The Sh*t Show: choking in the haze in Southeast Asia

Send us Fan Mail The haze is back in Southeast Asia and Indonesians are on the front-line breathing in the toxic smoke, with neighbouring countries, Singapore and Malaysia, experiencing particulate matter pollution in the dangerous range. The last major haze event was also during an El Niño year – 2015 - and this year the expectation is the fires and haze could persist into October or early November, as delayed rains prolong dry conditions. By the end of August, satellite monitoring estimated nearly 896,000 hectares burned, which is about a third of the 2015 total, but it’s still early days. Suffice to say, it’s not pleasant being exposed to this toxic smoke.  To help us understand why it keeps happening and what we can do about it, we are delighted to welcome Wally Tham, who helps organisations navigate complexity and create powerful stories for change. Beyond his work, for more than a decade, he has worked on practical protections for communities exposed to severe haze, including public education and air-quality measurement, to building the first haze shelter in Palangkaraya, Indonesia. He delivers low-cost and local solutions, including sealed, filtered concrete rooms that balance smoke filtration with heat and carbon-dioxide management. He’s expanded this work into a network of 22 operating safe rooms, offering an immediate layer of protection where larger institutional responses have fallen short.  After that, we’re going to dig into the maelstrom of news around AI, or should we say Super Intelligence? We’ll also look at the forthcoming extreme weather events predicted due to the El Niño, including the estimate of nearly 450,000 excess deaths by December. Then we’ll finish sitting with the despondency some of us are feeling, and we’ll talk about what we do to manage those feelings. It’s not an easy time.  It’s news from the front lines, as well as wider world issues, so we hope you can join us, and bring your friends. We’ll be going live Friday, 2nd October 2026, kicking off at 8am UK, 9am EU, 11am UAE, 12.30pm IN, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations, and no doubt about it, we’d love your support.  The Sh\*t Show is a Livestream happening on the first Friday of every month for now, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh\*t show.  #TheShitShow #UncommonCourage  You can find me Andrea T Edwards | The Digital Conversationalist and Welcome - Uncommon Courage - An Invitation.  My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage  My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar