valuable and productive, is instead of delivering like so for COVID vaccine, it's the spike protein from COVID. You put it into your muscle, and then your body sees that it's foreign, and then creates an immune response and protects you, right? But what we've done now is we put instead we put really good things in there, stuff that helps our body a lot, so painkillers, or the coolest one that we did recently is like a cognitive enhancement. So it's like a, it's called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's, it's basically a human hormone that makes your brain stronger and survives longer and protects from cell death and, and creates neurogenesis. So we took that brain-drive neurotropic factor. Put it into mRNA. Put that into the lip and nanoparticle. So it's just like the vaccine, but with, with something good in it. And instead of injecting it into our muscle, we put it in the nose of a mouse.

Mark Scott  20:12

Right.

Greg Neely  20:12

And then in the nose, it creates this brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is really good for the brain. And that gets in through the olfactory system, through the smell system into the brain of the mice, and it basically takes a really old mouse, so like 18-month-old mouse, it can't remember stuff, and then it now makes it as smart as when it was in its prime. And so it's basically nose drops that just rejuvenate the brain, make you from unable to remember to totally able to remember. And then we did that in an Alzheimer's model as well, and it also slows Alzheimer's disease and creates neurogenesis. And so, right now, we're trying to do, we started a spinout from University of Sydney, trying to take this mRNA LMP nose drop into humans, basically.

Mark Scott  20:52

Well, that's intriguing. That sounds like another conversation for another day. Good luck with that research. It's interesting broadly, as by thinking about our conversation, pain is the body's warning. You've investigated venoms which trigger enormous pain and have enormous consequence for the body. What are the implications more broadly of your research on helping us manage pain? So not just you know dealing with venomous animals, but there are many people every day who are dealing with chronic pain. Draw a line between the insights from your venom research and how we might be able to help the body deal with chronic pain or acute pain in a different way.

Greg Neely  21:32

Sure. So conceptually, it's straightforward. In reality, it's a little bit harder, right. 

Mark Scott  21:38

So, so, so much of science, right? 

Greg Neely  21:40

Yeah. So the idea is, if we find the stuff on our human body that venoms target to cause our pain, that gives us something that we can then target as a drug, right? ‘Cause we don't know everything about how our body feels pain. We only know some of it, right? And so we use venoms as a discovery tool to say, okay, this receptor might be driving pain in this situation.

Mark Scott  22:02

So the venom is causing pain,

Greg Neely  22:04

Yeah.

Mark Scott  22:05

Because of its impact on that receptor.

Greg Neely  22:06

Yeah.

Mark Scott  22:06

So therefore, when it comes to treatment,

Greg Neely  22:09

Yeah.

Mark Scott  22:09

If you can also target that receptor,

Greg Neely  22:12

Yeah.

Mark Scott  22:13

And turn off the pain impact,

Greg Neely  22:14

Yeah.

Mark Scott  22:15

That has the implication more broadly.

Greg Neely  22:17

Yeah. So basically, that receptor could be involved in pain from like 3000 situations, not just venom. 

Mark Scott  22:24

Yeah.

Greg Neely  22:24

You know what I mean?

Mark Scott  22:25

Box jellyfish, cobras. Do you have other targets, other venoms that you think I'd like to have a crack at understanding that?

Greg Neely  22:32

Yeah, we're doing Irukandji right now.

Mark Scott  22:33

Which is what?

Greg Neely  22:34

The Irukandji box jellyfish, the tiny one?

Mark Scott  22:36

The tiny box jellyfish, 

Greg Neely  22:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Scott  22:38

Right?

Greg Neely  22:38

So like when you get stung with that, you get an impending sense of doom that's unexplained, unexplained, and so,

Mark Scott  22:44

Wow.

Greg Neely  22:45

It causes tonnes of pain and cardiac issues, but also this impending sense of doom. So, from a neuroscience perspective, it's like what, what chemical causes doom?

Mark Scott  22:54

It's almost like prophetic, right?

Greg Neely  22:56

Yeah.

Mark Scott  22:57

Yeah. How do you catch them?

Greg Neely  23:00

Again, my friend Jamie Seymour, in,

Mark Scott  23:03

You have a good bunch of friends,

Greg Neely  23:04

Yeah.

Mark Scott  23:05

Out doing the dangerous stuff for you while you stay in the lab, Greg. This is very wise of you. Any other targets?

Greg Neely  23:09

We're also doing potato toxin.

Mark Scott  23:11

What's that?

Greg Neely  23:12

So, like you know, sometimes potatoes turn green, 

Mark Scott  23:14

Yeah.

Greg Neely  23:15

And then it creates a poison that's not, not totally good for us, and we don't. I mean, there's there's some idea how it works, but not fully at a physiological level. So we're basically saying, well, you know, billions of people eat potatoes, and some of them are going to be containing this poison. What's, what is chronic exposure to this poison do to our health?

Mark Scott  23:34

So in your lab, not just toxins from the worst snakes in the world, a bunch of mouldy potatoes in the back corner as well.

Greg Neely  23:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just that one extra thing I added.

Mark Scott  23:48

That's Professor Greg Neely from the Dr. John and Anne Chong Lab for Functional Genomics at the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre. You also heard from his PhD student Tian Du. And if you want to hear from other top scientists working to better understand our genes, listen to our episode with Professor David James.

David James  24:09

What I would like to see, is if we could do a test on people right at the get go, and that test would tell us you should be taking drug Y, so that you immediately are prescribed drug Y, save all those problems and you save the, the potential dangerous adverse effects from taking four medications instead of one. 

Mark Scott  24:32

You can listen to that episode of The Solutionists right now, and make sure you're following the show so you don't miss an episode. The Solutionists is a podcast from the University of Sydney, produced by Deadset Studios.

The Solutionists is a podcast from the University of Sydney, produced by Deadset Studios. Keep up to date with The Solutionists by following @sydney_uni on Facebook and Instagram, and @sydney.edu.au on Bluesky.

This episode was produced by Liam Riordan with sound design by Jeremy Wilmot. Supervising producer is Sarah Dabro. Executive editors are Kellie Riordan, Sladjana Rstic, and Mark Scott. Strategist is Ann Chesterman.

This podcast was recorded on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. For thousands of years, across innumerable generations, knowledge has been taught, shared and exchanged here. We pay respect to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.