Climate Migration: Confronting the Reality of Global Warming (Gaia Vince)

9 Oct 2025 · 1 h 2 min

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Podcast Notes: Radical with Amol Rajan - Episode on Climate Migration with Gaia Vince

Episode Overview Title: Climate Migration: Confronting the Reality of Global Warming Guest: Gaia Vince, journalist and author of *Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval* Release Date: [Insert Release Date Here] Podcast Host: Amol Rajan Description: This episode discusses the urgent issue of climate migration as extreme weather conditions force people from their homes. Gaia Vince argues for a positive re-framing of immigration in light of climate change, emphasizing the need for governments to prepare for and manage mass migration.

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Key Themes and Concepts

  1. Climate Change and Migration
  2. Inevitability of Migration: Vince highlights that climate change is causing displacement, with millions already being forced to leave areas that are becoming uninhabitable, primarily in the Global South.
  3. Economic Drivers: Many migrants do not self-identify as climate refugees but move due to the economic impacts of climate change on their livelihoods, such as drought and floods.
  1. Historical Context and Solutions
  2. Long-standing Issues: Countries like Bangladesh have been dealing with climate-related migration for decades, adapting through innovative practices like early warning systems for disasters.
  3. The Need for Planning: Vince emphasizes that managing migration effectively is crucial for economic stability and social cohesion.
  1. The Economic Argument for Immigration
  2. Economic Necessity: Vince argues that as populations age and birth rates decline, countries will increasingly rely on immigration to maintain labor forces and economic stability.
  3. Immigration as a Benefit: Rather than viewing immigration as a threat, Vince advocates for recognizing its potential to bolster economies and enrich societies.

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Discussion Points

  1. Public Sentiment on Migration
  2. Contradictory Views: While public sentiment often leans against high levels of immigration, Vince suggests that ignoring the realities of climate migration is counterproductive.
  3. Migration Management: Effective policies and social investment are required to ensure that immigrants are integrated successfully into society.
  1. The Role of Governments
  2. Proactive Strategies Needed: Governments must develop strategies to prepare for the incoming wave of climate migrants rather than reactively addressing issues as they arise.
  3. International Cooperation: Working with other nations to create a humane and cooperative migration framework is essential.
  1. Future Outlook
  2. Tipping Point for Renewables: Vince discusses the potential for renewable energy to become the dominant source of power, which could shift the economic dynamics surrounding migration.
  3. Cultural Adaptation: Acknowledging and addressing the cultural changes that come with migration is vital for social harmony.

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Key Quotes

  • *“Migration is part of the human condition, but because of the climate crisis, it is going to increase.”*
  • *“Not wanting it is not a solution to the problem, unfortunately, because it’s happening whether you want it or not.”*

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Conclusion The conversation between Amol Rajan and Gaia Vince presents a radical rethinking of climate change and migration, arguing for the recognition of migration as a natural human response to environmental changes. The episode challenges listeners to confront their views on immigration and consider the benefits of a world where migration is embraced as a factor of social and economic growth.

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Further Resources

  • Listen to the Episode: [Radical with Amol Rajan on BBC Sounds](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p04z203l)
  • Gaia Vince’s Book: *Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval*

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Contact Information

  • WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480
  • Email: radical@bbc.co.uk

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Transcript

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0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's Amol here. Welcome back to Radical.

0:45These are conversations about the deep global trends changing our world and offering you some pretty radical ideas to win the future. In this episode, we tackle two huge and intersecting forces, climate change and mass migration. Climate change is real. It is caused by humans and it is already leading to the mass movement of people. Those are the facts. There is abundant, in fact, growing evidence to support those facts. So if you don't like them, I'm afraid your problem is with the facts rather than with me. They ought not to be hugely contentious. But an area which is hugely contentious is, of course, the politics of migration.

1:24In fact, this is just about the most contentious issue facing many Western democracies. and our guest today is a journalist and author, author of a book called Nomad Century and other books, in fact, who thinks that climate migration is already reshaping our world and who has a pretty radical take on all of this, which is that we need to get used to the idea of mass migration, celebrate it and make it work because it's not going away. She is Gaia Vince and I think you're going to enjoy this pretty radical conversation.

2:07Gaia, how are you? You could drink your tea. Sorry. You could drink your tea. A really inopportune moment. I literally picked up the cup to take a really ungainly slurp. Take a big slurp. Take a big slurp. Are you drinking water or tea? I'm going to alternate, but I'm going to try and do it in a quiet way by having some paper underneath so I don't make clunky noises. You can make clunky noises. James, our magnificent studio engineer, is going to make you sound... He's going to do all the editing. Yeah, you just got... If I do accidental swears, you can... How did someone with a name like Gaia, which is the primordial goddess of Earth in Greek mythology...

2:47How does it feel to sit opposite a goddess, Emma? Yeah, it feels incredible. But did you take an interest in sort of environmental things and planet Earth out of a sense of duty to your parents who named you Gaia? No, I mean, it was, yeah. So my dad was studying ancient Greek. My brother and sister have got completely normal names. Normal being like John and Tim. David, David and Zoe. Yeah, very, very ordinary names. Yeah, so perhaps it was a nominative determinism. It is nominative determinism. Yeah. Would you mind just distilling for us and for our lovely listeners who might be new to your work, the central argument of your book and the connection between climate change in this era of mass migration?

3:27Because I basically want to talk to you about those two things, but I think you'd better introduce it rather than me. The earth is warming, it's heating up, and that is making large portions unlivable, increasingly unlivable. And as we look ahead to the coming decades, what that means is people will have to move. They're already moving. Migration is underway. It is inevitable. Not just people, not just young men, but families, expertise, skills, industry, capital, agriculture, industry, human activity is going to move away from unlivable places towards livable places. And I mean, that sounds like, oh, it's a really depressing book, but it's really a book of solutions.

4:10But it starts with a very honest appraisal of where we are in the world at the moment. We're already a quarter of the way through the 21st century. And it is just worth laying out for people who don't know. Already today, there are millions of people who are being forced to leave all that is familiar and known to them because the patch of Earth which they inhabit, which is generally near the equator, which is the hottest part of the Earth, is becoming uninhabitable. And actually, we now have not just months or weeks, but years and decades of evidence that climate change is already causing mass migration, don't we?

4:44Yeah, and most of that migration is occurring within borders, but increasingly it will occur across borders and across regions. So there are, you know, people move because their homes are uninhabitable because of, say, floods or coastal erosion, dramatic storms. But they also move because their livelihoods are impossible. So they're in agriculture and there's been persistent chronic drought, which makes it impossible for them to survive in those places. So they have to move. And the interesting thing is I've travelled sort of widely around the global south, around the equatorial tropical region.

5:27And many of the people that move don't consider themselves to be climate refugees or climate migrants. you know they're not they're not on paper as such they think of themselves as moving for economic reasons but when you dig down into why they moved and why they have to move yeah it's because it was impossible for them to survive there so either the main industries have moved away because of drought or because of the impossibility to to carry on working under those climate conditions And so the community, the village or the town has become so denuded of economic activity that they can't persist there anymore.

6:10They've had to move for work. You go to so many villages that are, you know, they're just skeletons of old people that are left and they survive on whatever comes back from the cities from their children. And there are places which where people are living. I mean, if you look at, say, Kenya, the world's the world's well, it was the world's largest refugee camp, the Derby refugee camp in Kenya, which is full of climate migrants, climate refugees, essentially from Sudan and even from Somalia that have all ended up there because drought has made it impossible. They just don't have enough food. And so they're now surviving on food aid in Kenya.

6:56They don't have Kenyan citizenship. They don't have their original citizenship. They are essentially in limbo. They are trapped. Generations are trapped living in these camps. And I guess I wrote the book out of frustration. It was, you know, why are we not addressing this? Why are we not talking about this in a sensible way? I mean, that is no living. It's so interesting you mentioned that crisis in Kenya as an overspill from what's going on in Sudan. One of the things I'm really proud of in working on the Today programme is, because Sudan is hellishly difficult to get into. And Sudan today, people should know, listen to this, Sudan today is in pure arithmetical terms.

7:37And humanitarian catastrophes are not a branch of mathematics, they're a branch of being human. But Sudan today is almost certainly the worst humanitarian catastrophe anywhere in the world ever. it's significantly bigger in terms of the severity of what's happening and the number of people affected for instance than what was happening in ethiopia 40 years ago that michael burke chronicled which led to live aid um there are various estimates but somewhere between 10 and 30 million people facing acute hunger or malnutrition and it's interesting you say people surviving on food aid obviously there's a lot of people who aren't getting food aid and there's a lot of children surviving on animal feed and a lot of what you're um talking about and And the refugees and the mass exodus of people from places that they call home come from resource wars.

8:19And resource wars include, again, it's obviously very, very complicated. I'm not trying to oversimplify it. But a lot of people say that one of the biggest conflicts of the 1990s, which was the Rwandan genocide, Hutus and Tutsis, was triggered in the end by a battle over water. There's an absence of supply of clean water. And that's one of the things that led a very complicated picture to become as combustible and as awful as it eventually was. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the experiences that you've had in that part of the world and some of the reporting that went into Nomad Century and some of the ways in which climate change.

8:55We talked a bit about Sudan, but in other places elsewhere, maybe in the Sahel or in other parts of Asia, the way in which abnormal weather, which has really turned up in the last 25 to 30 years as a result of the accelerated heating of the globe, is causing extreme events which are leading to these excesses of people. People don't want to move, largely. They don't want to move. They want to stay where they are. They have many reasons. They're known there. It's very hard to move. You've got your network. You have your language. You're known there. You know how everything works, how the job system works, how the economy works, all of those things.

9:35It's much easier. You have childcare from parents and aunties. We treasure that, which is familiar. Yes, and care for your parents and elderly people you're looking after. It's very hard to move. So it's not something most people do voluntarily en masse. But there are many places where people, where the landscape, the ecosystem that we rely on, you know, we think of ourselves as living in these artificial worlds, these cities that are completely divorced from the natural world. Podcast studios with microphones. Yeah. And cups with my, mugs with my face on them. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And, you know, to a certain extent, that has been what humans have been doing for the past, you know, millennia has been divorcing ourselves from the dangers and the inconveniences of the natural world and very much taming that whole thing and making it work for us.

10:32But we can't escape that everything that we have, everything we rely on, we are biology. At the end of the day, we're cells. We function because of the temperature, because of the water supply, because the air is cleaned and oxygen is infused from plants. All of these things and everything we have, everything, all the chair here, the microphone, everything comes from the earth. Right. We're not mining the moon yet. So we do rely on the earth so much, even though we don't realise in many places in the city. But when I was travelling around places that are more on the front lines of the natural systems that they exist with, that's when it's much more stark because they're not protected.

11:16They don't have those protections that cities have against that wall. They're very exposed to shocks. They're very exposed to shocks. They don't have the resilience generally to deal with multiple severe shocks in a short period of time. So, you know, there might be a once in a century terrible flood that comes through that everyone still talks about. But when that is occurring, you know, every 20 years or decadally, there just is not the resilience to cope with that sort of thing. And to be clear for people who still doubt it, can you just outline the fact that these extreme weather events, which are floods, droughts, hurricanes and so on and so forth, most of them are increasing in regularity at an accelerating rate.

11:58Completely. And it started in the tropics, but now it's everywhere. And also at the poles, right, which is also warming extremely. But the poles, not many people living there. So, you know, we see it from the satellite data and the data that scientists bring, but it's not viscerally there in the enormous populations that are already being affected. So Bangladesh, for example, is, you know, is a prime example of a society that has had to deal there at least a decade, if not 20 years ahead of us in Europe who are now experiencing these extreme events. And they've had to come to terms with these issues, with the fact that paddy fields are being inundated, not just from the Bay of Bengal flooding, but also because the groundwater is being infused with salinity.

12:50So paddy fields can't grow. So they're moving to shrimp farming and that's all been growing up. And at the same time, people are moving to certain cities. And there are, you know, originally it was Dakar and then other smaller cities are taking over. There's a government strategy to try and get this migration to work in a timely fashion for people. But largely, despite a lot of these efforts, and Bangladesh is quite interesting because its economy has grown considerably, shows its population actually, but it's grown considerably and it has to a certain extent dealt with this in really quite an impressive way.

13:31I mean, if you think about the typhoon, so the Bay of Bangal is hit by typhoons regularly and those have been increasing in severity and frequency. And because the sea level has also risen, that is inundating a much larger area. And yet deaths from these disasters have crashed. And that is because of their new program that they brought in to deal with disasters. So to deal with advanced warning systems. so everybody knows when the sirens start so they have advanced warning systems but they know what to do. They know where to go. They have trust. Trust is so key. Yeah, I mean, Bangladesh is such, such a riveting country to study.

14:14It's obviously got this very interesting history and it's got a lot of political problems right now. But there was a time, maybe about 20 years ago, when people said that Bangladesh's history and future was essentially as a glorified nation built on a floodplain. And it is a dominant feature of being there. But they have innovated to an extraordinary degree, including incentivizing people to build solar panels on roofs and all this sort of stuff to mitigate some of that stuff. But you feel that Bangladesh, which is often held up as a leader around the world in the mitigation of consequences of climate change.

14:45By the way, you don't find many climate change sceptics in Bangladesh. You know, go over there. If you want to have this conversation, go to Dhaka or Silek and ask them. When I started on this journey, and this was some time ago, there was a lot of climate scepticism. I'm calling it scepticism. I mean, a lot of it was very well-funded denial, right, by vested interests, the oil industry and other industries. This is not kind of, you know, a chance thing that has occurred. This is purely politically motivated and very well-funded denial in the West. but travelling through places that are affected it was almost the opposite not only were they very much believers shall I say in climate science but they were also attributing everything to climate and again this is a politically motivated reason because they are ultimately not the deliverers of this catastrophe they're not the major emitters So this is humans, right?

15:53We're weird. Lots of parts of the world that you've been to on your journey are very weak states. There are wars going on. And if we think particularly around sort of the northern strip or if you like sort of the part of Africa, you might call broadly speaking the Sahel and around it, there are lots and lots of countries where we now have very, very big movements of people. and those people, when you speak to them themselves, did you say that they do think of it as climate change or they just think of it as war? Yeah, but they don't necessarily think that that is the reason they're moving because there isn't one reason, right?

16:33People leave because of a number of compelling factors that have made a place unlivable. But climate is the fabric onto which all of this is woven. So if the climate changes and makes it impossible because in the States, your house is ununturable, right? And we're seeing this movement, by the way, not just in the poor world. We are seeing it everywhere. I mean, Valencia in the heart of Europe, in Spain, was completely wrecked. We see regularly on our television screens now cars floating down city streets. cars were not designed to float. This is not normal. And yet we see it so regularly now that it's not even commentable.

17:21It's just something that is a regular occurrence. So I guess one of the... You know, if the insurance industry, as it's already pulled out of states, entire states of the US, and is already finding it difficult to insure places in Europe, there are all sorts of alliances is trying to be formed between countries to make places insurable. If things become too expensive to insure, what does that mean for the whole financial underpinnings of our civilised world, our capitalist structures? Because you can't do long-term planning, you can't do everything, lending money to investing things. You can't do it without insurance.

18:03And the insurers are one of the few industries that have to look ahead. They have to be honest about that. So everybody else can pretend that this is just... And they're following the money. They're making decisions based on evidence of what they've seen. So two of the kind of founding principles of this podcast was I sort of wanted to get inside what I broadly call the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and also to understand, based on recent evidence, some of the deep global trends that are going to reshape the world. Can I ask you a couple of questions in those two contexts? The first is about the zeitgeist.

18:33You have thought about the Anthropocene and our relationship with nature for, you know, most of your career, 20 odd years. Do you feel that in that time, the green agenda has sort of gone from being quite low down the list of priorities to quite high to a moment right now where, bluntly, green politics, and I don't mean by that the Green Party, but I mean, green politics is in concern about the environment, is no longer seen as a top priority. and climate change worry is, I'm not saying it's going out of fashion, but it's been demoted. And when the most powerful man in the world says it's all a con, that's what he said, isn't it, Trump?

19:10It's all a con. Do you feel that actually - I mean, he's the expert in cons, so. Do you feel that the spirit of the times is no longer zealously green?

19:25I think that's an interesting question because undeniably 20 years ago, climate change was still quite a niche thing to talk and write about. I don't think that it has taken the role which I hoped it would take right at the heart of the current affairs agenda because everything, really everything, depends on our climate. You know, I mean, the cost of food, right, has gone up partly because of harvest failures, because of climate change. The cost of commodities every time the Panama Canal is affected by drought and there's log jams and slowness going through. That affects the logistics, affects the price.

20:10I mean, really, it affects everything. So I would say there hasn't been enough progress. In terms of the politics, obviously there hasn't because we're not dealing with this properly. But on the other hand, I think it's quite interesting in that the move to renewables, renewables to the green economy as such, has taken on a life of its own now. And so you don't have to be convinced or even care at all about climate change and green issues to know that it makes a hell of a lot of financial security sense, economic sense to invest in renewables rather than a dead... We are absolutely heading for the post-combustion power system.

21:00We're heading already, like in Europe, it was more than half of power is generated by renewables now. It's completely unbelievably fast. Well, one thing that people don't always appreciate is how far this country has come in terms of its move towards renewables. So there's been a day or two, including I think this year, where all of the UK's electricity was generated by renewables. that's not always going to be the case because it depends on the sun shining and the wind blowing and all that sort of thing. But actually Britain's made quite significant strides compared to some other developed nations.

21:31And also I think, you know, having this kind of very focused, Ed Miliband is a very focused on this whole kind of renewable energy and net zero economy. and he has a very, very strong position in government and that makes a really big difference. And every single day, whatever disasters happen, I'm so grateful that he's still in that position and still driving this because the thing is, what I just said about this being inevitable, that we are going to be moving to net zero, to the post-combustion energy system. When you say post-combustion, just to be clear, Do you mean post-reliance of fossil fuels primarily for sources of energy?

22:19Yes, we are going to, that is the trajectory we are on. It is undeniable that we will get there because it is, it makes financial sense. It makes security sense. It makes sense in every single, we're very near a tipping point in this. You know, it just, if China continues its kind of exponential rollout of solar batteries, et cetera, and that price drop, within about five years, that will be a global tipping point and it will be inevitable. But there are vested interests from, and this is an ideological, it's entirely ideologically driven, this move in the US and in petro states, essentially. It's not economic, right?

23:03Because if you look at the economics in the US of producing energy, and you see that in a lot of the Republican states like Texas and so on, it makes no sense, right? It makes absolutely no sense to open, you know, to continue exploration, to open a new coal power station, an absolutely mental idea, to continue with this industry. Why do you think they're doing it? Because it is entirely ideologically driven. And I think that's really interesting. Why is that a problem? Well, it is a problem. Donald Trump, because I know you might not be a fan of Donald Trump, but if he was sat in this studio now, imagine him right there.

23:42He would say, Guy, it's all very well for you to say there's all this mass migration. We want jobs. We want, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago in America, they did have jobs. That is what the green industry is delivering, right? It is delivering jobs. That was Biden's argument. It's worth saying. That was a really interesting thing about Joe Biden. He had this line where he said, when I hear people, Joe Biden, it feels like a different era, doesn't it? Where Joe Biden said, when I hear people talk about the economy, I'll tell you what I hear. I hear jobs, jobs, jobs. And his argument was America's got a very particular potential benefit with shale, he would say.

24:13But he would say that green energy could drive jobs as never before. And so would Ed Miliband. But when you say you're glad Ed Miliband's there, isn't the temper of the times, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but isn't the temper of the times moving against him and against net zero? The Conservative Party... Yes, we are seeing... They advocated net zero. They brought it in. They legislated for it, the Conservative Party. They've now moved off that position. I think it's fair to say that Reform UK are no great advocates of net zero. Don't you fear that actually if you were part of a movement that over the last 10 years won an argument, you're going to have to win that argument all over again?

24:51That argument has been won, but absolutely, you know, the price of peace, eternal vigilance, etc. Energy security is peace. Energy is the foundation of life. Life is all about harnessing energy in order to replicate itself. And we are this, you know, we are the creature that created fire, right, that was able to harness this external source of energy and create everything around us. You know, in so doing, we've completely changed our climate, which is endangering us. And we've realized that. And that is its own incredible to me story. The fact that we are legislating for something that's invisible, for something that might personally affect us in decades to come, and yet we're still doing that.

25:43But nevertheless, you know, the difference between fossil fuels, which are concentrated in a few geographically lucky locations in the world, which are controlled by a few people holding large corporations or a few small states, this very unequal system that we have, this very fragile system. You know, Russia would not have been able to invade Ukraine if we hadn't all been dependent on Russian oil and gas. You know, this is a very big security issue, which states realize it's much cheaper. It's, you know, when you distribute power, political power, when you distribute energy power, you're doing the same thing.

26:27OK, when you have when you are your own power station because of the solar panels and I've been around the world and seen this is absolutely life changing when you have your own power source. We don't realise that because we live essentially with abundant energy. We switch a light and on it comes, right? And where it actually, the origin of that, we don't need to think about. That's held somewhere else. Somebody's burning gas or oil or it's a solar panel. Who cares, right? We don't know. We still have light. But in a large part of the world, they don't even have that. If you look at satellite images of the Earth from space, there are massive black patches.

27:03And those are black patches. They are energy poor, but in being energy poor, they are poor in life. They're not able to fulfil their potential as human beings. And we are able now in this moment to do something truly radical, right? This is a radical podcast. We are able to say abundant energy is not just for me and thee. It's for everyone. It could be universal. We could have universal access. you um mentioned that five years from now there's this potential tipping point and i want to come to the second sort of foundation so only for like this podcast can i just can i just take back sorry really annoying um of your guests to take over no no no no it'd be annoying if we did that in the today program but this is a podcast so we've got the time to do it let's go for it sorry sorry to the producer who's got to edit this no no no lewis and anna both looking forward to it very much But I, you know, what I'm saying about this moment that we have is that it is inevitable that we're going to this post-combustion future.

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28:07Is it? Yes, it is. Just for economic reasons, because once we reach that tipping point, which could be very soon, you know, or it could be a few years down the track. It means that all the infrastructure, all the logistics, everything is geared around this source of energy. So it just becomes mental. It's as if today you try to bring back one of those, you know, ancient cars that you started up with. Like there is no market for that. Right. Other than a few like eccentrics. So so that's the way it will go. But the reason that we have taken this plunge originally was because of the emissions of these greenhouse gases, which is causing climate change, causing global heating, which is destabilizing our world.

28:57And, unfortunately, the Earth systems are not going to wait for us to reach a happy medium with the ideologues and reach this net zero. And then we have to, by the way, cut below net zero, right? Net zero just means that there's a balance between what we're emitting and produce and removing by natural means. so we have a very small window in which to do that before it just becomes unlivable we've already had more than a year um where the global average temperature has been above one one and a half degrees right this is hugely problematic we're seeing massive um flooding episodes right in the heart of europe we see you know we started the year in the winter of the northern hemisphere with the richest, most expensive, valuable real estate in the world on fire.

29:52This is Los Angeles. This is LA, yeah, and many people still homeless from that. So when we think about climate migration, you might be thinking about a village of some houses where people have had to move. If we look at the people displaced, which is essentially they've had to migrate to a certain degree from where they live by disasters, It's huge.

30:19You know, it's so interesting at a time when it feels like climate change is no longer at the top of the political agenda, perhaps compared to a few years ago. And when it feels like many leaders and perhaps many populations and publics are turning against migration, it is pretty radical, isn't it? to hear someone say, as Guy O 'Vince is saying, that climate change should be back at the top of the agenda and that we need to get used to an era of mass migration and make that work. There's plenty more where that came from. I just wanted to jump in here for a brief, brief moment and say to you that if you're enjoying this conversation, if you've enjoyed other episodes of this podcast, please do subscribe.

30:59If you subscribe on BBC Sounds, you won't miss future episodes. And just to say, if you do subscribe, make sure you've got your push notifications. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

31:45...tunned on. That way you will get an alert whenever we publish a new episode and you'll never miss out. Thank you so much. And now back to Gaia Vince.

31:59So climate migration is a phrase, captures the two sides of the huge human coin that I wanted to discuss with you. Because you say looking ahead the next five years, particularly given what's happening in China with solar energy, we're reaching potentially a tipping point in the global economy. But also if we look ahead the next five years and try and understand the deep trends that are going to reshape our world, which is really what this podcast is all about, your radical idea is that we need to get comfortable with the idea that mass migration is a bigger part of the human future and not a smaller one yeah absolutely so um we need to adjust um today's very uh anti-migration uh mental frame that we've got into to cope with that.

32:55We need to be honest about the extent of climate change and also the extent of migration that's coming. And we need to find ways to address that so that we can build our societies of the future in a planned, ordered, managed way so that we have a better Anthropocene because it's not so great right now. Can I put you a series of fairly obvious objections to your position. The first thing is you could not have a clearer or more emphatic message from all the polling and all the elections that people are worried about migration. This is just the UK, obviously true of many Western democracies and that's before we get on to Hungary.

33:37People are worried about mass migration. They want it slowed down and they also have quite strong views about who should come. I mean, yeah, that's all true. but you know not wanting it I don't want climate change I don't you know I don't maybe you want the world to stay exactly as it is well you know that's you can want it but that doesn't matter that doesn't mean it's going to happen right we have to get real we have to be honest about what is happening right if people can't stay in some place they will have to move and by the way it's going to happen here as well because we're certainly not making adequate preparations for the extreme weather that we're already starting to experience and we do have people every year made homeless because of floods um coastal erosion is uh getting rid of houses in quite dramatic fashion uh from from from british coasts we we are we are expecting to see that we have a huge drought issues across um the southeast you know this this is happening but it's happening on a global scale.

34:41So, you know, not wanting it is not a solution to the problem, unfortunately, because it's happening whether you want it or not. Do you think that large-scale migration, so we had, I think, last year, 460 net, or about 400-something net migration to the UK. Before that, it peaked at the end of the Conservatives 14 years, over 900 ,000 net. Do you think that's A, economically, and B, socially desirable? I mean, I don't know about desirable. It totally depends on how it's managed, how we invest, how we make it work. I mean, what is happening is that we have a massive shortage of labour here. We have population declines, which are happening actually across most of the world now, which are really serious in Europe, which are only met through immigration.

35:37we are not having enough babies to support the Asian population that we that we live in and our entire sort of society is built on this on this contract where the young pay for the elderly care and you know in taxes but you know when you're an old man who's gonna wipe your bum really right It's a question I think about pretty often. Well, so, you know, whether you like it or not, we need people in. And leaders know that, economists all know that we need immigrants. We absolutely need them. And immigrants want to come largely where the work is. That's how they come. Most migrants are economic migrants.

36:20What's the point about workers? I mean, what people who take against your position would say is, there's two reasons we've got a shortage of workers. One is, as you say, the demographics. We've got a falling birth rate and a sharply rising share of the population, which is old or very old. But then we've also got particular challenges, which are probably a bit of a distraction on this. Yeah, I mean, people used to die just sort of soon after they retired. Yeah, they don't anymore. Now they're still alive and they're still alive with multiple morbidities. We've also got massive challenges in this country around people who've gone from working into not working, who are getting benefits or welfare or social security or whatever you want to call it.

37:00But is it inevitable that democracies, Western democracies, have to say, well, the only way to solve this is through mass migration? A, there are some countries like Japan or Australia who say actually, no, we'll take the hit. We'll take the demographic hit. Australia doesn't say that. Does it not? No. No, like two-thirds of Australians were born overseas. I mean, they have a very, very... The reason is Australian politics has not been wholly receptive to the idea of mass migration. I mean, going back to John Hall. No, they absolutely rely on migration in Australia. They certainly have been, in terms of asylum seeking and asylum granting, they've done some incredibly inhumane things.

37:44That's true. But their economic policy is heavily based on immigration, totally. Japan's, isn't it? Japan tried to go down the other route of robots instead of, because they are so xenophobic that they've gone down this route of replacing humans with robots. And it just hasn't worked. And so even incredibly xenophobic Japan has had to loosen its immigration requirements. And it's, you know, doing this is not easy. It takes investment. It takes financial investment in terms of you need to make sure there is enough housing. There is enough access to health care and other infrastructure, education, all of these things, a lot of which the immigrants themselves bring.

38:29But there's also got to be very, very key is social investment. You've got to make sure that this is something that you bring people along with, that people feel included. so that the migrants feel like citizens and the original population sees them as citizens and otherwise you cannot build a cohesive society. And really that's one of the biggest points of my book, I think, that we need to get past this, you know, shall we do it, shall we not do it? It's happening. Migration is part of the human condition anyway, but because of the climate crisis, it is going to increase. It is inevitably going to increase.

39:14But some people would say it doesn't have to be inevitable. And some people might read that argument and say, or read that... So everywhere that they've tried to, for example, increase the birth rate as an option, Yes, that's true. It's not worked. It has failed, right? The only way that population has economically been maintained is through immigration. But maybe some places would choose to grow old and grey, but keep what they think of as a more coherent, ethnically homogenous population rather than have large scale migration. And I don't say that to you because I'm advocating that. Well, that's fine if you don't care about living standards.

39:52If you're happy for your living standards to massively decline and you to become much poorer and have less access to things. I mean, this is kind of the decision that the UK took with Brexit. and economically we took a hit because of ideology. So on the living standards point, a lot of people would say, well, if it was the case that migration is your best hope of increasing living standards, how can it be that in the last 15 years we've had record migration to the UK, completely unprecedented in historical terms, and yet living standards have been flat? There's been a massive lack of investment.

40:30There's been poor redistribution of wealth because certainly the richest people have got richer during this time. There's been the lack of investment in society generally in all of these aspects. But also the lack of people to do the jobs has been a big part of that. Plus, we've had a pandemic here. I mean, this is actually something that has happened globally. I'll give you the example of Spain, however, because the Spanish leader was very honest and open last year to the people and he said, look, we can go down this anti-immigrant route like it's the fashion in Europe at the moment. We can totally do that or we can grow the economy and that will take immigration.

41:19And what he did was he put in loads of policies to make it work. so when people arrive in Spain they are assimilated quite quickly into jobs into places where they where they can work they have Spanish lessons free or very cheap from day one they have they you know it as a result Spain's GDP has grown at a much higher rate than the European average the EU average and certainly much higher than than Britain's what would you say to That is largely because of this much more pragmatic policy. What would you say to your sisters and brothers in America, which is a country that right now politically, I mean, by the way, I should just say it's so interesting and how can I say it's refreshing because I'm talking to you about this because I realise that I haven't spoken to anyone strongly advocating for more migration for quite a long time.

42:15I mean, I think you are, I mean, I haven't heard someone make the case for migration other than when caveating their criticism of migration? You often hear people go up in a party conference speech and say, this country was built by migrants, my family came here, we believe in it, but let's, you know, not quite close the borders, but let's have fewer migrants. Whereas you seem to be sort of shamelessly saying this is going to happen, it's a good thing, and make sure it is a good thing by having the right politics to make sure it works. If we have migration, which we will have inevitably, but we don't put in any policies to deal with it, we will have conflict.

42:49We will have all sorts of problems. We must manage it in a sensible way. But also you won't have democratic consent, which is one of the big issues in this country. For example, and the reason we don't have that is because of this fundamental lack of honesty. Because we do hear, as you just said, we do hear leaders. They are all very, very anti-migration. That is their stance that they come from. And it is actually, it's quite interesting to look at this from outside the little peephole of our time and look at this on a grander historical level because, you know, nations were paying people to come to them, right?

43:29The Windrush generation didn't just sort of like rock up on a cruise, should we stop here? They were asked by Britain to come because we needed somebody to come and rebuild our health service. We needed, you know, the railway sorted. We needed all of this. We needed human labour just as we continue to need it. And so we wanted people to come. You know, borders, which are also actually historically relatively new, were mainly about keeping people in. You know, people went out. Leaders went out and brought people in. You know, when their armies defeated a population, they were brought in as Labour or to join the military or to, you know, work in the fields.

44:18We needed people and leaders have always needed people. And what we are heading for a place, whatever this kind of mad time might present otherwise, we are headed for a place where countries will be competing for immigrants. and the immigrants will choose where to go. We already see that. We already see... You don't mean just highly skilled AI engineers. I don't just mean highly. They are already choosing where they go, right? And if they have a policy, for example, where they're not allowed to bring their family with them, which, by the way, is a basic human right that you should be allowed to live with your family, if they have those sorts of policies, they're going to go somewhere where that isn't a policy.

45:01I mean, we have been very, very... We are naturally very, very lucky that people choose to come here when they do because of, for example, our language is fairly universal, because we have strong institutions, because, you know, we have a strong democracy, all of those sorts of things. Make it a place where, you know, which we should be proud of if we're proud of anything, that we have a country that can luckily attract people. But that is absolutely going to drop.

45:37But what you're saying goes so against the temper of the times, it goes so against the grain of public conversation in this country or indeed in America, that I think it's just worth putting to you so you can counter it. The argument of those who are, for instance, in America saying we need to be much tougher on immigration or people in this country who might soon lead this country. They say, look, nations are homes. They are a complicated mixture and fabric of institutions, rituals, customs, and maybe shared obedience to some kind of moral order and shared histories. And if you have too much too quickly, and if you don't take the necessary measures to make sure that those who do come are aware of their duties and obligations as well as their rights, then you get huge social division.

46:26You don't become richer economically and you create pockets of really parallel societies. Yeah, so that's exactly why we need to manage this properly. Because that is absolutely true. That is absolutely true. And we've seen that in various places. We've seen migration where it's been managed well, and we've seen it where it's been managed poorly. And, you know, we are creating those conditions all the time today. We are creating, we have essentially stateless people, asylum seekers, for example, are, you know, they're not allowed to work, they're not allowed to contribute to society. So we have the most expensive way of dealing with this because we keep them in, you know, accommodations on the edge.

47:13You know, we're not we're not helping them feel part of this society, feeling, you know, an affinity to to citizenship, to what it means to be British, to what it means to be a Londoner or whatever. We're not developing and nurturing that in them. what we're doing is developing this kind of, you know, we hate you, we wish you weren't here, we're going to keep you on the absolute bare minimum, we're going to put all sorts of other petty humiliations your way, and then we might let you become a citizen after that. You know, that is not the way to treat a human being at all, obviously, but if you want to create a flourishing, productive city of the future, a beautiful place to live for yourself, and for your children and your friends.

48:03And, you know, these are immigrants, our work colleagues, our kids, friends at schools, the nurse and the GP surgery. These are part of our society. The cleaner in the person at the local church or mosque, yeah. All of these people, they become part of our society. So let's create that society, you know, intentionally, meaningfully, without doing this. And that means that absolutely we need to find ways of working with other nations, with other countries to make sure that these people, as they come, they come in a way that we are able to manage it in a humane fashion. But when they come, we also make sure that we invest properly in them and build a sense of shared citizenship.

48:50What would you say? Because it's changing. Nothing is, you know, stasis is death. We are creating a society every day. The society we live in today, the London of today, was created in the past by people, you know, Victorians with vision that built libraries, Carnegie libraries. You know, we're living in the, you know, the community housing built in the 60s or built in the 80s or whatever. We are living in the idea of democracy that, you know, has emerged over the last few hundred years. We can do the same. We can imagine a better world, a better city, a flourishing place for humans to live in a way that they can reach their potential, that they can live collaboratively, that they can have enough of everything, but without poisoning themselves with their own waste.

49:45Right. Which is something we haven't managed to do today in 2025. What would you say to those who listen to that world, that sort of call for us to imagine a better future and say it's utopian? And that actually... So what should we strive for? Dystopia? Not dystopia, but the truth about politics and the truth about democracy is that a lot of people have a preference for certain cultures, have a preference for people that they feel that they've grown up among and will vote accordingly, and that they won't accept that their country should be changed at a rate and the population of their country should be changed at the rate it has been in the last 20-odd years.

50:31Because that's where the politics of, say, America and Britain is today. I'm not advocating that position. I don't know anyone who's running on your agenda who's been successful in any Western democracy in the last 20-odd years. I would say that London is a place where immigration largely works. You know, obviously there are problems. There is still racism. There is poverty. There is huge, you know, social inequity. All of those things. People actually rub along. People mostly rub along. They rub along. It's not, you know, it's not something unusual or surprising. Or I don't think, oh, that person has darker skin than me.

51:14they're a very different person or that person, you know, clearly worships this God. They're really different. We're Londoners, right? We do rub along, but it's not just tolerance. It's also respect. It's mutual respect. And that's what we need to move to. We need to move to that everywhere. And, you know, it would be fantastic if there was leadership on this from our leaders. There are some people that are advocating for that. I really appreciate people stepping up from whatever background and whatever community to remind us all that we are part of a greater humanity and that we can spend our time accentuating our individual differences, but we shouldn't do it in a way to denigrate others, right?

52:05The diversity is beautiful. It is the strength that biology relies on to make sure that we have that resource, that power within our community. None of us can succeed. None of us can do anything as an individual. We rely on this network of humanity. And within our communities, we all have different strengths and perspectives and opinions, which is what actually allows us to progress culturally. I take great pride in the fact that this is a podcast called Radical. where sat in that seat last week was a head teacher called Catherine Birbelsingh who argued the exact opposite, that diversity is not a strength and that anyone who's ever been a leader anywhere knows that unity is a strength.

52:45Have you ever thought about going into politics? I don't know if I would be happy about towing a party line on something that I fundamentally opposed.

52:57I admire these people that, you know, I think democracy and I think the political process, we don't, you know, it is denigrated in the media all the time, is these people that stand up bravely and try and through the process of the law, through the process of our agreed consensus to govern for us, to be our servants in that way, I think they deserve a lot more respect. I mean, obviously there's a lot of exceptions. Guy Vince, author of many books, including Nomad Century, future independent politician for South London. It's a real pleasure and a privilege to chat to you. Thank you so much for coming in and being, well, being radical.

53:40Thank you, Amol. It's been such a pleasure.

53:45We've had some high energy interviews on this podcast and that was big. It was gloriously big picture. You know, it was, as I said to her a couple of times there, it is very, very, very striking when you hear someone shamelessly and proudly advocate for more, not less migration and for making current levels of migration work because we have to and because that would be a good thing. You just don't hear that very often these days. I remember about 15 years ago, a guy called Philip LeGrain wrote a book called Immigrants, Your Country Needs Them. And it was this real defensive migration. I remember The Economist newspaper slash magazine used to advocate for migration in a very, very big way.

54:26And there used to be these little sort of pockets of public life or journalism and media or indeed politics where people would come out and say, actually, we should celebrate migration. Obviously, that was at a time here in the UK of significantly lower migration than we've had in recent years. But you just don't hear it very often. So it did sound pretty radical, frankly, to hear someone come forward and say, well, you need to get used to this fact. And it's a good thing for the migrants and indeed potentially for the host country themselves. But also what I'm finding quite enjoyable is that we've done enough episodes of this podcast now that we're beginning to sort of get exchanges or conversations, even arguments between episodes, which I obviously have the privilege of experiencing because I'm sat in the room with our different guests.

55:11So Gaia Vince said something there about how diversity, essentially, I'm paraphrasing, but she said diversity is a strength. And she did that in the context of London. And she did it about a week after Catherine Birbel Singh, the founder and head teacher of Michaela Community School, who advocates a traditional approach to education, said pretty much the opposite. She said diversity is not a strength. Anyone who's ever led any sort of organisation or been a leader would say that unity is a strength. And she too is from London, though at a different end of the political spectrum, I think, to Gaia Vince.

55:44So that was fun. But I think the kind of intra-radical conversational argument that I found most illuminating was that Gaia Vince and Paul Moreland, if you remember Dr. Paul Moreland, he's the demographer that came on about seven or eight episodes ago. they're both really clear that we face not quite demographic collapse, but a demographic crisis where we're just not basically most countries are just not having as many babies as they need to. And Dr. Paul Morland's solution was, you know, if you are worried about immigration, you just need to have more babies, have more babies, even though very, very few places have been able to make that work.

56:27I can't think of many countries anywhere that have successfully introduced tax or fiscal incentives to encourage people to have more babies and seen that that works. Gaia Vince took the opposite view. She said, having more babies, well, people don't really want to do it. And there are no policies anywhere that works. So you're going to need to, as it were, import them. You're going to need to have higher migration and inward migration to do the work that native populations, quote unquote, are not willing to do. So there you have the same social demographic cultural problem identified by two different guests on this podcast, but then coming up with pretty radically different solutions.

57:05And I think that that's a sign that this podcast is doing exactly what we wanted it to do.

57:15We have had loads of messages, loads and loads and loads about last week's episode with the head teacher, Catherine Birbel Singh. Thank you so much to everyone who has been in touch This one is from David. As a teacher of 14 years experience, one thought I've had listening to Catherine Burble sing is that for many years now, championing the traditional values, the academic rigour, the small c conservatism, is actually far, far easier to do in multicultural inner London than in provincial England. Catherine's pupils are probably the children of parents who themselves have come to London from countries whose educational systems are similarly traditional and hold similar values to Catherine's.

58:00I would challenge Catherine to take her high-achieving brand of education to small-town England, away from the cities, to poorer, whiter communities with lower aspirations and lower prospects, and see if she manages to deliver the same results there. David, what a fantastic message that is. Thank you so much. Oh my goodness, so much to go at. First of all, I would just slightly, if I may, humbly and gently take issue with the blanket view that if you get away to small town England, away from the cities, you get to poorer, whiter communities with lower aspirations and lower prospects. I have, for various reasons, I won't bore you with it too much because it might sound a little bit self-aggrandizing.

58:42Oh, okay, I will do it. When I made some documentaries not so long ago about social mobility, including one called How to Crack the Class Ceiling, I spent quite a lot of time in the southwest of England and also in the northeast, particularly in Hull. And the one thing I'd say is, yes, it might be true that in some of those very, very, very poor parts of small town or non-London Britain, that there are some lower aspirations in some communities. there are also jewels, real, if you like, diamonds in the rough, people that I've come across, I've worked with, I've mentored, I'm still in touch with, who have huge aspirations and who really do share that kind of absolute belief, not just in hard work, but in traditional values when it comes to education.

59:21I did say to a conservative politician, I won't say who because it would get me in trouble, but I did say a few years ago that if the Michaela School proved successful, wouldn't their, you know, a smart and savvy education strategy be to try and unleash a thousand Michaelers across the country if they felt that that was the way to go. And they said, well, there's two issues. One is exactly as you say, David, would there be the same kind of buy-in from other places outside of London? And secondly, you don't have a thousand Catherine Birbel-Sings. And she's obviously a very unique personality. She's very hands-on in running her school, which happens to be in northwest of London.

59:57Really, really, really interesting message, David. Here's another message. And this one's from Richard. Hello, Amal and the Radical team. I really enjoyed the education episode with Catherine Burble-Singh. I wasn't sure about Catherine's narrow view of Britishness. I like Shakespeare, but I don't have a strong passion. Same with King Charles. He isn't sacred to me, and I'd be open to Britain becoming a republic. I'm white, proud and British, but concerned that her view is sort of an older, almost colonial view that tries to freeze a fixed view of Britain. Two things come to mind, Richard. The first is I think that even Catherine would say that, yes, she believes in people singing I vow to my country.

1:00:44And yes, she believes in teaching Shakespeare and dead white men and so on. But even she would say that A, teachers and schools should have some freedom with their curriculum. And B, they should also teach colonial history. They should also talk about the Atlantic slave trade or other slave trades and talk about the East, what some people used to call the Orient. So I don't think she's not against expanding the curriculum to cover other parts of global history. I think she just feels like there is a certain story of Britishness which should be covered as a sort of baseline. I would humbly and gently say to you, though, Richard, I sort of think Shakespeare is an essential unifying aspect of Britishness, just because I think as a country, as a culture, what have you got more than your words?

1:01:29and your words come from your writers. And I think Shakespeare is the greatest writer of them all. And I think, you know, I mean, up there with people like Thomas Gray and John Milton, but I do think that Shakespeare is a unique proposition within this country, more so than, I don't know, Rabindranath Tagore in India or Goethe in Germany. I think Shakespeare is so big and huge in our culture that I think it's incredibly important that kids from all backgrounds do know lots about Shakespeare. And I think that Shakespeare can bring people together. But I take your point, Richard, and I'm very, very grateful indeed for the message.

1:01:59and indeed for all of the messages that we have got. Please do keep them coming in. We love getting them. And, you know, it just makes us feel good about the fact we're building a real community. And by the way, to all of the people who I've bumped into in the street over the past week, and they're saying very, very nice things to be about Radical. And you know who you are. And I always say the same thing, which is send us a voice note. Please do it, because I might even be a little bit biased and try and get you on. I'll have to have a word with the guys behind the glass about that. Anyway, that's going to get me in trouble.

1:02:27Anyway, to get in touch, like David and Richard and loads of other people, please WhatsApp us. The number is 0330 123 9480. That's 0330 123 9480. Or you can email us on radical at bbc.co.uk. Just by the way, if you use that WhatsApp number, remember, if you save that WhatsApp number and you try and send us a message next to the white bar where you type stuff in, there's a little microphone symbol. put your thumb on the microphone symbol and either you can hold it down or swipe up and it will kind of turn into a little lock and then you just talk into your phone and when you're finished you press the send button.

1:03:07That's how you send a voice note. Pleased to be of service to any who needs such guidance.

1:03:15And that is it for this episode. To make sure you don't miss future conversations please subscribe to Radical with Amol Rajan on BBC Sounds. You can also watch episodes. I mean, what could you possibly want to do in life more than to watch episodes of Radical? I can't think of anything better to do with your time. And you can do that, my friends, on iPlayer. Just head to iPlayer, sign in. You've got to pay the licence fee, but it's worth it just for this podcast. Head to iPlayer and search for Radical with a mole rajin, and then Unbounded Joy will greet your eyes. Speak to you next week. Goodbye.

1:03:52If journalism is the first draft of history, What happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

From the publisher

As extreme weather forces people from their homes, the journalist and author Gaia Vince makes the positive case for immigration.

Projections show that billions of people will be displaced by 2050 due to the effects of global warming, a phenomenon she has reported on in her book ‘Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval’.

She argues that if governments plan for the mass movement of people they can reap the economic rewards of immigration despite public concern about the issue.

And with news that renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of 2025, Gaia tells Amol why she thinks we’re approaching a “tipping point” which will see the end of our reliance on fossil fuels and green energy become the dominant source of power.

GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.

Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Anna Budd. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by James Piper. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.

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