I mean, were we sailing close to the wind, do you think? Or do you think maybe people are exaggerating that a bit and we had a lot more leeway?

No, I don't think they probably were sailing close to the wind.

I mean, coming off a year with Probably 800 million a turnover.

So that's a big old number to start with.

Squad cost is a funny one.

It's not your wage bill.

It's just your playing team plus your coaching staff.

They had

Why did he push for a cash injection of over $4 billion? despite the criticism, right after what he should have been considering was his finest hour and the most lucrative World Cup in history.

Yeah, well, you know, rich people get rich by always focusing on money.

And, you know, I guess it is, in fairness to him, part of his brief to keep the money flowing into FIFA and into the individual member associations, which, of course, are the people that elect him every four years via the FIFA Congress.

So this...

Cash injection, I think the number quoted was $20 million as a one-off payment, almost like a signing on fee, and then promises of further money over the next few years under this new scheme.

And also, of course, there were rumors, and we should say just rumors because we don't know for sure that he was going to be the head of this new project, even when he left Feef, which would have earned him an awful lot of money.

So it's something that perhaps we shouldn't be surprised about, given the way that football has gone over the last few years.

And then we dovetail that into what was a breathtakingly quick announcement agreement by UEFA and other confederations, given your insight and knowledge of the way these things work, can you just lift the hood on how quickly this decision, because normally we don't see alignment across confederations and agreement within one confederation, for that matter, happen as quickly as it did.

Ooh.

Which...

It seems obvious, and protein right now is having a moment.

It seems to always be having a moment.

It sure is.

But I think about protein, I think, a little different to the way that protein is being portrayed in the mainstream media right now.

I think it's great that there's a lot of emphasis right now on maintaining your functional independence as you age and staying strong.

yep

What about those transition foods, though? Do they have a place?

Simon says they can help, but the healthiest pattern centers on legumes, beans, lentils, tempeh, tofu, minimally processed foods.

And here's a major theme: communication.

They criticize making absolute claims to win people over when real science is uncertain and context-dependent.

As they put it, "The job of a scientist is to convey degrees of certainty and uncertainty."

But they push back hard, describing healthier masculinity as being a provider and protector, making thoughtful choices, showing emotional intelligence, being present, not posturing.

In the end, they call for humility.

They admit they once used reductive language to evangelize plant-based eating.

Mm

... companies that benefit.

The other thing that I, I might circle back on here is you mentioned that part of, of masculinity is protecting the vulnerable and protecting the, the voiceless.

And I would say I personally, I identify with the, the pursuit of living in a way that is as beneficial for the environment and other animals and other humans as possible.

And I find that to be not a, a weakness or a soft trait, but a, a, a strength, and I think it takes temperance and it takes some, uh, courage to step aside from what most of society is doing.

And I'm not saying, again, I don't- ... think people need to do this perfectly, and there's not one way of doing it.

But I think questioning that and saying, "I'm gonna have some, some discipline and strength to make some choices here that, that I think are not just better for myself, but better for the, the world around me."

Uh, so if you're encouraged by what you've heard and you're curious about how you might begin the process of eating a more plant-predominant diet, what is the best way to do that, Simon?

... and now that you've seen them, how it's changed your view.

Uh, well, I don't know whether my view's changed because obviously I've, I've watched a lot of Australia over recent years, and particularly under Tony Popovic.

So, you know, the way that they played was probably n- no great surprise.

And I, I think it's probably a very sensible way of playing because, you know, we, we've gotta be brutally honest.

Uh, we haven't got the best players in the world in the squad at the moment.

Uh, man for man, Turkey w- were probably better.

You know, they've got players like Arda Güler who plays for Real Madrid, arguably, you know, one of the biggest world clubs, uh, in, in football.

Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

So talk to us about Tony because he had success wherever he's gone.

Yeah, look, Popper is his own man.

He doesn't give much away.

he's very cagey with the media uh keeps things in house which uh previous coaches have been a little more open which is you know probably better for us in the media but uh Again, he knows he has to make those big decisions, and goodness me, they were big calls last night.

And it could have so easily gone wrong.

He's got to balance that against the likely probability or not of getting a good result.

And if it goes wrong, obviously he's got to live with that and answer the questions from the media and put up with all the brickbats that he's inevitably going to get.

What sort of effect that potentially has on a team when something like that takes place?

So talk to us about Tony because he had success wherever he's gone.

Yeah, look, Popper is his own man.

He doesn't give much away.

He's very cagey with the media, uh, keeps things in house, which, uh, previous coaches have been a little more open, which is, you know, probably better for us in the media, but, uh, Again, he knows he has to make those big decisions.

And goodness me, they were big calls last night.

And it could have so easily gone wrong.

And he's got to balance that against the likely probability or not of getting a good result.

What sort of effect that potentially has on a team when something like that takes place?

Um, so what do you make of that disconnect between the committee report and the decisions that were made regarding those aspects of the, of the inverted pyramid that are kind of anathema to the recommendations?

Yeah, well, the current administration es- essentially set those, the committee's recommendations to the side and then created their own, uh, additional panel of scientists which, which then did their own scientific foundation, uh, report, which is what Ty Beal and Don Layman were a part of.

And so they, they were tasked with reviewing the, the advisory piece from Christopher Gardner's committee, and they w- they went through 50-plus recommendations, and you just spoke to some of those recommendations were about eating more plant protein.

And they were recommending, like, Mediterranean, DASH, pescatarian-style dietary patterns with a lot of fiber and unsaturated fats and low in ultra-processed foods.

And around 30 of the 50-something recommendations were completely rejected, and they put forward their own kind of set of recommendations to the administration.

Now, the interesting thing is, I thought Don Layman, Ty Beal, and that group wrote the guidelines.

But they didn't even write the guidelines.

It doesn't matter

Yeah, and very vitamin deficient.

Right.

So I was observing that these things are interconnected.

And what we see is from the age of about 30 onwards, we see a reduction in muscle mass about half to kind of 1% per year.

And then by the age of 50, that can ramp up.

So you can be losing 1% to 2% of your muscle mass per year, right? So you could be losing 10%, 14% of your muscle mass per decade after the age of 50.

From age 50, you're losing more strength per year than you are muscle mass, which is also really important, strength and power.

And it seemed like a pretty well done review of the literature.

Mm-hmm.

So we can cause some dysregulation of our circadian rhythms, and then that affects the release of melatonin, which has an effect on your sleep, for example.

We can also dramatically affect these circadian rhythmsThrough the timing in which we eat.

That's the other really important signal here.

So within this challenge, we have two different habits that speak to nurturing our circadian rhythms.

One is light exposure.

We want people in the morning to get outside, get at least 10 minutes of natural light exposure in the first couple of hours of waking up.

... around morning sunlight.

(laughs) Okay.

And, you know, society has taught us if you eat muscle, you build muscle, and it kind of, you know, intuitively it makes sense.

We can see that.

Y- you take the muscle off an animal, you eat that, and all of a sudden you're going to be, you know, Popeye.

You know, these big bulging biceps.

But what I would explain to him is that when you eat food that has protein in it, whether it is meat, whether it is a legume or tempeh, the body doesn't just absorb that protein.

First, it breaks it down into amino acids, and then they get absorbed into the bloodstream.

You know, like, he's physically just a lot more active than, you know, I suspect most of us are in our adult lives.